The First Bad Man: A Novel

by Miranda July

  He crunched his candy angrily.

  I tucked my hair behind my ears and smoothed my eyebrows—it would be embarrassing for everyone but at least he would know she wasn’t a liar. I took a deep breath and stepped boldly around the corner.

  “Did you—” Her crying was so violent that she could barely talk. “Did you say that because you want me to”—the last part came out in a shrill chirp—“blow you?”

  My backward steps were silent and swift. No one had seen me.

  “No, Ruth-Anne. That’s not why I said that.” He sighed again, louder this time.

  “Because,” she said, “I might be willing to do that.” I could hear her attempt at a coy smile through her stuffy nose and running mascara.

  In the very beginning she didn’t even like him. She could see his arrogance and his tendency to ignore what was inconvenient to him. The doctor was surprised, taken aback, when she pointed out these flaws. It made him want to have intercourse with her, just to put her in her place. But he was married and it wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t his physical ideal—a little too old, a little manly around the shoulders, horsey in the jaw. She knew this; it was as clear as if he had said, “You’re a little too old, a little manly around the shoulders, horsey in the jaw.” The insult kept her interested, this and the fact that he was married. Nothing inspired her like the thought of wifely Mrs. Broyard, obsessed with making dinner and the consistency of her children’s stools. Finally she broke him down. One night after rebirthing class he wept into his wineglass and admitted that he and his wife were going through a rough patch. It was on this night that she suggested the arrangement; she described it as a form of therapy. He said he trusted her and for the first few months this trust was the basis of their dynamic. She was his new receptionist but it was as though he was working for her. She guided him into each thing he did to her. It was sweet, and he actually loved her a little bit. She felt satisfied and at peace. Gradually he gained confidence and the game heated up. It was aerobic and exhilarating for him; in their finest moments he admired her athletic build and the broadness of her shoulders. A smaller woman would have been more quickly exhausted, but she had a brute endurance.

  But eventually she wanted it more than he did, and this made her lower than him. There was no way to knock down a woman who was already lying on the ground. Their intercourse continued for a while, ritualistically, then dwindled to a pat on the rump in passing. And then finally nothing, for years now.

  “Where are you going?” she sniffed.

  He was walking straight toward me. His arm extended around the corner as he used the wall to stretch out his shoulder, one hand resting just a few inches from my forehead. I stared it down and it withdrew. He groaned and walked back to Ruth-Anne.

  “Let me pay you a normal rate. My secretary in Amsterdam makes three times what you do.”

  “But she’s a real secretary.”

  “You’re a real secretary.”

  Like a person slapped, she said nothing.

  “How are you different from a real secretary? Tell me. It’s been years, Ruth-Anne. Years.”

  The contract, I thought. Refer to the terms of the contract.

  She was silent.

  “If you won’t take a normal salary, then I’ll hire a secretary who will.”

  Ruth-Anne cleared her throat. “Okay. Hire another secretary.” Now she sounded like herself again, calm and astute.

  “Yes, I will. Thank you. I think it’s best for both of us,” he said. “Shall we go?”

  “You go. I’ll wait a bit longer.”

  Dr. Broyard laughed tiredly. He still didn’t believe I was coming. “Are you sure?”

  She wasn’t at all sure, this was plain as day. She was giving him one last chance to choose her, to stay, stay forever, to honor all her complications and live with her in a new world of love and sexuality.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” I could hear the smile she was using. Last chance, it said. Last chance forever.

  “Well, I might not see you before Helge and I take off. Let’s have a phone call when I’m back in Amsterdam, okay?”

  Maybe she nodded. He walked to the elevator. He pressed the button and we both listened, my therapist and I, and waited for this part to be over—the part where he had already left but was still with us. We listened to the elevator rush upward, the doors opening and shutting, and then a long descent, which got fainter and fainter but never seemed to end. She slid to the floor, sobbing. Something in the building shut off, the heating or cooling; it became even quieter. I tried not to listen to her choking, wet gasps. After a while she blew her nose, hard and loud, gathered her purse, and left.

  It was a wonderful feeling to be back in my warm car, driving home to Clee. I turned on the phone; there was one new message.

  “Hi, Cheryl, it’s Ruth-Anne, it’s three forty on Saturday afternoon. You missed your three o’clock rebirthing appointment. Because you didn’t cancel twenty-four hours in advance you will have to pay in full. Please make the check payable to me. See you at our regular time on Tuesday. Be well.”

  There was no way around it. I called back and made an emergency appointment. I would have to tell her what I had done and admit that I was struggling with my conception of her. She seemed pathetic and desperate to me now. Obsessed.

  “Good, good,” she would probably say. “Keep going.” It would turn out that this was the key, witnessing this exchange between the primordial mother and the primordial father.

  “But I eavesdropped!” I would cry.

  “It was essential that you perform the role of a spy, a naughty child,” she would say, excited because for the first time in her twenty-year practice a patient had shifted the field—this was a psychiatric term, shifting the field. It meant everything could be exposed for what it really was, every question answered, total clarity for both doctor and patient, leading to a true friendship inaugurated by the therapist reimbursing all her fees in one lump sum. Dr. Broyard would now come out wearing a mask that was a crude drawing of his own face and it would be revealed that the entire exchange in the hallway was a farce—it was the rebirthing.

  “You witnessed the reverse conception and survived it. That’s very powerful.”

  “But how did you know I would be early?” I would say, incredulous, almost dubious.

  “Look at your watch,” Dr. Broyard would say. My watch was one hour behind. Dr. Broyard would take off his mask, revealing a very similar face, then Ruth-Anne would pretend her face was a mask and because her skin was a little on the loose side it would look for a moment as if she really might be able to peel it off. But she couldn’t, luckily. We would all laugh and then laugh about how good it felt to laugh. A massage for the lungs, one of us would say.

  Now I almost felt like I didn’t need to go to the emergency appointment, but I went anyway. I was curious if I would really get all my money back in one lump sum; it seemed unlikely, but if I had really shifted the field then I guessed it was only fair. If shifting the field was a real thing, which, as I sat on the leather couch, I remembered it wasn’t. I explained about arriving early and hearing their entire exchange.

  Ruth-Anne’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know. But do you think maybe it was important that I perform the role of a naughty”—I could see already that she didn’t—“child? A spy?”

  “I just don’t understand how you could do this.” She put her face in her hands. “It’s such a violation.”

  Unless this was also part of the farce? I smiled a little, experimentally.

  “For the record, I think you did the right thing,” I said. “By quitting.”

  Ruth-Anne stood up, took a moment to put her long hair in a ponytail, and told me our work was done.

  “We’ve gone as far as we can go together. You broke the patient confide
ntiality agreement.”

  “Isn’t that to protect the patient?”

  “It’s a two-way street, Cheryl.”

  I waited to see what would happen next.

  “So, goodbye. I’ll prorate today since it wasn’t a full session. Twenty dollars.”

  It seemed like she meant that so I fished out my checkbook.

  “You don’t have cash?”

  “I don’t think so.” I looked in my wallet, all ones.

  “How much do you have?”

  “Six dollars?”

  “That’s fine.”

  I gave her the cash, including both halves of a dollar bill that I had been meaning to tape together for a few years.

  “You can keep that one,” she said.

  As I drove out of the parking garage I could feel her watching my car from her window on the twelfth floor. I marveled at the therapeutic process. This was bringing up a lot for me, being abandoned like this. Our most potent work to date.

  CHAPTER NINE

  All the women in Clee’s birth class were in their twenties or thirties, except the teacher, Nancy, who was my age. Whenever Nancy referred to what obstetricians were like twenty years ago, when she had her children, she would look at me; it was impossible not to nod in agreement, as if I were remembering. Sometimes I even chuckled ruefully with Nancy, and all the young couples would smile respectfully at me, a woman who had been through it and now was supporting her striking but sadly single daughter. We were given color-coded handouts to refer to during the birth in case we forgot how to time contractions or what to visualize for relaxation. We learned how to push a baby out (like urinating), what to drink in labor (Recharge and honey) and eat after birth (your own placenta). Clee seemed to be feverishly recording every little detail, but a closer look at her notebook revealed pages of bored loop-di-loops.

  In the last trimester the musculoskeletal and hematopoietic systems completed themselves and Clee stopped moving. She lowered her immense body onto the couch and stayed there, wanting everything to be brought to and taken from her. Princess Buttercup.

  “Remember what Nancy said in birth class,” I warned.

  “What?”

  “About how important it is to stay active. I’m sure the baby’s parents would appreciate you not watching TV every second of the day.”

  “Actually, this is their favorite show,” she said, turning up America’s Funniest Home Videos. “So I should get the baby used to it.”

  “Whose favorite show?”

  “The baby’s parents. Amy and Gary.”

  She laughed at a dog walking around with a can stuck on the end of its nose.

  “You’ve met them?”

  “What? No. They live in Utah or somewhere. I just picked them off the website.”

  It was called ParentProfiles.com; a woman from Philomena Family Services had sent her the link a few months ago.

  “Why Amy and Gary?” I clicked through pages and pages of clean, desperate couples. “Why not Jim and Gretchyn? Or Doug and Denice?”

  “They had good favorites.”

  I clicked on their favorites. Amy’s favorite food was pizza and nachos, Gary’s was coffee ice cream. They both liked dogs, restoring classic cars, and America’s Funniest Home Videos. Gary liked college football and basketball. Amy’s favorite holiday tradition was baking gingerbread houses.

  “Which favorite was your favorite?”

  She looked over my shoulder.

  “Was there something about ducks? Scroll down.” She squinted at the screen. “Maybe that was someone else. Gingerbread houses—I like those.”

  “That was the deciding factor?”

  “No. But look at that barn.” She touched the image in the masthead.

  “That’s a stock photo—it’s on every page.”

  “No, that’s their barn.” She tried to click on the barn. “It doesn’t matter, they’re already official.”

  “You e-mailed them?”

  “Carrie did, from PFS. I don’t have to ever meet them.”

  She’d really done it. Forms had been filled out.

  “Did you go to an office and sign papers?”

  “Carrie e-mailed me a thing. I did it all online.”

  A snail was crawling up the bookshelf. I put it in Rick’s bucket.

  “Did you put who the dad is?”

  “I said I didn’t know. There’s no law that says I have to say.”

  I clicked on Amy and Gary again. They looked nice, except for Gary. Gary looked like he was wearing sunglasses even without them. A cool customer. I clicked on “Our Letter to You.” “We realize this must be a tremendously difficult time in your life. The love and compassion you are showing for your child are immeasurable.” I looked at Clee.

  “Would you say this is a tremendously difficult time in your life?”

  She looked around the room, checking to see if it was.

  “I think I feel okay.” She nodded a few times. “Yeah, I’m doing all right.”

  I frowned with pride. “That’s the hormones.”

  I was good at this. I was a good mother. I wanted to tell Ruth-Anne—it was agonizing that she didn’t know. But maybe she did. Maybe I was still under her gaze somehow. I tucked my hair behind my ears and smiled at the computer.

  “Go to Grobaby.com,” said Clee.

  I fingered Embryogenesis. “We should get through the musculoskeletal system. Wouldn’t want to skimp on that.” But she was due in three weeks. Even with no guidance her body could probably finish it off from here. I clicked on Grobaby­.com. “ ‘Talking, singing, or humming to your baby is a fun way to bond during pregnancy. So warm up those pipes and get your Broadway on!’ ”

  “What if you don’t want to bond with the baby?” she said, staring at the TV.

  I hummed a little, clearing my throat. “Do you mind if I give it a try?”

  She changed the channel on the remote and lifted her shirt.

  It was really huge. There was a disturbing dark line coming down from her belly button. I put my lips close enough to feel its radiant heat, and she flinched a little.

  I hummed high and I hummed low. I hummed long, sustained notes like a wise person from another country who knew something ancient. After a while my deep tone seemed to split and harmonize with itself and I thought for a moment that I was doing that beautiful throat singing the people of Tuva do.

  Her eyes were on the TV, but her lips were pressed together and she seemed to be trying to match my pitch. And she was scared, that was suddenly obvious. She was twenty-one and any day now she would give birth, in this house, probably on this couch. I tried to hum reassuringly. Everything will be fine, I hummed, nothing to worry about. Clee’s stomach lurched against my lips—a kick; we raised our volume in surprised unison. I wondered if there would be an awkward confusion about how to end this but the hum simply grew fainter, as if it were leaving on its own, like a train.

  IN BIRTH CLASS WE LEARNED that her face would swell up when the time was near. Or she might begin scrubbing the walls with a fierce nesting instinct. That one was hard for me to picture—how would she know where I kept the sponges?

  She rose at dawn, certain a cat had pissed in the house.

  “Smell over here,” she said, sniffing my bookshelves. I couldn’t smell it. She followed the invader’s invisible tracks around the house. “It must have come in, peed, and left.” She whipped aside the shower curtain. “All we can do is look for the hole it came in through.” So we spent the earliest hour of the day searching for the hole, until she suddenly sat down on the couch with a gasp. She put both hands under her stomach and looked up at me with amazement. A contraction.

  “Maybe there’s no cat?” I said.

  “Yeah, no cat,” she said quickly, as if I was way behind.

  I called the midwife immediate
ly, describing the cat pee, the hole, and now the contractions. All the information was valuable, not to a doctor, but certainly to our wise midwife, who had fifteen years of experience. “Do you think it’s time to come over?” I tried not to sound too desperate. “Or is it too early?”

  “I’m in Idaho,” she said. “But don’t worry, I’m coming back immediately. I’ll drive as fast as I can.”

  “Drive?”

  “I’m bringing a friend’s car back to Los Angeles for her.” Before making a snap judgment, I tried for a moment to put myself in her position. What was she supposed to do, not drive the car back? What kind of friend would that be? The kind of friend who is a midwife.

  “I guess we’ll go to the hospital.”

  She laughed. “Don’t worry, everyone always thinks the baby is about to come out. That baby isn’t going anywhere for at least twelve hours. The good news is, you can call me as much as you want. I’m completely available by phone.”

  I told Clee not worry, the baby wasn’t coming for twelve more hours.

  “I can’t do this for that long,” she groaned. She was scraping the couch with her fingernails. “We should call Carrie from PFS, she has to tell the parents.” A weird low noise came out of her chest and her eyes bulged.

  “Maybe we should call your parents?” I suggested.

  “Are you kidding?”

  The contractions seemed closer together and longer than they should be, but I wasn’t sure we were measuring them right. And you weren’t supposed to time them in the beginning anyway; the blue handout from class suggested having friends over, going to a movie or dancing. It would be the first time we’d ever done any of those things, but I mentioned them to Clee.

  “Do any of those sound good?”

  She shook her head and moaned in a terrifying way. I skipped ahead to the pink handouts. We tried one of the visualizations from class—each contraction was a mountain. “Picture the mountain, you’re halfway up, now you’re at the top, now you’re coming down the other side and it’s easier, almost over.”