Milk Read Free Page B

blades; I think of my room at the Alta Vista, of the sock dangling from the showerhead. “No,” I say. “No thank you.”
    â€œWell, I offered.”
    â€œYes, you did. That’s over with. Phew, close call, huh?” An old joke between us. None of us have stayed under the same roof in more than fifteen years.
    Corb invites me for lunch the next day, a Saturday, and when I let myself in—the front door is unlocked—he and his wife, Diane, are rinsing vegetables at the sink.
    â€œTheo!” Diane wipes her hands on her apron first, but Corb just reaches out for me, hugging me with wet hands.
    â€œHi, you guys.”
    â€œWe’re so sorry,” Diane breathes into my ear, “about you and Jackson.”
    I break away. “Where are the boys?” Gabe and Bruce, their eleven- and twelve-year-old sons. My nephews.
    â€œPlaying Nintendo in the basement,” Diane answers. “Let me look at you.” She turns me this way and that. “You look fabulous. Did you get a haircut?”
    She always asks me that. Maybe she thinks I need one.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt’s so beautiful, your hair,” Diane says, then gestures at her own straight brown hair cut at the shoulders, slightly turned under. What I think of as an adult haircut. “If I want curls, I have to pay for them.”
    â€œCome on, now.” Corb takes my elbow and steers me out of the kitchen. “I want to show you the new baby.”
    â€œThe new baby,” I say. “I can’t wait.”
    It could be a computer or an addition to the house, or a new animal, which qualifies as a sort of baby, I guess. Corb leads me downstairs to the basement, in something of a hurry. We pass the boys, eyes glazed from Nintendo. By their feet, motionless, is a lop-eared rabbit I’ve never seen before. “Hi, boys,” I say.
    Gabe, the younger one, squints at me (glasses that always seem too large for his face) but doesn’t answer, in mid-thought about the game he’s playing. “Blow it up,” Bruce says to him. “Blow it up, Gabe!” Gabe touches a button and the TV screen emits an atomic sound, followed by cartoon smoke and exploding colors. The rabbit’s nose quivers slightly. “Hi Aunt Theo,” Bruce says, in the same inflectionless way he answers the phone. This is the Mapes’ residence. This is Bruce speaking. May I ask who’s calling?
    â€œCome on,” Corb says, pulling me along. Apparently, the rabbit isn’t the new baby.
    â€œWhere are we going?”
    â€œYou’ll see.” He’s like a kid, the most excited I ever see him, whenever he’s about to show me the ‘new baby,’ whatever it may be. For a second I think of my new baby—when do I tell him about that?
    â€œReady?” Corb ushers me into the storage room.
    The new baby is a hydroponic lettuce growing kit. You plant seeds in sand and pour in water, and, with the help of grow lights, voilà .
    The salad at lunch features this lettuce—pale, tender, embryonic.
    I can’t help asking. “Why don’t you just grow the lettuce outside?”
    â€œHe likes it because it’s a kit,” Diane says, “because it’s new.”
    My foot kicks something soft under the table. I look. It’s the rabbit.
    â€œGabe, Bruce—is this your rabbit?”
    â€œYeah,” they answer in unison, absorbed in their second helpings. A far cry from when they were seven or eight and couldn’t sit still—they played soccer with cherry tomatoes, made gullies and rivers out of mashed potatoes and gravy; they stuffed their mouths with food, gulped milk, and fled from the table out the back door. Back then they chattered to me nonstop about sports, Legos, their pals, the science projects they dreamed up themselves involving ice cubes and dental floss, cardboard tubes and plastic soldiers.
    â€œSo how are we going to convince Dad to