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Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 107 that. Only she didn't call them breasts, of course, she called them bosoms. Chickens had breasts, tramps had tits, and boobies were exotic fowl. Angie had ignored her as usual; she'd read that baby's raised on mothers milk were less likely to get sick and formed a stronger bond with their mothers, and Angie had a superstitious faith in everything she read in the baby magazines. She had not enjoyed breastfeeding. She leaked wet spots on her blouses, her nipples ached like clenched fists, and the pitiful look on Cleo's face when she gummed the air before finding the nipple provoked in Angie a resentment she was not comfortable with. Angie weaned Cleo onto bottle formula just shy of the one month mark, and re-met Patrick. The two corresponded to the day. Patrick was an old high school friend she'd not seen in years. The fast paced lifestyle of her late teens had prevented them from crossing paths, and only now, domesticated by a new baby and forced to slow down, had she found time for him again. In those first weeks, she had come to rely heavily on Patrick's company, as no one she'd known more recently bothered to visit anymore. She couldn't go to parties and found she didn't miss them. She was content now with being boring and wanted boring people, like Patrick, to surround her. Cleo was in love with Patrick. The whole time he held her that first day Angie had felt embarrassed, as though she were eavesdropping on a love affair. He held Cleo to him with an intimacy Angie had not assumed with the baby. It was unbearably sweet, and Angie felt relieved when Cleo started to fuss. She thought for sure Patrick would hold Cleo away from him in that awkward way boys have, and hand her back to Angie. But instead he cradled Cleo closer to him, in the hollow below his chest, and rocked her gently to sleep. |
