Free Milk by Emily Hammond

to: unbutton my blouse and bare them to passersby, men, women, children. As if the milk is flowing already.

E IGHT
    I hate to think of myself as one of those people who holds up a dusty old relationship to the light and, fantastically, unrealistically, deems it the best. But I am. It was. I think. Anyway, here I am in this club at Gregg’s invitation, watching his band play; a romantic fool to the end, silly old groupie, sipping my seltzer made to look like a cocktail: ice cubes, fizz, lime.
    When I first saw Gregg some sixteen years ago, he was standing in line at freshman orientation, tall and slim, dark hair down to his shoulders, parted in the middle, wire-rimmed glasses.
    I didn’t go up to him. But I decided right then and there I would meet him, be with him in some forever sense.
    It was months before we did meet, though. Smoking dope in somebody’s room, we sat on the floor together—for some reason people never sat on chairs or beds—the two of us dealing out Tarot cards and not talking, just laughing and laughing.
    He walked me back to my dorm and while we didn’t kiss, our hands brushed, our elbows bumped, and something had been decided.
    Now between sets, Gregg lights up a cigarette and I nearly gag. Me? Gagging at the smell of smoke? Pregnancy: how quickly this baby has set up housekeeping inside me, all my vices swept away. Baby’s rules, not mine.
    â€œYou still smoke?” I say to Gregg, trying to keep my voice light, even. He didn’t smoke last night.
    The reek of this bar; how did I ever, ever hang out in such places?
    Seeing my face, green and probably glowing in the dark, Gregg immediately crushes out his cigarette. Like Aunt Lyla used to do. Puff, puff. Put it out. Exonerated. “There,” Gregg says, half yelling the way people do in bars. “Enough. I only smoke when I’m playing, a couple of drags between sets.”
    â€œYeah,” I say, yelling back.
    â€œWhen did you quit?” He sounds disappointed.
    â€œAfter I saw you last.”
    We had met at a restaurant, the smoking section. To be with a man who smoked! It was heaven to me, after Jackson’s nagging.
    â€œI quit after that,” I yell. “Allergies.”
    â€œThat’s why you quit?”
    â€œPart of the reason. Not my allergies,” I mutter, glad for the din of this place, so he won’t hear me. It was Jackson who had the allergies, sneezing and wheezing whenever I lit up, even when I smoked outside. He said he could smell it on my clothes, my hair. I quit for him, penance for spending the afternoon in Gregg’s bed. After our lunch. That we didn’t go all the way was small compensation. I figured I owed Jackson something if not total fidelity, so why not quit smoking? After all, he’d begged me the entire first year of our marriage and I’d resisted, afraid I’d get fat. Which I did. Voluptuous, Jackson said. Luscious. Fat, I said and turned to coffee instead, drinking so much some days that my hands shook. My stomach ached. Finally I grew to resent him. All those afternoons I spent snapping a rubber band on my wrist, which is how I quit cigarettes. A tight rubber band, like my mother’s hand on me, I used to think. Not that I could recall such a thing. I couldn’t remember anything about her. But whenever I thought of smoking, I snapped the rubber band hard, for some reason thinking of her. Maybe because she had smoked. Anyway, it ended up with me blaming Jackson; I gave up cigarettes for him. Couldn’t he quit beer for me?
    â€œWhy else did you quit smoking?” Gregg asks, toying with a straw.
    â€œMy marriage.”
    His eyes flicker off, on, coldly. He doesn’t like to hear about this; wouldn’t he just love to hear about the fruit of that union? Then he’s not toying with the straw anymore but staring at me—calculating, I realize.
    â€œWhat year did you get married?”
    â€œFive years ago. I