LITMIR.BIZ

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the air. The false intimacy of the exam room, combined with the very real consequences of their night of sexual intimacy, made for an awkward situation.

      “Oh, the father is here,” the doctor said as she walked into the room. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

      Karl had felt discomfited enough as the only man in the waiting room without the doctor commenting on his presence in that chipper voice people use to inform their dogs a walk is coming. But the woman didn’t seem to notice his discomfort—or she didn’t care—and the visit wasn’t about him, anyway.

      “Considering how many times I hear people say ‘we’re pregnant,’ I almost never see the father.” His head jerked up when the doctor sat and patted them both on the knees. She looked old enough to be his grandmother, but he hadn’t expected her to treat them like children. “Good.” Pat. “This should be a partnership.” Pat. “And I expect this means both of you will be abstaining from coffee, alcohol, soft cheese and lunch meats.” Pat. “It’s not fair for the mother to bear those burdens alone.”

      He knew about the coffee and alcohol. He hadn’t known about the cheese. How much feta had been in the Middle Eastern food he’d brought home? Had Vivian picked it out? Had she eaten it? Was it even a soft cheese? Karl glanced at her and she lifted her eyebrows in what he expected was supposed to be reassurance, but he still felt as if he was swimming through a bizarre dream the consistency of gelatin and the color of black coffee—with grounds trapped beside him in the jelly.

      “So.” The doctor clapped her hands. “I imagine you have lots of questions...”

      How had offering a drink to an attractive woman at a hotel bar in Las Vegas led to him sitting in an exam room with a stranger in a hospital gown?

      “...let me tell you what’s going to happen at this exam, and you can ask all the questions you want when we’re done.”

      Now was probably not the best time to ask that question—or to ask when he was going to wake up. Although, he cocked his head to the side and caught sight of Vivian’s pink toenails as they swayed in and out of his vision, the dream didn’t really seem terrible. Still bizarre, but not definitively bad.

      “The last thing we’ll do is an internal ultrasound. It’s early yet, so you won’t see much, but we might get to listen to the heartbeat.”

      “The fetus has a heartbeat?” Karl asked, and immediately felt stupid.

      “If the date of your last period is right, the fetus may have a detectible heartbeat. Don’t worry, Dad.” The doctor patted his knee again. “People ask questions when they’re scared and sometimes they’re silly questions. Babies are scary and they’re also wonderful. Stick with your beautiful wife, here, and you’ll be fine.”

      Vivian’s legs had stopped swinging and her lips had pursed as though she might cry. Or—he reevaluated the brightness of her eyes—burst into laughter. He wasn’t the only one who found this scene ridiculous.

      The exam was reinforcing all the many things he didn’t know about his wife. He’d seen the stranger he’d married in a hospital gown, knew she couldn’t remember the age at which she had her first period and knew she’d been exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke on her job. He didn’t know why Vivian had lost her job, why her father was missing or why she wouldn’t tell him about her pregnancy. Until she told the doctor, he hadn’t realized she spent most of her days walking around the city when she wasn’t applying for jobs and cleaning up after the stupid bird.

      These were the repercussions of having a child with a stranger. These strange half intimacies of hearing her describe how regular her menstruation had been—really, did such details matter now that she was actually pregnant?—but not knowing if she’d ever gone to college defined their relationship.

      Vivian and the doctor were talking about genetic testing, but Karl only heard half of it. This wasn’t how he’d planned to have a baby. When he’d sat at the hotel bar knocking back whiskey and waiting to die because being older than his father was inconceivable, he’d thought back on what he’d accomplished in his life.

      And he’d come up short, which had probably been the alcohol and his thirty-ninth birthday talking. He had a job that was more than just important to him, it was important to the city of Chicago. He was the independent watchdog for the taxpayer and that didn’t mean he was looking out only for their money.

      The worst effects of corruption and fraud weren’t wasted dollars, but wasted lives. Two dead Milek men on the side of the highway and one dying Milek boy in the hospital were testimony to the devastation a bribe and a blind eye could leave.

      He averted his eyes when Vivian started to scoot her butt to the edge of the exam table and put her feet in the stirruplike things. The doctor had a wand-ish instrument covered with a condom and lubricant. The woman who had just been patting his knee was now telling Vivian how the ultrasound would feel compared to a vaginal exam and he nearly leapt out of his chair and headed for the door.

      His presence here was a mistake. Whatever was involved in an internal ultrasound was far, far too private for him to witness. They were strangers. He’d planned on having babies with Jessica, who would’ve known better than to ask him to come to the doctor’s office to witness this. Jessica had wanted two children—preferably one boy and one girl. They were going to buy a house in Andersonville and he was going to have the beautiful wife, two perfectly behaved children and a meaningful job. And when his thirty-ninth birthday hit, he was going to compare his life to his father’s and see that he’d lived up to all the man’s expectations.

      “Dad.” The doctor’s voice broke through the existential crisis he wouldn’t admit he was having, even in confession, should the priest ask. “If you look on the monitor you can see the embryo. And your date for conception looks pretty spot-on with the embryo’s growth.”

      The last, lingering nugget of doubt he’d had about Vivian’s pregnancy burst when Karl looked up. On the screen was some pulsing gray matter and, in a flash of emptiness, a little thing that looked like a mouse standing up and dancing. Only it wasn’t a mouse. It wasn’t anywhere near the size of a mouse. It was his baby and the doctor was saying it was a quarter of an inch in size.

      From somewhere in the room came the sound of a horse clopping. Vivian’s wide smile made her cheeks pop like a chipmunk’s, but he didn’t know the source of the sound until the doctor said, “And this is your baby’s heartbeat.”

      The blood pulsing in his ears took on the same rhythm of the horse galloping, the sound that the doctor was claiming was his baby. The baby he made with the beautiful woman lying back calmly on the exam table, looking at him as if she expected him to say something.

      “Holy shit.” His life was never going to be the same.

      * * *

      KARL WAS SILENT as he pushed the cart through the aisles of the grocery store. Normally, his quiet didn’t bother Vivian, but there was quiet and then there was the silence that buzzed between them.

      “Are you okay?” she asked for probably the tenth time since they’d left the doctor’s office.

      “Fine.” He held the plastic bag full of apples high in the air, twisted it and tied the bag in a knot.

      Already in the cart were bananas, oranges, clementines, grapefruit, grapes and strawberries that looked pretty but would probably be tasteless since it was only March. And that was just the fruit. They also had sweet potatoes, kale, Swiss chard, carrots, cabbage and a rainbow of peppers. If a doctor sitting on Oprah’s couch had ever called a plant a “superfood,” Karl had put it in their cart. His previously empty fridge was likely to expire with the pressure of the extra work. At least she’d be able to make every recipe on the planet without having to go to the store again.

      She weighed the bleak look that had been on Karl’s face when their baby’s heartbeat had filled the exam room and the fact that they were strangers and she was dependent on him. The bleak look won. She put a hand on his before he could bag some rocks masquerading as peaches.

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