SIXTEEN MONTHS LATER

“It has to be hot all the way through,” she said, not for the first time. I held the phone between my shoulder and ear while struggling to free a five from a roll of twenties. “If it’s not hot, I’m going to go down there and shove it up someone’s ass.”

“I’ll do the shoving.” I redirected my words to the round guy with the doughy skin and sweat-stained hat who plucked the five from my hand. “They hot?”

“Hot. Yes.” He slapped open the metal door. Steam escaped the silver compartment, gathering under the umbrella. The humidity by the little pushcart was as thick as taffy. “Since this morning. I put them in.” He wrapped two knishes in wax paper.

“Mustard,” I said.

“Brown mustard!” Diana said from the phone. “If it’s that yellow shit, I’m gonna—”

“I know, I know. Give someone a mustard enema.”

The doughy guy raised an eyebrow.

“Mustard. Not French’s,” I said to him. “You got Gulden’s?”

“This New York or what?” He pulled a rod out of a silver container. It was coated in brown mustard. He rubbed it on the knishes, wrapping them in a practiced motion.

“Are they hot?” Diana asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you check?”

Doughy Man handed me a brown paper bag already soaked with grease. I took it and headed back into the building as fast as I could without making a scene.

“No. I did not check.”

“How could you not check?”

“He said it was hot.” The elevator was already open, and I squeezed in just as the doors were closing.

“He lies. You have to check yourself.”

“I’m not sticking my finger in a strange knish.”

The businesswoman next to me smirked.

“If it’s cold—”

“I know, huntress. I know.”

The signal cut out.

* * *

As infuriating as she was when she demanded I manhandle food, when I burst into the pink-and-blue waiting room, dodging out of the path of a woman in a lab coat, I was reminded why I’d run all over Manhattan to soothe her.

Diana sat alone, hands woven together in her lap, hair half in-half out of the ponytail, skin blotchy from the hormone stew in her blood.

She was beautiful. Everything about her. From her ever-rounding belly to the way she dropped into bed after dinner. Perfect. The only thing marring a perfect pregnancy was her anxiety about the baby.

Today, we were getting rid of that. She was going to start enjoying this.

I sat next to her, put a napkin on her lap, and opened the bag.

“I’m not hungry,” she said, wringing her hands and staring into the middle distance.

“Yes, you are.”

“It’s not hot. I know it isn’t. Cold potatoes are gross.”

“They’re delicious. Can a million Irish mothers be wrong?”

“Our appointment was fifteen minutes ago. They don’t want to see me because of last time.”

I put the bag to the side and took her hands, prying the fingers open. She was strung tight enough to break. “Would you like me to set the building on fire?”

“Stop.”

“I can shove a clock up someone’s ass.” I rubbed the tattoo on her left ring finger. ADAM’S. Always mine. Her hand relaxed into my palm.

“I need this to be over with.”

“Tell you what. I can do that thing Superman did in the movie. The old one.”

“Pick up a car?”

“That. But also, he flew around the earth to make time go backward. But I can go the other way. Make it go forward. Any time between the sonogram and when he graduates from college.”

“That sounds great. Skip right through.”

“If you say so.” I leaned back. “We’d miss a lot of sex.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“And the actual parenting part.”

She pointed at a dark-skinned technician in pink scrubs sharing a clipboard with a guy in scrubs. “Can we skip to Dolores coming here and saying we’re next?”

“Yes.”

The technician nodded, took the clipboard, and approached us. “Are you ready?”

* * *

This wasn’t our first rodeo, though every time felt like it. Diana didn’t want to hear the heartbeat. She didn’t want to see anything, so she clamped her eyes shut so she wouldn’t see the screen. She didn’t want to fall in love. She’d wept with joy when she heard the first whoosh whoosh of the baby we lost, and she didn’t want to cry again over something she couldn’t have.

So though this was her third sonogram for this pregnancy, only the tech had heard the heartbeat. I’d seen the grey blobs on the screen, but Diana acted as if she was just gaining weight. Dolores knew our history and knew how shut down Diana was. She handled us personally, making sure the gel was warm and her earphones were plugged in before the sound of the heartbeat came through the speakers.

“You understand today is it,” she said, rubbing the gel around with the sonogram wand. “The issue you’re worried about, if it doesn’t show today, it’s not going show up at all.”

“I understand,” Diana said.

I sat next to my huntress, holding her hand. Actually, she was holding mine in a death grip. I didn’t complain. That’s what I was there for. Death grips were my specialty.

“There could always be something,” Dolores continued as she adjusted knobs, sliding across the linoleum on a round stool.

“I understand.” Diana had done a lot of robotic understanding in the past months.

“Even during the birth, things can go wrong.”

“I understand.”

“Child could also be a brat. Not our fault.”

“She understands. Brattiness is her fault,” I said.

Diana’s eyes were still squeezed shut, but she faced me. “You love my brattiness.”

“I do.”

“Right,” Dolores continued. “Do you want to know the sex?”

“No,” I answered half a millisecond before Diana said, “Yes.”

“I see you guys decided.” She flicked a switch, and the screen lit up. There was our baby in glorious lo-fi black and white, swimming in static. “All right. Let’s see.” She leaned into her screen, moving the wand. “Well, knock me over with a feather. Happy to report Baby Steinbeck is as right as rain.”

“Diana,” I whispered, “did you hear that?”

She nodded but her eyes were shut so tight her upper lashes dovetailed with her lower.

Dolores marked numbers down, shifted the wand, clicked buttons and switches while Baby Steinbeck hovered behind me.

“You can look,” I said.

“I’m scared.”

“You don’t have to be.” I put my body between her and the screen. “Here. I’m between you and the screen. Open your eyes.”

She took a deep breath and did it, hanging her gaze on mine as if my attention was a six-inch-ledge over a hundred-story drop.

“Good girl. Are you ready to meet your… Dolores? Boy or girl?”

“Congratulations. You’re carrying a boy.”

All of my wife’s anxiety rushed out of her in the form of tears. “A boy?” she choked out.

“Are you ready to see your son?”

She nodded.

I moved out of the way, letting the light of the screen shine on her. She looked full and round, swollen with a joy she’d been holding so tightly she couldn’t let it go until it got too big for her fist. Her face twisted into sobs and spit, becoming more beautiful in relief and release.

“Do you want to hear the heartbeat?”

“Yes,” Diana answered before Dolores finished the question.

The whooshing came through the speakers, loud, strong, and steady.

“Heartbeat’s just about perfect.” Dolores continued, showing us where the spine was (exactly where it should be), where his penis was (same), and his placement in the placenta (just fine).

But we weren’t listening. I was watching my wife let go of months of taut apprehension, and she was staring at the screen through sheets of tears.

Dolores said something about leaving us alone. She froze the image and left, clicking the door behind her.

“It’s over,” Diana sobbed.

“It’s over.” I wiped her face with a handkerchief.

She turned away from the screen to make eye contact with me. “I finished.”

“Not quite, huntress.”

Every tear the handkerchief wiped away was replaced with two new ones. I kissed her cheeks, tasting brine and perfume. I couldn’t help it. They were the stuff life was made of. Salt of clarity. Water of growth. The elixir of change.

She put her arms around me, and I held her. I didn’t comfort her with pats or hushes. I didn’t tell her it was going to be all right, because it wasn’t. Life was messy, and God was an irresponsible parent. None of it mattered. I held her to keep her company. I was her companion, her complement, and her protector. The celebration of her light and the consummation of her darkness.

We were no more than bound, no less than gods, creating life from the love between us.

* * *

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