Page 97 of Salty Pickle

I watch the confusing screen of black and white dots, unable to make out anything.

“Here’s the head,” Olivia says. She clicks on a few things. “Measuring perfectly.” She shifts the paddle and clicks more. “Femur good. Might be tall like Dad. Let me measure a few other little things and see if we can get a look at girl or boy parts. Oh, let me turn on the sound.”

She turns a dial, and that familiar whomp, whomp fills the room.

I lift my phone and record Olivia and her screen, then the glow on Lucy’s expectant face.

“Everything looks perfect. Let me rummage around here.” Olivia moves the paddle. “Ah, here we go.”

I set down the phone and peer more closely. “What is that?”

“That’s a penis,” she says. “It’s a boy.”

My throat instantly tightens. A boy. All the images come roaring forward. Running in the park. Flying a kite. Throwing a ball. Racing across a yard.

I find Lucy’s hand.

“Julian,” she breathes.

I don’t remember the last time I cried. Middle school, I think, when I broke my arm.

But it’s happening. I’m overwhelmed. I see myself with my father, jumping in the car for a ball game.

Then, me with my grandfather. I can picture his eyes on me, his smile after I finished my first hand-made music box.

I get to be that person now. I may have lost him, but now I get the chance to become him.

The tears gather enough to fall, and Lucy squeezes my fingers.

I didn’t know happy crying was something I could even do.

29

LUCY

I’m floating on air Friday morning as I pack the last batches of cookies to take to Court’s office for the pizza party.

We met Dr. Henry after the sonogram, and he assured us that if we didn’t feel comfortable making the drive out to Warwick, he had associates at six of the Manhattan birthing centers. Just call his office or the after-hours on-call, and they would direct us where to go.

The front door opens, and a woman calls out, “Hello, hello! Where is the goat?”

“On the balcony!” I reply and head to the front door.

Maggie is a late-fifties woman with stenciled-in eyebrows, a helmet of senna-red hair, and the warmest smile I’ve seen so far in New York. “You must be Lucy. Oh, you are about to pop!”

I run my hands over the white shirt self-consciously. “A week or so to go.”

“First baby?”

“Yes.”

“You have time.” She props the door open wide to push in a cart covered in cleaning supplies and bags of groceries. “I have food. I will clean. It’s been two weeks. But Mr. Court is so clean.” She sniffs the air. “You cook!”

“I’m making cookies for Court’s office. We’re having a pizza party there today.”

“How delightful. So good for such a stern man.” She closes the front door. “Now let me see that goat.”

I lead her to the balcony, where Matilda lies in her hay.

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