Sing You Home

9
ZOE

I like Emma. And Ella. And Hannah.

“Does every baby name have to be a palindrome?” Vanessa asks.

“No,” I tell her, as we sprawl across the living room floor, surrounded by every single baby name book stocked by the local bookstore.

“Florals?” Vanessa says. “Rose? Lily? Or Daisy. I’ve always liked Daisy.”

“Amanda Lynn?” I wait to see if she’ll get the joke.

Vanessa smirks. “Well, it’s better than Tuba or Banjo…”

“How about girl names that are also boy names?” I say. “Like Stevie. Or Alex.”

“It would save us half the work here,” Vanessa admits.

I have been pregnant three times and have avoided doing just this: hoping. It’s a lot easier to not be disappointed when you have no expectations. And yet this time I almost can’t help myself. There was something about the way I left things with Max that makes me believe this might actually happen.

After all, he didn’t say no right away, which is what I expected.

Which means he’s still thinking.

And that has to be good, right?

“Joey,” Vanessa suggests. “That’s kind of cute.”

“If you’re a kangaroo…” I roll over onto my back and look up at the ceiling. “Clouds.”

“No way. I’m not doing the hippie thing. No Clouds or Rain or Meadow. I mean, imagine the poor kid when she’s ninety and in a nursing home.”

“I wasn’t talking about a name,” I say. “I was thinking about the nursery. I’ve always thought it would be peaceful to fall asleep staring up at clouds painted on your ceiling.”

“That’s cool. You think Michelangelo is listed in the yellow pages?”

The doorbell rings as I toss a pillow at her. “You expecting anyone?” I ask.

Vanessa shakes her head. “Are you?”

A man is standing on the porch, smiling. He’s wearing a red baseball cap and a Red Sox sweatshirt and doesn’t strike me as a serial killer, so I open the door. “Are you Zoe Baxter?” he asks.

“Yes…”

He pulls a sheaf of blue papers out of his back pocket. “These papers are for you,” he says. “You’ve been served.”

I open the folded document and words leap off the page at me:

Pray this Honorable Court…

… award him full possession and custody of his pre-born children…

… wishes to provide them with an appropriate two-parent family…

I sink to the floor and read.

In support thereof, it is hereby stated:

1. The plaintiff is the biological father of these pre-born children, which were conceived during a heterosexual, God-condoned, constitutional marriage for the purposes of being raised in a heterosexual, God-condoned, constitutional marriage.

2. Since these pre-born children were conceived the parties have divorced.

3. Since the final judgment the defendant has engaged in a meretricious, deviant, homosexual lifestyle.

4. The defendant has contacted the clinic for possession of the pre-born children for the purpose of having them transferred to her lesbian lover.

“Zoe?”

Vanessa sounds like she is a thousand miles away. I hear her, but I cannot move.

“Zoe?” she says again, and she grabs the paper out of my hand. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. There is no language to describe a betrayal this big.

Vanessa starts flipping through the pages so quickly I expect them to burst into flame. “What is this garbage?”

Equilibrium is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. You can be punched without ever fielding a blow. “It’s from Max,” I say. “He’s trying to take away our baby.”