Expecting: A Novel Read Online Free

right?” Laurie asks Dr. Liu as he slides the ultrasound paddle across her tummy.
    “Who’s the doctor, you or me?” He’s grinning as he maneuvers the paddle. The machine makes a thunk thunk sound, slightly wet.
    “I vote for you. I’d make a horrible doctor. And I look terrible in white,” says Laurie. Dr. Liu moves the paddle to another spot. Thunk thunk . How loud will the heartbeat be?
    Dr. Liu frowns, taps the end of the paddle. “Let me try another one, this one’s acting a little funky.”
    Of course ultrasound machines go funky. So it’s not unusual for Dr. Liu to leave the room to bring in another machine. It must happen all the time.
    Only Laurie knows, deep down, not even deep down, she knows right there on the surface that Dr. Liu won’t find a heartbeat; it isn’t a broken ultrasound machine. Something has gone wrong; it’s bad news, the worst possible news.
    And it is. A second machine confirms what Dr. Liu suspected—no heartbeat. A blighted ovum, Dr. Liu explains, his face serious. No dimples this time. The fertilized egg attached itself to the wall of the uterus and began to develop a placenta, but there is nothing inside. No embryo. No baby.
    No Troppo.

Alan
    One morning when Laurie leaves early for work, Alan dismantles the crib. He looks down at the crib pieces scattered on the floor, and he’s tempted to throw everything away, but instead he gets a roll of masking tape and a Sharpie and a box of plastic bags and prints in clear handwriting where each piece should go. “Headboard, twelve six-inch screws, twelve matching washers and nuts.” He tapes the plastic bags to the corresponding pieces and carries everything out to the back of the garage. When he’s done, he covers the crib with an old beach towel with a picture of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on it.
    The room looks empty without the crib. Afternoon sun makes the yellow walls almost too bright. He looks up at the alphabet border. A is for anguish , he thinks. B is for bereavement. L is for loss. Longing. Laurie.
    ***
    Alan grew up as the youngest child in a noisy house in Virginia with three brothers and a sister, parents who spoiled them rotten and made up for it by making them wear matching red-and-green reindeer scarves and hats for their family Christmas card photo. It was a middle-class, white picket fence, Wonder Bread life. When Alan left home, finished college, and got married, no question about it, of course he’d have kids. Probably make them do stupid Christmas cards too.
    Having children only to replicate yourself seems ridiculously narcissistic. Alan doesn’t need an Alan Lee Gaines Junior to feel complete. Or Alan Lee Gaines Junior who grows up to have Alan Lee Gaines III. And on and on until Alan Lee Gaines Infinity. Not that he dismisses genealogy. Alan’s mother would never let him get away with that.
    Alan’s mother has always kept scrapbooks and researched family trees and has recently discovered (and become obsessed with) Ancestry.com. She follows various family members through different countries, tracks their trips on ocean liners, prints up obituaries. “Family means everything,” she says. “It’s the thing that’s left .”
    His mother emails him black and white photos of men standing beside Model Ts, women in shorts and gingham-checked blouses sitting on picnic blankets. One woman with dark hair in a white bathing suit is so pretty she could be a pinup. He asks his mother about her when they talk on the phone.
    “Bess, my mother’s older sister, isn’t she gorgeous? She never got married. Lived in Vermont with a woman named Catherine. They didn’t visit Virginia much.”
    “Were they gay?”
    “My mother said no. Not that she had anything against gay people. She just didn’t want to think about it.”
    If it’s unpleasant and you don’t think about it, it goes away. Worrying if Bess and Catherine were gay might’ve made Alan’s grandmother crazy. So she ignored it. And life went