Megan did not ask who had won the parking lot. She asked if anyone had swung. Evan said no. She said good. She sat on the sofa with her hands on the belly and felt the baby turn. Six months. A name not chosen. She had been calling the baby bean in her head so she would not have to say a last name. Bean was a cowardice. She let it stand one more week.
The ultrasound was on a Thursday. Evan drove. Megan held the folder. A technician named Paula who had a sticker on her badge and no interest in their silence put gel on the cream knit, pushed it up, and found the profile. Evan looked at the screen and then at the floor and then at the screen again. He had wanted this picture for two years in the abstract, a future he sent money toward. The future had arrived with another man’s calendar attached. Paula said everything looked ordinary. Ordinary was the kindest word in the room. She printed a strip. Megan put it in the folder. In the parking garage Evan said, “I don’t know what I am to that picture.” Megan said, “You are the man who drove. We can start there and not lie about the rest.”
He moved into the spare room officially, not as a punishment she assigned but as a fact they both picked so the bed would not have to pretend. He went back to the unit for out-processing and the dull mercy of forms. Men asked if home was good. He said the house was standing. They heard a homecoming. He let them hear it. The truth was a glass on a half-wall and he was not going to hand it to a barracks.
Janelle brought groceries once and did not come in past the mat. She told Megan, “He is ashamed and he is also not leaving the state. Do with that what you want.” Megan said she wanted a birth plan that included whoever could get there fastest and a last name she could say without flinching. Janelle said, “Then pick the last name for the child, not for the doorway.” It was the most useful sentence of the month. Megan wrote Ward on the pad and then crossed it out and wrote Ellis and then crossed that out and wrote nothing. The nothing stayed until month eight.