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puff of clouds, and I sip lukewarm orange juice out of a plastic cup. I like the way my aunt’s spoon rests against my thigh. Aunt Sylvia used to laugh at my knock-knock jokes and hang my art projects on her fridge and look the other way when I pinched pieces of meringue from the top of her icebox cake. I feel more hopeful than I have in weeks.
    The plane is hovering over the Potomac when I kiss Danny’s cheek, breathing in the familiar scent of Dial soap. “Let’s name our baby Sylvia.” As soon as these words leave my lips, I want them back.
    Danny gives me the wan smile he’s cultivated. “Let’s just see what happens.” He strokes my arm.
    â€œOh God, Danny. Don’t tell me you’re too superstitious to name the baby,” I say, when in fact I cling tosuperstition like Velcro. I lean my head back and close my eyes, signaling that the conversation is over. My hand rests on my mildly distended belly as I daydream about my little Sylvia. It will be a warm spring day, and she’ll sit on my lap licking vanilla icing off a cupcake, wiping her sticky fingers on my knees. She’ll smell like baby sweat and sugar. I’ll smooth her tangle of ringlets — auburn like Danny’s — away from her eyes. I can practically hear her giggle. Fear forms in the back of my throat and swells into my esophagus like a hive, as it always does when I allow myself to hope that this baby will survive.
    Later that night, shortly after eleven, I feel like someone is yanking my abdomen shut with a drawstring. Shit. Cramps turn into nausea, and I beg my baby to stay put. Danny pages the obstetrician while I stumble to the bathroom, clutching the spoon. Talisman in hand, I negotiate with God. No deal. Before the sun rises, I deliver my baby.
    I rest my head against the side of the toilet and gaze at the emptied contents of my womb. I try to capture the clump of blood and tissue with my aunt’s spoon, but my efforts only loosen it into a spray of red and greenish gray that dissolves into the bowl. I let my fingers linger in the cold red water before I close the lid. Aunt Sylvia appears to me: the slightly bulging gray eyes and the lisp and the sad smile pasted on soft, pink lips.
    Danny mops my forehead with a washcloth. I stand up slowly and rinse off the spoon, turning the faucet on full blast in a futile attempt to drown out the sound of the flushing toilet.
    One week later, Danny lounges on our bed staring slack-jawed at ESPN, as he has done for each of the past six nights. Who gives a damn about the Cardinals?
    I forage in our pantry for Tylenol. We’re out of cereal. A jar of homemade raspberry jam, our annual holiday gift from Robin, sits next to a bottle of capers; the colors remind me that I did get to see my actual baby, instead of just a black sonogram screen devoid of the pulsing light the size of a thumbtack. We disposed of those babies during tidy office visits followed by written instructions to call if there was too much blood. There’s always too much blood.
    I dump four tablespoons of jam and eight capers into a bowl and then retrieve the spoon from my purse; I use it to mix the concoction and ladle it into a small Ziploc baggie. Sylvia.
    By the time I return to Danny, baggie and spoon in hand, he’s asleep on our bed, his face bathed in the blue TV light, his mile-long eyelashes, blond at the tips, fanning the tender skin beneath his eyes. He looks like he’s eleven years old. A fresh soul. The foot rubs and the phone calls from the office aren’t working, but at least he’s trying. I can’t muster up the energy to comfort him. Before the miscarriages, I would have cheered him up by taking him bowling or seducing him or renting a Monty Python movie; we’d sit in front of the television drinking cheap beer and eating potato chips, laughing — Danny at John Cleese’s ridiculousness, me at Danny — until we could barely