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affair–ish.
    â€œI think you might be confused. You don’t remember the new millennium? Those great fireworks on the harbor bridge?”
    â€œNo,” said Alice. “I don’t remember any fireworks.” Please stop it, she wanted to say. This isn’t funny, and I’m just being brave about the pain in my head. It really does hurt.
    She remembered Nick saying one night, “Do you realize that on New Year’s Eve of the new millennium we will have a toddler?” He was holding a sledgehammer in both hands because he was about to knock down a wall.
    Alice had lowered the camera she was holding to photograph the end of the wall. “That’s true,” she’d said, amazed and terrified by the thought. A toddler: an actual miniature person, created by them, belonging to them, separate from them.
    â€œYep, guess we’ll have to get a babysitter for the little bugger,” Nick had said with elaborate nonchalance. Then he’d joyfully swung the hammer and Alice had clicked the camera as a shower of pink plaster fragments rained down all over them.
    â€œMaybe I should get an ultrasound to check that my baby is okay after the fall,” said Alice firmly to the doctor. This was how Elisabeth would be in a situation like this. Alice always thought “What would Elisabeth do?” whenever she needed to be assertive.
    â€œHow many weeks pregnant are you?” asked the doctor.
    â€œFourteen,” said Alice, but there was that strange space in her mind again, as if she wasn’t absolutely sure that was correct.
    â€œOr you could at least check the heartbeat,” said Alice in her Elisabeth voice.
    â€œMmmm.” The doctor pushed her glasses back up her nose.
    A memory of a woman’s voice with a gentle American accent came into Alice’s head.
    â€œI’m sorry, but there is no heartbeat.”
    She remembered it so clearly. The tiny pause after the “sorry.”
    â€œI’m sorry, but there is no heartbeat.”
    Who was that? Who said that? Did it really happen? Tears welled in Alice’s eyes, and she thought again of those bouquets of pink balloons whipped by the wind in a gray sky. Had she seen those balloons in some long-forgotten movie? Some extremely sad movie? She felt another wave of extraordinary feeling rise in her chest. It was just like in the ambulance. It was a feeling of grief and rage. She imagined herself sobbing, wailing, digging her fingernails into her own flesh (and she’d never behaved like that in her whole life). And just when she thought the feeling would sweep her away, it dissolved into nothing. It was the strangest thing.
    â€œHow many children do you have?” asked the doctor. She had pulled up Alice’s T-shirt and pushed down her shorts to feel her abdomen.
    Alice blinked to make the tears go away. “None. This is my first pregnancy.”
    The doctor stopped and looked at her. “That looks very much like a cesarean scar to me.”
    Alice lifted her head awkwardly and saw that the doctor was pointing a nicely shaped fingernail low down on Alice’s stomach. She squinted and saw what looked like a very pale, purple line just above the top of her pubic hair.
    â€œI don’t know what that is,” said Alice, mortified. She thought of the solemn expression on her mother’s face when she used to tell Elisabeth and Alice, “You must never show your private lady’s parts to anyone.” Nick fell about laughing the first time he heard that. Why hadn’t he noticed that funny scar? He’d spent enough time examining her private lady’s parts.
    â€œYour uterus doesn’t seem to be enlarged for fourteen weeks,” commented the doctor.
    Alice looked again at her stomach and saw that it was actually looking pretty flat. Skinny-person flat, which would normally be an unexpected bonus, except that she was having a baby. Nick had started to chuckle