Garrett had expected a doctor, but the woman who entered the room to do the ultrasound was young, with a ponytail and thick Boston accent. She patted the exam table, indicating that Piper should sit down on it.
“My name’s Marie,” she said.
Then she asked Piper questions: Bladder full? Date of birth? Dateof last menstrual period? If Marie was surprised that Piper was only seventeen, she didn’t let on.
“Go ahead and lift your shirt, hon,” she said.
Piper did so-the days of halter tops were over-and Marie squirted a clear jelly onto Piper’s abdomen. Garrett was embarrassed; he stared at his feet in his Sambas and wished he were running across the soccer field in Van Cortland Park right now. Only four days left until their ferry.
Marie switched on a monitor and a blank computer screen lit up. Then she moved a thick wand over Piper’s belly. The screen came alive with blobs and swirls.
“Where’s our baby?” Piper asked. She propped herself up on her elbows and studied the screen.
“Patient, hon,” Marie said. “We’re looking for something the size of a pea.” Garrett noted that Marie had yet to acknowledge his presence in the room, although he was growing used to being ignored where Piper’s pregnancy was concerned.
“Here we go,” Marie said. A white peanut appeared on the screen. Marie zoomed in. “There’s your baby.”
Garrett gazed at the screen with interest. The peanut, he could see, was moving. The peanut had tiny arms and legs.
“See this dark spot?” Marie said. “This is the baby’s heart. Here, wait a sec.”
Marie fiddled with a knob on the computer. Suddenly, a rhythmic whooshing sound filled the air.
“What’s that?” Garrett croaked.
“What’s that?” Marie said, as if she couldn’t believe anyone would be brave or stupid enough to ask. “Why, that’s your baby’s heartbeat.”
The baby, Marie said, was due March twenty-seventh. “But frequently first pregnancies are late.”
“Good,” Garrett said. “Maybe the baby won’t be born until April. March is a terrible month.”
Piper glared at him. “What do you care?”
“My father died in March,” Garrett explained to Marie.
“Sorry to hear it,” Marie said. “Well, look at it this way, if your baby is born in March, it will become a good month.”
Garrett rolled his eyes. The woman didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.
“I’m going to take a few pictures for your doctor,” Marie said. “And for you, if you want one.”
“Of course I want one!” Piper said. “Can you tell if it’s a boy or a girl?”
“Nawp, not yet,” Marie said. “Another eight weeks or so and you’ll come back for a second round of this. They can tell you then.”
“I feel in my heart that it’s a girl,” Piper said.
Garrett shut his eyes. He needed to sit down. A girl, a boy- the baby would be one or the other. God, it was all too much. He managed to stay on his feet while Marie took pictures of the white peanut from different angles.
“I just need to develop these,” she said. She handed Piper a couple of tissues for her belly. “You clean up. I’ll be back in a sec.”
Once Marie left the room, there was an awkward silence. Piper swabbed the gunk off her skin, then handed the tissues to Garrett.
“What am I supposed to do with these?” he asked.
“Throw them away.” She nodded to a trash can near his feet.
He slammed the wad into the can with all his strength.
“You’re angry,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re furious with me. You think this is my fault.”
“I don’t think that.”
“Of course you do.” Piper stood up from the table and tucked in her shirt. “You think it’s my fault I’m pregnant. But I have news for you, Garrett. You have to accept fifty percent responsibility.”
“Fifty percent responsibility but not fifty percent say in what happens.”
“You saw the baby floating around on that screen,” Piper said. “Do you honestly want to kill it?”
“I don’t know what I want.”
“I’ll tell you what you want. You want to be back in New York where you can pretend none of this ever happened. Where you can pretend I don’t exist.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. But you know what’s funny?I don’t care. I don’t care that you knocked me up and now you don’t love me anymore. It doesn’t bother me! All I care about is doing the responsible thing here, the adult thing, and I’m doing it! I’m taking responsibility for this child without compromising my future. You never would have made this decision because it’s too hard and you’re not strong enough. This doesn’t fit into the life plan you concocted for yourself. Well, guess what, Garrett?Part of being an adult is learning that sometimes in life, pieces don’t fit.”
“We’re not adults, though,” Garrett said. “We’re kids. We’re kids having kids.”
“You’re a real summer person,” Piper said. “I realized that when this whole thing started.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You show up here for three months of the year when the weather is nice and the water is warm and you use the island. You use it up. Then in September you go back to wherever you came from and forget all about this place. Because you don’t really care about Nantucket or the people who live here.” Piper’s voice was high and shrill; her face was flushed. “You probably won’t even come back here for the birth.”
Garrett stared at her. “Of course I’m coming back for the birth.”
“You are?”
“Yes.” He actually hadn’t given it a moment of consideration, but he would not stand here and have this girl call him a coward and be right. If his child was going to be born here, he would be here. And his mother and Winnie, too. They would all get a chance to see the baby, to hold him or her, then say good-bye.
“Well, fine, then,” Piper said. “But you’re not going to be my labor coach. Peyton has already offered.”
“You’re going to have a thirteen-year-old labor coach?” Gar-rett said.
“By March, she’ll be fourteen,” Piper said.
The door swung open and Marie stepped in, holding an envelope. She looked between them. “Everything okay in here?” she asked.
“Sure,” Piper said.
“Here are the pictures. I got two for you-” She handed two to Piper. “And one for you.” She handed one to Garrett.
Garrett scrutinized his picture, grateful that he had gotten a good shot, where the arms and legs were visible and he could see the dark spot where the baby’s heart was.
He looked at Marie. “This is my baby,” he said.
She clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a lucky man.”
At home, Garrett found Beth in the kitchen packing up the place mats and napkins, the coffee grinder, the food processor. She had saved the Zabar’s shopping bags and was filling them with the things they couldn’t get in New York: loaves of Something Natural herb bread, containers of smoked bluefish paâteé and clam chowder, huge beefsteak tomatoes from Bartlett’s.
She smiled indulgently as he walked into the kitchen. “How’d the appointment go?”
He shrugged. “Okay.” The picture was in his shirt pocket- he’d pulled it out twice after dropping Piper off to look at it. “Here, want to see?” He handed the photo to his mother.
Beth held it up to the light.
“These are the arms and legs,” Garrett said. “And this dark spot?That’s the heart.”
His mother turned the picture and squinted. Despite her most fervent wishes, a few tears leaked from her eyes.