But I can’t hide it from him. “You’ll do good, Bear. We both will. Look at Ty.”
I sigh. “I know.” Well, I think I do, anyway. Sort of. “Okay. Show me.”
I take one last look into Ty’s room before I shut the door behind me. He’ll be home soon. I won’t have to worry much anymore. At least about that.
I follow Otter down the hall to the spare bedroom next to ours, though I don’t know if I can call it the spare room anymore.
Not when it’s going to belong to our son in another four months or so.
Shit. That’s a thought I never believed I’d have.
Otter opens the door, and inside is the result of his loving, painstaking labor over the past couple of weeks. What had once been a cluttered office we rarely used is now a bright and airy ro
om painted the palest of blues. Cartoon elephants and tigers are stenciled onto the walls, prancing in a field of green grass and pretty flowers. The ceiling above is painted with clouds, and in the corner is the sun. When you turn off the lights at night, little stars stuck to the ceiling shine down, put up by Otter and me as we followed along with the images of constellations off his laptop to mimic the night sky during summer.
There’s a white dresser in the corner. A changing table. A crib. There are still so many things left to get, but the foundation is here. I’m pretty sure the ladies at the baby store rub their hands together gleefully every time they see us approach. This kid isn’t even born yet, and we’re already treating him like he’s the greatest thing in the world.
Which, in a scary-real kind of way, he really is.
The surrogate was a pain in the ass to find. Jerking off into a cup wasn’t my idea of fun, even when Otter was there to… help me out. The waiting sucked. The false starts were awful. We had one surrogate back out on us at the last minute. But it finally happened, and one day right around after Christmas, the phone rang and Otter answered it, and his face went white and then he said, “We’re pregnant,” and I don’t really remember much after that.
You should have seen Otter’s face, though, when we found out it was a boy last week. It was a look of such wonder that it knocked the breath from my chest. That look has made it all worth it. That look is what I live to see.
Jesus Christ, do I love that man.
It’s been a bitch to keep secret, let me tell you. The pregnancy, that is. Our family knew we were trying. But they don’t know we’ve succeeded or how far along it is. This room is meant to be a surprise for them. For us. For Ty.
They’re all going to shit a brick.
Goddamn this baby room.
And all this baby stuff.
And having babies.
And being a parent.
Forever.
And, of course, I start to panic.
“Bear?” Otter asks. “You okay? You’re breathing funny.”
“I’m fine!” I say, my voice high-pitched. My eyes feel like they’re bugging out of my head.
“Oh no,” Otter groans. “Bear, you need to calm down.”
Too fucking late. “What? It’ll be fine! No worries! The kid will come out okay, and he’ll be fine. It’s not like he’s going to be born with a horn or a tail or anything, right? I mean, how often are kids born with tails? Not that often, right? Right? I need to google that so I can see how many children are born with tails. Oh my God. What if he can wag the tail? What if we can’t get it removed because it’s attached to his spine and brain stem somehow and by removing the tail, he’ll be paralyzed for the rest of his life? If we do remove it and he’s paralyzed, the other kids will be mean and say his name is Doorstop, and then I’ll be forced to dropkick some stupid little fucker for calling my son that, and we’ll end up in court because you can’t dropkick children! I’ll go to jail and spend the rest of my days making license plates and covering my asshole so I don’t get accidentally raped in the showers! Or what happens if we get the tail removed and it messes him of neurologically and he grows up to be some kind of sadistic serial killer? I don’t know if I could be the parent of a serial killer. Everyone will whisper behind our backs every time we go to the store, and I’ll turn and look at them and shout that all I wanted was some goddamn eggs and we were good parents! We didn’t make him a serial killer! He didn’t play violent video games or see scary movies and he ate his vegetables and did well in school and never tortured animals as a child! But no one will listen and then we’ll be forced to go to his execution and he’ll see us there and scream that we should have never removed his tail and that we did this to him! We made him this way! Did we even test for that? Was that one of the tests? To see if our sperm makes serial killers with tails?”
“No, Bear,” Otter sighs. “I don’t think there was a test for serial killers with tails.”
“Well, there should have been!” I shout at him.
Then two things happen at once.
A phone rings.
The doorbell rings.