Both of you can hear the bubbling and growling in him while you sip from your bowls. The stethoscope is not needed for his belly. Then he pours more of the bone broth that’s been simmered all night and spiced with ginger. I wonder if this is because I threw your placenta into the waves when you were born. When you put the earpieces in though, all you hear is the sound the edge of the ocean makes when it’s pulling away from shore. First, he listens to your belly, moving the chestpiece around methodically, like he doesn’t want to miss a single note of what he calls a composition in progress. When you’re done with all your homework, you sit with your dad on the couch in the waiting room, taking turns with his old stethoscope. Even higher up, the sun is nodding from side to side, a dandelion on a thin stalk of cloud. On the way, you’re practically skipping, not noticing the change in the world, how the newly bare branches almost immediately begin to reach for each other, locking like fingers overhead. You hug him, but you can’t stay, there is choir practice you have to get to at school, and you have a solo so you really can’t miss it. Wow, what are the chances, he says, rubbing his belly, which you can see is protruding more than yesterday. You emerge from the bathroom holding the pregnancy test stick with its pink plus sign at the exact time that he walks in through the front door waving a lab report with his blood cell and protein counts. The whole world, all of a sudden, loses its cover, the jades and emeralds of the generous seasons, the golds and vermillions of the lean ones. The day you and your dad find out you’re both pregnant is the day the last of the leaves fall from the trees.
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