I broke down and made an appointment with the doctor. Ten o’clock this morning. I don’t like doctors. Maybe it’s because my mom is a nurse. Maybe it’s because of Doctor Baxter. Anyway, I washed up extra careful knowing I am to be examined. And then I gussied up with eye shadow and the whole works. Is gussy even a real word? Logan would know, or would pretend to know. I gussy, you gussy, he, she or it gussies. Up. Is it a transitive or intransitive verb? Do I know the difference? Do I care? I gussied him up. I remember one time Logan and I were at the mirror together battling for mirror space and I asked him what he thought about while he was shaving. “Nothing,” he said, “I just shave.” Doctor Baxter had this dark thick beard impeccably trimmed. I joshed with Logan: “Better shave close, dude—you don’t want to rasp your girl’s puss.” Doctor Baxter’s beard looked soft as sin. What does that even mean—soft as sin?

I wish Logan were here to gussy me and rasp me and gussy me some more.

Gus. Maybe it it’s a boy we should name him Gus. I’ve never known a Gus. Short for Gustave? Or August. A girl could be Augusta.

If our kid is a boy Logan can teach him to shave. If it’s a girl ... One time when I was maybe eleven—no I must have been more like fourteen—it was after my first period—my mom said something like: “Now that you’re a big girl you have to wash extra careful down there because we’re going to Brazil.”

I’ve never had much in the way of pussy hair. Just soft blond down.

Around that time I was sure I was adopted. I think most girls around that age think they were adopted. My mom said, “That’s ridiculous.” My dad said, “Ho, ho, honey, you were definitely not adopted. I was there when you were born. I was even there when you were conceived.” My mom snorted. My dad said, “Well, I was!”

“I was too!” I said.

Mom and Dad both laughed.

“Yes, you were, honey,” they both said.

I’m more than a little upset that I can’t remember the exact time our kid was conceived. It had to have been around May 18, right at the end of Logan’s term. His concert tour was finalized. We were celebrating with sex almost every day. But I don’t remember the specifics of the sex. I didn’t feel anything special.

With me, supposedly, it was a different story. “We were trying not to get pregnant,” my dad explained, when I’d pestered him again about being adopted. “Your mom had had a miscarriage about six weeks earlier, so she wasn’t back on birth control and anyway we were supposed to wait at least sixty days. But then there was that tragedy at the hospital. Your mom won’t talk about it, but she was a hero. She was the one who was sure something was wrong. She was the one who started moving the kids out of maternity. She was the one who saved 27 children.” I learned later that four infants had died. Carbon monoxide. Huge law suits. “When she finally got home that night it was like she was possessed,” my dad said. “She was wild. Overwrought with emotion. The horror of what had happened. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. She said it would be okay. But we both knew.”

The library has archives of the newspaper from that day. There’s a picture of my mom and Doctor Baxter. Looking at the picture, and knowing what I did about Doctor Baxter, I couldn’t help but formulate an alternative theory: Sometime during that day my mom and Doctor Baxter fucked. And then, to cover up, just in case there was a child, my mom seduced my dad.

So here I am. I’m going to be late for my appointment.