“I’m just nervous,” she said to Mr. Tannehill once she had finished with the pig. Dr. Preston Grind, the head of The IFP, was meeting her in less than an hour to discuss her future, or, rather, for him to outline her future. She had once again Googled his name the night before and found more information than she could process. She gave up halfway into a YouTube video of him on Oprah, surrounded by children, his manner easy and untroubled as he gave himself over to their pleas for his attention. He was legitimate, that was all she cared about at the moment. He was real, and he thought she was special enough that he was coming to see her.
She was overtly pregnant now, six months into the process, no hiding what would be coming. She knew that she made Mr. Tannehill nervous, the thought of having to deliver her child in a smokehouse, but she needed the work to keep her mind occupied. At all times, the baby was in motion. She felt the rhythmic lurch in her belly, the baby’s hiccups, and on a few occasions while resting in bed at night, she watched the baby push against her belly, fetal movement, and she would sit in controlled stillness, hoping to see it again. She was, for the first time in her life, infinitely interesting to herself, not a single change in her circumstances going unnoticed.
When she first became pregnant, all she could think about was the strange fact that a living thing was inside her, some kind of horror movie. Each week that passed, she appreciated how many of the pregnancy sites online compared the size of the fetus to food, starting with a mere poppy seed and then moving to a grape and then a lemon. It made her feel like she wasn’t having a baby at all, merely growing a vegetable in her belly, an organic garden housed within her own body. But as the baby asserted itself, began to move and flip and test the limits of the space it had been given, she grew irritated with the fruit comparisons. Fuck it, she thought, she was not having an avocado, she was making a baby. She wanted the power of creation now, to own the fact that she was making something tangible and beautiful. It was a rare feeling of satisfaction, from her experience as a teen mother, because everyone seemed to assume that you’d made a terrible mistake and that the baby’s development was just a harbinger of doom to come. People either avoided talking about it or made faces of the most punch-worthy suggestions of sympathy. Why, she now wondered, when a woman became pregnant, weren’t people lining up on either side of her as she made her way through each day, wildly cheering her on like she was running the most important marathon in the world? Other days, a fair number of days perhaps, she wanted simply to be invisible, to crawl into a cave with her baby and wait for it to come, far removed from anyone who thought they knew their future.
“Your shift’s done,” Mr. Tannehill said to her, and Izzy awkwardly struggled to lift the garbage bag over her belly and then to free her head from the black plastic. “Now, you’re sure you don’t want someone to be there with you? Just to have somebody else to listen?”
“I’ll be fine,” Izzy assured him, and she laced up her sneakers and walked through the kitchen and into the dining area, seated herself at a table, and waited for the doctor to arrive.
Dr. Grind was exactly on time, to the second, and he pushed open the door and stood, searching for her. She had the power, though it was fleeting, the last time she would be the one who knew something that he didn’t, and she relished his uncertainty for a second, two seconds, and then she raised her hand, caught his attention, and waved him over to her table.
There was no way around her surprise at his youthfulness; she had seen images of him, but in person it was hard to shake the notion that he was a child impersonating an adult. He was in his thirties, but he looked younger than she was, his face free of stubble, his body undefined by fat or muscle. He wore sneakers, gray New Balance running shoes, and this calmed her, his lack of formality. Dr. Grind smiled at her and walked with an unhurried gait toward her, his hand still raised, as if he was expecting, at any moment, to run into an invisible wall.
“Izzy?” he said, and it made her happy that he had not used her given name, had prevented her from the awkwardness of correcting him.
“That’s me,” she replied, absentmindedly patting her stomach as if to affirm her identity. It felt like a date; she could not shake this feeling as he took a seat beside her, not across from her.
“I’m Dr. Preston Grind. I’ve heard a lot about you, Izzy, and I’m so happy that we finally, after all this time, have the chance to meet.”
“Me, too,” she replied.
“Do you mind if I eat something?” he asked. “I skipped breakfast and, anyway, I was hoping to try some of the barbecue here. I’m from New York; we have barbecue there, but not like this.”
Izzy just nodded. Her nerves were just beginning to spike, in trying to act like she wasn’t terrified about what was going to happen to her, and, as if he could read her mind, he set down his menu, smiled again, and said, “Just to be entirely upfront, Izzy, I want you to know that I am here to ask you and your child to be a part of our project. I’m going to do my best to convince you to say yes. I think, we all think, that you are a very special person and that you’d be a great asset to our study. I have so much information that it’s impossible for it all to make sense, but I have all the time in the world and I’ll answer every question you have until you feel comfortable making a decision, one way or the other.”