69 XXX: A Short Story
“Come again?” I say. I pull the phone from my ear and eying the number on the screen. It’s my obstetrician, but maybe she thinks she’s called her boyfriend by mistake.
She clears her throat. “The genetic testing suggests 69 triple-X triploidy,” and I swear her voice is husky.
I write this down on the back of an envelope, even though I won’t forget. I speak it under my breath and it rolls off the tongue like dirty talk. A follow-up appointment is made and I end the call.
My husband, Tom, is draped across the couch looking at me expectantly. He’s managed to change out of his pajamas and it’s not even noon. He hasn’t done more than eat a bag of Cheetos, but I’ll take it. Anything is better than that crumpled look he’d taken on at the hospital. How can this keep happening? He’d said. When can we try again? And I’d said That’s just how it goes sometimes and My body needs time. He still looks that way most of the time, like a wadded-up ball of paper hiding a piece of chewing gum. Once I’d come home from work to find him crying in bed and almost said, venom pooling in my mouth, get over it, it didn’t even happen to you.
This is not the sort of thing a grieving unmother should have to Google. I make the mistake of typing “69 XXX” into an image search. There are dicks and tits in neatly spaced rows, and I contort my face in disgust, even…
