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against the sky. She dreams of old whalers, fishermen, dreams she is in a boat, far from shore, in the middle of the open sea. She thinks of her grandmother, freeing her. She thinks of how proud her grandmother would be that she’s taken things in hand.
    Finally they arrive. Creatures of habit, they go back to the same spot where they were yesterday, this time moving with greater urgency. There is something genuine, heartfelt in the sex habits of the young—it is all new, thrilling, scary, a mutual adventure.
    She retrieves and extracts her second sample. In the car, with her hips up high, she inseminates and she waits.
    She imagines all of it mingling in her like sea foam. She imagines that with the sperm and the sand, she will make a baby born with pearl earrings in her ears.
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    In the local paper there is a notice for a childbirthing class. She goes, thinking she should be ready, she should know more. There are only two couples; a boy and girl still in high school and a local couple in their mid-thirties—the husband and wife both look pregnant, both sip enormous sodas throughout the class.
    â€œWhen are you due?” the instructor asks each of them.
    â€œIn three weeks,” the girl says, rubbing her belly, polishing the baby to perfection. “We didn’t plan for the pregnancy, so we thought we better plan for the birth.”
    â€œFour weeks,” the other woman says, sucking on her straw.
    â€œAnd you?”
    â€œI’m working on it,” she says. And no one asks more.
    On the table is an infant doll, a knitted uterus, and a bony pelvis.
    â€œYour baby wants you,” the childbirth teacher says, picking up the doll and passing it around.
    The doll ends up with her. She holds it, thinking it would be rude to put it back down on the table—she might seem like a bad mother. She holds it, patting the plastic diaper of the plastic infant, pretending to comfort it. She sits the doll on her lap and continues taking notes: gestational age, baby at three weeks, three months, six months, nine months, dilation of the cervix, the stages of labor.
    â€œAll pregnancies end in birth,” the instructor says, holding up the knitted uterus.
    Leaving the hospital, she runs into the cop coming out of the emergency room.
    â€œYou all right?” she asks.
    â€œStepped on a rusty nail and had to get a tetanus shot.” He rubs his arm. “So, how about that coffee?”
    â€œAbsolutely, before the end of summer,” she says, getting into her car.
    She is a woman waiting for her life to begin. She waits, counting the days. Her breasts are sore, full, like when they were first budding. She waits, thinking something is happening, and then it is not. There is a stain in her underwear, faint, light, like smoke, and overnight she begins to bleed. She bleeds thick, old blood, like rust. She bleeds bright red blood, like a gunshot wound. She bleeds heavily. She feels herself, hollow, fallow, failed. And bleeding, she mourns all that has not happened, all that will never happen. She mourns the boys, the men, the fiancé, her grandmother, the failings of her family, and her own peculiar shortcomings that have put her in this position.
    She becomes all the more determined to try again. She counts the days, keeps her temperature charts and watches her men.
    She will try harder, making sure that on the two most viable days she gets at least two doses—no such thing as too much. She continues to prepare. August, high tide, peak of the season. The local newspapers are thick with record numbers of deer jumping in front of cars, a drowning on an unprotected beach, shark spottings. The back pages are filled with pictures of social events: the annual hospital gala, the museum gala, the celebrity tennis match, benefit polo, golf tournaments, the horse show. This summer’s scandal involves a man who tried to get into “the” country club, was loudly rejected, and then