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My wife decides that, starting today, we need to carry around a bag of flour to prepare us for being parents. I tell her that carrying around a bag of flour is her solution for everything, and she just stares at me, which I guess I kind of deserve. Carrying around a bag of flour isn't her solution for anything, but I haven't had my coffee yet and I felt like making a joke, which is my solution for everything. She says to be serious, because this is a baby we're talking about, our baby, and it's important to her that we be ready when we really become parents. I say, "Okay."
    She gets up from her breakfast and goes to the pantry. "The doctor said that this will help," she calls out. "We just have to treat it like a real baby. Burp it, hold it, play with it, everything." She leans back through the doorway. "So we know what to expect."
    "Play with a bag of flour?" I say. "Am I supposed to let it win?"
    "You know what I mean," she says.
    I decide to let her think I do.

* * *

    Our son lacks any of my defining features. His face is not like mine. He doesn't have my eyes, my nose, my mouth, or even my ears, just a blue sticker that proclaims "GOLD FLOUR" like it's the most important thing in the world. He doesn't have my legs, either, because he doesn't have any legs, period. In fact, he bears little resemblance to me at all, and when I inform my wife of this she tells me while wiping mock tears from her eyes that, yes, my worst fears are confirmed, she cheated on me with a threshing machine. God, I love her.
    When I pick up our child for the first time I'm surprised by how he feels. He's cold, dry, not quite squishy but not quite solid either. I regard him quizzically. I can't tell my wife that I don't think he looks like a baby, that if she came out of the delivery room with him I would look up a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, so instead I make cooing noises and tickle his flat little stomach.
    "He looks healthy," I tell my wife.
    She rolls her eyes.

* * *

    In the afternoon I watch a football game with him, pointing out the best players and what the calls mean and who we really, really hate on the other team. I feel like if I start early he can really make something out of himself, get onto the first string of the varsity team at his high school and maybe get noticed by college scouts and receive a scholarship from some prestigious university.
    "You'll have to grow some legs," I tell him. "We can't afford that kind of surgery."
    He doesn't say anything, but I don't really expect him to. He's just a baby, and also a bag of flour. I'm just happy he's paying attention.
    "Don't worry," I say, putting my hand on his head and smiling. "I believe in you. You can do anything you want to. You can be whatever you want to be."

* * *

    "He needs a name," I say.
    My wife puts her copy of Parenting magazine down on the bedspread, face up, and says, "What?"
    "Our son," I say. I get out from under the covers and walk to the crib in my underwear. I pick up our beautiful little sack of flour and tuck him in the crook of my arm. I stroke his folded white head. "He needs a name. I don't know what to call him."
    She looks at me for a second, then picks her magazine back up. The cover tells me that there are sixteen different ways to calm a crying baby inside. She licks her finger and turns a page.
    "This wasn't my idea," I say. I hold the baby out to her. "We need practice, right? To be good parents?"
    That one gets through. Her eyes snap away from the magazine, to me and the baby. I smile bouncing him up and down in front of my face. "You want to give me a name, don't you, mommy?" Our baby sounds like Julia Child, and it is truly frightening.
    My wife sighs, laughs, and smiles herself. This was her idea. I get back into bed, and the baby lays between us, my hand on him, her hand on mine.
    We decide to name him Gold.

* * *

    The next morning Mommy has to see the doctor, and while she's waiting for him to do whatever it is doctors do when you're there on time and they aren't ready, Gold and I go to the hospital cafeteria to get a snack. He's strapped to my chest in some contraption we got at the mall, like a reverse backpack or a suicide bomb, and he keeps moving around because he doesn't have any legs to stick through the leg holes. I see a sign over one of the hospital corridors that reads "prosthetics," but I decide that that's a conversation I can put off for a later date. They already grow up so fast.
    There's no line at the cafeteria. The food is set up like a buffet, small plates and cups under glass, lined up all the way to a cash register. Everything about the cafeteria is white — white walls, white floors, white tables, doctors in white outfits — so I get the most colorful thing I can find, a fruit cup. Green grapes, yellow pineapple chunks, red cherries, the works. I put the tiny cup in the middle of my tray and slide it down to the cash register.
    The heavyset woman behind the machine rings up my purchase and I pay with a five dollar bill. She hands me the change and a quarter slips between my fingers, and when I lean over to pick it up, Gold slides out the top of his carrier and lands on the floor with a thud.
    I drop the rest of my change. Pennies and nickels roll in all different directions as I seize Gold and stuff him back into his carrier. He's upside down, facing the wrong direction, but I feel better just having him pressed to my chest again.
    I stand up and look at the cashier. She has an expression that's somewhere between confusion and apathy, struggling to find the path of least resistance with regards to what she just witnessed. "You okay, honey?" she asks.
    "It's my first time," I say.
    When I lean down to pick up my change, I notice that my hands are white.

* * *

    A doctor walks into the bathroom, and I have Gold on the counter next to the sink, damp from being wiped down with paper towels. There's a band-aid plastered to the corner of his head, but he only needed that one and thank God he's fine. I'm not sure what the doctor thinks when he opens the door, what he's seeing when he walks in the bathroom, but when I glance in the mirror I can tell that there's just a hint of terror in my eyes.
    "Is that a bag of flour?" he says.
    I have to think about it for a minute before I say yes.

* * *

    "What happened here?"
    I try to keep my eyes on the road, concentrating on driving, like I don't know what she's talking about. Out of the corner of my eye I see her rubbing her thumb over Gold's band-aid.
    "Where?" I say.
    "Right here," she says. She picks at the edge of the band-aid and my knuckles go white on the steering wheel.
    "Don't," I say. She looks at me.
    "Honey," she says. "What happened?"
    I swallow hard. The car in front of us has a Baby on Board sticker in the back window. I am jealous.
    "He fell," I tell my wife. I look at her and say, "He fell right out of the pack."
    She laughs. I can feel my jaw slacken in horror. This only makes her laugh harder. "Oh, honey," she says.
    "I dropped the baby," I say.
    She tries to hold her laughter in and makes a sound like a motorboat.
    "This isn't funny," I try, but now she's making me smile. "A doctor saw us in the bathroom and he thinks I'm crazy."
    She puts her hand on my cheek. "You are crazy," she says. She kisses me on the cheek. I put my hand on her swollen belly and check the rearview mirror to make sure Gold is strapped in tight.

* * *

    My wife already has her coat on and her purse slung over her shoulder. "We have to go," she says.
    "Where's Gold?" I say.
    "What?" she asks. She looks at her watch. "We have an appointment."
    I stuff my arms into my jacket and take off into the other room. "Gold needs to be here for this."
    "Can't we do this later?" she calls after me.
    Gold was with us at breakfast. He was with us at the park. I check the crib, the changing table, the carrier — nothing. I tear the blankets off of our bed. My first and only son has disappeared.
    "Gold," I call. "Gold!"
    I hear my wife slam the door. She is on her way to the car. I attribute her callousness to the rapid hormonal changes in her body. Newspaper headlines about negligent parenting and child abuse flash before my eyes and manage to knock over Gold's crib before heading to another room. He is going to be on Dateline someday, explaining how he committed the murders. Psychologists will explain that his mental imbalance was created at a young age by unfit parenting, namely from his father.
    My wife starts our car. I'm on my stomach, crawling under the bed, covered with dust and dirt and toenails. "Gold?" I say. The dust hurts my throat.
    I worry about could have happened so that he won't even respond.
    I hear the horn honking outside, two short bursts and then a long one that seems to go on forever. I walk out of the bedroom backwards, slowly, my eyes searching for something, anything, anything at all, just to let me know that Gold is okay.

* * *

    It's because I dropped him. As I sit in the doctor's office, wringing my hands, and the doctor is rubbing some kind of yellow jelly all over my wife's stomach, this is the only conclusion I can come to. Gold ran away because I dropped him. I was a fool to think that he wouldn't ever be able to run just because he doesn't have any legs.
    "Is this going to hurt?" asks my wife.
    "No," says the doctor, "not one bit."
    I decide not to tell the doctor about what happened with Gold. I don't know how much pull this guy has, but I don't want him to keep my wife and I from getting our baby. I'll find Gold as soon as we get home.
    "This might be a little cold," says the doctor, sticking some kind of wand in the goo, and my wife gasps. She digs her fingers into the white sheets and I put my hand over hers.
    The doctor leans over some kind of screen and nods. He clucks his tongue. I hear a faint beeping coming from somewhere nearby.
    "There," he says. He leans back so we can see the screen. I think he's watching The Blob. "There's your baby."
    My wife squeezes my hand and I lean in closer, squinting. One of the blue blotches is moving around. The way it's curled up it looks like a lumpy sack of something or other, but it's not.
    "That beeping," I say, "is that the?"
    "Heartbeat," says the doctor. "A strong, healthy heartbeat."
    I put my other hand on my wife's cheek and lean down, touching my forehead to hers. I can't tear my eyes away from the screen, but neither can she, and as close as this I realize that's the only thing that matters.
    "A heartbeat," I whisper. "How about that?"



About the author:
Jake Christie has a BA in Media Studies and Writing from the University of Southern Maine. His work has appeared online in Ramble Underground and Yankee Pot Roast. He lives, writes, and drinks way too much coffee in Portland, Maine.

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