A small engraved bell with a clapper sat on the teak coffee table in the room where my father lay dying. He no longer had the strength to call my mother so this was the instrument he used to summon her. I heard it from the kitchen and went into the living room.

She promised me the good wine. The bottle her boss gave her as a reward for staying late on a Friday. But when we arrived at her Brooklyn apartment, she instead grabbed an open bottle of white in her fridge. I didn’t care. My vulva was pulsing like a heartbeat.

“Well, Ms. Song, I have to say, you’re pretty darn unlucky.” I thought about reminding her again—for maybe the 50th time—to call me Julie, but after two years of her ignoring my request, the point was moot. Besides, I couldn’t remind her, I was weeping again. Mike took two steps across the tiny doctor’s office and grabbed a tissue from the box, wiping the salty black tracks that muddied my cheeks. Dr. F pursed her lips, tightly holding back any words of wisdom or comfort she might have had. Her face said it all: pity and boredom. This was just another day as an infertility specialist.

In El Dorado you drive for hours, just to feel like you’re going somewhere. Your dad tinkers with cars and he’s given you one he loves, a 280Z. It’s too fast for you. You get reckless and twist past the pines. Once, you skid in a ditch on a zigzag turn. Another time, you open the throttle on a straight highway and rear-end a brown pickup full of stoners. No damage, dude. They’re the only stoners you’ve ever seen in Arkansas, and when you drive away you start to wonder if they were even real.