Beth married Elvis at the courthouse three days after she told him she was pregnant. She’d spent the last four months quietly, secretly vomiting in the last stall of the women’s bathroom at work and pretending to drink coffee and beer. Her pants had grown tight; her fear had grown unmanageable. Elvis, her first, was the first baseman for the minor league team that employed her as an administrative assistant. When she told him she was late—very late—he’d whooped, scooped her up, spun her around. She’d rushed behind his truck, vomited in the parking lot.

When he said, “We’re getting married. We’ll be a family,” Beth stopped crying.

After a city hall ceremony, they waited at the kitchen table for Beth’s mother to come home from work.

Her mother pushed through the apartment door, eyed them, and said, “Let me change out of my uniform and get a shower.” She disappeared into the bathroom that she and Beth shared.

Beth took Elvis’s rough-knuckled hands across the Formica table. “This’ll be hard. She had me when she was seventeen. She didn’t want this for me.”

“But, darlin’, you’re nineteen and have me.” He squeezed her fingers and grinned.

In awe of her handsome, her tall, her strong Elvis, Beth couldn’t believe that he’d loved her back. But he had. He did.

He said, “I have a job and Mama and Daddy will help out.”

Beth loved his confidence, his optimism. She said, “Let me do the talking.”

Beth’s mother went still and silent as Beth dumped the baby and the marriage out into her tiny, dark kitchen.

“Ma,” she pleaded. “Say something.”

Her mother flicked her eyes at Elvis. “How old are you?”

He straightened up, broadened his chest. His spiked, gelled hair, black and shiny, grazed the light dangling above the table. “Twenty-four, ma’am.”

“How much do you make playing baseball?”

His Adam’s apple, covered in black stubble, slid down his throat. “Well, I don’t know the exact figures, the total, I mean. But it’s more than I need. My check’s direct-deposited into the bank back home. In Tennessee. I get three hundred dollars a week, walking around money.”

“You get?” She glared at Elvis, then turned to her daughter. “My God, he’s a puppy who hasn’t grown into his legs.”

Beth opened her mouth to object to this comparison, but Elvis spoke first. “My daddy’s my manager. His name’s Elvis, too. He’s named after the real Elvis, and I’m named after him. Daddy handles the money.”

They drove south to Tennessee to celebrate the news with his parents. Hoping to calm her nerves, she replayed what Elvis had told her of his conversation with them.

“Well, of course they were surprised,” he’d said. “I won’t lie, Mama’s disappointed she won’t get to plan a wedding. Daddy said he’s proud of me doing the right thing. Being a man and taking responsibility. But they’re more than happy about their first grandbaby.”

Her nerves hadn’t calmed the least bit. Jangled and jittery, she stared out the passenger window at I-40. “Baby names… Do you have any ideas?”

Her husband snorted. “Hell yeah, I do. It’s Elvis. If he’s a boy. And Maria if he’s a girl.”

Beth flinched. Maria was his mother’s name. Elvis sang along with the country song on the radio. The gold wedding band on her left-handed first baseman flared in the sun as he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

She’d tucked the baby name library book into the outside pocket of her overnight bag. “I was thinking something more… I don’t know, like William or Thomas?” She reached for the book.

He shook his head. “No way. Elvis the Third.” He glanced at her. “What’s wrong?”

Beth pulled her hand back into her lap. Her voice cracked when she said, “I love you. But I can’t name our child Elvis. Between you, your father, and the real Elvis: that’s too many Elvises.”

His jaw grew hard. Beth wished he’d shaved the prickly black fuzz that shadowed his chin. “Well,” he said. “I didn’t know you hated my name.”

“I don’t. I don’t hate your name. I want our baby to have his own name. Or her own name.”

He planted his baseball-mitt-sized hand on her belly. “It’s a boy in there. I can feel it. Mama said when she was expecting, she knew I was a boy. Can you tell? Does he feel like a boy?”

Beth stared at him. How could she know what a boy felt like? How could he expect her to? In the most neutral way she could muster, she said, “I don’t know.”

“We’ll ask Mama when we get home. I can’t wait to get some real, home-cooked food. You gotta learn to make my favorites. She’ll show you—”

“Elvis, I’ve been cooking since I was eight years old, since I could reach the stove, the microwave.”

“I mean cooking for a man.” His fingers splayed across her bloated abdomen. “You and your mama make food out of a box.”

Beth had nearly unraveled with relief when Elvis said I do. She didn’t want to appear ungrateful. “I don’t have the time or money to cook gourmet meals for you. I work and go to school—”

“Well, you don’t have to do either of those anymore. We’ll live here, at home, when the baby comes. So you won’t be alone when I’m on the road.”

“What? I thought we were getting an apartment back home.”

“Back home?” He pointed to the exit sign. His hometown was speckled against a mountain. Clumps of split-levels sat behind cars that languished in varying states of disrepair in gravel driveways. “This is home.” He patted her knee, turned into town. “Look. See how nice this is?”

Beth craned her neck, turning her head to look up and down the street, hoping there was more to “downtown” than one block. Elvis parked in front of an insurance office, where a woman sat at her desk near the front window, painting her nails.

Elvis softened his voice. “Remember when we first met?” He waited for her nod. “And I took you out to dinner at that real nice place? You told me you didn’t want, you didn’t need, fancy. You wanted quiet. You wanted safe. Here it is. Now you’re my wife, with my baby in your belly; it’s my job to keep you both safe.”

Beth thought of her thirty-six-year-old mother, eyes hollowed with fatigue, her expression bitter with disappointment. Until that moment, Beth had felt sure she’d escaped her mother’s manless, poverty tightrope existence. But Elvis planned to leave her alone while he traveled with the team, the team that had been her life since high school graduation. She would be alone with his family, alone in his town, her income gone. She imagined herself sleeping alone in his childhood bed, under an Atlanta Braves quilt, hand-stitched by his mama, while he signed autographs outside locker rooms up and down the east coast.

Beth thought she felt very real Baby Elvis flutter inside of her. She turned to his father—the puppy who hadn’t grown into his legs—and said, “I can’t.”

He yanked his truck into gear. “You can.”

Beth pushed open the door. Only a week ago, she’d bolted out of the same door and vomited. She stepped onto the sidewalk and took the biggest risk she could imagine by standing on uneven cement, staring through the open truck door at her Elvis. She needed him to take her seriously, park his truck so they could sit down—maybe in the empty diner, a HELP WANTED sign in its window—and compromise. She shuddered at the chance he’d shout at her, “Get in the goddam truck.”

Instead, he smiled. “What in the hell are you doin’, darlin’?” He reached across the seat, held out his hand. “Come on, now. Get back in the truck. We’ll talk it out.”

She hesitated, rubbed her wedding band with her thumb.

He wiggled his fingers, a “come here” gesture.

She said, “We’ll talk before we get to your parents’ house.”

“Sure.”

Beth took Elvis’s hand, his fingers warm and strong, and he hauled her into the truck without leaving his seat. He pulled his keys from the ignition, dropped them into the cup holder, and turned to her.

He would never have left her alone on the street. He was a good, responsible man who loved her. He wanted this child, their child.

Unsure where to begin, she stalled. “Can you give me a minute?”

“I can give you whatever you want.” He kissed her on the cheek. “But I can drive and talk at the same time, you know.” Elvis joked when he was uneasy.

At 4:30 this morning, they’d tiptoed out of his apartment, muffling their laughter at whoever snored and sprawled on his roommate’s couch. Elvis had insisted on leaving in the dark early morning. He’d said, “Mama gets dinner on the table at 5:30 every night. I know better than to be late.”

Beth forced out, “I don’t want to live with your parents. You didn’t ask how I felt.” Beth expected him to argue, but he only blinked. “It’s important to me to finish school and work.”

“You want to tell me how you expect to take care of our baby while you’re doing that?”

“Elvis—”

“That’s no way to raise a child, Beth.”

“How would you know?” Her raised voice surprised both of them. “We can’t go to your parents’ house yet. We need to get on the same page.”

He shook his head, snatched up his keys, started his truck. “They’re expecting me. Us.”

Beth had learned about probability in her business math class. She wished she could plug into a formula: “risk of becoming her mother” and “risk of living with Elvis’s parents” and solve for “how to be happy enough.” If she didn’t finish school, she’d never be an accountant. If Elvis got called up to the majors, would she need to be an accountant? If she didn’t finish school and Elvis never played for the majors, would they—would she and her child—be trapped in his parents’ house?

He slowed the truck, turned into a smooth, newly asphalted driveway. “Here we are. Home.”

The neighbors had gravel driveways; Beth wondered if Elvis’s salary had paid for this upgrade.

His parents—soft, round, old— rushed into the front yard to greet them. Elvis looked nothing like either of them. His mother wore an actual apron over her dress. Elvis Senior’s hair appeared to have been very recently dyed very black. Dark stains smudged his hairline at his forehead and temples. Beth caught herself. They loved her Elvis. Surely, she’d find a way to love them, too.

Elvis’ father whacked his son’s right shoulder. “Junior! Welcome home!”

Elvis shook his father’s hand. “Good to be home, Daddy. I go by ‘Elvis,’ now, I’ve told you that. Hey, Mama.” He bent down and hugged his mother long and hard.

“Don’t be silly!” Laughing, she stood on her toes and held Elvis’s cheeks in her hands. “You’re Junior, and this little one…” She turned to Beth, placed both hands on her abdomen. “And this is Elvis the Third. You can call him Tripp! Welcome home, Betsy.”

Beth endured a hug from Elvis’s father, allowed his mother to guide her inside and tie an apron around her expanding waist. She helped make biscuits while Elvis and his father watched and yelled at something on television. He hadn’t looked at her since they’d arrived.

She excused herself to “their room,” Elvis’s old room, and found a peeling wood crib with rusted hardware at the end of the bed. The bedsprings creaked when she sat on the quilt sewn of his childhood baseball jerseys.

She called her mother.

THE END