“Nina . . .” Joe stops walking, turns to her, and puts his arms around her.
“What are you doing?”
Fighting the urge to kiss you, he realizes, brushing her bangs out of her eyes again.
Wow.
Kissing her isn’t what he’d intended at all. He only meant to give her a friendly, reassuring hug. But now that she’s in his arms, and he can feel the length of her body against his . . .
But they’re in public. Right out in front of his office building. This isn’t the time, or place.
He clears his throat. “Nina, do you know what this means to me? What you’re doing?”
She smiles up at him. “I want to do it, Joey. For you. When I was complaining . . . I was just teasing. Well, sort of,” she amends. “But it’s all going to be worth it for me if I can give you this. And remember, I’m doing it for myself, too. Because I want to know what it’s like. So I get something out of it, too.”
“But Nina,” he says hoarsely, around the sudden lump in his throat. “You’re giving me a child. You’re making my dream come true. How can I ever repay you?”
“You can bring me takeout sushi in the maternity ward after the baby’s born. Extra yellow-tail roll, and I won’t have to share it.”
He grins. “No problem.”
With that, the spell is broken. He reluctantly releases her.
“Just think, Joey,” Nina says, following him to the curb as he raises his arm to hail a taxi. “Next summer, you’re the one who’s going to be eating peanut butter and jelly for lunch in Queens.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” He never thought of it that way before. No more fancy client lunches. No more clients. No more job. He’ll work a few more months, and then he’ll give notice. He wants to have plenty of time to get ready for the baby.
“You’re not thinking you’re going to miss working, are you?” Nina asks.
He looks down to see her watching him carefully.
“No! Of course I’m not going to miss it.”
“Are you sure you can afford to quit?”
“Nina, I’ve spent the last fifteen years making a ridiculous amount of money and investing almost every penny. I’m set for life. Or at least, for the next twenty years.”
“I know you’re always saying that, but . . . what if you find that you need something more than just being a daddy?”
“What more could I need than that, Nina?”
Certainly not a career. But . . .
Stop. Stop right there.
Shoving away the memory of that morning he held Nina sleeping in his arms, he looks into her eyes. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
She holds his gaze for a moment, silent, then looks away, shifting her weight.
He wants to say more.
He wants to tell her that he might need more than a child.
More than fatherhood.
More from her.
At the very least, he wants to tell her that he’ll cancel his lunch and go home to Queens with her. That he’ll make her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and stand by to hold back her hair if it makes her sick.
“Hey, look, here’s our cab, Joey,” she says, as a car pulls up beside them.
“Yeah,” he says hollowly.
“Hello-o? You can lower your arm now,” she reminds him, reaching for the door handle.
“Oh . . . yeah.”
He reaches past her to open the door for her, then follows her into the yellow taxi that will deliver them to their separate destinations, just as they planned.
“NINA, I’M GOING to go pick up Grandma on Friday and bring her down for the weekend,” Anthony Chickalini says, popping up in the living-room doorway the next evening. He’s wearing his bedtime uniform: a tank-style white T-shirt, boxer shorts, and blue corduroy slippers.
Seated in the recliner with a new library book in her lap, Nina’s careful to hold it so that he can’t see the title. “Okay, Pop. That sounds good. I’ll put clean sheets on Ralphie’s bed so she can sleep there.”
Grandma, of course, is Grandma Chickalini, Pop’s mother. Grandma Valerio, Nina’s maternal grandmother, died years ago. Aunt Carm likes to say she died of a broken heart, having never gotten over her youngest daughter’s death in childbirth, but it was actually a stroke.
Pop goes on, “And Nina, can you make sure you don’t put mushrooms in the sauce this week? Ma says she’s allergic to them now.”
“Can you come down with a new allergy at her age?”
“Who knows?” Her father looks doubtful.
“I guess when you’re eighty-six, you can say whatever you want when it comes to your health, and most people are going to believe you.”
Especially your oldest son, who feels guilty every second that you’re living in a nursing home, Nina adds silently. Her grandmother makes sure of that.
Long widowed, she lived alone in her duplex in Corona until a few years ago, when, weakened after a bout with pneumonia, she could no longer care for herself.
Uncle Cheech, single at the time, wasn’t about to step in and do it, and the youngest brother, Uncle Gino, had just retired to North Carolina. It was Pop who, in the wake of his heart attack and after much soul-searching, made the decision to move her to a Westchester nursing home, much to Nina’s relief.
It isn’t that she doesn’t love her grandmother. But if Pop moved her in here, the responsibility of caring for her would likely fall mainly to Nina. It’s one thing to be caregiver for her increasingly independent younger siblings. It would have been quite another to take on the family matriarch, who grows weaker and more dependent—and demanding—with every passing year.
Not that she’s ever been an easygoing person.
When she offered to move in and raise the children for Pop after Mommy died, he quickly turned her down—but only after checking with Nina. Leaving the responsibility to her grandmother might have given Nina a reprieve, but she was certain it was the last thing Mommy would have wanted.
“I’ll pick up some lentils after work tomorrow, Pop, and I’ll make them with linguine, the way Grandma likes,” Nina offers.
“You’re a good kid, Nina.”
She smiles. Pop will call her a kid until she’s old and gray, just as his mother calls him Junior.
“By the way, Pop, Ralphie’s outgrown his dress pants again, and he needs a couple of sweaters, too. I’m going to take him shopping tomorrow after school. Do you need anything?”
“Socks,” Anthony says. “Every day, I put a pair in the laundry, and sometimes only one comes back.”
She smiles. “I’ll pick up some new ones for you. Black, right?”
“Of course. Use the American Express, though. Not the Visa. I just put the deposit for Rosalee’s reception on that.” Pop stretches and turns toward the stairs. “I’ll see you at the restaurant tomorrow, Nina.”
“I’ll be in at eleven. ’Night, Pop.”
Listening to her father’s footsteps trudging up the steps, Nina wonders what he’s going to say when he finds out she’s pregnant.
Pop is an old-fashioned man. It won’t be easy for him to accept the idea of Nina bearing a child for Joe, no matter how much Pop likes and respects him.
And Grandma . . . what’s Grandma going to say?
It shouldn’t matter, Nina reminds herself. You’re a grown woman.
Her gaze falls on a framed photograph on a nearby table.
Yes, you’re a grown woman . . . who, right now, just really, really wants her Mommy.
“It would be so different if you were here,” Nina whispers to the smiling woman in the photograph.
Her mother, she knows, would somehow understand what she’s doing . . . and why she’s doing it.
Then again, if Mommy were here, she wouldn’t be in t
his situation in the first place.
For one thing, Nina would have left Astoria, and Joe, behind years ago.
For another, she might not feel this innate need to experience pregnancy.
Or maybe . . .
Maybe she would be married somewhere, with children of her own.
An acute wave of longing washes over Nina, longing for what might have been. Longing for her mother—longing to be a mother. A real mother. Not an older sister tending to a flock of younger siblings; not a surrogate making somebody else’s dream come true.
A mother.
“Just the way you were,” Nina softly tells the photograph. “God, how I miss you.”
She closes her eyes, trembling, getting a grip on her emotions.
When she opens them, she finds herself staring at the library book in her lap. There, in living color, is an image of a nine-week-old fetus.
Somewhere deep inside of her is this tiny alien being that looks just like that. Incredible.
Just incredible, that she, Nina, is capable of creating life. Of nurturing this tiny miracle until the time comes to cut the cord and hand the baby over to its father.
She smiles, picturing Joey’s face at that moment. That she can give him that kind of gift . . .
Well, it’s all worthwhile.
And now I’ll know what it was like for you, Nina silently tells the woman who is never far from her thoughts. Now I’ll know how you felt, carrying each one of us in your womb. You gave your life bringing Ralphie into the world.
Would Nina do the same?
She gently lays a hand across her still-flat stomach, conscious of the fragile little life inside.
And she knows that she would instinctively do anything to protect it.
Nina smiles.
So this is what it’s like.
Wonderful, yet terrifying.
She is powerful, yet vulnerable.
And she doesn’t have to wait for July to embark on her adventure. It’s already begun.
Chapter Ten
THE CAB RIDE home from LaGuardia airport three nights later takes all of ten minutes, but to Joe, it’s an eternity. Finally, the driver pulls up at the curb and presses the button that sends the meter whirring.
“Here you go.” Joe tosses a twenty-dollar bill at him and bolts from the car. “Keep the change.”
“Wait, your receipt!”
“Keep that, too,” Joe calls, hurrying not toward his house, but toward the Chickalinis’.
Yes, the trip to Chicago was business, and no, the company won’t reimburse him for the cab expense without a receipt, and yes, he did promise himself that he’ll be more frugal now that he’s going to be an unemployed dad.
But that—the fact that he’s going to be a dad—is the very reason he’s in such a rush now. He hasn’t seen Nina since she told him about the baby. Every time he tried to call her when he had a free moment in Chicago, she was either at work or asleep, or he got a busy signal for hours straight.
Now, clutching his overnight bag in one hand and a small stuffed sweater-and-hat-wearing teddy bear in the other, he takes the steps two at a time. Only after he rings the doorbell, launching Yank into a wild fit of barking, does he think to check his watch.
Hmm. It’s after ten. But somebody’s definitely home, and awake. The porch light is on, and a bluish flickering light is spilling from the living room window, meaning the television is on inside.
A hand parts the curtain in the panel of glass, and the door opens.
“Hey, Joey, what’s up?” Nina’s brother Dominic is standing there in boxer shorts and a T-shirt. He’s holding Yank’s collar as the dog tries to escape past Joe.
“How’s it going, Dom?” Joe pets Yank, who pants excitedly. “What are you doing home from college?”
“Mid-semester break. Come on in.”
Joe steps over the threshold and sets his bag on the floor.
He inhales the familiar Chickalini-house smell, which has been the same ever since he can remember. It’s a warm, familial scent that brings to mind french vanilla ice cream mingling with fabric softener and the inside of a wooden dresser drawer filled with clean linens.
When they were kids, he and Nina often discussed house smells. She insisted her home didn’t have a scent, and that his house had an aroma of canned tomatoes and evergreens, which he has yet to sniff, try as he might. He and Nina both concluded long ago that the Scaturros’ house smells like a blend of damp basement, Funyons, and Jean Naté.
Dom closes the door behind Joe, then smirks and gestures at the teddy bear. “Aw, you shouldn’t have. Is that for me?”
“It’s for . . .” Joe clears his throat. Has Nina told anybody about her pregnancy yet? Opting to be on the safe side, he tells Dom, “It’s for Nina. She said she was starting a stuffed animal collection.”
“Yeah? That’s news to me. She’s the one who tossed all Ralphie’s old stuffed animals and made the poor kid cry.”
“I remember that. He was twelve years old, Dom, and he was dissecting them on the driveway with a bread knife. Stuffing was flying around everywhere.”
“Yeah, that’s right. You might want to remind Nina to keep Teddy away from Ralphie,” Dom says, gesturing toward the stuffed bear.
“Speaking of Nina . . . is she home?”
“She’s in bed.”
“This early? Every time I call she’s in bed. Is she sick?”
“She’s got some stomach thing. When she’s not puking she’s sleeping. Believe me, I’m staying away from her.”
“Oh. Well when she wakes up can you give her—”
“Joey! You’re back!”
He looks up to see Nina standing at the top of the stairs in flannel pajama bottoms and a T-shirt.
“And you’re up. I thought you were sleeping.”
“I was.” She yawns. “But I got up to go to the bathroom awhile ago and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Dom, turn the TV down, will you, before you wake up the whole house?”
“Are you kidding? Nothing wakes up Dad. Rosalee’s out with Timmy. And Ralphie’s still on the computer instant-messaging some girl.”
“Again?” Nina shakes her head.
“Is that why the phone line’s been tied up so much?” Joe asks. “I kept trying to call you from Chicago.”
“Yeah, well, Ralphie’s in love,” Dom says.
“I thought they broke up.”
“They did,” Nina says. “This is a brand-new love. What did he say her name was, Dom? Cammie? Camille? Corinne?”
“Yeah, something like that. Hey, you want a beer, Joey?”
“No, thanks.”
“Want to sit down and watch the game with me?”
The World Series. That’s right. How could he have forgotten?
“What’s the score?” Joe asks.
“Two-two, bottom of the sixth. Come on and watch.”
“Nah, I just want to talk to Nina for a second.”
“When did you get back?” Nina asks, coming the rest of the way down the stairs as her brother retreats to the living room.
“About two minutes ago.” He notices that she looks exactly the same as she always does. For some reason, he half-expected to come back to find her waddling around with her palms resting on her lower back and a giant tummy protruding out front.
Nina asks, “You just got back and you didn’t rush straight home to catch the end of the World Series game?”
“Nah. When the Yankees aren’t in it, I don’t mind missing a game or two.” He hands her the bear. “Here. I brought this for you . . .” He lowers his voice and adds in a whisper, “you know . . . for the baby.”
She smiles. “Aw . . . look at his cute little sweater and hat! Thanks, Joey.”
“You didn’t tell anybody yet, d
id you?”
“No way. I want to wait as long as I can before I break it to Pop.”
“I thought you said he’d be happy.”
“I said he loves you. You saved his life.” Nina sits on the bottom step, the bear balanced on her knees. “I didn’t say he’d be happy to have his unmarried daughter knocked up.”
“Oh.” Joe shrugs and sits beside her. “I’m sure he’ll get over it when he realizes he gets to be a grandpa.”
Nina looks at him. “Are you going to have the baby call him that?”
“Yeah . . . unless you think Nino would rather be called Poppi or something,” Joe says, affectionately referring to Anthony Chickalini by the Italian version of his name, as always. “What? Why do you look so surprised, Nina?”
“I don’t know. That’s just . . . I guess I didn’t think of that.”
“Well, he’ll be the baby’s grandfather,” Joe says.
“I guess. In a way.”
“What do you mean, ‘in a way’?”
“I just mean that if I’m not going to be the baby’s mother, Pop isn’t really going to be the baby’s grandfather.”
“Oh. Right.”
Joe hesitates, uncertain how to proceed.
His excitement about seeing Nina again seems to have fizzled.
It’s not that he isn’t fully aware that Nina isn’t going to be sticking around to raise the baby with him. In fact, he knows that things will be far less complicated for him—and the baby—if she makes a clean break.
But he can’t help feeling disappointed at her matter-of-fact attitude about the whole thing.
It’s as if the thought of leaving the baby and Joe behind doesn’t bother her in the least . . .
As if she expects to pop the baby out, hand it over, and sail off into the sunset without ever looking back.
Well, isn’t that the agreement? Joe asks himself. That’s the whole idea. She’s having the baby for me. Not for both of us. She doesn’t want to be a mother. I want to be a father.
“Joey?”
“Hmm?”
“You haven’t changed your mind about this, have you?”
The Nine Month Plan Page 14