The Nine Month Plan

by Wendy Markham

  “Yup. He and one of his buddies were leaving your house when I was coming out. They had on so much cologne that they either had a violent run-­in with one of those perfume spritzer guys in Bloomingdale’s, or they’re off to meet a ­couple of girls.”

  “Girls? No way.”

  Joe nods. “I could swear Ralphie had gel in his hair.”

  “Gel?” Nina shakes her head. “Ralphie doesn’t do gel. He doesn’t do cologne, either. And he definitely doesn’t do girls.”

  “Ah, Nina. Poor dear, sweet, deluded Nina. Let’s bet.”

  “I don’t want to bet.”

  “Come on. I say he has a girlfriend, you say he doesn’t.”

  “What would we bet?”

  “If he doesn’t, I take out your garbage next week. If he does, you have a baby for me.”

  “Oh, shut up, Joey, and hand me that round pan.”

  He does, grinning.

  She begins stretching another piece of dough, pondering the undeniable evidence that her baby brother has discovered females at last.

  Ralphie? It’s hard to imagine him brushing his teeth, much less grooming himself to impress a girlfriend. When Dominic was Ralphie’s age, he was already well on his way to becoming a ladies’ man. Nina never imagined that Ralphie would follow in Dom’s footsteps, but—­

  A clattering sound disrupts her thoughts.

  She glances up to see Joe at the sink, washing an empty saucepan.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Helping.”

  “You don’t have to help.”

  “I know, but I want—­”

  “I need three pepperoni and mushroom pies for the women’s softball team,” Cara hollers from the front. “They’re sending someone to get them in ten minutes.”

  “Okay, forget about the dishes and grab an apron, Joey,” Nina says, flattening the dough into a waiting pan.

  “I don’t need an apron.”

  “Do you know what’s going to happen to those white shorts if you start making pizzas?” She gestures at the front of her own sauce-­and-­oil-­spattered apron.

  “So I’ll wash them.”

  “They’ll be stained.”

  He shrugs. “Then I’ll buy new ones. It’s too damned hot for an apron. Okay, what do I do first?”

  The phone rings.

  “I can’t get that, Nina,” Cara calls. “I’m taking an order.”

  “Get the phone, Joey,” Nina says, grateful for his presence.

  He salutes, promptly lifting the receiver with a chipper, “Good evening, Big Pizza Pie.”

  Nina smiles and wonders what on earth she would ever do without Joey.

  WITH A GROAN, Nina locks the door behind the last customers and flips the sign in the window to CLOSED. She turns out the bank of lights over the tables.

  “Hey!” Joe, on his way from the kitchen, nearly trips over a mop handle as the restaurant plunges into relative darkness.

  “Sorry. But if I don’t do that, somebody else will show up and bang on the door wanting a calzone or something,” Nina tells him. “I swear, I think we could be open twenty-­four hours a day and be busy the whole time.”

  “Yeah, well, I keep telling your dad he should consider a franchise. I’d help him with the—­”

  “I know you would. But you’ve done enough for him, and anyway, all he should be considering at this stage is retirement, Joey.”

  A thin shaft of light seeps in from the kitchen, casting the place in a dim glow.

  “Man. Is it morning yet?” Joe asks around a yawn. He hops up on the counter beside the cash register and sits with his legs hanging over the edge.

  He can’t decide whether he’s more exhausted or exhilarated. It’s been a few years since he worked here while Nino was recovering from his heart attack, and he’s forgotten what physical labor is like. His legs and back are aching from making pizzas and shoveling them in and out of the ovens, but his mind is somehow relaxed, which feels surprisingly good. Better than he feels when he boards the subway after a long day at the office.

  “Oh, come on, it’s only two A.M. The night is young.” Nina unties her apron at last.

  “Yeah, right. The night hasn’t been young at two A.M. since my Ann Arbor days.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t get to hang out with you when you were young and fun and in college. All I get is old, boring Joey.”

  “Old, boring Joey who just bailed you out—­and your dad’s restaurant, too. Not for the first time, I might add.”

  “Believe me, Joey, I know I owe you big time, and not just for tonight. What can I possibly give you to make it up to you?”

  “Your firstborn,” he says without hesitation. “But if you’re still against the whole pregnancy thing, I’ll take a cold beer.”

  “All yours.” She removes two Budweisers from the glass-­fronted cooler and twists off the caps, then hands one frosty bottle to him.

  “Damn. Here I was hoping I could hold out for the kid.” He takes a piece of chewed gum out of his mouth, wraps it in a napkin, and shoots it into the nearby garbage can.

  “No way. Me, pregnant?” She hops up beside him on the counter and takes a long gulp of beer, legs dangling. “I thought we dismissed that idea this morning.”

  “Maybe you did. I still think it’s a viable plan—­aside from the whole thing about you fleeing the country.”

  “You think that me having a baby for you is viable?” She laughs. “Can you just see me huge and pregnant and blaming you? You’d be the one who had to leave the country, Joey, just to get away from me.”

  “Yeah, and I’d know when you went into labor, no matter where I was. I’d hear you howling from across the ocean.”

  “True. Which is why I can never be pregnant.”

  “Because you’re a wimp?” He swigs more cold beer. It tastes better than it should at this hour of the morning. “Oh, come on, Nina. Toughen up. The pain can’t be much worse than getting a tattoo.”

  Her eyes narrow at him. “Who says I’d be willing to get a tattoo?”

  “I say.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  She tilts her head back—­probably so that he can’t see her expression—­and drains half her bottle in a few big gulps.

  “Well . . .” She lowers the bottle. “You’re wrong.”

  “Really.” He quirks an eyebrow at her. “I happen to think you’ve already got one . . . and that it’s in a spot you thought I’d never see.”

  She shrugs, kicking her heels rhythmically against the counter.

  “Nina, are you blushing?”

  “No! It’s just a reflection of the sign.” She points to the neon red letters that spell BIG PIZZA PIE in the plate-­glass window.

  “Nah, you’re blushing.” He finishes his beer, takes her empty bottle, and hops down from the counter.

  He should drop it, he knows. The whole topic. After all, they never discuss what happened, and for a good reason. It would be too awkward—­especially after all these years. Especially when their friendship means more to Joe than some meaningless fling ever could.

  That’s why he doesn’t even allow himself to think about it, ever.

  But somehow, right now, the more he tries to force away the forbidden images, the more forcefully they seep in.

  He finds himself wondering whether Nina ever thinks about it too. Whether she ever speculates what it would be like if they fell recklessly into each other’s arms again. Whether she senses that Joe’s attracted to her, sometimes—­hell, most of the time, lately—­and whether she’s ever attracted to him.

  “All right, who told you?” Nina asks, with a nervous-­sounding laugh.

  The tattoo. She’s talking about the tattoo. “Nobody had to tell me. I bet you thought it was too dark that night, or that I w
ouldn’t actually look, but I—­”

  “Joey!”

  “What?” All innocence, he helps himself to two more beers from the cooler, opens them, hands one to her, and hops back onto the counter. This time, he sits a little closer to her.

  He has no idea why he’s doing this. Maybe he’s just in the mood to flirt, and Nina is the only female around. Or maybe . . .

  “It was a red rose,” he says, allowing that night to come back to him full force: the night when his forbidden adolescent fantasy unexpectedly roared to life.

  “Lucky guess. You know I love roses.”

  True. Her mother’s name was Rose—­Rosemarie, but everybody called her Rose. And ever since her death, Nina has been partial to roses. She wears rose perfume, and uses rose-­scented soap . . .

  Its faint scent wafts to his nostrils now, making him want to move closer still. He forces himself to stay where he is.

  “It’s not a guess. I’m telling you, Nina, you have a red rose tattoo,” he says again, “and it’s low on your left hip. Really low.”

  She squirms. “Who told you that? Minnie? Because I swore her to secre—­”

  “Nope, it wasn’t Minnie.” Should he tell her the truth? Oh, what the hell? He’s feeling more daring than usual. Must be the hour. Or the beer. “Really, Nina, I saw the tattoo. The night that we—­”

  “Joey!” She looks utterly horrified. “Don’t say it!”

  “Say what? Fooled around? For God’s sake, Nina, it was more than fifteen years ago. It’s about time we talked about it.”

  “You can. But you’ll have to talk to yourself. I prefer to pretend it never happened. And anyway . . .” She pokes his arm. “What’s with you tonight?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, you’re just . . .” She shakes her head, grinning. “Either you’re feeling nostalgic, or you’re flirting with me.”

  He looks at her in mock shock. “You think?”

  Thanks to years of practice, he’s able to keep it light. Nina doesn’t know that Joey had a crush on her when they were kids—­or that he’d fantasized about their losing their virginity to each other almost a decade before it actually happened.

  “Yup, I think you’re flirting,” she tells him. “And you must be pretty desperate. I mean, I smell like I was fried in a vat of garlic and my hair hasn’t been combed in a good twenty hours.”

  “Ah, but you are still ze most beautiful woman in ze world to me, Nina,” he says in his best French accent. “I love ze scent of garlic. Eet turns me on.”

  “Who are you supposed to be, Pepe Le Pew?” She swats his arm. “You know what I think, Joey? I think it’s been too long since you had a date.”

  “Nah. I had a date the other night. Friday? Thursday? Yeah, Thursday.”

  “Really? With who?”

  “Sara. Sara-­without-­the-­h. This girl I met at the gym.”

  “Sara-­without-­the-­h?”

  “Yeah. She must’ve told me that a hundred times. ‘I’m Sara-­without-­the-­h.’ As if I could forget.”

  “As if it mattered. I mean, unless you had some reason to write her name . . .”

  “Well, maybe she thought I was going to write her a love letter, and she was worried she wouldn’t get it if I used the h.”

  “Yeah, maybe she thought it would accidentally be delivered to some random Sarah-­with-­the-­h.”

  They laugh and sip their beers.

  “Seriously, Nina, what is up with women?”

  “It’s a conspiracy, Joey.”

  “Against me?”

  “Exactly. None of us like you so we all mess with your head.”

  “I believe it.” He sighs. “I spent an hour today trying to figure out who I want to take to see The Book of Mormon with me next Friday night, and you know what? I couldn’t think of a single woman I know. You don’t want to go, do you?”

  “Again? You already took me to The Book of Mormon, remember? The night Schmamanda backed out because she got her period.”

  “I know, but you liked it. Why not see it again?”

  “Hmmm . . . Do I get dinner first?”

  “Anywhere you want to go.”

  “Can we go dancing afterward?”

  “If I choose the club.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Last time you chose the club, Joey, they played Rosemary Clooney songs all night.”

  “Yeah, and last time you chose the club almost every man in the place looked like Rosemary Clooney.”

  “That had to be five years ago, and anyway, you have to admit it was fun.”

  “Yeah, until we got kicked out.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have gotten so worked up over that Liza person.”

  “Hello? She—­he—­grabbed my butt.”

  “So?”

  “Come on, Nina. If you expect me to stand still and shut up while some drag queen grabs my—­”

  “This is New York. For all you know it really was Liza Minnelli, Joey.”

  “He was six foot four and had five o’clock shadow, Nina. I don’t think so. And the point is . . .” He sips more beer. “Oh, hell, what was the point, anyway?”

  “That you want me to be your date Friday night.”

  “Right. I do. I want you to be my date. Okay?”

  “Sure. But I have to warn you, my Broadway-­worthy wardrobe is pretty sparse. Can I wear what I wore the last time you brought me to The Book of Mormon?”

  “I don’t think the cast will notice. Come on. Let’s go back to my place and watch ‘Aah-­nold,’ ” he says in his best Austrian accent.

  “Nah. I’m exhausted. And I’ve got to be up for ten o’clock mass.”

  “Not me. I went at four-­thirty today.”

  “You mean yesterday.”

  “Saturday.”

  “Yeah, and now it’s Sunday, and in a few hours I’m going to be sitting in a pew trying not to fall asleep while Father Tom gives the most boring, endless homily of the year. Come on, Joey, walk me home before I fall asleep on my feet.”

  Out on the street, they pass the Korean grocer replenishing a display of cut watermelon wedges. A group of loud twentysomething types, fresh from a bar or club, heads into the all-­night diner.

  “God, remember when we used to stay out till all hours, Joey?” Nina says over the roar of a subway train screeching to a stop at the elevated Ditmars Avenue station. She yawns. “We’re getting old, you know? We’re almost forty.”

  “Not for a few more years. Anyway, you have more energy than I do. You’re itching to go out and see the world. All I want to do is stay at home on the couch.”

  “But that’s so lonely.”

  “It wouldn’t be if I had a wife and kids,” he hears himself admit as they round a corner. “Isn’t that what I should be doing at this age? Getting married? Starting a family?”

  “All I want to do right now is finish a family.”

  He stares absently at a yellow cab pulling away from a curb down the street. “Don’t you feel as though the meter just keeps on going up and up, and you’re not getting anywhere?”

  “That’s exactly how I feel. But I know that I only have another year of it. Less than a year, actually. Nine months.”

  “Nine months.” He grins. “See? You definitely have time to have a baby for me.”

  “You’re serious about that, aren’t you,” she says unexpectedly.

  “Nah, Nina, I don’t really think you’re willing to get preg—­”

  “No, not about me. I mean about having a child. You really, really want to become a father.”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”

  He ponders that. “I don’t really know,” he says at last. “It just seems like something’s missing from my life. I’m ready for the next phase, just like you are.�
�

  “Yeah,” she says softly. “Only my next phase and your next phase mean the opposite thing. Yours is about putting down roots, and mine is about pulling them up.”

  For the first time, he thinks he hears a hint of reservation in her voice when she talks about leaving.

  “You know . . . you don’t have to go, Nina. You have your business degree—­”

  “From community college, Joey, and only because my father made me get it. I don’t want to be a business person. That’s not part of the plan.”

  “Maybe you’re too committed to this plan. Just because you’ve spent the last fifteen years saying—­”

  “I know I don’t have to, Joey,” she cuts in firmly, all traces of wistfulness gone from her voice. “I want to go. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  And he’s always believed that . . . until now.

  Now, he can’t help wondering if there’s a part of Nina that might be more afraid to stay than she is to go.

  Chapter Three

  “NINA? NINA, YOU HOME?”

  A door bangs downstairs and footsteps sound on the parquet floor in the hall.

  “I’m up here,” Nina calls reluctantly, crawling out from under Ralphie’s bed with yet another soiled gym sock. Honestly, if he would just use the basketball hoop hamper she bought him last year . . .

  Instead, he lets his dirty clothes drop wherever he happens to be standing.

  Dominic isn’t much better. As her sister’s footsteps pound up the stairs, Nina retrieves her middle brother’s crumpled T-­shirt from the floor by the door.

  “Nin?” Rosalee calls, home from work already.

  That’s right—­it’s Wednesday. The pediatrician’s office where Rosalee works as a receptionist closes early on Wednesday.

  “I’m in the boys’ room, Ro.”

  Her sister appears in the doorway.

  “Oh my God! What happened to your hair?”

  Rosalee’s pretty face—­which, Nina can’t help noting, is overly made-­up—­goes from expectant to crestfallen.

  “You don’t like it?”

  Nina gapes at the elaborate cornucopia of braids piled on top of her sister’s head. “It’s . . . um . . . I mean, how can I put this, Ro? It’s just . . . it’s not you.”