Chapter Twenty-three

“EVERYTHING’S GOING TO CHANGE for you two. You got to grow up real fast now,” said Mrs. Henderson to the backseat passengers of her Buick Regal. “Hon, do you remember the cocktail dress that was in the window at Grand Designs?”

“No, Mom.”

“Look at you two, back there like a couple of grumps. You should lighten up. So serious. Sheesh.”

“This is serious, Mrs. Henderson.” It was the first time he’d snapped at the rosy-cheeked polar bear.

“You kids don’t know from serious. Going to Vietnam is serious. Having a baby is joyous. You have to grow up and know the difference, Charlie.”

But this felt like war to him, like the movies he’d seen of young recruits swimming in their newly issued uniforms. He didn’t know how to wear this. Nor where the flares might be on his utility belt. Everything was dark, external to the light of his childhood. Adult. Stomach-sickening. No wonder they all take Tums.

“We’re almost at the Greens’. Don’t worry. I’ll wait in the car, like I promised, so you two can have your moment with Charlie’s folks.”

“I don’t care if you come in,” said Charlie.

“No, you have big news to say, and listen, you two, from here on in, if you want to share the bed with Paula, be my guest. You don’t have to sneak around the house anymore. At this point, what’s the difference? Ooh, a parking space.”

Charlie and Paula stood at the door. Deep inhalations.

“You want to be the one to ring the doorbell?” asked Charlie.

“No, not really.”

“Me neither.”

“Fine, I’ll ring it,” said Paula.

“No, I’ll do it. We’ll both do it at the same time. She’ll be out back, which gives us a little more time. Maybe we can ease into stuff, you know?”

“Yes,” said Paula. “We can begin by speaking about Mother Nature.”

Rose Green needed only to look at their faces.

“She’s pregnant.”

“Well,” said Charlie. “Technically, she is.”

“Oh my God! Come in, come in, let’s go in the kitchen and tell your father.”

They stood around the kitchen island, everyone in autumnal sweaters, except for Charlie, whose college uniform, less the custodian’s blazer, was reduced to just a black T-shirt and jeans. Well, the uniform sure got me laid. He thought it would take hours for his parents to digest the news, but it took minutes, everyone smiling, including Paula, whose emerald ring was being cleaned by Rose Green.

“I respect that you want to have this baby,” said Mrs. Green to Paula.

“I went to the doctor’s positive he’d tell me I was going to die,” said Paula.

“L’chaim,” said Jee-Jee. “What a pleasure to meet you, and for the record, you are the opposite of death, my dear.”

“We’d love to meet your mother, dear,” said Mrs. Green.

“She’s in the car. Parked around the corner. I know she’d like to say hi.”

“Go get her, Charlie,” said Mrs. Green. “I’ll get the foie gras.”

“Yes, Charl,” said Jee-Jee. “I must teach you the secrets of treating the mother-in-law so well. A lost art, my boy.”

I’m not the fucking messenger, Charlie thought, and decided he’d take his time. He stopped by the pay phone at the corner of Seventy-First and Second Avenue and called Monica Miller. There was a time when that was the only number, aside from his own, that he knew by heart.

“I was just out the door to the gym,” said Monica Miller. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“I’m in town.”

“No school?”

“Have some personal things going on.”

“Are your parents okay?”

“They’re fine.”

“You sound weird.”

“You wanna meet up?”

“When?”

“Now. We could go to Mariella’s.”

“I really have to go to the gym. And I’m sort of seeing someone, just so you know.”

“Who?”

“He’s actually a teaching assistant at NYU. You’d like him, I think. He’s English. He says ‘feck’ instead of ‘fuck.’ He looks like William Hurt. So, what’s going on with you?”

“I should go.”

“Look, call me later. I’m sorry we didn’t feck the night before you went off to school. We probably should have just fecked, then we’d always have this thing between us. Friends?”

“Sure, why not.” He wished they’d fecked as well. Now I’ll only know one fecking girl.

Forever.

When Charlie went to retrieve Mrs. Henderson, the car was empty. She’d retrieved herself. Self-retrieving adults. The worst. But he’d never seen the kitchen so lively. The birth of a new family necessarily begins with all the optimism in the world. Bottles were uncorked and popped. Mrs. Henderson heaped liver paté onto cracker after cracker.

“Your accent is divine,” she told Jee-Jee. “And Rose, you have to tell me who does your toes. My girl never gets it right. A la familia,” she toasted.

Charlie drank heartily and silently while Paula sat on the couch, looking through the family albums. He stood over her, away from the adults and their knowing corroborations about prams and teething pain.

“I might take a walk,” said Charlie, playing with her curls. “Might just buy a pack of baseball cards and a quarter pound of fruit slices, for old time’s sake. Maybe even a Playboy. Those three purchases meant the world to me. Three years ago.”

“You can still do things like that. Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean you can’t be eighteen. Men act like boys their whole lives anyway.”

“I don’t feel eighteen. I feel as old as death.”

“Look, no one’s putting a gun to your head. I’m telling you right now, if you want out, it’s okay. I don’t care what my mom says, I can do this alone.”

“But you’d rather do it with me?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So, we’re like a family now, you and me? And it?”

“Yes, Charlie.” She arched her caramel eyebrows.

A family. Go to hell, Monica Miller. We are as solid as the steel casing of my Boodo Khan. He thought about going to Adam’s Rib to toast his new status but hadn’t the muscle to leave her. A wave of protectiveness washed over him. He surveilled the four corners of the living room for danger.

“I still might buy some candy. You can come with me. I can show you all my spots on Lexington Avenue. It’s just a block or so away. We can even go to Mariella’s.”

“Your haven,” said Paula.

“It used to be a lonely haven, but now it has no power over me. It’s just a pizza parlor. A family place.”

They didn’t bother to say goodbye to the parents. They were parents, now, and could come and go as they saw fit. What a comfortable pace, he thought as they strolled, swaying their held hands.

“I used to walk ahead of my parents. Like a dog,” said Charlie.

“I like it when men walk slowly.”

“Did Tommy walk slowly?”

“Actually, he did. God,” she said. “So much, so soon. I haven’t even told him.”

“Told who what? I hate Tommy.”

“Then go hit him in the balls again. Is this your pizza place? It smells amazing. I’m so hungry.”

“Why would you bring up the ex, you idiot?” said John. Charlie had called him in a panic from one of the worst pay phones in the world, the one that was stuck on the wall of the Mariella’s men’s room.

“I’m not sure why. I sort of felt like Tommy, the way we were walking. I was in control.”

“Well, shit. Here’s what you’ve got to do, bring up that smelly tall chick you fingered at the frat.”

“She wasn’t smelly.”

“Tell Paula that you get it, that you both have a past with other people. Sit back and revel in your indiscreet night of smelly fingers.”

“It was a great smell.”

“It sounded grotesque. Real women shower twice a day. Once before work and once before a date. The girls at work shower three times. Four on the weekends.”

“I can’t believe I’m going to be a dad.”

“No one can. The key is not spending too much time with the kid, otherwise they’ll get sick of you.”

“I guess. Dad didn’t spend too much time with us.”

“He’s French. What did you expect?”

“I’m not going to be that way. I should get back to Paula.”

“Look, some chicks have exes they just can’t shake. When’s the wedding?”

“What?”

“You need to hurry up and close the deal.”

“Marriage?”

“Of course marriage. Maybe in ten or twelve years, when the dust has settled, and the kid is mature, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have a discreet affair.”

“I hadn’t thought about marriage.”

“She’s thinking about it. Trust me. Just ask her.”

She’d gone through a slice and a half and was now jotting something down in her Mead composition notebook. On its cover, in purple glitter ink: SENIOR YEAR.

“So, what did you think of the pizza?” asked Charlie.

“Good. I was really hungry.”

For her, this is just a restaurant. “Listen, we haven’t really spoken about the future.”

“Back at your parents’, you said we were a family.” She’d stopped writing, her eyes on the notebook page.

“We are. We are, but what does that mean?”

“What do you want it to mean?” Now she capped her pen, closed SENIOR YEAR, and raised her chin imperiously, bravely, ready for anything this boy had to say.

Charlie was accustomed to his future being an adventure, something that would be young for many decades. Fifty years of being eighteen, then maybe ten of being an old man, then another twenty of being an eccentric, boyish old man, one who buys baseball cards and fruit slices and Playboy, as a salute to the beginning. Clearly that was not how it worked; he saw that in her eyes. If he said the wrong thing, she’d leave him at Mariella’s and go it alone. Then he’d be stuck forever in between: no longer Charlie the freshman, and never to become Charlie the adult. A pizza parlor mutation.

She saves her composition books. He’d seen the junior and freshman ones, full of thoughts and dreams written in a beautiful girlish pen hand. No hearts dotting i’s, just lots of hopeful, loopy letters, and no cross-outs, either. Honesty needs no edits. It showed in her posture, how she wore her shoulders. He’d stolen a glance at one of her composition book’s aphorisms: Love your fate, even if it sucks.

Heroic, dirty-blonde genius with lightning bolts as locks. She’s stronger than me. And smarter. Add the wacky blue eyes, and we’re talking about a sort of superhero. A girl who can lead us into 1990 like Washington led his men across the Delaware. Face forward.

“We should get married,” said Charlie. “I’ve been thinking about things the wrong way. This is the best thing that ever happened to me, not the worst.”

“Kiss me.”

He hoped the pizza man was watching while his loneliest Saturday-night customer held the warm cheeks of a woman and made a life pact with sauce-tinged lips.

I want my own, I want my own, he’d wail at night as a child. He often wondered what his infant self had meant, but it wasn’t until this moment that he understood.