“More kashi?” Gia said.
Jack held up his plate and said in his best Oliver Twist voice, “Please, ma’am, could I have some more?”
Gia had whipped up one of her vegetarian dinners. She was on a kashi kick these days, so tonight she’d fixed kashi and beans with sides of sautéed spinach and sliced Jersey beefsteaks with mozzarella. All delicious, all nutritious, all as good for a body as food could possibly be; and though he’d push away from the table with a full belly, these meals always left Jack feeling like he’d missed a course.
Jack watched Gia as she scooped more kashi from the pot. The old townhouse had a small kitchen with cabinèts
and hardwood floor all stained unfashionably dark. Jack remembered when he’d first seen the place last year. Vicky’s two old spinster aunts had been living here with their maid, Nellie. The interior looked pretty much the same then, the furnishings hadn’t changed, but the place had a real lived-in look now. A child will do that.
Jack let his eyes wander down Gia’s trim frame, wondering when she’d start to show, to swell, marveling at the stresses women put their bodies through to bring a child into the world.
He shook his head. If men had to go through that the world would be damn near unpopulated.
Still looking at Gia, he noticed an uncharacteristic tautness in her posture. Her uncertainty over the weekend as to whether or not she was pregnant would explain the mood swings he noticed, but he’d have thought finding out and telling him would have broken her tension. Something else was bothering her.
Jack got up and pulled another Killian’s from the fridge.
“You don’t mind that I’m drinking, do you?”
This was his third Killian’s while Gia was still working on her first club soda. The bottle of wine he’d picked up on the way over sat unopened on the counter. Gia had told him that, as much as she loved her Chardonnay, she wouldn’t be drinking for the next nine months.
“Not if it’s beer. Wine might tempt me, but if the world suddenly forgot how to make beer, I’d never miss it.”
“A world without beer … what an awful thought.”
He wondered how hard it would be for him to give up beer for nine months. One of life’s great pleasures was wrapping his hand around a cold one toward the end of the day. He could swear off, but he sure as hell wouldn’t like it.
He decided to float the idea past Gia, praying she’d shoot it down.
“If you’re abstaining, maybe I should too.”
She gave him half a smile. “What would that accomplish?
My drinking could affect the baby; yours won’t.”
He raised his fist. “But how about solidarity, sharing the sacrifices of parenthood and all that?”
“If you intend to be a real parent to this child, you’re going to have to make a lot more sacrifices than I will, so drink your beer.”
That had an ominous ring. Jack took a grateful gulp of his Killian’s. “I already am a real parent. One of them, at least.”
“No, you’re the father. That’s the easy part. You haven’t begun being a parent yet. That’s a whole other matter.”
Gia seemed edgy. What was she getting at? “I’m aware of the difference between fathering a child and raising a child.”
“Are you?” She reached across the table and clasped his hand. “I know you could be a great parent, Jack, a wonderful father figure. But I wonder if you see what lies ahead for you if you make that commitment.”
Now he knew where this was going.
“You’re talking about the Repairman Jack thing. No problem. Look, I’ve already cut out certain kinds of fix-its, and I can make other changes. I can—”
She sat there shaking her head. “You’re not seeing the big picture. Usually you’re way ahead of me on things like this.”
“What am I missing?”
She glanced away, then back at him. “I wish I didn’t have to say this because it makes me feel like I’m forcing you into something you won’t want to do, and maybe even can’t do.”
“Telling me something isn’t forcing me. Just tell me: What am I missing?”
“Jack, if you’re going to be a real parent, you’ll have to really exist.”
Jack’s first reaction was to say that he did exist, but he knew what she meant.
“Become a citizen?”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
A citizen. Christ, he’d spent his whole adult life avoiding that. He didn’t want to change now. Join the masses … he didn’t know if he could.
“That sounds pretty radical. There must be some way …”
She was shaking her head. “Think about it. If this baby was born tomorrow, who could I put down as the father?”
“Me.”
“And who are you? Where do you live? What’s your Social Security number?”
“Numbers,” he grumbled. “I don’t think you need the father’s numbers on a birth certificate.”
“Maybe not. But don’t you think the baby would prefer a father who doesn’t change his last name every week? Who doesn’t fade away when he sees a cop car?”
“Gia …”
“All right, I’m exaggerating, I know, but my point is, even though no one knows you exist, you live like a hunted man, Jack. Like a fugitive. That’s fine when you’re single and are responsible only for yourself, but it doesn’t work for a parent.”
“We’ve been over this before.”
“Yes, we have. In the context of our future together. But it was all conjectural, with no set timetable.” She patted her abdomen. “Now we’ve got a timetable. Nine months, and the clock is ticking.”
“Nine months,” Jack whispered. That seemed like no time at all.
“Maybe less. We’ll have a more precise idea once I have a sonogram. But let’s go past nine months. Let’s jump ahead five years. And let’s just say that you leave your situation the way it is. We don’t get married but we’re living together here—you, me, Vicky, and the baby. One big happy family.”
“Sounds nice.”
“But what if I get breast cancer, or fall off a subway platform in front of a train, or—?”
“Gia, come on.” What a thought.
“Don’t say it couldn’t happen, because we both know it could. And right now, if something happens to me, Vicky goes to my parents.”
Jack nodded. “I know.”
It was logical, and probably the right thing. Her grandparents would be Vicky’s only living blood relatives. But it would burn a hole in his life to watch that little girl be taken off to Iowa.
“But what if my folks aren’t around when something happens to me? If they’re dead, then it’s not just Vicky who’s at risk, but our baby as well. What happens to those two children?”
“I take them.”
“No. You won’t be able to. They’ll be orphans and they’ll become wards of the court.”
“Like hell.”
“What are you going to do? Abduct them? Take off with them and hide out? Change their names and have them live like fugitives? Is that the kind of life you want for them?”
Jack leaned back and sipped from his beer. It tasted sour on his tongue. Because he was seeing it now, all of it, the knotty immensity of the problem. How could he have missed it? Maybe because the quotidian rituals of having no official existence, of pursuing an under-the-radar lifestyle had become to him as natural and reflexive as breathing.
Was he going to have to change the way he breathed?
He stared at Gia. “You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought.”
She nodded. “It has consumed me for three days.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m not pushing you, Jack. It’s just that if anything happens to me I want to know my babies are safe.”
Jack rose and moved around the table. He lifted Gia from her seat, slid beneath, then settled her onto his lap. She clung to him.
He put his arms around her and said, “Our babies. I
couldn’t love Vicky more if she were my own. And I don’t feel pushed, okay? Fatherhood wasn’t in my immediate plans, but that’s okay. I’m flexible. I’ve learned to adjust quickly to unexpected situations in my work, and I can do it here. It’s a responsibility and I’m not about to walk away from it.”
“How will you do it?”
“Become a citizen? I don’t know. I’m sure my father has my birth certificate squirreled away somewhere, so I’m pretty sure I can show I’m native-born. But I can’t exactly show up at the local Social Security office and ask for a number. Folks down there will want to know where I’ve been these last thirty-six years. And why I’ve never filed a 1040. I can’t just say I’ve been living abroad. Where’s my passport? Records will show I was never issued one. At worst they’ll think I’m some sort of terrorist. At best, a wide array of city, state, and federal agencies will be lining up to file tax evasion charges and investigate me for drug or arms trafficking. I don’t know how well my past will hold up under that sort of scrutiny. Some law firm will get rich defending me. And in the end I could wind up either broke or in jail or both. Most likely both.”
“I won’t let you do that. I’d rather take my chances with you as you are than see you risk your freedom. You can’t be a parent from behind bars. There’s got to be another way. How about false documents?”
“They’ll have to be awfully damn good if I’m going to rest my whole future on them. But I’ll start looking into it.”
Gia tightened her arms around him. “What a spot I’ve put you in.”
“You? You haven’t put me anywhere I haven’t chosen to be. This is a situation I was going to have to face sooner or later. When I opted out I was, what, twenty-one? I wasn’t looking ahead then. I never thought about how I’d get myself back in because I didn’t care. Tell the truth, I didn’t
think I’d be around long enough to have to worry about it.”
“Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
“No, but to someone watching me it might have seemed that way. I was reckless. No, that doesn’t even touch it. I was nuts. I look back at some of the risks I took and wonder how I ever survived. I had this feeling of immortality then that gave me the confidence to try anything. Anything. A few nasty close calls eventually woke me up, but for a while there …” He shook his head at the memory. “Anyway, I’m still kicking, and now that it looks like I might actually survive this lifestyle, I can’t see myself wanting to go on living in the cracks when I’m seventy.”
Gia let go a little laugh. “A semi-senile Repairman Jack. Not a pretty picture.”
“Can you see me stopping in at Julio’s for my afternoon warm milk, then hustling around, dodging the IRS and AARP in my walker? What a sight.”
They laughed, but not for long.
“Is there a way out of this?” Gia said.
“Has to be. It needs a fix. I earn my living fixing things. I’ll figure something out.”
Jack hoped he sounded a lot more confident than he felt. This could be his biggest fix-it job—his own life.
He stared out the back door at the fading light in the reddening sky, then glanced at the old oak clock on the wall above the sink.
“Oops. Speaking of fix-its, gotta go.”
He felt Gia stiffen. “That bodyguard job you told me about?”
“More like baby-sitting than bodyguarding.”
She leaned back and looked at him. “You be careful.”
He kissed her. “I will.”
“Remember, you’re Daddy-To-Be Jack, not Wildman Jack.”
At the moment, Jack wasn’t quite sure who he was.