| |
She wore a red velvet ribbon in her hair that so perfectly matched her dress it could have been cut from the same bolt of cloth. Bundled in her wool coat and leather gloves, Dana led Del by his hand up the sidewalk to Alexander’s. Smile, he reminded himself every time he realized he wasn’t, at least a dozen times during the two-block journey.
The warmth and noise of the restaurant spilled out onto the sidewalk as he held the door for her. Her eye twinkled as she glanced back. She was extra beautiful tonight, her cheeks, rosy from the walk, pinned wide by a grin that never faltered. He prompted himself to smile back, then realized he already was. It couldn’t be helped.
Until he spied the Tinkerbell haircut among a party of four in a booth on the wall to their left. “Dana.” He clutched at her arm, catching her in the crook of her elbow. “Can we go somewhere else?”
“What?” The merriment in her eyes gave way to confusion. “No. Why? I want to eat here tonight.”
“It’s just ...” Del pointed toward the offending table.
“Oh.” Dana retreated two paces and pressed her body tight against his side. “Just ignore her. We can sit in back. She won’t even see you.”
Del dropped his head and turned up the collar on his coat. Holding the lapel to the side of his face, he started after his wife.
“Del?” Sam Nightengale sprung up from her bench. “Oh my God, it is you.”
He froze. Beckoning with her hand, Dana implored him forward. Instead he turned to face the reporter.
“I didn’t know you came here.” Sam’s voice was sing-songy and overly familiar, as if she had run into a long-lost friend from college.
He looked at her, hard, examining every feature of her face from her penciled eyebrows to the cleft in her chin, as one might study someone before constructing a piñata in their likeness.
“Are you happy now?”
“What?” She halted, seemingly taken aback by his brusque greeting.
“You must have heard I was released. Maybe you can finally quit calling me and move on to your next victim.”
“It was never personal, Del.”
“It was to me.”
Rebuttoning her coat, Dana took him by the elbow and stepped toward the door.
“No.” He held his ground. “I’m staying. It’s chili night.”
“Are you sure?” Dana whispered.
“Yeah. It’s all about you, not all about her.” He cast a final glance at Sam Nightengale, then latched his fingers around his wife’s hand and headed for the open table in the back corner. He slid into the booth with his back to the door. Dana took the seat opposite.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It wasn’t your fault. Just forget it. She’s leaving anyway.”
Del resisted the urge to look back, distracting himself with the menu until their server arrived. He ordered a beer, and Dana, true to her recent habit, requested a diet ginger ale. “Calories,” she’d claimed the first time Del questioned her. She had trimmed nearly ten pounds since September.
“Toast first,” she insisted when he lifted his pint glass to his lips.
“To what?” Getting released? No, he wouldn’t turn this into a pity party.
“To us.”
“To us.” He touched the rim of his glass to hers and matched her sip so they drank together.
“I love you.” Her eyes welled as she gazed at him.
“I love you, too. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” A tear snuck out the corner of her eye and slid slowly down the side of her nose. A matching drop spilled out the other side. She let it too fall unchecked.
“Then why are you crying?”
“Del.” She stretched her arms across the table and placed her hands crosswise on top of his. Her eyes sparkled through her tears like a marquee in the fog and her mouth curled into a tight-lipped smile. “I’m pregnant.”
It was almost a year to the day since she’d greeted him at the door brandishing a plastic stick upon which she’d peed twice while he was at the gym. He’d been happy then because she’d been happy. It had given them something fun to focus on amidst the swirling rumors and reports that overshadowed the first weeks of their marriage. Losing the baby had driven a wedge between them, annulling the joy that proved in hindsight rooted in ignorance of what it all meant and what was to come. He no longer owned any of the wonder associated with last year’s conception, had never owned any related to the first such miracle that had flickered out so long before he’d known he’d lost it. Locking his hands around Dana’s wrists, he pulled her up across the table toward him until her whimpers in protest alerted him to the potential distress to her belly. Still clutching her hands, he slid off his bench and onto hers. He kissed her forehead, her ear, her tear-stained cheeks, and her nose before finally reaching her mouth. “Thank you,” he whispered.
She nodded against his cheek. “We’re fourteen weeks. I’ve been dying to tell you, but I just wanted to wait until my checkup. I saw Dr. Quindlen this afternoon. She said I’m no higher risk now than anyone else. It’s really going to happen this time.”
“You’re going to be a fantastic mom. I just know it.”
“And you’ll be a great dad.”
Del took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Would he? The thought of holding a tiny person in his arms both exhilarated and terrified him. How would he know what to do? He’d never so much as burped his niece or nephew. What if he messed up? How had Milo learned it all?
“I’ll do my best.”
“I know you will.”
“I’m going to apply for that relief job. It’s just part-time for starters and Milo said there’d be a lot of other candidates so I might not even get it, but if I do maybe by the time the baby’s born I’ll be full time and ... what?”
“Del, that sounds real good and I don’t mean to discourage you if you think that’s what you really want to do. I’d love to have you around and obviously you’d get to spend more time with the baby that way. But ...”
“But what?”
“Don’t you think it would be nice if they got a chance to see their daddy play baseball?”