Sigh.
“I love you with all my heart, Joey,” she goes on. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t a great pain in the—”
“Watch it, Chickalini. You need me.”
“Who says?” She sticks out her tongue at him.
“I say. I also say your tongue’s turned an attractive shade of green,” Joe observes, as the two girls shuffle to a tentative stop a few feet away. He looks over at them. “Lost, ladies?”
“Uh, does Ralphie live there?” asks the one with the brunette curls, gesturing at the house next door.
“Ralphie Kramden?” Joe says, deadpan. “Or Ralphie Nader?”
“Ralphie Chickalini,” says the straight-haired brunette.
“Never heard of him,” Joe says.
“See? I knew he didn’t give you his real address, Jamie,” Brunette Curls says in a told you so huff. “Let’s go back to the subway. This neighborhood is sooo not happening.”
“Bye, girls.” Nina waves cheerfully.
Joe exhales an exaggerated sigh as they walk away. “Oh, good. I thought they’d never leave.”
“They were actually kinda cute.”
“Very kinda cute.”
“They’re too young for you, Joey.”
“Yeah, but . . . who isn’t?”
“Let’s see . . . Mrs. Mylonas?”
“Hmm. Think she’s busy next Friday night? Because I’ve got two tickets to—”
“Forget it. She’ll probably be hanging out with Mr. Mylonas again.”
“Oh, right. That fifty years of marriage thing. He could be a problem.”
Nina grins. “For what it’s worth, I’m not busy Friday night. And I’m single. Plus, I’m an older woman.”
“By fourteen whole days.”
“I’m still older. And you keep saying you want to date older women.”
“Not older than me. Just older than the women I keep meeting. They’re all in their early twenties, and they seem so . . .”
“Shallow?” Nina supplies helpfully.
“Not necessarily shallow, but . . .”
“Stupid?”
“Not stupid. Just . . .”
“Boring?”
“No! Geez, Nina, will you let me talk?”
“I would, if you’d talk.”
“I’m just trying to figure out what I want to say. Unlike you, I don’t spout the first thing that comes to mind.”
“Hello-o? Ralphie Nader?”
“Okay, next time two nubile teenyboppers happen along looking for your brother, I’ll just go ahead and say, ‘Oh, you mean Ralphie Chickalini? He lives right over there and I’m pretty sure he’s home. Oh, Raa-allphie!’ ”
“Yeah, and Ralphie’ll just go ahead and beat you up.”
“I’d like to see him try.”
Nina rolls her eyes. At six-foot-three and growing, her beanpole baby brother is surely destined to become a whole head taller than Joe.
“Hey, don’t roll your eyes at me!” Joey protests. “I may be two or three inches shorter than Ralphie—”
“Or five or six inches—”
“Three at the most, Nina. I’m five-eleven. And anyway I’ve got a lot more muscle than Ralphie does. In fact, I’ve been to the gym every day this week. Check this out.”
He flexes. Nina gazes at his tanned arms. Okay . . . his biceps are straining the sleeves of his short-sleeved gray T-shirt.
“Hubba hubba, Materi.”
“Told you.”
She pokes a muscle. “Rock hard. Very nice. What about the abs?” She tugs on the hem of his shirt, pulling it up.
“Whoa, Nina, careful, there . . . you’re undressing me in public.”
“Since when are you modest? Aren’t you the same guy who steps out onto the porch in boxers every morning to get the paper?” She examines his tanned, taut abs.
“Crunches,” he explains. “They work wonders.”
“Yeah, there’s no sign of the last sausage and onion pizza you downed in one sitting.”
“Thanks.” Joey quirks an eyebrow at her, a gleam in his dark brown eyes. “Want to see more?”
“You wish.”
“Nah, not anymore. I’m long over you, babe.”
“You wish,” she says again, feigning nonchalance as she drops the hem of his shirt and pretends to concentrate on catching a drip from the rim of her fluted paper cup.
The thing is, she and Joe never talk about what happened that night . . .
His would-be wedding night.
The wedding day, they talk about. Analyze, even. Frequently.
But the night is off-limits. They never, ever discuss it.
Never. Not even teasingly.
Right. So maybe he wasn’t referring to it now. Maybe he forgot it ever happened.
But Nina hasn’t forgotten. She’ll never forget. And seeing Joey’s tanned, bare masculine body up close brings it all right back.
Stop it. Get your mind out of the gutter.
“Poor Ralphie,” she says, promptly shifting gears. “I can’t believe how bold all these girls are lately, chasing after him all the time.”
“Yeah, well, apparently, he gave those two his legitimate address,” Joe points out. “Maybe he’s discovered the opposite sex at last.”
“Not Ralphie. All he cares about is basketball and pizza.”
“That’s all I cared about when I was his age.”
“Oh, cut the crap, Joey. You were madly in love with Minnie when you were Ralphie’s age.”
“How old is he again?”
“Sixteen.”
“Already?”
Nina nods, although already isn’t exactly how she would phrase it.
It’s about time is more like it.
After all, she’s spent her entire adulthood waiting for her youngest brother to grow up so that she can have a life of her own. In June—as soon as Rosalee has a wedding ring on her finger and Ralphie has a high school diploma in hand and Dominic has graduated from college and moved back home for good—she’ll be free to start packing her bags at last.
“I guess I was in love with Minnie when we were sixteen,” Joe muses. “Wow, that’s young.”
“You were in love with Minnie when we were six, Joey.”
He contemplates that, then shrugs. “Well, what other girl could shoot a spitball at a moving target from twenty paces back? I happen to admire that quality in a woman.”
“No wonder you’re having a hard time finding Miss Right.”
“Yeah, no wonder. Could it be that the only woman I ever loved left me at the altar to become a nun? Face it, Neens—I’m scarred for life.”
“Oh, come on, Minnie wasn’t the only woman you ever loved. What about Amanda?”
“You mean Amanda how-many-carats-can-you-afford Parker the-Park-stands-for-Park-Avenue Johanson?” He rolls his eyes. “Don’t get me started.”
“You were engaged to her for an entire year, Joey. And you were with her for two years before that. You must have loved her. Or at least, you must have thought you did.”
“Yeah, I thought I loved her . . . until she told me that she didn’t want kids. What kind of woman doesn’t want kids?”
“Minnie doesn’t want kids.”
“She’s a nun. She doesn’t count.”
“Well, I don’t want kids.”
“Only because you already have kids. Four of them.”
True. As the oldest of the Chickalini brood, Nina had mothered her four younger siblings ever since their mother died, the same year she graduated from a local community college. Then again . . .
“You know, I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have had them the old-fashioned way,” Nina confides. “You know . . . to give bir
th.”
“You?” He shakes his head, crumpling his empty paper cup into a ball. “You can’t even deal with a head freeze, Nina. You’d never survive childbir—” He clasps a hand over his mouth, realizing what he just said. “Oh, God, Nina, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay.”
And it is. Really. It’s been a long, long time since Rosemarie Chickalini died giving birth to Ralphie.
“No, it isn’t okay.” Joey shakes his head. “You’re right, Nina. You’re not the only one who spouts the first thing that comes to mind. You know that I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t. And you’re the one who’s right, Joey. I’d never get through childbirth. I’d fall apart at the first contraction. Can you just see it? I’d be screaming, cursing, begging for drugs.”
“Yeah, that’d be you, all right. You’re not one to suffer in silence.”
“Nope. I want the world to share my pain.”
A block away, an elevated subway train rattles by.
Two ten-year-olds ride by on skateboards, waving and shouting, “Hi, coach!”
“Hey, Tino, hey Dougie!” calls Joey, who coaches Little League every spring. “How’s it goin’?”
Nina licks her nearly melted ice, gazing wistfully at a passing yellow cab.
“What are you thinking about, Neens?” Joe asks after a few moments of silence.
She shrugs. “I was just thinking, you know, that I’ll never know what it’s like.”
“To give birth?”
“Yeah. I always say I want to live my life to the fullest, and that’s gotta be one of the most amazing adventures a woman can have. To grow an actual human being inside your body . . . to know that another person exists because of you . . . I mean, that’s incredibly powerful. You know, Joey?”
“Yeah. I know. And if you ever get the urge to go through it—”
“Trust me, I won’t. I don’t want to be a mom, remember? I’ve been there, done that. I don’t have a maternal bone left in my body.”
“Yeah, but if you get the urge to experience childbirth, you can always hand the baby to me after you pop it out. I’d be a great dad.”
“You would be a great dad.”
“Amanda Parker Johanson didn’t think so.”
“Oh, Amanda Shmamanda.”
Joe is amused. “Shmamanda?”
“She was too selfish to care about whether you’d be a great dad. At least she knew she’d be a real suckwad of a mom.”
“Suckwad. Another priceless gem from the vast Chickalini vocabulary.” Joe stands and stretches. “Don’t you have to get to work?”
“I always have to get to work.”
Work being her father’s pizza parlor around the corner.
“Where are you off to now?” she asks, reluctantly rising from the stoop. “Let me guess. Home to catch up on paperwork?”
“I’m not working on weekends anymore, remember?”
“Don’t tell me you’re actually still sticking to your new year’s resolution. I thought I was the only one who did that.”
“That’s because yours is easy.”
“Easy?” She pokes him. “Mine isn’t easy. Do you know how impossible it is to scrub that entire house from top to bottom every single week on my one day off?”
“Easier than it is for me to resist being a workaholic, and to find time to get myself to the gym five days a week.”
“Is that where you’re headed now?”
“Nope. I was already there this morning, while you were still sound asleep.”
“Oh? When was that? At five A.M.? Because that’s what time I got up to walk Yank.”
“I thought that was going to be Dominic’s job from now on.”
“Yeah, just like it was going to be Dominic’s job to take out the garbage from now on. Which I did yesterday morning at six A.M. Meanwhile, Dominic hasn’t even slept at home the last two nights.”
“Does your dad know?”
“Of course he knows. But Pop’s feeling is that Dominic’s a grown man.”
“At twenty? Not quite.”
“Well, he’s not officially living at home anymore, anyway.”
“Not when he’s home from college for the summer.”
“Whatever.” Nina brushes off the seat of her khaki shorts. “Do I have dirt on my butt?”
He checks. “A little.” He brushes her backside.
“Thanks. Anyway, Dominic gets away with whatever he wants. The old double standard.”
“You sound like you’re about twelve, Nina.”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m still twelve, Joey. I might as well be. Here I am, living at home—”
“I still live at home, too,” Joe points out.
“Yeah, and as I said earlier, you still act like you’re twelve, too,” she reminds him. “And anyway, it’s different with you, Joey. You live here alone except for the two weeks your parents visit from Florida. I live with my father, three siblings, a dog, and that disgusting gerbil of Ralphie’s that refuses to die.”
“Well, maybe you should shake the old guy up a little,” Joe suggests as they head down the short walk toward the street.
“Geez, Joey. The thing gives me the creeps—I mean, it’s a rodent, for pete’s sake—but I’m not about to kill it.”
“Not the gerbil! I meant your father. You should shake your father up a little. Show him you’re a grown woman.”
“Yeah? How do I do that?”
“I don’t know . . . don’t come home some night.”
“Yeah, I’ve always wanted to sleep in a doorway somewhere.”
Joe stops by the black wrought-iron gate and opens it for her. “The point is, you need a life, Nina. A real life. A social life.”
She steps through the gate. “And I’m going to get a life in June, just as soon as Ralphie graduates and Rosalee walks down the aisle.”
“Yeah, but you can’t keep living this way until then. I bet Minnie gets more action in her convent than you do these days. It’s been more than a year since you broke up with Kevin.”
Ah, Kevin. Kevin the artist-slash-writer-slash-waiter. Kevin the would-be love of her life. But he wasn’t willing to wait for her. He didn’t “get the whole family thing.” He didn’t see why Nina couldn’t just pick up and leave New York with him.
Last she heard, Kevin was a bartender at a resort in the British Virgin Islands.
“You haven’t even gone on a date since I set you up with Ned on New Year’s Eve,” Joe points out.
Ned. Right. Joe insisted that Nina and his colleague would be perfect for each other, apparently basing that notion on the fact that both their first names begin with the letter “N.” She couldn’t imagine what else they possibly might have in common.
“Listen, I think he’s coming back from London next month, and he’s still not seeing anyone as far as I know. Want me to—”
“No!”
“Okay, okay, don’t bite my head off!” He puts his arms up in mock self-defense.
She takes a deep, cleansing breath and says calmly, “Thanks, Joey, but no thanks. You definitely need to brush up on your yenta skills. You’re a terrible matchmaker.”
“I never said I wasn’t, Nina. You’re the one who asked me if I knew anyone eligible that you might like.”
“That was only after I drank all that eggnog that night at your aunt’s Christmas party. I had no idea there was so much rum in it.”
“Oh, come on. You knew. Aunt Theresa puts rum in her meatballs, for God’s sake.”
“Well, I was lonely. I was desperate. I was—”
“You were wasted.”
“Exactly. I was wasted. So maybe I momentarily lost my mind, but I’m over it now. I’ll find my own man . . . and I sure as hell
won’t find him around here. In fact, the last thing I want to do right now is meet somebody that I really like.”
“Well, maybe if you do, you’ll change your mind and stick around.”
“Yeah, and maybe you’ll be flat broke tomorrow.”
“Don’t laugh. It could happen.”
“Not to you, Joey. Nah, you’ll go back to being a workaholic sooner or later and just keep making loads of money and I’ll be off trotting around the globe. That’s the plan, and I’m sticking to it.”
“You always do, don’t you, Nina?”
“What do you mean?”
“You always need to have a plan. You don’t like to play it by ear, ever.”
“Play what by ear?”
“Life in general.”
She scowls. “Yeah? So? What’s wrong with that? I happen to like setting goals and being organized and having a sense of accomplishment.”
“Relax, Nina. It’s not a criticism. It’s an observation.”
“Yeah, well, observe this.” She leans toward him and waves her hand. “It means goodbye. As in I’m going now.”
“Globe-trotting?”
“I wish. No, I’m going to serve pizzas and bus tables. But on July fourth . . .”
“Have fun at work, Nina.”
“Have fun lounging around without a plan, Joey.” She heads off down the street toward Big Pizza Pie.
“SO ANYWAY—” DANNY Andonelli tosses the basketball at Joe—“I tell her not to even think about going to China. I mean, she’s never even been on a plane and she’s going to fly to China?”
Chewing furiously on a wad of cinnamon-flavored gum—not sugarless, and his one vice—Joe dribbles the ball. “I don’t know, Danny. If that’s your only option . . .”
“It’s not our only option. We’re on waiting lists to adopt right here. Sooner or later—”
“Most likely later . . . much later—”
“Yeah, but eventually, we’ll get a baby. Barb just has to be patient.”
Joe shoots. The ball hits the rim and bounces off. He wipes sweat from his forehead with the hem of his already-soaked shirt. This new recreational lifestyle he’s been trying to adopt is a lot of hard work. Maybe weekends were easier when he spent them at the office after all.