cheese? Who said, ‘Hmm, I’ll bet this milk would taste really delicious if I let it sit until a rind of mold grew around it?’ Cheese had to be a mistake.”
“I never thought about that,” he said. “But I have wondered about Cheez Whiz.”
“Philadelphia’s official food!”
“Have you ever looked at the list of ingredients for Cheez Whiz?” he asked. “It’s frightening.”
“You want to talk about frightening, I’ll show you the fact sheet on episiotomies my doctor gave me,” I said. He swallowed hard. “Okay, not while you’re eating,” I amended. “But seriously, what is it with the medical profession? Are you guys trying to scare the human race into celibacy?”
“Are you nervous about labor?” he asked.
“Hell, yes. I’m trying to find a hospital that’ll give me that Twilight Sleep thing.” I looked at him hopefully “You can prescribe stuff, right? Maybe you could slip me a little something before the fun starts.”
He was laughing at me. He really did have a very nice smile. His full lips were bracketed by deep laugh lines. I wondered idly how old he really was. Younger than I’d thought at first, but still probably fif-teen years older than me. No wedding ring, but that didn’t mean anything. Plenty of guys didn’t wear them. “You’ll do fine,” he said.
He gave me the rest of his biscuit and didn’t even flinch when I ordered hot chocolate, and insisted that brunch was his treat, and that, in fact, he really owed me for introducing him to the diner.
“Where to next?” he said.
“Oh, you can just drop me off at Fresh Fields”
“No, no. I’m at your disposal.”
I looked at him sideways. “Cherry Hill Mall?” I proposed, barely hoping. The Cherry Hill Mall was over the river in New Jersey. It had a Macy’s, two maternity shops, and a M.A.C. counter. And my own car was on a weekend loan to Lucy, who’d gotten a job as a singing flower delivery girl on her heartfelt assurances that yes, she could provide her own transportation, while waiting for her spokesmodel career to take off.
“Let’s go.”
His car was a sleek silver, some kind of heavy sedan-type thing. The doors closed with an authoritative chunk, and the motor sounded much more ostentatious than my modest little Honda ever had. The inside was immaculate, and the passenger seat looked… under-utilized. Like the upholstery was still untouched by human buttocks.
We got on 676 and drove over the Ben Franklin Bridge, over the Delaware River, which sparkled in the sun. The trees were covered with the faintest green fuzz, and the sun was shining off the water. My legs were pleasantly tired from the walk, and I was pleasantly full from the food, and, as I rested my hands on my belly, I felt something that it took me a minute to identify. Happy, I finally figured out. I felt happy.
I warned him in the parking lot. “When we go into the stores, they might think that you’re the, uh…”
“Father?”
“Um, yeah.”
He smiled at me. “How do you want me to handle it?”
“Hmm.” I actually hadn’t thought that part through, so enraptured was I with being in this big, steady, powerful-sounding car, looking at springtime through the window and feeling happy. “Let’s just play it by ear.”
And it wasn’t bad, really. At the department store, where I purchased a Pregnancy Packables kit (long dress, short dress, skirt, pants, tunic top, all in some engineered, indestructable, stretchy and guaranteed stainproof black fabric), the aisles were crowded and we were pretty much ignored. Same deal at Toys “R” Us, where I bought blocks, and at Target, where I had coupons for buy-one-get-one baby wipes and Pampers. I could feel the girl at Baby Gap looking from him to me and back again as she rang up my stuff, but she didn’t say anything. Not like the woman at Pea in the Pod, who’d told me and Samantha last week that she thought we were both very brave, or the woman the week before at Ma Jolie who’d assured me that “Daddy will just love!” the leggings I was trying on.
Dr. K. was very nice to shop with. Quiet, but willing to offer an opinion when asked, and to carry all my packages and even hold my backpack. He bought me lunch at the food court (sounds tacky, but the Cherry Hill food court is actually quite nice), and didn’t seem perturbed at my four bathroom stops. During the last one he even ducked into a pet store and bought a rawhide bone at least as long as Nifkin was. “So he won’t feel neglected,” he explained.
“He’s going to love you,” I said. “That’s going to be a first. Nifkin usually works as my first line of elimination with…” Dates, I was thinking. But this wasn’t a date. “New friends,” I finally said.
“Did he like Bruce?”
I smiled, remembering how the two of them had existed in a fragile detente that felt like it would rupture into full-scale war if I’d only turn my back long enough. Bruce had grudgingly agreed to let Nifkin sleep in my bed, like he was used to, and Nifkin had reluctantly conceded that Bruce had a right to exist at all, but there’d been any number of raised voices, insults, and chewed shoes, belts, and wallets in between. “I think Bruce was always about two minutes from drop-kicking Nifkin somewhere far away. He wasn’t exactly a dog person. And Nifkin isn’t easy.” I leaned back in the new-smelling car seat, feeling the late-afternoon sunshine streaming through the sunroof, warming my head.
He smiled at me. “Tired?”
“A little bit,” I said, and yawned. “I’ll take a nap when I’m home.”
I gave him directions to my street, and he nodded approvingly as he turned onto it. “Pretty,” he said. I looked at it, trying to see what he saw: the just-budding trees arcing over the sidewalks, the pots full of flowers in front of the brick townhouses.
“Yeah,” I said. “I was lucky to find it.”
When he offered to help me carry things upstairs, I wasn’t about to turn him down, even though I was thinking, as I toted diapers up to the third floor, what my place would look like to him. He probably lived in the suburbs, in one of those grand old houses on the Main Line with, like, sixteen bedrooms and a stream running through the front yard, not to mention kitchens that did not boast Harvest Gold appliances, circa 1978. At least my place was relatively neat, I told myself. I opened the door, and Nifkin catapulted himself into the hall, hurtling into the air. Dr. K. laughed.
“Hey, Nif,” he said, as Nifkin sniffed the rawhide bone through three plastic bags and went into a seizure of joy. I dumped my bags on the couch and hurried to the bathroom as Nifkin tried to burrow into the bag. “Make yourself comfortable!” I yelled.
When I emerged he was standing in the second bedroom where I’d been trying to piece together a crib from one of my mother’s friends. The crib had come to me unassembled, without directions, and possibly missing important pieces.
“This doesn’t look right,” he murmured. “Mind if I give it a go?”
“Sure,” I said, startled and pleased. “If you actually get it together I’ll owe you big-time.”
He smiled at me. “You don’t owe me anything,” he said. “I had fun today.”
Before I could think of what to make of that, the telephone rang. I excused myself, grabbed the portable, and flopped gracelessly onto the bed.
“Cannie!” bellowed a familiar British accent. “Where’ve you been?”
“Shopping,” I said. Well, this was a surprise, too. Maxi and I had been
