One Italian Summer(38)

“You never stop to think about what you want,” Eric once said to me. It was a night a year or so after we had purchased and moved into our new house. I didn’t love that we were in Culver City—fifteen minutes still felt like a long time to drive when I was used to being able to walk to my parents’ house—but the price had been right, and the house had a yard and was on a good block. We said we could start a family there, when the time was right.

We talked about having children casually, the way two people talk about how to spend their Sunday. We were aware we would, at some abstract point, and that until that point, time would unspool lazily. We weren’t worried. At least, I wasn’t.

On that particular night, Eric raised the question, abruptly, over takeout from Pizzicotto: Margherita pizza and a chopped salad.

“I think we should talk about having a baby” was what he said. We were talking about whether to drink beer or soda, and then we were talking about changing our whole lives.

I didn’t answer for a moment. I blew on my pizza and then set it down. “Okay,” I said. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I think we’re ready.”

I blinked at him. Ready? I was still working freelance, and he’d just switched careers. We could barely keep up with our modest mortgage; there was no way we could add a baby to the mix.

“How do you figure?” I asked.

“We have a house; I have a good job. Your parents are close by.”

I imagined telling my mother that Eric and I were ready to start trying. I started laughing. I couldn’t help it.

“What?” Eric asked.

“Nothing it’s just, we’re kids.”

“We’re not,” Eric said. “My parents already had two kids by the time they were our age.”

“We’re not your parents.”

“Are we yours?” he asked. “Because that isn’t too far off, either.”

“Three years!” I said to him. “That’s plenty of time. That’s loads of time. We have it; we should take it.”

“But what if I’m ready now?”

It had never occurred to me that having a child before I was thirty was something Eric and I would entertain, let alone want. Let alone do.

“Eric,” I said. “Are you serious?”

He speared a tomato from his salad. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just want to feel like we’re doing something, making these decisions on our own. Like they’re our decisions to make.”

“We are,” I said. “Who else’s would they be?”

He didn’t say anything, and I continued.

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll think about it. But I’m not going to start a family just to do something. Let’s think about it, and we can talk about it in another week, okay?”

Eric smiled. He kissed me. “Thank you.”

I talked to my mother about it. She said what I knew she would—that it was too soon, that we were too young. I told Eric.

“You said you were going to think about it,” he said. “You didn’t say you had to decide by committee. You never stop to think about what you want.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is,” he said. “She just decides what you think for you.”

We got in a fight about it, one of our biggest, but I never wavered in the certainty that my mother—and I, by proximity—was right. Why would I make a choice this big without her? She knew what was right even when I didn’t—why wouldn’t I use that information, that help?

We shelved the baby discussion, another year went by, and then my mother got sick. Any questions of children were sent back where they came from.

I look at Nika now, seated next to me.

“Maybe Marco knows something you don’t,” I tell her. “If he believes that strongly, maybe he really does have some information he’s not sharing.”

Just then Adam appears in the lobby. He’s wet from the pool, and his chest is bare, revealing a very toned torso. A towel swings around his neck.

“Hello,” he says.

“We were just talking about you,” Nika says.

Adam raises his eyebrows and looks to me. “Really.”

“The hotel,” I say quickly. I can feel the heat creeping from my chest up my neck and into my face. “Your offer.”

“Ah.”

“I have to get back to the desk,” Nika says. “Thank you, for listening. I appreciate the ear.”

“Of course.”

Nika waves to Adam on the way out. And then it’s just the two of us. Last night might as well be playing on a movie screen in front of us. I know it’s the only thing either one of us is seeing.

“Hi,” he says. He’s still dripping wet, the beads of pool water dangling like earrings from the ends of his hair.

“Hi,” I say.

“Can I sit?”

I gesture to the empty space next to me. He does.

“How did you sleep?”

“Good,” I say. I swallow. “Not great, honestly.”

Adam smiles. “That doesn’t surprise me,” he says.

He holds my gaze, and I look away.

“I just mean,” he continues, “tequila and red wine and limoncello will do that to you.”