The Bookish Life of Nina Hill(22)

“I didn’t see much of her when I was a kid, and see even less of her now. She loved me, I guess, but she was busy.” Nina took a bite of her croque madame and shamelessly talked while chewing. “She carried me around everywhere when I was the size of a loaf of bread, but once I needed regular meals and got too big to sleep in a hotel drawer, she found an apartment here and hired Louise.”

“Louise?”

“The greatest nanny in the world. Her own kids were at college, and her husband irritated her, so she moved into our apartment to take care of me. Once I went to college, she moved to Georgia, to be closer to her grandchildren. She’s my family, my regular cast member. My mom is more like a guest star.”

“And now our father is like a character the other ones talk about.”

“Right, but one that never shows up. He’s Godot. Or Guffman.”

“Charlie in Charlie’s Angels.”

“Norm’s wife in Cheers.”

Archie smiled. “Well, he was around all the time when I was little. He worked a lot, but when he was there, he was really there. He had that way of making you feel you were the only person in the world. As long as you were right in front of him.”

“He was a lawyer, right?” Nina had seen that online but wasn’t sure she was remembering correctly.

“Yeah, entertainment lawyer. He and ten thousand other guys in this town. He inherited money from his parents, then made lots more, threw parties, went to parties, drank a lot, glammed around, the usual thing. He was larger than life and really smart. I loved him. When my mom died, he was devastated.” He frowned. “But now all I can think of is how he had you the whole time and never paid any attention to you at all.”

“I think that was my mom’s doing, not his.” Nina paused. “Do you think your mom knew about me? Do you think he told anyone?”

“Well, he told Sarkassian, because he put you in the will. He must have thought about you. He was pretty buttoned up; it’s highly unlikely you slipped his mind.”

Nina waved at Vanessa and ordered an iced coffee. Archie did, too. “Are you ordering the same thing as me on purpose?”

He shook his head. “No, I guess we like the same things. We’re like one of those twin studies, where they look at twins who were raised apart and yet turn out to have both married a woman named Darla.”

“Not the same woman, hopefully.”

“No, that would really be too coincidental. Were you a happy kid? Did you have a good childhood?”

Nina shrugged. “More or less. I was shy. I’m still shy. I wasn’t good at making friends. I got anxious a lot. Honestly, it would have been nice to have sisters and brothers and cousins and stuff back then. Now I’m not really sure what to do with you, although it feels nice to have a family for the first time.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “But maybe it’s too late for me to really be part of yours.”

He shrugged. “If you got married you’d join one.”

“True.” Nina thought about that. “I could always pretend I married into you, so to speak.”

“We could throw a wedding.” He laughed. “One thing that can be said for our family is that we love a wedding, or a birthday, or really any excuse for a party. We’re a sociable lot, mostly.”

Nina fake shuddered. Or at least, she faked a fake shudder, because inwardly she was actually shuddering. “I am not a party person. I’m an introvert.”

“Don’t worry,” Archie responded. “You can always say no.”

Nina went back to his question about her childhood. “You know, as a kid I felt alone a lot, but I also really liked being alone so, you know, it was fine. I spent a lot of time reading and lying on the living room rug watching TV. What about you?” The iced coffee arrived, and they toasted each other instinctively.

Archie took a sip and sighed. “It was happy at first. I remember hanging out with my mom a lot, and kids from the neighborhood, but then my mom got sick and it got sad. I was still pretty young, but old enough to feel bad I couldn’t do more to help. I got good at making tea. I got good at giving foot rubs.” He looked at the table. “I think I did more physical caring for another person during that period than I’ve ever done since, although I love my wife and son very much.” He met her eyes again. “Not sure what that says about me.”

They paused to consider this, then Nina plowed on. “And what about Eliza, your stepmother and now the widow?”

Archie shrugged. “We only really got together—all of us—at the holidays, usually at our dad’s instigation, so I don’t know if we’ll even do that anymore. I don’t know her very well; they live on the other side of town.”

“Santa Monica?”

“Worse: Malibu.”

“Might as well be Mars.” They both nodded. Los Angeles is a big city, as everyone knows, but there is an even bigger divide between the West side and the East side. To get from east to west you have to cross under the 405 freeway. There’s a stretch of Olympic Boulevard where you can see the 405 just ahead, a parking lot in bridge form, where it can take you over an hour to go one or two blocks because a portion of the traffic is going up the ramp to get on the freeway and blocking the way for everyone else. People have gone insane on that stretch.