Valerie told Dawn she wanted the best caterer she could find, so April didn’t complain about the food, and had Dawn call a judge she knew, and the florist she always used. Valerie wanted five round tables of eight set up in her living room, and chamber music and no dancing, since April said they wanted a lunchtime wedding, with guests arriving at noon. It was embarrassingly simple. They even managed to have invitations made, which would be hand-delivered two weeks before the wedding. By the time she and Jack left for Venice, the whole thing had been arranged. And Jack insisted he wanted to give a big party for them later, maybe after she’d reopened the restaurant, and had the baby, when it would seem more festive. Valerie and April were both touched by his offer. But for now the simple ceremony and lunch at her mother’s apartment were all April wanted, and probably all Mike could handle. He was already nervous about it, although insistent that it was what he wanted to do too. And April was ecstatic. She joked to Ellen during one of her acupuncture appointments that as it turned out, she would be married, have a baby, and a successful business at thirty, just as she had always believed she should. But this wasn’t about “should,” it was about being totally in love with the man she was marrying, and excited now to have his baby. Ellen was delighted for them.

The days Jack and Valerie shared in Venice were the best of the trip. The light was beautiful there in May, the weather was perfect, and the food was much too good. Valerie said she’d have to starve when she went home. They took gondola rides and went to churches, kissed under bridges, and wandered everywhere on foot. They went across the lagoon to the Hotel Cipriani for lunch one day, and went to see the glass factory in Murano the day after. They bought a chandelier together for his kitchen. Valerie insisted it would look great with the Ellsworth Kellys and convinced him.

They had their last lunch at Harry’s Bar, took a final gondola ride under the Bridge of Sighs, and spent their last night at the Gritti Palace in bed making love, and then walked out on their balcony to look out over Venice in the moonlight.

“Could anything be more perfect?” he asked, as he put an arm around Valerie and held her close to him. It had been the perfect trip. “I think this was our honeymoon,” he said, smiling at her, and she nodded. They didn’t need to get married, they already had everything, and best of all, they both knew, they had each other.

Chapter 20


April was at the restaurant every day, meeting contractors, and watching the people Larry had hired clean up debris, and remove everything that been damaged by water or fire. The basement was dry now, and the little they had been able to salvage was being stored there. The reconstruction of the restaurant still seemed like a mammoth project. Larry had hired all the people he needed, and he came by himself several times every day to oversee it, between the other jobs he was doing. April was there from sunup to nightfall, doing whatever she could, and constantly making decisions. It worried Mike that she was working too hard and doing too much, but there was no way to stop her, as usual.

He showed up one day at noon with lunch for her, and was horrified to find her pulling boards away from the wall with a crowbar. She was still wearing the rubber boots she had bought, and a hard hat she had borrowed from one of the work crews. She was a sight with her huge belly hanging out of her jeans, dirt all over her face, and work gloves, as she wrestled with the boards she then dropped at her feet.

“What in hell are you doing?” he shouted at her as she put the crowbar away. She could hardly hear him through the workers jack-hammering the floor in the kitchen. “You’re going to have the baby right here, if you don’t stop it!”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, but she didn’t look sorry at all. She couldn’t wait for him to leave so she could go on working and do more.

“You know, this may come as a shock to you, but they can do this without you. Women in their ninth month of pregnancy are not usually considered part of the workforce on this kind of project. Maybe you should join the union.” She took the hard hat off and wiped her face as she grinned at him. The truth was she was enjoying helping with the work, and he knew it. Nothing would have slowed her down or kept her away. April was only happy when she was working. She sat down on a stack of bricks as he sat down next to her, and handed her the sandwich he had brought her.

“Thanks, I was starving,” she said, as a truck arrived and the driver walked toward her. They were expecting more electrical fixtures, and she hoped this delivery was them.

“I have baby furniture for April Wyatt,” the driver said, pointing at the truck. “From Valerie Wyatt.” April had forgotten all about it. Her mother had mentioned it before she left.

“I don’t live here anymore,” she said, indicating the shambles around her. “Could you deliver it somewhere else?”

“In the city?” The driver didn’t look pleased.

“Yeah. Uptown.” He nodded. He could see that there was no way she could accept it here.

“Someone should have called us,” he grumbled, but wrote down Mike’s address. “Is there anyone there to accept it?” And of course there wasn’t. Mike was going back to work and she was busy here.

“How about four o’clock?” she asked him, and he grudgingly agreed, and walked back to his truck and drove away. April knew she could be back at Mike’s by then, and she would be exhausted before that anyway, so ready to go home. She had been at the restaurant since eight o’clock that morning.

“How much is there?” Mike asked her as she finished her sandwich. He had a small living room and bedroom, a tiny office, and a kitchen the size of a closet. There was no room for a lot of additional furniture there, in fact none at all. But she didn’t want to hurt her mother’s feelings. And the baby needed a place to sleep. She knew her mother had bought a crib and “a few other things” before she left for Europe. April had borrowed almost everything she needed from friends, and her mother had bought the rest, even a fancy layette from Saks that was due to be delivered any minute too. She was all set now. And in her own empty, nearly unfurnished quarters above the restaurant, it wouldn’t have been a problem to house the furniture her mother had bought. At Mike’s, it could be.

“I’m not sure, but we’ll move it back over here, as soon as we can move back in.” He had decided to give up his apartment, since he’d never see her otherwise. She was always at the restaurant, and she wanted the baby there with her. There didn’t seem to be much point to his keeping his old place. As soon as the apartment upstairs was cleaned up, and the remodel was down to a dull roar, they were planning to move in. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll make room for it,” she promised him. “How much room can stuff for a baby take?”

But she was in no way prepared for the full set of nursery furniture her mother had ordered. When the driver showed up at Mike’s at four o’clock, he brought up a crib, a chest of drawers, some kind of table with a place to change diapers on top, a toy chest, a rocking chair for her, and half a dozen framed watercolors of Winnie the Pooh to decorate the walls. Valerie had thought of everything, and knew April wouldn’t buy it. She was afraid she’d get it at Goodwill.

“Holy shit,” April whispered, as he brought the last of it in, and the crib had to be assembled. She asked the driver if he could do it for her, and he wouldn’t. He was sweating profusely from dragging it all up the stairs, and it took up every inch of Mike’s apartment. He had had to put the rocking chair and the toy box in the kitchen. Mike was going to kill her. She had no idea what to do with it, or how to make it fit, and she hadn’t wanted to hurt her mother’s feelings by sending it back. In her own apartment, it would be fine. In his, it was a disaster.

She managed to wrestle the parts of the crib into the bedroom after the driver left, and then dragged the rocking chair in. If she squeezed the crib in next to the bed, there was a possibility it might fit. The rest was a problem.

She shoved the white chest of drawers with scalloped edges into a corner of the living room, and the changing table next to it. He didn’t have a coffee table, so she put the toy box in front of the couch, and she stashed the Winnie the Pooh drawings behind it, for lack of anywhere else to put them. She didn’t think Mike was ready to have her put Winnie the Pooh on the walls instead of his collection of photographs by Ansel Adams. She looked around the room after that, and had to admit that the living room looked terrible. The white baby furniture was cute, or would have been in a nursery, but it stuck out like a sore thumb, and they’d have to climb across the rocking chair to get into the bed. It was an obstacle course of babydom, but there was nothing else she could do.

Mike wasn’t prepared for it when he got home that night, and he looked like he was going to have a stroke when he walked in. He had imagined a little basket in a corner somewhere, or maybe a miniature crib. Instead there were boxes all over his bedroom, waiting for him to assemble the crib, and baby furniture everywhere. He looked like he was going to hyperventilate and nearly did.

“How can a baby need so much stuff?” She didn’t tell him that friends were going to drop off the rest of what they needed in the next few weeks, a sterilizer, pajamas, diapers, a stroller Ellen was lending her, a high chair from one of the waitresses, a car seat one of the busboys didn’t need, and things she didn’t even know about yet and had no idea how to use. And Ellen had told her she’d need a plastic tub with a sponge insert to bathe the baby. April hadn’t thought of that. Mike sat down on the couch staring at the toy box, and feeling sick.