Happy Birthday: A Novel

“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.