Tonight, the four of us are having dinner at our kitchen table. Do you know what a kitchen table is? That’s a table that fits inside our kitchen. Yes, our kitchen now has room in it for a whole table. Our last kitchen barely had room in it for a person.
We ordered Chinese food from a restaurant that had sent us a menu in the mail. I’m not very picky about food, and neither is Enzo. The only thing he won’t eat is Italian food. He says that no restaurant does it right, and it’s always a disappointment. But he’ll eat delivery pizza. Because that’s not actually Italian food, in his assessment.
Ada is easygoing in the same way, but Nico is super picky about food. That’s why, while the rest of us are chowing down on lo mein noodles and beef with broccoli, I have prepared a plate of white rice for my son, seasoned with a pat of butter and lots of salt. I’m pretty sure buttered rice is flowing through his veins right now.
“Our first dinner in the new house,” I announce proudly. “We are finally christening our kitchen table.”
“Why do you keep saying that, Mom?” Nico says. “Why do you keep saying we’re christening everything?”
To be fair, I’m not sure he’s ever heard me use the word “christen” before, and I have used it at least five times in the last several hours. When we were sitting on the couch earlier, I said we were christening the living room. Then when he went out in the backyard with his baseball, I said he was christening our yard. And at some point, I might have mentioned that I would be christening the toilet.
“Your mom is just excited about the house.” Enzo reaches for my hand across the kitchen table. “And she is right. Is a very beautiful house.”
“It’s kind of nice,” Nico concedes. “But I wish it were painted red.
And had arches on it that were yellow.”
Okay, I’m pretty sure my son is telling me he wants to live at McDonald’s.
I don’t care. We bought this house for the two of them. Back in the Bronx, we were cramped into a tiny apartment, and men were starting to leer at Ada while she walked home. Now we are in an amazing school district, and they will have room to play in the backyard and wander around the neighborhood without worrying about being mugged. Even if they don’t appreciate it, this is the best thing we could have done for them.
“Mom?” Ada pushes some noodles around her plate, and I realize she’s hardly eaten anything. “Are we starting school tomorrow?”
Her dark eyebrows are scrunched together. Both of my kids look so much like their father, to the point where it seems they are both clones of him, and I was merely the incubator who birthed them. Ada is beautiful, with long jet-black hair and brown eyes that take up half her face. Enzo says she looks just like his sister, Antonia. Right now, she is coming to that transition between child and adult, and someday soon, she will be a woman who will turn heads. When that happens, I’m fairly sure Enzo is going to have to walk around with a baseball bat all the time. He won’t admit it, but he is very protective of her.
“Do you feel ready to start school?” I ask her. “Yes,” she says, even as she’s shaking her head no.
“It’s the end of their spring break,” I point out. “So nobody will have seen each other for about a week. They probably won’t even remember each other.”
Ada does not look even the tiniest bit amused, but Nico giggles.
“I can drive you tomorrow,” Enzo offers. “We could take my truck.” Her eyes light up because she loves riding in her father’s truck. “Can
I sit in the front seat?”
Enzo looks at me with raised eyebrows. He loves to indulge them, but I appreciate that he won’t do it without checking with me.
“Actually, honey,” I say, “you’re still a little too small for the front seat. But soon.”
“I want to take the bus tomorrow!” Nico declares. We were too close to the elementary school last year to get the school bus. So now he has elevated “taking the bus” into an experience on par with visiting a chocolate factory filled with Oompa Loompas. It’s all he can seem to think about. “Please, Mom?”
“Sure,” I say. “And, Ada, if you want to go with your dad ” “No,” she says firmly, “I’ll go on the bus with Nico.”
Whatever else you can say about my daughter, she is incredibly protective of her little brother. I heard that toddlers can be very jealous when you bring a new baby into the house, but Ada was immediately enamored with Nico. She abandoned all her dolls and took care of him instead. I have some achingly adorable photos of Ada cradling Nico on her lap, feeding him his bottle.
“Also ” Nico scoops more white rice into his mouth, only about eighty percent of which manages to get through his lips. The rest is speckling his lap and the floor below him. “Can I have a pet, Mom? Please?”
“Um,” I say.
“You said when I was older and more responsible, I could have a pet,” Nico reminds me.
Well, he is older. As for the responsible part “A dog?” Ada asks hopefully.
“We still have to get the yard fenced in before we consider a dog,” I tell them. Plus I’d like to be on more stable financial ground before we add another member to our family.
“How about a turtle then?” Ada suggests.
I shudder. “No, please not a turtle. I hate turtles.”
“I don’t want a dog or a turtle,” Nico says. “I want a praying mantis.”
I nearly choke on a broccoli floret. “A what?”
“Is actually a good pet,” Enzo chimes in. “Very easy to take care of.”
Oh my God, Enzo knows that Nico wants to bring this horrible thing into our house? “No. We are not getting a praying mantis.”
“But why not, Mom?” Nico presses me. “They are super cool. I’ll keep it in my room, and you don’t ever have to see it. Unless you want to see it.”
He flashes me that endearing smile of his. Right now, he has this adorable round face and a gap in his teeth. But you can just tell that in another six or seven years, he’s going to be breaking hearts like his father used to before we were together.
“I don’t care if I see it,” I say. “I’ll know it’s there.”
“We will keep it contained,” Enzo tells me, flashing his own version of that same smile. Damn my husband for being so handsome.
“What do you feed it?” I ask. “Flies,” Nico says.
“No.” I shake my head. “No. We are not doing this.” “Don’t worry,” Nico says. “They’re flightless flies.” “They are walks,” Enzo jokes.
“It won’t even cost you anything,” Nico adds. “We’re going to grow the flies ourselves.”
“No. No, no, no.”
Enzo reaches under the table and gives my knee a squeeze. “Millie, we pulled the kids out of school and made them move here. If Nico wants a praying mantis ”
Bullshit. He wants the praying mantis too. It’s just the type of thing that Enzo would think is cool.
I look over at Ada for help, but she’s too absorbed in making little piles of noodles on her plate. She is spelling out her name in noodles. She doesn’t generally play with her food, so she must be really anxious.
“If I were to say yes,” I say, “where would we purchase a praying mantis?”
Enzo and Nico high-five each other, which would be adorable if I wasn’t so terrified of this insect they are bringing into the house.
“We can buy a praying mantis egg,” Nico explains. God, how long have they been discussing this? It seems like they have a very firm plan in mind. “And then it hatches and there are hundreds of them.”
“Hundreds ”
“But is okay,” Enzo says quickly. “They all eat each other, so then usually there’s only one or two left.”
“And then we can christen them,” Nico adds. “Okay, Mom?”
I imagine how horrified Suzette Lowell would be to discover there is a praying mantis as well as a colony of flightless flies in her perfect cul- de-sac, which is the only thing amusing about this situation. Okay, fine, I guess I’m going to let this happen. But I swear to God, if there are flies all over my beautiful new home, Nico is going to have to move out.
