her arms. “I’m waiting.”
“Okay. While Rufus and I were talking, somehow the conversation got sidetracked onto the hospital expansion.”
Katarina looked up when her grandmother came into the kitchen holding her son. “Ah, my favorite little boy,” she cooed and clapped her hands. “Hello, Rad. Did you miss your mommy?”
The three-month-old baby boy was named for Lena’s late husband, Radko, who had died before Katarina was born. His still sleepy eyes were red from crying, but they lit up as soon as he saw Katarina. She held out her arms, and he immediately cuddled close, his mouth rooting around her breasts.
“Men, they’re all alike,” Katarina complained as she unbuttoned the front of her loose blouse and undid the snaps on her nursing bra.
Lena looked on, smiling. “He slept the whole time you were gone, I’ll have you know, so he deserves a reward. And it’s a gift to nurse your child.”
The baby latched on and started to suck with a steady determination.
“Oh, my goodness, your cheek, Julie!” Lena exclaimed. “What happened? Do you need something? Calamine lotion? I have a bag of frozen peas in the freezer.”
“It’s nothing, really,” Julie assured her. “Just a little bump.” She needed more concealer, clearly.
Rad’s voracious eating produced a smacking noise.
Julie laughed and leaned across the table to stroke his tiny fingers. Julie’s touch made him quiver, and he shifted to grip the skin above Katarina’s nipple and feather it with his tiny fingers.
“What little starfish hands,” she marveled. “I’m always amazed the way they come out with all the little wrinkles at the knuckles and tiny little nails.”
Katarina glanced her way. “All the better to scratch me with.”
“And you wouldn’t give it up for a moment,” Julie replied. She heard Lena clattering pots and pans behind her and swiveled around. “Can I help you with anything there, Mrs. Zemanova?”
“How sweet of you to offer.” Lena turned on a stove burner and placed a frying pan on it. She cut a generous hunk of butter and dropped it into the pan to melt. “I’m just frying up some onions to go with the pirohy,” she said, referring to the Slovakian stuffed dumplings. “Just a little something light, you know.”
A little something light? Julie mouthed to Katarina behind Lena’s back.
“But if you really want to do something, you can get the container of sour cream out of the fridge and put it in a bowl.” Lena nodded toward an overhead cabinet to indicate where the bowls were kept.
Julie slid across the window seat, got up and headed for the refrigerator.
“If you think we need more to eat, there’s mushroom soup that I made in a Rubbermaid container on the left,” Lena said in a raised voice as she fried the chopped onion.
Julie chewed her lower lip. “It’s tempting. What do you think, Katarina?” She turned to her friend.
Katarina moaned as she shifted Rad from one breast to the other. “Please, I’m trying to lose weight after the baby. Not all of us can eat anything and everything and still look like a long toothpick.”
“I guess no soup then.” Julie finished dishing the sour cream into a blue-and-white pottery bowl. “I’ll put this on the table, okay?” she said on her way to the dining room.
“Yes, that’s good,” Lena called out. “Put it next to the silver serving spoon. Meanwhile I’ll start to put up the pirohy because it looks like our little man is just about finished.” She removed a clean dishcloth covering a cookie sheet and exposed a neat array of crescent-shaped dumplings. She carefully dropped them into the pot of boiling water, and when they floated to the top, she ladled them out and placed them on a large china platter. She had already dished the sautéed onions into a matching bowl. “Who wants to take these in?” she asked.
“Julie, why don’t you take the baby, and I’ll help with the food,” Katarina said, passing him over and doing up her bra. “He still needs to be burped so take the receiving blanket. Otherwise he’ll upchuck all over your sweater.” She smoothed her long red hair off her shoulder.
“That’s what dry cleaning is for is what I say.” Julie mugged at Rad as she held him up. She confidently maneuvered the baby to her shoulder and patted him repeatedly on his back.
“Okay, Babi
Lena picked up the onions and marched on her Easy Spirit walking shoes to the dining room. She might be in her early seventies, but she was fit as a fiddle from tennis three days a week and tai chi classes at the Adult School.
“I know, I know,” she said, “but I wasn’t sure if Wanda was going to join us with little Natalie. They have music-and-little-tikes class today.” Wanda was a retired high school math teacher who now lived with Lena and took care of the one-year-old daughter of Julie’s other friend, Sarah. Sarah was a physiotherapist and her husband, Hunt, Iris Phox’s son, was in med school.
“You have enough here to invite the whole class,” Katarina joked. She rested the platter on the corner of the dining room table. For the occasion, Lena had set the table with a white damask tablecloth. The silver shone and the Bohemian crystal sparkled. A round glass bowl in the center held an informal arrangement of purple lobelia and feathery pink asters from her small garden.
Lena took her place at the head of the table. “Here, Julie, you can sit on this side while Katarina can sit next to the bouncy baby chair.”
“No way I’m giving up this cutie,” Julie said as she followed everyone else in. She continued to pat the baby on his back until he emitted a loud burp. “Good one, Rad.” She let him snuggle into her shoulder and breathed in deeply. “Don’t you just love the smell of babies?”
“Julie, you’re so good with babies. I’m still terrified I’m going to drop him.” Katarina pulled out her chair and sat.
“Just be the oldest daughter in a large Italian family and you’d be good with babies, too. Trust me, it doesn’t take any special gifts, just a lot—and I mean—a lot of practice. Anyway, my brother Dom hit the floor a few times, and he seems to have survived intact.” She deftly switched Rad to her other shoulder and raised her plate to Babi
“You should have children of your own. It’s much more fun than minding little brothers,” Lena said as she passed Julie back her plate. A succulent aroma filled the room.
“Have you been talking to my mother, Mrs. Zemanova? Or maybe my grandmother? Sometimes I think I see her staring at me, visualizing the size of my ovaries. She tells me she has powers, you know? Supposedly even the evil eye,” Julie said with a laugh. “Hey, come to think of it, maybe that’s what’s been keeping all those eligible bachelors away.”
“She would never do that!”
