The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - Abbi Waxman Page 0,26
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