My Funny Valentina (4 page)

He’d
then grabbed a plate off a nearby table and tossed it in the air to her surprised gasp.  ‘
Ooooopa
!!’ Stash had shouted out sweeping her up to safety in his strong arms as the plate had shattered at their feet. ‘Tonight we celebrate, Val,’ he’d said, lips claiming hers for a giddy moment, ‘for there is always another tomorrow – and we will all be here together to celebrate once again!’

But they had not
all
been there for long. 

J
ust a year after their marriage – in a tragic turn of events, his father had suffered a massive stroke and passed away a few sorrow-filled days later surrounded by eight weeping woman and his only son.  And in that one instant following the last shovel of dirt covering up the gleaming mahogany casket – Stash had become the ipso facto ‘King’ of the Karas family.  The man they all counted on.

For everything.

His father’s death had also sounded the death knell for their marriage
, Val thought with a surfeit of sorrow.

‘
And what is Zoey’s
last
name?’ Stash’s cold question hung in the air between them bringing her back to the here and now that had to be dealt with.  Here, and...right now. 

Val
entina hesitated in answering as long as she could, ‘Vincetti,’ she said at last, looking at the floor – willing a hole to appear.  ‘Zoey Francesca Vincetti. I…I left the father’s name blank on the birth certificate.’  It had been another hard decision when she’d completed the forms in the hospital shortly after she’d given birth still feeling a little discombobulated and groggy from the medication.  But it had also been a calculated move to gain a little more time to decide what she would do next.

Stash shot her a look akin to hatred
.  He whipped his phone from his pocket smashing his finger into a button once again.  ‘Evelyn!’ he barked a moment later, ‘find out what is required to change a birth certificate in…’ He glared over at her. ‘What state was she born in?’ The question was clenched from between gritted teeth.

‘
California – Los Angeles…she was born at Memorial General at twelve thirty-five in the afternoon on November nin...nineteenth,’ her voice almost broke, ‘she weighed seven pounds even and was twenty inches long.’

‘
Los Angeles, California. Her name is Zoey.  My...
daughter’s...
name is Zoey, Evelyn,’ Stash’s voice softened on the words almost in wonder, a father already having fallen hard for his newfound daughter.  Then he blasted a flinty look at Valentina and his voice hardened into stone again as well.  ‘The name currently on the certificate is Zoey Francesca Vincetti, born November nineteenth at Memorial General.  Father’s name was left blank and will need to be changed to Anastasio Karas as soon as possible.’  Stash grimly repeated the information into the phone before ending the call.

Valentina opened her mouth to speak
, took one look at his face and decided against it.  Stash’s square jaw angled in a pugilistic tilt seeming to be preparing itself to take another crushing blow. ‘So I suppose the next logical question, Valentina, is why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant when you left – though I realize now I’m not dealing with a logical person.’

‘
I didn’t know I was pregnant when I left!’ Valentina cried out, refusing to be accused of that degree of cruelty.  It was already at indefensible levels. ‘I…I found out two months later.  The first couple of months when I missed my period I thought it was just stress from…everything…’

‘
If she was born November 19
th
, then she was most likely conceived our last night together
…
at the house...’

They were both silent
after Stash’s grim mathematical deduction.  Both, she knew, replaying vivid celluloid in their minds of that last awful fight and what had happened afterwards on a frigid Chicago night.  Rewinding their last raw encounter in the splendid sprawling mansion Stash had built.

For
us.

Valentina’s eyes
filled with tears thinking of a happier, hopeful time. Remembering her thrilled delight when she’d first seen the house her new husband had secretly designed and had constructed for his bride.  For the two of them.   The home that should have witnessed their happily ever after, Valentina choked back a sob – but had instead hosted the downfall of their union.  And like in most horror stories, all seemed so fine and good in their marriage...in the beginning...

Valentine’s Day...three years earlier…

‘
I wish we could have stayed in Bora Bora on our honeymoon forever – it’s eighty-five degrees there and it must be about twenty below here in Chicago.  Stash – why do I have to wear this silly blindfold?’ Valentina tugged with impatience at the silk scarf he’d tied around her eyes after she’d slid in beside him in the front passenger seat of the car at the airport.  Once they’d finally located his car, that is, in the jam-packed parking lot, all of Chicago apparently trying to escape the biting February cold for warmer climes. ‘I can’t see a blasted thing with it on!’

‘
That
is
typically the point of a blindfold,’ Stash’s dry voice replied with an amused chuckle. ‘Be patient for once in your life, Val, we’ve just about made it.’

The next moment
she felt the powerful car slide to a purring stop.  ‘Are we there yet?’ she asked for the hundredth time, unable to contain her excitement.

‘
We’re
here
,’ Stash announced and Valentina detected the hint of excitement in his voice as well.  ‘You can take off your blindfold.  Happy Valentine’s Day,
agapi mou.
’

‘
Stash – it’s…
beautiful,
’ Valentina whispered with a tremor in her voice after lifting the blindfold.  Gazing from the car window at the magnificent three-story brick mansion that lay before them across a wide expanse of pristine white snow.  A giant heart affixed to a red ribbon stretching across the front door officially made it her best Valentine’s Day gift ever.  It sure beat the picked over dime store box of chocolates from Mikey Reynolds in the third grade.  ‘Is it really...
ours?
’

‘
All the official documents are signed, sealed and delivered.  It’s all ours, Valentina – all ten thousand square feet,’ Stash was unable to keep the swelling of pride from his deep voice. He swallowed hard, seeming touched by the emotion of the moment himself.  Like all Greek males, she’d learned during their time together, considering it a personal honor and responsibility to care for his family. Providing them shelter from all encroaching storms. 

He
hadn’t seen the one approaching that would destroy them.  Neither one of them had then.

Valentina
tugged off her leather glove and grabbed his hand.  His warm clasp tightened instantly around hers, the pale winter sun glinting off the plain gold bands they’d placed on each other’s ring fingers in the judge’s chambers two weeks earlier. Hers bearing the inscription he’d dictated to the jeweler. 
Agapi mou
–
my love. 
His stating her truth, simply and sweetly. 
My dearest heart
. 

His
pride was understandable, Valentina thought, feeling a little
verklempt
herself
.
  Her fiancé…er husband…
gosh, I have to remember to call him that now!
A child of Greek immigrants to this country, done good. 

A
mazingly good. 

Obtaining a degree as an
architect and starting his own construction and design firm that was winning bids and building contracts at a record pace.  Surpassing his parents’ modest success with their small Greek restaurant in leaps and bounds and in just one generation.  The stately Georgian manor fronted by four massive columns, located in one of Chicago’s toniest, up and coming suburban neighborhoods, standing as a towering testament to his success.  And standing at least five times the size of his parents’ space-challenged house where he’d been raised with his seven siblings.  The tiny wood frame house his parents had refused to move from – even after their architect son offered repeatedly to build them a bigger one in a better neighborhood. 

No, Anastasio, we stay
right here!  Why should we move?  This house holds too many precious memories of you and your sisters, the neighbors are like our family now.

‘I know you’ve never really had a home of your own, Val,’ Stash said tugging her onto his lap to share the driver’s seat, both staring in awed amazement at the stunning house perched on a hilltop through the windshield.  ‘Just apartments or the run-down old brownstone in Brooklyn you told me about, but this house has everything you could ever dream of – all the amenities you’ll ever need. I designed it myself –’, he dropped a soft kiss on the top of her head, ‘from the seven bedrooms down to the knobs on the kitchen cabinets.’

Her
gaze left the house to whip back to him in shock. ‘
Seven
bedrooms,’ she gasped, ‘but, Stash, why in the world do we need so many for just the two of us?’

Stash gave a
boyish shrug, his grin sheepish.  ‘Because we never had enough rooms when I was little, I suppose.  The girls had sets of bunk beds crammed into two tiny rooms and as the only boy, I was put in a glorified closet off the kitchen, barely even big enough to hold my bed,’ Stash replied.  ‘I guess I built us the house we
should
have had back then.’

He
swung open the driver’s side door and stepped out the car – right into a deep snowdrift pushed to the side of the road. Valentina’s husky laughter echoed in the still silence generated by a new day’s snowfall.

‘
Damn, I miss Bora Bora already,’ Stash grumbled, lifting her into muscled arms so she would avoid his same chilly fate.  His tall frame, clad in an expensive dark overcoat and colorful woolen scarf she’d painstakingly knit for him wound loosely around his neck, plowed with effortless ease through the foot-high snow drifts.  He carried his new bride with ease – even in her bulky down-filled coat that added at least ten pounds to her model-slim weight – right up the front steps to the door of their brand new house.

‘
You’re twenty-three now, Valentina,’ Stash looked down into her face with a smile that made her feel cherished and loved each and every time he bestowed it upon her, ‘and I’m twenty-nine…my mother and father already had all eight children before she was even thirty.’

‘
Ei…eight by thirty?’ Valentina questioned on a stuttering gulp.

Stash pushed open the front door with one broad shoulder busting through the red ribbon as though
he’d finally reached a finish line he’d been racing towards for years. ‘Yup,
eight,
’ he confirmed on a throaty chuckle before ceremoniously stepping them over the threshold.  His lips lowered to capture hers in a sensuous kiss lasting several scrumptiously long moments.  ‘And I expect us to have at least
half
that many in the next few years,’ he made the husky prediction, ‘so let’s get started trying to fill up those seven bedrooms, Mrs. Karas!’

~~~

The first fatal chink had unknowingly been formed in what she’d thought had been their impenetrable bond right then, Valentina reflected with raw hurt darkening her eyes a forest green as she stared up at her estranged husband in the silent studio. 

Stash’s determination to have children
.   And her ambivalence on the subject. 

He came from a large
, close-knit Greek community where family was
everything
– and she’d understood his longing to duplicate the loud and loving household he’d grown up in.  But her own childhood had been
so
much different from his.  Unhappy…fractious…an abundance of disinterested relatives.  And an argument-wrought battlefield with her moody, what she now strongly suspected was an undiagnosed,
bi-polar,
mother.

A
nd if I’m completely honest with myself
, Valentina clamped her lips tight on the painful self-analysis –
more than a little of my own youthful ego also factored in to compound our marital woes.
Yes, Stash’s mother had birthed a large boisterous family – but she also had the
body
resulting from having eight children emerge in quick succession from it. 

Valentina
had held in those unkind thoughts, sneaking looks during her and Stash’s visits to his parents’ home at the tiny Greek woman with the same deep, soulful dark eyes her only son shared, whose poochy stomach and saggy bosom attested to her fruitfulness.  Valentina’s own supple, statuesque body had been her livelihood for a long time. That and her face had always been, she acknowledged without being overly vain about it –
my moneymakers.
 

They
’d kept a roof over her head and food on her table after she’d officially liberated from her mother at the tender age of sixteen.  Not too long after she’d been scouted by a modeling agency representative who’d spied her walking tall, lithe and strikingly
‘different’
down a Manhattan street, her Brooklyn swagger on full glorious display.