Chapter Text
Lenny Kosnowski pressed his forehead against the plate glass of the viewing window. Before him – and before Frank – were rows of babies in bassinettes, all of them pudgy, a rainbow of lovely but nondescript – looking bundles of innocence.
When a nurse appeared and held up a swaddled pink bundle – the important one, the one that belonged to them - Lenny pressed his whole face into the glass, craning his neck to get a better look. From Frank’s vantage point he could see pudgy features – baby blue eyes open to a slit, tiny, chubby fists striking out and shadowboxing.
“She’s so small,” Lenny said at last. Then he shot Frank a quick look of confusion. “Is she supposed to be that small?”
“She didn’t feel small coming out,” Laverne offered, coming up behind them both. Frank watched her go to Lenny’s side and wrap an arm around his middle; he automatically pulled her protectively to his side, and Frank felt a little left out of the equation. She gave Frank a weak smile, and he took her hand, thought she looked grown-up in her hospital chic – her robe, a green football jersey, and her bunny slippers, hair tied up in a messy ponytail. So much like her mother.
God, what he’d give to have Josephine there, to hold on to him and marvel at the little girl on the other side of the glass.
“Are you okay, Muffin?” he asked.
“Yeah, are you supposed to be out of bed?” Lenny asked, in a much more frantic tone.
Laverne nodded. “Yeah. The nurse said it’s safe to walk around, and I should, so I don’t get clots.”
“Oh,” Lenny said, squeezing her harder, imagining, Frank knew – as Frank had himself – what that could mean.
“Don’t be a dope,” she teased Lenny, kissing his cheek. “Why were you worried about her being small?”
“She just looked a little tiny, that’s all,” Lenny said. “Was Laverne that size when she was born, Mr. DeFazio?”
Lenny had been married to his daughter for two years and yet Lenny still didn’t have the courage to address Frank by his first name. “When you were born,” said Frank to Laverne, “I could carry you in one arm.”
“Yeah, you said I slept in your bedroom drawer,” Laverne said.
“Wow. That sounds downright eloquent,” Lenny said. “My mom…left me on an ironing board.” He shrugged. “At least she didn’t leave the iron on when she did it. Most of the time…”
Laverne automatically squeezed Lenny’s shoulder. The look he gave her in return was filled with open adoration. Frank knew that he’d been giving Laverne those stares of his ever since he was a little boy hanging around their apartment begging Laverne to come out to play with him. Laverne had only started returning them over the past few years, but Frank didn’t doubt his daughter’s sincerity.
“Pop? You ain’t mad she’s a girl?” Laverne asked.
How long had he been drumming his need for a grandson into her head to get a question like that from her on such a happy day? “Why? It ain’t like you could help it!” Frank said. “I’ve got a lot of sweet girls in my life. One more ain’t gonna hurt nothing.”
Her smile was wide and beautiful as she lurched toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck for a quick hug.
“We’re thinking of calling her Josephine,” said Lenny, as he watched them.
Frank saw tears in the corner of Lenny’s eye, making them shine, eerily blue in the low lights of the hospital. “That’d be wonderful,” he said, and kissed his daughter’s forehead.
The first time Frank held Jo – for Jo she would always be within the family – she stared up at him with her little, defiant blue eyes and gave him a punch in the wrist. The first of a few. For she was a tough little thing. A DeFazio through and through.