18

  VIOLETTA

  The night he gave me the longest orgasm ever in the history of the universe, I fell asleep so hard I broke my ability to open my eyes before ten in the morning. I just lie there in a state of half-dream, with the sun bursting behind my eyelids, letting the all-rightness warm me from the inside out.

  He fucked me again the next morning. During the day, I speak to Gia. Her father told her things had changed, but not what.

  “Do you think the ‘mbasciata is off?” Gia asks. I can’t read how she feels about it one way or the other.

  “What if it is?”

  She pauses.

  “I want to be married,” she says, then breathes through another long pause. “But… no offense… not like this.”

  “No offense taken.”

  The call ends with a relieved sigh on my side.

  For three more days, the sheets remain crisp and white, and I can’t avoid it anymore. Lord knows I’m going to give birth before Santino notices I haven’t had my period. First, I want confirmation. I have to pee on a stick today.

  As I get out of bed, the house rumbles with the echoes of Santino’s voice from downstairs. There are pauses but not replies. He must be on the phone. We’re going to have to put some rugs down, because sound bounces around this house like a ping-pong ball and the floors can be rough on tender young knees.

  Before I say anything about the floors or putting a fence around the pool, I have to make sure there will be a baby in the house.

  “Hey,” I say with a kiss, joining Santino in the kitchen, freshly showered.

  “Buon pomeriggio.” He snaps an empty cup from the row on the counter.

  “It’s not afternoon yet.”

  He pours me coffee, serving me. I try not to make a big deal of it, even when he puts in sugar so I don’t have to.

  Does he know my period is late?

  “Grazie,” I say. Why is he even home? It’s not Sunday, the only day he spends the morning in the house.

  “Do you have plans today?”

  Something’s up. He can’t be counting the days in my menstrual cycle, but who knows?

  “Do I ever?” I ask.

  “Bene, allora. Finish your coffee and we go.”

  He drives the Alfa with the windows open and I let the warm summer breeze break against my cheeks. My right hand taps on the top of the door and my left rests on the gearshift, over his. The crown ring he wears on that hand is hard against the underside of my fingers. He hasn’t told me where we’re going. I’m okay with that until he turns onto the bridge over the river and my curiosity gets the best of me.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  The tower of St. John’s creeps over the tree line, and I wonder about school. I wonder why I haven’t thought about it, wished for it, or asked him about it. Maybe because I don’t have to. It’s summer anyway, and I’m already registered for fall. Or maybe I’ve been too distracted by the insanity my life has become.

  And now I think about what happens to all that if I’m pregnant, and I don’t have to wonder if another decision can easily be taken away from me.

  “Santi,” I say, squeezing his hand, “is it school? Are we going to school?”

  He takes his attention from the road long enough to look at me, and something in my expression must tell him that I won’t take less than a definite answer. “No.”

  “Good.” I relax and turn back to the view of the river with fishing boats, the V of jet-skis, the diagonal hatch of piers on the shore.

  The tires buzz over the textured metal plate that ends the bridge connecting Secondo Vasto to the rest of the world.

  “Do you want to go to school in the fall?” he asks at a red light.

  What I want could be irrelevant soon, but he asked what I wanted, not what’s possible. That doesn’t make the answer any easier.

  “I’d be the only married person in the class.”

  “So? You’re there to study.”

  “What if I get a bad grade? You going to beat up the professor?” I ask.

  “What’s a bad grade?”

  “A B plus.”

  “Oh, for that?” He shrugs and turns into a residential area. “Just a black eye.”

  “What about a D?”

  “That’s failing?”

  “That’s passing. Barely.”

  “Then I will let him live. Barely.”

  He’s joking, of course, but I pat his hand in thanks for letting this fake professor live through my unlikely near-fail. I don’t need to ask about an F.

  “This is a nice neighborhood,” I say.

  The streets curve around clean sidewalks shaded with old trees. The lawns are lush and short. The houses are painted soft colors and trimmed in white. Flowers, birds, and butterflies thrive inside a bubble of perfection.

  “It’s called River Heights. They say it’s very safe.” He strokes my pinkie with his thumb, then slows by a property with ten-foot hedges and an open driveway gate. When he pulls into it, a pale yellow two-story house is visible. He stops behind a silver Lexus SUV. The house’s front door is wide open.

  “So,” I say, “who lives here? What’s going on?”

  He gets out of the car. A man with a thick moustache walks onto the porch, and Santino waves to him. I open my own door before my husband has a chance to, and get out into the beautiful, blazing sun.

  “Come.” Santino grabs my hand and takes me up the front steps. He’s like a kid who’s too old to be excited by his birthday, but young enough to be delighted with the presents. The mustachioed man on the porch wears a light gray suit that’s too small around the belly and a red tie that’s just a little wider than fashionable. The breeze has zero impact on his dark brown combover, and there’s something vaguely familiar about him. “Bosco, this is my wife, Violetta.”

  The man takes one of my hands in both of his. “Such a pleasure.”

  “Bosco is a real estate agent.”

  “Ah!” The sound escapes my lips when I realize why I recognize him. “From the ads on the bus benches.”

  There’s no FOR SALE sign on the lawn. That’s my excuse for standing there thinking we’re having lunch with the guy or something.

  “Guilty!” Bosco opens his arms and quotes the ads. “Number One paesano in our paese!”

  I can’t help but laugh at his pride in the silly slogan.

  “I admit,” he says with some humility, “River Heights isn’t my area, but I have it on good authority that this is a primo neighborhood. Safest you can find. The tiptop! Come!”

  He steps backward, waving us through the door. Whatever fog of clueless ignorance I was floating around inside dissipates, and I look at my husband, who’s beaming like a guy who just swallowed the sun.

  The space is bare, leaving the hardwood floors and white walls completely exposed.

  “The security system? Just updated to ‘smart security,’ they call it. Open plan in the living room to the kitchen and this dining room, right here, so you can talk to guests while you prepare dinner. I warn you, there’s no kitchen in the basement, but if your husband wants to put one in for you, there’s room next to the wine cellar.”

  “Santi?” I say, peering up a staircase that sweeps at a graceful curve.

  “They just put in brand new appliances.” Bosco opens the huge refrigerator, showing off the pristine interior like a woman turning letters on a game show. “Also ‘smart,’ they say.”

  “Che?” Santino replies as if he has no idea what I’d be asking about right now.

  He knows. He has to know. Why else am I here?

  “Six-burner stove!” Bosco delights. “Maybe only one kitchen? Be like a real American housewife. June Cleaver. No?”

  He looks between us. I have no idea who Bosco is talking about, and I stopped paying close attention after Santi acted as if I knew what’s going on.

  But Bosco continues like a soldier someone wound up all the way. “I think I’m showing my age. But here’s for the man of the house to cook… a brick barbecue in the backyard.” He unlocks the sliding door to the back, which is completely paved except for a patch of manicured grass.

  No. I don’t want to go there yet. I put my hand on the graceful curl of staircase banister.

  “Violetta?” Santino asks, tugging me, but I tug back. I want to see upstairs.

  “Oh!” Bosco cries, jumping in our direction. “Let me show you the master suite!”

  He hustles up the stairs ahead of us.

  “What are you doing?” I ask Santino softly.

  “I didn’t want to spring it on you on your birthday.”

  “I see.” What I see is a man who’s sprung one too many things on me and very much wants me to think of him as changed.

  “If you don’t like it,” he says, “we can look at another one.”

  “No, I…” I hadn’t even thought about liking it or not liking it. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Good.”

  Santino pulls me up the steps and I run past him, giggling, to a wide hall bathed in sunlight. Bosco waits in the wide doorway to what has to be the master suite, but I know it’ll be gorgeous. I head for the bedroom next door.

  The window seat is coated in fresh white paint, and the walls are a gender neutral butter color. It’s bare as a bone, but the crib goes on the shared wall with the master suite, and the changing table is opposite. I look at the ceiling and see a small hook. There was a mobile there to occupy the baby while they were changed.

  “Forzetta,” Santino murmurs, putting his hand on my shoulder with two fingers on the bare skin of my neck. “You want to sleep in the guest room?”

  “This isn’t the guest room.”

  I open the closet. A little window on the facing end lights the walk-in space. A few wire hangers dangle from the rods on either side, and the walls are marred by strips of white paper and shards of exposed plaster. Stickers were pulled off. A cartoon character or flowers. Vestiges of the last occupant.

  “It’s a nursery,” I say.

  He shrugs. “We could need a nursery some day, no?”

  I should tell him I’m late. He deserves to know. But I’d so much rather be sure.

  You can’t always have what you’d rather.

  “Yes.” I go to the window and look down. Just below, there’s a crystalline pool for Santino to slice into. He’ll push me against the edge of it and kiss me until I’m as liquid as the water. “We probably will.”

  I don’t say when. I’m not ready to even insinuate a maybe. There’s no coming back from those conversations.

  I hear Bosco enter the room, but Santino holds his hand out to stop the agent from interrupting us.

  “Bigger then?” my husband offers.

  Another square foot won’t change a thing, but I don’t know what will, because I’m not sure what changes I need.

  “What’s wrong with the house you have?” I ask.

  “I thought you’d like this one. The location.” He indicates the window.

  The tower seems close enough to touch. He isn’t offering me a view out a closet window. He’s offering school without a commute.

  “This type of house,” he continues. “It’s better for having people around.”

  “It’s so far from everyone though.”

  “There are these things called… come si dice…” He snaps his fingers by his ear like a guy trying to lure a memory out of the dark. “Ah!” He points. “Cars! They can come in their cars.”

  It’s hard not to smile when he reveals his sense of humor.

  “Maybe,” I say, looking at the school’s brick tower that signaled I had to change busses. Every morning, it meant I was coming closer to where I belonged. “Maybe.”

  But now I belong to him.

  Tell him tell him tell him.

  And I’m still a little mad about it.

  And there’s still so much I don’t know, but I haven’t planned an escape in a long time, and I’m not sure I’m ever going to want to leave him.

  Tell him tell him tell him.

  From his pocket, his phone rings. He hesitates.

  “Get it,” I say. “I’ll let Bosco show me around.”

  He kisses me and answers the phone. I leave Santino in the baby’s closet so the realtor can show me the brick barbecue.

  Santino’s leaning on the car, talking on the phone when we’re done with the house. He hangs up when he sees us. I should tell him to take me to the drugstore, but as we drive away from Bosco, who’s waving from the front porch, and out the front gate, there’s no choice to make. Santino’s tight as a drum. I’m not telling him shit right now. I don’t think he can handle it.

  I put my hand on his, and he strokes my pinkie but doesn’t loosen up. His tension radiates outward, filling every inch of the car.

  “Are you all right?” I ask, assuming he’ll say he’s fine, and even if something is wrong, it’s not my business.

  He defies my expectations and hands me his phone. There’s a text from Gia.

  —Dear Santino. I won’t be at work today. I’m sorry. Thank you for giving me the job. It meant a lot to me. I’m going back with Mamma today—

  There’s no more.

  “What does she mean by ‘going back’?”

  “I can take you home,” he says at the light before the bridge. “But it’s in the opposite direction, and you won’t have a chance to say good-bye.”

  I’m going back with Mamma today.

  “Gia’s going back to the other side?”

  The light turns green.

  “Decide.”

  “Decide what?” I ask.

  “Airport or home.”

  There is no decision.

  “Airport.”

  Santino swoops into a U-turn at the intersection, causing a symphony of horns, shouts, and screeching tires, gunning it to make the next light. I grip the dashboard and his hand to try to keep steady.

  “Is that what you were on the phone about? She’s getting sent home?”

  “They’re not sending her home,” he says, slapping the shifter into a different gear. “They’re bringing her home for two weeks. To get the right things…” He stops as if he doesn’t want to say it.

  But Rosetta went to Italy for the right things too.

  “For the wedding?” The engine’s roaring so loud I have to shout, but I would have raised my voice anyway. “You said you took care of it!”

  “Did I?”

  Did he? Or is that what I assumed he meant?

  “You said he had nothing to gain.”

  He takes a turn at a yellow light, and with a gear change and a lurch, we’re speeding down the highway. His full lips are thinned by the tight clench of his mouth.

  “That’s what this house is about,” I say, then continue when I get no response from him. “You’re trying to placate me. You think if you buy me, I’ll let her—or anyone—get sold into marriage. All I cost is a house.”

  “No,” is all he can get out.

  “Say you’re not a liar.”

  “I did not lie.” His finger juts at me, but with his eyes on the road, the pointing loses its power. “I thought I had more time.”

  “Is that why you’re driving to the airport at ninety miles an hour?”

  “You want to say good-bye or no?”

  This is him doing things for me. The house I didn’t ask for, in a neighborhood he’d hate. The death-defying trip for a simple good-bye. All of it, covering the fact that he didn’t do what he told me he’d do.

  “You were supposed to stop it!” Both fists shake at him. I want to punch his face, but he’s driving.

  “She wants it.” He jabs his finger at me. “I talked to her. Gia wants this marriage. She said so. What are you going to do? Tell her she can’t have it because I fucked it up for you? I ruined your life, so you ruin hers? So you don’t feel bad? Queen Violetta won’t bless the deal so fuck what Gia wants?”

  He’s spoken to me like a child and a servant. He’s been heartless and cold. But he’s never spoken to me with this particular mixture of anger and respect.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s getting into.”

  “Bullshit. You want her to have the choice, but you don’t want her to choose.”

  “Fuck you.” I cross my arms and sink into my seat. “She’s being sold.”

  “And she knows it. You confuse yourself. It’s her life, not yours.”

  “I’m not confused,” I snarl. “I’m very clear about the difference between consent and force.”

  “Yes, I forced you. I didn’t take you back to Naples to have a dress made or to get bomboniere from Abriana Dolce. You had no bobbin lace veil. You had no time to consent. This is what I did. I. Fucked. Up.”

  My body stays upright, but inside, I can no longer hold up my own weight and my heart sinks into my gut. My life. My wedding. My marriage. The things he ruined, forced, and took for granted, in that order.

  “Why?” I ask. “Why did you move so fast?”

  A wrist over the steering wheel and the opposite elbow on the door, he rubs his lower lip, clearly thinking.

  “I’ll tell you.” He puts his blinker on, checks his mirrors, and exits to the airport. “On your birthday. Right now, you put on a good face for your cousin.”

  The airport closest to us is too small to service international flights, but we pass it right by anyway and go to the smaller, private terminal.

  Small planes dot the tarmac and surround the main runway. Santino drives to a jet surrounded by a handful of cars. Men load bags into the cargo hold of the jet that took us to and from Italy.

  “That’s your plane,” I say.

  “I had to placate them too. The plane ride’s cheaper than the house.”

  “Is there anything you can’t just buy?”

  “I got the plane as collateral on a loan.” He makes a lap around the little jet and stops behind the last car. “Owner defaulted.”

  “Did he offer you his daughter first?”

  “I was already spoken for.” He puts the car into park.

  “Jesus Christ.” I shake my head. “He’d give up his daughter before his plane.”