24

  SANTINO

  Kneeling before her while she sobs, my brain is soup being stirred. I feel the meatballs bang on the spoon. Escarole gets tangled in the handle then washes away. This and that. No and yes. Up-down-sideways. Save her and free her. Bring and take. Lock and key.

  All the while, I’m being cooked, and there’s no going back to who I was or what I wanted before. The times I wanted to crawl inside Violetta and live there were prayers made whole. I’ve taken root, and I cannot bear her misery any more than I can stand for her to be in danger.

  Then today, I became the danger, and I swear two things.

  One, I tell her. No one will be told who to marry.

  The second thing, I swear to myself. I will not lose control with her body again. Not like I just did. She can shoot me first.

  I’ll be as rough as she wants, but I will not hurt her in anger. I am not a child. I am not a baby crying for milk or a frustrated toddler. I am a man, and I decide what I do and what I do not do. No matter what she does, I will keep my head about me. I cannot stop her from setting my life on fire, because I struck a match and burned hers to the ground.

  I don’t know why it took me until this moment to see it so clearly, or why the threat of a daughter was the only thing that could remove the scales from my eyes.

  My wife’s life was destroyed in a single day. She was dragged to the church. She was forced to live in my house, under my rules. I have every power over her, and though she’ll be fine tomorrow or the next day, in my heart, I know that I was so angry she put a gun to my head, I could have killed her just now. I also know now that from the moment I saw her, I never chose to let her live. I’ve been a car speeding ahead, steering around the curves with a broken brake. Today, I would have finished what I started. I would have crashed and broken her body, but I came inside her, and once that happened, the car ran out of gas.

  Violetta and I got lucky. She wasn’t forced to marry a heartless man, and I didn’t marry a mindless woman. But fortune is not a friend to everyone.

  I have to be a man and break the world so Violetta, Gia, my daughter—none of them have to depend on luck just to live.

  She kneels with me, then we lie on the floor together. Her sobbing slows to calm breaths. I rub streaks from her face. I want to give her a bath to wash my filth off her, but if I do that, I’ll lose my nerve. She can bathe herself.

  “We’re not going to end this from the floor.” I get my feet under me and hold my hand out to her. “Let’s put the gun away.”

  I help her up. She hands me the gun, but I don’t take it. When she starts for the basement, I redirect her down the hall, past the double doors to the room reserved for business.

  She was never meant to come in here, but that’s all changed. I can’t put closed doors between us any longer. I will have her by my side as I expand. Her counsel. Her voice. Her castle joined with mine.

  With her, I will rewrite traditions into laws.

  I turn on a lamp and sit behind my desk. I open the sideboard drawer.

  “Put the gun here, where we can get to it.”

  I let her place it there, and slide it closed.

  She takes a chair by the window and crosses her legs, tapping on the wooden parts of the arms with impatience and expectation. How can I still want to fuck her, now that she has a life inside her?

  “I have a plan,” she says.

  “Okay.” The engine of the gold-faced clock grinds and ticks.

  “You offer any father who wants to sell his daughter a low-interest loan.”

  Biting back a laugh takes more strength than anything I’ve ever done. “I’m not the state government or a bank.”

  “Which means you don’t have to get a committee to sign off. You just do it.”

  “And what if they sell their daughters anyway?”

  “Why would they if you can refinance the loan?”

  “And every loan shark and bookie from here to Naples would just nod?”

  She shrugs. “Fuck them.”

  Now, I laugh, because she thinks too much of my influence, and too little of my power.

  “What you’re missing, my sweet Forzetta, is that ‘mbasciate is usually the groom’s prerogative, and the father is eager to get her gone without paying a bride price.”

  “Jesus Christ, are you serious?”

  “And the debts?” I put my elbows on my knees. There’s so much to explain. “Not always the case. Sometimes the marriage is to join territories or avoid a war.”

  “Gia’s marriage is all the above.”

  “Yes. And she’ll be married before I have the crown.”

  “No, she won’t be.” Her gaze is far-fixed, searching for a way to undo what’s been done. “What if you have to stop it? Like someone forced your hand or something?”

  “Someone like my wife?”

  “Maybe.” Her eyes are everywhere, taking in the layout of the room and the things in it. “I never asked you about your grandfather’s furniture.” She rubs her thumb along the ornate curve of the chair’s edge.

  “What about it?”

  “Why won’t you get rid of it?”

  “I love it.”

  “You know it doesn’t go with the house, right?”

  “I know. But when my mother was raped and the man didn’t offer to make an honest woman out of her, my grandfather rejected her. Threw her out.”

  “Wow. Asshole. What about your grandmother?”

  “Dead. My aunt Paola found her sister in an asylum in Aversa, then found me with the Sisters of the Assumption. I was born in the Montesanto Metro station. And still, my grandfather wanted nothing to do with her or with me.”

  “But Paola took care of you.”

  “Only when she got married to Marco, who I will always be this grateful to.” I hold up a finger and thumb an inch apart. “But no more than this much. Paola took a job and moved my mother to Trieste, then took me in. My grandfather still wouldn’t meet me. He let his daughters live in shit instead. So.” I lean back and spread my arms, indicating the entire house and everything in it. “When he died, I took his things and put them in my house so every day, I sit in his chairs and eat off his tables. I won. I beat him. I own his life now.”

  She nods, looking around the room with fresh eyes. “You really know how to hang on to a grudge.”

  “It’s in the blood.”

  “Yeah. Speaking of blood…” She stands. “Mine’s low on sugar, and I can’t think. Can we finish this in the kitchen?”

  She’s not asking for permission, and I have the choice to follow her or get left behind.

  25

  VIOLETTA

  His voice rattles the windows of my dream, which has no story or point. No lesson. It’s just pink lines crisscrossing my vision. Two. Four. Ten. Bifurcated. Crisscrossing. Never curved. Always in parallel pairs like elongated equal signs. A web across my vision in every direction. I’m not panicked. I’m not trapped inside them, trying to escape. We’re just in the same noplace, the pink lines and I, coexisting.

  I went to bed alone, but the lines vibrate when he speaks, and somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, I know he’s beside me.

  “Take it,” he mutters.

  I think this is a warning that he’s going to penetrate me. My body heeds the words and rushes liquid between my legs.

  “Prendilo e basta,” he says the same thing in Italian.

  Mostly awake now, I can tell his flat affect means he’s sleeping, not getting ready to fuck me. With a deep breath, I’m aware enough to see the blur of him lying on his back next to me. I put my hand on his arm.

  “Santi,” I say gruffly. I half hope he’s dreaming about sex. I wouldn’t mind a little right now.

  “Prendilo e basta.”

  Just take it is not the same as take it. I’m not rousing a horny man, which becomes even more clear when I move my hand to his chest and I can feel his heart pounding. His arm twitches.

  “Hey.” I get an elbow under me. “You’re having a dream.”

  “Mi fa schifo. I hate it. Non lo voglio.” He’s getting more distressed.

  I hate seeing him like this. Powerless. Afraid. It makes me feel alone without him, and I’m exposed and defenseless, but there’s also a voice in me that hasn’t spoken since nursing school. Right now, it’s given expression through that vulnerability.

  It says I am useful. I am strong. I have power over him that I can use to heal.

  “Santino.” I shake his chest, but his agitation only grows. Fully awake now, I straddle him and cup his face, saying his name again. “You’re having a dream.”

  His eyes open wide as saucers, and his hands grab my wrists hard enough to hurt. I don’t have a moment to struggle or gasp before he’s flipped me onto my back, holding my hands over my head and pinning me to the bed with his pelvis.

  “I will destroy you,” he growls in my face.

  “Santi,” I squeak, then breathe as much as I can under his weight. “Santino.” My pitch drops a little.

  “I will erase you from this earth.”

  “Santino.” I’m more steady now. “Santino.”

  He exhales and blinks. Then shuts his eyes tight and holds them before opening up, conscious enough to finally see me.

  “Cristo.” He lets my hands go. “Violetta.”

  “I’m right here.” I lay my palms on his cheeks.

  He says my name again, but with less shock. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I am so sorry.” He turns his head to kiss my hand, then my wrist. “You’re not hurt?”

  Before I can reassure him, he gets on his knees and whips back the covers so he can see me in the moonlight.

  “I told you,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  When his shoulders relax, I know he believes me, and when he kisses my face, apologizing over and over in two languages, I know he’s awake.

  “What were you dreaming about?” I ask.

  He doesn’t tell me. Instead, he says, “It starts today.”

  We’ve been planning all week, and because I’m part of his thinking, I haven’t made any sudden moves. Haven’t stolen the car, broken a vase, or made a single phone call that would signal an end to the status quo.

  Even in Italy, when I felt happy and unencumbered, I was anxious, and I don’t realize this until I can ask him anything and get a full and complete answer.

  He tells me the deal with the rings, and what the numbers engraved on the inside mean. In the event of his death, he arranged for me to find out what they are.

  I memorize the numbers. I memorize the address and the time of our appointment on my birthday. All this happens in between a plan built around a promise.

  We can go to the lawyer any time, but we’re going first thing Monday morning—the day I turn twenty. My party will be on Sunday night—the last chance to break Gia’s wedding and fix her life, before all eyes are on us.

  At the party, I’ll force Santino’s hand in front of everyone, and he’ll react to keep the peace.

  He doesn’t think it’ll work, but I have to believe we won’t have to resort to the brute force of plan B.

  Celia and I are wrapping braciole when Gia calls from the other side of the world.

  “Happy birthday!” she says.

  “That’s tomorrow.”

  “Oh, these time zones always confuse me.” I hear the bustle of a café and the honking of car horns behind her.

  “The party is today,” I add. “So it feels like my birthday.”

  “I wish I was there.”

  Personally, I don’t. I’m glad she’s thousands of miles away. While she’s away, I don’t have to worry that she’ll try to stop us, or scuttle the plan by trying to help, or blow the secret.

  Somehow, planning ways to buy out her arranged marriage right in front of her seems more offensive than doing it behind her back, but it relieves me of having to treat her like a full human with agency over her decisions—because she isn’t, and I hate the practical, real world truth of that.

  “When are you coming home?” I ask.

  “Tomorrow night.” She pauses. “Dami told me it’s going to happen right off the plane.”

  It means the wedding. At least he told her himself. He’s braver than I expected.

  “Why so quick?”

  “I don’t know, Violetta,” she snaps. The mood swings I observed in the back of the Lincoln are still happening, and I don’t blame her.

  “Are you okay?” I say.

  “I guess.” She doesn’t sound convinced, but she’s definitely trying. “He seems all right when we talk on the phone, and I remember why I liked him in the first place.”

  So they’ve been talking. That’s actually good. It shows an investment on Damiano’s part that’ll soften the blow if I fail to stop this atrocity.

  “He understands me,” she adds.

  “Does he?” This is not what I expected to hear at all. The women of Secondo Vasto do not strive to be understood. They bend to their husbands’ needs. “Like how?”

  “Like…” She stops, pausing to think about it for so long, I fear the line dropped. “We make plans together.”

  The wedding, of course. He dictates that it has to happen whiplash-fast—inserting himself into the family just as Santino and I get the crown—then probably agrees to all the other plans a bride makes.

  “I’ll be there for you,” I say. “Whatever you need.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “I do.”

  “That makes me feel so much better.”

  She tells me her departure time, and together we do the math of time zones, and I realize she’ll be landing as Santino and I will be driving to the lawyer’s—where we will pick up the one thing that can keep her from being sold into marriage.

  I don’t tell her I might be breaking my promise to her by about an hour so I can keep a promise I made to my unborn daughter. If everything goes perfectly, I can keep both.

  26

  SANTINO

  “Coming through!” Violetta chirps like a bird and slithers like a cat around the kitchen’s obstacles.

  She salts the water, tests the sauce, and pours another glass of prosecco in one near-fluid motion. Violetta is like the ocean’s shifting waves. She is the stars dancing around the moon.

  Watching my wife work the kitchen for her birthday party, knowing we planned the most important piece of it together is a joy I never could have imagined.

  When Emilio promised me one of his daughters, I gave up on the idea that my family life would ever be normal. I was right. My life with her isn’t normal. It’s much better than that.

  After everything she’s been through, all the upheavals and secrets and lies, the frustrating, maddening days, Violetta is earth in the kitchen and fire in stilettos.

  When Celia’s out of the kitchen for a moment, I come up behind my wife and slide my hands around her body. One sneaks under her blouse and the other strikes out for an olive like a snake. She slaps my hand, but I keep tight on the olive and feed it to her. She smells like basil and yeast, like Napoli, like home.

  “I want to fuck you on this counter right now.”

  She reaches for the olives. “You can if you help me clean it first.” She feeds an olive to me over her shoulder.

  “I’m going to clean it with your bare ass.” I savor the salty brine.

  “We have a job to do tonight,” she whispers. “Keep your mind on it.”

  A small herd of children stampede into the kitchen, followed by a group of her family. Violetta’s six-year-old cousin, Tina, wriggles between us to grab a handful of olives. My wife swats her away, but slips Tina a smaller bowl of sweet black olives. The kids disappear to stick them on their fingers.

  She kisses me once and attends to her guests. Violetta and Celia pass out jobs to our zias and nonnas, who joke about us having only one kitchen. This is my wife’s first gathering as the matriarch, and she’s already a master.

  If we get past this, she will have many more.

  She’s more comfortable than I have ever seen her. She’s the dream hostess every man wants in a wife, and I wonder if she’d be the same if we’d met under other circumstances.

  “Re Santino.” Zia Madeline, the woman who raised my wife, kisses each of my cheeks. “You look well.”

  “All Violetta’s fault.”

  “And I see she did the antipasto herself.” She points toward the tray where the black olives have been carefully placed hole-side-up so the children can stick their fingers in more easily.

  “She is the woman of the house.”

  Behind her, Violetta rushes to her zia, who scoops my wife into a big hug. They chatter as I answer the door for Angelo and Anette, who arrive with Lucia, Tavie, and his girlfriend, Diana. As soon as I greet them, Anette asks me where Violetta is.

  “Why does everyone ask me for my wife?” I spread my arms wide. “Am I no longer good enough?”

  “Don’t feel bad, Santi. Only your family knows you.”

  “May you choke on an olive.”

  Anette pops one in her mouth and heads for the kitchen, catching Violetta as she’s bringing out fresh wine.

  Marco comes in after his wife’s family, patting down his combover. He looks lost without Paola and Gia, but holds his head high as if he has a place in the pecking order—ten kilos of pride in an eight-kilo suit. He nods to me like an equal, and I make a conscious decision to shake his hand instead of punch his face.

  All this trouble is because of his betting habit.

  “Congratulations,” I say. “I hear Gia’s going to be married when she gets back from the other side.”

  “No need to waste time,” he replies with a shrug. “Like you did. Just go.” He raises his hand to indicate Violetta, who is perfect and mesmerizing despite rushing around. “My sister-in-law told me your wife was buying a pregnancy test.”

  “So she was.” I offer nothing more than a satisfied smile.

  “Good,” Marco says, taking that for a yes. “It all turns out in the end.”