The Family(13)

Lina collapses shaking on the floor. Suddenly, Antonia understands human beings as water droplets, part of a cosmic and liquid whole.

“Mamma,” asks Antonia, “why did you make them leave?”

Lina will regret her answer to this question for the rest of her life. She looks up at Antonia and before she realizes what she is saying, blurts out, “It’s his fault your father is dead.”



* * *



—

As an act of survival, Antonia does not believe this. Having lived with the empty shell of her mother for a full week before this funeral, she knows that if it is Uncle Joey’s fault her father is dead, she will have no family left at all.





For many weeks after Carlo disappeared, Lina’s mother stayed with her and Antonia, and held Lina’s hand when Lina woke wailing, sure the ground had disappeared, sure her face had aged a hundred years, disappointed she had fallen asleep at all. Her mother would hum and stroke Lina’s forearm and Lina was okay, because she was a baby again.

And then, as the days grew shorter and colder, Lina’s mother packed her bag. “You can’t be miserable forever,” she said to Lina. “You have a child to take care of.”

Lina’s mother kissed Antonia, who tended to hover in the corner of every room. And she left.

And then for a while Rosa would come over. And instead of being a baby, Lina would get angry. “Why did we marry these men?” she asked. Rosa did not answer, because there was no answer. She had never considered not marrying one of These Men. “Why didn’t you stop me, why didn’t you say something?” Lina asked Rosa. And eventually Rosa, too, was tired, and she had her own family to take care of, and she was always nauseous in those early days of pregnancy. So Rosa kissed Antonia. She said, “Come over anytime, baby.” She went home.

And Lina was so relieved.

She was so relieved to be left alone.



* * *



—

Four weeks after a priest wishes Carlo eternal rest and perpetual light, Lina announces that she will worship no god who has killed her husband. She spends Sunday afternoons and Christmas Eve with works of fiction (“Other works of fiction,” she says, “than the one you spend your Sundays with!”) and long, lovingly dog-eared volumes of poetry. She fills their apartment with stacks of books; no bookshelves, but books lined up along the walls, hidden in cupboards, holding up a lame coffee table, layered between winter scarves in the front closet.

Next, Lina proclaims that she will never attend a Sunday dinner again. She is done with them, she says, done with those people. You can go, she tells Antonia. Go, if you want. Antonia feels she has been cut in half. Aunt Rosa makes Sunday dinner at her own house now, and it is right next door, and the food is good. Eventually, Antonia starts slipping out of the apartment on Sunday afternoons, spending those evenings in the presence of a real family, the cocoon of familiar Sofia and the warmth of a house actually presided over by adults. When she returns after dinner, laden with leftovers Rosa insists on piling into her arms, she often finds her mamma sleeping on the couch.

During the week, their house is quiet. They read. There are days they do not speak at all.

Lina realizes sometime in the spring that she hasn’t paid rent all winter. She imagines herself and Antonia, thrown out, sitting in the black slushy puddles that guard each street corner. She opens her mouth and begins to wail and takes to her bed.

Antonia listens patiently, and when Lina has howled out enough of her predicament, Antonia calls Sofia’s house and says, “My mamma needs a job.”

The next week like magic, Joey calls and says he has a contact at an industrial laundry that washes the linens from restaurants and the sheets from hotels. “It’s not glamorous,” he says. “And I’m happy to keep helping—to help you out.” Of course, Joey had been paying for their apartment all winter. Lina is trapped. She depends upon her captor to release her, and of course, he will not, because she cannot take care of herself without him. The Family will not free Lina; it will not abandon her. We’ll always keep you safe, Joey almost says.

“I don’t want your fucking blood money,” she screams at Joey. “I never want anything to do with it again.” Joey lies: he tells her that the laundry has nothing to do with the Family. He promises she can support herself from now on. Lina hangs up the phone and tells Antonia, “We’re finally done with them.”

But later that week Antonia slips next door for Sunday dinner, where Joey resists the urge to put a hand over her arm and apologize for being alive. And when she leaves, Rosa slips a foil-covered dish of leftovers into her hands.



* * *



    —

When it is almost summer Rosa goes away for two days and Rosa’s mamma comes to stay with Sofia. Nonna is a small woman with hard edges and she has strict rules about what little girls shouldn’t do. No running. No loud voices. Wipe that expression off your face. No fidgeting in church. No elbows on the table. For God’s sake keep quiet, keep still. Sofia scuffs her feet across the floor and wishes her parents would come home. She imagines being a boy, but it’s no fun: there’s a void there, something missing. So Sofia stays a girl, but not a very good one. Her shoelaces are untied and she gets a drop of grease on her lap.

Rosa and Joey come back with Frankie while Sofia is in school. When she arrives home her papa opens the door to the apartment and says shhhh, and gestures to the living room, where Rosa is sitting on the couch, her arms around a bundle of blankets. “This is your sister,” says Rosa. Sofia’s eyes get very big, and she turns around and runs as fast as she can down her stairs, out the door of her building, and up to Antonia’s apartment.