The Family(24)

Sofia is silent, and then she says, “I do.”

“You do what?”

“I think about it.” She doesn’t often. But she can’t get the image of small Antonia, life permanently scarred by the machinations of men with power and secrets to spare, out of her head. And lately, surrounded by friends who don’t call on the weekend or ask how she’s doing but who will stand next to her, an army of pleated skirts against all that’s unknown, Sofia is sometimes suddenly breathless, caught in a memory of grade-school friendlessness, the throat-ache of walking the halls under pinched, judgmental eyes. And Sofia realizes she harbors no curiosity about what it is her father does to run Brooklyn, but rather, is filled with anger. Anger at all of it.

“What do you think, then?”

“I think it’s wrong.” As Sofia says this she thinks she believes it. As she says it she is buoyed by a pure, sovereign opinion. She realizes this is Joey’s worst fear: that she will see what he does, and that she will hate it. “I think it’s wrong, and I think they really hurt people.”

“I think it is more complicated than that,” says Antonia. Antonia, who never has the privilege of single-mindedness. Who knows viscerally how the Family has destroyed her life, but also how they have maintained it. She feels surprised to think this. A hole punctured in the side of her imaginary future life, the air all draining out. You’ll never abandon your family, she realizes. She’s no better than Lina, who cannot escape Family ties either.

“How?” asks Sofia. She feels that she is right. She feels it catch flame inside of her. “How can you”—it is coming out, there’s no stopping it—“you, of all people, think it’s complicated?”

“Excuse me?” Antonia stands, and suddenly there they are: on the brink of something unspoken. They are giddy and close to tears, still fragile together. They do not want to break apart again, but it would be easy.

The fire consumes Sofia’s belly and chest and it comes for her throat. “After what they did to your papa. How can you. How can you think it’s complicated.”

“They pay my rent, Sof. And yours, in case you forgot.” Antonia glares. “Isn’t it a little hypocritical to criticize them?”

Sofia is suddenly both sorry and even more angry. Tears form behind her eyes. She feels herself grow hot and knows her face is bright red. Her voice is stuck in the back of her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“It’s okay,” says Antonia, and it is: the relief of having something to fight about somehow better than having nothing to say to one another at all.

Sofia looks at Antonia and opens her mouth to ask a thousand questions. “Aren’t you angry?” is what she says. “At them? At us?”

Antonia looks at Sofia. She is standing by the doorway of Sofia’s bedroom, backlit by the lamp on Sofia’s desk. She has the same face she had when she was five, and nine, and thirteen. “Every moment,” is what she says. “But what alternative do I have?”



* * *



—

After Antonia leaves, Sofia turns over her newfound anger in her mind. It’s hot as molten metal. She cocks her head toward the rumble of end-of-dinner conversation from the sitting room, but she can’t quite hear it. So Sofia slips through her bedroom door in stocking feet. As she gets closer to the living room, the rumble sorts itself out into her papa, talking with her uncle and her grandfather.

Sofia peers through a crack in the nearly shut set of French doors to the living room. Joey is sitting up tall, spine straight, broad shoulders inclined toward Rosa’s father. “I don’t envy you,” Sofia’s grandfather is saying. “To start a new business venture, right as a war gets going—it’s hard to get people to buy anything during a war.”

“We’ll have to make sure we’re selling something they can’t get by without,” says Joey. A line appears, north to south on his forehead. Sofia watches his thoughts churn. It’s hard to hold on to her anger while she is looking at the familiar face of her papa. Sofia is too stubborn to ask herself whether her anger is a flimsy mask for something deeper and more complicated, but looking at Joey, something in her knows she is not just angry. She’s not ready to admit it, but Sofia is wildly curious. This makes her feel like a traitor: to Antonia, who has been hurt so profoundly by the machinations of Family. To her mamma, who only ever wanted for Sofia to be happy with the space carved out for her in the world.

It doesn’t make her a traitor to Joey, though. It makes her closer to him than Sofia ever imagined.



* * *



—

In the time it takes Antonia to kiss Rosa, close the door to Sofia’s apartment, walk down Sofia’s stairs, and walk up into her own building, Antonia lets go of her dream of a college degree in a town where no one knows her name. Without the Family, without her history, and without Sofia, she is an empty shell. She’ll never make it on her own. This is what she tells herself, but of course, the truth is more complicated: Antonia is suddenly not sure she wants to make it on her own. There has to be a way, she thinks, to get out from under the Family’s thumb without abandoning the people she loves. There has to be a way to get everything she wants.



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