The Family(60)

With Antonia, Sofia is careful. She knows Antonia doesn’t approve. But she cannot stop working, and she cannot lose Antonia. They are bound together by so much now: their history, their families, their children, who sleep better if they are in the same room as one another. So Sofia’s job is something that she and Antonia step around, examine silently, try to avoid.

And Antonia, who has softened into parenthood, into wifehood, into the role of best friend and babysitter and beloved aunt to Julia, does not say anything to Sofia. Antonia always takes Julia when Sofia shows up, dressed to the nines. She does not tell Sofia that the independence she boasts of stinks like Lina’s job at the laundry. She is not certain, of course, that Sofia is doing any worse than she, Antonia, is—where is Antonia’s independence, after all, her university certificate, her wraparound porch, her three children who have never heard of the Family, who will be doctors and explorers and farmers? She had a brief period of rebellion last year, when the war ended: she spent days and days looking up university schedules. She could have a degree if she took two night classes a week for six years. When she brought this to Paolo, he was angry. He told her there was enough change in their family with the end of the war. He didn’t know what his job would look like, or if he would even have one. He didn’t know what their finances would be like. His own family was in constant crisis, his mother refusing to get out of bed. Everything is unstable, he said. I feel like the ground beneath my feet is already dissolving. The last time I felt so—was after Robbie was born, when you— He hadn’t finished, but had left Antonia to her own guilt about the last time she abandoned her family. You know I want this for you, he said as they went to bed. You know it’s just bad timing.

So Antonia has thrown her whole self into motherhood, and in her efforts to be unlike Lina, unlike Sofia, she is there the instant Robbie wakes and she soothes him to sleep, a hand on his back every night. She tries to spare him any pain, any fear, any loss, and so she is constantly telling him she loves him, telling him to be careful, to look both ways, but rather than any common sense, Robbie develops a powerful need to have Antonia near him at all times, so they are rarely seen apart, except when Julia is there: Julia, in whose presence Robbie lights up, grows six inches taller; Julia, who sparks in Robbie something courageous and mischievous that draws him away from Antonia, that allows Antonia to rest, to come to terms with the toll her obsessive parenting is taking on her body, on her mind. Antonia would not call this the independence she once dreamed of but she had been unable, as a teenager, to imagine what loving two children would do to her, how completely she would want to give of herself, how difficult it would be to find balance. She is scared of her own need; she is exhausted; she wouldn’t change it for the world but a small sense of self-preservation rears up in Antonia and reminds her of the months after Robbie was born, when she needed to walk alone, to clear her head, to come back to herself.

Antonia listens to Paolo when he complains that his post-war job has become droll and tedious, that the craft of falsified documents and the tedium of bookkeeping are incomparable, incompatible. She does not tell him how relieved she is that he is out of the line of fire, or as far away from it as he can be. She takes careful stock of her life and decides that each of its challenges is worth it, that each of its joys is indispensable, and in this way she reasons away Paolo’s new sullenness and Sofia’s new flightiness and the gnawing feeling that she is putting herself last, letting herself go unfinished. Most of the time she manages to feel full, full, full of love.

Soon 1946 is over. Sofia throws a party for New Year’s Eve. She dresses in sequins and Antonia feels like they are teenagers, sneaking out to a dance. Rosa and Joey beg out after midnight and take Julia and Robbie to sleep in their apartment but Sofia and Antonia and Saul and Paolo and a couple of guys Saul and Paolo work with climb up onto the roof and watch their breath puff in frozen clouds up into the starless city sky, up into the fresh new year.



* * *



—

In March, Antonia is watching Robbie and Julia. They are napping: faces utterly slack; hair plastered against their foreheads. Robbie is as enamored of Julia as Antonia was of Sofia but he is messier than Antonia was; he is more sensitive; he bruises easily. And Julia, too, seems messier than her mother, less focused, but just as big, just as loud, just as hot. She digs her hands into every patch of dirt she finds. Antonia is thankful they are sleeping.

Earlier that day Antonia had walked in on a wrestling match on the floor of her bedroom. What exactly is happening in here? She had hissed. I’m a Fianzo! Robbie had said to her. His face had been bright and upturned; he loved to tell her things, to bring her into his world. His arms were always reaching out for her. A what? Antonia had asked. Cold dread. Robbie drew himself up to his full height and raised his arms. Wooooouuurrrghhh! he growled. I’ll get you, Fianzo, shouted Julia. She tackled him. Legs went everywhere. A water glass fell off of a bedside table and shattered. Enough, enough! said Antonia. She lifted Robbie and Julia away from the glass one by one. Go, now! And Robbie had gone: dejected, worried. He never wants Antonia to be upset.

Antonia had breathed a shaky exhale and shut the door. She lives in constant fear of becoming her own mother—they killed your grandfather! she imagines saying in a moment of panic—but then she wouldn’t be the parent anymore; she would be making decisions for her own self-satisfaction. Antonia has made her peace with the mother her mother is able to be. But she does not want to become her.