The Family(63)

Antonia peers down the hall to make sure Julia and Robbie are still nowhere to be seen. “Do you know that Joey meets with a man called Tommy Fianzo every month?” she asks.

“I do,” says Saul. He is taken to that meeting every month. Someday, he will go on his own. He has not asked why the meeting happens. He has been, he realizes, too trusting. This is something he has thought about a lot over the last year. Saul left his home, left his family, transplanted himself to the fertile soil of someone else’s life. He is a breathing transformation. But in other ways, Saul is beginning to understand that he has let his life happen to him. How much has he let go of? How much is he overlooking?

“Joey used to work for Tommy,” says Antonia. “Joey was best friends with my papa, Carlo. They were all friends.” Antonia can feel her face heating up, but her hands and feet are freezing. It is as though her body itself does not know how to speak this secret out loud.

“I know that,” says Saul. “Sofia told me—years ago. She said they were friends. She said he disappeared.”

“No,” says Antonia. “My papa decided he didn’t want to work for the Family anymore. But it doesn’t work that way. So Tommy Fianzo had him killed. In a way, I guess, disappeared. We never found out what happened to him. Joey couldn’t work for him anymore after that. They made some kind of agreement. Joey pays him; they work separately.”

Sofia had lied to him? Saul can picture her face as she told him. A tragedy, she had said, and shrugged. A mystery. She had lied to him.

“It broke my mamma. For years, she was—like an empty shell. I’m not saying that is what Sofia is like, of course. But from my perspective, as a child, I never had the mamma I expected. I never knew what I could depend on her for. And that changed me.”

When Antonia finishes speaking, her mouth retreats into a small thin line and her face looks bare, defiant.

The aftermath echoes.

Before he realizes what he is doing, Saul is halfway across the kitchen to clasp Antonia’s hands in his, to bury his face in her hair. He stops himself mid-step. There is an unspoken boundary there.

In Antonia’s mind, she steps across the kitchen to meet Saul halfway. They embrace: her face against his sweater, the branches of his arms a hollow to hide in.



* * *



—

Saul cannot sleep that night. He turns over and over on the mattress Antonia and Paolo have laid out for him and Sofia on the living room floor. Antonia and Paolo are sleeping in their own room, the door cracked open. Julia and Robbie are asleep in Robbie’s room. Above Saul, there is a crack winding out from the light fixture in the center of the ceiling. All is quiet.

He cannot stop thinking about Antonia’s papa. He understands the violence inherent in the work he does. He perpetrates that violence. But how could they have killed one of their own? How could they have deprived Antonia of a father? How could Joey Colicchio have gone on afterward? It was the pragmatic thing to do—Saul understands this. It was the path of least conflict, least bloodshed, least upheaval. But how, Saul wonders, could Joey have dragged himself out of bed every day, knowing his best friend had been killed—no, he reminds himself, disappeared, they don’t say killed—and how could Joey dress, and leave his home, and stand up all day under the crushing weight of knowing what had happened to Carlo—what he had done to Carlo? This is why Sofia had lied, he realizes. She had known Saul would have to do his job either way. She didn’t want him to change the way he thought of Joey.

“Sofia,” Saul whispers finally, unable to stand the snarl of his own thoughts any longer. “Sofia?”

Sofia turns. She has been sound asleep. “What,” she murmurs. Saul is overcome with tenderness for her sleep-creased face, the way one of her arms reaches for him, unfolding from beneath the sheets. Her hand moving against his shoulder raises quick goosebumps. Saul sighs. He doesn’t want to ruin her night, her rest. But he is bursting with unanswerable questions.

“Sofia, Antonia told me how her papa died today.” Saul is whispering as quietly as he can. He has no interest in anyone else overhearing.

Sofia raises herself up on one elbow. “I told you that, didn’t I?”

Saul shakes his head. Sofia can do this: half asleep, she can make it so that he doesn’t even remember whether she lied or not. “You just told me he disappeared,” he says. “You didn’t tell me why.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I guess I was protecting her.”

“You were protecting Joey,” Saul says, more bitterness than he intended stealing into his voice.

“He’s my father,” says Sofia.

“How can we keep doing this?” asks Saul.

“Doing what?” And as Sofia squints through dry midnight eyes at Saul, a familiar sense of purpose steals over her like silk. Sofia Colicchio, talking a nervous Family man down.

“He wanted to leave, so they killed him? They left his daughter and his wife alone? How did Antonia marry Paolo, knowing what happened to her papa? How can you work for Joey? How can I?” Saul’s whisper gets louder as he talks. It’s inconceivable, to be in a world that is so very tangled up.

“Shh,” says Sofia. “Julia and Robbie will hear you.” She pauses. She is good at this when she is talking to a stranger, but she doesn’t think Saul will be impressed by her batting eyelashes, her honeyed voice. She has no choice but to tell him what she really thinks. “I don’t have the answers to all of your questions. When you say it like that, it doesn’t make sense, does it? And you know how many questions I have. You know I can’t ever keep my mouth shut. This ‘don’t talk about it’ thing that my parents do—that my mamma always did—that doesn’t work for me.”