The Family(64)

“So how can you—” begins Saul, but Sofia shakes her head.

“Family isn’t so simple,” says Sofia, and Saul can hear his mother’s voice, telling him that God isn’t so simple, and he can taste the darkened mildewed air in the ship on the way to America. “I used to think my papa was a god. And then eventually, I began to understand more of what went on, and I was so angry. Antonia’s papa—Carlo was his name, Uncle Carlo—had disappeared, and we were all pretending like everything was fine, like it hadn’t happened. I was angry at my parents all the time; I was angry at Antonia, even, angry at her for being okay when something so wrong had happened. And then you came, and it was like I learned that violence and war can result in something good, in love, even, which I think is what I had been learning my whole life.”

“So it’s my fault?” Saul finds himself angry. His whisper becomes a hiss. “I barely escaped a war with my life and you’re telling me that’s why you understand the value of violence? You would have left if not for me?”

“No,” says Sofia, “of course not. But you helped me to understand that things are not all good or all bad. Because of war we have Julia. Because of violence Antonia and Paolo have Robbie. I can see both sides when I’m working. The people we help. I can see the good and the bad.”

“You go out to dinner,” says Saul, before he can help himself. “You don’t see the violence.”

Sofia’s mouth becomes a thin line. “I was raised in it,” she says icily. “And there is no changing what has happened already. So, you’ve decided you have a moral objection to the way things work. Do you propose we leave? Explain to Julia that she can never see Nonno or Nonna or Aunt Tonia or Uncle Paoli or Bibi again and flee and start over somewhere, and you can get a job bagging groceries and I can take care of Julia all on my own, and we can just worry for the rest of our lives that someday they would find us and you would disappear too? Because you would, eventually. They wouldn’t spare you because of me.” Sofia is whispering, too, but her words fill Saul’s ears; they drown out everything else. “Do you think that would cause less pain than staying?”

Saul stares at the crack in the ceiling until he can hear Sofia’s breaths even out again, and then he creeps off the mattress and into the kitchen, where he begins an elaborate breakfast, moving quietly so as not to wake anyone else before dawn.

Julia is the first one up. She stretches her limbs and drags her blanket into the living room, where Sofia is asleep alone. She crawls into the hollow where Saul’s body had tossed for most of the night and presses herself against her mamma’s back. When Saul next peeks into the living room he sees the heads of his daughter and wife lined up on the same pillow. Julia opens her eyes and says Papa, which is a command and a prayer and a pure, unfettered cry of love, and Saul opens his arms for her, imagines slicing himself open down the middle and enveloping Julia with every power of protection he has.



* * *



—

Antonia is not unhappy in her marriage.

There are many days she has everything she can imagine.

Those days Paolo gets home early enough that she is not run ragged and he is not so grouchy he spends the evening raging monotonously about how much use he could be in a different position. And she does not think about her papa, and she does not wonder if she made the right choice, and her mamma’s voice saying don’t speak to anyone with slicked-back hair does not echo in her mind.

Those days her baking turns out and she feels connected to Robbie, who still needs her desperately, from a wordless place in his small body, and who hangs and drags and claws against her until she lets him in, which some days she feels open and strong enough to do and which some days she is sure will destroy her. But some days Robbie practices his letters and they walk to the park and they joke with one another, and Antonia can see in his flawless face the man who will emerge, strong and sweet like his father, like his grandfather.

Those days she reads, in the patch of light that pours like liquid gold into their kitchen from ten to eleven in the morning as the sun passes overhead. She comes back to herself as the shadow of the next building over crosses onto her page and she feels exquisitely raw and preternaturally strong in those moments.

Those days she calls Sofia and Sofia is home, and she might go over there with Robbie, and drink coffee or wine with Sofia, and watch the sticks of dynamite that have replaced their children go spinning and spinning around the apartment, and she and Sofia might have an hour where because they are together, they can access themselves as children, and they can imagine themselves as old women. Paolo thinks maybe when Robbie starts school full-time, I might look into classes at the college, Antonia says. And so when Sofia responds, I am hoping to be able to take on more work, then, Antonia is having such a good day she does not respond, you leave Julia with me so often it’s as though she’s in school already. And as they leave, Antonia might be able to catch Julia and hold her close and smell her and look in her eyes and see Sofia flashing around their crinkled corners when Julia squeals and tries to get away.

Those days she starts dinner on time and the kitchen is filled with steam and spice, and Paolo rumbles in as she’s chopping and slides his hands around her and pushes his face through her hair to her neck, and Antonia leans into his weight and feels warm electricity pulse down from Paolo’s mouth through the center of her body.