The Family(76)

Take the gun.

Walk into the water.



* * *



—

Almost two weeks pass. Saul and Sofia and Julia spend every moment at Antonia and Paolo’s apartment. They rock Enzo and teach Robbie how to hold his brother. Julia watches from a darkened corner, fascinated but uncharacteristically cautious, almost fearful. The seven of them are as happy as they’ve ever been.

On Friday, Saul leaves in the early afternoon for his Fianzo meeting.

He escapes each of these meetings as quickly as he can, but they stain the first Friday of each month like grease, like wine, like blood. The sweetness of his new nephew fills him with loathing toward Tommy Fianzo Jr., who never misses a chance to belittle Saul, to make Saul feel small in the hopes of making himself feel more important. Saul could use his growing family as motivation to be more patient with Tommy Jr. But he doesn’t. Today, instead, he gets careless.

As Saul shoves the front door open like a battering ram, a slip of paper dislodges itself from his pocket. It falls like an autumn leaf down toward the ground. As Saul stalks off toward his waiting ride, the slip of paper lands on the burning asphalt. Saul doesn’t notice as he walks away. His pocket does not feel empty on the drive home.

2 guards today, the paper says. Summer busy for F’s. Shipping season? Winter is quieter.

Tommy Fianzo Jr.’s doorman reaches down and picks up the sheet of paper. He mouths the words on it as he deciphers Saul’s handwriting.

“Get the boss down here,” he says once he reads it.



* * *



—

In her apartment in Red Hook, Lina wakes with a jump, as though someone has shaken her. She has taken a nap because she has been spending nights wide-eyed and sweating, some deep internal disturbance keeping her from dreaming. When she slips into shallow sleep at night she wakes half an hour later, her skin slick and icy.

With her eyes closed, Lina can feel a crackling in the air, an omen of change sneaking along the floorboards. Vines of it winding their way up and down the banisters. Something big is coming.





Two days later, Sofia is sweating in her kitchen.

It’s not true that Sofia isn’t much for cooking. She doesn’t know that Eli said this about her, but she knows it’s whispered about in the neighborhood shops. Groups of mothers stop their conversations when Sofia approaches with her shopping basket. Trying something new? they might ask. Just some staples, Sofia responds, as haughtily as she can while weighed down by flour, tomatoes, eggs, garlic.

Sofia knows her mamma’s recipes the way she knows the rhythm of a Sunday Mass. Just because she doesn’t use them every day doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

By sense-memory, she unrolls the flank steak. It curls slightly, the blood and muscle of it contracting on her counter. It smells like coins. She takes a mallet and pounds it until it lies flat. It will be lined with speckled sliced mortadella, a layer of wilted spinach, and a mixture of basil, parsley, pine nuts, and parmesan. It will be rolled up and simmered in wine, tomatoes, and bay. All the windows in the house are open, lazy fans pushing the hot kitchen air around. Sofia’s hair is plastered to the back of her neck

The front door clicks. It’s not Saul, who is late. It’s Antonia, holding the small bundle of baby Enzo in one arm and a shopping bag in the other. “Christ, Tonia, you gave birth two weeks ago, what are you doing shopping?” Sofia asks. She wraps Antonia in her arms and then unwraps Enzo from his bundle of blankets and kisses him. “It’s a thousand degrees out, and you have him in all these blankets!”

Sofia hopes her voice is cheery but not saccharine; she examines Antonia as closely as she can. Antonia looks exhausted, but her hair is clean. Her eyes meet Sofia’s. She seems okay, Sofia thinks. “Are you okay?” she asks Antonia.

“I am,” says Antonia. She is almost giddy. She is sleepless and aching still, but she is so surprised she survived her second birth that she’s been cheerful, almost bubbly. Robbie has had to squirm away from her grasping hands; Paolo wonders where his mild-mannered, brooding wife has gone. Antonia is superwoman. Antonia can do anything. “I’m going to ask your mamma about the seafood.” Antonia leaves Sofia singing to Enzo in the hallway.

Sofia can just sense Robbie, sprinting off into the recesses of the apartment to find Julia. She looks down into Enzo’s liquid brown eyes, his wrinkled face. “Is your mamma okay?” Sofia asks him. Enzo does not answer.

Sofia hears a key in the lock and she hopes it is Saul this time.

And then she hears a door slam.



* * *



    —

Saul knew showing at dinner would cause a stir but not showing would be an even bigger problem and so he is standing in his front hall, wincing as he brushes his curls away from his eyes, as he shrugs off the trappings of his briefcase, his shoes. The house smells like meat and spices and his mouth waters. He hasn’t eaten in hours.

“Paolo, is that you?” comes Antonia’s voice. “Paolo, I asked you to meet me at the house this afternoon, did you forget?” She is walking toward Saul, who has the impulse to turn toward the wall. Instead he freezes, and so when Antonia turns into the entryway she is face-to-face with Saul, whose eye has been blackened and whose lip has been purpled and swollen. Antonia steps backward in shock. “What happened to you?” she says. Small teardrops of blood litter the front of his shirt. He does not speak. He hasn’t seen himself.