by C. D. Reiss
“Well, hello.”
Antonio.
“Eyes open,” she said to Jonathan then looked back at me. “How are you?”
“Antonio.” I couldn’t believe I got the word out. Every syllable was exhausting.
“He’s fine.”
“Swear?”
She held up her hand. “Pledge open.” She pulled two of my fingers off the sheets.
“Open,” I whispered.
“Antonio is alive and healthy. He walks, he talks, he is very, very worried about you. I’ll tell him you asked about him. He’s going to shit a brick with joy, but he can’t visit. Don’t be mad at him.”
“I’m not.”
“All right. I’m going to call a doctor to look at you.”
“Tell him…” I swallowed. I didn’t know what to say. Everything. “Tell him he’s my capo.”
“Funny you should say that. He says the same about you. Pledge closed.”
I had more to say. More questions. More statements. More more more.
But I didn’t even have the energy to close the pledge. Consciousness left and was replaced by a worry-free sleep.
fifty-five.
theresa
would only ever ask Margie about Antonio, and she constantly reassured me that he was fine. She promised she’d tell me everything. She changed the subject. She told me not to say more because I couldn’t see who was in the room.
“Talk to me, or I’ll scream.” I couldn’t have screamed if I wanted to, but the threat was enough to get her to lean over and look at my face.
“Oh, someone’s feeling better,” Margie said.
“I can feel my body.”
“You’re so lucky you’re not paralyzed. Have I mentioned that?” She pulled her chair close.
“Can you tell me where he is? Did he go home? To Italy?” I swallowed. I couldn’t do much more than swallow and blink.
“No. He’s in California. And by California, I mean… the state of.”
California. Huge state. In the geography of love, it was a nanostate. In the geography of need—it was massive.
“Just tell me.”
“It can wait,” she said.
“Tell me. Please.”
She leaned over me, deep in thought, then sat down. I had a view of the grey ceiling again.
“I want you to remember, as I tell you this, that he’s fine.”
My chest constricted. Had he run off with Valentina? A machine beeped somewhere.
“Easy, kid. If you make the doctors come in, this conversation ends.”
I breathed. I felt the ends and edges of my body, calming them. I’d done that when reporters asked me about my cheating fiancé. I’d done it when talking to Donna Maria for the first time. I’d done it my whole life, and I did it on that bed.
“Okay,” I said when I was ready.
“Okay.”
“Go, Margie. You’re stalling.”
She sighed then continued. “There wasn’t a mob doctor in California who could help you. He made a choice. He turned himself in. He and Daniel hammered out his story. He said he stabbed you in a lover’s quarrel and you fell off the veranda. Everyone in the house corroborated. Valentina said she ran the fence in a jealous rage. No grand jury. No indictment. No nothing.”
“Wait… I… there were—”
Bodies.
Blood.
Bullets.
“A wall of silence,” Margie said. “Donna Maria Carloni and Domenico Uvoli disappeared. Poof. No one’s seen them.”
There were holes, but I couldn’t get my head around them while one question remained. “He turned himself in? What does that mean?”
“We made the indictment over Paulie go away. There was enough evidence to claim self defense for that, but for what happened to you…look…he skipped everything and copped a plea. I shouldn’t tell you since I’m not even supposed to know the details, but I arranged his lawyer, and I’m yours, so there’s that.”
“Where is he?” I couldn’t bear saying it, because the answer—
“He’s in prison, Theresa.” Her hand was on mine. She squeezed it.
“But—”
“Listen to me. You fought over Valentina. He stabbed you. He threw you off a second-story veranda. That’s the end of it. If anyone asks you anything, you say you don’t remember. Your memory is fucked beyond repair.”
“How long, Margie?”
“If you decide to go honest, a lot of people you love are going away for a long time.”
“How long is he in? Tell me!”
She breathed hard then spit it out. “Ten.”
“Ten years?” I squeaked my last breath, because my god, my god, a decade?
“Listen…”
I was crying before she finished the word. I heard something about parole. I heard something about good behavior and not making it worse. But I was wrecked.
I had to know if I was allowed to forgive the fake stabbing. I had to know who knew what because I’d been holding on to this string of hope and it was about to break. But I couldn’t, because I was crying so hard I couldn’t speak. Then the doctors came, and I pretended to know nothing about anything.
fifty-six.
theresa
found it easier to just not talk. When the cops came, I claimed to remember nothing of the incident. So sorry. Shrug. Daniel didn’t let the interviewer press too long.
“Dan,” I asked when it was over, “the election? It’s March, almost.”
He smiled at me. “I got out in time. And you’re my last case I’m overseeing as DA.”
He wasn’t actually the prosecutor. He couldn’t be. But he seemed to be around all the time.
“Then what?”
“I can do commercial litigation, I think? Private sector stuff. I’m still a good lawyer.”
“No public advocacy?” I asked.
“My public life is over. Too many proverbial skeletons in the proverbial closet.”
“I’m sorry, Dan. It was all my fault.”
“No. It was my fault, and it’s better this way.” He held up his hands. The nails were unbitten. “Less stress. I swear, I get up in the morning feeling… what’s the opposite of overwhelmed?”
“Underwhelmed?”
“Not that.”
“I know what you mean.”
“It’ll all be all right. I promise.” He squeezed my hand.
But I wanted to die. I missed Antonio every minute of every day. I wanted his company so much I couldn’t go to physical therapy some days, and when they took the nylon cast off with a loud kkkkt of Velcro, I wanted his touch on my body so badly, I wished they’d put the damned thing back on me.
“Where do you want to go?” Margie asked on my last day at Sequoia.
“Do I still have my loft?” I sat on the edge of the bed, considering the fact that I’d never see those walls again, and I had to face a world without Antonio.
“Yeah. I had it cleaned.”
“Okay.” I got on my shoes. I could walk, if slowly.
“There are some guys who want to talk to you before you go.”
“I don’t remember anything.”
“Other guys. Names ending in vowels.”
I just looked at her. I knew who she meant, more or less. I had no idea why they’d want anything to do with me though.
“You’re safe. I have my guy on them. Sit in the chair, would you?”
I turned slowly and sat. I was in a wide skirt because it was easy to get on and a blouse that hid the hunch in my left shoulder. It would take years to fix me completely, and even then, I’d be at ninety percent.
Ninety percent was a miracle. I had to remember that.
Antonio was alive. That was a miracle as well.
And when Lorenzo, Enzo, and Simone shuffled in with Otto trailing behind them, I discovered another miracle.
“Boss,” Lorenzo said handing me a fat manila envelope, “I want to offer you an apology and a tribute. I was trying to help us in the
organization, and I done wrong. I can’t ever make it up to you, but you have my service if you want it.”
The envelope flopped back and forth where he held it.
“I’m not Italian,” I said, snapping it from him.
“Yeah. It’s gonna be a problem.”
He obviously didn’t even want to talk to me. Otto dropped his envelope on top.
“This is my month, Otto said. “Been great, gotta say, with the Sicilians off our backs.”
I peeked into the envelopes. They were stuffed with twenties and hundreds. I thought I should just step down, but there was a reason that was impossible. Killing a boss didn’t come without consequences.
“As far as I’m concerned, Antonio runs this operation,” I said. “If you have a question or you need something, you go to him and you ask him. This is done, right? When the boss is put away? You visit?”
“Yes,” Lorenzo said.
“You bring me the tributes. I’ll take care of it. The rest goes through him. I need you guys to keep the peace. I know you want that.” I looked at them each individually, stopping at Zo. “You tried to kill Antonio, and you turned everyone against him. It was for peace. I understand that, so there won’t be retribution, but we can never trust you again.”
He nodded like a shamefaced dog. I didn’t feel sorry for him or envy him.
“Go. Visit Antonio.”
They scuttled out. Only Otto made eye contact, and I winked at him.
I had this. Eventually, after enough torment, we’d give it all back to them. Even Lorenzo. He’d been loyal to his men and worked for peace instead of war. He’d do fine.
But first, I would rule.
fifty-seven.
EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER
theresa
hadn’t visited. He didn’t want me to. He didn’t want the parole board to think he would get out and stab me again. That was what he said, but I thought he just didn’t want me to see him behind bulletproof glass. I wrote him letters four times a week, keeping it all above board with newsy news and short declarations of love, and he wrote back with little in the way of prison happenings. It was obvious he didn’t want me to know.
The only thing I insisted on telling him over the phone was the only thing that might keep him from returning to me.
“What is it?” he’d said. “It’s nothing. I know already. It won’t keep me from you.”
I’d started crying almost immediately. I missed his voice. I craved his hands. I wasted thirty seconds of a two-minute phone call trying to put myself back into a staid little box.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Whatever it is—”
“I can’t…” My breath hitched. Got it together. “Because of the injuries. I can’t have children.”
“Contessa—”
“I understand if that’s a deal-breaker for you.”
“I saw what happened, my love. This isn’t a surprise.”
It was exactly that response that soothed me. If he hadn’t already known, I might have thought he was just gathering strength to leave me, or that he hadn’t digested what it meant. But he wasn’t caught off guard. He’d already dealt with it, and he still wanted me. For months, I didn’t know what that meant. Us wanting each other. Us “being with” each other. One year of separation or ten. Anything in between.
Over the course of his time in prison, I continued to insist I didn’t remember anything from that night, and Margie pushed for parole from behind the person who actually claimed to be his lawyer.
“For you,” she’d insisted. “I’m doing it for you. But if he hurts you, I’m coming down like a hammer.”
I’d agree to anything. To get him out, I forked over everything the guys sent in tribute. Cash. Untraceable and convenient as hell for doing stuff like greasing wheels and buying an olive orchard in Temecula. I got a place with multiple buildings for my family and promised the children pony rides.
I thought of him every day. I slept on one side of the bed. I left his dresser drawers empty. I set him up with a desk and a space in the office before I even knew what it meant to run an orchard.
“You have pains,” Valentina said as she wiped down a big ceramic bowl in my new kitchen. When she visited the orchard, she acted as if she owned the joint. “You should lie down.”
“I’m fine.”
She’d arrived that morning and taken on the chores as if she enjoyed them. She’d served Antonio with divorce papers soon after he was sentenced, and there hadn’t been much fuss. He was a felon. The Church didn’t like it, but the Church didn’t have to. She handed him to me on a platter and announced that she didn’t expect me to get in the way of her and Daniel.
I wouldn’t, but I explained what my ex-fiancé had done and what she could expect from him. Apparently, she expected exactly what he had to give. That day, Daniel had illustrated exactly that by plopping himself on the couch when they arrived and watching a game with the men. He was still an irritating douchebag, but what could I do? He was family now.
“You look a little bent,” Sheila said.
“I’m fine. Don’t make me say it again.”
“Yes, boss,” Sheila and Valentina said in unison.
I snapped the dishtowel at both of them.
Zia nudged me to the side. “You’re in the way.”
“Sorry.”
“You want to stand in front of the stove? You can cook.” She took the lid off something brown and stewey and stirred it with a wooden spoon.
“No, no, I’m good! You cook.”
She held up the sauce-smeared spoon. “Taste.”
I blew on it and put my lips to the wood. “Oh my god, what is it?”
She flapped her hand at me. She was always impatient with what I didn’t know.
“He’s late,” Jonathan said, strolling into the kitchen. “Maybe they decided to keep him.” He plucked two glasses from the cabinet and filled them with water.
“That’s not even funny.”
“I’m not laughing,” he said.
The children were though. And shouting. They tracked mud all over the kitchen. Bonnie opened the fridge and nearly dropped a gallon of milk.
“You left your wife on the patio to come in here and give me a heart attack?” I said to Jonathan.
He kissed my cheek. “She loves it here. We’re buying the place next door.”
I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not, but I played the odds. “Knock before you visit.”
He leaned on the counter. The kids had run back out, and I heard Sheila yelling at them from half a house away. Valentina and Zia had gone to prepare the buffet. Jonathan and I were alone.
He put up his right hand. “Open pledge.”
I held up my hand. “Open.”
“Swear he didn’t stab you and throw you off a balcony.”
“It was more of a second-story veranda.”
“You’re making me nervous.”
I held my hand up as if taking the oath of office. “I swear, in pledge, that he didn’t stab me and throw me off anything in the architectural lexicon. He has never laid a finger on me in anger or jealousy, and if he did, I’d kill him. Outside pledge, I’m sticking to my story.”
I’d made the same pledge to just about every other sibling, in addition to swearing to my mother that it wasn’t what it looked like. I tried not to speak to Dad alone, because I didn’t have enough forgiveness in my heart for him.
I heard the crunch of dirt and rock and peered out the kitchen window. A black car came through the gate. I put my hand on my chest.
Jonathan flicked my ear. “Close pledge, sister.”
“Closed.”
I was ready. More than ready. I slapped my towel down and ran to the front door, whipping it open and nearly tripping over Antonin, who stood at the edge of the porch. I took a moment to look at him. He was a serious boy generally, but his sullen face was more thoughtful today than usual.
I stopped and leaned in to him. He was almost my height already.
“It’s okay. He won’t bite you. We talked about this. He’s just a man,” I said.
He nodded. I hugged him. He was a good kid, whip smart and acing every single class at Harvard-Westlake. He was a genius under pressure. Valentina said he was more like his father than her, but his sense of humor belonged to his mother. At least he didn’t need half a glass of wine to bring it out.
Behind me, a car door slammed. And another as he was let out of the back of the limo.
I didn’t think I could turn around, because once I did, the waiting was officially over. My life would begin and preparation would become action. I stood with our families on the porch, waiting.
“Capo,” he said.
His voice. Music. An opera in two syllables.
I turned and nearly died, my gasp was so strong.
He was… Antonio.
Everything I remembered and imagined, but in three dimensions. In a white shirt and grey jacket, his thumb hooked on the shoulder strap of his bag, his face shaven, his brown hair falling into a parenthesis on his forehead. When he smiled, the sky opened and God himself showed his favor.
“You lost weight.” My bottom lip trembled so hard I could barely get the last word out.
“The second worst part was the food.”
I didn’t say anything. I was too overwhelmed. I took in every detail. His ebony lashes. His lips, drawn across his face in a grin. I was supposed to ask him the worst part, but the breeze shifted and I was swept away in the scent of campfires and quiet pine forests.
“I missed you,” I said. God, would I ever again get a word out without crying? I didn’t know how to catalog the relief, the joy, and the feeling of utter liberation, because I’d been in prison with him.
He dropped his bag and engulfed me in his arms.
“I missed you I missed you…” I kept repeating, because I hadn’t uttered it in a year and a half and it needed saying.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a pair of arms around my legs. I felt the breath and tears of our families as they gathered around us, shielding us with their bodies. I rested my cheek on his shoulder. This was my heaven, with him.