by Alexa Hart
And poor Dario. He sat, then stood, beside her, having handled all of the well wishes, the condolences, and the small talk completely alone. At some point during the internment, tears started flowing out of his eyes and he didn’t try to stop them. He just cried quietly next to the statue that was Natalia, not seeming to hear the words being said, and probably no longer caring to.
I had shoved my own grief deep down inside, wanting to be strong for my mother, for Nat, for Dario – at least temporarily. But the lump in my throat choked me, and tears burned in the corners of my eyes regardless. I remembered being thirteen, on a fine summer day, standing in this graveyard beside my mother as I did now - desperately wanting to be strong for her, but falling apart as any thirteen-year-old boy would do at his own father’s funeral. I felt I had failed everyone that day. I knew I was to inherit the business when I grew older, and I didn’t want my soft side to show – even then.
“It’s okay to cry,” Nat had said, a wise soul at all of thirteen years of age, sitting quietly beside me in the grass. We had parted from the crowd just enough to be alone. She knew I didn’t want to talk, and she knew I was horribly embarrassed that I had cried, even if it was my father’s funeral. So we just sat in the sun, me picking mindlessly at the grass, and Natalia compassionately doing nothing at all.
“I’m supposed to be tough now,” I had blurted out, surprising both of us.
Natalia had grabbed my hand in her tiny one and squeezed it. I had looked at her then, feeling moved by those sapphire gems of hers in a new and very exciting way; and she had said simply – but firmly, “You can be whatever you want to be.”
Now she was standing over the grave, looking at the partially lowered box that contained her father, whom she had loved beyond all measure. She held a red rose in one hand, waiting to drop it on all of the others. Dario had bent and placed his own carefully just moments before – still crying – and then walked off alone into the graveyard.
Natalia had been standing there so long that I wasn’t sure she would drop hers at all. But then she held it up to her lips, kissed the petals slowly, and held her arm straight out over the grave, the rose dangling. She closed her eyes and whispered something, then simply let the flower fall.
As she walked away, alone and silent, I couldn’t help thinking that she was perhaps today – in her raw grief – the most complete picture of exquisite perfection that could ever exist in this world.
And suddenly, I needed to find Dario.
I knew the life that I wanted, and I wasn’t going to let it go – not again.
Chapter 13
Natalia
I wasn’t entirely sure who was going to remove the hospital bed from the house, but I had an obsessive urge to set it on fire. Pop had been dead for three days. We had put him in the actual ground yesterday. What the fuck did we need this bed for now? It was mocking us. It was sitting there grinning and reminding us that it had spent more time with our father in his last year than we possibly could have in his whole life.
I’m going to burn that fucking bed.
“Nat?” Dario’s voice broke through my burgeoning madness.
“Yeah,” I returned, not taking my eyes off of that goddamn piece of shit deathtrap.
“You need to stay out of Pop’s room. It wasn’t his real room anyway – you know that. And you’re getting weird. Really weird. I’m having a moving service come tomorrow to take away the furniture that we don’t need, and then a cleaning service is going to basically sterilize the whole thing.” He put his hand on my shoulder now, standing calmly behind me. “I’ll have painters come if you want. We can turn it into something – anything else. Anything you want. Or we can board it up and never use it again. But you need to stay out of it for now, okay?”
Movers are just going to come and cart that thing off free and clear? No fire? No punishment for what it took from us?
“I’m leaving tomorrow night,” I replied evenly, not moving from the doorway to Pop’s sick room.
I heard Dario suck his breath in quickly – he hadn’t known that was coming – and although I felt horrible leaving him here alone so quickly after the funeral, I felt I might actually lose my mind if I stayed any longer.
This wasn’t just a neighborhood. It was an insane place where you loved people you couldn’t ever possibly, safely be with. It was a prison where you were born into expectations that crippled you from birth. These streets stole lives – through violence, occasionally; but mostly much more torturously slow, through misery and strain. It took young, promising, extraordinary people who could go anywhere – do anything – be anything – and told them exactly who they were by shoving them into a pressure cooker and turning up the heat until their dreams were forced to burn out.
My mother’s aneurysm, my father’s excessive drinking and smoking, Max’s father’s triple round of heart attacks – even Lucy’s fucking coked-out abusive mother – that was the future awaiting all of us if we stayed here. It was like a seal of impending ruination was stamped on every house on every block.
I fucking loved Maximo. I loved him more than anything or anyone, and I wanted him so badly that it made me feel sick. I had never more clearly known that I wanted to be with him forever than now. I wanted to marry him. I wanted to carry his babies. I wanted a fucking big dog that wasn’t a poodle and protected our kids. I wanted a faded rowhouse where you could almost hear your neighbors having sex and most definitely hear them arguing. I wanted a fucking full life with Maximo Fanucci. I wanted it all.
And then one day, after I had that – after I had everything I could ever want, he was going to drop dead from the stress of the business, his heart unable to keep up with his life; or someone would shoot him over a deal gone wrong, and maybe then come for myself and our kids. Perhaps he’d take up drinking, and turn into an abusive monster – or cigars, and smoke his lungs into black tar pits like my father – whatever it took to deal with the tension.
But I would lose him. The business took people from you. It always had and it always would. I had left Max all those years ago because I knew he would leave me when I least expected it – not of his own free will – but he would leave, somehow, in some way, all the same.
I was going to be tossing a red rose on top of Maximo’s grave – be it in the sunshine or the snow – at some point if I stayed here. It would happen.
I had to leave.
Packing my suitcases was different this time. I found myself looking around my bedroom, searching for things that I wanted to take with me, because I planned to never return to this place again.
Never.
I moved slowly from one little trinket to the next – tiny surprises my father had bought for me, some jewelry my mother had given me when I was just a little girl, some dried flowers from one of my first dates with Max... What did I take? What did I leave?
What would be more painful to have with me than to leave behind forever?
A soft knocking at my door, and Dario entered. He had given me a little space after our conversation downstairs, but apparently, he had more to say.
“Nat?” He spoke cautiously. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“You don’t have to ask me, Dar. Just talk,” I responded lightly, folding and re-folding sweaters before carefully placing them in my suitcase. I didn’t know what he had to say, but I was sure I knew the general goal.
“Don’t leave yet, Natalia.”
“I guess... I kinda thought... You and Max seemed to have...” Dario sputtered out half sentences, and I looked at him very directly.
“I don’t want to talk about Max, Dar.”
And I didn’t. My mind was made up. No more neighborhood – no more business – no more funerals – no more losing people.
“Well, we’re going to anyway, Natalia,” was his firm and completely unexpected reply.
My eyebrows shot up – I couldn’t stop the instant shock that took over my face. I wasn’t sure Dario had ever spoken to me like that in
our entire lives. It had always been me – when we were younger – who generally kept him in line.
I wanted to respond, but I wasn’t sure if I was mad or fascinated. It was a little of both, I thought, staring back at him and saying absolutely nothing.
“Max talked to me after Pop’s funeral. He gave me full leadership of the business. Just like that. Completely handed over his position. He might run the store for a while until I can get some more help but, he doesn’t want to be in charge. He doesn’t want to go on runs. He’s essentially done. And honestly, he has enough cash at this point, if he invests it wisely, he could pretty comfortably retire altogether.”
I had been stunned into silence. Max. Max quit the business.
“I want it to be different now, Nat. The old guys – they're done. That era is over. It’s time to put some legitimate business into the business. Less of this thug shit. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a fucking old school gangster. Max was all of the muscle anyway,” he laughed now, pausing and focusing his gaze on me. “You haven’t said anything.”
“I’m just – I'm just – I'm processing,” was my weak reply. It was true however. This new information was swirling around in my brain wildly – cracking all of the concrete blocks that formed the foundation of my life – the cornerstones on which I based all of my decisions.
“Nat, he did it for you. You know that, right? You have to know that. As much as Max has always, always wanted to do justice to his father’s legacy... As much as I think he felt he had to... He wants you more. He loves you more. He’s quitting Rafaele’s business for you,” Dario was very serious, very adamant now. He walked across the room and put his hand on my shoulder once again, looking deeply into my eyes. “I know you love him, Nat. Pop knew it. Everybody knows it. You can’t just leave him again. I don’t think you even want to.”
I was beginning to tear up, and I was so goddamn tired of crying. Dario hugged me tightly, and then left me to myself, instinctively knowing I needed to be alone now.
I sat on my bed, beside my open and half-packed suitcase.
Max quit the business.
Dario had movers come later that same day. Apparently, I had genuinely freaked him out with my previous behavior. We sat side by side at the kitchen counter, each holding mugs of coffee, watching the movers go in and out, freeing the room of its last inhabitants.
I watched with particular interest as the bed left.
You’re running out of time to set it aflame, Nat.
There was no way Dario could have known the absurd thought that shot through my mind, but he still eyed me uneasily, as if he worried that the sight of that thing was somehow capable of triggering a full break from reality inside of me. Given some more time alone with it, maybe he’d have been proven right.
I felt fragile – on edge. It occurred to me repeatedly with a cruel stab to my heart that the only person I would really want to talk to about my dilemma right now was six feet under some freshly laid dirt in a fancy box, lifeless and gone forever.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t confide in Dario – I knew I could and always had. But some deeply ingrained instinct had kicked in this last year that made me want to shield him from anything that would make his life even harder, or sadder, or more complicated. My mental state was a “need-to-know" matter right now, and he didn’t need to know.
And beside all of that, I already felt horrible enough for the way I had acted at the funeral. I hadn’t meant to completely shut down. It had just happened. Actually speaking to anyone when my father’s dead body was only a few feet away seemed impossible and ludicrous. Of course I wasn’t going to speak to any of those people. I didn’t owe them that. I didn’t owe them anything.
But Dario hadn’t deserved to be left like that to handle the crowd. It had been a shit thing to do to him. And now I was leaving – quickly – and I knew that, in spite of the fact that this had always been the plan, it was also incredibly unfair to him.
“You’re not really leaving tomorrow,” he said absently, refilling his coffee.
“That’s the plan, Dar,” I replied calmly, still watching the coming and going of the moving men. They reminded me of the ant farm Dario had bought with his own money when we were kids. He loved that damn thing. He even tried to name every last one of the completely identical ants, insisting he knew one from the other.
“So, change the plan, Nat.”
Just change the plan.
That night I tossed around endlessly in my bed. Max had not called – he hadn’t called since the night before the funeral, actually. I knew I had hurt him – again. It seemed to be my specialty in life to torture one Mr. Maximo Fanucci.
I knew I could press a button and have him on the phone in seconds. I could make it all okay again. Several times I almost did... but always stopped myself. It didn’t occur to me until well into the early hours of the morning why I would not allow myself to make that call.
What if he changes his mind? He’s going to change his mind.
This was an emotionally charged time, and Max had made an emotionally charged decision. But if there was one thing I knew from my education and my career – from my patients themselves – it was that emotions changed. They weren’t forever.
Of course, he would love me forever, as I would him. But quitting his father’s business... That had never been an option before, and it was quite possible that it wasn’t really, deep down, an option now – even if he wanted it to be.
What if I stayed and he had a change of heart? What if I left my new life completely behind – the life that had taken me six years to build – only to realize that I’d done it only to end up stuck in the exact situation that I had so desperately wanted to avoid?
Leave. I had to leave. It was the only scenario that I knew I could trust. It was the only way to know that I would never be dressed in black and staring down at Max in a fancy wooden box, rose in hand, last words to a deaf corpse leaving my lips.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”
That was what I had whispered to Pop before I dropped his rose.
I wouldn’t be able to save Maximo either, and I refused to ever speak those words again.
Tears were sliding sorrowfully down my cheeks, hitting my pillow with tiny, delicate thuds.
I’m leaving tomorrow.
Chapter 14
Maximo
“I think you made the right decision, Maximo,” Elena Fanucci declared softly, putting her small, aging hand on top of mine.
The relief of having her approval, her blessing – though I hadn’t even known I needed it so badly – flooded me instantly. I felt years of inner conflict vaporizing as though I had never carried that weight at all.
“Would he have thought so?” I asked quietly, staring at the table now, thinking of Rafaele Fanucci in all of his intimidating renown.
“You know what I think, Maximo?” She said now, waiting for me to look up. “I think that your father was a good man. I think he was a good man who did some very bad things – and some very nice ones. But I think, even more, that you are not Rafaele. You are my Maximo. Il mio ragazzo. You can be whatever you want to be.”
She had no way of knowing that Natalia had said those exact words to me after my father’s funeral. Yet here was my mother, repeating them to me all of these years later.
You can be whatever you want to be.
It wasn’t so much déjà vu or fate as it was a calm feeling of being in the precise place at this moment in time that I was absolutely meant to be. I felt – for the first time ever – that I belonged in the reality which I was existing in.
I was Maximo Fanucci – the real Maximo Fanucci.
And it was okay.
“I’ll go to Natalia tomorrow morning. It’s only the second day since she buried Pop. I know she needs time. I’ll go to her tomorrow,” I said decisively, a new excitement rising up in my chest. I was going to have the life that I had always wanted.
I was going to have the life
that I always wanted.
Ma smiled at me then, nodding and patting my hand. “Yes, Maximo. Yes. And she will listen, because she loves you. As sure as the sun rises in the east...,” Ma trailed off, overcome with sentiment and bursting into happy tears.
I smiled back at her.
Natalia would listen, because Natalia did love me.
There was absolutely no doubt about that.
I heard Dario’s frantic breathing over the phone before he said one word.
“Hello? Dar?” Instantly came the panic.
“Get here now! If you want any chance of stopping her, get here now! Her taxi is coming, Max – ten minutes – that's what she said. Ten minutes! I didn’t think she’d actually leave – not like this and not so soon – but she won’t listen to me, Max – she's leaving – get here now!”
I was already moving after the first “Get here now!”. I said nothing to my mother, grabbed no coat – simply yanked my keys off the table and ran out the door at a full sprint. I was turning the key when Dario finished talking, and threw my phone in the passenger’s seat.
No. NO. I will not lose you again, Natalia.
Suddenly, having bought my own home seemed like the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my entire life. If I still lived with my mother, I could have run to the Angelone house by now.
What if you don’t make it? You might not make it. What if she won’t talk to you?
But she had to – she absolutely had to hear me out. That girl loved me – she loved me – and there was no reason for us to part again. Not anymore.
Block by block flew by and I thought of life without Natalia –
“Wanna beer, Pop?” Nic called from the kitchen.
I swished my bottle around a little, responding much louder than I meant to, due to my state of inebriation, “Nah - I’m still good!”