by CD Reiss
he closet was dark as sin and hot as hell. I’d been there an hour and had just gotten through to Margie five minutes before.
“He needs a heart,” Margie said. “That’s all there is to it. He’s got a shredded valve, and there’s not enough blood in the world to make up for the leaking.”
“We’re really going to lose him.” I huddled in the corner. My eyes had gotten used to the light from under the door. Two wire hangers hung above me, and under me were dust bunnies and nylon carpet.
“Change the subject,” Margie said. “I can’t talk about this anymore. It’s making me want to punch someone.” She entered a crowded space. I heard voices and a whoosh of white noise. “You’re alive. That’s the good news. Everyone’s happy, but you ducked out without saying a word, and they’re scared you’re going to do something stupid. Or disappear again. Or die like you mean it.”
“I want to.” That was the wrong thing to say. I was heartbroken, but Margie was on the front lines of real tragedy. “Not really,” I said quickly. “I’m sorry, I’m being—”
“Please. Be dramatic. Talk about small things that seem big. Is he getting a divorce or what?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, hugging my bare knees. “He can get an annulment.”
“And make his kid a bastard? Sure. Good thinking.”
“Maybe she’ll divorce him?”
“She waited for him a long time,” Margie said.
“I’ll talk to her. I’ll explain that he’s different. Maybe I can convince her to leave him, because he won’t do it. Out of guilt or shame or some kind of feeling of responsibility.” I was grasping for control, looking for something I could do, some action I could take to bring his body and soul back to me. “Maybe she’ll tell him to fuck off if she knows he loves me. If I tell her.”
“Mom wants to talk to you.”
“Can I not?”
But she never answered.
“Theresa?” That voice. So flat and patrician. Jonathan called it haute voix.
“Mom.”
She didn’t say anything, but she sounded wet. I heard a half a breath and a ladylike sniff. Mom didn’t cry, so she tried to hide her hitched breaths and clear the mucous out of her throat with a rattle instead of a snuffle. I’d never heard much emotion from her, but what I was barely hearing was a soft sob from most people. For my mother, it was blubbering.
I could have been mistaken, confusing tears with allergies, until she spoke through lungs that wouldn’t stay still and a nose full of snot.
“I thought I was losing two in one day.”
“I’m sorry, I… we had to disappear,” I said.
“You didn’t see us on the way out today, and I was scared you were leaving again. Theresa, my baby. Don’t… please don’t do this.”
“Do what, Mom? I’m back. I’m here.”
“I wanted you. Did you know? You and your brother surprised me, but you were my special gifts.” She broke down into sniffles and hics.
I was frozen. I didn’t know how to react. I’d never heard this sappy story of her feelings about her last two children. “Mom…”
“And I’m losing the two of you.”
I touched my St. Christopher medal to protect against hating myself for what I’d done. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
Why did I say that? Would I have to stick to it? Was I cursing any chance I had of working things out with Antonio? I wasn’t ready to make that bargain. Not yet. Other deals with the universe were still pending, but this was no time to take it back.
“Where are you?” said a voice that wasn’t Mom’s. The new voice was bent with rage at the same time it was lilting like a singsong meant for a child’s ears. Only my sister Sheila could do that.
I opened my mouth to tell her then realized I didn’t really know.
“Where are you?” Sheila growled and sang.
On a closet floor, feeling like an ass for getting upset over a man when my whole family is falling apart. “I’m fine,” was the only lie I could articulate.
“Oh, bully for you. Really? Did you do this on purpose?”
“Do what?”
“Fall off the face of the earth? Let us all think you were dead?” Her phrases made hairpin turns around razorblades.
I wanted to tell the truth, spill everything. I was sure I’d get lacerated on a lie. “Sheila, I can’t answer that.”
“Oh, for the love of fuck, how could you? How could you do that to people who love you?”
She said everything I’d feared hearing when I came back, but I thought it would come from Margie or Mom. Instead it was Sheila, who had always had too many children to focus on me.
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you,” I said. “I’ve been a piece of furniture in this family my whole life. I haven’t asked any of you for a thing, and I promise you, I never will.”
It was the perfect time to hang up, but I couldn’t. I’d done enough walking away.
“Don’t pull that,” she growled. No one got away with anything as far as Sheila was concerned. “Any one of us would have jumped in front of a bullet for you.”
I was a pathetic woman crouched in a dark closet, but when she said that, and I heard the love behind her anger, I felt worthy in a way I hadn’t ever before.
“Maybe I didn’t want you to,” I said. “And I promise you the whole situation is more complicated than I can explain over the phone.”
“I’m so pissed off, I can’t even swallow.” But she wasn’t. She’d said her piece, and she was on her way down from her rage high.
“Well, get used to it. I’m not a piece of furniture anymore.”
“You were always the one we could count on to not change.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Not for that. The other stuff, yeah. I’m still mad. When are you coming?”
“Soon,” I said, lying again. It was possible I could be with my family some time before my brother’s funeral, but my own funeral was the likeliest event.
“I’m going to corner you, and you’re going to talk to me.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Good.” She seemed fully calmed. “I have to go.”
She hung up. I dropped the phone as if it had turned into lead.
I stayed in the dark, hunched over and paralyzed with conflicting emotions. The shower turned on. I waited for Antonio to finish. Then waited a few minutes more before I couldn’t wait another second. I opened the door and padded into the living room. The kitchen island separated the two rooms, and Antonio stood under the island lamps, hair still wet, cigarette dangling from his lips, with the guts of his gun all over the counter. He clicked pieces together, snap clap snap.
His hands stopped moving when he saw me. I’d seen him magnificently tired, exhaustion making him look more feral and beautiful, but in that cone of light, he looked as if he’d been unzipped and emptied.
“Hi,” I said.
“Buona sera.” He slapped the last piece into the pistol. “I’ve been trying to find the right words to tell you. I keep choosing then unchoosing.”
I’m a wreck, everything is fucked up, I love you, I can’t have you. You could get shot any minute, my brother is dying, and I can’t see him. I feel like a half-played game of Jenga. Pieces of me keep getting pulled away and added to the load.
“I don’t want to talk,” I said.
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t even look at me in that way that made me feel eaten alive. He just put his gun down carefully and held out his hand. I took it, and he led me to the couch. He lay flat, and I crawled on top of him, lying thigh to thigh, cheek to chest. When he put his arm around my back, the weight of it secured me in place, pressed the anxiety from my ribs, and I slept with his heartbeat in my ear.
nineteen.
theresa
dreamed I was chasing something through the halls of WDE, but I didn’t know what. I only knew I wanted it very badly. My father stood behind Arnie Sanderson’s wooden desk
, knocking on it while saying it’s in here it’s in here. His voice wasn’t his voice but a hive of bees in his throat.
I woke with a stiff neck to Antonio’s cheap burner phone buzzing.
“Be still,” whispered Antonio when I tried to raise my head. He wiggled until he got his phone out of his pocket. “Pronto?”
I opened my eyes and rested on him, letting my vision clear. How long had we slept? Longer than I thought I could. The light outside was dull grey, and the birds made a racket. Zo was on the other end. I heard his choppy Italian. I wondered if Antonio’s voice would still sound like music if I could understand what he was saying. Maybe if we got out of this and made a life, I’d learn Italian and find out the answer, or maybe I’d just go on loving the way he sounded, listening to what he was feeling instead of what he was saying.
He tapped his thumb to two of his fingers, making a list for Zo. He swallowed and added a third thing. Zo laughed. Antonio did not.
“Bene. A dopo. He tapped off.
I got up, and he sat on the edge of the couch.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“What did Zo want?”
“Marching orders. I don’t know what they did without me for two days.”
“I want to see Jonathan,” I said.
His silence was too heavy. Too obvious.
“You can pick the time if we have other things to do first. Or…”
I realized he had a set of concerns he wasn’t sharing, and the look on his face told me he wasn’t just going to tell me what he was thinking. He was calculating his next move.
“Say it, Antonio. What are you going to do when Zo gets here?”
“I need you to wait for my call before you leave for the hospital,” he said. “I’ll send Otto or come myself.”
Ah. That was it.
“We need to stay together,” I said.
I knew he wouldn’t agree. I knew my demand was the first salvo in a series of shots meant to keep us together, and I knew there would be a fight. When he just smiled at me as if I’d not alarmed him but charmed him, I knew something was wrong.
A car pulled up outside.
“That’s Zo,” Antonio said without even looking out the window.
Antonio leaned into me. I wasn’t supposed to touch him. I was supposed to shun his body, but I already failed when I slept on top of him and let the pace of his breathing soothe me to sleep. So there was no harm in letting him put his arms around me. I could pretend nothing had changed. Valentina was dead, and she’d stayed gentle forever. A memory of some past time, some past love of a man who didn’t exist anymore. I let him kiss my neck because she was gone and he was mine alone.
The hug lasted two seconds before Zo knocked.
Antonio peeked out the window and opened the door immediately.
Zo stood there with a white plastic bag. “Good morning.”
“Buon giorno,” Antonio replied, taking the bag and giving it to me. “Your wish for a toothbrush has been granted.”
“Lorenzo, I think I love you.” I hugged him hard.
He patted my back noncommittally, and when I looked at Antonio, I knew why.
“I’m going to give these roses a rest,” I said and dashed to the bathroom to run the brush over my teeth.
There was still glass all over the floor. I stepped carefully onto the overturned rug.
“I’ll have to pay your sister for the window,” Antonio said as he closed the door behind him.
I ripped open the packaging on two toothbrushes. “Better do it before she sends a collections agency for you. Oh, he got the cinnamon flavor. I like that.” I handed him the blue brush and loaded it.
“I want you to consider something,” he said before putting the toothbrush in his mouth.
I’d never seen him do a simple cosmetic chore. He’d always been this effortlessly perfect man. Invulnerable. Capable. He could solve anything. Even during the ridiculous ritual of tooth-brushing, he looked as though nothing could touch him. I think I stared at him too long, brushing the enamel off my teeth.
He spit. I spit. Like normal, whole people, neither of whom was committed to anyone else. I got that nagging feeling of incompleteness, and I chased it away when I wiped my mouth. I had no time to feel sorry for myself.
“What am I considering?” I took the brushes and wrapped them back in the plastic bag.
“Staying here for a few hours. Maybe until tonight.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ll have a TV sent. Books. Anything you want. And someone will come to watch you.”
My initial reaction was rage, then insult, then a stew of annoyance, sadness, dismissal, and disgust. I ran my fingers through my hair, making sure the mirror showed nothing of my messy emotions and all the neat and proper thoughtfulness I wanted to project. He caught my stare in the mirror, and I smiled at him.
“Well?” he said. “I won’t be too long. I can take care of this today. In and out. Easy. Then I’m going to get Valentina and send her home.”
“What about your son?”
“I won’t turn my back on him, but he’s not safe here.”
“He might need a father.” I kept my face completely straight when Antonio broke our gaze. I wasn’t even half done. “And I mean, you know, one who’s alive. One who can teach him to stay out of trouble in Naples.”
“Like my father did? I’d do more harm to that child than you know.”
“You’re wrong, but you’ll never know if you’re dead. And her? Well, it’s going to have zero net impact on her life if you die. She goes home and picks up where she left off. But me? Selfish me? I get to sit here and wait to hear you got killed.” I turned from the mirror and looked at him. “I know you’re inaccessible, maybe forever. I know I’m all wrong in the head to think I need you, but I’ll never feel right without you. So I’m going with you. If you die, I die. If there’s a miracle and you live, then fine. You take your wife and your family, and you move on. But me? Sit here and have my life preserved in a jar while you do this? So I can what? Be destroyed when the news comes that they killed you?”
“I have nothing if you’re hurt.”
“You have a wife and a family. Do you not get it? You have something to lose.”
He balled his hands into fists and held them up. “You make me fucking crazy.”
I pressed my lips together. I had to consider if I was simply irked that Valentina was probably going to enjoy his company today while I was not. Or was I annoyed at having to put off a trip to Jonathan? We were on our way out of the bathroom before I realized he’d said something I’d missed. He was at the bedroom door when I stopped.
“Antonio.”
He turned, hand on the doorframe, pointer finger bent just so in a way that made me want to put it in my mouth. “Yes?”
“You said you were going to do something quick before you see Valentina.”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“Do you need the day’s itinerary every day? Do we need to hire a secretary?”
Oh, no. That wouldn’t do. Not at all. We’d come too far together for defensive nonsense.
“Today. I need your itinerary today,” I said.
“I am not going back to my wife, if that’s what you’re worried about. I may see her for practical matters but—”
“Do not treat me like a toy.”
“Theresa,” he said softly, “let me take care of business.”
“No. Not when I don’t know how far you can go without getting shot at. Not when Otto might come back and tell me you’re dead. I won’t get in the way, but I won’t be left behind.”
He held up his hands in surrender. “I tell you what. Wait for Otto. He’ll take you to your brother. We meet up after.”
“After what?”
He shook his head just a little and strode out to the living area where Zo waited.
“I’m not some bored housewife you have to keep occupied.”
He said som
ething to Zo in Italian. A command, because I’d never seen one of his men do anything other than exactly what they were told.
Zo reached into his back pocket. I must have been moved by some form of trust, because my attention wavered enough for me to wonder what Zo had, what time it was, if we were going to get picked up by the Sicilians before we even got out the door, then I was airborne.
“What—?”
Antonio had slung me over his shoulder and carried me into the open kitchen. I fought him tooth and nail, though I didn’t know why. I only knew he was forcing me onto the counter, trying to get control of my left wrist.
“Calm down!”
I clawed his face.
“Spin, really…” Zo’s voice drifted off when the handcuff was slapped on my wrist.
“Little help here, Lorenzo!” Antonio cried.
I kicked Antonio, and he moved about three inches before wrapping his arm around me. I wiggled and wrenched myself away, but he was strong and vicious, slapping the other cuff around the drawer handle. I was trapped.
Zo held up his hands, muttering, as if he wanted nothing to do with anything about anything.
Antonio stepped back, breathing heavily. “You are a piece of work, woman.”
“Where are you going?” I pointed at the stove. “I’m going to burn this house down if you don’t tell me right now.”
He gathered his gun. “I am the boss, Theresa. I go where I need to, when I need to. If I tell you, it’s not for your approval. It’s for your information.”
He glanced at Lorenzo then turned back to me as he stuck his gun in his waistband. Of course, if he didn’t tell me, it would look as if he had to hide things from his woman. I’d put him in a position.
“I’m going to meet Donna Maria Carloni. Right now,” Antonio said. “I need to clear it up. I need to tell her I was already married and show her the trouble I saved her. Present it like a favor. It’s easily done, and this all gets done.”
“And what if it’s your territory she really wants?” I yanked against the drawer. It opened but didn’t come out. “You’re delivering yourself into her hands. She kills you, and she gets it? Is that right? It’s as good as a marriage, but she doesn’t have to share.”
“If she wanted my territory so badly, she would have done it already.”
