by Selena
What I said to Little Al is true, though. I don’t want to be an heir to this empire. But I want to be indispensable, and maybe I just proved that I am. I may not ever be a don, but maybe one day, I can be the consigliere to one. I may have come to them without experience, but I’ve proven myself to them, proven my loyalty, my protectiveness, my strength. After all, this is my family now, and no one fucks with my family.
This is where I belong. And what I did tonight shows what part I play in that family.
And best of all, there’s the little family of two that I’ve made with Eliza at home. That’s my reason now, the only one I need. I’ll always love my brothers, I’ll always miss my sister, and protect the Valenti name, but Eliza is what I live for. I can finally move on from the mistakes of my past and face a future more promising than I ever imagined. I have the kind of life I never dared to hope for. I have a wife I love and a job that recognizes my value, and a family that’s proud of me. And I’m alive for one more day. That’s all I can ask for.
Once, I thought a family was a liability, but now I see it for everything it offers, in all its complexity. Yes, it’s a liability, and it makes me vulnerable. It also gives me the strength to do what I need to do while keeping me grounded, making sure I don’t lose who I am despite the monstrous acts the job sometimes requires. When I started working for the Valentis, I thought it was easier to feel nothing than to feel pain, so that’s what I would do. It’s true, in a way. It is easier. But sometimes it’s worth it to feel the pain just to feel everything else that comes with it. After all, a man with no feeling is nothing but a monster in a suit.
Once, my sister said I’d see love differently if I felt it. Now I know she was right. If I’ve learned anything from loving Eliza, it’s that love is hard and sometimes painful, but it makes anything on earth worth it. It makes even one day with her worth risking it all. I hope Crystal got to feel that before she died. I hope it was worth it to her.
I know it is to me. Eliza helped me see that. She helped let go, give up control, and live in the moment, knowing that the next one is not guaranteed. This is the only moment we’re given, the only moment to tell my wife I love her, to show her I do. Instead of holding back and being selfish, I’ll love her with every bit of my heart, for every moment we’re given, and be grateful that she loves me back. That’s something worth dying for.
twenty-four
Eliza
I sit in the back of the car, clutching my purse in my lap and staring out at the city bathed in cool November sun. Every few minutes, I thumb open the bag’s closure and peek inside at the Glock nestled there, and my heart does a funny little flip. I glance up at the driver and my bodyguard, busy discussing the Yankees, before checking my phone to make sure King hasn’t checked in. He’ll get worried if I don’t answer within a reasonable timeframe, and that’s the last thing I need today.
We turn into a sketchy neighborhood, and I sink a little lower in my seat, acutely aware of how much our opulent town car stands out in this part of Manhattan. I’m glad I brought the bodyguard along and not just the driver. King doesn’t use the driver, since he’s the rare New Yorker who actually owns a car, but I’m glad he kept him on payroll for when I need to take… Let’s just call it an unauthorized outing.
And hey, I’m being safe. I brought a bodyguard.
We turn into an area of project houses in East Harlem, and the driver slows, glancing at the GPS on the dash. I’ve spent plenty of time in Manhattan, and while I know there are bad areas, we never go there. This street is slummy as fuck, and I’m hoping we’re lost, because that’s better than the alternative.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” I ask, glancing nervously at the sun as it sinks into a murky stew of smog in the west. Suddenly, this seems like a very bad idea.
“I’m afraid so,” the driver says. “I’ll stay with the car.”
My heart stutters erratically in my chest, and it’s not because this neighborhood is scary. What am I doing? What if I can’t go through with it?
But then I think of my husband going to work every day, facing the most dangerous men in New York, taking down the partner he should have been able to trust but who tried to get him killed, and then coming home to a wife who is still broken despite my best efforts to move on.
I take a deep breath and reach for the door. “I’m ready.”
My bodyguard gets out first, but I step in front of him, leading the way. After scanning the tall buildings of the Jefferson Housing project and rechecking the address on the sticky note where I scribbled it after secretly contacting King’s uncle with connections, I head for the doors. A couple Hispanic guys stand out front smoking cigarettes and watching us with calculating, suspicious gazes. I hurry inside and start up the stairs. I have to pull my shirt over my nose halfway because the smell of urine is so strong it brings tears to my eyes.
When we reach the fourth floor, we exit into the hallway. An old man lies against the wall, hopefully sleeping, though I don’t stick around to see if he’s breathing. I head for the door to the apartment and knock. I can hear loud music thumping from down the hall, and I have to knock a couple more times. Someone in the next apartment yells for us to shut the fuck up, though they don’t bother opening the door.
At last, the door opens a crack, and a bloodshot, unfocused eye blinks at us from inside. “Yeah?” a deep woman’s voice asks. I can just make out brown skin and frizzy cornrows in the dim lighting from within.
“I’m Eliza Pomponio,” I say, using my maiden name. “I’m looking for my mother. Is she here?”
“And who’s that?” the woman asks, her eye moving to my bodyguard.
“This is my friend,” I say.
“Nuh-uh,” she says. “That’s the DEA.”
“He’s not DEA,” I say. “He’s here to protect me.”
“You gonna need it around here,” she says. “A pretty little thing like you, shit. Won’t last an hour.”
“I just want to see my mom,” I say, my voice steady despite the trepidation growing inside me. “I haven’t seen her in ten years, and I heard she was living here. Her name’s Margaret, or Maggie, Pomponio.”
“Maggie, baby,” the woman calls behind her. “You got a kid?”
I hear a quiet voice speak, but I can’t make out the words.
“She says she don’t have a kid,” the woman tells us, looking me up and down with suspicion.
“I told you, I haven’t seen her in ten years,” I repeat. “I need to see her. Just this once. Then I’ll leave you alone, and I’ll never bother you again. Can you just get her to come to the door for one minute? Please?”
The woman sighs and steps back from the door, yelling that this isn’t her business, and she doesn’t want to deal with it. A minute later, another face appears for just a second, and then the door closes, and I hear the chain lock rattle, and then it opens fully. For the first time in ten years, I stand face to face with my mother. My abuser.
I wish I could say I hate her, or that when I see her, I feel nothing. That I could take out my gun and shoot her and walk away.
Instead, I stare at her, and I feel sad and sick and shocked.
“Come in,” she says quietly. “Your bodyguard can wait out here. There’s just a bunch of women in here, and most of them’s asleep.”
I nod to my guard, but he insists on checking the apartment before he’ll agree to stand outside and let me go in with her. When we step inside, it’s so dim I can barely make out the two figures lying on the floor in the living room, the carpet around them threadbare and stained, with holes from cigarette burns and who knows what else. One more woman lies sprawled on a sagging couch with the springs exposed.
Mom gestures for me to follow her into the kitchen. A cracked, plastic dish rack holds clean dishes, and the room itself is clean, though it’s literally falling apart. Strips of linoleum are missing, as well as half the ceiling, so you can see up to the floor of the next apartment and bits of insulation
hanging down. The counters are burned and stained and missing chunks of the Formica or whatever they used for the counters when this place was built.
My mother sits down at the table, which is in similar condition to the rest of the place.
“Mom, what are you doing here?” I ask, trying to keep the horror out of my voice.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
When I pictured this meeting, I thought I’d come in guns blazing. I thought I’d be so angry, that I’d punch her teeth out and put a bullet in her head for ruining me for the only person who’s ever loved me besides my father. But I can’t imagine anything I could do would punish her more than this.
Once, Mom was a mafia princess like me. She grew up rich, and she married a mafia king.
Or maybe she never grew up at all. Maybe that’s why she thought she could do whatever she wanted, and it would never come back on her. That she could run off and become an actress and everything would go her way, the way it always had.
But now, as we sit across a wobbly table from each other, I look at her full in the face for the first time. I have to admit that as bad as this place looks, it’s just a place. Just as they keep it clean even though it’s a shithole, good people can come out of the worst circumstances. People can come from nothing.
The opposite is also true. Bad people can come from every opportunity, every privilege. Someone can grow up rich, with everything handed to them, getting away with everything, and then marry a rich man who doesn’t watch them in the bathroom with their own kids. And they can end up like this. Her once lustrous chestnut hair hangs in thin strings from her head. Her clothes droop off her body, her shoulders so thin I can see knobs of bone sticking up against her shirt. Her cheeks are sunken, her teeth stained and broken, her eyes lifeless.
“Mom, what happened? I thought you went off to become an actress.”
“I did,” she says. “Just—give me a minute. I can’t believe this is real. Am I dreaming?”
“Not dreaming,” I say. “I came to talk about what happened when I was a kid.”
“Let me get a smoke,” she says, getting up and pulling open one drawer and then the next, muttering curses. At last, she comes back with a pack of cigarettes and sits down, lighting up with a shaking hand. She immediately coughs, a deep, wet, rattling cough. “You want one?”
“No, thanks,” I say, making a face before I can help it.
“That’s right,” she says. “Don’t want to stain those pretty teeth. Looks is all a woman has at your age. Gotta keep up appearances until you can be auctioned off to the highest bidder.”
“Mom,” I say, my voice hardening. “I’m already married.”
She coughs again, waving smoke away with one hand as she stares at me in the dim lighting of the kitchen. I can see track marks on her arms from whatever she’s shooting up. “Is that why you came?” she asks, her voice bitter, like I’m selfish for not coming to see how she is.
“Yes,” I say, anger building into a hard knot in my chest. She didn’t even ask about him, about the wedding that she didn’t attend.
“Well,” she says. “Congratulations.”
“I didn’t come for congratulations,” I say, my voice hard. “I don’t need anything from you, not even your best wishes.”
She snorts, then holds in a cough. “Don’t tell me you need money.”
“No,” I say. “I came to kill you. You ruined me, Mom. How could you do that to your own daughter? What kind of sick fuck does that?”
Her fingers tremble as she holds her cigarette, staring at me like she’s shocked that I’d bring it up, that I’d dare speak those things aloud. After all this time, she probably thought she’d never have to answer for what she did.
“I never wanted to marry your father,” she says, her voice trembling. “I wanted out, but he wouldn’t let me. My father wouldn’t, either. Women are just pawns to them, pretty playthings to use and sell off when they tire of them.”
“That’s your excuse?” I ask. “Your father used you the way you used me?”
She goes on speaking without acknowledging my words, sucking angrily at her cigarette every few sentences. “They just want to breed you like an animal and make more pretty playthings for them to use. And then once you’ve made them an heir and another piece of meat to auction off, they have no interest in you. Your usefulness is gone by twenty-five, and they don’t need you anymore. They go find a new little whore and leave you at home to raise their kids so they can use them to their advantage all over again.”
“Don’t you dare speak badly about my father to me,” I say, gripping the edge of the table so hard I think it’ll crumble. “He’s the only person in my life who did the right thing.”
She snorts smoke out both her nostrils. “Your father’s a monster, Eliza,” she says, and I remember that she’s the first person I ever heard call him that. “You really think that other family killed your brother? No, sweetheart. It was your own beloved father. He found out what Johnny’d been doin’ to you, and he killed his own son.”
“What he’d been doing?” I swallow hard, staring at her through the haze of smoke. I don’t want to believe her. If my father found out but thought it was my brother hurting me, not Mom, he might have killed him. But she’s lying. I know she is. Dad would have gotten me help. And my brother’s death was too hard on Mom, and that’s why she left.
Or maybe she left because she was afraid he’d talked before he died.
“That’s why you left, wasn’t it?” I ask. “Not to protect me, not because you loved me but couldn’t stop and you wanted to keep me from what you were doing to me. You weren’t even conflicted about it, were you, Mom? Are you even sorry?”
“You look like you’re doing fine,” she says. “Come in here looking all pretty. Expensive clothes. That handbag probably cost a year’s rent in a place like this. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you, Eliza? Would you rather I’d taken you with me?”
“No,” I say, horrified at the thought. I don’t even want to imagine what I’d have become by now if she’d taken me from Dad. But he’d never have let her. He might have let her leave him, not gone after her like most mafia men would. But if she’d taken his daughter? He would have hunted her to the ends of the earth.
“Then I did a good thing by you,” she says. “You’ll see soon enough. Marriage takes the best years of your life and leaves you with nothing. You’re too young to believe me, but you will.”
“You’re wrong,” I say quietly. My voice is firm, though. Her words played on a loop in my childhood, cursing marriage and men and my father. I didn’t even realize how much of my objection to marriage came from her until now. She’s the one who told me over and over, when I was way too young to understand, that marriage was a trap, a curse, a pit of quicksand to be avoided at all cost. As she splattered my little plastic plate with dinner, she cursed my father for not being home, cursed her life, her marriage, and the institution in general. Somewhere along the way, my impressionable little kid brain internalized it.
But marriage isn’t a trap. Not for me. For me, it’s the net that caught me on the way down when I was falling off the tightrope she put me on all those years ago. It’s a support system, someone who will always be there for me because he has no choice, either. That’s not a bad thing, though. It means he’ll work harder than anyone else ever would because we know we have to make it work. Even when it’s hard, we are there for each other, making the other grow, making ourselves better for the other. Marriage means someone who tries to understand me when I’m irrational, to love me even in my most unworthy moments. It means learning to think of someone else’s needs, to stop being selfish and running from reality.
My husband didn’t ruin me. He threw me a lifeline, and now he’s slowly saving me, pulling me from the quicksand she pushed me into when I was too young to understand what it was, too young to take a step and get out. Her toxic beliefs are hardwired into my brain, screwing me up for life. That’s t
he curse. Not marriage.
“You buy into it, don’t you?” she muses, watching me. “All your father’s lies. The Life. I’m too smart for that. I wasn’t going to be part of it. They’re all sick bastards, every one of them. I wanted my own life.”
“And it looks like you fucking found it.”
We stare at each other across the table for a long minute. Mom gets up to get an ashtray and crushes out her cigarette before sitting back down.
“Your father’s the monster,” she says again, a familiar refrain from my childhood. “All of them are. The way they treat us. We’re nothing but a conquest, some dumb thing to stroke their ego and their dick. You think you won’t wind up that way, but mark my words, as soon as you’ve served your purpose, that new husband of yours will trade you in for a younger model. See, once you have kids, you’re not so tight anymore, and he’ll want a young one again so he can show his prowess, make him feel powerful when she worships him, make the other men admire how many sluts he can get to spread their legs for him.”
“Not every man is like that,” I say. “And not every woman does what you did when a guy cheats on her. I’m sorry Dad was unfaithful, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that you hurt me.”
“Don’t judge me,” she snaps. “Once you see what you’d do to get his attention, how you lose your mind sitting home night after night, knowing you have nothing to look forward to for the rest of your life, living on nothing but the fuel of your own rage while some teenage whore at one of his clubs gets his affection, the gifts, everything you once got. You’ll convince yourself that maybe it’s because he didn’t get to pick you, that it was all chosen for him. That if he’d gotten to choose for himself, he would have chosen her. Everyone deserves love, after all.”
I shiver, remembering King’s words.
Mom laughs. “You already know it’s true. You’ll be a fool once or twice, but pretty soon you’ll see the truth. He doesn’t love the first one or the fortieth. He just keeps shoving his dick into more of them in desperation to fill the empty cavern inside him where his heart should be. He can’t love those girls any more than he loves you. He can’t love anyone. That’s what the mafia does to you. It makes men monsters, and women into empty shells.”
