by CD Reiss
A shot of heat burns through me and rests in my core. He said it casually, fully expecting me to claim the opposite side of the house from him, and yet I feel like he knew exactly what kind of thoughts entered my head.
Sharing a bed with the king.
Every moment of intimacy we’ve shared flashes through my mind like an old film reel. Pressed against the pool with a kiss. Held down and spanked raw. Bent over the table as he mouths a description of what, when, and how he’s going to take me.
He’d do those things to me.
All I have to do is let him.
He says nothing. I say nothing.
It’s time to put some more space between us so I can think. Time to forget everything that happened on the way here. Time to dig out the Santino-shaped barb buried in my skin. I take my bag and haul it to the opposite side of the house. He gets in front to lead me up the stairs, to a set of double doors and swings them open.
The room is like a spa—carefully luxurious, piled high with books and vibrant green houseplants, the sun pours in and the Mediterranean is just past a line of trees.
I turn to him. He puts the bag down and places his hands in his pockets. He looks pretty pleased with himself.
“Thank you,” I say.
“In Italiano, per favore.”
He’s not really saying please.
“Grat-zee,” I say with a red-blooded, stars-and-stripes American accent that only sounds rude because I know better. “Grazie,” I say properly before he reacts, then add, “ti apprezzo che tu…I think.”
I think I’m saying it right. His laugh tells me I’m not, but he lets it slide.
“I’ll see you downstairs,” he says slowly in Italian, and I nod my understanding.
When he leaves, he closes the double doors behind him, and I’m alone.
Stripping off my travel clothes, I put on a silky soft robe left hanging in the closet and recline on the patio outside my room—one of many patios that stretch across the back of the house. Between the house and the beach sits a yard dotted with white marble statues, a rose garden, and a pool that’s even bigger than the one at home.
Deciding not to think too hard about the word home and what house I associate with it, I stretch out on the rattan chaise lounge and nap in the salty air.
It’s the best nap I’ve ever had, because I awake at night, hungry and thirsty. I pad downstairs in my bare feet to find a tray of dinner, and a handwritten note in Italian.
* * *
Little Violet,
I’m out making plans for tomorrow.
Wait up for me.
Santino
* * *
Of all the times he’s left me eating alone, this is the only time he’s asked me to wait for him, and I try. I really do. After eating, I sit outside, turn on the news, find it in English, still get bored, turn off the news. I look in the cabinets and thumb through the books. It’s not too long before I go back upstairs, where the Mediterranean Sea lulls me to sleep yet again.
26
VIOLETTA
At sunrise, I’m fully refreshed and ready to explore.
How do I convince Santino to let us stay here forever? His house, for all its beauty, is nothing compared to this.
The scent of espresso from below lures me downstairs. I don’t even bother getting dressed. Santino greets me on the terrace. He’s on the phone again, but points to a plate set aside for me. Croissants and cappuccino.
I pick at the croissant while he talks and feel his eyes burning through me. A quick glance down tells me my robe isn’t giving me enough coverage, and it’s a quick reminder of what brought me here to paradise.
“Buon giorno, splendore.” Santino smiles at me and puts down his phone. To his credit, he doesn’t gawk or look disappointed I’m covered up.
“Buon giorno,” I say. Hoping to get enough credit toward speaking Italian to continue the conversation in English. No such luck.
“We will make a stop and then I’ll take you to Pompeii.”
I understand him perfectly, but putting together sentences this whole trip is going to suck away all the fun.
“Bella?”
“Bellisimo,” he corrects with an overstatement I’ll accept. I’ve never been to Pompeii—at least not as an adult capable of understanding its tragic history.
“I will get dressed,” I say in Italian and run upstairs before he can correct the conjugation.
I settle on a yellow sundress and strappy sandals, something comfortable and adorable and also respectful enough to tread on sacred grounds. And, I remind myself as I trot downstairs where he waits, respectable enough for a mob boss wife.
These are weird things to tell myself, but hasn’t that been the summation of my entire summer thus far?
We stop outside an apartment building on a narrow cobblestone street in a neglected neighborhood. The street is pocked with beehive shapes of missing stones. Steel grates are rolled down and padlocked, stronger-looking than the stone walls that are split with cracks older than the pasted layers of curling paper bills. There’s music and tires screeching and motors running everywhere and nowhere.
Santino parks with a touch of reverence and as the roof motor churns the car closed, doesn’t look anywhere but at the graffiti-covered apartment building sitting two feet from the curb.
“This is my home.” He shuts off the engine. “Where I grew up.”
It’s an entire life away from where he lives now. A whole other universe. Did I live in a place like this? Were my childhood memories colored with the naïve shades of a child, not knowing any better? Did we live close by? Did Santino know my father when he was just a child himself?
And during all this, where was I? Did I walk this street behind my mother like a duckling? Had Rosetta and I played here, with him? Close to him? Had we been breathing the same air for my first five years?
I don’t want to know. I just want to have a nice time.
I appreciate Santino’s lack of answers more than ever.
He opens the door for me and takes my hand, leading me to the building’s entrance. His eyes are everywhere, as if danger lurks on the rooftops or hangs on the laundry lines. He knocks warily, a far cry from his usual authority, and looks up at the windows across the street.
“What’s wrong?” I ask after a pause to translate two words in my head.
“My best friend Dami lived up there.” He points to a window on the second floor with worn curtains flapping in the wind. “He worked at his father’s fruit cart.” He points to an empty spot on the street. “He used to throw oranges at me. The little ones. When they got soft or moldy, he’d throw them up to the second floor. If they stained the sheets my aunt just washed, she’d hit me with her wooden spoon.”
The smile on his face is so strange as he recounts this memory of putrid citrus and beatings for a thing he didn’t do. He loves carrying the nostalgia and longing as if he hasn’t escaped the filth of the jungle at all, but been thrown to lions with clean fur and golden teeth.
“I’m surprised you let him get away with it.”
He laughs, big and open. “No, I broke a bottle and tucked a piece—where it curves at the bottom—right here between my fingers, with the sharp point out. Then I punched him in the mouth.”
“What did he do?” I gasp.
“Got stitches.” Santino shrugs. “We were still friends. Is that what you’re asking?”
The Average Joes I tended to date always managed to confuse me, but none of them could baffle me like the man I married.
I didn’t have a chance to press him when the door opens, revealing a woman in her fifties with long, dark hair streaked with silver in the front, and though I expect to see the cliché Italian Zia with a black shawl and worn out apron, she’s not that at all. She wears jeans and a red cardigan printed with birds, flip-flops with blue rhinestones, and a carefully arranged bosom meant to suggest, not reveal.
“Santi!” she cries, arms thrown wide. “Santi, it’s you!”
They double kiss with her hands on his shoulders, then she pulls him into a fulsome embrace, and I realize this is the first time I’ve seen anyone offer him love without tension or veneration.
“Zia Paola,” he says when they part. “I want you to meet Violetta. My wife.”
“Hi,” I say, holding up my hand in a nervous wave, but Paola’s having none of that. She takes me by the forearms and looks in my eyes as she slides her hands down to take mine.
“You’re Emilio’s.”
I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out, not because I’d have to do the work of replying in Italian, but because I didn’t expect this woman to know anything about me.
“You have his eyes,” she continues.
“Let’s go inside, no?” Santino says before I can tell her that I’m sure she’s right, but I barely knew the guy.
“Certo!” she says, stepping aside so we can enter the cool, dark foyer. She leads us up the stairs to the first floor, and through the open door to an apartment, and I realize I’m nakedly disrespectful; meeting my husband’s family without a gift or flowers or anything.
Paola sits us at the kitchen table, asking us if we’d like espresso. Santino says yes, and Paola sets about making it as she asks about life in the States. The window over the sink overlooks a wide shaft. Being on the second floor means the room gets almost no light. Even the living room with its tufted velvet with worn pile at the seat, isn’t getting much sun.
When I look back at Santino, he’s watching his aunt with his hands in his lap, knees together, like a ten-year-old who doesn’t want to take up more space than necessary.
Who the actual fuck is this man? He usually sits as if he’s trying to dominate the chair.
Paola puts cookies on the table as the coffee perks. Their conversation revolves around a lot of familial inside jokes I don’t get and references I’m too new to understand. My Italian lessons with Santino helped jog a lot for me, but I eventually get a little lost and my ears get tired.
“Violetta.” Paola sits and puts the little espresso cup in front of me. It’s plain white with little blue flowers that match the saucer.
“Grazie.” I take the curl of lemon she’s placed at the rim. Santino puts a chocolate-tipped biscotti on his saucer.
“How’s Mammà?” Santino asks, rubbing the lemon around the edge of the cup.
“Same.” Paola makes a pfft sound and waves dismissively. “Dying every day.”
I snap my mouth shut before I can cry what?
“My sister,” Paola says. “Santi’s mother? Been dying of something since she was thirteen. Right after—”
“Paola is Gia’s mother,” Santino interrupts.
“Oh,” I say. “Gia’s such a nice person. She’s doing really well in the US.”
“She is?” Paola takes my hand across the table and squeezes it.
“If you count that she’s smiling all the time, and she was so kind to me when…”
I drift off before I say something I’ll regret.
“Thank you for telling me,” Paola says, taking her hand back.
“I tell you every day,” Santino objects, but his aunt’s not impressed. She puts her cup down as if remembering something.
“I have something for you.” She gets up and goes into the other room, calling back. “It’s your mother-in-law’s. I’ve been saving it for…quanto tempo?” Her voice gets farther away.
“Your mother had you at thirteen?”
Santi shrugs, not interested in talking about it.
“Am I going to meet her?”
“Paola raised me. You want something else?”
Well, yeah. I want a lot of things, but the way Santino’s sitting—like a man who’s come home to the comfort of the boy’s rules—tells me that his aunt’s love long ago trumped his mother’s DNA.
Which brings to mind a man he’s never mentioned—his father. The son of a thirteen-year-old mother has a father with a lot to answer for.
“Trovata!” Paola cries in victory, scuttling back into the kitchen before I can pry where Santino doesn’t want me to. “It was where I left it. Ovviamente.”
She places a brooch on the table between us, facing me. The carved cameo ringed in 18K gold is a standard for married Neapolitan women. My zia has a traditional lady’s profile carved in white on a red corniola. This one is different. Three women dance on a dark brown sardonica shell base. Their dresses are gauze and every strand of hair has been carefully rendered.
“It’s gorgeous,” I say, picking it up. “I’ve never seen one like this. Are they the three graces?”
After another pfft, she explains, “Men carve what they desire when they can’t picture their own fear.” She shoots a look to her nephew, who shrugs her off. “Three Graces. Beauty, Friendship, and Cheer, because they don’t want to think of the three Fates taking their power or three Furies coming for them.”
“Dio, Zia Paola,” Santino sighs. “Not today with the women’s power talk, eh?”
“Hush, Santi,” she hisses, and shockingly, he hushes, and she turns back to me. “The Fates spin life, measure it, and cut it.”
She makes a scissor out of two fingers and snips the air. Death.
“And the Furies?” I ask.
“Anger,” she points to one of the carved ladies, who doesn’t look angry at all, then moves to the one on the other end. “Jealousy.” Her finger lands on the center figure. “Destruction.” Her passion for the story is riveting.
“Oh,” I exclaim with delight. “I like that. What are their names?”
I’ve already decided they’re my favorite.
“Alecto. Megaera. Tisiphone. Born of blood and beauty. You don’t speak of them or they’ll rise from the underworld to punish the sins of men.”
“Then why do you keep talking?” Santino asks, immune to her intensity.
Paola ignores him in a way I’m sure I’ll never be able to, and slips the cameo into my hand, closing my fingers around it.
“This is yours now.”
“Tha…Grazie.”
“Put it away,” Santino says after draining his cup, “before she summons them.”
Paola literally slaps him in the back of the head, and they laugh.
27
VIOLETTA
An hour later, we’re back on the street. The sun has crept closer to the center of the sky, the shadows have backed off, and the crowd’s gotten thicker.
“You didn’t tell me I was meeting your family!” I scold Santino after Paola’s done kissing us goodbye and has closed the door.
“You would have fretted over it.” He shrugs. “It was better this way.”
“I do not fret.”
He gives me a look that wonders if I’m lying to myself or just him, but his attention is distracted by a fruit cart that pulls into the street. He transforms into an entirely too tall boy.
“Oranges?”
Nice for him to ask, but he’s already walking toward the cart.
“I’d love some.” I answer honestly, knowing I’d say yes even if I didn’t want any. His behavior in his zia’s home clearly has my insides twisted.
He asks the pretty lady selling the fruit a few questions, then looks to me.
“You like tarocco?”
I remember blood oranges from my earliest years. When I went to my father’s grocery store, I used to steal them and eat them under the counter. I always forgot to pick up the peels, so I always got caught eating the inventory.
Daddy never got mad, and now I know why. He was never really in the grocery store business.
“I love them.”
Santino buys a bag and hands them to me. As he turns to get change from the vendor, a guy on a moped zips close, holds out his arm, and slaps my ass. Santino must have seen them coming, because a split second before he could continue driving away, he yanks the guy off the moped, throws him onto the cobblestone, and pulls him up by the collar like a doll.
“Did you just slap my ass
?”
“No!” Moped Guy struggles to get up, but Santino’s hold is firm. “No!”
“Are you sure?”
Santino slaps him in the face, and I’m frozen with the ease of the violence.
“I’m not gay!” Even in this position, the guy is so offended at the implication he makes a damning admission, pointing at me. “I grabbed hers!”
“Her ass?”
“Yeah. Hers.”
Crowds clear out around us, like this is business as usual and they have no desire to get involved.
“With which hand?”
Incredulous, Moped Guy holds up his right hand. Santino throws him to the ground and drops hard, putting his knee on the guy’s chest and his hand on his throat.
“That’s my ass,” Santino says. “Mine.”
Moped Guy flails but it’s useless.
“This hand has to go.” He points to a big man who’s been leaning on the wall. “You. One hundred euro to hold him down.”
“No! Please!” Moped Guy starts screaming.
Big Man looks up and down the street, then to the pretty lady selling fruit before he strides over.
I’m horrified, haunted with flashbacks of the day I was chased down, but also very weirdly turned on. His whole body throbs in the sunlight as he exerts his power and I am apparently a very broken woman.
“Santino,” I say. “It’s not that big a deal.”
“Stay there, Forzetta.”
Santino slides away, but Moped Guy doesn’t have a chance to get away. Big Man’s done this before. When he has room, he replaces Santino’s knee to the chest with his own and—per my husband’s instruction, puts the other knee on the wrist that grabbed my ass. The whole thing would look sexual if it wasn’t for the look of terror on Moped Guy’s face.
Without taking too long to think about it, Santino brings his bootheel down on the offending hand, smashing it with a crunch followed by high-pitched screams.
“Grazie,” Santino says to Big Man, holding out his hand to help him up, then takes out his wallet. “What’s your name?”
