by Jc Emery
I tell her everything right down to the most awful truth of all—when I told Officer Davis where he could find Michael, and how Tony had obviously overheard. I may not have known what giving Officer Davis Angelo Fortino's name would do, but it doesn't matter. My father and Uncle Emilio are in custody. My brother has to have been treated for his gunshot wound, but he’s in custody, too, I guess. My biggest problem, however, is Tony. He isn't just angry with me; he's disowned me. Tony having overheard me talking to Officer Davis is beyond bad.
Gloria takes a few moments to let it all settle in. She looks half set to strangle me and half set to walk out of the room as though she’s never heard anything. There’s nothing more I can hope for—that much I know.
"Oh, God," Gloria finally says. She shakes her head and wraps her arms around her torso. A minute or two passes before she speaks again. "Some things have to happen, Alex. None of it is going to make any sense, and I can't explain." She’s imploring me with her eyes, willing me to understand. But I don't.
"You're scaring me," I whisper, tears wetting my cheeks. She clears her throat, walks to me, and hugs me to her chest. I fight back the flood of tears that I don’t think will never end.
"And you're scaring me, Alexandra. There is only one thing I have ever told you not to do. One thing that I was wholly serious about, just one thing, Alex—and you did it anyway. You spoke to someone outside of the family about family business." I deserve her judgment. She deserves this moment to scold me for my epically poor behavior, but her words make my blood boil.
"I thought I was protecting my brother," I defend, the words coming out in a frenzied, jumbled combination of Italian and English, which happens regularly when I’m upset.
"There is nothing further you can do, sweetheart. You must trust me. I'll take care of this. Can you do that?" I nod. It’s not too much for her to ask. “Go back to the waiting room, miele. Wait for me. Do not go anywhere.”
“Is Michael here?” I blurt out, distracted. I don’t want to go to the waiting room if I have a chance to see my brother.
“It’s too dangerous,” she says. Her mouth turns down in apology. I start to object, but she shakes her head. “I’m sorry, but no. This is non-negotiable.” Everything, it seems, is too dangerous now. I walk down the hall like I’ve been instructed. I keep my eyes on watch for any familiar faces. Down the hallway, just after the turn down the other hallway that leads back to Tony's room, stands Officer Davis and Agent Wilks. I approach silently, intent on listening to their faint conversation as I pass.
"The girl, she gave up the location," Officer Davis says, pride evident in his smug voice. My stomach churns at the sound of it.
"Did she know what she was doing?" Agent Wilks asks.
"No. She's seen me at her father's house a few times. She thinks I'm on the take." Davis claps Wilks on the shoulder and walks away. Agent Wilks stands in the hallway a moment before a large smile paints his face and he walks down the hall after Officer Davis. I wait until they’re both out of sight to follow behind them, praying I won't see either in the waiting room. Aunt Gloria could have stared at me all day with her looks of pity and fear, and I’d much prefer it to Agent Wilks and Officer Davis's proud voices. What I did was make a horrible mistake, but I suppose for them my greatest failure is their greatest luck.
Chapter 4
The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
- David Russell
WE FINALLY GET back to the house. Gloria pulls up in the driveway and slams on the breaks to avoid hitting the garage door, she was going so fast. The outside is eerily desolate, which is unusual. We don't always have men guarding the house, but with both my father and brother elsewhere for God-only-knows how long, we should have guards keeping an eye on things. Gloria seems to notice that the lack of bodies around the house have captured my attention.
"I sent them away, miele," she says. I follow out of the car, fumbling, after her. She races up the drive and dives into the side door that welcomes us into the kitchen. I’m a total disaster, not knowing what else to do but follow her. She moves fluidly through the kitchen to the mud room. I wait by the door as I watch her open the cabinet where I keep the laundry detergent. She throws the laundry supplies aside and pulls out a gun. For a moment I let my imagination wander as to where else my father keeps weapons in this house.
Gloria shoves past me and makes her way across the main hall and into the game room. My stomach lurches when I realize she’s headed right for my father's office. We aren't supposed to be in there—nobody is—not without my father. Oh, Gloria is going to get it this time. There’s only so much Carlo Mancuso can put up with from his sister. This woman is insane. Still, I follow her as she bursts into his office. The house is strangely silent. I don't feel safe being here and it’s amplified the farther Gloria gets away from me. She looked around for a moment and then storms back out.
Gloria says nothing as she sets the gun down on the counter and pulls a clean glass out of a cupboard and grabs an open bottle of scotch from the dining room table. She pours herself two fingers, drinks it, and then refills her glass.
"Do you remember what we talked about at the hospital?" she asks, downing the contents of her glass. I haven't forgotten, and I tell her as much as I watch her refill her glass twice more. She lean over the kitchen counter, hands splayed apart as she stares out the window into the backyard. She reminds me so much of my father in this moment—calm, calculating, and aware of everything around her.
"Good," she says. "Now go get some sleep." I want to protest, but I’m too tired. I leave her in the kitchen and go upstairs to my room. I stand before the full-length mirror in my room and notice for the first time that my clothes are covered in dried blood and my eyes are cracked and swollen.
I force myself into the shower and scrub my body as vigorously. It doesn't matter how much soap I use or how hard I scrub, I don't feel clean. I’m not sure I’ll feel clean ever again. Eventually though, I give up and dry myself off. I dig through my drawers until I find what I’ve been looking for.
The old, ratted nightgown I pull out and shimmy into was my mother's. It was the one she wore just before she died. My father thought I was sick and nearly sent me to a hospital because I wore this nightgown for a week straight after she died. I didn't even clean it. I just pulled it on and wrapped myself in her smell. I needed the comfort then just as much as I need it now. Only now her smell has long since faded and been washed away.
I give up on my nap after only a few hours. I’m not sure if it’s the sunlight that keeps me up or the horror that fills my mind when I close my eyes. I can’t stay still, my body thrashing around with the thoughts of the night. The small amount of time that I did sleep, I remembered that Leo Scavo was also shot, and awoke with a twinge of guilt for having forgotten about his injury.
I lie awake for what seems like hours more, at first numb to the terror that fills my heart and mind, then so uncompromisingly aware of it that I can do nothing but scream.
My throat gives out eventually, and I succumb to a coughing fit. I know Gloria hasn’t left me alone in the house, but still she doesn’t come to check on me. Never once in the hours I’ve been in bed does she offer me an ounce of comfort. More than anything, I need her to tell me it will all be okay, but I know that is a lie, and lying is one thing Gloria hates to do.
When I can't stand wallowing in my own sorrow anymore, I get up and walk downstairs. I can hear Gloria on the phone in the game room. Mumbled words filter through the hall: safety, death, take her now, please, please, please. I know I should try to break myself of the habit of eavesdropping. It never ends well, but eavesdropping, it seems, is the only way I can gather information. They all see me as a child and never bother to tell me anything, especially if they think I might argue. And I like to argue. A lot. The one word that sends chills down my spine is "tomorrow." Gloria ends her phone call with, "yes, tomorrow." I pray tomorrow will never come.
&nbs
p; I rush back up to my room, uninterested in overhearing anything else. Under my bed is a bottle of my father’s nicest scotch that Tony procured for me a while back. I pull it out and crawl into bed, drinking until I can’t think clearly enough to care anymore.
When I wake the next morning, the overwhelming despair sets in again and I drink until well into the afternoon. When my stomach revolts at the idea of more scotch, I pull myself out of bed and spend the rest of the day wandering around the house in my mother's nightgown, just looking everything over. Gloria’s packed a small bag for me: a few personal items from my room and the gun she found in the laundry room and a wad of cash she got from God-only-knows where. I ask her, without trying to be a brat, what she’s up to, rifling through my stuff. The things she puts in the bag seem random at best. I figure if she is packing a bag for me I should have things I actually need, like clothes and maybe a hair brush.
Gloria throws together some pasta for us for dinner and doesn't even bother to clean up after we were done. I start to, but she stops me. “It doesn’t matter, baby,” she says.
We spend the rest of the evening in the family room on the sofa, looking through family albums. Earlier, she was so cold and factual. But now she’s more solemn than anything. She insists on a night of bonding, which is nice, but it also feels too much like goodbye—like we’re doing something that we both should remember. It feels important.
When we’ve gone through all of the photo albums from my and Michael's birth on, Gloria pulls out an album I’ve never seen before. It’s nondescript enough to blend in with all the others, but this one has my mother's name on the spine. It’s dusty, as though it hasn't been touched for years, and from the way she’s gripping it so tightly, I guess that my father doesn't even know it’s here.
"I've wondered why you never ask me about your mother," Gloria says in a gentle tone. I have no answer for that. My father isn't fond of too many questions, and for far too long after her death, he hadn't allowed us to even mention her. I shrug, feeling guilty, like I should have asked questions and the fact that I didn't meant I don't care. The awful weight of my selfishness presses on my shoulders. I’m a horrid daughter.
"I've spent a long time deciding what I would say to you and how I would say it when you finally got around to asking me about your mother. But you never did, so consider this my gift to you, amore." She smiles at me with the saddest expression I've ever seen, sadder than even the one she wore at my mother's funeral. Tears pool in her eyes and slip down her cheeks.
"She was my best friend," she begins the story of my mother's life, telling me all about how they met in Sunday School one summer when she came up from Florida to spend the summer break with her grandparents, and eventually moved in with them full-time after her mother left her abusive father.
"Even then, she was a free spirit—wild, unrestrained, loud. Mean, too. She had so much fire, that one." The woman she describes doesn't sound like my mother. The Esmeralda I knew had been docile and quiet. She practically tip-toed around my father, and I only heard her raise her voice maybe once. But I don't dare interrupt Gloria's story, I find myself wholly fascinated.
"The last time I saw your mother," she says, holding my hands in hers with a sad smile on her face. "She said two very important things to me. The first was that no matter what, I was to keep you and your brother safe, and you trust that I'm doing that now. Don't you?" I nod, not understanding where this is going, but I do trust her. She’s all I have.
"The second thing she said to me was that her sister will take care of you." She opens the photo album up to the first page, which displays a photo of two baby girls lying next to each other in a crib. At the bottom of the page, written in choppy cursive, are two names: Esmeralda and Ruby.
"I didn't know my mother even had a sister," I admit, feeling even guiltier for not asking more about her. I’ve never met any of my mother's family before and haven't a clue how an aunt I’ve never known existed can care for me. I’m no longer a child, old enough to be married off, old enough to leave my father’s home for my husband’s bed. My mother is dead, my brother’s been shot, my father’s been arrested, and only now do I find out about an aunt I’ve never known. I want to be excited over this piece of history, to ask so many questions. But I don’t. Gloria smiles brightly. How she has so much energy, I'll never know. I’m so tired, my eyelids are dropping. I reach for my Coca-Cola from the coffee table and take a large drink. The caffeine is supposed to wake me up, but it’s done nothing but make me sleepy.
"Oh, she did. They were twins, just like you and Michael." She continues on through the album. As the girls age in the photos, their personalities become more apparent. One of the girls is always smiling politely, while the other usually has a cheesy grin on her face and stands in some grand pose. The girl with the polite smile, who seems to accept being in her sister's shadow, has slightly darker caramel brown hair than her sister, but other than that, they have the same brown eyes; same small, swooping nose; and same full lips. I touch my face, realizing how very much I look like my mother.
"Which one is my mother?" I ask, unsure. The way Gloria talks about my mother, it seems she was so very different in her youth than her adulthood—lively, joyful, rebellious. The Esmeralda Mancuso I knew was none of those things. Loving, gentle, kind—sure. But she most certainly was not rebellious. She lived by my father's word.
Gloria points to the photo before us—showing the girls in their late teens—and lands her finger on the girl with the lighter hair and her tongue sticking out. "This is Ruby," she says. Then she points at my mother. "This is Esmeralda." Esmeralda, in the photo, had been the shy one in the corner.
"Whatever happened to Ruby?" I ask, hoping for a direct answer.
"Last I spoke with her she was out in California." Gloria stands up and pulls me with her, marching us up the stairs and into my room. "Heaven knows how close she is to New York now."
"What do you mean?" I ask. Gloria is acting weird, even for her. She purses her lips and straightens her back in thought. I allow her to lead me to my bed and tuck me in as though I’m a small, incompetent child. Everything she’s done since we left the hospital feels intentional. The entire situation leaves me reeling, my brain jumping from asking one question to another, ending with few answers and more questions than I can keep straight.
"Just that I'm not sure where she is right now," she confirms. "It's a big country." She smiles and smoothes my hair away from my face.
"You trust me, Alex?" she asks. I blanch at the question, my nerves on high alert.
"Why do you keep asking me that?" I demand more forcefully than I intend, surprising Gloria with the volume of it. My body is so worn out and feels heavy with sleep already. I just want to drift off.
"Because, I need you to know that everything I've done is for you," she says and goes into another speech about how I need to trust her. I try to pay attention, really I do, but I can't keep my eyes open anymore as I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Chapter 5
Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I SLEEP WELL for the better part of the night. My mind is groggy, confused. I try to keep myself alert and aware, but can’t get my brain to function. Something’s wrong with me. My limbs are heavy and slow to respond. I can still breathe and function despite the haze, but something definitely feels wrong about all of this.
Light shines in through my window, much to my dismay. It isn’t quite morning yet, but it’s now moved into that place between darkness and light. It’s too early to be so awake, too early to be dealing with—well, anything. I hear my bedroom door crack open and try to move my head, but it’s too much effort. I give up and wait. Gloria comes into view with a nervous smile on her face. She’s carrying a short stack of clothes.
“We need to get you up and ready,” she says. For what, I want to ask. The words stall on my tongue. She sets the clothes down on the night table be
side me and peels back my covers.
Gloria helps me with everything from brushing my hair and putting it in a long braid down to tying the shoe laces to my Chucks. She’s dressed me in fitted jeans and a baseball tee—one of my favorite outfits. It’s plain and comfortable and it doesn’t tell the world who I am, unlike most of the clothing my father prefers I wear. “We have an image, Alex” he says. It’s his image, not mine.
“Why am I so tired?” I ask her as I search through my closet for my favorite hoodie. It’s old and worn and so very comfortable.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” Gloria says as she stands next to me. “I didn’t want you to flip out so I…” And then I remember something—years ago right after my mother died, I’d been inconsolable. Aside from wearing her dirty nightgown day and night, I’d also been plagued with insomnia. It was awful. After a week or so, I became a zombie. That was when my father took me to the doctor, who had prescribed me some pills that would calm me down. I turn and look at Gloria, eyes bugged out and jaw slack.
“You drugged me,” I accuse. In my head it’s a fierce yell of betrayal and anger. Out loud it sounds more like a child’s bedtime plea. My voice is hoarse, and the words come out slow. No wonder I had trouble moving in the night and have been in a haze since Gloria pulled me out of bed. I’m angry, though in this moment, I can’t feel it. This is why I stopped taking the anti-anxiety medication. I really hate how it makes me feel—compliant and unable to argue.
Gloria finds my hoodie and helps me get it on. The sun isn’t quite up yet, though it isn’t far off, from what I can tell. We walk out of the closet and Gloria hands me the small bag she put together yesterday. A loud rumbling sound comes from the street, growing louder with every moment. It’s so noisy and so overpowering that I can’t help but feel it in my bones. It sounds like a motorcycle engine, but not just one—many. I’ve heard this many motorcycles before—it hadn’t been good. The motorcycle club from Queens made a visit here a few years back, making demands on my father’s business. I don’t know what came of it, but that the club left in a good mood and my father was grouchy for a good week. I haven’t so much as seen or heard more than one stray bike drive past the house since. My stomach sinks.
