by CD Reiss
“Good morning.” I sit and let Celia pour me coffee. “How did you sleep?”
He lowers the news and takes another look at me. A real one, this time. I keep a neutral expression, stirring my coffee as if my period came on the dot and there’s not a damn thing on my mind.
Deep, steady breaths, Violetta. Just find out first.
“Like the dead,” he finally says and folds his paper neatly. “You look beautiful this morning.”
“Thank you.” I choose a pastry. “Must be a glow from last night.”
He smirks, and I do too, because last night was pretty glow-worthy.
He folds his paper neatly and sets his phone on top of it, straightens his cuffs, and reclines in his chair. His hands rest lightly on the arms in a way that’s so regal, I feel an urge to fall between his knees and beg to be used like a toy.
I am a badly broken woman.
Santino’s eyes follow every move I make as I sweeten my coffee.
“Maybe tomorrow morning you’ll set the house on fire,” he says, implying tonight could leave me hot as well as glowing.
“The fire extinguisher’s under the sink.” I smile around my sfogliatella, which is when I notice he’s looking at me as if I’m about to announce news that could disrupt our lives.
“Any fire that little thing can put out isn’t worth setting.” He moves his phone off his paper as if he’s going to read it again, but something tugs on the corners of his mouth and his hand slides back onto the arm of the chair. He taps the end with a fingernail, watching me break my pastry into a hundred little flakes.
“I want to see Gia today,” I say, cracking like a sfogliatella under the pressure of his attention.
“She’s working.” He goes for his paper again.
“I’ll come to the café for a coffee then.”
Santino snaps open the news and reads again. What did it take, I wonder, to acquire such control? Is it from the years that separate our births?
“I gave you your phone.” He scans the articles, but I don’t think he’s reading it. “Call her.”
“I don’t want to call.” Petulance laces through my tone. This is not how territory is marked. “I want to see my cousin.”
“What for?”
I cannot out-play Santino. Only the truth will get through. “To make sure she knows.”
“Knows what?”
This asshole knows exactly what I’m talking about, but he’s going to make me say it. I’m not sure if he’s being cruel or thorough.
“Do you remember what happened after you stole me away?” I ask.
“You figured it out.”
“Do you want Gia to be as miserable as I was?”
Santino folds his paper down and regards me silently, maybe mulling over what I’ve said, maybe figuring out how to shut me up. But it isn’t an immediate no, which is definitely better than expected.
Finally, his mouth opens, and my chest tightens, waiting for him to tell me he doesn’t care.
“You were the exception.” He flicks his hand in my direction. “Most of the brides know what and when.”
Why wasn’t I told? Why was it piled on me all at once?
“If it hadn’t been for the guy who raped her, would you have told Rosetta?”
“Eventually.”
“Before you married her?”
“I don’t know.”
I’d like to strangle him, but there’s a deep vulnerability in his answer. It’s not just I don’t know. It’s also, I never got the chance to find out.
“Damiano’s not going to tell Gia he’s buying her,” I say. “Her own father wants her to be blindsided so he doesn’t have to deal with her being afraid or begging or whatever she’ll do.”
“She won’t be afraid.”
“How do you know? She’s full of these silly ideas about love.”
“So she won’t see a wedding as a bad thing.”
Having held back since I eavesdropped through the office doors, I didn’t feel the slowly bubbling rage until I’m near the boiling point. “She should have a choice!”
Santino responds with a raised eyebrow. “You are not the one to give that to her.”
“She’s just like me.” I have to stop myself from pounding the table. “And you know that wasn’t right.”
I can’t tell what’s happening to his face. Is he softening?
He is. This moment can’t go to waste.
I slide off my chair and kneel at his feet, looking up imploringly. The supplication is completely sincere, and it’s the least I’ll do.
“Please,” I say with one hand on my heart and the other on his knee. “Let me tell her.”
“No.”
“She needs a way out if she wants it.”
“You cannot change these things.” He puts his hand on mine and bends at the waist, speaking tenderly—as if to a child who doesn’t know how the world works. “Be careful you do not ruin something for her because of your own experience.”
Was my experience so uncommon? If I’d known it was coming but still had no choice, would the wedding and the following weeks have been better or worse? And what’s the difference? Knowledge is valuable, even if it hurts, but I can’t explain basic human respect to a man who’d let his cousin pay a debt.
“I heard you say you wanted to tell her.” I run my hand up his leg. His body is reacting to seeing me on my knees. “Let me do it. Let me give you what you want, then blame it on me.”
He grabs my wrist before I reach his erection. “This is our way, Violetta.” He stands and looks down at me as I collapse onto the floor. “It’s our fathers’ way, and their fathers, and their fathers’ father before them.”
“What about your mothers?”
He takes his phone off the table and leaves me on my knees, petitioning to an empty throne.
—YOUR HUSBAND IS SOOOOO HOOOOOTTTTTT!!!!! —
I’ve left Scarlett’s notification up, even though I answered it. I miss the life I had when she was in it, but I’m so divorced from this kind of talk, it seems like a curious language I understand but don’t speak.
In the drugstore, Armando stands a respectful distance away, pretending he’s shopping for cold medicine as I browse the feminine products. I swipe Scarlett’s message away without deleting it and call Gia.
“Violetta!” Gia squeals, picking up after half a ring. “I wanted to call, but it’s been so busy at home!”
“Busy how?” I try to make myself sound as cheerful as possible. “Tell me everything!”
“Oh, you know, Mama and Papa coming in from Italy just like that.” She snaps her fingers, then drops to a whisper. “Mama must be going through the change, because she’s been extra irritable. And Tavie? I think he has a girlfriend because he’s out all the time and when he’s here, he’s growling at everything.”
My stomach sours. Paola’s upset because she knows her husband is selling off her baby, and the baby herself doesn’t even know.
“Men are stupid.”
The pregnancy tests are behind a locked glass door. Shit. Down one end of the aisle, Armando keeps vigil. Down the other… nothing. I walk toward nothing.
“Remember Damiano?” Gia says. “He was at the dinner last Sunday?”
“We weren’t introduced.” I swallow the hard mass in my throat. “But I remember him.”
“Of course you do! Well, he asked my father if he could take me out,” Gia gushes. “And papa said yes!”
My throat feels both dry and sticky at the same time. My tongue’s too heavy to move.
Behind the pharmacy counter, a woman in a bright blue jacket with a nametag pinned on the breast pocket talks on the phone and taps into a computer. She can open the case and get me a test.
“It’s tonight,” Gia squeals. “What should I wear? Do you think a dress? Or shorts and a cute top? No, that’s too casual, right?”
Her parents aren’t telling her what is about to happen to her because her father is emotionally lazy and Damia
no is emotionally sadistic. Zio and Zia did the same, though I remain conveniently convinced it was to protect me because they thought they could wiggle out of it.
The results are the same. Our families are so entrenched in these customs that they can’t even see what they’re doing to their own children. The knot in my stomach turns to stone. I’m no better than any of them, because I’ve already decided not to tell her immediately. She wants to see him. She wants a wedding and a romantic honeymoon. Telling her might get her to my side, or coupled with the excitement she’s already feeling, it might entrench her. She may accept this is for the best and think that she’d want it anyway.
For now, I have to be a voice of reason. I have to be the big sister.
“Pants,” I say, waving to the woman in the bright blue jacket to let her know she can take her time. “You don’t want a strong wind to give him an eyeful, you know?”
“Right!” She claps. “I don’t want him to think I’m whoring it out.”
Of course. Men can wave their hand and transform decent women into sluts, much like Santino was reputed to do. Gia wouldn’t want a skirt to turn her into Loretta.
Who is protected.
And cherished.
And frankly? Respectable, but only because Santino says she is.
“Exactly,” I say to Gia as Bright Blue Jacket hangs up and heads toward me. “Don’t let him think it’s more than a date. You know these Italian men.”
“I woulda dropped off a prescription if you needed,” Armando says, suddenly at my side.
“Can I help you?” Blue Jacket smiles.
“He’s been here longer than me,” Gia natters. “Since he was nineteen, maybe?”
The phone behind the counter rings. Blue Jacket pretends to ignore it.
Armando. “Or I can come get it later for you.”
Blue Jacket glances at him.
The key that opens the cabinet with the pregnancy tests dangles from her waist.
Then she looks at me.
Gia. “He’s practically American.”
I put my hand over the bottom of my phone.
“I need a—” pregnancy test.
Armando sniffs.
Gia goes on and on.
The drugstore phone rings.
“I need…” Armando hasn’t backed up and won’t. “Birthday candles.”
“Aisle seven.” Blue Jacket picks up her phone.
“Answer,” I tell Santino on the second ring.
I’m in the back seat of a parked car. Armando’s in the front, patient as a saint, waiting for me to tell him to pull out so I have the impression I make the decisions around here.
“Forzetta,” he purrs when he answers.
“Gia says she and Damiano have a date tonight.”
“Yes?”
“What’s going to happen?”
“Nothing. They have chaperones.”
“No, I mean… is he going to take her away?”
There’s a long, wordless gap that’s filled with clinking cups and one man’s breathing. Santino doesn’t want to say. Her life could end after a dinner just as mine did, and he knows I could have Armando drive this car over there before it happens.
He also knows he can tell Armando to take me home.
“Santino.” I mean to growl, but I can barely whisper.
“I’m here.”
“Tell me.” The force builds in my tone. “Is he forcing her into a car and driving her to a church?”
“No.”
“Do you swear it?”
“What is this about?”
Oh, no, he will not change the subject or redirect the inquiry to try to calm me down. I know what has to be done.
“Swear it!”
Armando pretends he’s not looking at me in the rearview. I can make another stop and run. Take the bus to Gia if I have to. Maybe Armando will catch me, but he won’t hurt me.
“Violetta!”
“Swear on your mother he’s not going to do it tonight!”
“I swear it.” He pauses and gathers the control I know him for. “On my mother, it’s not tonight as far as I know.”
“Do you rule this shit town or not?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Find out for sure!”
I cut the line and throw the phone on the seat. I’m not letting the days get by me like this again. I’m putting Gia in my sights and keeping her there.
Armando’s phone dings. He looks at it and starts the car.
Our eyes meet in the rearview.
“Go, if he says you have to,” I say. “I don’t want you to get into trouble.”
He waves to me. When I wave back, I’m shaking.
Celia and I prepare dinner, then I send her home with a wink. I put on lipstick and give my hair a quick pass with the curling iron. I wear jeans and a blouse. Generic. Not distracting. I barely have time to get dinner on the table before I hear the front door beep, then the sound of his keys hitting the front table.
“Santino,” I say.
“Forzetta,” he says as he comes in. We stand on opposite sides of the foyer.
“Well? Did you find out?” I ask.
“I did.”
“And?”
“It is just a date. Like I said.”
I close my eyes to hold back tears of relief.
I still have time to break the chain.
My eyes are still closed when I feel his lips on my cheek, then my mouth.
“Thank you,” I say. He takes me by the chin and I open my eyes.
“Are you feeling all right?” He’s inspecting me, and I wonder if he can see the contents of my body better than any pregnancy test. I step toward the kitchen before he can tell me the truth of what I am too frightened to know.
“I’m fine.”
“Armando says you went to the store today?” he asks in the kitchen, rolling his sleeves over his tight, olive-skinned forearms. On the counter in front of him are the 2 and 0 candles I got at the drugstore.
“I did.” I take the chicken from the oven.
“You went to the drugstore for birthday candles?”
“Yes,” I reply, chipper as a bird.
While I get dinner on the table, he changes clothes and washes his face. When he comes downstairs, he smells of soap and fresh cologne.
“If you want wine, I put the white in the fridge,” I say. When he nods and brings it back opened, long fingers grasping two glasses by the base, I realize my mistake.
“Say when,” he says as he fills the second glass.
I want that wine. The sticky sweet on my tongue, the warmth in my chest, the dry tang after.
“When.”
He stops the pour and pushes the glass to me, then sits.
“How was your day?” I ask as if the last time I saw him in that chair, I hadn’t been on my knees.
“Good.” He eats, going along with my pretense that everything’s fine. “Yours?”
Mine. Sure. It was great. I realized I had a missed period and went to the drugstore for a pregnancy test, but I didn’t want to get it in front of Armando because he’d report right back to his employer and Gia was going on about the guy who bought her, so instead I asked about the first thing that popped into my head.
“Fine.”
“Birthday candles.” One eyebrow raised, he eats his chicken.
“It’s coming up. Mine.” As if the 2 and the 0 aren’t enough of a clue.
But maybe they aren’t, because he stiffens and puts on his bossman face. Why… I don’t know. Maybe he has a big surprise planned? Or maybe he forgot it completely. It’s possible he doesn’t even know the date.
“What would you like? For a gift?”
It’s fair to say he doesn’t know me well enough to know what I want. That must be the source of his discomfort.
“I thought just a cake.” I swirl the wine, try to read his thoughts, fail, and go on. “Maybe people? Some family? Might as well, right?”
“It
is a Monday.” He seems to be chewing the inside of his cheek like he’s gnawing on a thought.
“We can do it the night before. Regular Sunday dinnertime. It’ll be fun!”
“It will be fun.” He doesn’t sound convinced.
“Unless Gia’s getting married that weekend.”
“Definitely no.” He eats, shaking his head.
He’s confirmed for me, and when the tension leaves my chest, it feels as if I’ve been restrained for so long, I forgot what it felt like to have my hands free.
“This call to me today? About Gia?” He seems suddenly unconcerned about whatever was bothering him about my birthday.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”
“This panic you had… it’s not necessary. There’s a process.”
“There is? I was somehow dragged through it blindfolded.”
He stops mid chew, then starts again. “I regret that.”
“I’m just saying, the process can’t be such a big deal if you decided to do it differently.”
“You were different,” he says, still eating. “There was no debt to secure.”
“Tell me.” I lean on my elbows with the glass swirling between my fingertips. “Come on. Tell me the fun I missed.”
“It’s not that fun.” Santino sits back and takes stock of me. I’m trying to keep it light, but he’s a wild creature, and I know he sees through me. I assume he’ll cut off the conversation, but I’m wrong. “First, as an act of good faith, Damiano will put the debt money into escrow, then send flowers. When her father confirms the escrow, he’ll give the flowers to the Virgin.”
“I’m sorry? The virgin is Gia?”
“No.” His impatience doesn’t seem directed at me, but himself. “The Virgin in the shrine.”
I nod, assuming it’s the Virgin Mary in the church’s chapel. Putting flowers at her feet requires a big donation.
“Then Damiano will offer a ring. The father accepts it. The debt is paid. The matter is closed. She is his, and he may walk with her when he chooses.” His lips purse as if he’s trying not to say something. “The wedding’s a formality between him and God.” What is understood, but remains unsaid, is that the woman isn’t part of the contract with God, just the deal between the men. “They have to turn four corners together or she will not bear children.”
