by CD Reiss
I don’t want to screw this up with a badly-told lie either. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day and I don’t want anyone to steal Gia’s life. It’s a delicate line I’m not sure I can properly straddle, but dammit, if Santino can make all these people eat out of his hands and I can make him do what I want, then surely I have some competence.
The teapot whistles like an alarm. Time’s up. Answer now or change the subject. Anette shuts the heat and gets out a box of Lipton and cups.
“It was hard at first, no lie.” I check to see who’s paying attention and who isn’t. Anette’s a casual observer. Gia—who was there to see how hard it was for me—retrieves the sugar with half an eye on me. Paola, though, is hanging on my every word. It’s her daughter who’s being traded. “I’m still not sure what I’m doing, kind of. Am I going back to school? Do I want to? And getting used to living with someone… a man. Well, that has its own… demands.”
Paola nods with grave understanding.
“But it’s Santi!” Gia chimes in, talking about him as if he’s a puppy.
“Is he nice with you?” Paola adds. She can be an ally in this, if I can give her enough of a reason.
“I got lucky with him.” I match her gravity, but I’m not sure I’m as lucky as I claim. “I don’t think everyone gets to marry a Santino DiLustro.”
“He’s lucky he ended up with someone so beautiful and smart like you,” Gia pipes in, glancing at the clock, then dropping teabags in cups of steaming water before she looks at the clock again. “So many women see the cars and the suits and his handsome face and just want his money. It’s so nice to see him with someone who understands him, not someone who uses him.”
I never had a choice, I want to say, but don’t.
I had to learn to stop hating him.
The thoughts rain down.
Sometimes I think about what I lost.
It’s terrifying.
No one should count on being as lucky as I am.
You are in terrible, terrible danger.
“Tavie!” Gia calls.
I follow her eyes to a blur in a lightweight leather jacket crossing the doorway. He shoves one of the wireless headphones away from his ear.
Jesus. I should be dating guys like him, but he seems too young to even be my friend.
“Violetta is here,” Gia adds, indicating me expectantly.
“Hey,” he says with a quick wave, studying me carefully, and I remember that he’s against the idea of his sister being sold into marriage.
He must think I’m trying to be an example of why it’s okay.
This guy’s in for a big surprise.
He stalks off, and Paola shakes her head and sighs, “Boys,” making eye contact with Anette.
“Boys are nice,” Gia chirps, then checks the clock.
“He’s not coming half an hour early just because you’re ready,” her mother says.
“Which you shouldn’t be,” Anette adds.
“Oh, what’s the harm?” Gia kisses her aunt’s cheek. She’s so happy, staring expectantly at the tight bud of her life just before it blooms.
The doorbell rings and Gia gasps, bouncing up to go get it.
Paola grabs her arm. “You do not answer the door for him.”
“Especially if he’s early,” Anette adds, then calls back as she heads for the front door. “Get upstairs.”
Gia rolls her eyes and obeys, leaving Paola and I alone.
“I’m going to kill him,” Paola murmurs, using the threat the way you’d use it for an intimate—half-joking, while keeping the other half undefined. This is how I know she’s talking about her husband, Marco, before she gets to the next sentence. “He could let me tell her, but he cuts me at the knees.” Cuts has a particular venom and is accompanied by a hand slicing the air.
“Santino!” a man cries from the front door.
Shit. I have no time for this. Not another second. But I don’t know what else I expected him to do. I should have left a note that I was going to the drugstore for a pregnancy test. Checking every one in a ten-mile radius would have kept him occupied for a long time.
Gia is a pink streak across the doorframe as she rushes for the foyer, crying my husband’s name.
“Are you letting Armando sit in the car?!” she adds before the screen door creaks. “Mando! Come on in!”
Elbow on the counter, I lean over my teacup to get closer to Gia’s mother.
“Trust me,” I whisper, “I’m working on it.”
“Violetta didn’t tell me you were coming!” Gia’s voice gets closer.
“I trust none of you,” Paola hisses, then pastes on a smile as Anette returns.
Now that we have two more guests, I can’t sit and remain respectful, so I refill the teapot and turn on the burner. Anette gets cups. Paola pulls down a cookie dish.
“Ciao.” Santino enters the kitchen, kissing aunts between compliments like a mayor up for reelection. I catch his eye and he shrugs slightly while he pecks Anette’s cheeks.
“Surprise?” It’s all I can think to say when my husband caresses me from behind and kisses my face in greeting.
“Is it?” he asks, knowing the answer. Something you should have seen coming is never a surprise.
Armando accepts the cookies from Paola and puts them at the table as he sits. Everyone’s in the kitchen like good little Italians, waiting for a suitor to arrive.
“Please, sit, sit!” Gia pulls out a chair for Santino, but he doesn’t sit. “Is tea okay or can I get you an espresso?” She’s slipped into caregiver mode, playing the fledgling attentive bride and hostess—the future woman of the house.
“What about me, eh?” Armando complains, waving his biscotti.
“Santino is first,” Gia scolds, grabbing the espresso pot before her aunt can. “Sambuca?”
“How about we skip the espresso then?” Armando suggests.
“Mando, you are my favorite,” Gia coos at him in Italian and dances her way to the china cabinet for the right cups.
Santino takes a soft pinole cookie and leans against the counter, as if it’s not peculiar that he showed up, fully at ease and completely commanding with everything in his purview—except me, obviously.
With the chatter in the kitchen rising, I have a moment to talk to Santino without leaving the room. “I thought you were taking a swim.”
“I did.” He bites the cookie. The crumbs leap into his mouth rather than drop onto his shirt.
“Awfully fast swim, that was.”
“How long should it take to get wet, Forzetta?”
My husband holds up the cookie. He wants to feed me.
My first instinct is that I’m perfectly capable of eating my own cookie, and if I wanted one, I’d be getting crumbs on my shirt already. But I fall victim to his intense gaze and obediently open my mouth. It’s milky and sweet and utter perfection. His thumb lingers under my chin for just a moment and everything inside me catches fire.
“I want to be exactly like you guys when I get married someday!” Gia gushes, fanning herself—which is utterly embarrassing. “It’s so romantic, watching you two together. What a beautiful life you have! A handsome, doting husband and a gorgeous, loving wife. You guys are such a pair. Like a power couple.”
Santino winks at her, then at me. I shove another piece of anisette toast into my mouth to cork the truth before it gets out. A power couple consists of two equal partners at the top of their respective profession. That’s not what we have, but it’s what Gia deserves. She’s not a piece of real estate. Period.
Then she says something that—coming from her mouth—sends me right over the edge.
“I can’t wait to be married!”
My resting heart rate doubles. My skin emits heat as blood flows to the surface.
“No need to rush,” Paola says.
“I know.” Gia’s mouth puckers into a perfect pout. “But married life is perfect for me. I can cook for my husband. Take care of him. And when he’s at work, my
girlfriends can come swim in the pool, or we can go shopping, we can see the movies. I know how busy the men get in their work. Isn’t that right, Violetta?”
Wrong. It’s all wrong. She won’t see her friends. She won’t go shopping. She won’t see another movie. The people in this room know exactly what she’s in for and they refuse to acknowledge the horror behind it. My heart bangs against my rib cage.
“Yes,” Santino hints. “Isn’t that right, Violetta?”
Besides Scarlett—who I may never see again—I can’t remember the last time I saw my own friends. My return to school isn’t guaranteed, and shopping isn’t a substitute for freedom.
Maybe it’s my innocence I miss. The possibilities. Life was a wide open road, spooling endlessly into the future. Someone stole the steering wheel and hauled me over the median, and now I’m going in the other direction.
I have to let her know. I have to save her. I have to spare her.
“Violetta…” Santino warns me from a million miles away.
“It’s not—”
“Time to go,” Santino neatly cuts me off. “Thank you for entertaining my wife, Zia Paola.”
He kisses his aunt, then his other aunt, and finally Gia, who’s tucked away her pout as she kisses the two men.
“I’ll see you around, Gia,” Armando says as he pushes past the screen door. “Call me if you need anything, all right?”
“I’m so glad you came by,” she calls, waving.
“Gia, I—”
“Vai,” Santino commands, and I ignore him to grab Gia one last time before he drags me out.
“You should come stay with us.” I’m speed-talking. All the emotion is drained out of the words because I’m saying them so fast. “It’s such a big house for the two of us, so if it’s ever too crowded here, you come. Or if you want to keep me company, you can just call me. Okay?”
“Sure.” She looks concerned.
But Santino pulls me through the house, and when the door closes behind the three of us, I feel Gia slipping through my fingers.
13
VIOLETTA
The barefooted Virgin Mary stands in her little half-clamshell with her palms up at the vase of flowers as if to say, “Can you do something about these?”
She was forced into marriage after God gave her a gift she didn’t ask for.
Così stanno le cose.
It is what it is.
It’s always been this way.
Even God plays by the rules the king protects.
The sky and trees are painted with a rage as helpless as it is righteous. Streaks of it curl through the sidewalk, cracking them in a serpentine grip. Streetlights buzz in agony. Even the breeze whistles through the leaves at the pitch of nails on a chalkboard. My entire body is on fire.
“Violetta…”
Santino’s voice is almost drowned out by the white noise in my ears. I feel his hand on my arm. The path’s bricks press up against my feet, my knees, pushing my head on the hard sky until I have to crouch as he pulls me toward the front gate or I’ll be squashed by the world, compressed into a base, prenatal state.
I was a healthy woman when I was stolen and dragged into this fever dream. Rosetta was the victim of a different man, but the same diseased system. Gia can be liberated, but not by safe increments.
A mali estremi, estremi rimedi.
Extreme sickness calls for an extreme remedy.
“Violetta.” Santino pulls at me, but I appear to have stopped moving in this red hell. “Let’s go.”
Another command. I’m tired of commands. I am not a dog.
I pull my arm away. Behind Santino, Armando gets into the Alfa Romeo and drives down the block and out of sight. It’ll be the devil and me alone in the Mercedes. Him driving. I’m just a passenger again.
“Violetta.” Another warning. He grasps me again, but gently. As if I’m a dangerous animal he’s trying to lure into a cage with food.
“She thinks it’s cute, Santino.”
“She’s young.”
“She thinks she’s living in a TV show.”
“Come on,” he says, still trying to pull me, but I’m not moving. “She won’t have to work. She’ll always have what she needs. Won’t have to worry about anything. Who doesn’t like someone taking care of them?”
“Who doesn’t like? Are you fucking kidding me right now? Have you always had that disgusting silver spoon in your mouth? Someone always around to wipe your ass so you cannot see how deeply, deeply fucking flawed and awful this is? No? No, you had nothing? No, you were powerless? No, you busted a hundred asses to get what you have and now you’re going to fuck over your own cousin to keep it? Eh?”
He says nothing to my tantrum. He says nothing because the neighbors sticking their noses through their beaded curtains can hear. He says nothing about the cruel injustices that nearly crippled me and now threaten someone he cares about. He says nothing.
So I say nothing.
Through the rage-induced hazy tint of crimson, I spot the little plaster shrine to the Virgin Mary and the vase of roses.
Put the debt money into escrow, then send flowers…
And not just one dozen, but…
He’ll give them to the Virgin…
The traditions are so thick they stick to your ribs, but Mary passively holds out her hands.
Can you do something about…
Before my brain catches up, my body catches Santino in a split moment of inattention, and I wrest myself away, take the vase of roses, and throw them over the gate. The vase smashes on the sidewalk with a pop. Water streaks the concrete like a drawing of a comet.
“Santi,” a man’s voice comes from the stoop in a whisper. It’s the daughter-seller.
“Go inside, Marco. You too, Angelo. I have this.”
Santino has nothing, because I rush past him and through the gate to step on the flowers, squashing the hard buds underfoot and scattering the petals. None should remain to prove Marco ever left them for the virgin.
“Violetta.” Santino’s voice is now firm and calm and deep. It ripples down my spine, settles into the rage in my belly, and I wake up from a dream.
We’re both on the street, white petals sprayed around like targeted snowfall.
“It’s okay,” he says softly, one hand out to me.
I don’t care if he’s angry. I don’t care if he threatens me or commands me to stop. I’m ready for that. I’m primed to fight him every step of the way. But there’s no way to combat this gentle, compassionate thing he’s doing. He’s pulling open the valve and deflating the very thing that’s keeping me upright.
And suddenly, I don’t have the strength to do it anymore. I throw myself against him and let his arms tighten around me. I won’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. I must nullify this union and I must save my friend and cousin, and I must undo the traditions and I must, I must, I must…
“We can’t let this happen.” I choke on the words, unable to stop sobbing.
I collapse and Santino holds me up, trying to get me to walk. Slowly, I follow while he tells me it’s going to be all right, it’s going to be fine, and I don’t resist. I hear his words in their spirit. He’s not promising me anything past the next few minutes, which I’ll get through and live to fight another day.
Before I know it, I’m in the Mercedes I drove here in, except now I’m a passenger again.
Santino starts the car, pauses, and leans into me, but not for a kiss. To look out my window. I follow his gaze. A car is double-parked in front of the house. Damiano’s on the sidewalk, his arms out and his palms up, wider than the Virgin’s. He’s saying what the fuck? Marco runs down the stoop to explain or apologize.
I need to see if this is just a messy sidewalk or an insult Damiano cannot forgive, but the car jerks under me, and we take off down the block.
Santino pulls up to the front door and puts the car into park.
“What did I do?” I ask numbly.
“Maybe nothing.” He
shrugs, dismissing the seriousness of it all. “Maybe a war.”
That snaps me out of it. “Over what? Gia? She’s just a girl.”
“She’s my cousin.”
“Now you realize this?”
“I don’t want to tell you ugly things. I want to protect you. But you’re hurting yourself, and this, I cannot stand.” He shuts the engine but doesn’t get out. Instead, he seems to settle deeper into his seat. “Do you remember when we were on the other side? And I broke the little stronzo’s hand that touched you?”
By the orange stand, a guy on a moped had grabbed my ass. Santino brought him down like a cat pulling a bird from the sky.
“I do.”
“What else do you remember?” he asks.
I’m pretty sure he’s not asking me to enumerate all the ways I was turned on. “You smashed his hand under your heel. Then you let him go.”
He nods to me to continue, so I rummage through the loose emotional trash I’ve accumulated in the last half an hour to find the scene in the smell of fruit and engine exhaust, the light of the Mediterranean, and the sound of a moped gunning away.
“There was a guy you gave money. For holding him down. And you said some blah blah blah—when you speak Italian that fast, I lose stuff. Something about a job. And a guy everyone knows.”
He nods, satisfied. “Cosimo Orolio.”
“Right!” I snap my fingers when the name rings a bell.
“I committed an act of vengeance on his territory. This is a crime.”
“You’re not in trouble for that, are you?”
“No.” He tsks. “I would have been if I hadn’t sent word back with a tribute. The man I gave the money to? He understood that.”
“How do you know he delivered it?”
“We left Napoli with our lives.”
At first, I can’t tell why he’s smiling, then I realize I have a questioning, shocked expression.
“I’m Re Santino,” he says. “Right? You think that means I have all the power in the world. All I have to do is say the word and whatever I want, it happens like that.” He snaps his fingers and shakes his head. “But my territory doesn’t go beyond Secondo Vasto. It’s a tiny speck, surrounded by a land with people who don’t obey me. They don’t respect my authority. And why should they? I give these people—our people—a way of life. What good do I bring those outside this town? They don’t believe I can give them the way of life they want, so I have no power over them.”
