by CD Reiss
“You want to be turned into a street whore?” She shakes Elettra viciously, danger etched into her features.
“Donna!” Nana grabs her by the shoulders and gently pries her hands away.
But Zia Donna’s hell-bent on proving whatever point she’s got and winds up scratching Elettra’s arm as she pulls away.
“I was kidding.” Elettra hiccups between sobs, cradling her scratched arm. “Ma, it was a joke!”
“That is nothing to laugh about!”
Zia catches my attention and tips her head toward the back half of the house as she picks up a tray of antipasto. I know what she’s asking.
“Come, Elettra.” I wrap my arms around my cousin to hold her together as she cries. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“I was just kidding,” she whimpers again as we go to the little downstairs bathroom.
“You know how moms get about their daughters.” I don’t actually know, because my parents died when I was very young. Still, I think back to the argument between my aunt and uncle early this morning, and it’s enough to elicit empathy. “Family cares, even if they do it rough.”
I close the door. Elettra sits on the blue toilet so I can tend to her arm. She’s as shaken as I am, though more, given what happened. What about this man caused my aunt to go ballistic? He’s scary as hell, sure. But that didn’t justify calling Elettra a whore waiting to happen.
Is that why Zio lost his shit this morning?
And what does that say about Santino? Is he the kind of man who only likes fallen women? Does he ruin all the girls foolish enough to flirt with him? Does he use them then abandon them?
I try not to dwell on it too much, instead focusing on carefully bandaging my cousin’s arm and pretending it’s part of my final, but I can’t stop twisting back to it. So many arguments in our home today, violence from my aunt, all over this mysterious, dark man.
The king, about to receive hospitality from a man he made kneel and weep.
What would such a man do to me?
Would he make me kneel and weep too?
“Violetta?” Elettra says. My hands have frozen with a Band-Aid inches from her wound. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I place the adhesive strip. “Just…thinking.”
“About?”
About a man so mighty he’s called a king.
About a man whose power I felt so strongly, twice, that the memory of it lives deep in my body.
About the fear of him taking away my defenses, opening me the way heat spreads the slashes at the top of a loaf of bread, crusting my insides against my outside.
About me liking it.
Wanting it.
Fearing it.
I don’t want a dark-eyed king.
Except the one.
Which I can’t, because he’s terrifying.
I can’t hold the contradictions in my head, and shake them away.
“What’s going on out there?” I ask.
“I have no idea,” Elettra whispers. She watches me smooth down the bandage. “My brother was weird this morning too. He said Daddy would never deal a daughter to the capos.”
Ah, this is about the part of my community I never have to think about. My uncle is in construction, so he deals with it, paying what he has to pay and staying in the good graces of the criminals in charge. We observe the law of omertà like a religion.
The law of omertà is simple. You don’t speak of who runs Secondo Vasto. You don’t say or even think the words. You don’t dream of them or what they do.
You certainly don’t judge it, because the mob makes the world go around, and in the same way you don’t think of gravity or the forces that keep the planet in orbit, you don’t spend time thinking about the corruption or crime. You just pretend you’re more American than anything else, because the law of omertà is about so much more than the mafia.
“So,” I started, trying to find the best phrasing for the question, “he’s afraid Uncle Angelo’s going to give them one of you guys?”
Sometimes, at church, it’s whispered that a daughter is dealt to a capo for a debt. The weddings are quick and surprising, and the daughter in question denies it’s anything less than love.
I don’t actually believe it, and I don’t have to worry about it. My father’s dead, and only a father can offer a daughter as payment for a debt. Rosetta and I were worth nothing to the Zs when they took us in and loved us like the children they’d never have.
“I don’t think your father owes anyone anything,” I say, taking it all as seriously as I’d take a plot hole in a soap opera. “Not a daughter’s worth, for sure.”
“Antonio promised me he’d kill them.”
I scoff, imagining my cousin—or anyone—putting a finger on Re Santino.
“Men are weird,” I say, getting out another Band-Aid.
“My mother says they’ve got this thing between their legs that makes them think they’re smart, even though it’s on the other side of the body from their brain.”
That makes me laugh harder than necessary.
“Cousin, truer words were never spoken.” I make a plastic X on her arm and pat it finished.
Elettra runs a finger over the extra strip. “A bit overkill, isn’t it?”
“I’m a nursing student. Overkill is better than death.” I shrug. “Besides, maybe it’ll make Zia Donna feel guilty about freaking out.”
“She never feels guilty.” My cousin pouts.
“Mothers.” I smile, picturing my own mother and barely succeeding to put her features together after so long.
Thinking about her doesn’t hurt anymore. Instead, it’s strange. Almost hollow. Zia’s everything I could have asked for, but there’s an asterisk by her place in my life, and though I never want to look at the footnote, I know what it says all too well.
*Not your real mother.
Rosetta and I lost our parents, but I have no right to asterisk this family.
We were safe and secure with Mom and Dad. When they were killed, every bit of protection was ripped away. But not for long. We were given a kitchen table’s worth of aunts and grandmothers to raise us. A poker table’s worth of uncles and grandfathers to protect us. Not a mother and father, but good enough.
Elettra and I return to the table of endless bread, and I can’t help but wonder what exactly my zio, the rational protector, has gotten himself involved with.
3
VIOLETTA
The entire back of the house is now a complicated ballet of dishes and elbows performed to the rhythm of two languages shouted between two kitchens.
The kitchen dance always makes me think of home—Napoli—and my mother. If she were here, she’d be gossiping with family and neighbors, flour up to her elbows. Rosetta would refill the wine and sneak treats for me. Everyone so happy and so alive.
Envisioning them with me still, as if they’re part of the chaos brewing alongside the handmade cabinets and stocked pantry, is my favorite part of cooking. And days like today, with the whole family participating, it’s easy to forget two women are missing.
In this moment—covered in flour and shining with sweat—maybe I am my mother and Tina is my daughter, and we can all pretend their spirits aren’t just with us, but a part of us. It’s not so hollow in my chest anymore. That phantom ache that loves to assault me when I least expect it has disappeared into the ether. I am one with these old wooden floors and the voices that chide and tease with nothing but love.
The beach is nice and the boys are pretty, but this is my happy place.
I’ve all but forgotten the look on Zio’s face when I came downstairs. In the heat of the afternoon, the pity has slid from everyone’s faces. The long looks have ceased. All anyone can remember are the words to Umberto Tozzi’s “Ti Amo” and that funny thing you said ten years ago when you were mad. Get the olives. Check the bread.
At exactly five o’clock, the doorbell rings.
The entire house goes silent.
; I don’t notice it at first. I’m too busy slicing thin shards of basil to notice everything around me has gone quiet, but it creeps, heavy, and I’m soon as stoic as the others. Everything I’ve managed to forget bangs down the door between what’s on my mind and what I choose not to think about. It enters, operatic and full, with a voice that’s impossible to ignore.
“He’s here,” Zia Donna whispers.
Everyone flocks to get a glimpse of the man who has brought our lively kitchen to a grinding halt, but—as if there’s an invisible barrier—none of us step into the hall. My aunts whisper like chatty chickens, speaking Italian too fast for me to understand. Tina squeezes between several pairs of legs. Elettra grips my arm to pull herself higher onto her tiptoes.
Zia pulls me back, hard. When I look at her, she’s looking at Elettra.
“I’m sorry, Violetta.” Zia’s voice is barely above a whisper. “I’m so sorry, my sweet Violetta.”
“It’s okay, Zia.” I squeeze her hand with a tight smile. “You didn’t hurt me.”
She’s not the crazy aunt who leaves scratches and calls her daughter—well, niece—a street whore, as we all witnessed with Zia Donna. The event must have shaken Zia more than usual for her to apologize for just grabbing my arm.
The things this man, this supposed king, is doing to our house are starting to piss me off.
I drop Zia’s hand and peer over Elettra’s head. Santino and four other men are in our hallway, greeting Zio and three men. They are each dressed in various shades of darkness, all somber and serious.
Santino, though, towers above them. Hulking, tall, somehow dazzling in the light of the late afternoon despite all the funeral colors. He’s just as stunning as the day he pinned my ghost to the hallway floor. Just as serpentine. His jaw is tight, locked, a man coiled to strike at any moment. Venomous. Gorgeous.
His handshake is even something to behold. His hand engulfs Zio’s like ravioli dough folded over a lump of cheese.
Elettra sighs beneath me, a young girl with an intense and palpable crush. I can practically feel Zia Donna coil up, ready to put another series of bandages on her oldest and most yearning daughter, but then Santino looks our way, and she goes rigid.
His eyes pinpoint everyone in the doorway, hammer them in place. Surveying, inspecting maybe? Memorizing those who dare to spy on him? Even little Tina goes still.
Finally, his gaze reaches mine just for a moment, but in that very moment, my soul shakes free from my body. I can’t breathe, think, move. This, I decide, is why they call him the king. He exudes power from across entire rooms, entire houses. A mere shift of his gaze has rendered me marble. I am again a young girl, pinned against my will and very much in accordance with my fledgling desires. Everything fades away in that brief moment, and it’s just him and me, trapped in a long hallway.
Zio leads them into the dining room, Italian flowing like river rapids between them, breaking the curse binding my body. Breathing becomes taxing, as if my lungs are relearning how to function once again. Like everything was fine marble, chiseled and perfected, and then God blew life my way, leaving me to fumble through the actions everyone else seems so capable of doing.
Breathe, stupid girl. Breathe.
For the first time, I do the math in my head. Santino brought five men, Zio brought three. In the kitchen, there are at least six of us. The dining room seats twelve. The women will be relegated to the kitchen while the men usher themselves into the dining room.
It is a meeting not of the families, but of the families.
A small tremble creeps down my spine. Earlier, Elettra mentioned the capos. About her brother keeping her safe. Protecting her. Then in walks Re Santino with his crew and Zio standing by with his.
We just made a week’s worth of pasta and bread, with Zia Donna popping the corks on several bottles of basement-fermented red.
There’s no room for the women. This evening is about the men. Dangerous men. What was it Zia told me only yesterday about the different sides of life? “If you’re lucky, you’ll have a man to deal with the cruel one.” If I’ve learned anything from my perch on the landing above the stairs over the years, it’s that talks with men never end in good news.
“Violetta.” Zia’s all business now. Any signs of being shaken are long gone. Zio may be the one to deal with the cruel side of the world, but I’d put money on Zia taking down just as many terrible people as my uncle. “Take the bread baskets to the dining room while Nana Angelina and I get the antipasti.”
Zia Donna finishes polishing the silver trays. We don’t bring out the silver much anymore.
“Don’t we need more chairs?” I whisper to the woman who raised me. “Or should we set up a second table?”
She tsks at me, which means both no and hush. “There are too many men tonight for that. Make sure you eat a little before dinner.”
I don’t know what my aunt and uncle were like on the other side, but here, in America, they’re very old-fashioned—as if they’re terrified of losing Napoli. But they let me forget the language as well as the traditions, taking me out of St. Anselm’s and putting me in public school. My American friends would never understand our home life or their behavior, and I’ve never bothered introducing the two worlds because explaining it would be fruitless.
But this? This is positively backward. I could count on one hand the number of dinners served in this house where the women were relegated to the kitchen as servants to the men. Zia isn’t the kind of woman who sits back and serves the opposite sex.
What in the ever-loving fuck is going on?
If I’m to be a mere bread carrier, then I’m going to do some spying. Between the piteous looks and this baffling display, I don’t trust what’s happening in my home, and that’s a terrifying place to be.
In the dining room, thick with the scent of man, cigar, and too much cologne, Santino is at the head of the table, not Zio. How fitting for a king.
The thrill is mostly gone, leaving instead a lump of fear stuck in my throat. What man thinks he can sit at the head of another man’s table? What does a man do, exactly, to be revered as such? I don’t think I want to know.
Their conversation is strictly in Italian through the manicotti and the osso buco. I linger, placing the baskets just so and carefully moving around their large feet, so I can eavesdrop. Figure out what exactly is going on with these soberly dressed men. In all these years, I’ve forgotten how to speak our mother language, much to Zia’s dismay, but I can understand enough to get what’s going on.
One of them is flying back to Italy for a christening. Someone else’s idiot brother-in-law nearly chopped off his thumb while using hedge clippers. There are jokes about the kids left at home. The burden of taxes.
The idiots in the FBI. A younger man with a huge nose and thick eyebrows brings up his mantenuta—a woman who isn’t your wife, but who’s expensive nonetheless—joking about her putting him into such a debt he’s going to have to give Lucinda to American Express. They all laugh, except my uncle and the king, who puts down his wineglass so I can fill it.
“Enough,” Santino says. He’s not even loud or sharp, but the laughter dies as if it’s been shot.
As I lean over Santino, pouring his wine, I feel his eyes on me. I try to keep my body as far away from his as possible, but our skin is practically magnetized. I can’t breathe.
“Grazie.” The word rolls from his lips like thunder from a cloud.
My nipples harden and press against my blouse, tingles exploding across my skin. It’s the volcano choosing another day to erupt yet promising to explode for him and only him—when and only when he chooses.
I hurry back to the kitchen—my skin burning in shame and lust.
“Well?” Elettra grabs my arm after I go back to the kitchen with a load of dirty dishes. “What are they saying?”
“Boring things.” I shrug, secretly thrilled to be playing informant, but also disappointed there’s nothing more exciting to relay. “Family cha
tter that doesn’t matter. Someone almost lost their daughter’s wedding savings playing cards. That sort of thing.”
Elettra pouts. “I like it when they talk about exciting things. We never get to be involved. But one day I want to be like my brother, in the thick of it all—”
“You do not,” Zia Donna snaps. She’s more even-tempered than earlier, but there is still venom in that stare. “Get the espresso cups. Go.”
“Can’t I just go out there once?” Elettra pleads. “I’ve been doing all the work too. Let me see them, just once, Ma?”
“Here.” Zia thrusts a second bottle of sambuca into Elettra’s hands and passes me the coffee pot. “Go get those brazen men their coffee.”
The way she says “men” forces her entire face to curl up as if she ate a soured lemon.
Conversations in the dining room prove to Elettra that there’s no excitement here. No danger. Just boring people talking about boring things. An Italian circus, just for them to joke about minutiae. I try to catch Elettra’s gaze to tell her, “I told you so,” but then a single word from the man at the head of the table stops me dead.
“Violetta.”
Everything stops. Zia and Elettra stop pouring as if his voice turned them into statues. I’m at the opposite end of the table from Santino, pot of coffee frozen mid-air, but the way he stares at me, across so many other men, makes me feel naked, exposed. Vulnerable as a gazelle too young to run with the herd when the lion begins his chase.
The way they all look tells me my name wasn’t simply mentioned in passing. It was a command to pay attention. A command to answer. A command that came straight from the king.
“Yes?” The word barely unsticks from my throat.
“You will take a walk with me.”
“Capo,” Zio interjects, tilting his head as if he’s starting an argument he can’t afford to lose. “I was thinking—”
“Hush, Guglielmo.” Santino stands, silencing the entire room with a single movement. How tall is this king? Six-two? Three? A thousand feet, scraping the night sky as he comes to me?
