“You have a daughter?” And here, Sofia can see, Detective Leo’s eyes glance appraisingly at her waist. People often do this. They have to imagine Sofia pregnant in order to determine whether her child has ruined her. She keeps her face carefully blank. “Your papa,” says Detective Leo, “did a real special thing, during the war, for people who needed it. People who were escaping something awful, you know, all that Nazi scum. Well, we showed them, didn’t we. And I guess you might not understand this, but I just want some credit where credit’s due. I have to advocate for myself.” Detective Leo has finished inhaling his meal and sits back against his chair to regard Sofia through his thick dark glasses. There is a speck of tomato at the corner of his mouth. “Your old dad’s an honorable man,” he says, “so I think he’ll understand where I’m coming from.” And Sofia can see, now, clearly, what Leo needs.
“You know,” she says, “I don’t think he would have been able to run his business without you.”
“Really?” asks Leo. “Well, I guess you need someone who knows the ins and outs.” Leo takes a sip of water to disguise a slow smile, but Sofia sees it.
“Yes, certainly,” says Sofia. “I know how much he values you.”
“You can’t just value someone, though,” says Detective Leo. “You have to compensate them accordingly. You have to show them.”
“I know my father knows that,” says Sofia. “I think he’s just doing what he can to take care of his family, and the families of everyone who works for him. He makes it seem easy, but it’s a lot of responsibility.”
“I understand that,” says Leo. “When my precinct reorganized—well. I understand being saddled with responsibility over other people.”
“I can tell,” says Sofia.
“Joey Colicchio really is an honorable man,” Leo says, and for the first time in her adult life, Sofia can see a road stretched out in front of her, a path she wants to take. This is the right thing for me, she thinks, and she is so grateful she almost weeps at the table. This is what I’m supposed to do.
* * *
—
When Sofia returns home and Saul asks, how was it? she turns to him with light in her eyes and says, it was easy.
And she expects to fall sound asleep that night, but she finds herself staring at the midnight ceiling, and she cannot figure out what is keeping her awake. Was it Leo’s face as they said goodbye, how he turned and scratched his head, so like Saul when he grapples with something wordless and gnarled? Was it Saul himself, who has only half-looked at her for days, who is gripped by a melancholy Sofia doesn’t recognize, and wouldn’t have expected, given that the war is over?
Sometime before she drifts off, Sofia remembers a school courtyard, and holding Antonia’s hand. A cluster of girls on the other side of the windswept swingset and Sofia could tell they were all talking about her. Your father is a murderer, Maria Panzini said, matter-of-factly, as they waited in line to go back inside. Ice like concrete in Sofia’s belly. Even in grade school, she had harbored some unspeakable desire to be better than the people around her. Has she succeeded now? Does she understand the price she’ll pay? It was easy, her own voice echoes. It was like it was made for her.
Next to Sofia, Saul feigns sleep. For hours, he stares with half-mast eyes at the ticking clock.
* * *
—
At dinner on Sunday Joey raises a toast to Sofia and everyone cheers, Antonia and Paolo and Frankie, Pops, who is repeating stories lately and who might not understand what he is toasting, and even hawkeyed Nonna, even Rosa gives a tight smile, and Rosa’s brother nods and Marco DeLuca and two other interchangeable new guys raise their glasses but look at Joey the whole time, instead of at Sofia. “Welcome,” Joey says, warmly, and Sofia is too busy avoiding Antonia’s eyes to notice that Joey is avoiding Rosa’s, but Rosa finds Sofia washing dishes after dinner and begins to berate her with the fierceness of a thousand mammas: Gussied up like you’re for sale, this is disgraceful. You have a husband and a daughter, Sofia, what will Julia think, how will she grow up? And Sofia, for the first time in her life, wants something more than she wants to argue with Rosa, and so she kisses her mamma and she says, I’ll be careful, Julia will be fine, and she leaves Rosa sputtering in this kitchen, torn, as Rosa often is, between pride and horror.
The job becomes a part of her so that soon Sofia cannot ever remember not wanting it. She points her whole being toward the horizon of it, the glory of stepping out of the house and being seen.