So Antonia has thrown her whole self into motherhood, and in her efforts to be unlike Lina, unlike Sofia, she is there the instant Robbie wakes and she soothes him to sleep, a hand on his back every night. She tries to spare him any pain, any fear, any loss, and so she is constantly telling him she loves him, telling him to be careful, to look both ways, but rather than any common sense, Robbie develops a powerful need to have Antonia near him at all times, so they are rarely seen apart, except when Julia is there: Julia, in whose presence Robbie lights up, grows six inches taller; Julia, who sparks in Robbie something courageous and mischievous that draws him away from Antonia, that allows Antonia to rest, to come to terms with the toll her obsessive parenting is taking on her body, on her mind. Antonia would not call this the independence she once dreamed of but she had been unable, as a teenager, to imagine what loving two children would do to her, how completely she would want to give of herself, how difficult it would be to find balance. She is scared of her own need; she is exhausted; she wouldn’t change it for the world but a small sense of self-preservation rears up in Antonia and reminds her of the months after Robbie was born, when she needed to walk alone, to clear her head, to come back to herself.
Antonia listens to Paolo when he complains that his post-war job has become droll and tedious, that the craft of falsified documents and the tedium of bookkeeping are incomparable, incompatible. She does not tell him how relieved she is that he is out of the line of fire, or as far away from it as he can be. She takes careful stock of her life and decides that each of its challenges is worth it, that each of its joys is indispensable, and in this way she reasons away Paolo’s new sullenness and Sofia’s new flightiness and the gnawing feeling that she is putting herself last, letting herself go unfinished. Most of the time she manages to feel full, full, full of love.
Soon 1946 is over. Sofia throws a party for New Year’s Eve. She dresses in sequins and Antonia feels like they are teenagers, sneaking out to a dance. Rosa and Joey beg out after midnight and take Julia and Robbie to sleep in their apartment but Sofia and Antonia and Saul and Paolo and a couple of guys Saul and Paolo work with climb up onto the roof and watch their breath puff in frozen clouds up into the starless city sky, up into the fresh new year.
* * *
—
In March, Antonia is watching Robbie and Julia. They are napping: faces utterly slack; hair plastered against their foreheads. Robbie is as enamored of Julia as Antonia was of Sofia but he is messier than Antonia was; he is more sensitive; he bruises easily. And Julia, too, seems messier than her mother, less focused, but just as big, just as loud, just as hot. She digs her hands into every patch of dirt she finds. Antonia is thankful they are sleeping.
Earlier that day Antonia had walked in on a wrestling match on the floor of her bedroom. What exactly is happening in here? She had hissed. I’m a Fianzo! Robbie had said to her. His face had been bright and upturned; he loved to tell her things, to bring her into his world. His arms were always reaching out for her. A what? Antonia had asked. Cold dread. Robbie drew himself up to his full height and raised his arms. Wooooouuurrrghhh! he growled. I’ll get you, Fianzo, shouted Julia. She tackled him. Legs went everywhere. A water glass fell off of a bedside table and shattered. Enough, enough! said Antonia. She lifted Robbie and Julia away from the glass one by one. Go, now! And Robbie had gone: dejected, worried. He never wants Antonia to be upset.
Antonia had breathed a shaky exhale and shut the door. She lives in constant fear of becoming her own mother—they killed your grandfather! she imagines saying in a moment of panic—but then she wouldn’t be the parent anymore; she would be making decisions for her own self-satisfaction. Antonia has made her peace with the mother her mother is able to be. But she does not want to become her.
She thinks, also, of the Fianzos themselves: their putrid cigars; the slick of their shoes and hair. She is grateful that her son thinks of them as monsters, and she is deeply disappointed: since he was born, Antonia has done her best to shelter him from the tragedy and terror in her own childhood. You’ve failed, she thinks.
Antonia is rarely surprised, any longer, by the depth and fierceness of her love for Julia. It’s not true what they say about blood being thicker than water. So she is grateful to have Julia sleeping soundly in her son’s bedroom, and she tries not to dwell on Sofia, who showed up earlier and begged Antonia to take Julia, just for a couple hours. And Antonia always opens the door. She always kisses Sofia’s cheeks and tells her to go, and she puts a hand on Julia’s hair, and she tries to focus on the absolute ocean of her love for both of them, rather than on Julia’s face, which crumples just slightly as Sofia leaves, like the top of a cake falling as it cools.