When she lies down to sleep at night, her heart beats furiously against her chest. She is transported into visceral memories of the months after Robbie was born. It is a time in her life she has carefully contained: an aberration, a cautionary tale. But she remembers now. Every time Antonia shuts her eyes, she remembers pain, holding herself together so she could pee without splitting down the middle. The months she knew the world was there but could not make herself a part of it, like there was an impenetrable film suffocating her. The fear she felt at being in the same room as everyone she loved, but also, a thousand miles away.
When Antonia told Paolo she was pregnant, he took her in his arms and cried, and then he promised to be more grateful, less ornery, less dissatisfied with his job, with his lot. He stays like this all winter, telling her to put her feet up, not to lift that, Robbie, for God’s sake don’t torture your mother. So there are moments of perfect joy, when Antonia can imagine she is twenty, and marrying a beautiful man, and planning to have three babies and live in a spacious and bright home, which somehow, in her imagination, always smells like the ocean.
But when Antonia dreams, Carlo stands just out of her reach with his back to her. They are at the seashore. The water is still and opaque; it is both the end of the world and the source. Carlo walks away from Antonia toward the water. She screams Papa at the top of her lungs. He doesn’t turn around. Papa, Papa. Antonia rages. Her feet are stuck in the sand; she is too weak to pull them out, to go in after her papa. She watches as Carlo disappears into the sea.
When she wakes from these dreams she is angry. With herself, because Antonia often directs her frustration inward. But also, with Paolo. This is something she won’t explain to him. I’m angry because you got me pregnant is a shameful sentiment, and Antonia cannot voice it. But Paolo knows. He can see the way Antonia shields herself from him, the way she holds herself slightly more erect in any room he enters. He is kinder in response, but he also works longer hours, lingering at the office, calling Joey to ask for extra tasks.
And so the rift deepens. The winter wind strengthens. The dark, cold months pass. And the valence of Antonia and Paolo’s divide takes on a certain seriousness. They begin to forget their way back to one another.
Robbie knows all of this without actually knowing it. He can feel that there is a deep and deadly chasm in any room both of his parents are in. It is populated by silence and apathy. Later in his life, Robbie will know this was a dark time in his household because he will retain almost no memories of his mother while she was pregnant. He’s old enough to notice it, and he is sensitive, so he feels it. But in his memory, this year will be blank.
For everyone else, it will be unforgettable.
Robbie and Julia know exactly what their family business consists of but not how it is accomplished. Their families, of course, would like to keep it that way for as long as possible. But as they hurtle toward their sixth birthdays they notice what seems like more closed doors than usual. More late-night whispers in the walls of their homes, as their fathers shuffle quietly back and forth, planning. Plotting.
Curiosity grows in Robbie and Julia, beanstalks of it sprouting in their stomachs and pushing up and out of their mouths. Where are you going, Papa? Julia asks Saul as he leaves on a Thursday night. The Empire State Building, Saul responds. He is distracted. Julia loves the Empire State Building. You’re not, she says. What are you doing? Saul adjusts the collar of his shirt in the hallway mirror. It’s too late for you to be up, Jules, he says. Should I ask Nonna to come read you a story? And then, I love you. And then Saul is gone, and in the click of the front door shutting Julia finds she is hungry, and frightened. Information might have fed her.
Julia cannot sleep that night. She twists and turns so she sweats damp spots into every inch of her bedsheets.
Robbie, gifted with slightly more stealth than Julia, creeps along the middle rooms of his apartment. His papa came home from work and shut the bedroom door and his mamma is in there now, too, the low hum of her voice against the sharp crackle of his. Stuck here, Robbie hears. Half-assed . . . legacy. And then nothing, and then, Minchia! which if Robbie said, his mamma would chase him around the apartment with a bar of Ivory soap to wash his mouth. And then his mamma’s syrup, the tone she uses to calm Robbie down too. And then footsteps. Robbie flees to the kitchen table and has to pretend he has been practicing writing the alphabet the whole time. His mamma comes into the kitchen, where she braces a hand against her back and holds herself up against the counter with the other. She breathes, shhhh, a loud soothing sigh. The bigger she gets, the more inaccessible she seems to him.