* * *
—
Antonia makes it through the cleanup and the goodbyes and she hugs Sofia tight and says, “We’ll figure all of this out in the morning, okay? I will call you in the morning,” and then she leaves, accepting Saul’s offer to have his driver take her home. As she is being driven away it occurs to Antonia that her husband is missing, and Sofia’s is right there, right there where she can see and touch him. In the back of the car she stares through the space between the two front seats and holds Enzo close to her and squeezes Robbie by the hand until he squirms away. Mamma, Mamma. That’s too tight.
When they arrive home, Antonia stands still at the bottom of the stairs to her building until Robbie says, Mamma, come on, and then she moves, one leaden leg after another. The windows in her apartment are blank, black. Darkened. Paolo isn’t there.
Antonia puts her boys to bed with shaking hands. She feels herself settling into a role she knows all too well: petty criminal missing, idiot wife surprised. Antonia and Paolo have been drifting apart, neither of them possessing the energy to pull themselves back together. Antonia’s body remembers the rattle of Paolo’s key in the lock. The way a part of her would tense, steeling herself against the fug of depression, the moody cloud Paolo would surely drag through her living room. Antonia prays for Paolo’s key in the lock now. She remembers it and she wills it to happen. The rattle of metal in metal. Antonia’s want pulls goosebumps up out of her skin, but there is only silence outside the front door of her apartment.
She pictures Paolo’s feet sunk into a bucket of hardening concrete, his body dragged through the far reaches of Canarsie, dumped flailing off the Belt Parkway into Long Island Sound. She pictures Paolo tied to a chair, swollen, beaten, while a faceless Fianzo brandishes bloodstained garden shears. Antonia spirals into panic. Mamma, are you crying? Robbie asks, as Antonia, a warm hand on his back, soothes him into sleep. No, caro mio, Antonia responds. She turns her face away. She hums an old song.
When Enzo and Robbie are both breathing deeply, evenly, their dreams inaccessible to watchful Antonia, she tiptoes into the living room and folds herself into the couch. Deep inside of Antonia, her organs are shifting back to their original places. The parts of her that carried a human being are shrinking, throbbing smaller and smaller so soon it will be impossible to imagine that anyone else ever lived inside her body. It will also be impossible to imagine that she had ever been alone. She clutches a small pillow and feels herself strain against it with every inhale. Somewhere, a clock ticks.
* * *
—
After dinner all it takes is a quick jerk of the head and Saul follows Joey into his study.
Rosa watches them go, and then tries to return to the cleanup. But she cannot focus: of course she can’t. She shuts her eyes and feels out into the wide world for Antonia’s fear, for Sofia’s, for Julia’s. She realizes that Antonia and Sofia will have to face whatever catastrophe is unfolding on their own.
Saul finds his hands are trembling.
The study has achy French doors which Joey shuts now, so the end-of-dinner din sounds like it is coming from a different world. Joey hands Saul a drink, which Saul grips until his fingertips go white. Joey runs a hand through his salt-and- pepper hair, as if he is trying to rake up a solution to whatever catastrophe Saul has wrought.
“You’re in trouble,” says Joey.
“I’m fixing it,” says Saul. He is twenty-three and he is promising Joey he loves Sofia. “I can handle it.”
“I’ve retired,” says Joey. “I will take your word for it.”
“Thank you,” says Saul.
“But I need you to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
Joey crosses his arms. “I once told you that you don’t get to die when you’re a father,” he says.
“I remember,” says Saul.
“I lied,” says Joey. “If you have to choose between you and them—”
“I know,” says Saul.
“I trust you can get yourself out of whatever predicament you’ve found yourself in,” says Joey. “But, Saul, if it comes down to it.”
“I know,” says Saul.
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” says Saul.
How can anyone move forward when their lives are increasingly full of ghosts that demand their time and attention? The ghost of Carlo, who haunts them all, and the ghosts of their former selves, the exoskeletons they all try to shed and bury, to lock in a closet, to repurpose. Their houses are full to bursting.