The Family(5)
It is this moment that Sofia’s anger boils and cannot be contained inside her skin anymore. As Marco DeLuca approaches her seat, Sofia clenches her small hands, and extends her leg to catch him across the shins.
Antonia looks up to see Marco DeLuca sobbing as he picks himself up from the floor. In the din that follows, Antonia snatches up images that she will sort out later—Sofia, her leg still lifted into the aisle, her mouth open in shock; Maria Panzini, wailing and clutching the side of her desk in a very good impression of an old lady; Mr. Monaghan, face bare in unmasked shock and horror; and a single, glistening, red-rimmed tooth, lying on its side on the linoleum floor.
And as Antonia watches, she sees a strange expression creep over Sofia’s face—a version of the one Sofia’s father wears when he smashes a water bug under his shoe, or slits the glistening belly of a fish.
That expression will haunt Antonia for many years. It will come back to her in the moments she is not sure whether to trust Sofia, during the dark and thin parts of their friendship. There is a seed of something volatile in Sofia. Antonia searches herself and cannot find a similar place. She does not know whether or not she is relieved.
Later that evening, Sofia sits in her chair in the kitchen, snapping the ends off of green beans. She understands by the stiffness of her mamma’s shoulders and the thick quiet in the kitchen that she is in trouble. Tripping Marco had made her feel giddy, and a little surprised. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. But Sofia does not quite feel sorry.
* * *
—
Every Sunday, after Mass, the Russos and the Colicchios pile into one car and drive across the Brooklyn Bridge, to Tommy Fianzo’s house for dinner.
Tommy Fianzo lives in a sprawling four-bedroom penthouse close enough to Gramercy Park that everyone who walks by outside his home is dressed head to toe in silk and leather, furs and pearls. He doesn’t have a key to the park but can often be heard telling anyone who will listen that he doesn’t want one, doesn’t care about the things the Americans do, here, your glass is empty, come, have a drink, have some wine. The Colicchios and the Russos arrive as one unit in a slow parade of Tommy’s employees.
By three o’clock, the usually spacious-seeming Fianzo apartment is stuffed to the brim with the buzzing and spitting of adults, the smell of wine and garlic. In the winter, the windows steam and the house fills with the singed, snowy smell of gloves and scarves drying on radiators; in the summer there is the sharp stench of sweat, and melting buckets of ice for lemonade and white wine on every surface. Antonia and Sofia are quickly forgotten in the maelstrom and fend for themselves with the other Family children, who they see once a week but who they do not know well, because their families are the only ones who live in Red Hook.
Tommy Fianzo has a son, Tommy Jr., who is bigger than Sofia and Antonia and mean, given to vicious pinches and obscene gestures when no adults are looking. Tommy’s brother Billy comes, who Sofia and Antonia like even less than Tommy’s son. He doesn’t have a wife, or children, and he seems to skulk at the edges of rooms like a barnacle on a rock. His eyes are narrow and black, and his teeth crowd into his mouth like commuters on a train platform. He rarely speaks to them, but he watches them with his beady eyes, and Sofia and Antonia avoid him.
At six, Tommy Fianzo and his wife carry the platters of food into the room. Bellissima, the guests cheer. They welcome the bowl of pasta, the falling apart lamb, the cold plates of beans and sliced squid drenched in olive oil, the slippery roasted red peppers. The guests kiss their fingers. They beam. Moltissime grazie, they moan. I have never been so full. I have never seen food so beautiful.
For the most part, Sofia and Antonia are ignored: left to their own devices, they play precarious games of tag, racing around the table and between the legs and gesturing elbows of adults. The house fills with pipe tobacco and ladies’ perfume; the chaos is friendly, familiar, the burbling high point of a wave. Eventually, their parents fill their plates.
On the way home, Sofia and Antonia are half-asleep, eyes lowered, limbs heavy. Manhattan sparkles through the car windows as they flash over the Brooklyn Bridge. And if they are lucky, Antonia’s papa will put a hand to each of their backs and sing to them, low and soft songs that he remembers from his own mamma, from the island where he grew up. He tells them about the red-hot dirt, the whitewashed ancient church, the fragrant shade of gnarled lemon trees, the old woman with long and tangled hair who lived in a hut overlooking the sea.
When they get home, the Colicchios and the Russos unfurl from the car and the grown-ups kiss one another before they go into their respective apartments. Carlo carries Antonia upstairs and Joey takes Sofia by the hand and Rosa and Lina share a lingering look at one another, at their husbands, at their girls.
Papa, Antonia says, before she drifts into solid sleep, you would rather be here all the time instead of going to work, wouldn’t you. It is not a question. Cara mia, Carlo whispers. Of course.
In the other room, Lina Russo always knows when Carlo gives this answer. She knows when Carlo eases their daughter into sleep. Cara mia, and Lina is weighted down at last, balanced and calm. Of course.
On Sundays after Sofia is asleep Rosa stands still in her living room and surveys her territory. Cara mia, she thinks. Her sleeping daughter, who wants for nothing. Her husband with his raised eyebrows, waiting for her to decide the room can be abandoned for morning. Of course.