Breathe, stupid girl. Breathe.
For the first time, I do the math in my own head. Santino brought five men, Zio brought three. In the kitchen, there are six of us. The dining room seats twelve. The women will be relegated to the kitchen while the men usher themselves into the dining room.
It is a meeting, not of the families, but of the families.
A small tremble creeps down my spine. Earlier, Elettra mentioned the capos. About her brother keeping her safe. Protecting her. Then in walks Re Santino with his crew and Zio standing by with his.
We just made a week’s worth of pasta and bread, with Zia Donna popping the corks on several bottles of basement-fermented red.
There’s no room for the women. This evening is about the men. Dangerous men. What was it Zia told me only yesterday about the different sides of life? “If you’re lucky, you’ll have a man to deal with the cruel one.” If I’ve learned anything from my perch on the landing above the stairs over the years, it’s that talks with men never end in good news.
“Violetta.” Zia’s all business now. Any signs of being shaken are long gone. Zio may be the one to deal with the cruel side of the world, but I’d put money on Zia taking down just as many terrible people as my uncle. “Take the bread baskets to the dining room while Nana Angelina and I get the antipasti.”
She hands me our best bread baskets. Zia Donna finishes polishing the silver trays. We don’t bring out the silver much anymore.
My aunt and uncle are probably more than a little old-fashioned, and very traditional. Moving away from the old country only encouraged their behavior, rather than ease it up, as if they were terrified to forget Napoli. My American friends would never understand our home life or their behavior, and I never bothered introducing the two worlds because explaining it would be fruitless.
But this? This was positively backward. I couldn’t even count on one hand the number of dinners served in this house where the women were relegated to the kitchen as servants to the men. Zia isn’t the kind of woman who sits back and serves the opposite sex. Not even when she’s worried about the cruel parts of the world.
What in the ever-loving fuck is going on?
If I’m to be a mere bread carrier, then I’m going to do some spying. Between the piteous looks and this baffling display, I don’t trust what’s happening in my home, and that’s a terrifying place to be.
In the dining room, thick with the scent of man, cigar, and too much cologne, Santino is at the head of the table, not Zio. How fitting for a king.
The thrill is mostly gone, leaving instead a lump of fear stuck in my throat. What man thinks he can sit at the head of another man’s table in this other man’s own home? What does a man do, exactly, to be revered as such? I don’t think I want to know.
Their conversation is strictly in Italian. I linger, placing the baskets just so, and carefully moving around their large feet, so I can eavesdrop. Figure out what exactly is going on with these soberly dressed men. In all these years, I’ve forgotten how to speak our mother language, much to Zia’s dismay, but I can understand enough to get what’s going on.
One of them is flying back to Italy for a christening. Someone else’s idiot brother-in-law nearly chopped off his thumb while using hedge clippers. There are jokes about the kids left at home. The burden of taxes.
The idiots in the FBI. A younger man with a huge nose and thick eyebrows brings up his mantenuta—a woman who isn’t your wife, but who’s expensive nonetheless—joking about her putting him into such a debt he’s going to have to give Lucinda to American Express. They all laugh, except my uncle and the king, who puts his wineglass down so I can fill it.
“Enough,” Santino says. He’s not even loud or sharp, but the laughter dies as if it’s been shot.
As I lean over Santino, pouring his wine, I can feel his eyes on me.
I try to keep my body as far away from his as possible, but our skin is practically magnetized. I can’t breathe.
“Grazie.” The word rolls from his lips like thunder from a cloud.
My nipples harden and press against my blouse, tingles explode across my skin. It’s the volcano choosing another day to erupt yet promising to explode for him and only him—when and only when he chooses.
I hurry back to the kitchen—my skin burning in shame and lust.
“Well?” Elettra grabs my arm after clearing another round of dishes. “What are they saying?”
“Boring things.” I shrug, secretly thrilled to be playing informant, but also disappointed there was nothing more exciting to relay. “Family chatter that doesn’t matter. Someone almost lost their daughter’s wedding savings playing cards. That sort of thing.”
Elettra pouts. “I like it when they talk about exciting things. We never get to be involved. But one day I want to be like my brother, in the thick of it all…”
“You do not,” Zia Donna snaps. She’s more tempered than earlier, but there is still venom in that stare. “Get the espresso cups. Go.”
“Can’t I just go out there once?” Elettra pleads. “I’ve been doing all the work, too. Let me see them, just once, Ma?”
“Here.” Zia thrusts a second bottle of sambuca into her hands and passes me the coffee pot. “Go get those brazen men their coffee.”
The way she says “men” forces her entire face to curl up, like a soured lemon.
Conversations in the dining room prove to Elettra that there’s no excitement here. No danger. Just boring people talking about boring things. An Italian circus, just for them to joke about minutiae. I try to catch Elettra’s gaze to tell her, “I told you so,” but then a single word from the man at the head of the table stops me dead.
“Violetta.”
Everything stops. Zia and Elettra stop pouring as if his voice turned them into statues. I’m at the opposite end of the table from Santino, pot of coffee frozen mid-air, but the way he stares at me, across so many other men, makes me feel naked, exposed. Vulnerable as a gazelle too young to run with the herd when the lion begins his chase.
The way they all look tells me my name wasn’t simply mentioned in passing. It was a command to pay attention. A command to answer. A command that came straight from the king.
“Yes?” The word barely unsticks from my throat.
“You will take a walk with me.”
“Capo,” Zio interjects, tilting his head as if he’s starting an argument he can’t afford to lose. “I was thinking—”
“Hush, Guglielmo.” Santino stands, silencing the entire room with a single movement. How tall is this king? Six-two? Three? A thousand feet, scraping the night sky as he comes to me?
“I could sell the business.” Zio presses on. “Maybe some property I’ve kept. This house.”
If I wasn’t confused before, I am now.
As far as I know, Zio’s business runs in the black. He’s not rich, but I never thought he’d be in so much debt he’d have to trade his property.
My Z’s don’t have children of their own, so all the earlier talk of daughters paying debts was irrelevant, but now Zio’s trying to throw real estate at Re Santino and this all makes no sense.
Santino opens his gilded fist and holds his hand out to me.