Page 35 of Mafia King
“Why am I frowning?” I say.
“Your father denied you a second lollipop.”
“Man. I am not happy.”
“Violetta isbuona come il pane, he used to say.” He chuckles, describing my father’s belief that I’m asgood as bread, which is pretty solid as Italian compliments go. Then he twists it around, “But the attitude on her isbrutta come la fame.”
“Ugly as hunger?”
He shows me another picture of myself at about four with my arms crossed and a sour puss from here to next week. Yeah. Daddy was right.
“Where did you get these?”
“Your father gave them to me in his will. He thought I’d give them to Rosetta, but…” He shrugs and lets the rest of the sentence say itself. “I was a kid too. The first time the Tabonas tried to kill him, they threw him into a water tower with cinderblocks around his waist.”
As he speaks, he takes out pictures one by one, and I’m blindsided by my first few years of life. The people in the square at the center of the apartment complex, the little stores, the tight streets, are all completely different than I expect and yet, exactly as I remember.
“I fished him out. Cut him loose but…” He shakes his head. “The water was dirty and he had an infection in his lungs. Said where Franco Tabona failed, bacteria could succeed. But that’s why he trusted me with his daughters.”
“Didn’t know you so well, did he?” I say slyly.
“I was almost eighteen. Plenty of time to disappoint him, but I did promise, and I kept that promise. I made sure you both were sent to America, and I came here, established my business, then introduced myself.”
“And you fell in love with her.”
“She was beautiful, and I loved her.”
How can I be angry at him? How can I hold this grudge so tightly when his remorse is loosening my grip? We both loved the same woman. I shouldn’t hate him for that, but I do.
“But no,” he continues. “I never loved her the way you think.”
Instead of triumph, I’m enraged. How dare he not love her?
“We said we were going to the other side to get things for the wedding.” He flips through the box, tossing random photos on the table, but he’s looking for something in particular. “That was the story we told, but it wasn’t entirely true.”
“You were going to marry her there because she was too young to marry here.” I pick up a Polaroid of Rosetta leaning over a white cake and blowing out two candles in the shape of a 1 and a 3.
“When I took her to Italy, she was seventeen. I was already too old for her, but it was what it was, and then…” He finds what he’s been looking for and puts it on the table, tapping the corner. “This.”
I gasp. It’s an ultrasound, which is enough to be shocked over. But there’s so much more to it.
“Not normal,” I say. “This is ectopic.”
“Fine, yes,” he says with anger that’s not directed at me. “An ectopic pregnancy. We leave here with a blood test to get married on the other side, because her child will not be a bastard. And the doctor ina casa del diavlo?” He sneers when he saysthe house of the devil—it means theboondocks—as if he had the chance to set fire to it, but didn’t. “That doctor missed what a nursing student can see right in front of her.”
“Oh, God.”
“I was in the city for a few days taking care of some business,” he explains more calmly, because now it’s on him. “She said she was fine, so I went, and when I came back, it was over.”
I put the sonogram down next to a photo of them in the strange place made of old stones. It’s not exactly the same piazza where Santino fed me orange wedges, but it could be any of the hundreds more in Napoli. There, he looks a hundred years younger and a hell of a lot happier, in a sport jacket and shirt open at the collar, squinting in the sun with his arm around Rosetta. Her left hand rests on his, and that diamond—my diamond—flashes in the Mediterranean light.
“It wasn’t pneumonia,” I say.
“It was not.”
“Did she know she was given to you as a reward?”
“No. She didn’t have to.” He gathers up the photos except for the ultrasound photo, clicking the sides against the tabletop like a deck of cards, then drops them all in the folder. “That baby? It wasn’t mine. I never touched her. How could I? She was a sweet girl. A nice girl, but never… never.” He cuts the air with his hand. “We became friends, but not more. I swear it.”
