Page 100 of Mafia King
We clink and he takes his leave to poke his pinkie into the hole of a black olive, eating it off like a child. What a joke of a man.
Violetta charms Tavie and his girlfriend with a story about an afternoon we had on the beach in Italy. Our eyes meet and her cheeks warm in the most beautiful way, as I remember the way her naked body looked under the blazing Napoli sun. I wonder how much of that story she disclosed. Angelo charms her in return with a story about a fish. Zio Guglielmo and Zia Madeline laugh with her over the children trying to steal bread with their olive-tipped fingers. My second cousin, Oriana, passes her baby to Violetta, who rocks and coos with her.
I didn’t know my mother, so I don’t miss her, but in that moment, I feel the empty place where she should have been.
Beside me, Marco is replaced by Violetta’s zio Guglielmo.
“She looks happy,” he finally says.
“She is.”
We are quiet once more, as I doubt whether I have the right to speak for her.
“Thank you for raising her so beautifully.” I raise my glass in toast to him.
“Anything is possible in America.” He raises his own glass, and we toast the country where dreams meet reality.
Violetta clinks her glass of prosecco to announce dinner is ready.
* * *
The lights are outand the little fires flicker over the red script ofHappy Birthday Violetta. My wife glows, then during the last stanza of the song, she looks at me and smirks.
It’s now, and she’s ready.
“Make a wish!” Elettra cries, eyes big with her own wishes. Her mother brought the cake and Violetta gave them the 2 and 0 candles for the top.
Violetta blows out her candles, and I know she has no wish. She has a demand that has turned into a plan. Everyone applauds and the lights go on.
I stand and raise my glass. “To my beautiful wife, Violetta,” I say in Italian. “Who has made me the happiest man in the world.”
Everyoneawws. It’s like a fucking movie.
“Salute!” I toast.
“Salute!” everyone toasts back.
We all sit and Anette starts to cuts the cake, when my Violetta stands and taps her glass with a spoon.
“I have an announcement to make,” she says in Italian when she gets every last bit of attention.
She gets a gasp and an uncomfortable titter from my left. It could be that she’s speaking Italian when so much has been said in front of her with the assumption she didn’t. Or it could be that a newly married woman usually has only one kind of announcement to make.
“My husband, Santino.” She raises her glass to me, and I nod as if I suspect she’s going to surprise them with a pregnancy announcement, and approve by raising my own glass to her. “The man you men all call the king—while we girls pretend we don’t know why…” She looks around and the women giggle. “Is going to pay Marco’s debt so Gia can choose who she wants to marry.”
Tavie leaps from his seat, shouting, “Yes!”
The room falls as silent as death. No one will look at me. Outside, even the birds don’t dare to chirp. My house could burn down from the heat of their shock and awe. And in the middle, surrounded by blurred faces of confusion and horror, is my smiling wife, who lifted my world up with a beautiful party in a role she so masterfully played and then destroyed it with two sentences in Italian.
I sit there as if I’m ignorant, as if I’m almost—almost—impressed by how she manipulated this situation. As if I wish she’d done it to someone else, instead of turning her genius against me.
So I laugh. I laugh loudly and hard. I laugh so forcefully the others have no choice but to laugh with me lest they show their disloyalty.
Even Marco—especially Marco—laughs as he’s supposed to. The hardness in his eyes, however, says this will require some smoothing over. I don’t like the way he’s staring at my wife or the glances he casts my way. Marco may have raised me, but once I became a man, it is for my zia Paola I show him respect, and now I will have to lean into that all the more.
I straighten my sleeves, clear my throat, and make a show of taking a sip of prosecco. Everyone follows, and little by little, order is restored.
Violetta says nothing as she serves the cake, but she stares at me with a sultry look, challenging me like a beautiful tyrant in stilettos.
