While his usual pole is occupied, he waits against the wall. The hot pink gallery opening flyer and the white note I taped over it are lost in the scraped fold of tape and paper layers.

He lights a cigarette, unaware of what he’s missing.

Whatever choof off meant, he’s not going to do it.

I’m barely disappointed. There was never a chance of help from the outside. It’s Dario and me alone against the Colonia, and Massimo has already promised to split us apart with an annulment.

I do church chores in silence. I mop the Dome floor, thinking of my blood and Dario’s mingled on the center stone. I help with the school kids, wondering if we will ever have children together. When I stand in the kitchen, I place him two floors beneath me and imagine he’s looking up while I look down. I make myself small and scarce while my brain turns and turns.

I’ve never felt this cut off from the decisions of the community, and never this connected to the consequences.

Dr. Palmeri’s Precious Blood office stays closed and locked, but he might be at the 18th Street clinic. I doubt he’s in trouble for last night. Massimo is in Daddy’s office in the rectory down the hall. No one who can tell me a thing speaks to me all day.

“You all right?” Denise asks before blowing her nose.

“I’m fine. I think I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep last night.” That’s the truth. It’s just incomplete.

“You should come over for dinner.” She wipes her nose with the balled-up tissue. “You won’t have to cook, at least.”

Cooking with Grandma, who’ll have her own questions about what I said to Dr. Palmeri last night after she was kicked out of my bedroom, isn’t something I’m looking forward to. If there’s one thing she finds less appealing than a chatty woman, it’s a sullen one.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’d like that.”

On Marco’s third after-dinner amaretto, I start to worry. I know it’s affecting him because he’s turned from surly to verbose. When Denise and I come back from putting the kids to bed, he’s pouring another. I stiffen and look at her with a worried expression. She returns the tiniest of shrugs and goes right to the kitchen, which looks like a bomb hit it.

After a tense dinner, we’d piled the dinner dishes by the sink, which is filled with multicolored sippy cups, a half-eaten bowl of cereal, and a three-quart pot crusted with a black and red ring at the bottom. The huge stock pot of lentils sits on the stove. Brown glop has dried in drip-shapes on the side. A few escaped lentils are stuck to the burners.