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.