At dinner on Sunday Joey raises a toast to Sofia and everyone cheers, Antonia and Paolo and Frankie, Pops, who is repeating stories lately and who might not understand what he is toasting, and even hawkeyed Nonna, even Rosa gives a tight smile, and Rosa’s brother nods and Marco DeLuca and two other interchangeable new guys raise their glasses but look at Joey the whole time, instead of at Sofia. “Welcome,” Joey says, warmly, and Sofia is too busy avoiding Antonia’s eyes to notice that Joey is avoiding Rosa’s, but Rosa finds Sofia washing dishes after dinner and begins to berate her with the fierceness of a thousand mammas: Gussied up like you’re for sale, this is disgraceful. You have a husband and a daughter, Sofia, what will Julia think, how will she grow up? And Sofia, for the first time in her life, wants something more than she wants to argue with Rosa, and so she kisses her mamma and she says, I’ll be careful, Julia will be fine, and she leaves Rosa sputtering in this kitchen, torn, as Rosa often is, between pride and horror.

The job becomes a part of her so that soon Sofia cannot ever remember not wanting it. She points her whole being toward the horizon of it, the glory of stepping out of the house and being seen.

Chapter 21

While Saul is working late Julia is often at Antonia’s house. This started as a way for Sofia to avoid talking to Rosa about her job, but it has become habit, lifeline. Sometimes Sofia comes with her, to stay up with Antonia past bedtime, conversation like a low sonata on the couch. Sometimes Sofia is elsewhere. When Sofia shuts the door to Antonia’s house and walks away, she feels relief and joy and an anticipation that crawls like static under her skin. She does not think about Antonia, whose slightly pressed lips have been a moral barometer since Sofia learned to talk. She does not usually think about Julia. Your Child, people say to her, constantly, as though because Sofia Has A Child she has relinquished all claim to agency, as though Sofia needs reminding that the top of Julia’s head smells like warm bread, as though Sofia isn’t a better mother now, a fucking lioness. My Child will never be made to feel guilty for existing the way she wants to, Sofia thinks. And so she parents: when Julia wants to eat leftover pastry for breakfast, spongey cakes with chocolate ganache, thick cognac cream, Sofia opens the box and eats, too, with her hands. When Julia wants to skip her bath and crawl under her sheets with dirty feet and tangled hair, Sofia tucks her in. So what, she says to Rosa. She’s fine, she says to Antonia, who finds an excuse to make bath time a part of any day Julia spends there.