So Antonia has thrown her whole self into motherhood, and in her efforts to be unlike Lina, unlike Sofia, she is there the instant Robbie wakes and she soothes him to sleep, a hand on his back every night. She tries to spare him any pain, any fear, any loss, and so she is constantly telling him she loves him, telling him to be careful, to look both ways, but rather than any common sense, Robbie develops a powerful need to have Antonia near him at all times, so they are rarely seen apart, except when Julia is there: Julia, in whose presence Robbie lights up, grows six inches taller; Julia, who sparks in Robbie something courageous and mischievous that draws him away from Antonia, that allows Antonia to rest, to come to terms with the toll her obsessive parenting is taking on her body, on her mind. Antonia would not call this the independence she once dreamed of but she had been unable, as a teenager, to imagine what loving two children would do to her, how completely she would want to give of herself, how difficult it would be to find balance. She is scared of her own need; she is exhausted; she wouldn’t change it for the world but a small sense of self-preservation rears up in Antonia and reminds her of the months after Robbie was born, when she needed to walk alone, to clear her head, to come back to herself.

Antonia listens to Paolo when he complains that his post-war job has become droll and tedious, that the craft of falsified documents and the tedium of bookkeeping are incomparable, incompatible. She does not tell him how relieved she is that he is out of the line of fire, or as far away from it as he can be. She takes careful stock of her life and decides that each of its challenges is worth it, that each of its joys is indispensable, and in this way she reasons away Paolo’s new sullenness and Sofia’s new flightiness and the gnawing feeling that she is putting herself last, letting herself go unfinished. Most of the time she manages to feel full, full, full of love.

Soon 1946 is over. Sofia throws a party for New Year’s Eve. She dresses in sequins and Antonia feels like they are teenagers, sneaking out to a dance. Rosa and Joey beg out after midnight and take Julia and Robbie to sleep in their apartment but Sofia and Antonia and Saul and Paolo and a couple of guys Saul and Paolo work with climb up onto the roof and watch their breath puff in frozen clouds up into the starless city sky, up into the fresh new year.

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