“Saul just called me at the office to tell me that Joey is making him his right-hand man. He’s being groomed to take over.” Paolo sits on the edge of the toilet and puts his face in his hands. “I thought it might be me. I thought my life was headed toward something more.”

“Paolo.” Antonia wants to say more than this. She can tell Paolo is waiting for something reassuring, that he is expecting her to make him bigger by giving him a small piece of herself. But she cannot give him any more, because she is feeling a wave of powerful disappointment. Their home, which is small and more chaotic than either of them had wanted, seems to shrink in on Paolo and Antonia in their bathroom. Escape seems impossible. Antonia has no more words to give Paolo. No more of her self. Just as the sea receives from round the world its rivers, and is never satisfied . . . all his eating only left him empty.

“I wanted more than this,” Paolo says, gesturing at the bathroom, its peeling paint, its thumping pipes. “I wanted to give you more than this.”

“I’m happy,” says Antonia. This is automatic, but it will quell the questions Paolo and Antonia do not want to ask one another. Questions like, how did we get here? And more importantly, how do we get out? And, terrifyingly, can we do it together? There is a crash from the kitchen. “Look, can you go check on Robbie? Can we do this later?” Paolo stands and walks out of the bathroom. Antonia wrings the rag between her fingers until they chafe.

Chapter 24

A week later Antonia wakes with her skin aching against her nightgown. She knows she’s pregnant even before she stumbles to the bathroom. She kneels on the tile floor with the side of her face against the porcelain of her bathtub and counts days. She had been careful—as careful as she could be—since Robbie was born. What would be so bad about another baby? Paolo has asked her as she turns away from him, saying, not this week.

What would be so bad about another baby? Antonia asks herself now. From the other end of the apartment she can hear Robbie stirring. Paolo has already left for the office—he goes earlier and earlier, as if he can escape his desk duties by overachieving.

When she has controlled herself Antonia stands and walks into the kitchen to make Robbie breakfast. He pads down the hall after her, black hair pressed into an architectural post-sleep sculpture. He wraps a proprietary arm around the low point of her hip bone, leans his head against her. “Mamma,” he says. “Hi, baby,” Antonia replies.