When she lies down to sleep at night, her heart beats furiously against her chest. She is transported into visceral memories of the months after Robbie was born. It is a time in her life she has carefully contained: an aberration, a cautionary tale. But she remembers now. Every time Antonia shuts her eyes, she remembers pain, holding herself together so she could pee without splitting down the middle. The months she knew the world was there but could not make herself a part of it, like there was an impenetrable film suffocating her. The fear she felt at being in the same room as everyone she loved, but also, a thousand miles away.

When Antonia told Paolo she was pregnant, he took her in his arms and cried, and then he promised to be more grateful, less ornery, less dissatisfied with his job, with his lot. He stays like this all winter, telling her to put her feet up, not to lift that, Robbie, for God’s sake don’t torture your mother. So there are moments of perfect joy, when Antonia can imagine she is twenty, and marrying a beautiful man, and planning to have three babies and live in a spacious and bright home, which somehow, in her imagination, always smells like the ocean.

But when Antonia dreams, Carlo stands just out of her reach with his back to her. They are at the seashore. The water is still and opaque; it is both the end of the world and the source. Carlo walks away from Antonia toward the water. She screams Papa at the top of her lungs. He doesn’t turn around. Papa, Papa. Antonia rages. Her feet are stuck in the sand; she is too weak to pull them out, to go in after her papa. She watches as Carlo disappears into the sea.

When she wakes from these dreams she is angry. With herself, because Antonia often directs her frustration inward. But also, with Paolo. This is something she won’t explain to him. I’m angry because you got me pregnant is a shameful sentiment, and Antonia cannot voice it. But Paolo knows. He can see the way Antonia shields herself from him, the way she holds herself slightly more erect in any room he enters. He is kinder in response, but he also works longer hours, lingering at the office, calling Joey to ask for extra tasks.

And so the rift deepens. The winter wind strengthens. The dark, cold months pass. And the valence of Antonia and Paolo’s divide takes on a certain seriousness. They begin to forget their way back to one another.