Saul stands to undress. He steels himself: he cannot tell Sofia what happened. He has to face the family at dinner. He is scared: a fear that skips his brain and moves straight into his body and blood. Trembling the muscles, tightening the breath.

—

Paolo doesn’t show for dinner. Antonia sits where she can watch the doorway, which yawns open as each neighbor, each Uncle, arrives. Each time someone who is not Paolo walks in, Antonia feels a vise squeezing her heart tighter and tighter. Where’s Paolo? asks Rosa. Oh, he got caught up, says Antonia. I’m sorry. Rosa knows she is lying; Rosa wraps an arm around Antonia’s shoulders and squeezes; Rosa smells like flour and jasmine, like orange rinds and parsley, and Antonia would like to curl up in her lap and be rocked to sleep. Instead she smiles and says thank you, thank you, as one by one people come to stroke Enzo’s cheeks, to smile at him, to lean with their breath and their overflowing blessings too close to Antonia, too close to her until she feels she might explode. She might scream.

She stays quiet. She says, thank you.

Sofia has powdered her face and re-lined her lips and gritted her teeth. She has stifled all of her fear. She has turned it into anger, she has turned it into a uranium core. She has climbed upstairs with trays of ravioli, with the braciole sitting in its own fragrant juices. She has opened bottles of wine for Rosa and laughed at a small joke Frankie made. Sofia is a china plate. Any hairline fracture could shatter her.

Saul manages to laugh off his injuries (last time I deal with business after I drink a bottle of wine at lunch, am I right, boss?) but Julia says but, Papa, what what what HAPPENED to you loudly enough to draw the attention of everyone in the room and Joey stays disarmingly quiet and Saul feels his lies all pounding at the windows, the ceiling, the front doors, trying to get in.

—

Antonia makes it through the cleanup and the goodbyes and she hugs Sofia tight and says, “We’ll figure all of this out in the morning, okay? I will call you in the morning,” and then she leaves, accepting Saul’s offer to have his driver take her home. As she is being driven away it occurs to Antonia that her husband is missing, and Sofia’s is right there, right there where she can see and touch him. In the back of the car she stares through the space between the two front seats and holds Enzo close to her and squeezes Robbie by the hand until he squirms away. Mamma, Mamma. That’s too tight.