Antonia bursts into tears. Sofia stares, silent, desperately wishing her parents would come in.

Antonia wails. She shudders. She sits limp on the edge of Sofia’s bed and howls.

Rosa bursts into the room.

Sofia is so relieved she starts crying too.

Rosa is pregnant, and she has not told her husband. She sits between two wailing girls and hugs them both close and wishes for her own mother. She stares out the window and knows she cannot fall apart.

—

They have a funeral for Carlo, though there is no body. They bury a silk-lined, dark-brown box in St. John’s. For the rest of her life, Antonia will be able to picture the funeral in little pieces, as though a broken film is playing in her head. The day is too warm and she sweats in her black stockings and new dress. There are the bent elbows of men clasping one another around the triceps; the rustling of women stepping through long grass in heeled shoes; the nasal drone of the priest, who keeps having to adjust his eyeglasses and off of whose naked pate the sunshine glints as the afternoon wears on. Again and again, the faces of bent-over adults loom toward her like flesh-colored balloons. There is the queasy discomfort of being kissed and hugged and having to say thank you, thank you, thank you over and over again, and as the afternoon grows old the adults’ breath becomes worse and worse, soured with dark wine and fat-lined slices of lonza shipped from Rome. Antonia can feel her self separating from this day, retreating. Further and further away so by the time Aunt Rosa kisses her and holds her close at the end of the afternoon Antonia can hear her voice echoing, like there is water between them.

Lina is inconsolable for most of the funeral, reddened and teary and leaking. Carlo’s well-wishers are sympathetic, but seem wary of getting too close to such a volatile fountain of animal grief. A wife, everyone knows, should have a wan but clear face at a funeral. She should be holding herself together, in honor of the memory of her husband. So the guests at Carlo’s funeral give Lina sympathetic glances from afar, ask each other how does she seem without asking her themselves; whisper such a shame when they think they are out of Antonia’s hearing.

Lina had given everything to the conventions she was told would protect her. Get a husband, her mother used to say, and you will be taken care of. Along with get a husband went fix your hair when you go out, be polite, and don’t sob like a broken beast at your husband’s funeral. Lina has been betrayed. She sees no need to continue abiding by anyone’s rules.