But later that night, Sofia is drying dishes. Rosa has stepped out of the kitchen to go to the bathroom, and Nonna has left with Pops already, taking her eagle eyes with her. No one is watching as Saul moves quietly through the doorway of the kitchen and stands so close to Sofia she can smell him, so close the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck strain up toward him. “See you next week,” he says.

Inside Sofia there is boiling, thick blood. There are rushing rapids pumping through her veins, against her hot cheeks, her fingertips, the eyes of her knees. Change thrumming itself close to the surface of her skin, threatening to burst through at every moment.

BOOK THREE

1941–1942

Chapter 11

Paolo loves Antonia with a desperation that wakes him in the night and surprises him with its vehemence. When he is with her, he can feel the atoms in his body coalescing, straining, conspiring to be closer to her. When he is not with her, he is drawn by the string of his obsession, woven closer to her person. Paolo’s fixation has started to express itself in sleeplessness. He lies awake staring at the cracked paint on the ceiling of his bedroom and feels something writhe under his salted skin.

Before Antonia, Paolo’s fantasies of an adult life were all in black and white. He was a product of rough and winding tenements, where spit-swears and playground brawls transitioned into a crude adulthood. Life was about survival—of polio and measles, of violence perpetrated by the dregs of the Five Points gangs and the bigger, meaner school bullies, of factory work that left heads spinning and fingertips bleeding. Pleasure was taken haphazardly and without thought for consequences or continuation. It was meat served outside of Sunday supper, or whiskey tossed burning down an exhausted throat, or the soft bed of a loose woman. Just enough of them escaped and came back for holidays, telling stories of success as Broadway producers or bankers, that the rest of them were able to sleep at night, secure in the knowledge that hard work paid off; that the American dream was alive and well. Paolo’s mother didn’t stand for nonsense and that included fantastical daydreaming—she had raised her sons to work hard and take comfort in the little things. This supper, she would say. The most beautiful radishes! And then she would glare and raise her eyebrows and say, if you’re lucky, a good woman.