“My papa he held him. I said I don’t need it. After, they beat my papa so bad, he couldn’t walk and he couldn’t speak and he lost one eye. And he just sit all day, that’s all he can do. And my mama, that puttana, she left him, and my nonna she come and she feed and change him like a baby. Whenever he see me his eyes go like this”—he widened his eyes—“and he make sounds like he’s choking, trying to speak to me. And I wouldn’t go near him. My papa he told me to hold the boy down. He was already knocked out, but he kept kicking his head, like it’s a football, kicking it and kicking it. And I keep telling him, it’s over. Over.”

“What did he do to you?” Annie said. “This boy, what did he do?” This was the first time she had ever been able to get even the vaguest sense of what her dad was talking about when he had his nightmares. Usually he would break down into Italian immediately and all she knew was that he was talking about fighting because he was always making fists, gritting his teeth, and kicking out. She had seen a picture of her Italian grandfather in a wheelchair, but her mom told her he had suffered a stroke.

“I was paddling in the stream and the boy—Marco Cantoni—he take my new shoes and he throw them on the roof of the church. He was a bully.”

“So then you and your dad—”

“That Otto. Fuckin’…” Her dad’s body tensed again, the sinews in his neck taut, his hands clenching within hers. Otto always provoked his default fury and hatred. “He’s gonna get it. Bastardo lurido! He’s going to shit his own face when I’ve done, eh. Ruffiano leccacazzi. Una merda fra merda. Tutto che tocca finisce in merda.” Her dad was getting angrier and angrier, flecks of spit flying from his mouth as he spoke. Annie stood, gently embracing his head, shushing, trying to calm him.

“You look at my son.” He gestured as if Frank were lying in front of them. “This my son? Fucking piss his pants. My wife? Una puttanaccia.”

With this he broke down completely, sobbing. This was how it always ended. Though she held on to her dad, her body shaking with his wrenching sobs, Annie was afflicted once more by that strange emptiness, all her feeling throbbing in her skin and nerves, pushed as far as possible away from her numb core. This had gone on, would go on, forever.