I knew I wasn’t alone. That was what was important. That kept me from a confined madness. Margie was there. And my mother. Deirdre. Even Daniel.
But Antonio wasn’t. I loved my family. I wanted them, craved them. But I had a creeping concern in my half consciousness that my demand that he not take vengeance wasn’t the end of the story of that day.
I prayed for him a lot. Every day that passed with the light coming in, diffused by my eyelids and warming my face, my worry grew. He wouldn’t just leave me. Something had to have happened. Something terrible.
“Sit.” Margie’s voice came through. I didn’t think she was talking to me.
“I’m on my ass all day.” Jonathan. This was his second visit.
“You had a heart transplant three weeks ago. Your ass isn’t half finished.”
A chair scraped. “I hate this.”
“I’ll be an old woman one day, and you can make me sit down when I need to.”
I listened for a third person, but no one came. Not one of the hundred doctors. Not a nurse. Not Antonio.
Where’s Antonio? I tried to say it and failed.
“You’re never getting old, Margaret. Not if you can fix it.”
“There are some things a fixer can’t even fix.”
Every time they came and went, I forgot then remembered. They bickered and joked. They did it out of rote. All of them except Deirdre, who’d prayed out her sense of humor. Even Mom could cut deep with a single word, and just that day, I couldn’t bear it.
Antonio.
“You need to put that as an exclusion in the contract,” Jonathan quipped.
“Once I can get some blood out of you to sign it in.”
Antonio. Please.
“Did she just say something?” Margie asked.
A chair creaked.
“Sit down,” Margie snapped.
I opened my eyes. The light felt like knives in my head and my tear ducts went into production mode, fogging everything. I blinked. I felt the drops rush down the side of my head. When I opened my eyes again, Margie’s face blocked the light.
“Well, hello.”
Antonio.
“Eyes open,” she said to Jonathan then looked back at me. “How are you?”
“Antonio.” I couldn’t believe I got the word out. Every syllable was exhausting.
“He’s fine.”
“Swear?”
She held up her hand. “Pledge open.” She pulled two of my fingers off the sheets.
“Open,” I whispered.
“Antonio is alive and healthy. He walks, he talks, he is very, very worried about you. I’ll tell him you asked about him. He’s going to shit a brick with joy, but he can’t visit. Don’t be mad at him.”
“I’m not.”
“All right. I’m going to call a doctor to look at you.”
“Tell him…” I swallowed. I didn’t know what to say. Everything. “Tell him he’s my capo.”
“Funny you should say that. He says the same about you. Pledge closed.”
I had more to say. More questions. More statements. More more more.
But I didn’t even have the energy to close the pledge. Consciousness left and was replaced by a worry-free sleep.
fifty-five.
theresa
would only ever ask Margie about Antonio, and she constantly reassured me that he was fine. She promised she’d tell me everything. She changed the subject. She told me not to say more because I couldn’t see who was in the room.
“Talk to me, or I’ll scream.” I couldn’t have screamed if I wanted to, but the threat was enough to get her to lean over and look at my face.
“Oh, someone’s feeling better,” Margie said.
“I can feel my body.”
“You’re so lucky you’re not paralyzed. Have I mentioned that?” She pulled her chair close.
“Can you tell me where he is? Did he go home? To Italy?” I swallowed. I couldn’t do much more than swallow and blink.
“No. He’s in California. And by California, I mean… the state of.”
California. Huge state. In the geography of love, it was a nanostate. In the geography of need—it was massive.
“Just tell me.”
“It can wait,” she said.
“Tell me. Please.”
She leaned over me, deep in thought, then sat down. I had a view of the grey ceiling again.