—
Back in Brooklyn, Joey Colicchio kisses his sleeping wife’s forehead and inhales the familiar dust and detergent of his bedroom. He pauses at the window to look out over the still-sleeping buildings of South Brooklyn before drawing the shade against the bright morning sun. He disrobes, leaving his suspenders clipped to his trousers in a puddle on the floor and his socks in small white balls. Without looking down, he knows his body shows the unmistakable signs of middle age—his legs have lost some of their tone and his torso is more barrel-shaped than it used to be; his skin hangs more softly on his muscles; his muscles don’t cling to the bone the way they once did. The mat of curled hair across his chest is flecked with gray and plastered across thinning skin. He climbs into bed next to his wife and moves the bulk of his body against the pliable curves of hers. She leans back against him, and her smell, unearthed from its cavern of sheets, fills the air of their bedroom. Outside there are jobs unfinished—a young man not yet hired; plans not put into place; debts to be paid.
Joey had had several meetings to keep after his conversation with Saul. In the middle of the night, in a moment of cold, calculating determination, he had drawn back his fist and punched a man in the face. Joey is particularly adept at punching a man in the face. Done haphazardly, the bones in the hand can snap like breadsticks. But without even thinking about it, Joey Colicchio can land a devastating blow: fingers curled tightly, thumb on the outside, wrist cocked so the meat of the other man’s cheek meets the strong place between Joey’s index and middle knuckle. There is no swing; rather, a short sharp forceful jab; a direct path from Joey’s fist to the soft tissue of Giancarlo Rubio’s cheek. There is some adrenaline. Some unmentionable, addictive satisfaction. We don’t fuck around when you owe us, Joey had hissed. And you know, you’re lucky I’m here. Joey wiped his hand on his handkerchief. You’re lucky I came tonight, and not one of my guys. They’re not as nice as I am. Giancarlo Rubio had held the split fruit of his mouth with one hand and said, I know, I know, it’s coming. Giancarlo owns a restaurant in the growing Italian section of Carroll Gardens. Joey’s associates make sure his olive oil, his prosciutto, his wine, get to him on time. Undamaged. Giancarlo has a wife and five children. The children will be sleeping in their narrow bunks when he limps home, but his wife will pour him a glass of wine. She will hold ice against Giancarlo’s swollen blackened eye, will put pressure on the gash in his face until Giancarlo stops spitting thick mouthfuls of blood. Your children eat or mine do, Joey sometimes thinks of saying. But he cannot admit, or does not believe, that he has no choice. He no longer knows what part of his job is a system from which it is worth breaking free, and what part of it is an inheritance, a heart, the fertile earth out of which he grows.
The Jewish boy will take the job, Joey is sure. He can see something of himself in the young man. Lenny at the deli says he’s more timely than a grandfather clock and kind, cool, calm, even when the place is packed and the customers are foaming around the mouth with hunger and impatience. Joey trusts Lenny’s judgment—Lenny has been on the Colicchio payroll for years; he’s an invaluable asset in what’s otherwise Eli Leibovich’s territory. Joey can see that Saul will have a knack for the work, and that he will appreciate the benefit of a job that feels eerily like family. It is a good job for someone who has lost his roots. As Joey knows from personal experience.
Joey moves his head onto his wife’s pillow and buries his nose in the mane of her hair. An hour more, he hopes, as her breathing lengthens and she seems closer to consciousness. Stay an hour more.
* * *
—
Sofia is awake. She has been awake since the darkest hour of the night, when it is inconceivable that it will ever get light. When just opening your eyes and looking through the crack in your curtains feels like you are staring at the naked body of the world, all vulnerable folds and soft corners. Sofia does not know what woke her up, only that it was a restlessness with no name, who would not let her soften back into sleep.
Sofia’s eyes smart as her room goes gray and lightens, and her limbs ache. Soon her alarm will ring and she will reach a hand out and press the chrome knob to shut it off, automatic. It is the first day of her last term of high school.
The new year dawns frigid and violent, war like a coat the world pulls over its shoulders. Antonia reads the news even after Lina banishes the Times from the house. She listens to the radio with her eyes squeezed shut. People are dying in London at incomprehensible rates. They are dying in Eritrea. In Bucharest. Antonia feels each of these losses like a prickle along her spine. The clock speeds up every day: it seems there is no time to waste. It seems human beings are more fragile than Antonia ever could have imagined. She throws herself into her relationship with Paolo. The war rearranges her priorities. It tells her she’d better put down roots, or risk missing her chance. It tells her the world will not iron out its flaws and instabilities for her, so she’d better make do with what she is given. Paolo takes her seriously. He makes her feel safe. They decide on three children: less chaos than Paolo’s upbringing; less silence than Antonia’s. The war encourages them to have this conversation. People continue to die. Antonia puts all her energy into constructing a future that will endure the chaos of the world around her. She believes, most days, that she can do this without escaping the Family after all.
Sofia dreams in Technicolor. Her attention wanders, but she lives fully in the present at every moment, so her life is an ever-changing tapestry of friendships and activities, of schoolwork not concentrated on and of meetings she is late for. She feels unsettled and fearful at the thought of graduation. The train is about to run out of tracks, and bold Sofia Colicchio has not figured out what she wants to do. And the war makes it all the more obvious.
Every day, it seems, Joey shuts the parlor doors for another evening meeting and Rosa wrings a dishtowel to shreds before making a platter of coffee and cake for Joey’s associates, Frankie comes home from school and tells the rest of them that Donny Giordano said his brother’s enlisting and anyone who doesn’t is an America-hating, Nazi-loving, kraut-slurping coward, and the room goes silent because Joey employs a raft of able-bodied young men who are already fighting a war of sorts, but they don’t talk about it at the supper table, and later Rosa leaves a pair of knitting needles conspicuously on Sofia’s bed because they won’t have her working in a factory like the other women but they’ll be damned if she doesn’t participate at all, and there are socks to be sent off in the army care packages. Every day the war circles closer and it tells Sofia, you decide to do something useful, or I’ll decide for you.