—
Sofia develops a habit of lingering outside the parlor door, eavesdropping on Paolo and Saul as they work. It is this way she has learned that Saul is from Berlin, where he got the neatly articulated ends of his words and the quiet ja that sometimes slips out as he is listening to someone else speak. She has internalized his schedule by listening to him describe the rounds he makes of boardinghouses and hotels, unfathomably foreign neighborhoods like Borough Park and parts of the Lower East Side so low and so east they could be mistaken for water, for the crumbling edge of the island itself. She has seen Paolo checking off names on a long list, passing neatly wrapped packages that she has learned contain valuable forgeries for wealthy European Jews willing to pay for a new life. And she has seen her father, lurking in the room like a conscience, weighing stacks of bills with a practiced hand and kissing Paolo and Saul before they leave.
Sofia understands both the Family and Germany like a nightmare she can only partially remember—something sinister in both of them, her belly and throat are sure—but she chooses to feel comforted by the sound of Saul and Paolo and her papa, plotting in their baritones, working against a vague and unnameable evil. They cannot all three be on the wrong side.
* * *
—
The day Paolo comes to dinner at her apartment, Antonia spends the afternoon cleaning. There is not much that can be done about the shabbiness of the sofa, the sunken spot that belies Lina’s favorite place to sit, the browning throw rugs in the kitchen and living room. But Antonia shines the mirrors and countertops until they gleam. She makes dinner and the apartment fills with steam and fragrance, warm garlic and the fresh spice of lemons. She hounds Lina until Lina showers, dresses, pulls her hair away from her face. Lina looks almost normal, Antonia thinks. Almost like a real mother. Antonia shakes her head to rid it of that ugliness. Things between her and Lina have been good since their first tentative conversation about Paolo. Antonia believes Lina wants her to be happy. But Lina is strange, and getting stranger: women have begun sneaking in and out of the living room to visit with her when Lina thinks Antonia is asleep. Lina is charting her own course. Antonia might admire this, but there is a part of her that is still too angry. She doesn’t trust Lina to shower before company comes over, or to give advice about wedding details. She doesn’t trust Lina to stay in the real world for long enough to have dinner with her fiancé, and so Antonia spends the day cleaning and cooking, one suspicious eye trained on Lina, who wants to be trusted, but who cannot bear the inconvenience of making herself presentable for company, or eating at a pre-arranged time, rather than whenever she decides she is hungry.
The women visiting Lina came at the maga’s suggestion. It is, after all, the maga’s job to consider the unasked question, which in Lina’s case had to do with how to move forward once you know there is no path that can guarantee against pain and disappointment. And so now there is the candle burning in Lina’s window, the women slipping in her front door after Antonia has left for Sunday dinner. The women want a conversation over upturned tarocchi cards, or they want to hear the words Lina whispers to each full moon. The women come back again and again. And they pay her enough that Lina is planning to quit the laundry when Antonia gets married. Gone will be her chapped hands, cracks extending painfully down the pads of her fingers, no matter how much olive oil she rubs into them. She will never need to abide by the ticking of a clock again.
She will be done letting fear control her. And if Antonia wants to put herself in terror’s way, Lina cannot stop her. No one would have been able to stop Lina, when she married Carlo. The inevitability of pain—the way love makes certain aches inescapable—used to wake Lina, heart pounding, terror coursing through her, every night.
No longer, she thinks, as her daughter’s fiancé comes knocking at her door, that Family-slick hair, those irresistible high cheekbones, the toothy smile, one end of his mouth turned up so everything is a joke, everything is sex, everything is tension and energy and charm. Exuding that ignorant young-man confidence, that certainty that the world will roll out before him like a red carpet, that rejection of mortality. You’ve never felt fragile, Lina thinks as she shakes his hand, as he inclines his head, warmly, as she beckons him in, as Antonia stands looking back and forth, from her fiancé to her mother. Lina understands the power of fear, now: it brings into sharp focus that which is most important. You’ve never been hurt, she thinks, smiling at Paolo.
As for Paolo, he will not remember the food or the conversation of this evening. He will remember the glow of Antonia, bending over a dish. The way Antonia makes sure her mamma has everything on her plate before serving herself. The incandescence of her face as she looks at him, the strength in her set jaw, her determination breaking in waves over Paolo and Lina as they eat. This is someone to build with, Paolo thinks. This is someone to care for. This is someone who will care for me.
* * *
—
Two weeks later, on a Thursday evening in April, Sofia hears the doorbell and leaps away from her studying, which she was doing half-heartedly anyway. She hopes it is Saul, and it is—she hears him greet her mamma. The smoothness of his voice and steps echoing down the hall.
Toward her. He’s walking toward her.
Sofia watches Saul from behind her cracked-open bedroom door. There is a way he has of just moving that shows Sofia he takes care of people. There are secrets vying for space behind his hooded eyes, a dark downturn of his mouth when he doesn’t want to answer a question that causes Sofia to gasp for air. Her heart thuds, resonating wildly around her chest, threatening to jump out of her mouth. Everything pounds, from her face to her fingertips to her jellied legs. He’s three feet away from her. He’s going to open the bathroom door.
“Hello,” says Sofia. He looks up. They are standing face-to-face, Sofia hiding halfway behind her cracked-open bedroom door and Saul, one hand on the bathroom door already, eyes quizzical, looking right at Sofia.
“Hello,” he says.
And then something in Sofia erupts. And she is reaching out her hand and she is grasping a handful of his shirt and pulling him forward, and his eyes widen in mild surprise as Sofia tilts her face toward him and kisses him, damp and breathy, messy and fast.
She pulls away and looks at his face. Sofia has kissed enough boys to know they should look astounded after she pulls away. They should look amazed at their luck.
Saul is smiling, but he doesn’t look astounded. He looks like he’s about to laugh. “Sofia, right?” he says.
For an agonizing second, Sofia believes that her humiliation will be so powerful she will burrow down into the earth. She shuts her eyes and wills her body to sink directly through the floor.
When she opens her eyes Saul is still in front of her. “I’m sorry,” she stammers. “I’m so—”
“It’s okay,” he says, and the way he says it makes Sofia feel like it might, after all, be okay. “I have a meeting with your father,” he says. “I should—”
“Go,” she says. “Go.”
That night Sofia tosses and turns in a pool of nervous sweat, hair slick against her damp neck, sheets alternately boiling and then freezing. What will I say to you, she wonders, if I see you again?
* * *