She tells Saul first. He has not heard from his mother since the summer of 1941. He has not been alone in a room with Sofia since the night she spent with him in December. It is not in his nature to be angry with her for avoiding him. What can I do, he asks her. She does not look pregnant, and it is hard for Saul to comprehend what he is being told. What do you need. Sofia doesn’t need anything. If she stands and does nothing, she will still grow a human being inside her body. But she is happier than she would have imagined to be with Saul. He kisses her and something in Sofia blooms upward, something is hot and waiting, something has been dreaming of this moment. She grabs fistfuls of his shirt and pulls.
She invites Saul to dinner without telling her mamma, which she knows will send Rosa into an anxious spiral. But Sofia can’t figure out how to tell Rosa and Joey that Saul is coming without telling them why, and Saul wanted to be there. It’s my responsibility too, he says, with the very serious crease between his brows. The problem had turned into an “it”; had been shared; had been named, and so it had been called into being, into the world with them. Sofia gets into a cab and watches Saul walk away, scratching a nervous circle into the back of his head. Something about his slow steps makes her weepy, lumps like laughter she has to swallow down. You love him, a voice in her head says. You didn’t expect it, but you do. It sounds like Frankie. Shut up, Sofia responds. She turns her head forward. The cab moves toward Brooklyn.
Saul shows up at the Colicchio apartment early and Rosa is wiping her hands on a dishrag as she says, “Joey will be out in a minute.” He thanks her, because there is no way to tell her, actually, I am here for dinner. Luckily Sofia hears him enter, because she pops her head into the living room and says, “Mamma’s making meatballs. Would you stay?” and Rosa, after a shrewd look at Sofia, says, “Yes, of course, we wouldn’t hear of you going out in the cold, come,” and offers Saul a glass of wine, and sneaks down the hall to whisper with Joey. Sofia and Saul hear Joey say, “No, no meeting,” and they look at one another in furtive silence.
When dinner is served Sofia and Frankie and Saul and Joey and Rosa sit around the table in silence for a moment, staring at their untouched plates as the steam rises in curling columns toward the ceiling. They are all lit from the top down by the overhead bulb and from the inside out by the candles on the table. It is Frankie who eats first and eases them out of their silence.
Only Sofia finishes her plate: she is ravenous; every space within her cries out to be filled.
And then there comes a moment where everyone has paused, where the candles still flicker and the attention at the table moves and comes to rest on Sofia, and on Saul. And Sofia wipes her mouth with her napkin and laces her fingers together and her voice creaks open.
“Mamma,” she says. “Papa.” She looks at each of them, and then back to the middle of the table, where the serving dishes are still half-full. And she thinks of how Antonia might say this, might talk about the relationship she and Saul had built, the subtle ways they have learned to care for one another, the surprise of it all. And then she says, “Saul and I are going to have a baby,” which is as abrupt, as tactless, as unlike Antonia, as anything she could imagine.
Frankie gasps, and then grins: this will be something momentous, and she knows she will be both a spectator and, somehow, implicated. This is juicy. This is unheard of.
Rosa says, “Don’t say that. What in Heaven would possess you to say something like that,” but before she has finished her sentence she realizes Sofia is not making it up, and she falls silent and then turns to Joey and says, “Say something!”
Joey does not say anything.
“Sofia, this is absurd,” says Rosa. “He’s not Catholic. What are you thinking? How can you build a life this way? Where will your child go to school? What will you do on Christmas? Why aren’t you answering me, Sofia, say something!” Rosa’s panic rises like a bird trapped in the room, flapping in chaos against the furniture, the windows.
“I don’t know, Mamma!” says Sofia. And her voice is loud, too, and it is clear, and everyone looks back at Sofia, back to where her center of gravity has pulled them all into orbit. “We didn’t plan this. We didn’t plan—I didn’t mean to fall in love with him. But, Mamma, he’s interesting, and he’s kind, and he loves me, and I don’t care if he isn’t Catholic or if we’re doing things out of order. I don’t care!”
“Giuseppe Colicchio,” Rosa says, turning on Joey, “unstick your damn tongue! Talk to your daughter!”
But Joey’s eyes are on Saul. His face is unreadable. His gaze is a needle, pinning Saul where he sits in his chair, like a specimen on a corkboard. He is silent for a moment, and when his voice comes it is clear and calm.
“You will get married,” Joey says. “I’m going to speak to Father Alonso and he will perform the ceremony even though you”—he looks at Saul—“are not Catholic. Well, you can become Catholic. It will be a special favor to me. To us. You can take the name Colicchio. I’ll arrange for it to be no problem.”
Saul is on his best behavior, and as such feels himself smiling and nodding at Joey’s words before their meaning organizes itself in his brain. He understands that Sofia’s mother is smiling; that Sofia herself looks happy, or at least surprised. He hears Joey Colicchio tell him he is to give up his name, his language, and his heritage. He understands he is being given something immense in return. “Thank you,” he hears himself say. Thank you?
“Papa, I,” begins Sofia. Papa, thank you for not killing the man I love. Papa, I can’t bear to see you looking at me with a sad face anymore. Papa, it’s been years—when did I stop being your girl?
Papa, you can’t possibly expect Saul to give up everything.
“Papa, this is crazy.” But it is not Sofia who has spoken; it is Frankie, her neat frame next to Rosa on one side of the table. Her bright eyes alight.
“This is not a discussion,” says Joey, automatically, almost before he registers that he is talking to Frankie, his smallest baby. Frankie, who was born after four miscarriages and had to be sliced out of her mother as the sun rose, who cried and cried the first months of her life, soothed by nothing, but who, once she grew accustomed to the world, found comfort in the tastes of new foods and the laughter of her sister and has hardly cried since. “This is not a discussion,” Joey repeats.
“Of course it is,” says Frankie. “This is unfair, Papa. You haven’t even asked Sofia and Saul what they want.” She says this matter-of-factly, like she says everything. The truth of it weighs down on all of them. No one has asked Sofia and Saul what they want.
Saul is overcome by the urge to say something amenable, like, it’s fine, or, really, I don’t mind, but he is silent. How can he know which moments he has control over the direction of his own life, and which moments he has no choice but to surrender to bigger forces? He is good at keeping his head above water; good at thriving in whatever unexpected circumstances he finds himself. But here, in the moment of decision, Saul realizes he does not know how to make the choices that will steer him in one direction or another.
“Enough!” says Joey, and for the first time his voice cracks slightly, out of his control. “This is not your affair. You will sit there and you will not speak. You will not. You will not make the impossible situation your sister has put this family in any worse. You will not question my judgment. Is that clear.” Frankie is silent. “Is. That. Clear.”
But Frankie cannot stop herself. “This is ridiculous, Papa! People have rights. Women have—”
“Frankie, enough,” says Rosa.
“But, Mamma—”
“That is enough.”
“It’s okay,” says Sofia. She puts her hand on Frankie’s knee. She keeps her eyes on her own lap and tells herself again, for emphasis, it’s okay. She believes it. For the first time in months, everything might be okay.
There is what feels like an exhale—from each person in the room, from the room itself, from the very bones of New York—as the Colicchio family makes itself into something new.
* * *
—
Saul is sent home with a foil-wrapped tin of leftovers.