Chapter 10: Sunday Gravy

The petition was forty pages long.

Aaron read every page in the car with his jaw tight, and I watched Third Avenue go by.

"He can't get custody of a child that isn't born," he said finally. "No judge in New York signs this before May."

"He doesn't need a judge to sign it. He needs me to read it."

"Did it work?"

"A little."

He folded it back into its envelope and put it in his glove box, with the parking tickets.

"Then it lives here now," he said. "With my other paperwork."

Sunday at two I rang Delfina's bell in Bay Ridge.

Her oldest opened the door. He was fifteen and taller than me, with a mustache he was very proud of.

"Ma! It's the lady from the video!"

"Tell her she's late!" Delfina yelled from the kitchen.

"She says you're late."

"I heard her."

The kitchen was full. Delfina at the stove in an apron that said KISS THE COOK, with the KISS crossed out in marker.

The wife from the docks at the table, peeling garlic. The young one with the twins, one baby on each knee, both of them screaming.

Delfina's eight-year-old twin girls were under the table, tying everybody's shoelaces together.

Her husband sat at the head in his cardigan, reading the Sunday paper. He lowered it when I came in.

He looked at me for a second.

Then he folded the paper and pushed the bread basket an inch toward my chair.

"Eat," he said.

That was all. I sat down.

Delfina put a bowl of gravy in front of me big enough to bathe in.

Meatballs, braciole tied with string, and sausage from the place on 13th Avenue.

"I'm not that hungry."

"You're eating for two. Eat for three. I'll pretend I didn't see."

The wife from the docks leaned across the table.

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