Don, I Left as You Wished novel · Chapter 18 of 32

Chapter 18: The Box

Santo cut the tape with a bread knife.

His hands were steady. I watched them be steady on purpose.

Inside the box were three things.

A small green notebook with a cracked spine.

A slip of yellowed paper in a plastic sleeve.

And an envelope with one word on it, in the same thick marker. SANTO.

My mother picked up the plastic sleeve and held it to the light.

A diner check. The diner in Woodside. Coffee, one dollar ten.

The date was four months after the funeral.

She didn't say anything. She just held it.

Santo opened the envelope and unfolded two pages of his father's handwriting.

He started to read out loud.

"Santo. If you're reading this, something happened to Pauline, and it was Tullio."

His voice stopped.

He cleared his throat and kept going.

"Your mother didn't fall, and she didn't drink, and she didn't go in that pool for any woman."

"She kept the pier books for me when you were small. She was better at numbers than me. She found that Tullio's people were taking from our containers. A little every month, for years."

"She told me she had something to show me on the Monday. On the Saturday night she was dead."

Santo's hand was shaking now. The paper shook with it.

"The gardener saw Tullio go out the back gate at one in the morning. Walking fast. His sleeves wet to the elbow."

"He didn't tell me for a year. He was afraid. When he told me, I put my gun in my coat and drove to Bensonhurst."

Santo stopped.

He put the letter down on the table and pressed both hands over his eyes.

I took the pages.

I read the rest for him.

"I sat outside Tullio's house until the sun came up, and then I drove home. You were asleep in your room. Thirteen years old."

"If I'd gone in, it was war. In a war they kill the son first. Every family knows that. So I didn't go in."

"I chose you over her. Forgive me if you can."

"Pauline. I let them say that word about you for fifteen years, because the truth would have started the war. I'm sorry. You deserved better from me. You were the best thing that walked into that diner."

"Santo, the notebook is your mother's. It's all there. Be smarter than I was. Don't go to Bensonhurst with a gun. Go with the truth, in daylight, where everybody can see."

That was all.

The kitchen was so quiet I could hear the pool filter through the closed window.

Santo made a sound.

I'd never heard a man make that sound. It came from somewhere under his ribs.

He bent forward over the table until his forehead was on the wood, and his shoulders started to shake.

I got out of my chair.

I knelt on the kitchen floor beside him and put my arms around him from the side, and held on.

He turned into me.

He was crying, with no sound left in it, just breath.

I held his head against my shoulder.

"I hated her," he said into my neck. "Your mother. For fifteen years. For him. I hated her for him."

"I know."

"He sat at our table. Every Sunday. He sat at my right hand and passed me the bread."

"I know."

"He knelt down at the casket and put his hands on me."

I didn't say anything.

There was nothing to say. I just didn't let go.

Over his shoulder I saw my mother.

She was still sitting there with the diner check in her hands, crying without making any noise either.

She put it down.

She reached over and laid one hand on the back of Santo's head, very lightly, for maybe two seconds.

Then she took it away and stood up.

"Take him out of this house tonight," she said to me. "He can't sleep over that pool. Not tonight."

"Where?"

"I don't care. Somewhere that's yours." She picked up her tea and poured it down the sink. "I'll lock the box in my room."

It was nearly one when we got to Red Hook.

The fence was eight feet high and the gate had a new padlock.

The Torrisi sign shone white under the streetlight.

Santo looked at the fence and then at me.

"You're joking."

"The side door's still my key," I said. "They fenced the front. They never asked who had keys."

I climbed it first.

I'd climbed worse fences in college. I dropped down on the other side and waited.

The Don of the Cavallaro family climbed a Torrisi fence in his good trousers, tore one knee out on the top, and landed beside me swearing.

It was the first time all night I laughed.

Inside, the bathhouse was black and smelled like it always did.

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