The Don's Wife Never Looks Back novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Wreath

At Mama's funeral Mira throws out the Corsi wreath, refuses Santino's money and tells him in front of the mourners she's divorcing him, then finds a note in Mama's things: find the girl from St. Agnes.

I stood in the open doorway with the cold coming in around my bare shoulders.

"You answered," I said.

Livia's face didn't change. "Goodnight, Mira."

She closed the door on me.

I could have pounded on it.

I walked down the long drive instead, past the guards, in a green silk gown at five in the morning.

Marisa's cab was still idling at the gate with the meter running.

She had waited for me.

We buried Mama four days later, from Saint Bridget's in Bridgeport.

It was the church where she'd hemmed the altar cloths for free for thirty years.

The pews were full of her people.

The old ladies she'd taken in waistbands for. The butcher whose daughter's wedding dress she'd saved after a wine spill.

Marisa's mother had cooked for two days and was still cooking in the church hall.

I wore a black dress Marisa lent me, pinned at the waist because it was too big.

I pinned it with three of Mama's pins.

Ten minutes before the mass, the side door opened and two men carried in a wreath.

It was taller than I was.

White roses, white orchids, and a satin sash across the middle in gold letters.

THE CORSI FAMILY.

They set it beside the casket.

Then Santino came in.

Black suit, black coat, his driver at his shoulder.

Livia walked one step behind him in a black veil.

The church went quiet.

He came down the aisle and stopped at the front pew where I sat.

"Mira."

"Why is that here?"

"Your mother worked for my family for twenty years. We paid our respects."

I stood up.

I looked at the two men who had carried it in.

"Take it out, please."

They looked at Santino.

"Not at him," I said. "At me. It's my mother's funeral. Take it out."

Marisa's mother came out of the side door wiping her hands on a dish towel.

She saw the wreath and said something in Italian that made the old ladies in the third pew cross themselves.

Then she said it again in English.

"Get the gangster's flowers out of my church."

Somebody laughed.

It was a short, shocked laugh, and it came from the butcher.

Santino's jaw went tight.

He nodded once.

The two men lifted the wreath and carried it back out the side door, and a rose fell off on the way.

Santino reached inside his coat and took out a thick white envelope.

"For the expenses," he said. "The stone. Whatever she needs."

"No."

"Don't be proud at a funeral."

"I'm not proud. I'm finished." I said it loud enough for the third pew. "I'm divorcing you, Santino."

Every head in the church turned.

He put the envelope back in his coat without hurrying.

"You'll come home when the money runs out," he said. "It'll run out fast. You've never paid a bill in your life."

"I paid for three years," I said. "You just never saw the bill."

Livia touched his sleeve.

"Santino, the priest is waiting."

I looked at her hand on his arm.

"She answered Mama's last call," I told him. "At eleven forty. My phone was in her purse. Ask her what she said."

The church was silent enough to hear the candles.

Livia lifted her veil and looked at me with wet, gentle eyes.

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Mira."

Santino looked at me.

"Grief is making you cruel," he said. "She's been nothing but good to you."

He put his hand on Livia's back and walked her out of the church.

He didn't stay for the mass.

The priest started anyway.

I don't remember the homily.

I remember Marisa's hand gripping mine the whole time, and her brothers carrying the casket, and the rain at the cemetery.

Afterward the church hall smelled like baked ziti and wet wool.

The old ladies made me eat.

Marisa's mother filled my plate twice and stood over me until I finished both.

"That man," she said. "That man with his flowers."

"Ma," Marisa said.

"I'm talking. Three years she gives him. For what? For a wreath."

"For Mama's heart," I said.

She stopped talking then.

She kissed the top of my head and went back to the kitchen.

That night I slept on Marisa's pullout couch on Lowe Avenue, under an afghan Mama had crocheted for Marisa's sixteenth birthday.

Marisa came out of her room at midnight with a plastic bag.

The clinic's logo was printed on it.

"Her things," she said. "From the room. I didn't want to give it to you at the church."

She sat beside me on the couch while I opened it.

Mama's cardigan, with the pins still in the collar.

Her reading glasses.

Her rosary, the old one with the cracked blue bead.

A pocket pincushion shaped like a tomato.

Under all of it was a single sheet of clinic notepaper, folded twice.

I unfolded it.

It was Mama's handwriting, careful and slanted, the way she wrote on garment tags.

Find the girl from St. Agnes. Tell her I'm sorry.

I read it twice.

"St. Agnes," Marisa said. "Isn't that where she got you?"

"Yes."

"Who's the girl?"

I held the paper close to the lamp.

"I don't know," I said. "I was the girl from St. Agnes."

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