He Used My Pregnancies to Cure His Mistress, So I Told Every Family novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Congratulations at the Sunday Table
Silvia announces her pregnancy at Rosaria's table, Elena finds the clinic sheet with her own lot numbers, reads it aloud before the capos and walks out, and Nico refuses to take her to the grave.
At my mother-in-law's Sunday table, Silvia stood up with her glass of water and told forty people she was ten weeks pregnant.
The capos and their wives clapped.
My mother-in-law cried into her napkin.
My husband stayed in his chair at the head of the table and smiled at his plate.
I was seated at the other end, six weeks after burying our daughter, with a fork in my hand.
"Six years of trying," Silvia said. "Three years with the new clinic, and now this."
She turned to me with her eyes shining.
"And Elena, I wouldn't be standing here without you. You gave me everything."
She said it so warmly that the wives all looked at me and sighed.
Silvia had brought me soup after every one of my losses.
She had held my hair back in the bathroom and sat with me until I slept.
She was the only person at this table who said all four names I had picked for my babies, and she said them right.
I stood up and walked around the table to hug her, because that is what a good Barzini wife does.
My husband, Marco, caught my wrist as I passed.
"The doctor says it was never anything you did, amore," he said. "Not one of them."
He had told me that at the hospital, at the funeral and in our kitchen.
He said it the same way each time, in the same words.
I kissed Silvia's cheek and said congratulations, and she squeezed my hand under the cloth.
Then I asked where the powder room was, though I had lived in that house seven years.
Rosaria's downstairs bathroom has a pink marble sink and a hook for coats.
Silvia's cream cardigan hung on it, and her leather bag sat open on the shelf below.
I did not mean to look.
A folded paper had slid halfway out, with the letterhead of the women's clinic in Montclair.
I knew that letterhead.
I had signed forms on it four times with a pen the nurse handed me.
I opened the paper.
It was a table, typed in neat columns.
DONOR: E. BARZINI, patient 40117.
LOT ONE, gestation sixteen weeks, March, three years ago.
LOT TWO, gestation eighteen weeks, the following winter.
LOT THREE, gestation nineteen weeks, fourteen months ago.
LOT FOUR, gestation twenty-seven weeks, six weeks ago.
Beside each lot was a second date, and a second column that said RECIPIENT: S.C.
Every date beside my name was the day I had lost a baby.
Every date in the second column was the same day.
Under the table, in pen, someone had written: Treatment continues. Fourth lot strongest. Proceed to implant.
I read it twice and did not shake.
My hands were very still.
I thought about the nurse who held my feet and said breathe.
I thought about the doctor who always sedated me before I could ask a question.
I thought about Marco kissing my forehead in a hospital bed and saying, "Next time."
Next time.
I walked back to the dining room with the paper open in my hand.
Forty people were still holding their glasses.
"Silvia," I said. "Is this yours?"
She went white, but she was smiling when she said, "Elena, honey, it's private."
"Read it to me, then."
Nobody answered for her.
So I read it to the room.
I read the name, the four lots and the four dates.
I read the line that said fourth lot strongest.
When I finished, nobody clapped.
My mother-in-law, Rosaria, put her napkin down very slowly.
Marco stood.
"Elena," he said quietly. "You are not well. Sit down."
"You told me they were accidents."
"They were."
"They had lot numbers."
The capo nearest me looked at his wife, and she looked at the tablecloth.
Marco did not look at the paper.
He looked at the door, where the men stood, and then at his mother.
"Nico," he said. "Take her to the car. She needs the doctor."
I folded the paper and put it in my bra.
"I'm not going to the doctor," I said. "I'm going to our daughter."
Nobody moved.
Nico Alinari came across the room, the quiet man who had driven me everywhere for seven years.
At the funeral he had carried the little white coffin himself and let no one else touch it.
He did not take my arm.
He opened the front door and held it.
"Mrs. Barzini," he said. "The car is out front."
I walked past my husband and out of his house.
Nico drove for ten minutes without a word, past the churches and the shuttered bakeries of the Ironbound.
At the light on Ferry Street I said, "Take me to Belleville."
His eyes found mine in the mirror.
"I want the grave opened," I said. "Tonight."
His hands tightened on the wheel.
"No," Nico said.
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