Chapter 5: Mother

The pantry door swung open.

I was already back in the dining room by then, sitting down, picking up my spoon.

My mother came in smoothing her blouse.

The doctor's car pulled away outside.

Leni was arguing with Ugo about whether cannoli counted as fluid.

Lucio was watching me.

I ate my dessert.

I didn't taste one bite of it.

That night I lay on my back over the shop and put it together, one tube at a time.

My mother had just paid the man who held Lucio's chart.

And the man who wanted me on the table had come home tonight with a cotton ball in his arm.

Maybe Lucio knew.

Maybe the Don of Federal Hill had scratched out his own name because he'd rather cut me open than lie down himself.

I couldn't ask him.

If I asked him, he'd know I knew, and I'd never get to Saturday.

At ten the next morning I walked back up the Hill.

The housekeeper let me in the side gate.

My mother was in the walled garden in a straw hat, cutting roses off the bush by the fig tree.

She had my father's wedding band on her right hand.

It flashed every time she squeezed the shears.

"Roxie. You're early for once."

"How much did you pay him?"

The shears stopped.

She didn't turn around.

She snipped one more rose and laid it in her basket.

"Who?"

"The doctor. Last night. In the pantry. How much?"

She took off her gardening gloves one finger at a time.

Then she turned around and looked at me with my own gray eyes.

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