Don, Your Regret Can't Keep Me novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Only One

Annette takes Giada in, and Mrs. Zito swears she never had a daughter, but her rent comes in an envelope every month in Sergio's handwriting.

"Is that the Singer?"

Annette Marino came down the sidewalk in slippers and a black salon smock, with her hair in a clip.

She lived over her salon, two doors down.

She'd seen the Escalade from her kitchen.

She looked at Mauro.

She looked at the robe in the top window.

She looked at me.

"Oh, I'm gonna need a minute," she said.

"Annette," Mauro said.

"Don't Annette me, I knew you when you had a mullet." She took the Singer out of my arms like it weighed nothing. "Giada. Inside. Now."

Mauro stood on the curb and let us go.

He didn't follow.

He never followed.

Annette's salon smelled like peroxide and hairspray and the lemon cookies she kept by the register.

She put the Singer on a dryer chair and turned the sign to CLOSED, even though it was Sunday and it already said that.

"Start talking."

I told her.

The toast, the key, the ring in the wine.

The hall.

"I like her. She makes me laugh."

Annette sat down on her own shampoo sink.

"He said that? To your face? On your anniversary?"

"He said he'd never lied to me."

"Oh, that's nice, a gentleman." She pulled her phone out. "I'm calling my fiancé."

"For what?"

"He has an axe, Giada. It's a fire department axe. It's for emergencies."

I laughed.

It came out wrong, and then I was crying into a salon towel that smelled like bleach.

Annette held my head against her smock and didn't say anything for a long time.

That was the only time all day she didn't say anything.

That night we ate lo mein out of the cartons on the couch in her back room.

The couch was pink vinyl and older than both of us.

Her fiancé had brought it up from his mother's basement when Annette opened, because she'd wanted somewhere to nap between perms.

"You're sleeping here," she said. "I'd give you my bed, but he snores like a garbage truck and he's in it."

"The couch is fine."

"The couch is not fine, the couch has a spring in it with your name on it." She stabbed a piece of chicken. "Tomorrow you go to a lawyer."

"Tomorrow I go to the priest."

She stopped chewing.

"You're going to confession? You? What'd you do, take a second cannoli?"

"I'm going to ask for an annulment."

"Since when do you need a priest to leave a man?"

I put the carton down.

"Since he never touched me, Annette."

She looked at me for a long moment.

"Like, ever?"

"At the altar. He kissed me at the altar."

"Six years." She set her fork down very gently. "Okay. Okay, I need you to know I'm not gonna make one joke about this."

She lasted about four seconds.

"His loss. You've got thighs like a Renaissance painting."

I threw a fortune cookie at her.

The next afternoon I drove to Dom's mother's house.

She lived in a rowhouse a block off Oregon Avenue, two streets from where her husband's car went into the guardrail.

Mrs. Zito was sixty-one and four foot eleven, with a cardigan buttoned wrong.

She hugged me in the doorway like I was hers.

"Giada. Look at you, you're skin and bones. Sit, I've got gravy on."

Her front room was full of Dom.

Dom at his confirmation.

Dom at the Shore with his shirt off and that crooked grin.

Dom in a tuxedo at my wedding, holding Mauro's ring box up for the camera.

She put a bowl of macaroni in front of me even though it was three o'clock.

I ate it, because you do.

"Mrs. Zito," I said. "Did Dom's father have any other kids?"

She stopped with the pot lid in her hand.

"What kind of question is that?"

"There's a woman at the house. She says she's Dom's sister. His younger sister, from his dad. From Atlantic City."

Mrs. Zito put the lid down.

Her mouth went thin.

"My husband was dead before my son was born," she said. "Five months. You know this. I told you this with your hands in my lace."

"I know."

"He never went to Atlantic City in his life. He got carsick on the Walt Whitman Bridge." She crossed herself. "There's no sister. There was only one. Who is saying this?"

"Her name is Gabriella."

"I don't know any Gabriella." Her hands were shaking now. "Who brought her? Mauro?"

"Mauro's uncle."

She looked away from me, at the mantel.

There was a white envelope propped behind the photo of Dom in his tuxedo.

"Sergio's a good man," she said, too fast. "He comes to the cemetery. He sent a big wreath."

"Mrs. Zito."

"I don't want trouble with that family, Giada. They've been good to me."

She got up and went to stir the gravy that didn't need stirring.

I stood up and went to the mantel to look at Dom.

The envelope behind his photo was fat with cash.

"The rent," Mrs. Zito said from the stove, without turning around. "It comes every month since Dom. Under the door. No name. God bless the family."

On the front of the envelope, in black ink, was one line.

For Dom's mother.

The letters slanted hard to the right, and every capital had a little hook on it.

For six Christmases I'd opened a card with a hundred-dollar bill in it and those same hooked capitals.

To my favorite niece.

It was Sergio's handwriting.

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