The Don's Dying Wish novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Saline

Amalia and the embalmer help her swap the drug for saline under Tiziana's nose, and the dying Don sends for her alone: did his son open his eyes?

I backed out of the kitchen without the coffee.

Upstairs, I told Marcello in a whisper.

"Double. Tonight. To scare me."

His eyes stayed shut.

His fingers tapped the sheet twice, which we'd agreed meant yes.

"I'm going home for a few hours," I whispered. "I'll be back before eleven."

One tap, and his hand moved an inch toward mine.

I found her at the kitchen table in the back with a deck of cards and a cigarette she wasn't allowed to have.

Amalia Guarino was seventy-nine and had done the hair of every dead woman in South Philly for fifty years.

She looked at my face and put the cigarette out.

"Who died?"

"Nobody yet," I said. "That's the problem."

I told her all of it.

The bag.

The clamp.

His eyes opening at three in the morning.

When I finished, she crossed herself.

Then she got up and yelled down the back stairs for our embalmer.

He came up wiping his hands on a towel.

He was in his sixties, and had been a Navy corpsman before he ever touched the dead.

I unzipped my overnight bag and set the shawl on the table.

He picked up the bag and turned it over.

On the back, near the seam, was a tiny pharmacy sticker with a lot number printed on it.

"Doesn't matter what's in it," he said. "Matters that it's not in him."

"She wants to double it tonight."

"Then tonight it's salt water." He held the bag up to the window. "Same size. I can get saline by four. I'll copy the sticker."

"Will he be all right? Coming off it like that?"

"He'll shake a few nights. Sweat. Bad dreams." He set the bag down. "Water, and someone sitting with him."

"He has someone," I said.

At four, the embalmer handed me two bags of saline wrapped in a dish towel.

At five, Amalia climbed out of my car in front of the Brancato house with her hair kit on her arm.

"I'm here to do the boy's hair," she told the man at the door. "For the wedding pictures."

"The wedding was yesterday."

"Then I'm late," she said, and walked past him.

In the east bedroom, she set out her combs on the dresser.

"Handsome," she said. "Too thin. Who cuts this, a gardener?"

His eyelids didn't flicker.

She sat on the edge of the bed and started combing out his curls.

"I'm Amalia," she said. "The grandmother. I hear you've been lying around for two years."

"My husband lay around for forty," she said. "At least you have an excuse."

His mouth twitched.

I saw it.

She saw it.

She leaned close to his ear and lowered her voice.

"You keep my granddaughter alive," she said, "and I'll make you beautiful for free."

Two taps on the sheet.

Amalia sniffed and went back to combing.

Before she left, she taught me the oldest card trick she had.

"You don't hide it," she said. "You hide the hand. People watch the face."

We practiced with a bag of saline until I could do it in my sleep.

At ten to eleven, I was sitting by Marcello's bed in a cardigan with deep pockets.

A bag of saline was rolled flat against my hip.

The clock struck eleven.

The door opened.

Tiziana came in with the night nurse behind her.

The nurse was carrying a steel tray with a bag on it.

It was fuller than last night's.

"Sit close, Vittoria," Tiziana said. "A wife should watch."

I stood up.

"Let me do it," I said.

Tiziana raised her penciled brows.

"I've handled more lines than your nurse," I said. "I'd like to do something for him."

For a second, I thought she'd say no.

Then she smiled, slow and pleased.

She thought I was trying to be a good girl.

"Go on, then," she said. "Wife."

The nurse held out the tray.

I took the bag and turned my back to them to reach the pole.

My body was between their eyes and my hands.

I hung the saline.

The real bag went flat into my pocket in one turn of my wrist, exactly the way Amalia had shown me.

I threaded the line into his port and rolled the wheel open.

Drip.

Drip.

I stepped back.

Tiziana came to the foot of the bed and folded her arms.

She watched his face.

I watched her watch it.

Twenty minutes passed, and Marcello lay like stone.

The nurse checked her watch and glanced at the bag, frowning.

"Ma'am, it should have..."

"He's built like his father," Tiziana said shortly. "Tomorrow, then."

She left.

The nurse went after her.

I sat down.

My hands didn't shake until the door was closed.

Then they shook so hard I had to hold them between my knees.

"Nice hands," Marcello whispered.

"My grandmother's."

"I like your grandmother."

Someone knocked softly.

I froze.

Marcello went slack.

The door opened a crack, and an older woman in scrubs looked in.

It was the Don's nurse, from across the hall.

"Mrs. Brancato," she whispered. "Mr. Brancato wants you. Alone."

I followed her across the hall.

The west bedroom was dark except for one lamp.

Ambrogio lay propped on his pillows with his cloudy eyes turned toward the door.

"Close it," he said.

The nurse pulled it shut from the hall.

"Tell me the truth, girl," the Don said. "Did my son open his eyes?"

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