Chapter 16: The Signature

Santino straightened up behind the desk.

"Then tell me what happens in the light."

"First you sign," I said. "The divorce. No more torn paper."

"Sunday," he said. "At Nonna's table. In front of everyone I said it to."

Livia laughed, a small cracked sound.

"You're going to sign away your wife over a piece of clinic paper?"

Santino didn't look at her.

"Pack a bag," he said to the driver. "One. Her things from the rooms over the garage. She's out of this house by Sunday night."

"Santino." Livia stood up. "Six years."

"Six years," he agreed, and turned his back on her.

On Sunday I walked up the front steps on Taylor Street at two o'clock, when the family sat down.

Not at three, the way I'd come before, like an intruder.

At two, with the family.

Nathaniel wasn't with me.

Marisa was.

She'd come straight from her shift in her navy scrubs and a borrowed black coat, and she held my elbow on the steps.

"If an aunt looks at you wrong," she said, "I'm telling my mother."

The dining room was full again.

The two long tables, the brass light, the priest at the far end, the baby in the high chair with a breadstick.

Livia's chair at Santino's right hand was empty.

Somebody had moved it to the wall.

Nonna looked up.

"Sit," she said. "Both of you. Eat."

This time I sat.

Marisa sat beside me and took two meatballs before anyone passed her the platter.

Santino stood up at Nonna's right hand.

He had a folder in front of his plate.

The room went quiet in pieces again, from the head of the table to the foot.

"Most of you were here a month ago," he said. "You heard my wife tell you what happened the night her mother died. You watched me call her a liar."

An uncle shifted in his chair.

"She wasn't lying," Santino said. "I was the one who was wrong. I'll say the rest of it when she tells me where."

He opened the folder.

It was the divorce agreement, already drawn up by his own lawyer, with little yellow flags on every line that needed his name.

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