Chapter 14: On His Knees

Carmine laughed.

It was the laugh from Sunday dinner, the one that told the table how to feel.

Nobody followed it this time.

"Pop," he said. "You're sick. You're tired. She's been working on you all week."

"Say it."

"There's nothing to say. Lucia's hysterical. You saw her at the party. She fakes things."

"She faked them for you," Pop said.

Carmine turned to the room.

He spread his hands, the way he had six years ago over the pasta.

"Come on," he said. "Who here believes a hostess over me?"

Nobody answered.

The capo who'd laughed at Lucia on the first night looked at the floor.

The aunt with the reading glasses folded her arms.

"I believe the box," said an old cousin by the window. "The box doesn't have a husband."

A few people laughed.

It wasn't the kind of laugh Carmine was used to.

I watched him hear it.

I watched it go through him.

He'd spent his whole life deciding who the room laughed at.

"June," he said.

He said it low, to me.

"You don't want this. Think of the boy. Think what he'll hear at school."

"He'll hear his mother wasn't a dry well," I said. "That's all I want him to hear."

Pop's oxygen hissed.

"You told the table five years," Pop said. "So tell the table."

Carmine stood very straight.

His gold watch caught the light.

For a second I thought he'd walk out.

Then the old man did something I had never seen him do.

He pushed himself up out of the wheelchair.

His arms shook.

The oxygen line pulled tight under his nose.

Gianni moved to catch him and Pop waved him off without looking.

He stood on his own two feet in front of his son, half his old size, and the whole room stood up with him.

"I stood for your christening," Pop said. "I can stand for this."

Carmine's face broke.

Not all at once.

It went at the mouth first, then the eyes.

He looked at his father standing there, and he got down on his knees.

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