The Widowed Don Hired a Doctor for His Son, and She Brought Two Boys Who Wore His Face novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Saturday
The twins meet Nico, Teo speaks for the first time in fourteen months, and Biagio refuses to look at the boys and says Nico's wife should be kept busy elsewhere.
On Saturday I put the boys in clean shirts and told them they were going to meet a man who might be their uncle.
"What's an uncle?" Gianni asked from the back seat.
"Your daddy's brother."
"We don't have a daddy."
"You had one," I said.
"He was funny."
"Was he funnier than Mr. Pete?"
Mr. Pete ran the hardware store on the Gulf Freeway and gave them each a lollipop.
"Much funnier," I said.
Luca was already asleep with his head on the car window and his yellow boots on the seat.
The Vasari compound sat behind its live-oak wall on Broadway, three whitewashed houses with green shutters and a garden between them.
I had been through the gate twenty-two times in eleven days, and I had never been so afraid of it.
Nico stood on the front steps.
He had shaved and put on a gray sweater with the sleeves pushed up, and he stood with both hands in his pockets.
He didn't come down to the car, and I understood that he was afraid to.
I got the boys out.
Gianni jumped to the gravel with both boots and looked at the house, and then at the man, with his head tipped to one side.
Luca stood behind my leg with one finger in his mouth.
Nico came down the steps very slowly.
He crouched on the gravel in front of them so that his eyes were level with theirs.
He looked at them the way I had seen people look at a fire.
Gianni studied him.
"You've got our chin," he said.
Nico's breath left him in a rush.
"Do I?"
"It has a hole."
"Yes," Nico said.
"It does."
"Mama says it's a cleft," Gianni said.
"Your mama is right," said Nico.
Gianni nodded as if that settled it.
Then he did it.
He lifted the left corner of his mouth, up and a little sideways, and looked at his uncle with private amusement.
I had seen that smile across a pillow.
I watched Nico's face change.
He didn't smile back, because he was too stricken for it.
He reached out one hand and stopped it an inch from Gianni's cheek.
"May I?" he said.
"Okay," said Gianni.
Nico touched the small cheek with two fingers, very lightly, as if it were wet paint.
Luca peered around my leg.
"Are you a bad man?" he asked.
Nico turned his head and looked at him, and it took him a moment.
"Some people say so," he said.
"I try not to be one to anyone who's four."
"Okay," said Luca.
He took his finger out of his mouth and offered Nico the hand it had been in.
Nico shook it with great seriousness.
I had to turn around and study the oleander.
The kitchen was laid for lunch.
Carmela had made a pot of pastina with butter and cheese, the food you give a sick child or a very young one.
She set bowls in front of the boys without a word.
Then she stood at the end of the table with her hands pressed together.
Gianni looked up.
"Are you a grandma?" he asked.
"I'm told so," said Carmela.
"We don't have one," Gianni said.
"Mama's mama is in Port Arthur, but she lives far."
"You have one now," said Carmela, and her voice did not sound like hers.
She went into the pantry and shut the door.
I heard the water run.
Teo came in at the far door at half past twelve, in his Astros shirt, with the seahorse under his arm.
He had been standing in the hall for some time, and I had seen the tip of his sneaker.
The twins stopped eating.
Luca looked at him across the table, a long considering look, and held up his bowl.
"It's good," Luca said.
"You can have mine."
Teo stared at him.
Nico had gone entirely still at the head of the table.
I put my hand under the edge of the wood and didn't breathe.
Teo took a step.
Then he said, in a voice that had rusted shut and had to be worked open like a hinge, "I'm not hungry."
It was the first sentence he had spoken in fourteen months.
Nobody said a word, and nobody cheered.
I had told Nico that morning that if it happened he mustn't make a thing of it.
He picked up his fork and put it down again.
The muscle in his jaw jumped.
"Then sit, Teo," he said in an ordinary voice.
"You can watch them eat."
Teo sat.
He sat directly across from Luca and watched him eat pastina with great attention.
When Luca got butter on his chin, Teo said, "You're messy."
"You're skinny," said Luca.
They were friends.
I looked at Nico.
He was looking at his son, and his eyes were full, and he was trying very hard not to let anything fall.
Then the side door opened and a man came in without knocking.
He was forty-five and heavy in the chest, with thinning gray hair combed back and a close gray beard.
He wore a pressed suit and a gold watch.
I had met Biagio Gallo on my second day.
He kept the family's books and the family's door, and he called Nico "Boss" when other people were in the room.
"Boss," he said, and stopped.
He looked at the table.
He looked at Teo, and then at Nico.
He did not look at the twins at all.
I noticed, because everyone else in the house had looked at them a dozen times, in that helpless sideways way people look at a miracle.
Biagio kept his eyes on the wall above their heads.
"I didn't know you had company," he said.
"My family," Nico said.
"These are Gianni and Luca.
"They're my brother's sons."
"I heard," Biagio said.
His voice was smooth and neutral.
"The doctor told Carmela, who told the women at church, who told my wife.
"It's all over the Strand."
"Then it's all over the Strand," Nico said.
"Good."
Biagio's gaze came slowly across the room and rested on me.
It was a polite look, and it wasn't kind.
"Dr. Marchetti," he said.
"A doctor in a house is a hard thing.
"You get close to the family, and it makes people sentimental."
"I'm a pediatrician," I said.
"I'm paid to be close to children."
"Of course."
He smiled and turned to Nico.
"Boss, I'd say she's done what we needed for Teo.
"Maybe she should be kept busy elsewhere for a while, at the hospital or the clinic, until things settle."
Nico set down his fork.
Carmela, in the pantry doorway with a dish towel in her hands, did not move.
The room had gone very quiet, and the twins went on eating without noticing.
"Biagio," Nico said mildly.
"Sit down and have a plate."
"I've eaten."
"Then stand and watch," Nico said.
"I'm having lunch with my family."
After lunch Nico walked me out to the porch while the boys went to look at the garden with Teo and Carmela.
The sun was on the live oaks.
I stood on the second step and he stood on the third, so that for once our eyes were level.
"You'll forgive Biagio," he said.
"He's loyal.
"He's been a brother to me since we were boys."
"I don't have to forgive him," I said.
"He isn't hurting me."
"No."
His hand came up and settled at the small of my back, flat and warm through my shirt.
He did it without hurry and without apology, in plain view of the kitchen window and the gate.
I felt it through every layer between us, and my whole spine went toward it.
I couldn't have moved if the house had been on fire.
Across the gravel, Biagio had come out of the side door to light a cigarette.
He watched us with his hand cupped around the flame.
"She stays," Nico said, aloud, to the air, in a clear, level voice.
"She sits where I can see her."
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