Page 43 of The Enforcer

18Alfonso

What I appreciate mostabout my mother is that she has a script, and she sticks to it.

Why don’t I come home more often?

Have I been eating enough?

When am I going to shave?

Is that a new scar?

Is that a new scar?

I normally find comfort in the familiar questions, and I nod and answer when I can, as best I can, usually with a mouth full of food she’s been piling onto my plate. And then:

Don’t talk with food in your mouth. Who raised you?

This is how my mother shows her love, and I reciprocate by enduring it. The food also helps.

But right now, I wish that she would go back to that line of interrogation because this new one is brutal. I hadn’t realized she’d been going easy on me all these years.

“Who is she?”

“Do we know her family?”

“Where is she from?”

“America!? Is this for the citizenship or healthcare? I’ve heard horrible stories about that place.”

“Is she pregnant?”

This question, at least, is familiar. My mother asks if Zoe is pregnant with a hungry gleam in her eye. When we were younger, she used to ask this question every time Nicola and I got caught sneaking out, or she heard we had a girlfriend from some busybody in town, or we even looked at a girl on the street. But over the years, her tune has changed. Dario told me that she often laments how unlucky her life is; four sons and none of them married or even reckless. She asks the priests to pray for our love lives. She lights candles for her future grandchildren. She prays constantly for babies to spoil. Once she starts on this line of questioning, she can’t let go. If we allow it, she will talk about all the days we’re wasting of her old age by not giving her babies to raise.

“You should get her pregnant. It will be good for your immigration file.”

I look desperately over her shoulder at my father and Ugo; they’re pretending not to hear her and bending over a bed of rosemary. Traitors.

“Mamma,” I say, and she stops speaking, probably out of shock. I normally don’t interrupt her. “I’ve missed you.” I grab her shoulders gently and kiss her on her cheeks. She pulls me into a hug, and I hold her. I don’t have a plan beyond this. Planning is not my strength. Thankfully, my stomach growls, and she pushes me away.

There’s a horrified look on her face.

“Did you eat? Ugo,” she yells, “why didn’t you let him eat before he walked up all those steps? And where is Nicola?”

She turns away to fuss at my brother and pick some vegetables from the garden.

I back toward the door, preparing to stand sentry there until Zoe is done. I really don’t know what else to do. I wish this was something I could ask Giulio’s help with, but he would only laugh if I tried. And of all the things I should call about in this moment, my overbearing mother isn’t on the list.

After what feels like an hour in the hot sun, the shed door cracks open. I turn my head enough to peek through the slit without alerting my mother to the fact that Zoe is there. It’s still hot outside, but I can feel the steam from her shower. Or her body. I can see her brown eye and a sliver of her bare shoulder. I look away.

“So, that was your mother,” she says.

“Si.”

“What’s our story?” she asks. “How did we meet?”

I’m speechless.

“You do have a cover story for us, right?”

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