Page 2 of The Don

I nod because even the thought of admitting that’s exactly how I feel is too much for me to handle right now.

Caroline squints her eyes and tilts her head to the right as she considers the conundrum of my emotions — my life. For a few tense moments, I seriously consider telling her everything that’s been going on. With her age and wisdom, surely she’ll be able to figure out how to fix the mess I’ve made of my life and tell me what to do next. It’s been months, and I sure don’t know what to do. But I can’t do that, especially not in this room with basically all of the women who raised me. I’m overwhelmed enough.

“It’s complicated,” I tell her, slouching in my chair.

“Sit up straight,” she says automatically, and I do. “Life is complicated. But hey,” she says, throwing her hand up in the air. “Your business is your business, and no one here gets to tell you what to do.”

“Do they know that?” I ask, mouth wide in shock at these words.

“Well,” she shrugs, smiling fondly, “in theory. Look, whatever’s complicating your life more than usual right now, here’s what I think.”

Caroline excels at giving advice. All my life, I’ve watched her swan into the family reunion/wedding/funeral, give everyone younger than her — including very grown women — the benefit of her years and years of life and experience, and then hop on another plane out of town long before it was time to wash a single dish. She has always had a particular knack for arriving respectfully late and leaving fashionably early, the weight of her words and scent of her perfume lingering, while an empty bottle of good liquor and untouched cake remind everyone not just of her presence but her priorities. So I don’t pretend that I am above whatever advice Caroline can give. I turn my entire body toward her and watch her face eagerly, letting her know that I’m listening hard.

“Complications aren’t always a bad thing. Sometimes you gotta step out on the ledge, not to jump, just to get a new perspective. And that new perspective might uncomplicate everything.” She squeezes my hand and kisses me on the cheek. “Bring me back a refrigerator magnet.”

“What?” I ask, laughing at the sudden change in subject.

“A magnet. I went to Rome two years ago and meant to get one but forgot. I’ve been mad about it ever since. Every damn time I look at my collection, I swear I see that magnet of the Colosseum I meant to get but didn’t.” She shakes her head and stands from her chair. “Only regret of my life, I swear.”

“Only regret?” I mumble to myself as I watch her walk away. “I can’t even imagine.”

Surprisingly though, once Caroline is gone, I realize that I feel better, freer, somehow.

And then I think of Salvatore.

I’ve dreamed about him for so long that even just thinking his name brings a picture of him to my mind — the sun hitting the dark gray strands of his hair, glinting off his glasses while he smiles at me. But for the first time, I try to imagine him here in front of the Council of Aunties.

Apparently, my entire family hated Steve, not just Zoe. The whole family. So, I can’t help but wonder what the fuck they’ll think of Salvatore. What will they say when they find out that I’m pregnant by someone who isn’t the boyfriend they hate but a man who’s definitely closer to my mother’s age than mine? The married man. The man I met once for only a few hours before he impregnated me. The man whose last name I don’t even know.

The man I can’t forget.

I can’t picture him here, and that makes my heart break. And I guess that’s an answer to one question, at least. Why aren’t I happy knowing that I’ll be in Italy this time tomorrow? Because the man I’ve been dreaming about is the ultimate figment of my imagination; just real enough that I can still feel his fingers digging into my waist, bending me forward while his tongue explores my pussy, but so completely unattainable that those memories hurt, because I’ll never have more.

If I were smart — if I were Zoe — I wouldn’t go back. If I were stronger, I would take the out that Aunt Caroline gave me and let Zoe go on her own while I move into her spare room and find an OBGYN and therapist. But I’m not.

I know that as surely as I know that this avocado-sized collection of cells in my stomach is Salvatore’s and mine. I know that I’m going to get on that plane and go back to Naples because the memory of Salvatore watching me walk away is haunting me. No, scratch that — the entire afternoon I spent with him has been haunting me, and I don’t want it to stop. I see him standing in the doorway of his restaurant, watching me rush off to the train station in my mind’s eye, and I think we both knew that I wanted to stay.

But did he want me to stay?

I feel pathetic worrying over this question again, but I can’t help it; it’s eating me up.

Some days I’m certain that he didn’t. Couldn’t. I was probably just the latest in a long line of tourists he brought to that back room. Those are the worst days.

But on the best days, I imagine him standing at the door all these weeks later, looking out onto the square, seeing echoes of me walking away, stuck in the moment in the same way I’m still there.

And that’s why I’m going back to Naples. On the slim chance, the faintest brush of hope, that Salvatore has been waiting for me to return as desperately as I’ve been waiting to get back to him.

* * *

Salvatore

You’re never too old to ask for help, Sasà.

-An Old Friend

When I left the restaurant this afternoon for a visit to the barber, everything on my desk had been as it should be. A neat stack of papers I’d collected for the restaurant’s accountant, a vegetable order from the head chef that I needed to call in, a message from a walking tour company interested in bringing their tours to La Casa Colonica — a request that made Alfonso and I laugh for a good long while.

I walked to the barbershop. It was a lovely day out. The sun was high in a light blue sky. The air was crisp, a welcome reprieve after a too-hot summer. The cooler weather reminds me of spring and Shae. But everything reminds me of Shae. The high sun in summer made me think of her smile. The moon seemed to be the same shade of the palest skin underneath her breasts, wet sand the same darker shade of brown at her inner thighs, soft jazz notes the same tone of her satisfied cries in my ears, and the warm water of my shower made me think of her wet release when I stroke myself to all these memories of her. I moved through the city in a haze, not quite seeing anything around me as I hallucinated Shae’s echo everywhere, just around the corner and through every window.

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