Page 28 of A Winter in New York

“Bruno,” Gio says, plucking the small dog up on to his lap. He’s some kind of terrier, I think, a small, scruffy furball with kind eyes who turns himself around a couple of times and then settles into a relieved ball on Gio’s lap.

“He’s fourteen,” Gio says. “Missing Papa like crazy.”

“I always wanted a dog,” I say, giving Bruno’s ears a scratch.

“Did you ever have one?”

I shake my head. “It was never the right time.” I don’tadd that our lives were always too transitory and finances too unreliable to add a third mouth that needed feeding to our tribe.

Francesca comes through balancing a tray of crystal shot glasses and places it carefully on the coffee table. She hands me one first, as their guest, and I sniff it as everyone else leans in and grabs a glass. Gio shoots Bella a warning glance when she shows interest and she rolls her eyes before sliding back into her spot on the floor by the fire. I pretend not to notice when Maria allows her granddaughter a sip from her own glass, and I’m pretty sure Gio turns the same blind eye.

“Cazzo,” Viola murmurs, spluttering on her drink.

“Viola!” Maria frowns.

I glance at Gio for clarification. “It means fuck,” he says with a laugh.

“Gio!” Maria says.

“Sorry, it’s just so strong,” Viola says, going in for more even though her eyes are watering.

I can only agree—the limoncello is rocket fuel.

Sophia is curled into a deep-green leather button-back armchair, her feet tucked beneath her bum. “What do you think, Iris?”

I feel as if someone just turned a spotlight on me as all eyes swivel my way. “It’s, umm…” I gesture toward my throat—“like drinking lemon fire.”

They fall around laughing, and Pascal shrugs again, as if he cannot be held responsible for his own creation.

“You know what would be the perfect thing to show Iris right now, Mamma?” Sophia throws a subtle wink at Bella. “Some really embarrassing photos of Gio as a kid. You know,the ones of him wearing Fran’s pink overalls after he peed himself at the park?”

“Gio was such a beautiful child,” Maria says, ignoring the context. “You all were. Bella, pass me the album.”

I don’t miss the look of pure sibling insta-hate Gio shoots across the room at Sophia, or the absolute couldn’t-care-less insta-joy on her face in return.

Maria balances the thick old photo album on her knees and opens it, one hand on her heart as she flicks through the first few pages. After a moment she passes it across to Gio, her emotions close to the surface.

“Here, you can show Iris.”

The album is open on a spread of old birthday photographs: Gio’s seventh birthday, going off the cake and the badge pinned to his Garfield T-shirt. It looks like countless other family parties, dated in the eighties by the clothes and hairstyles. Bella perches on the arm of the sofa to peer over her dad’s shoulder.

“You looked like a girl,” she says, laughing at Gio’s curls.

“I couldn’t bring myself to cut it,” Maria says.

“Remember when you let me put it in pigtails?” Francesca says.

“I didn’t let you, I lost a bet,” Gio corrects her. “You know I’ve always been a man of my word.”

He turns the pages: family days out at Coney Island, Christmas trees in the corner of this very room, countless pictures of the kids behind the counter in the gelateria, some of them too small to see over it. This is the first time I’ve seen any other photographs of Santo besides my mother’s single shot. To me, he has forever been that cool guy frozen in the eighties, but of course he wasn’t always. Here I see how hislife played out. The lines that bracket his mouth, the receding hairline, and the family he built.

Gio turns the page again and the strangest of sensations slides over my bones, and it’s nothing to do with the wine or the limoncello.

“That’s my father, Felipe,” Gio says, touching a black-and-white photo. “With Papa.”

Felipe is standing with his arm slung over Santo’s shoulders, both of them holding half-full pint glasses and laughing into the lens. Felipe has an electric guitar hung over his tall skinny body, and the sweaty sheen of someone who has been under the glare of stage lights.

Several small explosions happen in my head at once. I’ve seen Gio’s biological father in photos before. He was in my mother’s band. But it’s not only that. The photo looks as if it was taken late at night in a club, and in the background, her face turned away from the camera, is my mother.

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