Chapter 26 – Angela
Chapter Twenty-Six
Angela
M y plan with Luigi and Delphine unfolds beautifully – even better than I expected.
Maybe the stupid men in my backwards Italian family will understand my position if they experience what I did.
Even Luigi doesn’t know why my ex-husband attempted to end my life – which he essentially did by breaking my feet at the peak of my career.
I would have never been the lead dancer in a bigger company, but I could have danced until my late forties instead of having to give up the only thing that made my pathetic overly controlled childhood worth living.
Tonight, Peter has to take me home, which I don’t mind.
The deeper Luigi falls in love with Delphine, the better for all of us in the long run.
My cousin Peter might be an asshole in every sense of the word, but the man has excellent taste in cars.
He’s one of the easiest to get along with because he doesn’t speak much, only gives a shit about the gym and hockey, and he has that strange wisdom about my family problems and most issues.
Peter’s latest ride gives off the impression he did a pretty good job whacking someone for my dad.
I don’t know all the details, but I know from my life in Pittsburgh and what the boys fail to keep from me that Peter and Michael do the dirtier work.
Pino had a tougher past and he never wanted the boys to grow up weak.
Dad never liked us getting our hands dirty.
Ever since my cousin got the new electric Porsche, I’ve craved the illusion of freedom I get from riding in the passenger seat while Peter ignores the very concept of a speed limit to race his car across Western New York.
Good luck to any State Trooper who tries to catch him in this thing.
It’s a rush, and reminds me of how fucking intense life can feel.
It’s a cheap high compared to what I used to get dancing and performing, but it’s better than nothing.
I need a thrill to pick me up off my late night low from thinking about the past and how my success with Luigi and Delphine doesn’t fix my problem.
I’m here, trapped with my older brother because my father doesn’t trust me, and the complete knowledge that he shouldn’t trust me.
Peter disappoints me once we start driving back to Luigi’s apartment by obeying the speed limit and looking over at me cautiously like he wants to start a deep conversation. Our family doesn’t do open and honest conversations, so if my cousin wants to ask me something, it must be pretty serious.
I don’t want to talk about Pittsburgh, even if that’s all they want to talk about.
I spent ten weeks knowing they were over there within a few miles of my past life and there was nothing I could do but…
stay trapped. It’s humiliating enough that my younger brothers have more power in my family than I do, and having to constantly face the realization that I’m nothing more than a prisoner makes me feel like shit.
“Does your dad have a plan for letting you out of this arrangement?” Peter asks at a stoplight downtown, a couple miles away from Luigi’s apartment. I’ve been there for months and he hasn’t said a word about my freedom or what he expects from me.
“Nope. What about you? Still trapped working a shitty gig for my dad?”
Peter shrugs. “I don’t mind it.”
“Really? You like randomly leaving for Pittsburgh? Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
Again, the men in my family remain disturbingly nonchalant about their romantic lives.
Maybe our family is too big and crazy for them to have a powerful drive to breed and populate the earth, but outside of fulfilling their immediate needs, these men are downright uninterested in relationships. Or starting families of their own.
I guess I used to be like they were – too cynical about the world to give a shit about having a baby or starting a family. Ironically, falling in love with a man I wasn’t married to is what changed everything for me. I didn’t try to keep it a secret when I should have, and I paid the price.
“I don’t need a girlfriend to stay satisfied,” Peter says, clearly trying to get under my skin with his gross guy-response.
“Ew.”
“What? It’s true. Plus, if I had a girlfriend, I couldn’t stay up with you tonight and listen to you bitch about your problems.”
“Is that your plan?”
“You seem like you need a friend,” Peter says with a shrug.
I hate feeling like he pities me, but I shouldn’t hold his moments of kindness against him.
Nobody outside our family knows that Peter is a teddy bear deep down.
Mikey might have the giant scar on his face and the missing eyeball from the botched job in Pittsburgh a decade ago, but Peter has the sharp angular face and features that make strangers’ blood run cold.
He doesn’t look like the stereotypical Sicilian from the movies, but if you go back to Italy, you see many men with a similar appearance to my cousin – copper hair, eyes like a Siamese cat, and a prominent Roman nose.
“You need a girlfriend way more than I need a friend,” I mutter, not trying to be that Italian cousin, but slipping into the role effortlessly regardless. When you’re cooped up the way I’ve been for the past few months, gossip becomes your lifeline.
“Is that what you said to your brother?”
“I intervened,” I say simply, hoping that Peter doesn’t pry into my activities. I might need to use the same strategy on other members of my family, and I would rather keep some of my secrets.
Peter chuckles, not taking me seriously in the slightest. “What do you mean by that? You set him up with a black woman?”
“Something like that.”
Peter’s visceral reaction fills me with rage.
I suppress my outward response, but make no mistake, I feel the bitterness tightening in a firm knot at the base of my stomach.
If they didn’t all think like this, I could be with the man I loved.
If they didn’t all think Italian blood gave us some sense of superiority over other people, I wouldn’t have to worry about his skin color and he wouldn’t have had to worry about mine.
If I were anyone else except Angela Taviani, I could have escaped my husband and instead of living in this humiliating captivity, I could be with the only man I met who understood my passions in life.
“No thanks,” Peter says, affirming my belief that his visceral reaction to interracial relationships is disgust. “I don’t care to taste the rainbow.”
I tell myself I’ll hold back from making any accusations that might land me in an unpleasant argument with an arrogant Italian man, but I can’t help myself. Luigi and Delphine taught me something: I have more power than I realize.
“You’re so racist,” I say to Peter without hiding my scorn.
He scoffs at me indignantly. “What? You wouldn’t fuck a black guy.”
He doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know why my ex-husband took a mallet to my feet.
“You’re racist. Period.” I want to stay in control here, especially because I’m pushing myself to stand up to a man who could destroy me – like all the men in my family. They’re proud of the fear they inspire.
“I don’t like the way you responded right there,” Peter says calmly, but with underlying malice in his tone as he continues accusingly.. “It’s a suspicious response.”
“What’s suspicious about me being with a black man?” I’m pushing him again, and my heart races with fear that I’m slowly gaining control over.
Peter’s next words slam into me like a brick. The ugly reality of the world I live in as the member of a “proud” Italian family.
“You don’t seem like the type to be into thugs.”
They think there are tiers and levels to hatred, but all the bigotry and bullshit leads to the same place. The pain in my body. The pain that separates me and the man I love.
“The man I slept with wasn’t a thug,” I say in a low voice that barely contains my anger. “He was the lead dancer at my ballet company and a beautiful man.”
He doesn’t know how rare it is to find a man in the dance world who doesn’t prefer other men.
Devin grew up with parents celebrated on Broadway who encouraged his interests.
When we met, skin color didn’t factor into the equation.
At least not for me. I thought I could live in a dream world where we loved each other and it didn’t matter.
But it did.
And he didn’t want me to leave my husband.
He didn’t think it could work between us.
I wanted him anyway. I convinced him to sleep with me.
I broke us apart with my untamed desires for him that could have gotten us both killed.
I’m lucky that I only ended up with my feet broken and that I was smart enough to never tell anyone in my family his name or any information that could lead to them finding him.
Thankfully, he left Pittsburgh a month or so after I left. I have no clue how to find him and I don’t think he knows how to find me. I’ll always love that man, but I’ll never get a chance to go back and fix the shit between us. It’s over.
Peter puffs quietly on the cigarette for another minute. “No fucking way you fucked a black guy.”
“That’s what you focus on?”
“They let black guys dance ballet?”
His unserious responses at least make me comfortable that he won’t run off to either of our parents with righteous indignation.
Although, my father suspected Devin and I had a connection from the start of our relationship.
My father’s support for my ballet career has always led to his suspicion of every man who got close to me.
He thought my arranged marriage would have fixed that problem, but none of us could have predicted where that would end up.
“Yes, they let black men dance ballet. Are you a goddamn idiot, Peter?”
“I’m just imagining Tupac in tights. It’s not a good look.”
He’s so ignorant.
“I hate you.”
“Was he gay?” Peter asks with even greater confusion.
“You’re going to die alone,” I mutter under my breath. I can’t imagine any woman in this era putting up with a man as ignorant as my cousin. These old school Italian men don’t realize that no woman with half a brain would put up with their chauvinistic values.
“You might be right.”
“I can help you the way I helped Luigi.”
“I already told you,” Peter says. “I don’t want to end up with a black woman.”
“What makes you think a black woman wants to end up with you?”
“Exactly,” Peter says. “We’ll just keep avoiding each other for the rest of my life and I’ll end up with… I don’t know. A loud Italian woman like my mother when I’m sixty-five and ready to settle down.”
“If that was what you wanted, you would be married already. You’re like royalty in our world, Peter. You haven’t chosen any of the eligible princesses available to you.”
“I’m waiting for the right one.”
“Oh my God. You are gross.”
“What? I’m Italian. We’re romantic.”
“And racist.”
“I’m not racist,” Peter insists.
Although, I’m pretty sure he is racist, like the rest of my family. I might have made progress on Luigi’s heart, but my idiotic older brother has always had a thing for women who looked like Delphine. He was just always too shy to admit it to himself.
But who else googles ‘Queen Latifah boobs’ or ‘Queen Latifah sexy’ that enthusiastically as a ten-year-old? Luigi was an easy nut to crack.
But the twins? My cousins?
I don’t know if anyone will ever melt their hearts.
Peter drops me off at the apartment and he changes the subject to hockey, which we both enjoy. I’m not a huge fan of the Sabres, but I understand sports talk and I have my favorites. Plus, I don’t want to stay here all alone until I’m tired enough to pass out.
Around 3 in the morning, Peter snores away on Luigi’s living room couch and I slip back to my bedroom to head to bed.
Right as I’m about to fall asleep, my phone buzzes. Probably Luigi.
Unknown: It’s Devin. Went through hell to get this number. I hope it’s you, Angelfish.