3. Maria
Maria
Small, dark and slightly damp-smelling it might be, but I am glad to be home.
It may not have the size or luxury of Sal and Francesca Moretti’s swanky Bed-Stuy brownstone, or be surrounded by all those wide, tree-lined avenues that open up the skyline, with their Victorian, brick-built houses that make the whole neighborhood so much less of a concrete and asphalt eyesore than the part of Brooklyn we call home, but it is still home—just about.
No thanks to Papa and his poor money management over the years.
And what had he been thinking? He must have known that taking a loan from the Morettis was always going to be a slippery slope to disaster.
Perhaps he thought that his special childhood bond with the don himself—Salvatore Moretti—would be enough to ensure he would be left alone.
Well… not so much, now the old man is on his death bed.
No way will Tony feel the same about it once he’s taken over (as all the rumors say he is doing).
Hence my reluctant agreement to marry him.
For perhaps the thousandth time, I run the decision through in my mind.
But no… just as every other time, I can think of no better solution.
At sixty-five, Papa is getting old, and all those years of drinking too much are beginning to show.
He’s not the sprightly, vibrant dynamo he used to be.
Nowadays he shuffles from bedroom to living room, with occasional trips to bathroom and kitchen as necessary.
He rarely leaves the apartment, and when he does it's generally to place a bet, or buy another bottle of vermouth or whichever other ingredient for his precious Negronis he happens to be out of.
Those Negronis are a habit he's had for years, but it was never a problem before. Lately, though, he’s been drinking more, and I'm starting to worry.
Not just for his health, either. We both know they're an expensive luxury we can't really afford, but it's his only vice and I just haven't the heart to mention it.
Not yet. Perhaps I'll have to say something if it gets any worse.
Pasta, Negronis, fried fish on a Friday, worrying about money, and—of course—talking about the past. That’s what Papa’s life has been reduced to.
Well, me getting married at least removes the financial worries, so that’s one thing.
Perhaps with less stress in his life, Papa will start drinking a little less.
Maybe even get out a bit more. Meet some of his old friends.
Take walks in the nearby Bushwick Inlet Park…
perhaps sit on one of the benches down by the riverside, or overlooking the children’s play area.
I smile, remembering him taking me there in a pushchair.
One year he had bought me a pair of bright red shoes.
I’d been so proud of them, running around, showing everyone—even total strangers—and getting smiles and congratulatory exclamations from all the no-doubt highly amused adults.
I remember him as he was then. Lean, swarthy, brown as a nut.
His hair swept back with some kind of pomade in a style that no doubt had been cutting-edge fashion at the time.
Tight, tapered trousers, suede loafers, and a leather bomber jacket. Always the leather bomber jacket.
I can smell the scent of it now as he lifted me up high off the ground and into the air—that and the sweet citrus and spice of his pomade—before placing me safely back into my pushchair.
All his clothes had been fashionable, but cheap, and well worn.
We’d never had too much cash. God knows where he’d found the money for those red shoes of mine.
He’d probably gone without a few meals for them.
I sigh. It’s no good. I have to go through with it. I owe so much to Papa, and he wants this so badly. I know he thinks it’s for the best, not just for himself but for me too. I know he thinks I’ll be set for life as the wife of the head of the Moretti family, and so I will be… financially.
But money isn’t everything.
Could I ever grow to love Tony Moretti?
Be attracted to him? Certainly. He’s a good-looking man, even though he knows it a bit too well for his own good.
Admire him, even? Yes, perhaps… in some ways. He is strong, ambitious, and full of energy.
But love him? I don’t know.
Maybe love will grow.
Given enough time.
At this moment my cellphone chirps. A text. Who could that be? I’m not expecting anyone to text me this evening. I press the option to display the message. It’s from Tony. What on Earth does he want? I’ve just come from him… can’t he leave me alone for five minutes? I read the message:
Camila darling, you’re a bad girl… telling me you’re lying there naked like that.
I can’t concentrate on anything else. Not for long though.
Once this wedding is done and I’ve got what I need—my son, the Contarini bloodline—I’ll deal with Maria and her father, just like we agreed.
Cleanly. The world is full of accidents—hit and runs, house fires…
people barely notice anymore. After that, we can be together properly. No more hiding. Your Tony xxx
My heart stops. My hand is shaking.
I read the text message again, wanting to be sure. Needing to be sure.
Because it doesn’t seem real.
A bad dream.
Did I say ‘bad dream’? Ha!
More like a full-on nightmare.
This is worse—far worse—than even I had imagined.
As if sleep-walking, I wander into the living room and collapse into the armchair my father never uses—the one that had been my mother’s and is now mine.
It was getting a little shabby around the edges, but it had seen much less use and is in far better condition than the one placed opposite to it—the armchair that belongs to Papa.
I let out a deep sigh, and close my eyes. Maybe this is all a nightmare. Maybe I’ll wake up and find I’ve dreamed it all. That none of it is real.
Oh, Mother Mary… please make that be the case.
But when I open my eyes again the message is still there on the little screen, staring starkly at me, written in letters of bright LED light.
“Damn!”
Less than a day into this stupid agreement and already it’s falling apart.
Falling apart? Ha! It was never held together.
Just a story. A “let’s pretend” to catch the unwary and to steal the name of Contarini for some sort of ridiculous idea of hijacking my father’s family history and using it for their own.
And me? Seems my part in this plot is not to be the princess or the queen, as poor Papa would have it.
My role is just to be the brood mare. To give birth to a precious son-and-heir—and then what?
Be gotten out of the way as quickly and quietly as possible, Papa with me.
And with both of us gone, who would be left to shout about it?
Who would be likely to care, let alone complain?
No one.
No one at all.
At twenty-seven, I’m too young to die. Hell…
at sixty-five, Papa is too young to die.
But how are we going to avoid our fate if the new head of the Moretti family orders it so?
There are hundreds of ways to kill a person in a big, anonymous city like Brooklyn.
A quick push from a passerby on the sidewalk, sending me into the oncoming traffic.
A flick knife stabbed into the heart as I walk past. A street mugging gone wrong and blamed on youths or crackheads… endless varieties of ways to die.
But I don’t choose any of them.
Instead, I choose life.
That’s easy to say, but how much harder will it be to actually do it?
Tony’s not a “half-measure” type of guy. When he commits to a course of action he barely stops to breathe, let alone to think things through rationally.
Which leaves me in a whole lot of trouble.
Because no way am I ever marrying the guy now. The date has been set, the church is booked, and worst of all, the invitations have already gone out. Tony can’t not go through with it now, the loss of face would be… well, nothing short of spectacular.
If I marry the guy, he breeds a son from me, and then kills me.
If I run, he kills me anyway.
That’s not really much of a choice. Especially as I’ve nowhere to run to, and no money to start a new life with.
Shit!
Seems there’s nothing for it. We have to run. Maybe if we get in the car and just go… keep on driving. Perhaps we can go far enough where we can get lost. Start again under different names. America is a big country. Surely he can’t look everywhere…
…can he?
Okay, okay, calm down, girl. I force myself to calm my increasingly rapid breathing, to take longer, deeper breaths. Good, that’s better. You’re in control. Now… think.
Where could we go? We have relatives on my mother’s side somewhere in Idaho, I think.
But we’ve never seen them since the funeral, so we could hardly be called close.
Why would they want to help us? Besides, anything that is a link to our current selves…
well that’s a link that Tony and his henchmen could follow.
I shudder, remembering the outline of that handgun butt lying against Tony’s chest.
No, if we’re going to run, we have to go somewhere nobody knows us at all. Somewhere without any connection to us. But where?
The wedding is not for another two weeks—it was rushed to try to fit it in before Sal passed—but there’s a whole host of social events and planning meetings beforehand.
But… if we go tonight then there’s no reason why we’d be missed until Saturday morning.
That gives us tonight, all of Wednesday through Friday, and Friday night before Tony notices we’re gone.
Probably. It’s our best chance, because after that there’s something scheduled in the diary for every other day and sometimes even daily.
Dress fitting, talking to the priest, meeting Tony’s cousins, choosing the flowers… the list is endless.
Three days and four nights. It’s not much, but it's better than nothing.
I make the decision.