20. Adriana
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Adriana
They come on a Tuesday, which is the part that gets me later. Not a dramatic day. Just a regular gray morning, the kind where I’ve got a reading due and a coffee going cold and no reason to think the past is about to walk back through the door.
The buzzer goes. I assume it’s a package.
“There’s a Fernando Costa and a Monica Costa downstairs,” the doorman says, in the flat, careful voice of a man who’s clearly already been yelled at once this morning. “They’re asking for you. They say they’re your parents.”
For a second I just hold the phone. My father’s name in someone else’s mouth, here, in the one place that was supposed to be untouchable.
I could say no. Tell the doorman to send them away and never know what they came to say. The old me would have. The old me would have folded the second she heard his name, gone soft and small, already rehearsing apologies for things she didn’t do.
I’m not going to apologize for anything. But I want to hear it. I want to stand in front of him as the person I am now and see if he even recognizes her.
“Send them up,” I say.
I have about ninety seconds to regret it. I use them to not change my clothes, not fix my hair, not make myself presentable the way I would have before. I’m in leggings and one of Enzo’s sweaters with the sleeves shoved up. There’s ink on the side of my hand from class. Good. Let him see it.
Enzo’s in his office on a call. I don’t go get him. This one’s mine.
The knock comes. I open the door.
My father looks smaller than I remember.
That’s the first thing, and it throws me, because in my head he’s always enormous, the size of a whole weather system.
In Enzo’s doorway he’s just a man in an expensive coat, gone a little grayer at the temples, with the pinched look of someone who’s spent the last week being talked about.
My mother stands half a step behind him, the way she always does. She’s holding her handbag with both hands like it’s the only thing keeping her upright.
“Adriana,” my father says.
“Father.”
Nobody says anything for a second. He’s looking past me, into the apartment, taking inventory the way he takes inventory of everything, the high ceilings, the art, the view, doing the math on what it’s all worth. I watch him do it. I don’t invite him in.
“Can we come in?” he says. “Or are you going to make us have this conversation in a hallway like servants?”
“You can say what you came to say from there.”
His jaw works. He’s not used to this. In twenty-four years I never once made him stand anywhere he didn’t want to stand.
“Fine.” He pulls himself up. “I’ll be direct.
Things have been said about this family that should never have been said.
Your sister has disgraced us in a way I didn’t think possible, even from her.
She lied to a man’s face about his own child.
She brought a bastard into this family and tried to pass it off as a Vitale.
” His mouth twists. “She is not the daughter I raised.”
“She’s exactly the daughter you raised. You just liked her better when she was getting away with it.”
His eyes flash. For a second I see the old him, the one who would have backhanded a comment like that out of the air. But he catches himself. He needs something from me. I can see him remembering that, swallowing it down.
“I came here,” he says, slower now, like he’s doing me a favor with every word, “to tell you that I am willing to put this behind us. All of it. The things you said. The way you’ve been carrying on, the man, the spectacle of it.
” He doesn’t look into the apartment again, but I feel him not looking.
“You can come home, Adriana. Your room is still your room. We’ll say you were overwhelmed, that you weren’t yourself.
People will understand. With Viviana gone, the family needs… ”
He stops.
And there it is. The thing he didn’t mean to say out loud.
“The family needs what?” I ask. “Say it.”
“A daughter who isn’t a scandal,” he says.
I almost laugh. It comes up before I can stop it, this short, disbelieving sound, because of course.
Of course that’s what this is. It was never love and it was never regret, never one single moment of looking back at the wedding where he stuffed me into my runaway sister’s dress and thinking maybe he did something wrong.
He’s standing in my doorway because his prize daughter turned out to be defective and he needs the spare back on the shelf.
“You disowned me,” I say. “To my face. At the function, in front of everyone. You told me I was no daughter of yours.”
“You were being hysterical. We both said things.”
“I said one thing. I said I was done. You said the rest.”
“I’m offering to forgive you,” he snaps, and the mask slips for just a second, the real heat coming through. “Do you understand what I’m offering? A way back. After everything. Most men would have washed their hands of a child who behaved the way you behaved.”
“You did wash your hands of me.” I keep my voice level, which costs me more than yelling would.
“You washed your hands of me at the wedding, when you decided I was a thing you could trade. You washed your hands of me at that function, in front of everyone you’ve ever wanted to impress.
You’ve been washing your hands of me my whole life.
The only thing that’s changed is that it stopped being convenient. ”
He stares at me. I think it’s the longest he’s ever looked directly at my face.
“You ungrateful…” He stops himself. Breathes.
When he speaks again the voice has gone quiet and cold, which I know from experience is the dangerous one.
“I gave you a home. I gave you a name that opened every door you’ve ever walked through.
I fed you, clothed you, found you a husband from one of the oldest families in the city. ”
“You sold me to cover a hole my sister left. That’s not the same as raising me.”
“And look where it’s gotten you.” He gestures at me, at the sweater, the bare feet, the ink on my hand, like it’s evidence.
“Playing house with the family embarrassment. The one Dante threw out. Do you have any idea what people are saying? You’ve attached yourself to Enzo Vitale, of all the men in this city.
A man whose own father won’t say his name. You think that’s a step up?”
That’s when I look at my mother.
She hasn’t said a word. She’s been standing behind him this whole time, both hands on that handbag, eyes fixed somewhere around my collarbone because she can’t quite meet my eyes.
But when my father says Enzo’s name like a slur, something moves across her face, a flinch so small and so quickly hidden I almost miss it.
“Mother,” I say. “Do you have anything to say? Or did you just come to hold his coat?”
Her eyes come up to mine. And for just a moment, I see it, the thing I spent my whole childhood waiting for. Some flicker of a woman in there who knows exactly what was done to me and knows exactly who did it. Her mouth opens. Her hands tighten on the bag.
“Adriana,” she says softly. “You look… you look well.”
It’s not nothing. Coming from her, it’s almost everything.
It’s the most she’s ever managed. And it’s also the saddest thing I’ve heard all morning, because I can see how much it costs her to say even that, and I can see that it’s all she’ll ever be able to give.
Three words, while he’s standing right there.
She’ll never say the next ones. She’ll go home in his car, sleep in his house, spend the rest of her life half a step behind him.
“You could come with me,” I say. I don’t know I’m going to say it until it’s out. “You don’t have to go back to that house either, Mom.”
For one second, one single second, something opens up in her face like a window.
Then my father says, “Monica,” without even turning around, and the window closes. She drops her eyes back to my collarbone. Her hands settle. She steps back into her half-step behind him like she’s never been anywhere else.
So that’s my answer. That was always going to be my answer.
“No,” I say to my father. “I’m not coming back. Not to be your respectable daughter, not to fix your reputation, not for any of it. You don’t get to throw me away and then call me back when the better toy breaks.”
“You will regret this,” he says. “When that man is bored of you. When you’re alone with no family and no money and no one to call. You’ll remember I came here, that I offered, and you threw it in my face like the spoiled, ungrateful…”
“Is everything all right?”
Enzo’s voice, behind me. I didn’t hear his office door open. He comes to stand at my shoulder, not in front of me, not pushing me aside, just there, one hand resting light on my lower back. He’s looking at my father with an expression I’ve never seen him use on anyone. Pleasant and absolutely flat.
My father straightens. Something passes between them, some old current I don’t have the history to read. Two men from a world that chewed them both up in different ways.
“Vitale,” my father says.
“Costa.” Enzo lets the silence sit a beat too long. “You’re upsetting her. On my doorstep. I’d think carefully about the next thing you say, because she’s already given you her answer, and I’m a great deal less patient than she is.”
It’s not loud. It’s not even a threat, exactly.
It’s just a man making it very clear that the conversation is over and that he is not someone my father wants to test. I feel it hit home.
I watch my father run the same calculation he ran on the apartment and arrive at the number that tells him he’s lost.
“This isn’t finished,” he says. To me, not to Enzo.
“It is, though,” I say. “Goodbye, Father.”
I close the door. I don’t slam it. Just close it, quiet and final. Then I stand there with my hand flat against the wood until I hear the elevator come and go.
I expect to fall apart. I brace for it the way you brace for a wave you can see coming.
It doesn’t come.
I turn around and Enzo’s watching me, careful, giving me room. I realize I’m not shaking. My eyes are dry. There’s a strange clean feeling in my chest, like a room that’s just been emptied of furniture that was never comfortable anyway.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I think I’m great, actually.” I half-laugh. “Is that bad? That should feel worse than it does.”
“It should feel exactly how it feels.” He studies me. “You didn’t need me out here. I want you to know I know that. You had it handled before I opened my mouth.”
“I know.” And I do know, which is the strange part.
I look at him, this man my father just tried to use as a weapon against me, and I think about all the ways he could have charged out here and made it about him.
Taken over. Handled it. He didn’t. He waited until the end and then stood at my shoulder instead of in front of me. He’s learning. We both are.
“Thank you for letting me have it,” I say. “And for showing up anyway.”
“Always.”
I go to him and put my face against his chest and let him hold me. Not because I’m falling apart, but because I want to. Which is a distinction I’m only starting to understand. His heartbeat is slow under my ear.
And standing there, I start thinking about Lucia’s room.
***
I bring it up that night, over takeout on the kitchen island. Maybe a coward’s way to do it, but it’s the only way I can find.
“Lucia’s roommate is moving out at the end of the month,” I say. “The room’s still open. The one near campus.”
Enzo goes still in that particular way he does when he knows something’s coming. “Okay.”
“I’m thinking about taking it.”
He sets his chopsticks down. Doesn’t say anything yet, which I’ve learned is him choosing his words instead of reaching for the first ones, and I make myself keep going before I lose the nerve.
“It’s not about you. I need you to hear that part first, because I know how it sounds.
It’s not another version of this morning.
You’re not him. You’re not anything like him.
” I push a piece of rice around. “But I stood in that doorway today and told my father I don’t need him.
No name, no money, no house. And it was true.
It felt true. Then I closed the door and walked back into an apartment that isn’t mine.
That I don’t pay for. Where I wear your clothes, use your card, live on your floor in your building.
” I set the chopsticks down. “Who am I to tell anyone I can stand on my own? I’ve never done it. Not for a single day.”
“You’re not dependent on me,” he says. “I’ve told you the money doesn’t…”
“I know it doesn’t matter to you. That’s not the point.
” I meet his eyes. “The point is it matters to me. Every place I’ve ever lived, someone else’s name was on the door.
I’ve never had a place that was just mine.
That I keep up myself. That I could lose if I’m not careful.
I don’t know who I am without someone holding the ceiling up.
And I need to find out. Not because you’re a cage.
Because I’ve never lived outside of one, and I want to know if I can. ”
He’s quiet a while. I watch him work through it, the part of him that wants to fix this, to argue, to point out that I’m being impractical, that the room is probably tiny and the neighborhood’s a hike and he has a perfectly good apartment with my name basically on it.
I can see all of it move behind his eyes.
Then I watch him decide not to say any of it.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
“You think I’m going to fight you on this.” Something rueful in it. “Two weeks ago I would have. I’d have had a list. Reasons. I’d have made some calls and found you a better place and called it helping.” He almost smiles. “I’m trying not to be that. So. Okay. If you want the room, take the room.”
I wasn’t expecting it to be easy and it isn’t, not really, because under his okay I can hear all the things he’s not saying. One of them sounds a lot like fear.
“It’s not me leaving you,” I say.
“I know.”
“Enzo. Look at me. It’s not me leaving you.”
He looks at me. Says, “I know,” again, gentle. I almost believe he believes it.
But there’s something sitting under his face that he won’t show me.
The same thing that’s been there for weeks.
The thing he won’t put into words. And for the first time I let myself wonder if my leaving, even a little, even just across the city to a cheap room near campus, is going to be the thing that finally cracks it open.
I don’t ask. I’m not ready for the answer, and I don’t think he’s ready to give it.
So I pick my chopsticks back up. He picks his up. We finish dinner talking about smaller things, and neither of us says the big one.
But it’s there. Sitting at the table between us like a third place setting.
Something’s coming. I just don’t know yet that it’s already on its way.