Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
DARIA
G old powder and pink lips. Ivory chiffon and silk petals. Skin flushed hot and cold. Hands trembling like linen curtains in gale force winds. Mamma jittered behind me like a headless chicken while Divya made me up like a porcelain doll.
My eyes trailed Mamma in the reflection. She’d decided my wedding day was the day to clean up my room. She fussed with the clothes on my bed. Folding and unfolding them in a loop. When she thought no one was watching, her face scrunched up in worry.
A frown caught on my forehead. My stomach dipped for the thousandth time. Who was going to chastise me in New York?
Lia waltzed in, in a lilac cloud. All my bridesmaids were in pink except for Lia. She had wanted her own color, and she’d decided that was going to be lilac.
“Which shoes?” She held out a pump and a stiletto in her hand. Both were in silver glitter and shone against her olive skin. She didn’t seem to catch the tension hanging in the air.
“ Amunì! Is this the time for doubts?” Mamma moaned.
“I can’t decide.”
Mamma smacked Lia’s hand, and the stiletto fell to the floor. “Wear the pumps.”
“But it’s too warm for that! I want to wear the stilettos.”
“Fine. Go now!”
Lia ignored her and stepped closer to me. The strong masculine smell that used to be Papà’s danced up my nose. She’d worn his aftershave. My smile dipped at the edge. Her awed eyes caught mine in the mirror. “You look so hot, Ria. I think he’ll want to rip that dress off you.”
“ Beddra Matri! Basta amore! I don’t want to hear these things.” Mamma wailed, flopping down on the bed.
“What? You do know she’s going to have sex tonight, right Mamma? Might be earlier the way that dress looks.” Lia hopped away, avoiding the stiletto that came flying her way. “I mean…” she stepped closer, her eyes squinting, “It’s almost see-through.”
Mamma threw her a thunderous look that she ignored. “I want a dress just like this, Divya, when I am married off.”
Divya bit her lip to hide her smile. Lia was the sunshine in our family, and somehow she’d gotten past all Papà’s shit without a hitch. It helped when the information was censored before it reached her dainty ears.
“So, do you think he’ll show off the sheets in the morning?”
“What?” Divya and I both looked at her as if she’d grown an extra head.
“Didn’t you know? They still follow the red sheet tradition in New York.”
Minchia! My hands rattled under the vanity.
Mamma yanked Lia by her ear and pushed her out of the room. “Go wash your mouth with soap and wear the pumps.” She gave me a nervous look before she shut the door to Lia’s grumbles.
Apprehension fluttered in the air. No one dared to bring up the pink elephant floating in the room. Divya finished with me with a frown knitted in her brows. Sometimes, even I forgot the strange habits of Cosa Nostra . I couldn’t have imagined what she thought of them as an outsider. I’d bet Antonio loved her so much he wouldn’t have made a play about the stupid sheets.
The thickness of envy flooded my veins. What must it feel like to be at the receiving end of so much love? The Capizzi men were famous for their faithfulness. Like father, like son. In all of Cosa Nostra, I’ve known only them to follow that trait. They were cousins. My papà and Antonio’s, but somehow, there was a world of difference between the two. There was no doubt that Divya got the long end of the stick here by marrying into the Capizzi family.
She didn’t have a future with a man who’d cheat on her. I did. If wasn’t the question rather than when and how many times ? She didn’t have a future where the absence of red would stain her reputation far worse than crimson ever could on the white embroidered sheets.
“Absolutely gorgeous,” Divya murmured.
I pushed my worries down and lifted my lips in the fake smile that would have to line my face all day, as long-lasting as the light makeup she’d painted on my face.
“It’s the dress,” I muttered.
“It’s all you. Don’t you think so, Ada?”
Mamma was standing in front of my wardrobe with my dirty sneakers clutched to her chest. Ah! I knew she’d find them. She wasn’t mad, though, when she turned to look at me. Her eyes shone bright, like a single star on a starless night. “ Bellissima, figlia mia. ” Her voice wobbled like my smile.
Divya collected all the brushes and zipped them up neatly in her bag. “I need to check what Antonio’s been doing with Cora. You don’t want your ring girl to be in a dirty dress. You let me know if you need anything, okay?” She touched my arm to reassure me and rushed out the door.
Mamma watched the door shut, her jaw clenching and unclenching. My heart ached to see her pain.
“Mamma—”
She blinked rapidly and came to stand behind me. Worry lined her face as she met my eyes in the mirror. I don’t think she realized she still held my sneakers on her chest, and I wasn’t going to tell her that.
“I’ve let you down, piccola mia .”
I shook my head vigorously. “No, Ma—”
She squeezed my naked shoulder tightly. “I loved your papà. I did. I loved him so much. Maybe that’s why I allowed him to do what he did. Again and again. But I should have thought… thought of the example I was setting for you girls… I should have listened to Vitale. I let him down too…”
“Mamma…” Thorns in my throat. Spikes in my eyes. I couldn’t cry and let Divya’s work go in vain.
“Promise me, if he hurts you, you come back to me,” she urged.
This morning’s breakfast crawled up my throat. She was asking me to promise things that couldn’t be promised. I swallowed the thick ball of bile in my stomach.
“Promise me. If Vitale doesn’t take you back, I will. We’ll run off somewhere where there are no made men.”
I slid my eyes closed for a minute. I breathed one stuttered breath at a time and counted to three. There comes a time when the parent-child relationship is reversed. Something clutching at my heart strings told me this was one of those times. So I hopped off my seat, hugged her tight, and hid my face on her tense shoulder. There was nowhere we could run where a made man couldn’t find us. So I mumbled a lie. It was easier when she couldn’t see me. “I promise, Mamma.”
Lub dub. The sound of my heartbeat in my pulse. I’d bathed in lavender and sage. To calm my nerves, Mamma had said. Yet that calmness spiraled out of me like the bath water down the drain as I stood outside the bright sunlit day clutching Vitale’s arm. No matter how many times I willed myself, I couldn’t get my feet in the ivory stilettos to move. Because my conscience knew. The moment I walked in through the heavy bronzed doors, I would no longer be a Di Matteo. Bitterness piled inside me. I was sick of these rules. A woman should carry a man’s name like it was a God-given right of hers, while he would fuck around like it was his. Why was I born a girl? Was it so I could bear this pain and understand my daughter’s one day?
Vitale’s hand wrapped around mine. I hadn’t realized that my hands were gripping his like my lifeline. One I could already feel letting go, an inch at a time. The closer I walked to the Don of New York, the more it would give, until I was all his to do with what he wanted, and nothing to do with the Di Matteos.
Sometimes, I wondered if Vitale and I were twins in another time. “You’re always a Di Matteo, Daria,” he rasped like he’d heard my mind.
My throat clogged. Gold shimmered on my eyelids, and pink trailed my lips. I mustn’t cry.
I forced a frail smile out. “Always a Di Matteo.” If only I believed it myself.