Chapter 27 Constantine
Constantine
My mother was blowing up my phone. You can’t spend the night together before the wedding, Constantine.
We’re already living together and have a baby on the way, Ma.
But it’s not tradition.
I’m pretty sure a child out of wedlock isn’t traditional either.
Her dots disappeared, but then my screen lit up with my mother’s name. “Oh boy . . . code blue.”
“What?” Aurelia asked, sitting on the couch beside me with Medusa’s chin resting on her thigh.
“Ma’s gone nuclear.” I answered the call and rose from the couch to step away. I headed out the back door and stepped onto the terrace. “Ma—”
“It’s bad luck, Constantine.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s one night,” she said. “You really can’t do one night?”
I didn’t say what I wanted to say—not to my mother anyway.
“How about you come here and spend the night with me?”
Spend the night with my mother? “Ma, I’m a grown man—”
“Listen to me, Con,” she said abruptly, but then there was a long pause afterward.
She’d cut me off but had nothing to follow it.
“When you were born, my mother told me to cherish this time . . . because I only got to keep you for eighteen years. I know you’re a man now, but soon, you’ll be married and you’ll have your own family, and it’ll never be the same.
I would love one more night with you, just the two of us. ”
I felt the breeze move through my hair as my eyes darted down to the floor at my feet, feeling a wave of emotion I didn’t expect to hit me so hard. “I have two conditions.”
“All right.”
“You make dinner.”
She didn’t say a single word, showed no sign of emotion in her silence, but I knew her eyes were welling with tears.
“And let my friend Rocco join us.”
She still said nothing, like she needed a moment to recover from what I’d said. “I would love that.”
When I hung up the phone, I returned to the house.
Aurelia was still on the couch. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I sat beside her, placing my arm around her shoulders. “She wants me to stay over there the night before the wedding. Says she wants to spend time with me before my entire life becomes about you two, even though it already is.”
“Aww, that’s sweet.”
“So you don’t mind?”
“Of course not,” she said as she hooked her arm through mine. “I love that idea.”
“You’ll be okay here on your own?”
“I’m sure Beatrice will sleep over with the boys.” She petted Medusa on the head. “And I’ve got my girl.”
“All right. I’ll miss you, though.”
She smiled as she continued to pet Medusa. “We have the rest of our lives, Constantine. And hopefully eternity too . . .”
With my bag over my shoulder, I arrived at my mother’s house.
She was over the moon to see me, squeezing me tightly and pinching my cheeks before she kissed me, like I was home for the holidays after being gone for six months.
I put my stuff in the spare bedroom, then joined her in the kitchen.
The counters were covered in cutting boards and ingredients, a pot of water already simmering on the stove.
“Handle the tomatoes and the garlic while I take care of the beef,” she instructed, like we were at work.
“All right, boss.” I washed my hands, grating the garlic and then the lemon zest before I washed and peeled the tomatoes.
She worked on the other vegetables, then put the beef in one of the preheated pans. “Nervous?”
“About?” I asked as I continued to peel the tomatoes in the big bowl.
“Getting married tomorrow.”
“Oh.” I smirked. “Nope. Not even a little bit.”
She worked beside me at the counter, a smile on her face. “She’s lovely, Con. I’m glad you found her.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Boy or girl, whatever child she gives you will be beautiful.”
“I know. Especially if it’s a girl.”
“What are you hoping for?” she asked.
“Girl—all the way.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. The idea of raising a boy doesn’t sound appealing to me.”
“Why?”
I didn’t get into it with her, wanting to keep the conversation light. “Because men ain’t shit.”
She chuckled quietly. “Ain’t that the truth.”
“Would love to raise the baddest bitch who’s ever lived.”
This time, she released a louder laugh. “You and Aurelia can pull it off.” She finished chopping her onions and slid them off the plate and into the pan with the beef. Immediately, everything started to sizzle, so she added more olive oil. “How many kids do you want?”
“One, honestly.”
“One?” She stopped what she was doing and looked at me like I was crazy. “No such thing as one kid, Constantine.”
Every Italian family we knew had at least three kids and a bazillion cousins.
“I know, but I like the idea of having one and only. Putting all my love and energy and resources into just them, I don’t know.
Maybe I’ll feel differently as we go through life, but it’s hard for me to imagine not falling madly in love with this kid and possibly desiring another. ”
She turned back to her cooking when that answer was enough to satisfy her.
We continued to cook, and once all the ingredients were ready, we prepped the lasagna together, putting layers of sauce, freshly grated cheese, and noodles over and over before she popped it in the oven.
We sat at the table together and shared a bottle of wine.
“When will your friend be here?”
I grabbed my phone and checked for messages. “Said he just landed. So, probably an hour.”
“How do you know him?”
“From work in Rome.”
She nodded before she took a drink of her wine. “I’m excited to meet him.”
“Yeah, he’s cool.” He was cool enough that he wouldn’t be annoyed by hanging out with my mom tonight instead of going out to a bar or something. “You’ll like him.”
She swirled her glass, then took another drink, her eyes glazing over like she suddenly went somewhere else. The air around her changed too, suddenly becoming heavy like a storm was moving in over the ocean.
“Ma?”
When she didn’t look at me and snap out of whatever funk she was in, I knew she had something to say. “Your brother should be here. He should be your best man . . . sitting right here with us.”
My heart dropped straight out of my stomach. I’d finally found my closure, so I felt nothing but joy for my upcoming nuptials. But for her, there would never be closure. She would grieve every single day until God took her soul. “I know.”
She continued to swirl her wineglass unnecessarily. “I know I shouldn’t make this about me—”
“It’s okay, Ma. I know you see his face every time you look at me.”
She suddenly sucked in a deep breath as her eyes began to smart.
“I loved your father, even if he was a lazy piece of shit, and I was devastated when he passed. But it’s nothing like losing a son.
” She tried to blink the tears away, but her eyelids couldn’t move fast enough.
“A pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
” She took a few breaths before she downed the rest of her wine, the only thing strong enough to pull her back together.
Then she grabbed the bottle and refilled the glass once more.
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and ever since I knew I was going to be a father, I feel a lot closer to you.”
She turned her head to look at me, her dark eyes tinted with red, the skin underneath puffy even though she hadn’t really cried.
“I’m worried about someone who’s not even born yet.
Worried about how they’ll do in school, if they’ll be able to make friends easily, if I’ll punch a kid if he says anything mean to them, if I’ll be able to let them learn to drive, if they should go to college, and if so, where?
How I’ll react when they bring someone home for the first time, if my heart will break into a million pieces the day they move out.
I worry about an entire lifetime every single fucking day.
And it makes me realize how much you’ve put up with from all three of us. That you were a rock star of a mother.”
Her eyes started to water again. “Con . . .”
“That I hope I’ll be as good as you were.”
As if she couldn’t take what I said, she looked down into her glass, even though she’d never been shy, never been one to drop eye contact first.
“And . . .” My voice caught before I even said my sentence.
“I’m so sorry that you have to carry this pain every single day, and I selfishly pray that I’ll never have to know it myself.
” I hoped I would live a long time, to see as much of my child’s life as I could, and then die before them.
I loved Aurelia more than words, but the love I already had for this nonexistent person . . . it was just different.
She was quiet for a long time, not responding to what I said, not consoling me or making me feel better like she normally did. Then she said my name, said it in a tone that made my arms break out in bumps. “Con.”
I stilled at the table, and somehow, I just knew what would follow.
“When I went to visit your brother the other day . . . it looked disturbed.”
Fuck. “The caretakers do their maintenance every so often. Perhaps it was that.” I’d done my best to level the ground and make it look exactly as it had when I’d first arrived. But she’d been there every single day for the last seven years, so she knew it better than I did.
“No. It wasn’t that.”
I prayed she wouldn’t ask me. But how could she think I had anything to do with that? I was being beyond paranoid but straight-up irrational.
But then she looked at me—dead in the eye.
Fuck.
She looked at my face like she could read it, like there were inked words on my goddamn forehead.
For the love of fucking god, don’t ask me.
“Con.”
No, no, no. I wore the best poker face I could, but I knew my hand was shit.
“Was it you?” She put me on the spot and asked me, watching my face with eyes that felt like microscopes.