Chapter 15
Annamaria
Eighteen years old.
Every night for the past three months, Raffaele starts our text exchange by sending me a new quote he picked out earlier in the day, just for me. Poems from Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, Warsan Shire, and so on, and so on.
He makes a point of telling me which ones are his favorites, pairing them with new poems I’ve never read before.
And every night, he ends our conversations the same way, by asking me how I am.
It almost feels as if he’s waiting for me to give him a different answer.
And tonight, I think I’m at a place where I can give him one.
Rafe: How are you?
Me: Better. More like myself.
The typing bubbles appear and disappear until his reply finally lands.
Rafe: That makes me very happy to hear.
Me: Does it?
Rafe: Of course. Why wouldn’t it?
Me: We didn’t end on the best of terms last time. It’s hard for me to feel assured you actually care this time.
Rafe: That was my doing, not yours. You are not at fault for my behavior.
I chew on my bottom lip as I type my reply, and before I can talk myself out of it, I press send.
Me: Did you mean it? The words you said? That you were tired of pretending?
Rafe: I’m not pretending now.
I reread the message and frown. What does he mean by that? Is he referring to the cruel words he once sent me, or is he saying that this is the real Raffaele? The one who reads beautiful prose and knows exactly which lines will lighten my heart.
I don’t have the courage to ask. Thankfully, he ends the exchange with a new question that leaves me momentarily speechless.
Rafe: What beauty did you experience today?
I think long and hard about his question. I’ve come to realize that when Raffaele asks me something now, there’s an underlying reason behind it. It’s not hard to decipher what he wants me to think about.
What did I experience today that made my life richer? What made today a good day? A day worth living.
Me: I worked at the soup kitchen tonight and saw an old man, with nothing to his name, give a boy a baseball he’d kept from his previous life.
Rafe: Explain.
So I do. I open the voice memo and begin to paint the lingering image that followed me home tonight.
Me: “The boy and his mother are new to the shelter, so I don’t know their names. But I do know that they have fallen on hard times and are now living out of their car to make ends meet.”
Me: “Ralph is a familiar face at St. Mary’s shelter whenever the weather turns cold. But now that it’s summer, he doesn’t like sleeping there very much. Still, we can always count on him being first in line for a home-cooked meal, always tossing his precious baseball into the air as he waits.”
Me: “Something in Ralph must have shifted tonight when he saw the little boy cry silently in his mother’s arms. The poor boy was about five if he was a day.
Too young to understand why he couldn’t go home, or why he had to eat there, amongst strangers, while his friends back at school had kitchens, stocked fridges, and warm beds. ”
Me: “It reached a point where neither the mom nor her son was eating. The food got cold while she did her best to console her frightened child.”
Me: “That’s when I saw Ralph stand up from his seat and sit right next to them. I only began to pay attention to them because Ralph never likes to eat next to anyone, preferring to keep to himself.”
Me: “He distracted the little guy by throwing the baseball back and forth, just so his mom could finish feeding him and then herself.”
Me: “When they finished their meal, Ralph just stood up, waved them goodbye, not having the heart to ask the little boy for his baseball back. He gave up his most treasured possession just to make a boy smile.”
Me: “I saw human decency tonight. A love for one’s fellow man. A selflessness in one kind gesture. What could possibly be more beautiful than that?”
Raffaele’s reply does not come right away. He listens to each message carefully before texting back.
Rafe: If everyone in this world had your heart, there wouldn’t have been any need for him to give the boy his baseball.
There wouldn’t be shelters. No poverty that forced a single mother to live in her car with her son.
No senior citizen left sleeping on the streets.
None of it would exist if everyone just had your heart.
I don’t respond. Raffaele’s words make me self-conscious, as if he’s putting me on some kind of pedestal.
I have enough of that with my family. I am not as good as people believe.
I can’t be. Not when there is so much darkness still inside me.
I don’t want him to see me like the rest of my family does. I want him to see me for me. Just me.
As if reading my mind, he sends me another message.
Rafe: A heart can still be pure even if broken, Anna. Your darkness doesn’t change that.
Feeling uncomfortable with the whole exchange, I ask him the same question.
Me: What beauty did you see today?
Rafe: My life holds only cruelty, Anna. It has no beauty.
I stare at his words, feeling a pang in my chest at how final they sound. I can’t accept that answer. I refuse to.
Me: I don’t believe that for a minute. You want me to be vulnerable with you, but you refuse to do the same. If you honestly want us to be friends, I need you to try to be as honest with me as I am with you. If not, then we’re done here.
The typing bubbles appear, then vanish, then appear again. I imagine him hesitating, weighing whether my threat holds water to it.
Rafe: I am trying…
My heart clenches further in my chest at the sight of those ellipses. There is so much that is said and still left unsaid with those three little dots.
Me: Even if you can’t see it right now, it exists. Sometimes beauty doesn’t announce itself loudly. Sometimes it hides in the smallest moments like a whisper. If you can’t think of one you experienced today, I’ll take anything that stayed with you.
There is such a long pause that, for a second, I think he might not answer me at all. Then a message arrives.
Rafe: When I was a child, my mother used to sing to me.
I sit up in bed, suddenly wide awake.
Rafe: She sang while she cooked. While she cleaned.
While she thought no one was listening. Her voice was soft, even if a little off-key, but it filled the house.
And sometimes, at night, when my brothers were asleep, and I woke up from a nightmare, the only thing that quieted the monsters in my head was her voice—singing to me. It made things feel safe. I felt safe.
I can almost see it… the hidden memory he’s carried quietly for all these years.
Rafe: That was beautiful.
My throat tightens as my eyes begin to water.
Me: Does she still sing?
He doesn’t respond right away.
Rafe: Sometimes. But it’s different now.
Me: How so?
The bubbles appear again.
Rafe: I’m the one who should make her feel safe. Not the other way around.
My heart saddens further at his reply.
Rafe: But thank you. I haven’t thought about her singing to me as a boy in a long time.
Me: I’m glad you remembered it now.
There is another pause.
Rafe: Yes. So am I.
I smile softly to myself, even as a tear falls down my cheek.
Me: Your life doesn’t hold only cruelty, Rafe. It holds a special kind of beauty, too.
For the first time since we began these nightly exchanges, I don’t feel like I’m the only one being held together by words. It feels like Raffaele needs them just as much as I do.
The silence stretches between us, not uncomfortable, but it’s clear we’re both in our own heads. Then my phone vibrates with a new message.
Rafe: I’ll make you a deal.
Rafe: I’ll try to find more beauty in my life if you step out of your sheltered world and find yours, too.
I read it twice, a small laugh escaping me before I can stop it.
Me: You think my world is sheltered?
Rafe: I know it is. You look for life’s beauty in safe places. Soup kitchens, books, other people’s pain and happiness. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but it keeps you on the outside looking in.
Rafe: It’s time you stopped waiting for life to happen and started making it happen. You can’t do that if you don’t break away from your sheltered existence.
Raffaele’s words sting, not because they’re cruel, but because they’re honest.
I am sheltered. As the youngest daughter of the Outfit’s boss, I’m more than sheltered. I’m always watched. The minute I step outside, I’m either supervised by one of my father’s soldiers or by the nuns at school.
Before, the only people I had to worry about were my somewhat intrusive siblings.
But now that they’ve all moved out of our family home and started families of their own, I’m followed by big men with even bigger guns.
Even at my piano recitals, they’re always there in the background, watching me.
The only time I have a moment to myself is within the four walls of my bedroom.
What kind of life am I supposed to have like that?
I take a deep breath and send my reply.
Me: What would this deal even look like then?
Rafe: It means I stop telling myself my life holds only cruelty. And you stop hiding from the world behind good intentions and Outfit bodyguards.
I close my eyes. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Me: Fine.
The typing bubbles appear almost immediately.
Rafe: Fine?
Me: Yes. Fine. I’ll try. I’ll try to step outside my comfort zone. I’ll look for beauty where I’m afraid to look. Bodyguards be damned.
There’s a long pause before Raffaele sends his reply.
Rafe: And I’ll look for it where I’ve convinced myself it doesn’t exist.
I smile as something begins to warm my heart in a way I’m unfamiliar with.
Me: Deal.
Rafe: Deal.
Knowing this is his last text of the night, I slide my phone under my pillow, unsettled by how something so simple has my heart beating faster than it should.
I tell myself it’s just nerves. Nervous excitement brought on by the deal I just made with him.
But as I twist and turn throughout the night, I wonder if it’s anxiety keeping me awake, the fear of stepping outside my comfort zone, or if it’s this brand-new relationship I feel beginning to take shape between Raffaele and me.