15. Cielo
— ? —
Cielo
The first time Giovanni tries to put Gio to bed, it’s a disaster.
I’m hovering in the hallway, telling myself I’m not eavesdropping, when I hear the conversation through the half-open door.
“Papa, that’s not how you do it.”
“What do you mean? I put the blanket on you.”
“But you have to tuck the sides in. Like this. See? Mamma always does it like this.”
A pause. Then Giovanni’s voice, strained with the particular patience of a man who is not used to being corrected: “Okay. Like this?”
“No, that’s still wrong. The astronaut has to go on the left side, not the right side. And you forgot to check under the bed.”
“Check under the bed for what?”
“Monsters, Papa.” Gio’s voice drips with the condescension of a child who can’t believe he has to explain something so obvious. “Everyone knows you have to check for monsters.”
“There are no-” Giovanni stops himself. I can practically hear him recalibrating. “Right. Monsters. Let me check.”
I peek around the door frame just in time to see the most dangerous man in Milan get down on his hands and knees to look under a child’s bed.
“No monsters,” he reports solemnly.
“You have to say ‘all clear.’ That’s the rule.”
“All clear.”
“Good.” Gio settles back against his pillows, apparently satisfied. “Now you can tell the story. But Papa? It has to be about space. Stories about space are the best.”
Giovanni pulls up a chair - the chair, I realize, the one from our bedroom that I noticed was out of place - and sits down beside the bed. In his hand is a small notebook, and when he opens it, I see pages covered in cramped handwriting.
“What’s that?” Gio asks, craning his neck to see.
“I did some research.” Giovanni’s voice is gruff, almost embarrassed. “About space. I thought… I wanted to get the facts right.”
“You researched?” Gio’s eyes go wide. “Like a scientist?”
“Something like that.”
“Mamma says scientists are very important. They find out new things about the universe.”
“Your mamma’s right.” Giovanni flips through the notebook. “Okay. So. Did you know that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth?”
“Really?” Gio sits up straighter. “How do they know? Did someone count them?”
“They use math. Very complicated math.”
“I like math. Mamma’s teaching me to count to one hundred. I can already do it in Italian and French.”
“Can you?” There’s something new in Giovanni’s voice - pride, maybe, or wonder. “That’s very impressive.”
“Zia Delphine taught me the French. She says I have a good accent.”
“You probably do. The French are very particular about accents.”
I’m watching a man I married eight years ago become a father in real time. It’s clumsy and awkward and he’s clearly terrified of getting it wrong, but he’s trying - he’s trying so hard that it makes my chest ache.
“Papa?” Gio’s voice goes quieter, more serious. “Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything.”
“Why didn’t you come before?”
The question hangs in the air, heavy with the weight of four years and five months of absence.
Giovanni is quiet for a long moment. Then he closes his notebook and sets it aside, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“I didn’t know where you were,” he says finally. “Your mamma had to go somewhere safe, and I couldn’t find you. I looked everywhere, Gio. I never stopped looking.”
“Mamma said it was dangerous.”
“It was. It still might be. But I’m going to make sure you’re safe now. Both of you.”
“Because you’re big and strong?”
“Because I love you.” The words come out rough, like they’re being torn from somewhere deep. “I loved you before I even knew you existed. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure nothing bad ever happens to you.”
Gio considers this with the gravity of a four-year-old philosopher.
“Okay,” he says finally. “But Papa? You still have to tell me a story. You promised.”
Giovanni laughs - a real laugh, rusty with disuse - and picks up his notebook again.
“Right. Space story. Did I mention the thing about the stars and the sand?”
“Yes. Tell me something else.”
“Okay. How about this: there’s a planet where it rains diamonds.”
“Diamonds?” Gio’s eyes go round. “Like the shiny rocks?”
“Exactly like the shiny rocks. It’s called Neptune. The pressure is so strong that it squeezes carbon into diamonds, and they fall from the sky like rain.”
“That’s amazing.” Gio’s voice is hushed with wonder. “Can we go there?”
“It’s very far away. But maybe someday, when you’re an astronaut, you can be the first person to visit.”
“The first person ever?”
“The first person ever.”
I slip away before they can notice me, retreating down the hallway with tears I can’t explain burning in my eyes.
* * *
By the end of the first week, Beppe and Rino have been completely conquered.
It happens gradually, then all at once. First Beppe starts carrying cookies in his pocket, “in case the little boss gets hungry.” Then Rino starts adjusting his patrol routes to coincide with Gio’s play times in the garden.
Before I know it, the two most fearsome members of Giovanni’s security team are spending their afternoons building blanket forts and having very serious conversations about which planet is the best.
“Jupiter is the biggest,” Gio explains one afternoon, standing on a garden bench so he can look Beppe in the eye. “But Saturn has the best rings. They’re made of ice and rocks and they go all the way around.”
“All the way around?” Beppe nods solemnly, as if receiving critical intelligence. “That’s very impressive.”
“And Mars is red because of rust. Rust! Like on old cars. But it’s a whole planet.”
“A whole planet of rust.” Rino shakes his head. “Kids today know everything.”
“I’m not a kid,” Gio informs him with great dignity. “I’m four and a half.”
“Almost,” I correct automatically. “You’re four and five months. That’s not quite half.”
“It’s close enough.” He turns back to his captive audience. “Did you know there’s a storm on Jupiter that’s been going for hundreds of years? It’s called the Great Red Spot. Papa told me about it.”
“Papa did?” Beppe’s eyes flick to me, and I see the question in them - how much should they play along, how much is allowed, where do the boundaries lie in this impossible situation?
“Papa knows lots about space now,” Gio continues, oblivious to adult complications. “He has a notebook. He’s learning so he can tell me new things every night.”
“That’s…” Beppe seems to search for the right word. “That’s very nice of him.”
“He says learning is important. And that when I’m big enough, we’re going to look through a telescope together and he’ll show me all the planets.”
“A telescope?” Rino sounds genuinely interested now. “Your papa’s going to get you a telescope?”
“He said maybe. If I’m good.” Gio’s face scrunches with the particular determination of a child who has decided to be very, very good. “I’m going to be so good, Rino. So good.”
I watch this exchange with a feeling I can’t quite name.
Giovanni has been true to his word - every night, he comes to Gio’s room with his notebook and his facts and his obvious, desperate desire to connect with his son.
Every night, he gets something wrong, and Gio corrects him with the patient condescension of a small professor, and Giovanni takes the correction and tries again.
He’s learning to be a father the way he does everything else: with focus, with intensity, with the particular stubbornness that made him successful in a world that doesn’t forgive weakness.
I should be happy about this. I should be grateful that my son has a father who cares, who’s trying, who didn’t just turn his back when he learned the truth.
But every time I watch them together, every time I see Giovanni’s face soften when Gio laughs or see Gio’s eyes light up when his papa walks into the room, I feel the ground shifting under my feet.
This is what I wanted, I remind myself. This is why I told Gio about his father, why I kept his picture, why I never let him forget that somewhere out there was a man who would have loved him if he’d had the chance.
I just didn’t expect it to hurt this much when that chance finally came.
* * *
That night, after the bedtime routine has been completed - blankets tucked just right, astronaut on the left side, monsters checked for, facts about space delivered - Gio calls me back to his room.
“Mamma?”
“What is it, piccolo?”
“Come here.” He pats the bed beside him. “I want to ask you something.”
I sit on the edge of his mattress, and he immediately crawls into my lap, wrapping his arms around my neck the way he’s done since he was a baby.
“What do you want to ask me?”
He’s quiet for a moment, his face buried against my shoulder. Then, muffled: “Papa is nice.”
“He is.”
“He makes the blankets wrong, but he’s learning.”
“He is learning.”
“And Beppe and Rino are nice too. They let me tell them about planets.”
“I noticed.”
Another pause. Then Gio pulls back, and his eyes - Giovanni’s eyes - meet mine with an intensity that steals my breath.
“Mamma, can the scary nice man stay?”
“The scary nice man?”
“Papa.” He says it like it’s obvious. “He’s scary, because he’s big and he has a serious face. But he’s nice, because he learns about space and he checks for monsters.” Gio’s brow furrows. “Can he stay, Mamma? Like, forever?”
I don’t have an answer.
I want to say yes, because that’s what he wants to hear and because some part of me - some traitorous, hopeful part - wants it too. But I also want to say no, because staying means trusting, and trusting Giovanni Salvatore was how I ended up alone in a burning house five years ago.
“We’ll see, piccolo,” I manage finally. “It’s complicated.”
“Grown-up complicated?”
“Yes.”
He considers this, then nods, apparently accepting that some things are beyond even his considerable understanding.
“Okay.” He settles back against his pillows. “But Mamma? I think he should stay. I think he wants to stay. And I think…” He yawns hugely. “I think maybe you want him to stay too.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because you look at him the way you look at the stars.” His eyes are drifting closed now, sleep pulling him under. “Like they’re far away, but you still want to get closer.”
I stay frozen on the edge of his bed long after his breathing evens out, his words echoing in my head.
Like they’re far away, but you still want to get closer.
Four years and five months.
I spent all that time running. Building walls. Protecting myself and my son from a man who wasn’t there when I needed him.
But now he’s here. Every day, he’s here, getting bedtimes wrong and learning about space and looking at our son like he’s the most miraculous thing in the universe.
And my four-year-old, with the terrifying clarity of children, has just identified the truth I’ve been hiding from myself since the moment Giovanni walked back into my life:
I want him to stay too.
The question is whether wanting is enough.