Milan
I had never queried the concept of time until I was standing at the cathedral’s altar observing Sicily Bianchi walking down the aisle toward me.
Time was not an illogical concept, but the speed at which the past month had passed felt disproportionate. I had had time to plan the event, time to strategize on how to exist in the same estate as another person who was not Adriano, yet it had still not been enough.
The black suit and smart white dress shirt scratched my neck.
Adriano was distracted at my side, staring into the crowd of thousands.
The cathedral’s high ceilings and white stone beams echoed with strings of a thirty-piece quartet that made my teeth hurt.
There were too many tall, stained-glass windows with too much brightness and far too much boiling hot sunlight.
It was colorful and bright, ornate and opulent, and I had never wanted to go home as badly as I did then, not even at the funeral.
It was overwhelming, and so was Sicily’s untraditional, tightly fitted dress.
I was malfunctioning, yet I could not be extracted from this situation because it was mine.
You are capable, Milano.
You are capable, Milano.
You are capable, M—
Adriano squeezed my hand.
No.
Sicily put her hand in mine, threading her small fingers between mine that were wringing painfully over my wrists.
She interrupted my mother’s repetitive voice in my head, stopped the obsessive words that never left unless I acknowledged them. Sicily had taken them this time, and I doubted she knew what she had done for me.
My gaze traveled the length of her body as she situated herself beside me, facing the priest with the guests at our backs.
It was then that I truly noted the details of her dress.
Her spine was unnecessarily exposed; it had unconventional sleeves that were too long and reached her fingers, there were lace fixtures of flowers sprouting across the uncovered skin, and small white buttons were dotted to the very end of the long white fabric.
It was all inadequate coverage of her body, and the part that did cover her was tight and clung to the outline of her figure.
That part did not cause me the expected visual disruption.
“Do you like it?” Sicily whispered under her breath, leaning closer to my shoulder as the elderly Italian priest began to speak.
I looked at her face this time, noting the sparkly makeup she was covered in and how her blonde mess of curls had been pinned up as tightly as her dress was.
She did not even have a veil; that was against the rules.
My hands began clenching and unclenching at my side, around hers, as I said quietly, “You do not follow the rules.”
She scoffed. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I do not possess the capacity to like or dislike.”
Sicily made that sound that Adriano always did. A snort. “You can just say if you don’t like it. I don’t really give a fuck what you think anyway.”
My face was uncomfortable. I must have frowned. “Stop using that word.”
“What word?” She smirked. “Fuck?”
I tried hard to focus on the Catholic priest’s Italian introduction of a happily marrying couple instead of Sicily’s pink painted nails hurting my hand and her sinful attitude disrupting my state of mind, but she was very present and still verbalizing her rebellion aloud.
She shuffled closer to my body, her strong, synthetic, flowery scent causing my eye to twitch, her nearness unacceptable. I could tolerate the handholding for a limited period of time, but it was not a requirement for her shoulder to be touching mine.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
I recognized that as the deliberate attempt to disobey rules that it was, and I realized then that I was about to marry a logistical anomaly. My hand slipped out of hers, and I was aware this time of the need to wring my fingers, to bind them together so nobody else could touch me.
My chest ached. My shoulders heaved. I required stabilization, but the only being nearby was the one causing the destabilization. Adriano was not near me. Where was he?
Today, I had told Dad he must not hit Mommy anymore because she was going to have a baby soon, but he did not like me when I said that, so he hit me instead. He had put me here, in the yard, because I was defective and had not looked him in the eye when he shouted at me.
I just found it hard sometimes.
“Hey!” I looked behind me, frowning as the wet fence suddenly had an eye. “Were you bad? Is that why you’re in the rain too?”
I nodded at the fence. “I am defective.”
The fence laughed, and a finger poked through another hole. “That’s a silly name.”
“My name is Milan, not defective!”
Then, the eye was replaced with a mouth. “Oh, I like that name better! My name’s Adrian.”
“Milan.”
I blinked, returning to the cathedral and the priest and this problematic woman who was to be my wife. Her voice was loud enough to be heard over the priest’s talking, but also to replace the voices I heard in my head when things got overwhelming, and that word came to mind.
Defective.
“Why are you doing that?” Sicily frowned, looking at my hands.
Quickly, I tucked them to my front, stopping how they scratched and wrung over one another. “Your vocalization is not required.”
My vision blurred, but I saw the slight narrowing of her pupils as she looked behind us to the guests and then took a large step aside, distancing herself from me, removing her voice, her touch, her scent.
She did not understand my brain as I did; only Adriano could, but she appeared to realize what was required for my stabilization.
You are capable, Milano.
You are capable, Milano.
You are capable, Milano.
My lungs flooded with air once the voice inside stopped and I inhaled sharply, breathing enough to take her hand once more, just in time for the priest to turn to us and say, “Milan Lucca, do you take Sicily Bianchi to be your lawful wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”
“I do,” I answered instantly.
Silence hung in the rafters of the church, only broken by the barely audible shuffling from the guests. Perhaps they were experiencing the emotion that came after expecting a volatile environment.
Relief.
Many did not know the names to call my diagnoses, but they suspected I became incapacitated in environments such as these with their social and emotional expectations.
People said I had problems and while logically that was true, I had never felt as though I was problematic, not even when the doctors told me I was, not even when my father called me defective.
I had known I was capable of overseeing this day, but nobody else did.
I was capable.
The priest turned to Sicily, who had become quiet. She stared at the priest, her pink painted lips pursed. She had the same face Adriano did when he was thinking deeply, usually about things that did not make sense, usually emotional things.
“Sicily Bianchi, do you take Milan Lucca to be your lawful husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”
Silence.
Excessive, disruptive, unwarranted silence.
I lowered my head, close to her ear, as I spat, “You are required to speak.”
She cleared her throat loudly, appearing not to care about the whisperings behind us. “Apologies, marito mio.” Sicily’s voice deepened. “I thought my vocalization was not required?” She was attempting to imitate me. She was doing it horribly; my voice was deeper than one she could produce.
“Speak,” I barked when the priest coughed, looking at me for direction on what to do about my new wife. If only I knew.
Sicily sighed loudly.
My jaw ticked as the sound echoed over the high cathedral walls.
“For richer, sure. We can discuss poorer later.” She winked at me. “I do.”
You are capable, Milano.
You are capable, Milano.
You are capable, Milano.
SICILY
I stared at Elena as she gawked at my new gold ring like my finger had grown something unnatural.
It kind of had.
“It would be easier to hate him if he didn’t do things so perfectly.” Elena sighed dreamily as if my new husband was some kind of prince charming just because he had booked a fancy church and bought an expensive ring.
A fancy church that blossomed with sunlight and colored glass and was like stepping into a watercolor painting, and an expensive gold ring that was crowned with six brightly shining colored stones, like a representation of the paint palettes in my studio.
My lungs deflated.
Milan had planned a perfect wedding, my dream wedding, if I dared to call it that.
Did that mean that my dreams were too easy to read? Too simple to fulfill? Milan had met me once and hadn’t even bothered to speak to me during the four weeks since he’d declared me his bride, so how could he know, or even suspect, that I’d adore this venue and this ring?
Milan was either extremely powerful or incredibly attentive to have noticed the color to my world, the paint that I wore on my clothes like a badge, the brightness that I sought in every shadow, and as I dragged my heavy pupils up, beyond the crowd of dancing couples and pristine white tables, to him, my husband, I knew it was both.
He was talking, just talking, to the Gioffre Don beside the white marbled dance floor.
Giovanni was laughing obnoxiously, but Milan wasn’t.
In fact, he looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight from side to side every few seconds, sipping from his champagne flute but not really drinking, yet the Don didn’t take that as the sign of disrespect that it would be if it was anyone else.
That was power, a power I hadn’t realized he had.