They took Celestina for walks, sweating in the glorious light of the mezzogiorno—a violet sea to the west, shimmering sunlit crags to the east, the acrid-sweet scent of dust and flowers and asphalt sharp in their throats. Strolling along, they argued over stupid things, and enjoyed it, and went home to fresh bread fried in oil from olive trees eight hundred years old, and zucchini with provolone dolce, and almonds in honey. Lingering after supper, Emilio would put Celestina to bed, and Gina would listen, shaking her head, as the two of them made up a long, complicated story with many episodes, about a princess with curly hair who was allowed to eat nothing but treats even though her bones would get bendy, and a dog named Franco Grossi, who went on trips with the princess to America and the moon and Milan and Australia. By June, Emilio had admitted to the migraines, and Gina brought several new medications for him to try, one of which was a remarkable improvement over the Prograine.
There was, as the weeks passed, an unspoken understanding that he needed time, but perhaps not as much as he’d once thought.
Gina taught him to play scopa one night; once he got the hang of the game, she was amused by the ferocity with which he played, though distressed by how difficult it was for him to hold the cards. When she asked about this, he changed the subject and she dropped it for the time being. Then, on midsummer’s eve, perhaps to prove that his hands were fine, he and Celestina set themselves the goal of tying their own shoelaces, something both of them had given up on in the past.
"We can do it," Emilio insisted. "This time for sure! Even if it takes us all day, it’s okay because this is the longest day of the year."
All morning, they commiserated over how easy this was for other people, but conquered frustration together, and ultimately shared a radiant self-satisfaction in the accomplishment. Happy for them both, Gina suggested a celebratory picnic down on the beach, pointing out that this plan would afford many opportunities to take off and put on shoes with unnecessary frequency and great flourish. And so the long midsummer evening was passed in quiet contentment, Emilio and Gina ambling along the seashore behind Celestina, watching her chase seagulls and grub for treasures and heave stones into the water until she wore herself out. As the darkness began at last to deepen, they climbed the cliffside stairway— Gina’s pockets and hands full of shells and pretty rocks, Emilio’s arms full of sleeping child—and murmured greetings as they passed the Camorra guards, who smiled with complicity.
When they got to the house, Gina held the back door open for him but did not turn on the lights; knowing the way, he carried Celestina through the quiet house to her doll-crammed room and waited while Gina cleared a nest in the bed full of stuffed animals. He could lift Celestina’s small weight if he was careful when he picked her up, but could not set her down again without damaging the braces, so Gina gathered her baby from his arms and lay the child in bed, and stood awhile, gazing down at her daughter.
Celestina, she thought. Who never stopped moving, who never stopped talking, who exhausted her mother before breakfast, who would have driven the Holy Mother herself to consider hiring a hit man. Whose face in sleep still showed the profile of a newborn, whose small fingers still held her mother rapt, whose knotted navel still traveled the coiled route to another belly in spirit. Who had quickly learned not to mention Papa’s new friends to Mamma.
Gina sighed and turned, and saw Emilio leaning against the door frame, watching her with a still face and eyes that hid nothing. He held his arms slightly away from his body, as he did for Celestina’s hugs, to keep from scratching the child with the hardware of his braces when she came to him for an embrace. So Gina came to him.
The edge of her lower lip was as fine as the rim of a chalice, and the thought almost stopped him, but then her mouth rose to meet his and there was no turning back, nor any wanting to. After all the years, the effort, the anguish—it was, he found, all very simple.
She removed his braces and helped him with his clothes, and then took off her own, feeling as familiar with him as if they had always been together. But she did not know what to expect and so she braced herself for a failure of nerve, or for brutal urgency, or for weeping. There was instead laughter, and she too found that it was simple. When the time came, she took him into her and smiled over his shoulder at the small sound he made, and nearly wept herself. Naturally, he came too soon—what could you expect? It didn’t matter to her, but a few moments later she heard his muffled chagrin next to her ear. "I don’t think I did that quite right."
She laughed as well, and told the air above him, "It takes practice."
He went motionless and she was afraid then that she’d hurt his feelings, but he rose on his elbows and looked down at her, face amazed, eyes merry. "Practice! You mean we get to do that more than once?"
She giggled as he collapsed on her again. "Get off me," she whispered after a while, still smiling, hands drifting along his back.
"I don’t think so."
"Get off me! You weigh a ton," she lied, kissing the side of his neck. "All that macaroni and cheese!"
"No. I like it here," he told the pillow under her head.
She put a finger into his armpit. He exploded and rolled away as she laughed and shushed him and whispered, "Celestina!"
"Soy cosquilloso!" he said, astonished. "I don’t know what that is in Italian. What do you call it when there’s a reaction to touch like that?"
"Ticklish," she told him and listened, amused, as he guessed at the verb and quickly conjugated it. "You sound surprised."
He looked over at her, chest quiet now. "I didn’t know. How would I find that out? People don’t tickle Jesuits!" She looked at him, massively skeptical in the dark. "Well, some people tickle some Jesuits," he admitted indignantly, "but I assure you, madam, that no one tickled me."
"Not even your parents? You weren’t always a priest."
"No," he said curtly.
Oh, God, she thought, realizing she’d wandered into some new mine-field, but he rose up on one elbow and draped an arm over her belly. "I hate macaroni and cheese," he confessed. "There were no dragons to slay for my beloved, but I ate macaroni and cheese for you. I want credit."
She smiled up at him, wholly content. "Wait," she said as he went to kiss her. "Go back to that part about ’beloved.’ " But his lips dropped once more onto her mouth, and this time he did better.
They were discreet, for Celestina’s sake, and he was gone before dawn. It was as difficult as anything he’d ever done, to say good-bye to her and leave. But there were other days at the beach that wore Celestina out early, and other nights that wore them both out late, and as that summer passed, she made him whole again. There was no memory of bestiality that she did not efface with beauty and gentleness, no humiliation that was not eclipsed by her warmth. And sometimes, when the dreams came, she was with him: salvation in the night. Before the summer was over, while the days were still far too long and the nights all too short, when the fragrance of lemon trees and oranges had deepened and drifted each night through her bedroom window to scent the sheets and her hair, he began to give back to her some of what she had given him.