"Yes, caro," she assured him. "People still dance."
"Good," he said, and leaned forward to kiss her, but then just closed his eyes in resignation and rested his forehead against hers as the kitchen door crashed open and a tidal wave of noise rolled down the hallway toward them.
Celestina skidded to a halt at the bedroom door, hair wild and face rosy with the heat. "We’re starving!" she cried dramatically and demonstrated this by collapsing semi-gracefully into a pitiable heap at their feet.
"Note, if you will," Emilio pointed out to the dying swan’s mother, "that she made sure to fall onto the bedroom carpet, rather than the tiled floor of the hall." Celestina giggled, eyes closed.
"Will you make us macaroni and cheese again?" Pia begged Emilio, hopping up and down, hands pressed together in supplication. "Just like last time? Please, please, please. Extra soupy? With lots of milk?"
Gina smiled at her lap, shaking her head, as Emilio was borne off to the kitchen by two boisterous little girls. "Pia, call your mother," she could hear him say in his very best papa voice. "And ask if you may stay for supper. Celestina, you set the table. Lots of milk, the lady says! Why is it you can never find a cow when you need one…"
FINALLY, THE TIME CAME TO PUT CELESTINA TO BED AND, AS GINA touched off the light and tucked the child in, Emilio cleared a space to sit amid the doll-and-stuffed-animal populace. From out of nowhere, he produced a small silver box that one of the Camorra guards had purchased for him in Naples and held it up for Celestina’s perusal.
"Is it for me?" she asked, her yearning naked.
"Who else?" he asked, smiling at Gina, enjoying her obvious perplexity. "This is a magic box, you know," Emilio confided then, face grave, eyes alight, as Celestina examined the tiny, perfect flowers that decorated its lid. "You can keep words in it."
The child looked up at him, massively skeptical in the dark, and he smiled at her remarkable resemblance to her mother. "Take the top off for me, if you please," he said. He had planned to do this himself, but small precise movements were sometimes excruciatingly hard. No matter, he thought, I can adapt the act. "Now. Get ready because you have to put the top back on very quickly after I say the words." Caught up in the game, Celestina tensed and held the box to his lips. Eyes on Gina, he whispered, "Ti amo, cara," and then cried, "Quick! Get that top on!" Squealing, Celestina clamped the lid down as quickly as she could. "Whew! That was close. Now," he said, taking the box from her, "tap the top and count to ten."
"Why?"
"Why, why, why! We don’t beat this child enough," he complained to Gina, who was smiling broadly. "In my day, kids did as they were told, no questions asked."
Celestina was not impressed. "Why?" she insisted on knowing.
"To let the words know they’re supposed to stay inside," he told her in an exasperated tone: any silly would know that! "Do as you’re told. Tap the top and count to ten!" he repeated, holding the box out in what was left of a palm, balancing it on the brace strap. She no longer saw his hands, he realized. Even Pia was used to them now.
Celestina, mollified, tapped and counted. He handed the box to her. "Now, open it, and put it right next to your ear."
Small fingers pried the lid off and her oval face, the mirror of her mother’s, became still as she thrust the box into blond tangles near a golden ear sprinkled with summer freckles. "I don’t hear anything!" Celestina declared, skepticism confirmed. "I think you’re goofing me."
Emilio looked indignant. "Try it again," he said, but he added, "This time, listen with your heart."
In the magical silence of a little girl’s bedroom, they all three heard his words: Ti amo, cara.
BEFORE IT WAS OVER, CELESTINA HAD ASKED FOR A DRINK OF WATER AND reminded her mother about the night-light and told Emilio she was going to keep the box under her pillow and asked for one last trip to the toilet, and then tried to initiate a discussion of monster-under-the-bed behavior that had the potential for delaying "Good night" five more minutes, but didn’t work.
Finally, pulling the door almost closed, they left Celestina with "Sweet dreams," and Gina caught her breath, feeling vacuumed of energy but happy. "You are going to be the greatest papa in world history," she said with quiet conviction, putting her arms around Emilio.
"Depend on it," he told her, but she could tell something was wrong. He made no move toward their bedroom and finally told her wryly, "You could save me a lot of embarrassment if you had a headache tonight."
She stepped back. "Your hands?" There was a small shrug and he looked away. He started to apologize, but she stopped him with a finger on his lips. "Caro, we have our whole lives for it." And to tell the truth, she’d felt faintly queasy all day anyway, so she changed the subject as they headed for the kitchen table. "Don Vincenzo told me they found another surgeon for you last May, but you wouldn’t see him. Why not, caro?" Emilio slumped into a chair opposite her, face stony, his breathing shallow. "You heal well enough now. They can do amazing things, Emilio. Re-glove the hands with artificial skin, reposition some tendons to take advantage of the nerves that weren’t cut. You’d have much better function afterward."
"I’m used to the braces." He sat up, half defiant. "Look. I’ve had enough, okay? I don’t want to start all over learning how to use my hands."
That much he had told the Father General. She waited, giving him time to say the rest himself. When he didn’t, she answered the unspoken objection, and knew she’d guessed correctly when his eyes slid away. "The phantom neuralgia won’t be any worse afterward—it might even be better."
There was no answer for a time. "I’ll think about it," he said, blinking. "Not right away. I need some time."
"Maybe after New Year’s," she suggested gently.
"Maybe," he said. "I don’t know. Maybe."
There was no rush, apart from her own desire to see him made whole, so Gina let it go. He’d had scurvy when he first came home and, for a long time, his connective tissue had simply been too fragile to permit surgery; the longer he waited, the healthier he would be and the faster he would heal. The damage to his hands was already three years old. Another six months would make no difference clinically.
The last thing they talked about before he walked back to his apartment was the arrangement he’d made with the law firm in Cleveland and the bank in Zurich, giving Gina free access to all his accounts.
"Don’t you want to wait until after the wedding?" she asked, standing in the doorway.
"Why? Are you going to run away with the money?" he replied. She could barely see him in the dark. "No, I just want you to take your parents out for dinner a few times. Someplace nice, yes? And tell them it was my idea! I want credit. A son-in-law has to think about this kind of thing."
She laughed and watched until he disappeared into the moonless night.
THEY WERE IN TOUCH DAILY WHILE GINA WAS GONE, ALTHOUGH TOWARD the end of the second week, Emilio was swamped, wrapping up the final details of the K’San programs, trying to meet his own self-imposed deadline at the end of the month. By the time she and Celestina got back to Naples, it had been a couple of days since they’d spoken. She called the minute she walked in her door, but the number was disconnected. She tried again to be sure she hadn’t touched the wrong code, then drove over to his apartment as soon as she’d brought the luggage in from the car and taken care of Celestina’s immediate needs for a toilet and lunch, telling herself all the while that what she knew must be wrong.
The main retreat house was not deserted, as she had irrationally feared, but no one she knew was in residence. The lay brother who’d taken Cosimo’s place in the refectory was Vietnamese and she couldn’t make out a word of his Italian. The door to Emilio’s apartment over the garage was locked, and the geraniums were gone from his unshuttered windows. She demanded explanations, wept, screamed, accused, and everywhere met omertà—the silence of the South. Her second daughter was nearly ten years old before Gina understood the whole of it.