Her Sugar Mask

The shots came while Giulia was cutting the cake. The knife was silver. It belonged to her mother and came out of the drawer twice a year. Later she would remember this part: she had a knife in her hand. She had had one the entire time. It was her nephew's baptism lunch. Four long tables in the courtyard, cloths ironed by her mother, stones set on the corners because the wind came off the sea every afternoon. Her father sat at the head of the table telling a joke everyone had already heard. He told it, laughed at it, laughed until he coughed. He was sixty-two. Next year he would have been sixty-three. He did not get there. Her mother sat on his right with her hand on Emilio's shoulder. Emilio was fifteen and had been looking at his phone the whole time. Every few minutes he looked up and said, "I'm listening." The guest of honor was her nephew Carlo, four months old, in a white baptism gown from 1958. Her father had worn it. She had worn it. Her brother had worn it. Carlo cried through the entire service. Her mother said he was crying because he was hungry. Her father said he was crying because he understood what the priest was saying. Giulia stood at the end of the table cutting the cake. Cassata, the green marzipan crust. She cut twelve pieces because there were twelve adults at the table. She cut one more for Enzo, standing by the door. There were three things wrong with that afternoon. She counted them many times afterward. The first: Enzo was not standing behind her. Nineteen years. Ever since the day he was brought into this house at ten years old, he had stood half a step behind her left shoulder. She sat, he sat. She rose, he rose first. Today he leaned against the doorframe with both hands in his pockets. The second: the wine was bitter. The bottle her uncle Turi had brought. He opened it himself, poured it himself, went around the table, and when he reached her he said, "Giulia, you look beautiful today." She drank. The bitterness was wrong. She put the glass down. Not one other person at that table put their glass down. The third: Rosaria was not there. Rosaria had worked beside her mother for twenty-six years, since the day Giulia was born. The girl carrying plates today was a stranger, eighteen or nineteen, and her hands would not stop shaking. Giulia put down the knife and crossed the courtyard to find Enzo. "Where were you." "Signorina." He used the formal address. For nineteen years he had called her Giulia. From the gutter when she was ten years old, from the day she reached down and pulled him out of it, he had called her Giulia. "You should go back to your seat," Enzo said. His eyes were red. She looked at him. She should have seen it. She said that to herself a thousand times afterward. But she did not. She went back to her seat. She went back because her father was calling her, because he had stood up with his glass raised, because the whole table was laughing. By the time Turi got to his feet, her father had already lifted his glass. "To family," Turi said. "To the ones who stayed." What Giulia remembered most clearly afterward was the half second. Everyone raised a glass. Everyone laughed. She turned to look at her father and saw him holding his glass at eye level, looking at his brother through the amber. Then her uncle Turi — the man who grew orchids, who donated books to the village school every year, the man the entire family believed had no ambition — looked across the table while everyone was raising their glasses, and smiled at her. Once. The shots came before that half second had finished. The first sound was glass. She thought someone had dropped a wineglass. The second sound was her mother calling her name. She thought about that for years. Her mother called Giulia. Not Calogero. The first person in that courtyard to understand what was happening called her daughter's name, not her husband's. She never decided what it meant. Maybe she wanted her to run. Maybe Giulia was simply the closest person to her. After the third sound there was no sound at all, only a chair going over onto stone. Her father slid out of his chair. He was still holding his glass. The wine went into the tablecloth, dark red, and spread into the linen. Giulia ran to him. She never knew how far. Three steps, maybe. When she dropped to her knees his eyes were still open. "Papa." His hand caught her jacket. He pushed something into her right pocket. His hand was heavy, and then it was not. He did not say one word. Someone grabbed her hair from behind. She turned. It was Enzo. He had a gun. The barrel was still smoking. He had fired the first shot. She would not know that until she read the ballistics report years later. The first bullet went into her father. He was crying. The tears came down his face and fell into her father's blood. He was crying and he was raising the gun and pointing it at her. "Enzo." He closed his eyes. Then he fired. The pain started in her shoulder and went down, all the way into her fingers. Her left arm stopped being there. Someone screamed. She did not know whether it was her. She went down. · · · It was dark when she woke up. The car was moving. She was in the boot, her face against the spare tyre. Her left arm had no feeling in it. Her right hand was still closed around the silver knife. She did not remember closing it. She remembered cutting the cake. The car stopped. The boot opened. Two men dragged her out. She knew one of them: Dario, Turi's son, twenty-eight, useless, shouted at by her father since he was a boy. When Dario was twenty-two there had been an incident. He hit a woman on a bicycle on the coast road outside Palermo and he did not stop. Her two children spent three years in court afterward. Giulia's father had made it go away: the money, the lawyers, and one meeting with the family. Giulia had been there. She was twenty-three. She stood outside her father's office door and heard him say: that boy owes me a life. "She's still alive," Dario said. "Better," the other man said. "Don Salvatore wants to watch her go under." They tied her wrists and fastened a block of concrete to her feet. The concrete was new. The edges were still sharp. Someone had poured it that afternoon. They had prepared for days. She understood that underwater: a block of concrete has to dry, and drying takes time. Dario crouched down. He could not look at her face. "Giulia —" "Look at me." He looked. "Look at me properly," she said. "Because when it's your turn, I'll make you look at me." They threw her in. · · · The water was colder than she expected. She went down. The block pulled her fast. Her ears began to hurt, then her chest. Something in her right pocket was hard against her ribs. She remembered her father's hand. Her right hand let go of the knife handle and went into the pocket. A key. She did not know what it opened. When her father pushed it in, she had thought it was paper. Then she began to cut the rope. The blade was thin. Her mother took it out of the drawer twice a year. It had never cut anything harder than a cassata. She cut in the dark for a long time. Her right hand was bleeding because the blade slipped, and because she could not hold it properly. The rope parted. She kicked off her shoes and cut the one at her ankles. Faster this time, because she knew the angle now. She went up. Her lungs were burning. She counted. Her father had taught her that, on a boat, when she was small. Underwater, count to twenty. Past twenty you start doing stupid things. At fifteen she remembered something else. She was twelve. Her father took her out on the water and told her to jump off the side. She said no. He said jump. She said no. He said, one day you are going to be alone in the water, so you will practice now. She jumped. She counted to thirty-one. She broke the surface. · · · There were stars. The sea was black. She could not see where the land was. She lay on her back and let the water hold her. Her left arm would not float. Her whole body listed to the left. Far off there was a line of lights. She started swimming toward it. She pulled with her right arm. The left dragged behind her like somebody else's hand. It was getting light when her foot touched stone. She crawled onto the rocks, spat out three mouthfuls of seawater, and passed out. The last thing she did before she passed out was lift her right hand. The knife was still in it. She put her hand on her chest and pressed the knife against her heart. Then she remembered nothing. What she did not know was this. Three kilometers out, a small boat was heading back to shore. Enzo stood at the stern. He was holding her shoes. He sat with them for a long time. Then he threw them into the sea, one at a time. He did not cry. He had used up all of it the day before.