Sunday Dinner

Sunday came and I wasn't ready for it.

Three days I'd spent trying to find a way out and got absolutely nowhere. Called my cousin Fia in Rome on Friday she'd married out of this life a few years back and I thought maybe she'd have something useful. She listened to everything I said and told me to pray. I hung up on her.

Thought about going to my mother maybe four or five times. Talked myself out of it every single time. I kept seeing her hand on my knee at dinner, that hard grip, and I just couldn't. Couldn't walk into her room and drop something else on her that she'd carry by herself in silence.

By Saturday night I'd made my peace with going in empty. No angle, nothing. Just me and whatever face I could hold together for a few hours.

I was good at faces. Grew up here didn't I.

He handed his keys off without even glancing at the guy holding his hand out for them. Just didn't look. Not mean about it, not deliberate.

Just genuinely didn't occur to him that there was a person standing there. I watched that from my window and filed it away somewhere useful and then went to find something to do with my face before I came downstairs.

Green dress, hair loose, enough effort to say I tried without saying I cared. I checked the mirror once and went down.

Him and Papa were already in the sitting room. Whiskey, low voices, easy with each other the way men got when everything was already decided and they were just doing the comfortable part. Papa saw me and something in his face settled that particular relief of a man whose difficult daughter had shown up when she was supposed to.

Luca turned around.

Dark shirt tonight, jacket over it, less formal than before. Didn't make him look warmer. Some people just ran cold regardless. He looked at me the way he always seemed to quick, thorough, like he was updating something in the back of his head and said my name.

I said his back, flat, and went straight to Papa and kissed his cheek and asked about Rosa and got myself out of that room before anyone could start a conversation I didn't want.

Dinner was the strangest kind of awful. The kind where nothing goes wrong.

I'd prepared myself for something I could push back against quietly in my head. Arrogance or that particular way certain men talked at women instead of to them, something I could hold onto and use to keep a wall up between me and all of this. Some private reason to hate him that was fresh and specific and mine.

What I got instead was and I really don't want to write this fine. He was fine across a dinner table. Didn't perform, didn't talk over anyone. Asked my mother something about her garden and she actually answered properly, which almost nobody managed because Mama shut herself off at meals.

He was funny in that dry way where he wasn't trying to be funny, just was, and twice I started reacting before I caught myself and looked down at my plate.

Papa looked like he'd won something. Couldn't even pretend otherwise.

Mama kept her eyes on her food which meant she had thoughts she wasn't sharing, which with her meant anything.

At some point he asked about the stables. Had I grown up riding.

"Used to," I said.

"Not anymore?"

"Things feel different when you're older." I looked right at him. "Stuff you loved starts feeling like obligation instead of choice. You know how it goes."

A beat of quiet.

His eyes stayed on my face. Then that corner of his mouth moved not a smile, not quite like he'd caught exactly what was sitting under what I'd said and wasn't bothered by it. Was maybe even a little interested by it.

I picked up my wine and looked away and did not think about that.

Papa took him to the study after. I helped Rosa clear the table even though she waved me off three times because I needed something to do with my hands or I was going to lose my mind.

Mama found me in the kitchen doorway.

She touched my elbow and I just followed her. Down the hall to that little room she kept for herself, her furniture, her things, nobody else's business in it. She closed the door behind us.

Went straight to her dresser. Second drawer. Came back with her fist closed around something small.

Dark little bottle. Almost black, no label. Something inside it that caught the light a strange colour when she turned it.

"What is this," I said.

"Luca's father." She kept her voice low. "Old man, very traditional, made certain requirements clear to your Papa about the kind of woman coming into that family." She pushed it into my hand and closed my fingers around it herself. "This takes care of it."

"Where did you get it."

"Somebody gave it to me years ago," she said. "When I needed it."

That was it. No story around it, no details. Just that flat and done and matter of fact. And honestly the flatness of it hit me harder than anything dramatic could have because I understood suddenly that my mother had needed things in this marriage that nobody knew about.

Things she'd handled alone, quietly, the way she handled everything, with nobody asking and nobody noticing and her just getting on with it.

I didn't know what to say. She didn't seem to want me to say anything.

She put her hand against my face for just a second quick and warm and then gone and walked out before either of us had to do anything with what was sitting in the room.

Strange little bottle. Dark glass, no label, light catching it wrong. I turned it once in my fingers then pushed it into my pocket and went back to the sitting room.

About an hour later they came out of the study.

Papa had the look of a man who'd just closed the deal of his life. Luca behind him, jacket on, that same face that gave nothing for free.

"Sunday the fourteenth," Papa said to me. Not a question. "Engagement dinner. Luca's father comes from Palermo, his sisters. Wear something that does this family credit."

I kept my face completely still. "Of course."

Luca looked at me when I said it. Something in his expression I couldn't quite name not triumph, nothing as obvious as that. More like he was watching to see what I'd do. What version of me showed up right now.

I gave him nothing. Smiled at the right moment, said goodnight, sat in my chair with the book I still hadn't read a word of and listened to his car leave.

Papa squeezed my shoulder on his way to bed. Happy with me. Proud of his good daughter.

The house got quiet.

I dug the bottle back out and held it under the lamp. Kept thinking about what Mama said. Somebody gave it to me when I needed it. Just sitting inside that sentence was a whole other version of her life I'd never been shown and probably never would be.

Sunday the fourteenth. His father flying from Palermo with his old fashioned ideas and his requirements.

Klaus out there somewhere with nothing between him and whatever my father decided his patience was worth.

And me sitting here with this thing in my palm. Small and dark and strange. Something my mother had kept in her second drawer for years like a quiet last resort.

I wasn't okay. Everything was still closing in and I knew it.

But I had something now.

I just had to figure out what exactly I was going to do with it.