TORONTO, HIGH PARK AVE., OCTOBER 1975
IDA PUTS ASIDE “DOWN WITH” and paints “FREEDOM TO CHOOSE NOW,” pondering the meaning of the words. Jasmine comes outside in a long, faded skirt, her braless breasts bouncing under a tube top. She’s carrying a placard that reads “STOP THE SPADINA EXPRESSWAY NOW!”
“We can paint over this one and reuse it,” she advises Ida, looking over her shoulder at the sign. “Darling, what’s with this ‘freedom to choose’? You need to be more direct: ‘ABORTION RIGHTS NOW!’ And you and I should talk about passive resistance.”
Ida picks up a fresh brush and dips into can of white paint. She starts painting over SPADINA. “You already told me, Jasmine: sit down on the ground and go limp because it is hard for the cops to carry a dead weight. I know this but I do not plan to be arrested.”
Jasmine snorts. “No one plans to, darling. But it happens. Things get out of hand.”
Ida turns back to finishing her FREEDOM sign, silently disagreeing. This is Toronto. If there’s one place where things don’t get out of hand, this is it. Sometimes it seems like a city full of sweater-clad old nonnas constantly fussing over people’s drinking and gambling and love lives, while at the same time slyly electing this playboy of a prime minister again and again, along with the rest of the country.
Marcello has absorbed a bit of that Canadian diffidence too, although when she told him of Rocco’s treachery, he became so enraged that he leapt out of their bed, ran downstairs, made a phone call, came back upstairs, dressed, and left the house without speaking to her. When she followed him out to the driveway, and asked him where he was going, he shouted, “I’ll tell you when I’m back.”
Blowing off steam over Rocco, no doubt. Probably spending the day at Esposito’s.
“Dinner at seven,” she said, watching him pull out of the driveway like a mad fiend. Ida didn’t even have a chance to remind him she was going to the women’s march.
On the other hand, why would he care? She’d be back in plenty of time to make the risotto.
Before the demo, Ida needs to finish her shopping. She walks into Bertinelli’s, list in hand: Asiago cheese, Arborio rice, basil fresh-not-the-dried-stuff.
Almost hidden in the narrow aisles of the store is Angela So-and-So—so called, because for a long time people didn’t know whether she was married to her brother-in-law Tony Lo Presti or was his housekeeper. Angela is a tiny ghost of a woman, probably in her mid-twenties, who never comes out of the shadows. The story going around is that back in Italy, Angela was forced to marry Tony by proxy after the sudden death of her sister here in Toronto. She was sent to cook and clean for Tony, presumably to sleep with him, and to wipe noses and teach prayers to her niece and nephew. Ida’s heart is always slightly wrenched by the sight of her, a thin, young woman who is already starting to look middle-aged. She’s lived here a year but has never been able to get the hang of English. Ida suspects she doesn’t want to, as if being able to speak the language will trap her here forever.
Once, looking out the window of the house on a Sunday morning, Ida was shocked to see Angela walking behind her husband, head bowed and shoulders stooped. At first she just thought Angela was trying to catch up with Tony but it became obvious that this was the way they walked together: Tony striding ahead, Angela cowering behind. Tony has a reputation for being a bully; Ida wonders what happened to wife number one.
Ida walks down the aisle, basket on her arm, and smiles at Angela. “Come stai?” Ida asks her, gently touching her arm. “Stai bene? How are you? Are you well?”
Angela tugs her thin cardigan around her shoulders and gives a quick, sharp nod, not wanting to look at Ida straight on. That’s when Ida notices dark patches on her pale cheeks, daubed with foundation. Cover Girl medium-light, Ida thinks, the same shade she herself uses to turn her face into a blank canvas for work. No wonder Angela stays in the shadows: that bastard Tony has been hitting her.
In Italian, Ida whispers, “Angela! Is someone hurting you?”
Angela looks at Ida now, eyes wide. The woman is clearly terrified. She shakes her head, quickly. “No, signora. I’m just tired.”
Ida takes her hand. “Mi chiamo Ida. I’m called Ida. If anyone ever hurts you or you need help, you come to me. I’m your sister. You know where I live, yes? Next door to Agnellis.”
Angela again gives a quick nod. “Grazie, signora, but don’t say you are my sister. You don’t want to be my sister. She’s dead.”
Ida touches Angela’s hand quickly and goes about her business in the cheese section. She feels fury rising inside her, starting in her belly and overflowing into her chest like warm yeast. She thinks of going to the Lo Presti home to confront Tony but knows what Marcello would say: Mind your business. This is another thing about Canada: passionate emotion expressed in the form of physical and verbal confrontation is frowned upon. You’ve got to keep things bottled up and boiling under the surface. Maybe write a letter to the editor, or say something behind someone’s back. Slapping Mr. Carlyle was one thing—he was an outsider after all, and it was an extreme situation—but slapping Tony Lo Presti would be lunacy. Like all good Canadians, Ida has learned to pick her battles.
Back at Barrie Avenue, Ida unloads the groceries, does some quick preparation for that night’s meal, changes into her WOMEN’S RIGHTS NOW! T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and waits for Jasmine to pick her up. The plan is to drive to a parking lot near the one of the sweat shops at Spadina and Richmond, gather together with the other women, and march up the street. It should all be over by four o’clock, leaving plenty of time to make the evening meal. Jasmine is bringing the bullhorn and the protest signs; while she waits, Ida touches up her fingernail polish.
As she spreads a top coat over shell pink lacquer, Ida hears a knock at the door. Checking her watch, she sees that it’s only noon. Jasmine isn’t supposed to be here until one. She opens the door to Angela So-and-So, a shawl hiding her face.
“Please, signora, you say I could come here for sanctuary,” she says, pulling the shawl back to reveal a large purple bruise spreading over one cheekbone, the eye socket turning black. Her one good eye brims with tears. Ida has the oddest feeling that she’s looking at another version of herself.
“Come in,” says Ida, but Angela doesn’t move. Ida has to reach out and take her by the arm, gently pulling her inside the alcove. Angela looks around in wonder as though she’s never seen the inside of any Canadian home but her own. It strikes Ida that this could well be true.
“You’re hurt,” says Ida. “Do you want me to take you to the doctor?” Ida hesitates, then adds, “Or la polizia?”
Angela’s already huge bruised eyes grow even wider. She shakes her head vigorously. “My husband, he would kill me if I go to the police!”
“He’s doing a good job of that right now, Angela,” says Ida, at which Angela bursts into tears.
Ida manages to get Angela to sit down in the living room with a bag of ice on her face. Jasmine will be here in thirty minutes—less than that—but Ida is reluctant to leave Angela alone. What if she gets frightened and goes back to Tony? No. Impossible. The women’s movement is supposed to be there for the oppressed. She’d rather have Angela close by where she can keep an eye on her.
Ida sits next to Angela, holding her hand. “I want to take you somewhere today. One of my—sisters—is coming to pick me up in a few minutes to go to a protest march for women’s rights. Do you know what that is?”
Angela’s one good eye rolls to look at Ida. She shakes her head uncomprehendingly. “Women’s rights?” The words make no sense to her. Well, why would they? thinks Ida bitterly.
“Never mind. You’re staying with me Angela.”
Angela manages a small smile behind the ice bag. “Thank you, signora.”
When Jasmine arrives in her old VW bus, Ida goes out to the curb to meet her and explain the situation. Jasmine raises her eyebrows. “Let me have a look at her.”
Angela is huddled in a chair in the furthest corner of the living room, her shawl over her face, her body pushed down into the chair as if trying to disappear inside it.
“There, there, darling, let me see what the bastard did to you,” coos Jasmine, reaching out to pull back the shawl, but Angela edges away, and pulls the shawl around her even tighter.
“She doesn’t understand English,” explains Ida, who gently moves the shawl away from Angela’s face. Jasmine looks at the bruised cheek and eye with clinical interest.
“I think she should go to the police, then the hospital.”
“I’ve tried,” says Ida. “She refuses to do either. She says her husband will kill her.”
“Probably true,” mutters Jasmine. “What should we do? Leave her here until we get back?”
Ida shakes her head. “I don’t think we should leave her alone. And she doesn’t seem to have any friends in the neighbourhood. Maybe the church—I could try calling the priest.”
Jasmine snorts. “Oh please. It’s that kind of patriarchal sexist medieval institution that got her into this situation in the first place.”
Ida starts to explain about the kindness of Father Dave Como, but stops. Jasmine isn’t wrong. It was no doubt the priest back home in Angela’s village who arranged the marriage and performed the proxy wedding. An entirely different breed from the educated, enlightened Dave, but still. To quote from Marcello’s favourite movie about the glamorous mobsters, they’re all part of the same hypocrisy.
“Maybe we should take her with us,” says Ida. “The march is for her rights, too, no?”
Jasmine nods. “Right on, sister.”
Ida explains to Angela that they are going for a walk with a group of Canadian women. This gets Angela out of the chair and into the back of Jasmine’s car with the protest signs and the bullhorn. As they set off, Jasmine glances in the rear view, then says to Ida: “I don’t mean to be ghoulish, dear, but your friend already looks like a ghost. Someone has to convince her to leave that brute.”
Ida sighs. “We could try to call the police ourselves, perhaps. Make them talk to him.”
Jasmine shakes her head. “Useless. Unless your friend makes the complaint, the authorities won’t do a damn thing.”
In the parking lot on Adelaide Street, they meet the rest of the group. Jasmine hands out protest signs and gives brisk instructions, while Ida stands with an arm wrapped around Angela’s shoulders. Something about all the people and activity seems to have perked her up: “What are they doing, signora?”
“They are going to march to demand their rights. Yours too. See the signs? They are telling the government to start treating women equally with men. Do you understand?”
Angela nods. “It’s like a church procession.”
Well, not really, thinks Ida but doesn’t try to explain further. She’ll find out soon enough what a demo is.
They marshal with the other marchers—mostly labour unionists, a few ancient Communist organizers from the old days on Spadina, some gay rights activists, and anti-nuke campaigners. The women at the head of the group unfurl a banner that reads “WOMEN’S RIGHTS NOW.”
Ida offers the “FREEDOM TO CHOOSE” sign to Angela: “You don’t have to carry it but you can if you want to.” To her surprise, Angela accepts it. Ida picks up “ABORTION RIGHTS NOW.”
The march begins to move up Spadina. Sidewalks are crowded with onlookers, some of them applauding, others jeering, especially at the women.
“Come on you bitches, take your shirts off, and burn your bras for us!” someone shouts from the sidelines. “Show us your tits!” yells another.
Ida pats Angela’s arm reassuringly; they’re walking together, side by side, Angela holding up her sign like the others. At least Angela doesn’t understand what the men are shouting. Looking at Angela’s battered face makes Ida feel enraged again—not just at Angela’s husband, but at everything, at the unfairness of life, at these stupid louts who can hassle them so freely. Where are the famous Canadian decency and politeness now?
On the bullhorn, Jasmine shouts: “WOMEN’S RIGHTS NOW! WOMEN’S RIGHTS NOW!” Her fist in the air, Ida shouts too until she feels something soft and wet hit her in the side of the face. She reaches up to touch it, then sniffs her fingers: it stinks. Someone is lobbing rotten tomatoes at the women marchers. Angela reaches out to dab Ida’s face with her shawl: “Signora, why…”
And all hell breaks loose.
For reasons Ida is never quite able to make sense of later, everyone starts running. Ida links arms with Angela, trying not to be separated from her, but the sea of people wrenches them apart and washes them away from one another. Caught in a whirlpool of bodies, Ida is trapped in one place while Angela is carried off by a different current, her head bobbing with the motion of the crowd, the FREEDOM sign abandoned on the ground. Forcing herself to pay attention to what is going on around her, Ida realizes that the crush of people is spiralling like water going down a drain or a toilet flushing. Ida has a brief moment of panic in the crush of bodies; she feels like she’s suffocating, can’t make sense of why they’re all moving closer together instead of forward, until she sees the police in helmets and vests surrounding them, carrying batons and shouting Move back! Move back! She’s too short to see much of anything else except people’s backs as they try to flee. But there’s nowhere else to move to. Ida remembers the instructions about passive resistance, but there’s no way she can get down on the ground, and if she did, she’d be trampled. She feels a hand on her elbow and a strong pressure pulling, pulling her out of the crowd. Someone is rescuing her—Marcello? she thinks, but when she turns her head she sees that it’s an older man, heavy, a tool belt slung under his the gut, a pair of wire cutters hanging from a loop. He grips her around the waist so hard that her feet drag along the ground as he pushes the panicked crowd aside. When Ida recognizes her rescuer, her bladder empties immediately.
“Let go! Let go!” she shouts, struggling to break free of Stan’s grip. “I’m not that candy man’s wife anymore!”
“You’re not a wife, you’re an unfinished business transaction. Just stay calm or I’ll take out the wire cutters. Wanna lose the end of your nose?”
Ida looks around in desperation. Stan is moving quickly, pushing people aside, dragging her; in a moment, they will be free of the crowd. Not far away, the police are pushing women into black vans. Ida struggles, trying to kick Stan in the knee but he’s gripping her at arm’s length. “My Marcello will kill you!”
“Yeah? Hasn’t he figured out what you really are yet?” asks Stan, turning toward her. Ida spits in his face.
With his free hand, Stan grips Ida’s neck, crushing her windpipe. Her feet leave the ground. She can’t breathe, but in the wildness of the crowd, no one notices that she’s about to die. She still has the “ABORTION RIGHTS NOW” sign in her hand. Lifting it in the air, she brings it down on the back of Stan’s head, the wooden stick of the placard giving a resounding thwack. A red bloom appears on his scalp.
“You goddamn bitch!” He swings at her face, the slap sending her to the ground, into a storm of running-shoed feet; Ida curls into a ball, trying not to be trampled. Struggling to get up, she sees Stan trying to push his way back into the crowd, toward her. But now there’s something on his back. At first Ida thinks it’s an animal—a dog perhaps—until she sees that the figure is clothed in a granny dress and construction boots, and is hitting Stan over the head with the FREEDOM sign: a tall woman with long black hair, roused to a fury. He flails his hands, trying to pull the Fury off his back; finally he wrenches her away and lifts one large fist to punch her but before he can connect, Ida sees a clear path and rolls across the ground, hitting him just below the knees, knocking him off his feet. Flat on her back, Ida looks up between the legs of a cop; he’s standing directly over her, probably not even aware that she’s there. Move back! he shouts, thwacking his club on a shield, and Ida suddenly sees the quickest means of rescue: seizing her sign, she jabs hard at the exposed part of the policeman, right between his legs. He topples like a sack of potatoes thrown from the back of a truck. Ida finds herself lying directly beside the groaning man, his baton rolling on the ground. Ida grabs it; if Stan comes for her again, she’s now properly armed. A few feet away, another cop is peeling the Fury off Stan’s back; she must have jumped him again when she had the chance. When Stan is finally free of her, Ida watches him disappear into the crowd.
Ida is lifted by her arms and dragged forward, the baton wrenched from her hand. Looking around, she is relieved to see Angela So-and-So, Jasmine, and the Fury being hauled away too.
It takes Ida’s eyes a minute to adjust to the darkness. She and Angela have been pushed into some type of truck, black on the outside, black on the inside, packed with women. The two of them huddle together in the dim interior, the only light entering through a tiny window in the back door. “Where are we, signora?” asks Angela breathlessly.
“Non lo so. I don’t know,” answers Ida. Looking around at the other women, she asks, “Where are we?”
“Inside a Black Maria. A Paddywagon,” says a woman’s voice. “The pigs are taking us to jail.”
“Jail? What did we do wrong?” Ida is shocked; Jasmine had assured her that the protest was entirely legal.
The woman barks a laugh. “We didn’t do nothing wrong. The male chauvinists are trying to teach us a lesson. Put us in our place.”
Ida suddenly becomes conscious of the smell of her own body, covered with rotten tomato, urine, and sweat. Her thigh is pressed against the woman next to her. Now that her eyes have adjusted to the light, Ida can see that she’s a teenage girl improbably dressed in breeches, boots, and a dark riding jacket.
“Excuse me, but aren’t you Ida Umbriaco?” asks the girl.
Ida peers at her. Although the rotten tomato on her jacket gives her common ground with everyone else in the wagon, her clothes make her look like royalty. “Yes, I’m Ida. Who are you, Princess Anne?”
The girl laughs. “I’m Cindy Carlyle.” She waits a moment, waiting for Ida to recognize the name. When she doesn’t, the girl adds: “Jonathan Carlyle’s daughter.”
Mr. Cake! thinks Ida. How much worse can her luck get? “But why did they arrest you?”
“I came down for the demo. Daddy thinks I’m at Sunnybrook Stables for my riding lesson.” Ida hears her sigh deeply. “So much bourgeois crap.”
“I always wanted to ride horses,” says Ida, despite the ridiculousness of bringing this up now. “It is one of my dreams.”
The girl perks up. “Really? I’d love to take you. It would completely freak out my father.”
The processing at Don Jail is tedious. Ida sits on a bench between Cindy and Angela, her clothes still damp with pee and tomato pulp, needing to empty her bladder again. On the other side of the room, the Fury sits beside Jasmine, hands behind her head, her construction-booted feet stretched out in front of her. She’s a pretty woman, but a remarkably large and powerful one.
“Thank you for your help, Miss,” says Ida to the Fury. “I’m Ida. May I know your name?”
The woman acknowledges Ida’s thanks with a nod, as if saying, It was nothing. “Holly,” the Fury says huskily, then falls into silence.
“We’ll be out of here soon,” says Cindy. “They’re just trying to scare us for being uppity. It’s not like they can charge us with anything.”
Each woman’s information is typed onto a form by a policeman who scarcely bothers to look at them. Ida asks for and receives permission to make a phone call. She calls Georgia at Ed’s house, who gets on the line and tells Ida to stay put until he gets in touch with Marcello.
Stay put? What else am I going to do? wonders Ida.
Ida, Jasmine, Angela, Cindy, and Holly sit side by side in the holding cell, Angela’s head in Ida’s lap, Cindy peeling nail polish off her thumb, Jasmine softly humming “We Shall Overcome,” Holly sitting with her legs spread under her dress, elbows to knees, when Ed arrives wearing a suit jacket and blue jeans. He stands outside of the cell, arms crossed, looking in at the five of them. “Well, this makes a pretty picture.”
Ida looks at him through the bars, then down at Angela, who has fallen asleep in her lap. “If there were justice in this country, the police would arrest this one’s brute of a husband, not us.”
Ed’s eyebrows shoot up. “What the hell is Angela Lo Presti doing here?”
“She came to our house looking for sanctuary,” says Ida, stroking Angela’s hair. “I didn’t want to leave her so I brought her along on the march.”
Ed sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “When Tony finds out, things are going to be even worse for her. You know that, don’t you?”
Ida feels a spike of anger at Ed so intense that she can barely speak. “Oh yes? You know about Tony and everybody knows about Tony, about how he beats his wife? And you do nothing and tell me this makes things worse?”
The other women in the cell glare at Ed and nod.
“Give it to him sister,” mutters Cindy.
Ed drops his eyes. Clears his throat. Adjusts his tie. “I’ll see if I can find out when they’re planning to release her. Maybe I can get Dave Como involved. To act as a go-between between her and Tony.”
“What?” says Ida. “ You’re going to send her back to him?”
“Where else is she going to go?”
Ida lifts her chin. “I’ll take her home with me.”
Ed clears his throat again. “You’re not going home, Ida. At least not right away. They’re charging you with assaulting a police officer.”
“Oh baby,” says Cindy, putting her arm around Ida’s shoulders. “You’ve gotta stop hitting The Man.”
“I thought the fascisti lost the war, Eduardo,” says Ida acidly.
“Don’t worry about it, Ida,” says Cindy. “My father’s going to pull some strings and get the charges dropped for all of us. With you and me both in here, he’s worried about more bad publicity.”
Ed looks at her skeptically. “And who would you be?”
Cindy stretches out her long, riding-booted legs and puts her arms behind her head, leaning back against the wall of the cell. “I’m The Man’s daughter.”
True to Cindy’s word, strings are pulled and cell doors are opened. Everyone is released without charges.
Dave Como, waiting at the entrance to the jail, says he’s come to take Angela to a women’s shelter run by Italian-speaking volunteers. “Mrs. Lo Presti won’t be the first woman in the parish I’ve had to take there, unfortunately. It’ll give her a safe place away from Tony, for now.”
From the steps at the front of the jail, Ida scans the crowd of women for her rescuer, Holly, but the black-haired Fury has vanished.
With her car still parked in the lot on Spadina, Jasmine hails a cab for Cindy, Ida, and herself. Ida asks to be dropped off, not at home, but at Spadina and Bloor.
“I want to walk a bit, breathe the air,” says Ida. “It feels good to be free again.”
Exhausted yet exhilarated, Ida strolls along Bloor, past Hungarian restaurants and porno movie houses and second-hand bookshops. As she nears the circus lights of Honest Ed’s department store, someone falls into step beside her, slipping an arm through hers—the black-haired Fury.
“Holly! I’m glad we meet again. I didn’t have a chance to say enough my thanks,” says Ida. Arm in arm, Holly’s unusual height is more noticeable. It’s not unlike walking with Marcello.
“I’ve gotta talk to you, Ida,” Holly says.
There’s something odd about her voice. It’s too deep. Her face has changed, too, the bristles of a five o’clock beard beginning to poke through the surface of her makeup. That’s when Ida realizes that Holly is a young man. Ida tries not to show her surprise. She is a woman of the world, after all.
Holly nods in the direction of a stone church on Bathurst Street, its bell tower tolling the hour. Six o’clock. “Let’s go into St. Peter’s.”
Ida laughs, and shakes her head. “I’m not one for church.”
“Me neither, but it’s a good place to talk without anyone hearing us.”
Ida pointedly checks her watch. She’s grateful to this woman—person—but far too tired for a conversation. “I have to get dinner on. Perhaps another day.”
Holly shakes her head firmly. Almost angrily. “No. Now.”
Ida tries to gently extricate her arm. “I must go home. My husband will be wondering where I am.”
Holly gives a deep, bitter laugh. “By now, Marcello’s probably either dead or in jail.”
Ida stops walking. “How do you know his name?”
For one horrible moment, Ida thinks that Holly is another of Senior’s thugs. She tries to yank her arm away but Holly is holding her in a firm grip. She’s about to start screaming when Holly drops her voice into an even lower register and whispers urgently into Ida’s ear: “Ida, it’s me! Bum Bum. Pasquale. Benny. Whatever you call me, I’m on your side. But you have to come with me now.”
In the pews of St. Peters, a scattering of penitents bow their heads. A cross is lit over the door of the confession box, indicating that someone is pouring sins into a priest’s ear. Ida hasn’t been to a church service since her proxy wedding in Italy, where she exchanged vows with a hired groom, stinking of wine and mothballs. He turned out to be the real groom’s brother. As part of a package deal, the marriage broker had loaned him a suit, and threw in a priest, a bouquet, and a dingy wedding dress two sizes too big for Ida; she had to be pinned into it. The proxy wedding meant she was legally married to a man in Canada she had never met: Senior. A horrible day.
Benny and Ida slide into a pew screened from the rest of the church by a rack of devotional candles.
“Why do you say Marcello is dead or in jail?” she whispers.
“He’s gone on a vendetta to get Senior to sign the annulment. Either his name goes on the paper, or his brains,” Benny whispers, as he pulls off his wig and wipes a sleeve across his face. “Man, this thing gets hot.”
With his wig in his lap, Benny talks. Ida listens. When she learns why and how he escaped from the Andolini farm, Ida puts her arm around him and leans her head on his shoulder in sympathy. When she hears of Claire’s death, she starts to wipe tears. When they get to Benny’s liberation of Noname from Doctors’ Hospital, Ida rises abruptly. “Enough. We go now.”
At Benny’s knock, Vera opens the door. “Benny, thank Christ. Your friend’s been here for two hours, tying up the goddamn phone. Trying to call his wife. Marco’s got business to do, he can’t have customers getting nothin’ but busy signals.” Vera glances at Ida. “Who’s this?”
“The wife,” says Benny.
In the back room, under a laundry line holding a string of fake IDs for college students from Buffalo, Marcello sits in the La-Z-Boy with Noname in his arms and the phone pressed to his ear. When he sees Ida, he gives a shout of relief, waking the baby, who chirps her displeasure.
As Ida and Marcello embrace, Benny tosses his wig on Marco’s desk. “Kill anyone today?”
Marcello shakes his head. “I paid my respects to the Andolinis, visited Prima’s grave, had coffee with Frank, and left. They didn’t know anything about a meeting between me and Senior. He was a no-show.”
“He just wanted you to go off half-cocked, so Ida’d be alone when Stan came calling,” says Benny. “You got a lot to learn about vendettas, brother.”
Ida gazes down at Noname, whose oil-slick eyes stare back. She feels a strange sense of recognition, as if gazing into a bottomless pool that mirrors a familiar face.
“She’s beautiful. She has your eyes,” she tells Benny. “You could be her father.”
Benny shrugs. “I must’ve given her my looks by sleeping with my arm around Claire every night.”
“Inherited traits don’t get passed on that way,” says Marcello, as Benny lifts the baby out of his arms to quiet her.
Ida rolls her eyes. “Marcello goes to university now. He thinks he knows everything.”
Benny lays out his proposal to Ida and Marcello with the same logical, Spock-like arguments he tried on Scott. Having spent the last two hours bonding with the baby, Marcello needs no convincing. Ida agrees without hesitation. She knows Noname’s possible future by heart and already aches to rewrite it, just as she’s trying to rewrite her own. They’re all outcasts—Benny, Marcello, Ida, and Noname—members of the same pagan tribe of lost children. A family in everything but blood.
Always practical, Marcello asks: “How do we explain where she came from?”
Ida and Benny exchange looks over Marcello’s lack of imagination.
“We say that we adopted her and the papers just came through. Or, she’s a cousin’s child from back in Italy with no one to look after her,” Ida rattles off, waving a hand in the air impatiently. “We think of something, Cello.”
“But what about papers—birth certificate, medical records, that type of thing?” asks Marcello, still fretting. “We can’t have anyone connecting her with the Love Canal baby.”
Marco pats Marcello’s shoulder. “Don’t worry Papa. It’s on me. All you gotta do is give her a name.”
Marcello wants to call her Sophia, after his mother. Benny pushes for Claire—appropriate, but risky. Ida mentions that she’s always liked the name Zara.
Finally, Marco gets out an old set of craps dice and they play for the naming rights. Benny rolls a four and a two. Ida, a three and a one. Marcello rolls boxcars—a pair of sixes. The baby will be christened Sophia Claire Zara Umbriaco, with Benny, Vera, and Marco as a trinity of godparents.
“No priests or holy water, please, let’s just baptize her with a friendly drink,” suggests Vera, and everyone agrees. She twists open a bottle of Baby Duck sparkling wine and fills five juice glasses.
After they toast Sophia’s health, Marco gets out his tools and starts forging the birth certificate. From under the glare of a gooseneck lamp, Marco grins up at Marcello, who watches him work with interest. “Beautiful, eh? With the right papers, this little girl can be anyone she pleases.”
“How hard is it to forge church documents?” asks Marcello.
Marco raises his eyebrows with interest. “You mean, like baptismal papers or a marriage certificate?”
“No, I mean, the document for annulling a marriage,” answers Marcello.
Marco shrugs. “Piece of cake. Thought you were going to give me something interesting.”
He slides open a drawer and slips out a printed sheet, placing it on the desk in the front of him with a professional flourish. Marcello recognizes it as the same form he received from the diocese with Senior’s refusal.
“When can you get me the signature?” asks Marco.
Marcello silently pulls out his own annulment form—the one with Senior’s signed refusal—from his jacket pocket and places it on the desk.
Marco looks up in surprise. “You carry this with you everywhere?”
Marcello grins down at him. “Only when I’m planning to ram it down someone’s throat.”