Happy Family Read Online Free Page B

Teresa of Ávila and imagine Maurizio the altar boy’s lips pressed against hers.
    Besides Maurizio the altar boy, the other good thing about church was how it smelled: a distilled concoction of old wood, bitter oranges, Christmas pine, death-sweet lilies, rotting beams, and bergamot smoke children thought was the Holy Spirit fogging out from the priest’s censers. St. Clare’s had no odor. Maybe it wasn’t old enough to have acquired its own fragrance, but Cici made sure that Father Padua would use scented oil for the baby’s baptism, and she hoped to convince him to bring out the censers.
    Cici was in no rush to go to Mass at St. Clare’s. She was finally free from the irons of family obligation. An obligation that came as part of the bargain her mother made by marrying Marco D’Ameri and promising him that she’d raise her daughters as good Roman Catholics. What would they think of her now? It’s what Sol thinks that’s important. He adores her and will adore his son. Ever since Cici looked down and couldn’t see her feet over her stomach, she knew she was having a boy. Her older sister Genny had three children, all girls, much to Marco D’Ameri’s disappointment.
    Cici hasn’t felt the baby kick or move since the cramp last night, and she is as listless now as she was excited when Sol helped her off the plane and onto the tarmac at Idlewild airport ten months ago. She’d spent much of her life in the provincial town of Varese, and although she’d worked at her stepfather’s retail store in Milano, no city she’d seen in Italy compared to Manhattan. New York City was the big sister she’d always wanted: it moved fast, burned bright, took her by the hand and threw her into the action. She was used to the cold uniformity of Milano, the gray faces of businessmen, the small weariness of the housewives who spent all day shopping to feed the businessmen, putt-putting through the narrow streets in their itsy-bitsy cars. Everything in New York was big: big taxis, big hot dogs in big buns, big buildings, and big music. She was like a Russian doll, and Cici loved to explore the smaller and smaller cities nestled within. Sol took Cici to Little Italy, Chinatown, Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side. Cici vowed to become a New Yorker right away. Go, New York! became her bible, and she devoured any and all guidebooks she could find in Italian. She learned how to take public transit and read the grid system, discovered that museum headsets were more fun than Berlitz tapes and that Harlem wasn’t a place for the many wives of Turkish men. Most important, she figured out where to shop.
    With the one pan Sol had in his Gramercy Park apartment, Cici made risotto con funghi and costoletta alla Milanese and brought it to Sol at St. Vincent’s. They’d eat lunch and nuzzle in the spare room at the back of the radiology department where the nurses stored people’s old X-rays. They went to the New York Philharmonic on Sunday afternoons to hear Bernstein conduct Mahler or to the Met to see the latest exhibits, even when there was standing room only. Afterward, they’d peel off their clothes and squeeze into the tub, she leaning back into him, hugging her knees to her chest so they’d both fit. There, they’d take turns reading from an Italian/English version of The Inferno, coconspiring in their lexicon of mixed languages and touch, laughing long after the soap-scummy water had grown cold.
    In those New York City months, Cici thrived in the womb of their twosome. They went out with a few couples—acquaintances of Sol’s from the hospital—but mostly kept to themselves. Cici’s main obstacle to broadening her social life and knowledge of the city was her English. She’d thought she would pick it up quickly, and when that didn’t happen, she felt self-conscious and frustrated. As long as she could communicate with Sol and get around, what else did she need? She could become a New Yorker without grammar. But as soon