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“Look, nobody likes talking about this shit, but I’m going to tell you because you’ll never hear it from Elio even though I think you need to know. For some reason, he’s attached to you, and you’re the one who has to contend with all the shit he’s got going on, so I figure the more you understand about him, the better.”
“Thank you,” I say quietly. I realize how much she’s doing for me right now. That she’s breaking some sort of family code of silence around this issue simply because she wants to help me navigate the deeply unfamiliar waters that make up Elio Titone. Maybe her loyalties aren’t as easy to decipher as I’d first thought.
She drops her bag on the floor then settles herself on the edge of the bed, tucking one leg underneath her bum and facing me.
“So, the whole reason our family came to Canada was because of Elio and Curse’s papà, Giuseppe. I don’t know all the details about this part, but twenty years ago he did something major to fuck over the ruling famiglia in Taormina. So, one night, some soldiers came and torched their house. Giuseppe, Elio, Curse, and my aunt Florencia were all inside.”
My hands are starting to shake. I grab my cup of tea and hold it tightly, staring down at the liquid as Valentina goes on.
“It took a while for Elio to wake up. No smoke detectors. By the time he knew what was happening, fire was everywhere. From his room there was a clear shot out of the house, but Curse was stuck in his own bedroom. The fire was spreading between their rooms and licking up Curse’s door. The doorknob completely fucked Elio’s hand when he tried to open it, and he ended up punching through the burning wood to get to Curse.” She stops, and a new thickness enters her voice when she speaks again. “They were only eight and fourteen. Can you fucking imagine that? Sometimes I think I’m tough shit but then I remember this story, remember what happened to them and I just…” She blows out a shaky breath like she’s about to cry.
I look up from my tea and try to give her a reassuring look.
“It’s alright. You don’t need to tell me any more if it’s too hard.”
I know better than most how much family trauma and childhood loss can break a person down. How hard it is to put those heart-killing moments into words. Only fourteen years old…
Valentina inhales deeply and visibly steels herself.
“No. That’s only part of it and you should hear the rest.”
I steel myself, too. Because this story is getting inside me, it’s hurting me, and I don’t want to hurt for Elio.
“So, while Elio is fighting his way through literal fire to get to Curse, he sees their dad. Elio and Curse’s bedrooms were on the ground floor, and Giuseppe had a workshop down there where he worked on his bike. We think he got drunk and was asleep in there when the fire started, because he wasn’t upstairs in the other bedroom with Aunt Florencia. If he’d been upstairs, the piece of shit probably would have died like he goddamn deserved to. But instead, he just watched Elio pounding on that burning door, listened to his wife screaming and his other son crying, and then he ran.”
My breath crystallizes and then breaks, every inhale jagged and cutting. My throat contracts as I try to picture what Valentina is telling me. Picture a father watching his children in that kind of situation and choosing to cut and run.
And it almost kills me that I don’t even have to imagine it, because I witnessed it myself. I watched my own father sprinting across the snow, away from our house and away from me.
“Anyway, Elio got Curse out. By that time Curse was unconscious from smoke inhalation and Elio wasn’t much better off. But as soon as he got Curse out, he went right back in.”
“For his mother,” I finish for her in a whisper.
Valentina nods.
“At that point, I think she was still alive, just trapped. But she was upstairs and there was just no way to get to her. Elio still would have tried. Except a beam in the entryway collapsed on him, hitting his neck and shoulder and forcing him back outside. I wasn’t around yet, but my parents only lived a few houses away and by that time they’d shown up. Elio was physically falling apart, and even so my dad still had to restrain him from running back inside. My dad told me once, when he’d had too much wine, that it was the only time he’s ever heard Elio scream.”
Her tone turns wistful. “I wish I got to meet my aunt. I don’t know a lot about her. Men in this family don’t talk much to begin with, but especially about the things that hurt them. But my mom has told me a bit. I do know she was beautiful. She had black hair, like my dad and like Elio and Curse. I know she loved music. Apparently she had a beautiful voice.”
My mother had been beautiful, too. And though neither my mother nor I were blessed with good singing voices, we both loved music. I feel the strangest sense of kinship welling up for Florencia. For this faceless woman who’d loved some of the things my own lost mother had loved. This woman who’d created men like Curse and Elio, who’d given them life, and who’d irrevocably shaped them with her death.
“Anyway, Elio has this whole thing about the burn marks on his hands. He’ll never say it out loud, but I think they make him feel weak. Remind him of what he couldn’t do. Who he couldn’t protect.”
“He can’t blame himself for that. He was only fourteen,” I say. I shouldn’t feel sorry for present-day Elio. But a fourteen-year-old boy fighting to save his mother when his own father had so badly failed him? Well, that Elio broke my fucking heart.
“Trust me, I know,” Valentina replies. Her mouth lifts on one side in a twisting sort of smile. “But I don’t think he’s exactly rational about that night. Kind of like you.”
Her words jar me, and for a second I think she means that I’m also not rational about the night my mother died, and I wonder how the hell she could possibly know that.
“What?” I ask sharply.
“He’s not rational when it comes to you.”
“Oh,” I say. “I mean, yeah.” I wave at the doorless doorway into his room. “I could have told you that.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not something I would have expected,” she replies. “Like I said, it’s out of character for him. He’s usually so focused, so business-like. He does everything for a reason. Every move is calculated and thought-out and he doesn’t let anything or anyone fuck up his plans or change his mind or make him lose control. He doesn’t have to keep anyone out because he doesn’t let anyone in. At least, that’s what I thought, until you drop the bomb on me that he took his gloves off in front of you and put a freaking bandage on your foot and now I’m just over here, like, what? Don’t get me wrong, I love him, but he can be one cold, mercenary motherfucker.”
If that isn’t the understatement of the century…
