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I breathe in the smell of incense already heavy in the air and it takes me back to when I was younger. To when we would attend mass as a family.
We weren’t welcome in the small church then. I felt it even as a little boy.
And neither Gabriela nor I are welcome here now.
I see it in the faces that turn in our direction as I walk her up the aisle and into an empty pew.
A glance at her tells me she sees it too.
“Are you okay?” I ask her. I don’t know why.
She shrugs away from me. “You should go. You don’t belong here.”
“Do you?” I ask, gesturing to the family who are openly talking about us from the front pews.
“I used to,” she says, sitting down and picking up the memory card.
I glance at it, see Alex smiling back. See her lightly touch his hair in the picture and I’m pissed. I’m pissed that this happened. That we’re here for this. The kid shouldn’t have died.
“Haven’t you done enough?” asks a man.
Gabriela tilts her face up, and what I see in her eyes, it brings out something dark inside me. Dark and fiercely protective.
I turn to face the man. He’s in his forties I’d guess. Not the father, I know he’s dead. Maybe an uncle?
“You are?” I ask politely because we’re at a fucking memorial service.
“Alex’s uncle, not that it’s any of your business, Sabbioni.” Ah, he knows me. Saves me the trouble of introducing myself.
But he looks past me to Gabriela who’s stood up.
“I didn’t…Alex was…” Gabriela stammers.
I shift my posture, blocking Gabriela from the uncle as I step out into the aisle. He’s a big guy, but so am I, and if he thinks he’s going to somehow make us leave, he’s got another thing coming.
“She has as much right to be here as you. Gabriela and Alex were good friends.”
“And look where that got Alex.” He gives me a once-over, then peers around me. “Is your father coming too?” he spits the words.
I put a hand on his shoulder, squeeze. “Watch yourself. We’re in a fucking church. I advise you to go back to your pew and sit down. We’re staying.”
The man leans against my hand as he gets his face in mine. “Leave.”
“Stefan,” Gabriela starts, her hand on my arm.
“Sit down, Gabriela,” I tell her without turning away.
“Maybe we should—”
“You’re making a scene,” I tell the man.
He looks around, notes all the eyes on us, backs up a step. “You leave your men outside, Sabbioni.”
“Do you see my men inside?”
His eyes narrow.
“You lost your nephew,” I say. “My fiancée’s lost her friend. She grieves as you do. Now go back to your seat and let her be.”
He grits his teeth, looks at Gabriela once more before scanning the dead silent church, all eyes on us, all ears on us. He then returns to his pew at the front.
Gabriela is still standing, her face white, a rosary in one hand, the memorial card in the other and all I can think is how different she is to who she was when I first met her two years ago. When I first started this.
And I think how little I like this change.
Because she is being buried. And if not buried, then at the very least, she’s breaking.
The music changes, the boom of the organ commanding our attention. The procession of altar boys begins to make their way up the aisle, followed by a priest swinging the smoking censer, all of it so familiar and yet so far out of reach, as if the past never was at all.
That’s the thing with time. I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to forget. To set fire to all the photographs. To somehow burn all the memories.
“Thank you,” Gabriela whispers, drawing me to the present.
I nod and take my place beside her in our pew.
7
Gabriela
I think Stefan is bipolar. At the very least he has multiple personalities.
Throughout the service, as I pass my fingers over the rosary beads Miss Millie lent me, he sits quietly attentive, giving the impression he’s listening to the mass when I know he’s just watching me and everyone else.
I don’t know Alex’s uncle. I’ve seen him once, but I don’t even know his name. Alex and his father were the only ones out of his family to work for my father. But if I’d been on my own and he came to tell me to leave, I’d have left. I wouldn’t know how to say no, to stand up to him the way Stefan did.
It’s so confusing being with him. One minute he’s a fierce protector. The next, he’s the predator and I’m the prey. And I feel like I don’t know when either will take over.
The service lasts two hours and afterwards, as we walk out of the church, I feel drained. Weepy.
