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Twelve
…And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins,
from “Peace”
At long last, Sabina put away the biscottu she’d been starting when Lorenzo showed up and trudged up to her room. Exhaustion dogged her steps, but what right did she have to even feel it? All she’d done today was whisper a few well-placed words to a few women in the markets about the Bennatos and then bake a few more batches of cookies and calzones for dinner. She hadn’t sat up all day, all night with a dying mother. She hadn’t worried all day, all night about a father who never came home anymore.
But guilt was tiring, and she’d felt it with every measure, every stir. Guilt for what she’d done to Lorenzo—first in taking him from the life he was surely called to, then for betraying him, when he’d given up so much for her.
She switched on the lamp on her bedside table and sank to a seat on the mattress, too tired even to untie the ribbons on her pumps and toe them off. What had she hoped when she asked him tonight why he loved her? That he would admit he didn’t, that he regretted everything? No. That wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. She’d wanted to hear exactly what he’d said—that she was his everything. But surely that, too, was sinful, for her to want him to desire her above the priesthood. Especially when she’d been so blind to his life, when she’d turned to another man.
“Yet by your own admission, you fell in love with someone else.”
She could still hear the heartbreak in his voice. He said he forgave her, would keep on forgiving her, but it would always be a specter between them.
Why? Why had she done it? She tried to remember when she’d made a decision, when she’d walked through the doorway…but she couldn’t. At first, they had just started talking, completely innocent. But then he’d seen her, and she’d started looking forward to those moments. Had that been the first step into sin? It must have been. And the path was so slick, so steep that she’d just slid down like a child on a slide, too exhilarated at the rush to think about what waited at the bottom.
It had only been a couple of weeks ago that she’d thought, with that giddy, lightheaded certainty lent to her by cheap gin and loud music, that finally she’d found real love. She’d thought this excitement, this fire in her veins was what life felt like, and she could grab it. She could forget everything else—grief and mourning and promises that felt as useless as Lorenzo’s diamond on her finger—and take hold of something new with both hands. Roman Oliveri was the path to everything she wanted, worth any rocks in the road, any disapproval.
She’d thought Lorenzo would be relieved when he realized she was gone.
She’d called it love. And the other day outside Lorenzo’s office, Roman had called it that too. Her father hadn’t corrected her, but Mama had tried. Mama had known the difference between the rush of excitement and what could actually stand the test of time. Mama had known who would bring heartache and who would walk beside her through every trial life tossed at her.
Mama loved her too much, though, to see that she didn’t deserve Lorenzo.
Sabina reached for the book of poetry and turned the pages until she found the one with his note tucked in. It was a short poem, entitled “Peace,” but her eyes sought his handwritten words on the marker before the printed ones on the page.
With the news of Joey’s death in Europe still so fresh, this poem is especially striking. How true that Peace is elusive and,even when present, brooding. It is our nature, I think, to fight one another. Perhaps because all around us is raging a spiritual war we cannot see.But it is my prayer that you and I, at least, might convince Peaceto “coo” for us. You’re my dearest friend, Bean. I never want to fight with you.
“Oh, Enzo,” Sabina sighed, resting her head on her hand. “It’s as if you already saw what was coming and wrote this to prick my heart.”
She read the poem aloud twice and then just sat there as the rhythm echoed through her room. Peace. It was something she hadn’t felt since Serafina was still alive to laugh and dance. It was something she’d given up chasing because it had seemed as fruitless as running after the pigeons that always fluttered away when you got too close. It was something she craved like water or salt or the collorelle they only ever made at Christmas.
Her eyes drifted to the cross on her wall—not cheap tin like the one Isadora clearly treasured, but sterling silver, with a gold Savior hanging on it to remind her of what He’d done to prove His love. Yet even looking at it every day, she hadn’t really seen. Every prayer had felt like nothing more than chasing a pigeon. Hope, faith, peace always fluttered away, just out of reach. So how could she make it coo for her and settle at her feet?
Were it really a pigeon, she’d have to be still. She’d have to sacrifice a bit of her bread or cookie or crust for it, scatter it before her. And wait.
She sprang to her feet, let the poetry book rest on her bed, snatched up her favorite cloche without any thought to whether it matched her dress, and hurried back down the stairs, through the foyer, out the front door.
“Sabina Maria! Where are you going?”
Papa’s voice slowed her, but it didn’t stop her. She just tossed over her shoulder, “To church!” and jammed the hat over her wave-less hair.
She heard him bark a command, though it wasn’t at her. The words, in fact, didn’t even process until she saw two men take shape from the mounting shadows and fall into step behind her. Her heart pinched. This was the life her father had built for them, a life where she couldn’t even dash down the block to church without needing bodyguards to flank her.
It was no wonder peace had proven so elusive.
She didn’t slow for her new shadows, tried not to think about them back there—at least until the stone façade of Holy Guardian Angel loomed ahead of her…and a whistle pierced the twilight.
She froze, her breath balling up in her chest. There was nowhere to take cover, nowhere to run. Her gaze flicked every direction in search of the lookout who’d just announced her presence, for the gunman who’d be raising his Betsy and mowing her down.
She saw only a little old man tottering down the sidewalk after a dog who was dragging a dropped leash. He whistled again, and the dog barked and returned to him.
