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Three
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins,
from “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day”
Astrangled cry stuck in her throat and forced Sabina awake. Her chest heaved, her breath came out in a panicked gasp. Images of dreams still flickered in front of her eyes like a silent film—except those sorts of images weren’t allowed on the silver screen. Death, everywhere she looked. Mama, in her old bed at the sanitorium, unable to be roused no matter how Sabina shook her. Sweet Serafina, lifeless and blue and limp. Papa, imagined bullet holes spilling his blood onto the street. Little G, charging into the fray and jerking to a halt as the bullets found him too.
Lorenzo, a dagger through his heart, gasping and stumbling her way. “How could you? This is all your fault.”
She pushed herself up against her headboard and pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. Lorenzo was always right.
She blinked into the half-darkness of dawn until the dull gray images of her room replaced the ones still trying to flash before her. She willed those others to go away, leave her alone. They weren’t real—mostly. She really had seen Mama like that, but she’d eventually woken up. Serafina, though…she hadn’t. But God willing, Sabina would never see Papa or G taken down.
She crossed herself against the thought, then again to try to ward off the shame when another face flashed before her. Roman. Despite her prayer, the shame only built, crashing over her again and again with each memory that pounded through her mind. She hadn’t meant to like him. She hadn’t meant for that first walk to turn into a kiss, or to tumble headlong into love. A week ago, she hadn’t meant to let his hands wander where they shouldn’t have.
But it had been so long since she felt wanted, needed, so long since anyone but her parents had told her she was beautiful. For three years, her soul had been wandering in a desert, and no one had ever offered her a sip of water. Even Lorenzo’s affection seemed to have dried up since he proposed. Then Roman had come, and it had felt like he let loose a whole clear spring upon her.
She’d known, probably, that she was doing wrong, sinning against Lorenzo and herself and the Lord. But it had been such a new sin that it tasted sweet on her lips, made her blood tingle in her veins. She’d been too weak to resist it. Even now, the memories were fresh and bright—the rush of slipping out of the house when her parents thought she was asleep, going over to Mary’s and putting on one of the new short dresses, painting her lips a bright, vibrant red. The thrill of meeting Roman and Mary’s beau Robert without chaperones. They had laughed the whole time as they made their way to one of Papa’s speakeasies, fronted by a millinery.
She was a monster. Perhaps it was a blessing that Serafina wasn’t here to see what a terrible person her sister had become.
Sabina tossed back the covers and jumped out of bed, needing to wash away the dried sweat and fresh guilt. Sidestepping the squeaky board by her door, she tiptoed out into the hall and down to the water closet, running her fingers along the papered wall so she could find her way without bumping into the stand with the oil lamp. The harsh glow of the bathroom’s electric light forced the truth upon her as she looked in the mirror.
She was a wreck.
Bracing her hands on the porcelain of the pedestal sink, she stared into the mirror. She always took care with her appearance—she’d thought she owed it to her family, to Lorenzo, to try to be as pretty as Mama. But what had it ever gotten her?
Lorenzo had only kissed her once. Once, in the three years of their engagement. On her eighteenth birthday, the day he proposed. She’d been floating on a cloud that day when he asked to go for a walk, when she’d seen the light in his eyes. She’d hoped…dreamed of marrying him for two years, since the first time he’d held her hand and she realized he didn’t intend to join the priesthood.
She had always wanted a chance to be more to him than his best friend, but she hadn’t ever dared to imagine that it would happen. Surely it was a grave sin to think such thoughts about someone God had called to serve Him, right?
But then, it had all seemed to come true. Whenever he was home from college, he would drop by to visit, take her on walks, hold her hand. Then that day, he slipped a ring onto her finger and kissed her. She’d thought she could fly straight to heaven with the wings it gave her. She’d come rushing home to tell Serafina, and they’d giggled long into the night, planning the wedding and basking in the joy.
Then the flu had come. Serafina had died. And Lorenzo… He wasn’t there. Even when he was with her, he wasn’t the friend he had always been, much less the fiancé she needed. He was always a foot away, rarely taking her hand, never kissing her again. He claimed he needed to study instead of drawing her into long conversations like he always used to do. Time he once would have spent at her side he instead spent at daily Mass or adoration.
He would honor the promise he made to her and marry her this August, now that he’d passed the bar, because he was above all a man of his word. But he couldn’t have made it any clearer that he regretted choosing her over the Church.
He didn’t want her. To make it worse, her family didn’t need her anymore. When Prohibition began, the money started pouring in. They’d hired a cook, a maid—people to do all the things Sabina and Mama used to do. Papa said it was so they could enjoy the high life that they’d earned.
Useless, that’s what she’d become. No wonder she’d tripped so happily into being used by that Judas.
She shuddered, her stomach threatening to heave.
She ought to have just stayed in her block of ice, let it carry her out to an arctic sea. Better to feel nothing for the rest of her life, to be superfluous, than to be the cause of all this pain.
Tears burned again, but Sabina squeezed her eyes shut against them. She yanked a washcloth from the towel rack and bent over the sink to wash her face. When she straightened again, she jumped to see a second reflection in the mirror.
“Mama! I didn’t hear you come in.”
Mama gave her a soft, tired smile, and smoothed down Sabina’s sleep-frazzled hair. “Bad dreams?”
