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He gave her fingers a squeeze. “I hope so. We can pray so. I know you wish there was more you could do, but you’ve been a good friend. You have to leave her in the hands of God now.”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t sound any more at peace, and he knew why—because of the other shadow that had been plaguing her. Her father, and the accusations of murder. “Has he said anything more? Papa Manny, I mean, about O’Reilly’s investigation?”
Eyes glued to the pavement, Sabina shook her head. “It’s like the whole situation doesn’t even exist within the walls of our house. I tried broaching the subject a few times, just to see if there have been any developments, but he cuts me off. Says we aren’t to worry Mama with such nonsense.”
As if murder charges were nonsense. Lorenzo sighed. He’d have loved to have been able to offer her reassurances, but the truth was that Manny hadn’t told him anything about it either, even when he’d come to the office for official counsel. But then, that counsel had simply been a recommendation to Darrow. He’d been otherwise tightlipped, saying he wanted to keep Lorenzo out of it.
Suddenly he didn’t know whether to be grateful for that or not.
“I don’t know what else we can really do, Bean. Other than pray he didn’t do it, pray the law sees that, pray the investigation doesn’t interfere with the wedding.”
Her lips turned up just a bit. “And pray that I can stop feeling so guilty for focusing on the joy of that when there’s so much to be sorrowful and anxious about.”
“We’re meant to cling to the joys, though, whenever we can. There’s no need to feel guilty over it.” Wind danced up the street. Laughter rang out from somewhere nearby, and a dog yipped a friendly hello. Proving his point for him—that no matter what might befall them, life marched on. He let it speak its reassurance for a minute and then looked down at the book in her lap. “What’s that? G’s latest project?”
She grinned but shook her head and showed him the spine. It was the book of poetry he’d given her all those years ago. He didn’t know whether to smile or wince at all the “wisdom” he vaguely recalled tucking into the pages. “Ah. My annotated gift. Still working through that?”
“Yep.” She grinned and nestled closer. “Well, I have one left. You had a note on this one to read it with you, so I saved it for last. ‘That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection.’”
“My favorite. Not that I’ve read it in years, so we’ll see what insight I thought I could offer you. Have you been reading them out loud?”
“As directed.” She opened the book to where a piece of paper stuck out, covered in his scrawl. “Would you do the honors for this one?”
“Sure.” He positioned the book between them, then cleared his throat and found the first line. He paused to pull his glasses out of his pocket and position them on his nose. “Much better. Okay. ‘Cloud-puffballs, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air- / Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.…’”
He read the lines slowly, careful to observe the odd syntax of the phrases; no sentence ever seemed to behave normally, nouns turning into verbs and verbs to nouns, the breaks in the middle of each line usually also in the middle of a clause, sometimes even in a word. But despite that oddity, or perhaps because of it, the verses had always captured for him the glory of a vast nature. Ever changing, as Heraclitus always said. Man but one small, easily extinguished part.
“Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone! / Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark / Drowned….”
Each time he read this poem, he remembered studying it in school and realizing how true the words were. How quickly the flames of men—nature’s dearest, as Hopkins called them—were quenched by the seas of time.
In the world of Little Italy, it had seemed especially true, and all the more so now, with Isadora and Mary mourning the death of their mother and the abandonment of their father. With Joey lost to war. With all the pain they’d endured this summer thanks to their fathers’ world.
Father. Manny. He could see their faces, their smiles, the love in their eyes—but also the shadows there, always there. They were always looking around, over their shoulders, waiting for the next strike. All their lives, their fathers had striven to build something from the wobbling blocks of men’s vices, to profit from their darkest passions and purposes. But how often had Lorenzo seen mafiosi just like them snuffed out with a bullet, a blade, a rope, an angry hand? They knew it—it was a risk they accepted. But it wasn’t a risk Lorenzo ever wanted to take. He knew that anyone who lived that life also died an eternal death. Despair always waited around the corner, threatening to consume anyone who looked up and saw the infinite universe crashing over his speck of existence.
He had chosen life instead—to partake of something greater that would buoy him over those vicious seas. He, like Hopkins, clung to the comfort of the Savior who had the power to calm treacherous waves with a single word.
“…Enough! the Resurrection, / A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, | joyless days, dejection. / Across my floundering deck shone / A beacon, an eternal beam….”
Sabina’s fingers laced through his and gripped them tight. He thought she was even holding her breath. The sounds of the neighborhood faded, and he felt again what he had the first time he’d tasted the Body of Christ, the Presence that was usually only clear to him when he sat in a quiet church in adoration. He became aware of the settling of the Holy Spirit on this mafioso’s front stoop in Little Italy—the Breath of Heaven, here in the bowels of the earth. Light in the darkness.
“In a flash, at a trumpet crash, / I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and / This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond…”
Sabina’s voice joined him for the last words. “‘Is immortal diamond.’”
Silence beat its wings for several heavy seconds, the outside world held at bay by the intensity surrounding them. Sabina drew in a long breath. When she spoke, her whisper somehow compounded the quiet. “Wow. I get it.”
Lorenzo traced her finger with his thumb. “The poem?”
“The truth.” Her eyes slid shut, rapture written upon her face. “That was how I felt all those years, Enzo—all those dark things. Like I was nothing worth loving, nothing worth saving, nothing worth hearing.” Her fingers held tight to his. “I felt so alone. But I never was. Because Christ made himself nothing too. And that because of that…”
He could feel his pulse in every limb. “Because of that, we become what He is.”
“Mm.” She rested her head on his shoulder, her eyes still closed, her lips turned up in a beatific half-smile. “‘Away grief’s gasping, joyless days, dejection.’ I didn’t think, before all this, that they’d ever go away. I didn’t think they could. I thought…then I thought if ever they would, it would be because I made them. All my efforts just made the ship toss on the waves, but He was there still. Shining that beacon.”
“And because of Him, we get to be part of that Light too. The matchwood—lit by His fire, touched to the candle’s wick. We’re how His light is carried on. We’re what pierced the darkness.”
