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The incidents that led to their marriage and the need to flee to the United States...those weren’t details I was willing to share, especially not with someone who had a temporary place in my life.
My father was a smart man. The dirty paperboy from the wrong family had married above him, but it cost him dearly.
It cost his bride even more.
My mother never complained, but when certain songs played on the radio, or a certain food smell wafted by, the memories of her homeland lingered in her eyes just a bit longer than before.
Yes, my father was a smart man, but he was wrong. The sweet women, the ones with the easy smiles and the comforting embraces, those were the women who needed to be protected. They had no business in our world.
My father failed my mother once, and the only way he could protect her was to pull her away from the country and the people she loved. They made a new life for themselves in the United States, a life they never could have achieved at home in Italy, but they paid a high price to do so. My mother left everyone she loved behind while my father’s family eventually followed them to America. She never saw her own mother and father again.
And why? So she could sit home, night after night, wondering if her husband would live through another day? To one day get that phone call, on a day she least expected it - on a day when the sun was high in the sky and her husband and daughter were enjoying a simple ice cream cone together in an ice cream parlor they’d been to since she was born.
She cried for days.For weeks. She was strong in front of us, even when Dante and I told her she didn’t have to be, but we heard her cries at night, the muffled sounds through her bedroom door as she mourned the loss of the man she loved with all her heart.
Then one day, the tears dried up. She cooked her son’s favorite foods and sat down to dinner with her children. She squeezed her oldest son’s hand and told him she loved him. She kissed her daughter on the cheek and told her she was proud of her. We didn’t know then the effects Lilly’s trauma would have on her, but we’d find out.
Then she turned to me and grabbed my hand. She pulled my father’s gold insignia ring out of the pocket of her cardigan and pushed it into the palm of my hand.
My hand shook as I put the ring on, knowing that I’d never take it off, not until the day it was put on my own son’s finger - a day that would mean I was no longer there to share in his accomplishments - to welcome my grandchildren into the world, to watch them grow up, to help them learn to ride a bike or cheer on their first home run.
Instead, he’d have to do as I’d done - hold his mother, my wife, as she faced her worst fear - losing her son to the same violence that had claimed her husband’s life.
I would never put the woman I loved through that pain.
I looked into Suzanne’s warm gaze and made a promise to myself. I’d let her go before I ever caused her the same agony my mother still suffered.
I was on borrowed time. This woman had the potential to be everything Andre predicted - my kryptonite, my future...my heart.
Like the drying alcoholic promising himself one last night, I told myself it’d be okay. One weekend. Get what I needed. Then walk away.
My future depended on my strength.
I had no choice.
