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Ghetti is not the sentimental type, though, nor would he ever consider something small like feelings. I’ve known him since we were kids. Our mothers are friends. We went to school together. That’s how we met Sebastiano. His parents split, and neither of them wanted him, so he got stuck with his grandparents. Some kids were beating him up on the playground. I stepped in. Ghetti did after, even though he took the credit. And just like his old man, sometimes he acted like Sebastiano owed us for that day. A loan he could never repay.
I still wasn’t sure why I’d done it. Stepped in to help Sebastiano. Probably because it meant I could kick those kids’ asses and have a valid reason for it.
Pops is at the window, doing his thing with the bread, while women and men hustle behind him to keep the wheels of the business turning. He happens to look up, and our eyes meet.
I’m not a reflection of my father. I’m tall where he’s on the shorter side. I’m wide where he’s slender. His hair is lighter and so are his eyes.
The differences between me and Michele run even deeper than skin, though. That’s only the surface. Where it really counts, we’re night and day.
The only thing that keeps us in the same room at the same time is my ma.
He meets my eyes and doesn’t look away. Not like most men. He rises to the challenge he sees and throws it back at me. We stay locked, neither of us looking away, until Ghetti nudges me with his elbow.
“He never has a problem until you come around,” he says.
“How would you know?” Sebastiano says, stepping up to my other side. “You only come around here when Lilo does. And we all know Michele’s real problem is with you.”
Ghetti shrugs. “A man doesn’t have the right to tell another man how to feed his family.”
“When that man has the potential to steal food out of the other man’s mouth, he does.”
“Fuck you,” Ghetti says. “Are we going in or what? Carine likes me.”
Carine, my ma, is the only reason Ghetti is allowed in our house. In Michele’s house—Valentino’s—he’s not. Neither is his old man or anyone he does business with. Pops doesn’t tolerate shit. And that’s what he considers Ghetti, his old man, and anyone they associate with. He keeps a shotgun in the bakery, ready to go to war if they would ever try to step foot in his business.
“Carine tolerates you because your ma is a sweet woman,” Sebastiano says from behind me. Then he calls her the equivalent of a doormat in Sicilian. Ghetti’s old man is not a poster boy for a good husband.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Ghetti says, not understanding the language. “Hey!” He grabs Sebastiano by the shoulder, yanking him back.
“Get your fucking hands off me, Spaghetti,” Sebastiano says, and I can see the fire in his eyes to retaliate. He has it in him, but it’s almost like he’s too tired to contend with the bullshit, so he always backs down.
“You both coming in or what?” I don’t wait for them.
Our house is next to the bakery, and I take the steps two at a time until I reach the door. Mostly everything inside is like it was when I was a kid. Flowered wallpaper. Relics from Italy, like an old cross, religious statues, even the dark wooden bedroom sets. And I have no doubt that it’ll forever smell like garlic and tomatoes, along with freshly baked bread. We lived with my father’s parents until they died. Then it became my parents’ place. Ma usually helps with the bakery, but on certain days of the week, she teaches music to troubled students.
The school recommends them to her. Kids who act out but show musical potential. Ma says music is a venue for them to place their misplaced feelings. To work them out through artistic expression.
She taught me how to play the piano as a kid, but that’s all it ever was to me. Messing around.
Ma’s ma is shuffling her feet through the house. She recently moved in with us. After my grandpa Daniele died, she decided to go back to Armenia to be close to some relatives she has there, but then she decided to come back and live with us. She gives me a smile and a wink and heads into the kitchen.
I follow the sound of ma speaking in hushed tones. She’s in what she likes to call her music parlor. Ghetti and Sebastiano’s footsteps echo behind me, but fade when the piano’s keys start to make noise. The song starts off serious and intense. I have a feeling it’s going to stay that way.
Right before I make it to the door, a voice barely rises above the notes. The sound’s stripped down, nothing but it and the piano. But it sounds like it’s coming from the speakers of a radio. It’s fragile, like the singer is purging her soul, but gaining strength as she releases whatever it is she’s hiding from the world. The voice is mature. Too mature for a student.
Maybe ma has an old friend over.
A blast of light from the windows hits me square in the eyes as I reach the doorway. I blink to recover from it, and as the spots fade, I’m shocked into stillness. Ghetti runs into my back, but I don’t move.
A girl is sitting at the piano next to ma, who works her magic on the keys. Ma is giving her an outlet through the notes. The girl is taking it, singing them to life.
It seems like she’s singing to save her next breath.
My skin is tight and cold from the sound of it. From everything she’s giving. Even as something warm rushes through my chest. A surge of my own blood. I’ve never noticed it before, but I do at that moment.
Through the sheer curtains in the room, light filters in, and it illuminates the piano and the two women sitting at it. I’ve known one of them my entire life.
The other one is a stranger, but as I stand there and listen, she’s introducing herself to me.
