Total pages in book: 37
Estimated words: 36268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 181(@200wpm)___ 145(@250wpm)___ 121(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 181(@200wpm)___ 145(@250wpm)___ 121(@300wpm)
Every night for ten years, I pretended to sleep while she whispered to this Father she doesn’t ever lose faith in, asking Him again and again to keep me safe on the track. Heal my burdens. Soften my heart.
And...fuck.
The more I remember all the things my wife has done for her, the more I’m starting to realize just how much I’ve taken her for granted. How much I’ve fucked up. And how, since I’ve completely left nothing to lose...
“I don’t...” My voice cracks against bathroom tiles that have absorbed worse confessions. “I don’t even know if You’re real.”
The words echo in the silence.
“But she believes in You. Talks to You like You actually care about broken things. About people who destroy everything they touch.”
My hands fist against cold linoleum.
“She thinks You can fix anything. Anyone. Even someone like me.” The laugh that escapes sounds like breaking glass. “So if You’re listening...”
What do I even ask for? Forgiveness? Another chance? The ability to rewrite ten years of emotional negligence?
“Please...help me not be this anymore. Whatever this is. This thing that takes love and turns it into ownership. That takes devotion and calls it duty.”
I wait for hours, but I don’t hear anything that constitutes like a miracle.
Morning comes, my eyes are bloodshot, but there’s just radio silence.
And yet...for the first time in so many years, the silence doesn’t feel empty.
It feels like space for something new to grow.
DAY 6.
I don’t go to her street.
Instead, I find myself at the market where Signora Chavez struggles with bags that look heavier than she is. She’s remarkably spry for her years, but also extremely conservative in how she wouldn’t even consider attending church if she’s not wearing her Sunday best.
“Let me help you,” I say in Sicilian, reaching for her bags.
She squints up at me, recognition dawning. Without the Armani armor, I’m just another man on the street.
“Little Aivan?” Her voice carries forty years of watching me grow up. “My goodness, what ever has happened? You look very, very troubled.”
“Life,” I say, taking the groceries, to which the older woman only rolls her eyes.
“Bah! Life happens to everyone, but most people don’t look like they’ve been dragged behind a truck.” She studies my face with eyes that have seen everything. “Come. You need coffee.”
Her apartment smells like breakfast and the good old days, its walls adorned with framed family photos and diplomas. She invites me to sit in her tiny kitchen while rain begins to fall outside, and I do as she says.
In our world, the utmost respect is given to little old Sicilian women who remember when you were knee-high to a grasshopper.
“You have been the talk of our little town lately. Have you gotten into a fight with your wife?”
“We’ve never—”
Signora Chavez cuts me off with a sage nod. “Ah.”
If it were anyone but her, I would have bristled at the wealth of innuendo she’s managed to inject in that single syllable, and that’s me being nice.
“That’s why she left you then.”
I can’t help stiffening. “Scusa?”
“A couple that never fights is the first sign of trouble, giuvini. It means there is no communication, no real trust.”
Ah, I am almost tempted to say back. If this is Signora Chavez thinking she’s being helpful instead of simply rubbing salt on a viciously bleeding wound, then I do not want to know how she is when she’s not being nice.
“But all is not lost.”
She says this reluctantly though, so that doesn’t exactly give me much hope.
“You can still do something about it, if you know who to ask.”
I should have known. Really should have known. Signora Chavez used to be like all the grandmothers of our town. Went to church faithfully every Sunday, prayed the rosary every morning, and went back to doing crime for the rest of the week simply because it was the life they were born to.
Everything changed, however, when my own father came to know God. Since then, he and Serena have not stopped talking about him, and faith spread throughout our little town like an epidemic. It terrified me the first time, to be honest, hearing a once-hardened gangster like my father speaking boldly of his faith.
And yet...
“God doesn’t allow divorce,” I hear myself say. “So why is it that my father is arranging the end of my marriage?”
“God also says that we must take care of ourselves because our bodies, and that includes our hearts, are His temple. Don’t you think there is more than one way for a marriage to end without divorce?”
Signora Chavez gets up to pack me a paper bag full of freshly baked bread, just like she used to do in the years Olivio and I hadn’t a mother to look after us. “Take it with you before you go. All bones and heartbreak do not look good on you, Aivan. And if you insist on working things out on your own, without His help, well...I hear there’s this very nice, very handsome lawyer Sienah has been meeting lately?”