Russo Blood Debt Chapter 11
Middle Village
The plot is in Middle Village. Queens.
He could’ve put me at Green-Wood. The Russos own a mausoleum there. Marble. Eighteen-eighties. The old man, both his parents, the brother — all in there.
He didn’t.
He buried me in a single plot under a maple tree in a parish cemetery off Metropolitan Avenue. Then he bought the plot next to mine. Cash. Forty-two thousand dollars. The week he sold the brownstone.
Matteo tells me on the drive in from Teterboro.
“Forty-two grand for a hole in the ground.”
“Forty-two grand for a hole in the ground next to yours, principessa.”
I don’t answer.
He parks two blocks down. Three soldati go in first to sweep. I sit in the back of the car and put my gloves on.
Black coat. Hair up. The Vitali ring on my right hand — old gold, a snake eating its own tail, on the finger every made man in New York knows to look at.
Matteo opens the door.
“He’s there. Alone. Since six A.M.”
It’s three.
I walk in.
—
He’s on the grass. Cross-legged. Bottle in his hand.
The headstone says Serafina Russo. Beloved wife. That’s it. They didn’t list Aurora. She wasn’t real enough to bury.
Dante looks fifty. He’s thirty-four.
I stop in the shadow of the maple. Matteo and the men hold the perimeter, out of his eyeline.
He’s talking to the dirt.
“— cara, I sold the Maserati today. I know. You always said it sounded like a leaf blower. You were right. You were always right about the loud things.”
He drinks.
“Found a hairband of yours in the glove compartment. Pulled over. Just sat there a while.”
A pause.
“She would have been three months old this week. Cara. I keep doing the math. Three months. Six months. First steps. First word. I keep walking past the room we set up. The door’s still open. I can’t close it.”
He drinks again. Coughs.
“I had her name picked out, you know. Costanza. My mother’s mother. I was going to ask you the night you went into labor. I had it in my head all afternoon.”
A pause.
“I forgot to ask. Cara. I had it in my head and I forgot.”
He drinks.
“I think about that a lot. That I never even — I never even asked you what you wanted to call her.”
Long silence.
“I bet you had one. I bet you had a name and you weren’t going to tell me till she was out, because you knew I’d argue. I always argued.”
He laughs, small, broken.
“Cara. Whatever you picked, you were right. I wouldn’t have known the difference.”
“I should have asked.”
I take one step.
The leaf snaps.
He whips around.
The bottle goes over. Doesn’t break. Vodka soaks the grass.
He sees me.
He doesn’t move. His mouth opens once, like he forgot how breathing works.
Then, very small:
“Cara.”
I don’t say anything.
“Cara, I’m — I know I’m drunk — I —”
“It’s me, Dante.”
He gets to his knees.
“You’re — you didn’t —”
“No.”
A sound comes out of him I don’t have a name for. Half laugh. Half something else. He’s on his hands and knees on my grave.
“You didn’t die — Madonna — cara —”
He tries to crawl to me.
Matteo steps out from the maple. Vincenzo and Beppe behind him.
Dante stops.
He sees the cut of the suits. The way the men stand. He’s looked at men who stand like that his whole life.
The body knows before the brain.
He looks back at me.
The sound dies in his throat.
“Sera.”
“Sì.”
I pull off my right glove.
I don’t say anything.
I just hold my hand at my side.
The ring catches the October light.
Old gold. A snake eating its own tail.
His face does something I have never seen a face do. It does not go white. It goes gray. Like someone unplugged him.
He knows the ring.
Every made man in the five boroughs knows the ring. They learn it the year they get straightened out. You see that ring, you walk the other way. The woman wearing it speaks to you, you answer with both hands showing. You cross the woman wearing that ring, her father buries your father.
Only one man in New York gives that ring to a daughter.
Dante’s mouth shapes a word. No sound.
Then sound.
“Vitali.”
“Sì.”
“No.”
“Sì, Dante.”
“No, no, no — Madonna —”
He’s a smart man and he just did the math three years late.
“Your father is —”
“Don Lorenzo. Yes.”
“Madonna santa madre di Dio.”
He puts both hands flat on the dirt like the ground is tilting under him.
“He never came to the wedding.”
“No.”
“Three years married. Not once.”
“He didn’t think you were worth the trip.”
Dante closes his eyes.
“He told you not to marry me.”
“He said you’d eat me alive.”
“He was —”
“Yes.”