The temperature in the room felt cooler. He shrugged off his blazer and unbuttoned his shirt. As he walked into the bathroom he scratched his jaw. It itched. Unlike Gio he could never stand facial hair. He shaved regularly, and if he forgot his skin became irritated with bumps. Lorenzo removed his shirt. He stood naked before the mirror and sink. He picked up his razor. The shaving cream can was empty. Lorenzo knelt and opened the cabinet. He reached inside and pulled out his bag. Marietta’s makeup bag fell over. Lorenzo tossed his to the sink. He righted her bag and then paused. Countless times he caught her in the bathroom fiddling with her cosmetic bag.
“
Why are you constantly with that damn bag?” Lorenzo asked. He reached around her to pluck the bar of soap from its dish, and then turned to go to the shower.
“This is my magic bag, baby. It’s where I keep all my secrets. How else do you think I stay so beautiful for you?”
He glanced over at her and she removed her lipsticks and then blew him a kiss. He shook his head smiling.
“Bag of secrets? Che palle,” he chuckled. “That’s where you keep them women things.”
“What women things?”
“For your period. Those things.”
“I swear, Lorenzo, you act like a cave man sometimes,” she laughed.
“Bag of secrets,” he said. Lorenzo stood. He unzipped the top. Inside were tubes of crèmes and lipsticks. He turned the bag over and dumped its contents in the sink. A circular plastic disc was one of the last items to drop out. He studied it.
What the fuck did he know about birth control pills and how they were packaged?
The thing looked odd enough to be something. Was it contraception? He flipped it over. The foil was a circular wheel of broken capsule slots. Lorenzo flipped the compact open. It was a prescription in his wife’s name. The date was just under a month.
“Lo? What are you doing?” Marietta entered through the bathroom door as she tied the front of her robe. She looked to the sink first and then to his hand.
“What is this thing?” he asked.
She turned and walked out of the bathroom. Lorenzo blinked. He was surprised by her immediate retreat. He went after her. She was by the bed twisting her wedding ring over and over.
“Marie?”
“I can explain. I swear!” she yelled at him.
“Why are you yelling?” he asked her.
Her bottom lip began to quiver and her eyes pooled with tears. She stood there twisting her ring over and over on her finger.
“Explain it. Start talking!” he said.
“I-I-I-took those pills before. Not after,” she answered. “And, I tried to tell you before. But you wouldn’t listen. Then we talked about it and I changed my mind. So I didn’t need them anymore. So I didn’t take them.”
“You took them before what? You don’t need what?” he asked. He threw the packet at the wall. “Tell me what they are.”
Marietta put her hands in her hair. She pulled her hair at the root. “I made a mistake.”
“Did you lie to me? DID YOU LIE TO ME?” he shouted loud enough to raise his mother from the dead. Her silence fileted him. It was like she’d taken a blade and carved out his heart. “Did you? DID YOU LIE TO ME?”
“Yes! I lied.”
The confession was not what he wanted. It was not something he was prepared to hear. She could have lied to him again, and he would have convinced himself that it was the truth. He could forgive so many things, but not her betrayal. Not this betrayal. She made a fool of him.
“You did this. You did this,” he said in disbelief. He took a threatening step toward her. He could see his hands wrapped around her throat. He could actually feel her gasping and begging for life as he squeezed the lie out of her mouth once more. But her weeping turned his rage inward. Just like his mother, when the hurt became insufferable, she wept and made him feel guilty about his own pain.
Just like his mother.
Of course she tricked him. Of course it was a lie. No one could love him completely. Her tears were further sullied by her pathetic apologies and garbled excuses. He could hear none of it. Marie yelled and screamed at him while crying. He went deaf. He heard nothing. She didn’t want his child. She never did. And she’d do anything to keep from having it.
“Lorenzo, please forgive me!” Marietta wept. She reached for him but her touch had the adverse affect. It unleashed the fury he kept caged. He grabbed her by both arms and threw her to the bed. And then he turned and destroyed everything in the room he could lift, throw, and rip from the walls. The chair to her vanity went crashing through their window outside. It landed on a car that sounded a car alarm.
“No! No! Stop it!” Marietta screamed. She ran to him to grab him and he threw her off him. She hit the dresser. Her head landed with a loud smack. She nearly lost consciousness. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care. She crawled away. Lorenzo smashed his fist into the wood dresser drawer, and nearly put it through it. He shoved the heavy tallboy and it too went crashing to the floor, barely missing her. Marietta screamed. She kept screaming because her heart hurt too bad to fight back.
Lamps, clocks, even the television was hurled at the wall.
“How could you fucking do this to me? How could you fucking do this?” he shouted.
Marietta put her hands to her ears and closed her eyes, begging for him to listen, to forgive. Praying that she could find a way out, but realizing she was trapped.
**
“What was that?” Mirabella turned from the mirror and stopped braiding her hair. The car alarm blared. Giovanni sat up in bed. They listened for the noise again. A woman’s screams could clearly be heard. Next came pounding on their bedroom door.
Mirabella fled to the kids’ room connected to theirs. Giovanni was up and putting on his robe. He was half dressed when he opened the door with his gun in his hand.
“What is it?” Giovanni asked.
“Boss, it’s Lorenzo and Marietta. They’re fighting. We can’t get into the room.”
“Fighting?” Giovanni asked in confusion. He stepped out into the hall where the screams and shouting could be clearly heard. “It sounds like they’re going to war.”
Mirabella heard Leo. The twins were still sleep in their bed, but Eve was sitting up now looking around. She locked eyes with her mother and pulled back her covers. She was going to get out of bed and come to her. “Stay there, baby. Mommy will be right back.” Mirabella raced from the room. In the hall she could hear Lorenzo’s shouting clearly, and they were on the hall beneath them.
“What is it? What’s going on?” Zia asked her.
“Watch the kids,” Mirabella said. She went after Giovanni and hoped to reach her sister’s room in time.
**
“
Smettila di mentire e inizia a raccontarmi la verità!
Stop telling me you’re sorry. You’re a fucking liar!” he shouted.
“I didn’t do it to hurt you. I stopped taking the pills over a week ago. I just threw them away. I tried to explain it to you.”
There was nothing left in the room to hit or kick. Lorenzo started to get dressed. He put on his underwear and pants. The men were demanding the door be opened. He ignored them. Marietta found the strength to stand.
“Please don’t leave me,” she said softly. “We have to… talk… work it out. Right, baby? We can figure it out”
“
Vaffanculo
!” he said.
“Lorenzo, please!” she pulled at his arm.
“Get the fuck off of me!” he yanked away.
“No!” She panicked. She jumped on his back. Marietta wrapped her arms around his neck as tight as she could to choke him. To make him come down to his knees, or at the very least stop him. He was too tall and too strong. She didn’t know what else to do. He struggled to get her off him. He swung left and right. He finally got a hold of her when the door crashed open.
Marietta shrieked and screamed to the top of her lungs.
“What the hell is going on in here?” Giovanni demanded. The men took the question as an order and charged in to break up the fight. Lorenzo must have resisted throwing her off him to keep from hurting her. But Giovanni couldn’t tell if his theory was correct by the look of the destroyed room. The way Marietta screamed and hit at her husband, he again was curious over who was attacking who. Everything but the bed was either shattered or broken.
“No! No! Noooooo!” Marietta screamed like a mad woman. The woman wouldn’t stop screaming. Mirabella pushed past him. He didn’t even know she entered the room. She grabbed her crying sister, who was being restrained. Marietta clung to her when released.
“Take her out of here, Bella. Now!” Giovanni ordered.
Mirabella nodded. She had to help Marietta walk. The woman wailed so loudly that they all believed her pain to be physical. And that further outraged Giovanni. He grabbed Lorenzo and punched him in the face. He slammed his fist into his face twice more before driving him to his knees. He pulled him by the hair. “Did you fucking hit your wife? Did you?”
Lorenzo shook his head no. Giovanni let him go. His cousin fell forward on his hands and spat blood. “Out! Everyone, get the fuck out!” Giovanni shouted.
The men left and closed the door behind them. He immediately turned on Lorenzo. “Convince me that you aren’t insane enough to beat your fucking wife in my home!” Giovanni shouted.
“I didn’t hit her!” Lorenzo said. “I was trying to get the fuck away from her!”
“That’s not what I saw when I walked in. Look at this fucking place?” Giovanni kicked the splintered wood.
“It’s personal, Gio. Stay out of it.” Lorenzo staggered to his feet.
“I will not! I will not have you fucking hitting your wife!”
“I didn’t!” Lorenzo shouted him down.
“Then tell me what I walked in on.”
“It’s private!” Lorenzo sat on the bed. “It’s my private hell,” he said.
“None of your fucking business!”
Giovanni wiped his hand down his face. He stepped over what looked like a dresser drawer. He sat on the bed. “Tell me or leave my house. Push me and I’ll make the boys get it out of you. Do you want to confess your private hell to them?”
“She’s not pregnant.” Lorenzo said. “And don’t worry, I was leaving your fucking house.” He got up and went to the closet and brought out his suitcase.
“You went crazy because she can’t make babies?” Giovanni asked.
“Not can’t. She won’t,” Lorenzo said.
“I don’t understand?” Giovanni said.
“She’s not pregnant because she doesn’t want to have my child. She’s been taking birth control pills behind my back,” Lorenzo said.
“You sure about this?” Giovanni asked.
“I caught her lying. I… last night… fuck,” he said shaking his head. “Everything I am, I touch, it all turns to shit.”
“Get it together. She’s your damn wife. Figure it out.”
“Fuck figuring it out! I’m done!” Lorenzo dropped several suits in the suitcase and zipped it. “I can’t look at her. I need to be away from her, from all of you,” he said.
Giovanni had to agree. What else was there to say? If his Bella had done this thing behind his back he wouldn’t know what to do with the betrayal. And then it dawned on him how he recovered from sin in his marriage. “Do you remember what you told me when I found out that Mirabella had run away with another man and kept little Evie from me?” Giovanni asked.
“No.”
“You told me to not let my anger cost me the woman I love.”
“That was Domi, not me.” Lorenzo said.
Giovanni frowned. “I don’t remember if it was you or Domi, but the advice was solid.” He pointed a finger at Lorenzo. “I didn’t believe that you two belonged together. I thought you married her to piss me off, or to manipulate me, or maybe because you finally wised up and found someone to love.”
“I have loved her! What did it get me?” Lorenzo said.
“Maybe. Maybe not. She lied, she betrayed you, but she is your wife. And that bond you only make once. Forever. Be careful where anger takes you. Never close doors in your marriage that you want to return through.”
“I’m leaving,” Lorenzo said.
“Go. Get over it. Then bring your ass back to deal with it. She’s your wife. I don’t care if you married her under a full moon, on the back of a donkey, you married her. That’s not going to change! We clear?”
Lorenzo looked him in the eye. He shook his head and finished packing. Giovanni walked out.
**
“I have to go to him. I have to talk to him.” Marietta paced the floor. She twisted and turned her wedding ring.
“What exactly does he know?” Catalina asked. “Does he know about what Shae said about the birth control? About Carlo?”
“Yes!” Marietta shouted. “Oh God. I don’t think so. He came home last night and asked me if I was lying to him about taking birth control. So they told him. My marriage is over because of lies!”
“He doesn’t know,” Mirabella said. “You talked to him last night and he was fine. You said he found your birth control pills this morning. If he knew, trust me they would have come for Giovanni last night,” Mirabella said. “Giovanni is with him. He’ll calm him.”