“Attraction,” he said.
“For sure,” I said. “But that was only part of it. I knew I was in love with you. I knew the connection between us wasn’t normal, or perhaps standard for most people. Even back then, I knew that having babies with you would be the highest point of our love, because we’d create them together.”
Brando didn’t reply to my last comment, which meant he was thinking over my words. I was thinking over them too.
I would have given everything up, even the ballet, to have children with him back then. Looking back, he had been right to persuade me to not quit, even for marriage. It was an experience I’d learned to cherish. When Mia was old enough to understand, I could share it with her. Tell her stories and perhaps dance with her, if she enjoyed it, which she seemed to.
We started walking again. We still had a few stops ahead of us. Since we were visiting mostly Italians, the visits were not short.
Brando stood close to me as we made the deliveries, still quiet, watching. He made some of the men uneasy; he had a silent fierceness about him that was hard to overlook.
We ended up with nothing more than I had before though. I felt nothing but appreciation as I delivered each basket, the men thanking me over and over. All but the Italian boxer Brando and Rocco had sponsored, Primo Bruno. He wasn’t rude, but he wasn’t friendly either. Ever since he’d been brought back to Italy to recuperate, he’d been in a deep depression. The only one he didn’t mind talking to was Nino. I had a feeling it was because they drank together.
The situation was incredibly frustrating, and I found myself in deep contemplation on our walk back.
How to even find someone who didn’t seem to exist but did?
“Dhat?” Mia used her hands to gesture a lot. She didn’t even point most of the time, she turned her wrist over, using her palm to gesticulate to whatever piqued her curiosity.
Brando and I glanced at what she’d motioned to, and then at each other.
The Winkelmatten playground. All the play equipment was covered in snow.
“Eeee!” she screamed, wiggling to be let down. She was as slippery as an eel.
Brando set her down, but before he could catch her sleeve, she started to run, and slipped. She fell, her face coming extremely close to the snow packed ground.
I sucked in a breath and went to pick her up, but Brando reached her first. He scooped her up before she even had a chance to cry, holding her close. A second or two passed, enough time for her to realize that she’d hit the ground, hard, and then she started to wail.
I knew she wasn’t truly hurt; her layers had protected her from most of the impact. Kissing her hands, I checked to make sure she hadn’t skinned her palms or hit her nose. She hadn’t. She was more scared than anything.
She kept going back and forth between us, wanting us both to hold her at the same time.
Since we could afford to, Brando and I grinned at each other when her head was turned. She’d cry, then stop, glancing at us, and then start up again, wanting the attention. This tactic worked especially well with herpapà, and she knew it.
He was in so much trouble.
“Come on, my baby,” Brando coaxed in soft Italian. “Daddy will take you to play at the park.”
Mia looked at it dubiously, blaming it for making her fall. She shook her head and buried her face in his neck.
“Daddy won’t let you fall again.” He started to walk toward it and she sucked in a breath, holding on to his sleeve tighter. “It will not hurt you. Daddy is stronger than this.” He waved a hand at it. “I will protect you.”
Once he started clearing the snow off and brought her down the slide once or twice, she forgot all about her mishap and played in sheer childless abandon with her father.
“Mo! Mo! Mo!”
Brando had me sit on a swing after he’d cleared it, worried I’d fall like Mia did, so while he wore her out, I kept thinking about the mysterious traitor.
I kept feeling like the entire scheme was a lie somehow, but going deeper, I felt nothing but total conviction that there was a man out there who would stick a knife in my back, or my heart, as it were.
Who, dammit!
“There’s no use in stressing over it, baby.” Brando took the swing next to me, Mia on his lap. “What’s done is done. We’ll deal with it.”
Mia held on to the chains, kicking Brando with her legs, urging him to push. He did, and they swung back and forth, real slow.
“It feels like I’m missing something right in front of me!”
