The driver opened my door when we arrived at the concert. I helped Scarlett out, keeping her close to my side. It always felt like the air was sucked out of the room when she entered, and then released in a collective sigh as she moved.
I was never a proud man. Confident? Yeah, I was. But never proud. Unless she was on my arm. Then I was the proudest fucking man who had ever lived.
We were making it to our seats relatively easily, given the fact that everyone and their wives always wanted a chance to speak to Luca. He’d stop to shake a man’s hand or introduce Maggie Beautiful, his sons and their wives, to men and women he’d lost touch with, or some who remembered him all too well.
One man was brave enough to stop him and ask how Lothario was doing, though not without respect.
“Good.” Luca nodded. “Better than he was.”
“Terrible, just terrible! I heard a boating accident…”
Scarlett and I exchanged a secret look that could only be described as wry. We didn’t bring up the Venice party, not unless we had to.
Taking our seats, Scarlett turned to face me before the music began.
“You look tired, Brando.”
“I am,” I said. “Of this.”
It had been years of this—of this and that.
I wasn’t a man made for this life.
All the custom suits, the political play, the shaking of hands and the arranging of business meetings.
Thelet’s get together so our children can play!game.
The women attempting to sweeten up my wife for a chance to be invited to one of the Fausti palaces, their husbands wanting to play golf.
My son rushing to my father’s side, thinking him a hero.
Our friends who kept their distance, wary that my father would take his revenge if they came too close.
Where did our life go? Where was it going? One minute we were in a fixer upper in Louisiana, the next Paris, then Italy, and numerous places in between.
When would we ever go home?
Would our kids ever experience the life that we had?
Nights spent by the railroad tracks, old cabins in the woods, walking up and down Main Street after getting ice cream, or just the simplicity of living someplace small. Their last names not indicative of who they would become.
I wanted our children to grow up grounded, to know that the worth of man didn’t exist in his name alone but in the choices he made, and how he carried them out with his two hands.
I wanted Mia to know that whether she danced in the best schools the world had to offer, or in a small studio in Louisiana, the place didn’t make the heart of the dancer.
I wanted them all to know the downside of the Fausti name, as well as make friends who had no idea who they were in Italy.
I wanted to make love to my wife in our bed, in our old room, my face buried in her breasts, my seed flowing through me to her, creating another life from our love. In the same bed that she’d given herself to me the first time. I wanted her to look out of our bathroom window at the roses I’d planted for her. I wanted her to look out of her kitchen window, too, and see the reminder.
Always. I will always come for you and bring you home to me.Verrò sempre per te e ti porterò a casa.I’d vow it in blood in ten different languages if I knew them.
I wanted to hear Scarlett tell our children the story of how we met, of the things we did, even the separation. I wanted dinner at the diner on Fridays, movies on Saturday, eating ice cream on Sunday after church. I wanted quality time at Scarlett’s father’s cabins in the woods.
I wanted to take my children fishing in a boat their mamma had bought me that I never got to use, so I could tell them stories of their uncle, the one who was still my best friend, even though he’d been gone for much longer than I could even comprehend. That,that,was the true meaning of brotherhood.
I even wanted Italy in the summers, or at Christmas. Or other places we’d never been, or had, but our children hadn’t.
It wasn’t the destination but the climb, with the six—someday seven—of us all together. It had never been so clear to me as it was in that moment, the reason why the Poésy family had chosen to live in such a small town, when their funds could have put them in the finest accommodations anywhere in the world.
