The Fifth Gospel(218)

            “Are we going to live at Mamma’s house?” he asks.

            My throat closes. “Sweetheart, no.”

            I feel broken. I lift him in my arms and squeeze almost as hard as I can.

            “Then why are we here?”

            There is no answer he can understand. So I lift him in the air and point to all our favorite places. I remind him of the things we’ve done here, the adventures we’ve had. The way we used to sit in the shade of the trees below us, throwing pieces of old bread to the birds, watching people drop letters into the big yellow box at the post office and imagining the countries they were destined for. The night we climbed to the top of Saint Peter’s to watch the fireworks for John Paul’s silver jubilee, and we saw John Paul sitting in his own window, watching them, too. The winter morning we came out of the Annona, the village supermarket, and our plastic bag broke and the eggs cracked all over the street and Peter started to cry until—a miracle—for the only time in his life, it started to snow. Remember, Peter, that magical feeling. How, in an instant, every particle of sadness can be swept away by the smallest gift of God’s love. He watches us. Cares for us. Never, ever abandons us.

            God bless Mona, she comes to my rescue. When I am empty and exhausted, when Peter wants to hear more stories but my memories are growing darker and darker, she begins to tell him about when we were young. About what I was like as a boy.

            “Mamma,” he asks, “did Babbo used to be good at soccer?”

            Mona smiles. “Oh, very good.”

            “Even as good as Simon?”

            The muscles under her eyes tighten. “Peter, in every way, he was better.”

            I carry my son back downstairs. He frowns when he sees the apartment again. He tucks himself in bed, then gets up. He closes the closet and checks that it’s really shut. We pray. Mona holds his hand, and somehow that’s enough. I turn out the light and see fingernails of moonlight reflecting in the wet of his eyes.

            “I love you,” I say.

            “I love you, too.”

            And for a second, my heart feels full again. Wherever this child is beside me, that’s where I will call home.



* * *



            MONA FOLLOWS ME BACK to the kitchen. She runs a hand through her hair. She stands and takes down one of the cups from the cabinet, filling it with water from the tap. All this time, she doesn’t speak.

            Finally, she puts her cup down and sits beside me, wresting my hands from an open Bible that happens to be there. An open Bible she has been reading to our son.

            “Alex, what are you about to do?”

            “I can’t talk about it.”

            “It’s not your job to save Simon. Do you understand that?”

            “Please,” I say. “Don’t.”

            She nudges the Bible back at me. “Look in there, and tell me something. Who saves Jesus?”

            I stare at her, wondering what she can possibly mean.

            “Show me,” she says, “the page where he wins his trial.”

            “You know he doesn’t w . . .”

            My words trail off. But she waits. She says nothing. She wants to hear me speak those words.

            “Jesus,” I say, “doesn’t win his trial.”

            Her voice is quieter now. “Then show me where everything ends happily ever after because his brother comes to save him.”