Checkerboard White & Gray

And what had she done? She’d gotten up from the ground and opened the door, stood in the doorway like a stricken deer in the middle of the roadway. She’d gone to the kitchen and turned on the faucet to wash her hands and it wasn’t until the water was running clear in the bottom of the sink that she even realized—

Her silk dress is stiff and brown with blood. She thinks of asking one of Sonny’s men to bring her something else to wear, but just as soon thinks better of it. All this mess over nothing, all these men in her home tracking through the broken dishes, looking through her things. Sonny will take care of it, just as he’s taking care of her.

“He told me to do it.” There’s a long white cut on the palm of her hand. Connie rubs it in circles with her thumb. “He told me to do it — told me I’d be just like my father.”

She has to catch herself from calling him papa, or pop like the boys do, like Sonny and Fredo and Michael and Tom. She’s a married woman now, with a married woman’s concerns. She can’t go running to her father any more. She needs to keep these things within the home, to be patient with her husband and to let him alone, not to pick fights—

She is a widow now. She has no such concerns.

Sonny takes her hands in his, there at the kitchen table. The enveloping warmth of his palms makes her break into laughter and pull back, tears pricking up in her eyes again. It’s a banked heat, at least, banked and buried for her sake. Wheels are turning in her brother’s brain.

He presses his mouth to the crown of her head, the way he has a hundred times before. Maybe Sonny does that with all the women in his life, she wouldn’t know. It makes her feel like a girl again. Her hands flex and unflex in her lap.

(And what had she done? She’d put on her slippers, she’d found a cigarette and smoked it. She’d left the fearful red knife shivering in the bottom of the sink like an old plate. She’d rubbed at her eyes and felt the stickiness of new bruises. She’d listened for anything moving in the other room, for a thud or a groan or her husband’s curse, when there was nothing to be heard. And she’d thought, tonight he can wait.)

She’s a murderess. She’s a killer too, now, like Michael with his medals, like Sonny, like Tom with his briefcase. They don’t let women off for self-defense against their husbands, not with the best lawyer in the world on their side, not with the welts of her husband’s belt on her stomach and the bruise of his hand in the soft part of her upper arm. But her father is Vito Corleone, and her brother is Santino Corleone, and she has the bravest brothers in the world and the best lawyer there is. Maybe she’ll cool her heels in Sicily for a little while until the baby comes. It’s going to be a boy; she can tell.

(He’d been heavy on top of her, crushingly heavy, her head hit the wall and the kitchen knife slipped. All she’d wanted was something to put between him and her, something to make him sorry. Carlo could have killed her then. She wanted to make him sorry first.

What had she done after that? She’d smoked another of her husband’s cigarettes and then another, until her hands no longer trembled, and she’d taken up the telephone handset, and dialled. What had she done? Not mama, not pop, not Tom. She’d called for Sonny.)

“And what’s our father going to say when he finds out what I did, huh?” Her nose has begun to run. Good job, Connie. Well done, Connie, he’d have killed you too if you hadn’t done it first— what’s he going to do, praise her for killing the man who would have been the father of her children?

There had really been a time where to Connie her father knew everything. He knew everyone, remembered every face, her mother knew the year of every marriage and every baptism and Connie thought that one day she would too.

Sonny’s face is hard.

“You didn’t do it, Con, I did. I should’ve done it a year ago.”

“How could you have gotten there?” There’s a scream creeping in at the edges of her voice, a piercing needle of hysteria. She hates how her voice sounds. It happened quickly, so quickly, how long could it have been —

“You called the house and I came running. Don’t you think I would’ve ran, Connie?”

Ran right into her husband, fresh from seeing his whore — Connie can’t even think about her, a woman’s voice without a heart, how many times has she gone stiff under Carlo’s hands wondering if that’s another woman she smells, ground into his clothes and in the creases of his big hands — how can she blame him, how could she have when at the end of the day Connie smells like salt and sweat and burned suppers and this woman she has never met wears Chanel perfume.

Her brother crushes her against his shirtfront, cautious of her pregnant belly — his fingers tangle in her hair and bite in against her shoulder. When he lets her go, she wonders, will there be a red mark left behind — an inkblot?

Trouble on the road, Sonny had said. But his eyes had been grim — he’d seen something. A little mess at Connie’s place is the least of their problem. Her brother is a lot of things but not patient — what would have happened if she’d called for somebody else?

She’s committed a sin. Sonny has too, he’s made his bones and that’s business. There are questions she wants to ask him, about what it feels like to kill a man. If it always leaves a mess, if he tells his priest.

“Someone will find out, and then we’ll both be in for it, oh— the police, or something, I left him there, Jesus—”

“Nobody knows what? What’s there to know? Nobody’ll find out. I mean it.”

Connie inhales sharply and rubs at her eyes. Talk slow, keep your voice down. “He was getting telephone calls, he was out all night. I thought — there was another call, after I did it. I picked up the phone because I thought it might be you, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t any man I ever met, I can tell you that. I couldn’t say anything, just stood there on the line like I was stupid or something. Oh God, Sonny—”

“Look what he did to you, Connie, for Christ’s sake.

Her bruises are still sticky, but her hands are white and dry. She wishes she could hold them up and show him.

Connie laughs, wetly. “Yeah, well.” Look at what she did to him. You can’t say she didn’t give as good as she got.

“There’s some undertaker, owes pop a favor. He’ll make all this disappear.” Sonny’s mind is a book where all these things are written. He draws her out of her chair, there onto his lap like a kid, and holds her.