Chapter 9: The Yellow Dress
She was waiting at the door when I arrived.
Yellow dress.
Worn sneakers.
Blonde curls pulled back on one side with a clip that was slightly crooked.
She had a small backpack over one shoulder that appeared to contain, based on its shape, approximately one stuffed animal and very little else.
She looked up at me with those gray-green eyes.
"You said an hour," she said.
"It was an hour and seven minutes."
"You're right.
I apologize."
She considered this.
"Okay." She stepped out into the hallway.
"Where are we going?"
"I thought we'd start with breakfast."
"Mommy's coming too?"
"If she feels up to it."
Elena appeared in the doorway behind her.
She was dressed and her color was better than it had been the day before.
The doctor had started her on the first phase of the protocol that morning.
It would take time — weeks before the real improvement, months before they could measure the full effect.
But she had slept.
She had eaten.
She was standing in a doorway without holding onto the frame.
"I feel up to it," she said.
Gia reached back and took her mother's hand without looking.
The automatic gesture of a child who has spent years making sure the person she loves most is still there.
We took the car to a diner in Brooklyn that had been there since 1962 and had not meaningfully changed since 1974.
Red vinyl booths.
Coffee that arrived before you asked for it.
A laminated menu with photographs of every item.
Gia studied the menu with the seriousness of someone reviewing a legal document.
"Can I have pancakes and eggs?" she asked.
"You can have whatever you want," I said.
She looked up.
"Whatever?"
"Within reason."
"What's the reason?"
"If you can eat it in one sitting, you can order it."
She turned back to the menu, apparently reassured, and began calculating.
Elena watched her over the rim of her coffee cup.
There was something in her face I hadn't seen yet — something lighter.
Not happiness exactly.
The early edge of it.
The place just before happiness where a person starts to believe it might actually be allowed.
"She's never been to a restaurant like this," Elena said quietly.
"Never?"
"We didn't — there wasn't money for it.
We cooked at home." She set her cup down.
"She used to ask me sometimes why other kids at school talked about going out for breakfast.
I told her we had our own special breakfasts at home." A small pause.
"She believed me.
She always believed me."
"She's going to have a lot of firsts," I said.
"I know." Elena looked at her daughter.
"That's what I'm trying to get used to."
Gia ordered pancakes, scrambled eggs, orange juice, and a side of bacon that she negotiated into the order with impressive calm.
She ate with focused efficiency and then pushed her plate aside and looked at me.
"Are you going to live with us?" she asked.
Elena set her cup down.
"That's—" I started.
"Because Mommy said we might move somewhere bigger." Gia's eyes were direct.
"And I thought maybe that meant you were going to be there."
"We're still figuring that out," I said.
"Okay." She seemed satisfied with this.
"Do you have a dog?"
"I don't."
"We can't have one in our apartment.
The building doesn't allow it." She picked up her orange juice.
"If we move somewhere bigger, could we get a dog?"
Elena made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"We'll see," I said.
"That usually means no," Gia said.
"It means we'll see."
She studied me for a moment.
Then she appeared to accept this as a reasonable answer and moved on.
"What do you do?" she asked.
"For work."
Elena's hand moved slightly on the table.
"I manage things," I said.
"Arrangements between people.
Making sure agreements are kept."
Gia thought about this.
"Like a referee?"
"Something like that."
"My teacher is a referee," she said.
"She says her job is to make sure everyone follows the rules." A pause.
"Do you follow the rules?"
The question landed in the space between us with a weight she had no idea it carried.
"I'm working on it," I said.
She nodded, apparently finding this acceptable, and went back to her bacon.
Elena looked at me across the table.
Her expression was complicated and quiet and said several things at once that neither of us was ready to say out loud yet.
After breakfast, we walked one block to where the car was parked.
Gia stopped on the sidewalk.
She looked at the car.
Then she looked at me.
"You said you had several," she said.
"I do."
"This one is very big."
"It is."
She walked around it once, slowly, examining it from every angle with her hands clasped behind her back.
Then she stopped at the rear passenger door and looked up at me.
"Can I sit in the front?" she asked.
"You're six," Elena said.
"The front seat is for people over a certain height," I said.
"When you're tall enough, you can sit in the front."
Gia measured herself against the car door with her hand.
She was approximately two and a half feet short of the mark.
"I'm going to grow," she said.
"You are," I agreed.
She got in the back without further argument.
We drove through Brooklyn with the windows down.
Gia pressed her face against the glass and watched the streets go by.
She asked questions about every building, every bridge, every boat on the water.
I answered the ones I could.
Elena answered the rest.
At one point Gia fell quiet.
I looked in the rearview mirror.
She was looking back at me.
"Thank you for coming to the door," she said.
The car was quiet for a moment.
"Thank you for not leaving," I said.
She seemed to understand that we were talking about the same sidewalk, even though she didn't know I knew she'd been there.
She gave a small nod — the nod of someone who considers the matter settled — and turned back to the window.
Elena reached across the center console and placed her hand over mine on the gearshift.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
That evening, after Gia was asleep, Elena and I sat at the kitchen table in the Brooklyn apartment with two cups of tea going cold between us.
"Ferrante," she said.
"Is it handled?"
"Yes."
"And Marco?"
"Yes."
She turned her cup slowly in her hands.
"Your father."
"My father is gone," I said.
"What he decided doesn't decide anything anymore."
She was quiet for a moment.
"I want to be angry at you," she said.
"For the world you came from.
For what it cost us." She looked up.
"But I watched you with her today.
At breakfast.
In the car.
The way you answered every question like it mattered." She shook her head slightly.
"It's hard to stay angry at someone who looks at your child like that."
"You can be angry," I said.
"You've earned it."
"Maybe." She wrapped both hands around the cup.
"But I think I'm too tired for anger right now.
I think I just want—" She stopped.
"What?"
She looked at me.
"I think I just want to see what happens next," she said.
"If you're actually going to be here.
If this is actually real." A pause.
"I've been surviving for so long I'm not sure I remember what it feels like to just — live."
"We'll figure it out," I said.
"Together?"
"Together."
She held my gaze for a moment.
May you like
Then she picked up her tea and drank it even though it had gone cold.
And for the first time in seven years, she didn't look like someone waiting for the next thing to go wrong.
