"A monstrous calumny!" he confirmed indignantly, standing again, and if Celestina did not understand any of the words, she knew that he was taking her side against the grown-ups who were laughing.
They all went to Auntie Carmella’s house after that. Celestina ate biscotti and got Uncle Paolo to push her on the swing and had soda, which was a treat because it wouldn’t make her bones strong, so she could only have it at parties. She considered playing with her cousins, but no one was her age, and Anamaria always wanted to be the mamma and Celestina had to be the baby, and that was boring. So she tried dancing in the middle of the kitchen until Gramma told her she was pretty and Mamma told her to go visit the guinea pigs.
When she got cranky, Mamma took her to the back bedroom, and sat with her, humming for a while. Celestina was almost asleep when her mother reached for a tissue and blew her nose.
"Mamma? Why didn’t Papa come today?"
"He was busy, cara," Gina Giuliani told her daughter. "Go to sleep."
THE GOOD-BYES WOKE HER: COUSINS AND AUNTS AND UNCLES AND grandparents and family friends, calling out ciaos and buona fortunas to the new baby and his parents. Celestina got up and took herself to the potty, which reminded her of slander, and then moved toward the loggia, wondering if she would get to take some balloons home. Stefano was making a fuss, yelling and crying. "I know, I know," Auntie Carmella was saying. "It’s hard to say good-bye to everyone after such a nice time, but the party’s ending now." Uncle Paolo simply scooped Stefano up, smiling but brooking no nonsense.
Amused by the tantrum and indulgent, none of the adults noticed Celestina standing in the doorway. Her mother was helping Auntie Carmella clear up the dishes. Her grandparents were out in the yard saying good-bye to the guests. Everyone else was paying attention to Stefano, screaming and struggling manfully, but helpless in the arms of his father, who carried him off, apologizing for the noise. Only Celestina noticed Don Vincenzo’s face change. That was when she looked at the man with the machines on his hands and saw that he was crying.
Celestina had seen her mother cry, but she didn’t know that men cried, too. It frightened her because it was strange, and because she was hungry, and because she liked the man who took her side, and because he didn’t cry like anyone else she knew—eyes open, tears slipping down a still face.
Car doors slammed and Celestina heard the crunch of tires on gravel, just as her mother looked up from the table. Gina’s own smile faded when she followed her daughter’s gaze. Glancing in the direction of the two priests, Gina spoke to her sister-in-law in a low voice. Nodding, Carmella went to Don Vincenzo’s side on her way to the kitchen with a stack of dishes. "The bedroom at the end of the hall, perhaps?" she suggested. "No one will disturb you there."
Celestina ducked out of the way as Don Vincenzo took the crying man by the arm, steering him through the loggia doorway and toward Carmella’s room. "It was like that?" Celestina heard Don Vincenzo ask as they passed her. "They were amused when you struggled?"
Celestina followed them, embroidered anklets making whispers of her footsteps, and peeped through the little space where the door wasn’t quite closed. The man with the machines was sitting in a chair in the corner. Don Vincenzo stood nearby, not saying anything, looking out the window toward Cece’s pen. That’s mean, Celestina thought. Don Vincenzo is mean! She hated it when she cried and no one paid attention because they said she was being silly.
The man saw her as she stepped into the bedroom, and he wiped his face on his sleeves. "What’s the matter?" she asked, coming closer. "Why are you crying?"
Don Vincenzo started to say something, but the man shook his head and said, "It’s nothing, cara. Only: I was remembering something—something bad that happened to me."
"What happened?"
"Some… men hurt me. It was a long time ago," he assured her as her eyes grew round, afraid the bad men were still in the house. "It was when you were very small, but sometimes I remember it."
"Did anyone kiss you?"
"Mi scuzi?" He blinked when she said it, and Don Vincenzo stood very straight for a moment.
"To make it better?" she said.
The man with the machines smiled with very soft eyes. "No, cara. No one kissed it better."
"I could."
"That would be very nice," he said in a serious voice. "I think I could use a kiss."
She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. Her cousin Roberto, who was nine, said kissing was stupid, but Celestina knew better. "This is a new dress," she told the man. "I got chocolate on it."
"It’s still very pretty. So are you."
"Cece had babies. Want to see them?"
The man looked up at Don Vincenzo, who explained, "Cece is a guinea pig. Having babies is what guinea pigs do."
"Ah. Si, cara. I’d like that."
He stood, and she went to take his hand so she could bring him outside, but remembered about the machines. "What happened to your hands?" she asked, pulling him along by the sleeve.
"It was a sort of accident, cara. Don’t worry. It can’t happen to you."
"Does it hurt?" Vincenzo Giuliani heard the child ask, as she led Emilio Sandoz down the hall toward a door to the backyard.
"Sometimes," Sandoz said simply. "Not today."
Their voices were lost to him after he heard the back door bang shut. Vincenzo Giuliani stepped to the window, listening to the late afternoon buzz of cicadas, and watched Celestina drag Emilio to the guinea-pig pen. The child’s lace-pantied bottom suddenly upended as she leaned over the wire enclosure to grab a baby for Emilio, who sat smiling on the ground, black-and-silver hair spilling forward over high Taino cheekbones as he admired the little animal Celestina dumped in his lap.
It had taken four priests eight months of relentless pressure to get Emilio Sandoz to reveal what Celestina had learned in two minutes. Evidently, the Father General observed wryly, the best man for the job can sometimes be a four-year-old girl.
And he wished that Edward Behr had stayed to see this.
BROTHER EDWARD WAS AT THAT MOMENT IN HIS ROOM IN THE JESUITS’ Neapolitan retreat house some four kilometers away, still astounded that the Father General had chosen a baptism as the occasion for Emilio Sandoz’s first venture out of seclusion.
"You’re joking!" Edward had cried that morning. "A christening? Father General, the last thing in the world Emilio Sandoz needs right now is a christening!"
"This is family, Ed. No press, no pressure," Vincenzo Giuliani declared. "The party will be good for him! He’s strong enough now—"
"Physically, yes," Edward conceded. "But emotionally, he is nowhere near ready for this. He needs time!" Edward insisted. "Time to be angry. Time to mourn! Father General, you can’t rush—"
"Bring the car around front at ten, thank you, Edward," the Father General said, smiling mildly. And that was that.
Having dropped the two priests off at the church, Brother Edward spent the remainder of the day back at the Jesuit house, stewing. By three in the afternoon, he had convinced himself that he really ought to leave early to fetch them back from the party. It was only sensible to allow time for security checks, he told himself. Regardless of how well known the driver was, no vehicle got near Giuliani real estate or the retreat without being carefully and repeatedly considered by swarthy, suspicious men and large, thoughtful dogs trained to detect explosives and ill will. So Edward allowed forty-five minutes for a trip that might otherwise take ten, and was questioned and sniffed and inspected at every intersection of the road that paralleled the coast. It wasn’t entirely wasted time, he noted, as the car’s undercarriage was mirrored at the compound gate and his identification studied a fourth time. He had, for example, learned some remarkable things from several dogs about where weapons might theoretically be concealed on a tubby man’s body.