I check on Nico after dinner to make sure he’s doing all right. He was quiet during dinner, pushing his food around his plate instead of actually eating it. Meanwhile, Enzo acted like nothing at all was wrong. He truly doesn’t think our son deserves to be punished.
When I get into Nico’s room, he’s reading a comic book. As part of his punishment, we have taken away all his devices, but he loves comic books. He is sitting up in bed, his black hair disheveled, his eyes pinned on the page in front of him. His left eye is already turning black and blue, but when I sit at the end of his bed, I notice both eyes are bloodshot.
“Hi, honey,” I say. “How are you doing?”
He doesn’t raise his eyes from the comic. “Okay.”
“Are you feeling upset about what happened today at school? It’s okay if you are.”
“Nope.”
“Nico.” I sigh. “Would you look at me?”
It takes him a few seconds to drag his eyes away from the comic. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine. I just want to read.”
I squint at him, not sure I believe him. “Does your eye hurt?” “Nope.”
I look over at the enclosure where Little Kiwi has resided ever since Enzo inflicted him on our family. I try to catch a glimpse of the praying mantis, but I don’t see him. I look among the twigs and leaves inside, but he doesn’t seem to be anywhere. Just a bunch of flies.
Oh my God. Did that horrible thing escape? This day can’t possibly get any worse.
“He died,” Nico says. “What?”
“Little Kiwi died,” he repeats. “He was molting and I guess he got stuck in the molt, and he died.”
“Oh!” I’m not quite sure how to feel about the death of an insect that I hated with every fiber of my being. But Nico seemed to really like him. “Where did you put him?”
“I flushed him down the toilet.”
My jaw drops. That does not seem like a proper burial for a beloved pet, even if that pet is a horrifying praying mantis. I had assumed we would have to have some sort of somber ceremony in the backyard complete with a commemorative rock whenever Little Kiwi passed. “You flushed him down the toilet?”
“He’s an insect, Mom,” Nico says in an exasperated voice.
I’m not sure what to say to that. But something about it is highly upsetting to me. “What do you think you’re going to do all week while you’re suspended?” I barely know myself. He’ll have to come to my office or go with Enzo on his jobs.
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe I can make a playdate for you one afternoon with Spencer when he’s done with school,” I suggest. The two of them have had a few playdates since that first one, and they both seemed to enjoy it a lot. “At least that way you’ll have some social interaction. Would that be okay?”
Nico shrugs again. “Okay.”
Then he picks up his comic book and starts reading again. I guess our conversation is over.
I wander back to our bedroom, but there is a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know what is going on with Nico. He’s always been impulsive, but it’s at a new level recently. Moves are hard on kids though. Hopefully, this is just a phase and he’ll bounce back soon and be his old happy self. And stop punching other kids in the face.
When I get back to our bedroom, Enzo is sifting around in the drawer of our nightstand, a frown on his lips. “Millie,” he says when I
come in. “Did you take any money from this drawer?” “No, why?”
“I had fifty dollars in here,” he says. “I think so, at least. But now is gone.”
“Maybe Martha took it,” I blurt out. He raises his eyes. “Martha?”
I still remember the way I caught her looking through the drawer of the desk in our living room. If she was going through that drawer, why not in our bedroom? I knew I should have fired her. “She was cleaning in here, so ”
“Maybe you should accuse her then. That went well last time, no?”
One more false accusation against Martha will be the end of her tenure here. And she is very good at cleaning. She’s so efficient. She works her butt off and never complains, even that one time I left dishes in the sink.
But I also don’t want her here if she’s stealing our stuff. There are other people who are good at cleaning and don’t steal your money. Plus, I’ve never felt quite comfortable around her.
“Maybe I took the money out,” Enzo says thoughtfully. “I think I did. I am just not sure.”
“Enzo,” I say. “Can we talk about Nicolas?”
He slides the drawer closed. He juts out his chin in a defensive expression, and I can already see how this conversation will go. “What is there to talk about? This is unfair.”
“It’s not unfair. He punched a kid in the face.”
It bothers me that this makes Enzo smile. “A boy is being mean to a girl, and he stood up for her. Good for him!”
“He shouldn’t be breaking other kids’ noses.”
“The principal says the nose is not broken,” he reminds me. We did get an email from the principal, informing us of this. Thank God, because we can’t afford a lawsuit. “Just bruised, right? Is nothing.”
It also bothers me that Enzo seems a little disappointed that the kid’s nose wasn’t broken. “That’s not the point.”
“He’s a boy. This is what boys do. They fight. I did this all the time when I was a boy.”
“You punched kids in the face when you were a boy?”
“Sometimes.”
Okay, well, that’s interesting to hear. I don’t know if he is exaggerating or if he really means it. Like I’ve said, Enzo has studiously avoided talking about his life before he came to this country. But I do know one thing: he had to flee Italy because he beat a man half to death with his bare hands.
Although in his opinion, the man very much deserved it.
Even so, I have always looked at my husband as the more stable one of the two of us. I can be hotheaded, but he thinks things through. When he assaulted that man, he didn’t do it in a fit of passion. That man was his brother-in-law and used to beat his sister regularly until he finally killed her. He found the man, beat him to a bloody pulp, then hopped on a plane to LaGuardia that evening. Enzo knew exactly what he was doing.
He was exacting revenge.
“He got suspended, Enzo,” I remind him. “This is a big deal.” “Third-grade suspension is not a big deal.”
It’s frustrating that Enzo is refusing to acknowledge that this is a big deal. It makes me wonder even more about his younger days and what he used to be like. Did he really used to get into fights like that all the time? Maybe he did. After all, he managed to assault his brother-in-law without any injury to himself. You don’t do that the first time you ever throw a punch.
Enzo Accardi is a good man. I believe that with all my heart. He has taken good care of our family.
But more and more, I wonder about his past. I wonder what he has done and what he is capable of doing.
