The Godfather Returns (30 page)

“I’d like that,” she said, her voice quavering. “Thank you.” She patted the seat beside her.

He sat. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be,” she said, taking his hand. “No apologies. Just talk to me.”

They stayed in Rome only long enough to sleep off the jet lag and have a magnificent meal at a restaurant Kay had been to years before with her parents. The next day, with Michael still asleep upstairs, she spoke to the hotel concierge herself and arranged a reservation at a resort in the Swiss Alps. He helped her rent a plane, too, for Michael to fly them there, which she knew he’d love. She’d never been to the Alps, but when they’d flown over them on the way here, she’d promised herself she’d go someday. Turned out, someday would be tomorrow.

When she finished, she turned and saw Al Neri, sitting in a leather chair across the lobby, smoking and chomping a sweet roll. She shook her head and he nodded. She told the concierge she’d been mistaken. She needed two rooms. Preferably not adjoining. He sighed and made an exasperated gesture but dialed the phone and was able to change the reservation.

Kay got an espresso from the hotel bar. The hotel had a glassed-in courtyard, and on her way to get a table, a man about her age whistled at her. A younger man next to him raised an eyebrow and called her beautiful. She tried not to react, but she was a happy woman and in truth they’d made her happier. She was only thirty-two years old. Yes, they were Italian, but it was still nice to think of herself as a woman able to summon blurted compliments from strange men.

She took a seat by herself, bathed in that pink-yellow light so distinct to Rome.

The day Michael had proposed to her, he’d warned Kay that they couldn’t be equal partners. Kay had protested; clearly Michael’s father confided in his mother, no? True, Michael had said, but his mother’s first loyalty had always been to his father, for
forty years.
If things worked out as well with them, Michael had said, maybe someday he’d tell her a few things she didn’t really want to hear. Turned out,
that
someday had been yesterday.

Kay should probably be furious, frightened, or at least unmoored. She wasn’t. Despite or maybe even because of the things Michael had told her, Kay couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this happy. It was irrational as hell, but then again all happiness was irrational.

Her husband was a murderer. He’d fled to Sicily not because he had been unjustly accused of murdering those two men—the police captain and the dope kingpin—but because he’d shot them, one in the head, the other in the heart and throat. Three years after those killings, Michael came back to America. When he and Kay got together, he confessed that he’d been with a woman, yes, while he was gone, but only because he never thought he’d see Kay again, and at any rate not for six months. What he’d failed to mention until yesterday was that the woman, a teenage peasant girl named Apollonia, had been his wife. The reason it had been six months was because six months earlier she’d been blown sky high in a booby-trapped Alfa Romeo.

His brother Sonny did not die in a car wreck. He’d been shot to hamburger at a tollbooth.

Everything that Tom Hagen had told her two years ago—that Michael had ordered the deaths of Carlo, Tessio, Barzini, Tattaglia, and a host of related others—was true. The day Hagen had told her those things—and told her that if Michael ever found out about it Hagen would be a dead man—had felt like the worst day of her life.

Yesterday, when Michael had trusted her enough to tell her those things himself, had hardly been a good day. But it hadn’t been the worst day of her life. No one could have been happy to have heard that those things had happened, but she was, she realized, elated that he’d told her about them. Kay was shocked but not surprised. A wife knows things. Kay knew who Michael was. From the time they’d first met, he’d been the perfect mix of good boy and bad boy. At Connie’s wedding, Kay had blamed the strong red wine for her euphoric light-headedness, but what had really done it was Michael’s deadpan explanation of his family’s business. Afterward, when he dragged her into a family photo
—six years
before they got married—Kay felt like she’d been yanked into the cast of a Shakespeare play. She’d acted reluctant, but it was acting. She’d loved it.

If she was honest, she had to admit that she had her own secrets, ones she still hadn’t confessed to Michael. During his years in hiding she’d had a long affair with her history professor at Mount Holyoke (she’d never thought she’d see Michael again, either) that Michael still didn’t know about. Deanna Dunn had told her things about Fredo that Kay would never
dare
mention to Michael. And Kay never had let on that Hagen had told her anything.

Kay had fallen in love with Michael the night he’d told her about the horror of those Pacific islands—buddies decapitated, incinerated, rotting in hot mud. He’d told her about the men he’d killed. The raw male violence of it—and the strength this man had shown, not just to survive that but, in her arms, to allow himself to confide in her—had frankly excited her. He’d murdered men there, too, and it had
excited
her. If Kay had been able to fall in love with a man who’d killed men for his country (to fall in love with him, Kay knew, not in spite of this but because of it), how shocked could she be that he’d killed and had men killed in defense of his own blood?

Kay was older now, of course. She was a mother. That changed everything—everything but the way she felt now. She finished her coffee. Her heart raced.

She went back upstairs (she heard Neri following but didn’t turn to watch), chained the door behind her, drew open the curtains, and flooded the room with light. Michael stirred but didn’t wake. Kay got undressed and burrowed under the covers next to him.

“We’re going to the Alps,” she whispered. Her heart was going even faster.

“I don’t ski,” he said.

“We’re not going skiing,” she said. “I’m not sure we’ll even leave the room.”

“Except for Mass, obviously.”

He wasn’t mocking her. “Not even that,” she said. “I don’t have to go every day.” Only as she said it did she realize she suddenly didn’t feel the need to go every day, either.

She gave him the details. They’d take a little plane he’d fly himself. They’d stay a week, then go home early, get the kids, and go to Disneyland. She’d cabled a travel agent she knew in New York, and arrangements had been made for that trip, too. He seemed amazed she’d salvaged their vacation so fast.

“You underestimate me,” she said. “Do you have any idea how far ahead of schedule we are on things at Lake Tahoe?”

“I’m really going to fly over the Alps?”

“I thought you’d love it,” she said. “If it’s too challenging or—”

“I do,” he said. “I love it.” He squeezed her hip. She squirmed in warm, carnal assent.

This was always where things had been the best for them, in bed. It was not at all unlikely he’d get her pregnant. The way she felt now, for the first time in a long time, that wouldn’t have been unwelcome. Lately, in the rare times they’d made love at all, Michael had been on top or she had, and they’d stayed in the position where they’d started, executing the act like some grim household errand. This time, as they had when they arrived, too, they did it the way Kay liked best, switching positions often, him on top, then her, then she turned around and faced away from him, her eyes clenched closed, grinding into him, happy enough that it might have been enough, just that. But he surprised her by not coming. He rose from the bed and lifted her onto the marble sink. The cold stone sent jagged shivers through her, and she looped her arms around his neck. She threw back her head. Michael’s hands slid over the curves of her breasts and trailed lightly across her ribs and she shivered again, harder this time.
Perfect
height. When she could feel how close he was, she put her fingertips gently to his sweat-slicked chest. She didn’t have to say anything. He knew to stop and pull out, and she hurried to the bed and got on all fours. As Michael entered her, she heard a growl escape from her throat. The sun on her skin seemed baking, burning, scorching. The sheets had come loose from the corners, revealing the bare striped mattress beneath. Kay’s arms gave out, and her face fell against the wadded sheets. The next thing she knew, so fast she was barely aware of how it happened, she was on top of him again. He was pulling her hard into him, and the look on his face, his openness, his vulnerability, his ardor and attention to
her,
to what she liked and how she liked it,
that
was what did it for her. It was painful, more like electroshock than orgasm, and she felt like she was giving off sunlight—like it was radiating off of her, a haze of undulating waves. Somewhere in the trembling rills of aftershocks she felt his spasms below her, far below her. And at some other point—it could have been ten seconds or ten years—Kay felt herself tumbling exhausted onto the sodden mattress.

It hadn’t been painful at all, of course.

Michael blew gently on her dripping back. He touched her, lightly, a single finger. He traced the words
I love you.
Over and over. Her breathing and her beating heart finally slowed. Suddenly, a torrent of words came out of her, a long and grateful expression of love. Only when she stopped did she realize she’d said it all in Italian.

“Where the hell did you learn all that?” Michael said, laughing in amazement.

“No idea whatsoever,” she said in English, rolling over and kissing him. “That was—”

He put a finger to her lips. They smiled. He was right. No need for words.

Mary wore her new Mickey Mouse ears, Cinderella dress, and Davy Crockett moccasins everywhere, every day. She was three years old and thought the bear she’d danced with was real. Anthony went around belting out note-perfect renditions of the songs that had been featured at various rides and attractions. He had the spooky ability to hear a song once and perform it. This had caused him no small amount of trouble at his kindergarten, but Kay was sure this skill would bode well for the boy in the long run. In fact her father, an opera buff, planned to hire someone to give Anthony singing lessons for his next birthday. They were lucky kids, Kay supposed, but she felt even luckier to have them.

Could Michael possibly know how much he was missing by being gone so much? But he loved them, too. He’d taken an obvious, visceral delight taking them to Disneyland. Anytime Michael was home, he absolutely doted on Mary. Anthony was harder for him, but it was unabashed love for Anthony that made Michael’s befuddled regard of his son so heartbreaking. Several days after their vacation, Michael had to go to New York, both for business and to see how his mother—who’d had a few complications but was back home again—was getting along. As he was packing, he called Kay to their bedroom window. Anthony had dug a big hole behind the swing set and was standing over it, alone, head down, praying.

“It’s a funeral for his coonskin cap,” Kay explained.

“You’re kidding.”

“Don’t be angry,” she said.

“I’m not angry. I’m—” He couldn’t seem to come up with a word for what he was.

“I think it’s sort of sweet.”

“That cap cost four dollars.”

“Unless there’s something more you’re not telling me, we can afford four dollars.”

He paused. Obviously there were other things he wasn’t able to tell her. They both knew that. “That’s not the point. The four dollars. Obviously.”

“Oh, really? So what is your point?”

Anthony was burying the cap, Kay knew, less out of sympathy for a dead raccoon than because several months ago on TV he’d seen a senator from Tennessee wearing such a hat, campaigning for president and denouncing Michael Corleone, among others, by name. Buying the cap had been Michael’s idea, not Anthony’s. Anthony rarely seemed able to tell his father what he did or didn’t want, and Michael meant well but was oblivious. This whole matter wasn’t something Kay wanted to get into with Michael, not right now.

Michael sighed, resigned. “Think that’s real raccoon fur he’s burying?” he asked. “Or rabbit?” She kissed the top of his head. He forced a chuckle and went outside and joined Anthony. Kay watched. They stood on opposite sides of the hole from each other. Anthony looked down and didn’t seem to be saying anything. At a certain point, he broke into “Ave Maria.” Michael heard him out. He could have hardly looked more uncomfortable if he’d learned his son was actually a little green man from Mars.

It was while Michael was on that trip to New York that their half-finished house at Lake Tahoe burned down. Tom Hagen, who was back working as the family lawyer, walked over to give her the news. There had been a lightning storm. The insurance should cover everything, he assured her. There had been no damage to the foundation. Kay had done such a good job of making all the decisions that they could simply hire a few extra crews and rebuild in no time. Also, there was a mansion in Reno, a castle really, that used to belong to a railroad baron; it was being torn down to make way for a modern hotel, and Kay could have any of the fixtures she wanted. Once Kay saw this place, Hagen said, she’d end up thinking the fire was a blessing in disguise. Hagen knew she’d been hoping to move this summer, so he’d talked to the head contractor, who seemed to think it was still possible to be done by Labor Day.

“
You
talked to him? Before he talked to me? Or you talked to me?”

“He’s our contractor, too. For our house up there, too.”

“Does Michael know?”

“He does.”

She frowned and put her hands on her hips and stood in the doorway and did not invite him in. As of today, she’d realized she wasn’t pregnant. As of this moment, it was happy news.

“I didn’t actually talk to him,” Hagen said. “I left a message.”

“With
Carmel
a
?”

“Of course not.” He left it at that. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

“Don’t bet on it.”

“We’re looking into things, okay?” he said. “But, you know, rigging up a lightning storm, you have to admit, that’s pretty much God’s territory.”