those who leave and those who stay

For a moment, I listened to the shutters clicking furiously. Then, I nearly tore my jacked off. My legal team huddled closer to me and implored me to stay composed in hushed, urgent voices, but I had had enough. I knew none of this would have happened to a male reporter. Anonymous tips and truncated financial documents were par for the course. I felt as though my whole life, I was expected to blaze trails by the people around me, and then punished for it by everyone else. I shook my head vigorously. “Get me to the car now. You’re still on retainer. You still work for me,” I spat. The four men exchanged glances with each other. Then, they closed ranks around me. When we stepped out into the daylight from the courthouse, I heard my name and felt a crush of people. A light flashed, a million watts brighter than the sun, and my vision went from white to red to black every time I blinked. I could only feel being led by my elbow down the steps. I imagined I was one of the spectators watching on, my expression dazed and helpless, my legal team parting a sea of reporters and guiding me into the car like a wilting damsel, and cursed. 

I sat down on the leather back seat, hard, and a junior attorney squeezed in next to me. He asked if I was alright, and I blinked in his direction until my vision recovered and his face came into focus. The other attorneys piled in and prepared to drive away from the press swarm. Then, I dropped my jacket in his lap. “Please burn this for me.”

—

Il Lavoro was based in the heart of the Centro direzionale in Naples. When Nino and I first founded the investigative magazine in 1964 – that is, when Nino founded the magazine that I hatched in the Florence apartment that I used to share with Pietro and the girls – we burned through the Airotas’ investment capital just to afford the rent. Now, after ten years of building a dedicated subscriber base and carefully accepting donations from respected sources, the libel case may well have shattered our fragile business model and the magazine that I loved so dearly.

These were the thoughts running through my mind as I tried to focus on the strategy meeting in our conference room. Guilt, grief, horror, and rage lurched up inside me, producing wave upon wave of nausea. I tried to pay attention to the plan to appeal, but my eyes pulled my focus to Nino like magnets. It took only a few minutes for him to notice. Deliberately, but subtly, Nino planted the seeds. Tomorrow, he said. Dealt a blow, but we’ll come back stronger, she heard. And: we’ll survive one more evening.

Soon, all four attorneys were shaking my hand, offering idiotic platitudes and promises for a different outcome, soon enough. The room expanded with space and silence as Nino ushered everyone out, and I sat alone at the table, listening to the clock tick until I heard the room door open again.

—

I kept my eyes downcast, listening to the rustle of clothing as Nino stepped behind me. He placed a hot hand on the side of my neck, and immediately, I felt a fire deep in my belly. 

“What do you need right now?” he said into my ear, making my head loll back into the crook of his neck. His hand slipped into my blouse, stroked across my chest, and his fingers teased the top of my breast under the cup of my bra. I shivered. 

“I need to feel,” I breathed. With a hum, he pressed his open mouth against my neck, and I sighed. 

It was always like this between us; effortless chemistry, ever-present desire, and equally matched libido, from the moment we began the affair in Florence on that summer night in 1966, Pietro snoring in the master bedroom next door as we fucked on the guest bed. Nino was my secret lifelong love, and having him in my life again felt like a chance to do it all over again.

Pietro never discovered it on his own, though it was mostly denial, not faith in me, that blinded him. After an explosive revelation, I left Pietro and the girls in the middle of the night. Nino and I became travel partners, collaborators, business partners, employer-and-employee, cohabitors, ex-cohabitors. Il Lavoro was our first child, and then Imma became our second in 1971. Through it all, we remained lovers.

There was no formal romantic relationship. I wanted one, but only briefly. I quickly changed my mind after my first journalism prize nomination. I was married before, I was the wife of a career-focused man from an aristocratic lineage. It was a miracle that I even had the time to devise the business plan and do all the research for Il Lavoro. My in-laws helped financially, but Pietro resented it. I decided that my work was too important, and so I abandoned the idea of ever marrying again. 

Nino once revealed to me that Eleonora, his wife, periodically threatened self-harm if the affair continued, and I was sure that these threats were met with hearty reassurances that it was over between us. Twice, we tried to end it. Once, in 1972, I discovered Nino having sex in the shower with Cloelia, a hefty older woman hired to care for Imma when she was an infant. I kicked him out of the apartment. Another time, after Il Lavoro reached 500 monthly subscribers, we were discovered together by a young Il Lavoro staff journalist, well after hours in Nino’s office: me, shirtless and in Nino’s lap, skirt hiked up around my waist and exposing the nature of our relationship. Embarrassed, I told him that for the sake of professionalism, we should stop. 

But whenever we tried to stay away from each other, the mutual craving never diminished and only blazed brighter. We always ended up reconciling and resuming the affair more feverishly than ever before. 

And so, I endured being called a whore, untalented, undeserving of her position in Il Lavoro. In one of the most painful moments in all my life, my mother expressed shame and disappointment in me on her deathbed, calling me names that all included the word “slut.” Unable to articulate to her that Il Lavoro was my brainchild, my passion for uncovering and understanding labor issues, and my expression of caring for the status of vulnerable women, I flew out of the hospital room in tears. My mother passed before we could properly reconcile. My relationship with her was never great, but it became another casualty of my work by the end.

Il Lavoro was a product of my sacrifices. If my life radiated in circles from me at the center, the magazine would wrap around me like a fortress, and Nino would stand guard at the entrance. All my broken relationships would surround us. When Dede was born in 1960, the feminist movement was not what it would eventually become. Losing my mind with the children at home, I became involved in trade union organizations through my sister-in-law, Mariarosa, a trail blazer in her own right. There, I discovered that women and their problems at work were largely unrepresented. I began interviewing female laborers, as well as their male counterparts, collecting stories and stories, and the idea for Il Lavoro was born. A magazine dedicated entirely to labor issues, investigative stories, a periodic survey of wage rates, anecdotes of hiring practices, and testimonies of women’s experiences at work. 

Pietro repeatedly told me to abandon the idea, until Nino Sarratore came back into my life in 1963. He was no longer my classmate, but Pietro’s colleague visiting Florence for a semester. He was a lecturer of humanities at a university in Naples. After an awkward, contentious spring where Nino put Pietro down for stifling my ambitions and career, Nino became my business partner, helped me obtain financing from my in-laws, started the magazine, and hired me as Il Lavoro’s first investigative reporter. 

Nino forever assured me that it was my magazine and that he just facilitated bringing it to fruition in a chauvinistic world. And what choice did I have? Sometimes, I trusted him. Other times, I didn’t. But the deeper we went, the bigger the magazine became, the longer I went without being a mother to Dede and Elsa, the deeper I loved my magazine, and the more meaning my life took. And Nino was right that a woman-run magazine would not survive. 

Everything was fine until I ran the Soccavo story. I had no one to blame for that but myself.

“Feel,” Nino said presently, plucking my nipples deliciously as he sucked on my ear lobe. My nausea, my disgrace, my loss, all melted away. Buttons came undone, zippers tugged, clothes pulled off and discarded. Nino stepped away to pull the draw cord that closed the blinds.

—

Around ten in the morning the next day, I woke feeling less miserable than the day before. Moving through the house, I found that Imma’s nanny must have taken her for her morning walk already. I stepped outside to retrieve the newspaper, when I saw a man take deliberate steps toward me. 

A chill went up my spine as I recognized his face. “Michele? Michele Solara?” 

The man smiled broadly. Then he spoke in dialect. “I was worried you wouldn’t remember. Hello, Lenu.” 

__

“I have no milk or sugar, I hope that’s alright,” I said, busying my hands with preparing coffee so they wouldn’t shake. Dialect flowed from me, and I had the sensation of riding a bike after a long time, but without any breaks. I hadn’t seen anyone from the rionne in years, and Michele Solara was last on my list of people I would have expected to visit me without notice. Michele was a camorrist, a thug, a known rapist, and generally horrible, but as dangerous as he was, antagonizing him was more dangerous. 

“I always drink plain coffee. Where is your daughter?” 

“Her nanny takes her for a long walk in the mornings.”

“And the other daughters?” I bristled, nervousness giving way to indignation. “They live with their father. Michele, I don’t want to be rude. It’s good to see you, but why are you here?” 

Michele took a long drag on his cigarette before speaking. “It wasn’t safe to meet you somewhere public. And I was worried you would tell me you were too busy over the phone.” 

“What do you mean? What’s going on? Is it my family?”

“My mother died,” Michele said, and his expression was so pained that in that moment, I nearly had to resist the urge to reach out and pat his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry Michele.”

“Thank you. She was murdered about a month ago.” 

This was a shock. “What! Are you sure?”

Michele looked annoyed for the first time, but he ignored my question. “Lenuccia, I have a proposition for you. A job offer. I know the magazine can’t afford to keep you on right now. You’ll bleed subscribers and donors. I’m very sorry about the libel case. I’m especially sorry because you’re right about Soccavo. I don’t know how you figured out his payroll fraud and embezzlement, but you’re right, and I know it. Soccavo owes my family a lot of money, he borrowed from us to build his new factory. I have all the evidence you need.”

My head spun. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I decided to start with the most interesting thing he’d said. “What kind of evidence? Can I see it?”

“Not so fast,” Michele chuckled darkly. “Lenu, I have done you some big favors already over the last day. Haven’t you wondered why the press isn’t following you around after that court case? I paid them to leave you alone.”

“Oh… oh, Michele.” My heart sank to the pit of my bowels. “What will they think of me?”

“They don’t know who paid them,” Michele said, and I suddenly knew what he was going to ask her.

“Who murdered your mother, Michele?”

He smiled, and it was sad and sinister, all at once. “That’s what you’re going to find out in exchange for the Soccavo evidence. As soon as you agree, I will pay Soccavo all the damages and fees you owe him immediately.”

End Chapter 1

Timeline, with spoilers, for reference:

1934 - Elena Greco and Marcello Solara are born 1952 - Elena graduates high school, is admitted to college 1960 - Dede is born 1963 - Nino & Elena start Il Lavoro together 1966 - Elena leaves Pietro, starts being with Nino 1971 - Imma is born, Immacolata dies 1974 - Elena loses a libel suit, Manuela Solara is murdered

“I’ll come back to visit.” 

“Don’t. I don’t want to see you until you have a baccalaureate and a job.”

“My mother will want me back for Christmas, at least.” 

“Your mother will fight with you and send you here. No, Greco. You are a woman now, you must stand on your own legs. You must write to me and I must write to you, but you mustn’t fall back into old patterns from childhood. Look forward.”

Hearing Maestra say this stung, but I understood. Part of me knew it wasn’t sensible to come back, most of me was turbulent with wanting to never come back. “Yes,” I agreed, though despite it all, I knew I could not stay away.

In 1940, when the elementary school building became an air-raid shelter — and, in 1942, a half-ruin of rubble and classrooms exposed to the elements — other families put their girls to work caring for their younger siblings and tending to domestic tasks. My mother was deprived of this prerogative; instead, I was cloistered by Maestra Oliviero in her apartment, studying for my elementary school diploma and middle school entrance exams. I slept many nights on a pile of blankets near the stove on that very kitchen floor. In March of 1945, when the school was finally restored and reopened, I was the only girl in Oliviero’s classroom until I started middle school several months later. The years spent studying under Maestra Oliviero’s roof were some of the most peaceful periods in my whole life. When the war ended, I mourned it. 

In 1945, I started commuting east to the middle school. Every afternoon, it was a struggle for me to get along with the other students, with their middle class manners and neat clothes and good shoes.  Every morning and night, my mother and I clashed, and my mother exploded, projecting venom like shrapnel everywhere. Every chance she had, she vindictively ordered me to go back to my real home at my teacher’s apartment. And many days, I acquiesced. This continued into my high school years.

“Elena,” Maestra presently said, “I have a student, Cerullo. She must learn of your achievements and set her ambitions high, you are the only girl in this rotten neighborhood to attend middle school, to attend high school, to even dream of college. Now you will go and you will go for free. Cerullo must have these great things.”

I was used to this. The families around me either resented mine for educating me or asked me to encourage their daughters. But Maestra Oliviero never asked me to go out of my way for something like this before. She saw me as a precious, exceptional girl. She often lectured me, discouraging me from forming friendships with my peers, especially romantic entanglements, but eventually even acquaintanceships. She worried that the people living around me would breathe on me, causing all my promise and potential to sour like milk. 

“Don Fernando, the cobbler’s daughter?” I sipped on the red wine she’d served us. I felt a quiet exhilaration at being treated like an adult by my old teacher. As though a balloon in my chest was expanding with ego and would float and carry my whole person away if I wasn’t careful.

“Fernando Cerullo is a charlatan idiot. Neither husband nor wife can be convinced that the child requires attention and investment. Plebeians, Greco.” I suddenly saw a savage loathing in Oliviero’s face, the dark in her eyes and the creases in her forehead, the dribbles of red sauce around her lips and the mashed noodles in her mouth. I looked down at my plate. 

“I don’t know him very well.” 

“Greco. You must see Cerullo, the child is astounding, breathtaking. She taught herself to read, to write, she computes complicated sums and products and quotients in her head. She is absolutely brilliant.” 

“Brilliant like me?” I teased boldly.

She didn’t even look up at me. “Better.” 

—

I was born in early September of 1934. My father tells of this occasion as the only time he’d bought a bottle of high-quality spumante — black market French champagne — and a cake during the depression, though he would have two more children – sons, even – during those years. 

Cake was extravagant enough, but the vendors, the Spagnuolos, sold their pastries at the time from the parlor room of Donna Manuela Solara. The elder Signor Spagnuolo was in her black books already, struggling for a sugar and eggs supplier even before the war, initiating a generations-long entanglement between the Solaras and Spagnuolos. Donna Manuela was nursing her first baby, a son named Marcello, when my father shared his own good reason for ordering a cake. “Just a pastry? For a baby girl?” Donna Manuela plied. And so my father drew my mother’s fury upon the home like a lightning rod during a summer storm on the day I was born.

My mother disliked me from the beginning, perhaps to compensate for the indulgence that my arrival inspired in my father. Perhaps this original indulgence symbolized and prophesied my father’s future indulgences with regard to me, sending me to middle school, then high school. Perhaps, rather, there was some ambition she saw in me, some entitlement to my father’s indulgence, some indication that I felt superior to her, deserved a life superior to hers, even as a newborn baby. This last trait, for as long as I can remember, was what she always accused me of. I am too old now to say for certain whether it was true, or when it became true. 

Between my mother and my father, the day I was born was often recounted as a day of pain, blessing, pride, luxury, and contempt. 

But the day I first drew real, invigorating breath was the day I saw Lila Cerullo, Rafaella Cerullo, outshine every one of her peers in a scholastic competition.