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“First I’ve heard of this.” My brother looks at my parents. Joe is as stunned as I am at their betrayal.

“You meant to keep me here in the cellar like they keep our cousin Marina Bustagrande in the attic!” I shout.

“Marina has crippling shyness,” Mom explains. “Entirely different pathology from your issues.”

“You treated me like I needed protection, when what I needed was adventure. What made you think I couldn’t cut it at Rutgerswhen I graduated magna cum laude from Montclair State while working full-time? I am talented!” I can’t breathe. My mother jumps up and goes for a brown paper lunch bag she keeps in the drawer. She hands it to me.

“Breathe into the bag!” Mom commands.

I close my eyes and hold the bag. I don’t open it. Instead, I inhale on my own. I cannot show weakness in this moment.

“Forgive us. We knew it wasn’t ideal”—my mother puts her head in her hands—“but we wanted to protect the family name.”

“What name?” I stand in my fury. “Stop with the airs! The only place you can find the Capodimonte name is on the side of a gravel truck. It wasn’t on the Magna Carta. Your maiden name didn’t secure the bond to raise Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Your people didn’t build the Verrazzano Bridge. We are not a family with a name anyone remembers, much less can spell, unless they happen to be in a secondhand store looking for a lamp covered in ceramic flowers! The Capodimontes busted rock in a quarry in Italy for generations and then came over here and busted slate until we figured out how to sell the marble. We are hardworking Italian Americans who have done all right. There was a time whenall rightwasenoughbecause we had each other. I didn’t think we were held together by our bank accounts, or our lust to fill them. I believed we had a mission. To…to love one another.” I look at my family. Their expressions are frozen until my mother decides to scream at me.

“Dear God! Fine! We decided to help your brother.” My mother gets louder, more vehement. More defensive. “We saw an opportunity to do better. To finally have a professional in the family. And didn’t it come in handy when the FBI showed up at our door?”

“Let me understand this. The market crash excuse was a myth! I was in a money market. They bounced back! The money was never gone; youtookit.”

“Jess, you will get all the money back and more someday when we’re dead and you sell the house,” Dad offers.

“What’s mine has never been mine. You took my future and handed it off to your son because he is more important than me. You’re misogynists!”

“Hey,” my father says in a warning tone.

“You do for your son and not your daughters!”

“They paid for my wedding,” Connie says softly. “I am grateful for that.”

“And mine, but only half. Mom caved and split it with the Bilancias, so I’m in their debt until the Rapture for that ice sculpture of a giant heart over the raw bar, which we didn’t need and could ill afford.”

“I thought I paid for the raw bar.” Dad glares at my mother. “I knew nothing about this.” My father leans back in his chair.

“Whatever flimflam deals ensued! The point is: You putmyresources behindyourson when they weren’t even yours to give! To think I’ve been living in that hole at the bottom of the house without complaint.”

“No rent,” Mom whispers. “You paid not one dime.”

“You live down there, Ma. You wouldn’t last the night. You should be paying me to stay down there. Grandma Cap died instead of moving into that apartment.”

“Don’t say that!” Tears stream down my mother’s face.

“I tried to make the cellar nice for her, then I tried to make it nice for you,” my father says sadly.

My heart starts to break for him. I shake my head.This is how they get you, Jess. Pity.“Dad, you did try. Ma, not so much. You are quick to say what you do for me, but you don’t acknowledge what I do for you. Kindness cuts both ways.”

“I definitely feel the knife,” Mom says. “You might as well plunge it directly into my beating heart.”

“Did Aunt Lillian know?” Connie asks. “About Uncle Louie?”

“Lil didn’t care what Louie did as long as he took his shoes off before entering the house,” Mom says wearily. “That plush 1986 Karastan Deluxe is as new today as it was when they installed it.”

“Aunt Lil has her own money,” Joe confirms. “She told me she didn’t trust Louie’s ‘business style,’ she called it. She put her own money aside through the years and she’s set.”

“She was the top Avon saleslady in New Jersey in 1977,” Mom says. “Lil is her own woman. I’ll give her that. My brother had his quirks, so I did what I had to do in order to deal with him. It wasn’t easy. I am done being criticized for putting Louie on the Island for a few weeks here and there.”

“Ma, it was five and a half years,” I correct her.

“Look at the facts. Louie took care of you.” My father pinches his fingers into small bouquets. “Jess. You were an Italian studies major. What were you gonna do with that?”