The Body #1: Santo and Fiorella

Chapter 5 (Fiorella): What A Blessing

I blanked my mind as I made dinner with my mother-in-law watching. Moved around the kitchen like a robot in the familiar dance  of making a meal, and I tried not think about what was coming my way very soon.

I ripped up the lettuce for the salad while I thought about what else I needed to prepare for the meal. Santo loved dessert, so I definitely wasn't going to make one. His fucking girlfriend could give him something sweet after the meal if he wanted dessert.

I may be obliged to provide dinner, but I'd be damned if I did one extra thing for Santo and his girlfriend. And, following this afternoon's lunch and shopping fiasco, my mother-in-law had been added to my no-fly list.

Her attitude since she'd arrived at Santo's house at noon, making me pick out baby clothes to congratulate Santo and his puttana, and then threatening me with worse had taken all of my restraint not to start screaming.

I wondered if Body wives were heavy day drinkers or something. How else did they live through their husbands' bullshit? It was impossible to believe they were all happy with their lot in life. Although, had my life turned out as expected, I would have been perfectly happy in the role I'd been raised since birth to play: wife and mother. That was the ideal life for all of us girls raised in the Body. 

Then Santo had thrown our lives into chaos when he walked through the door with Tanya the Mistress, and everything I'd been raised to believe had been called into question. All it took was a real-life illustration of how helpless I was to make me re-think my life. I was completely at Santo's mercy. He gave me a very generous monthly allowance, but I couldn't run away with the money he gave me because the Body would take out its anger on my family. So I was trapped, like a rat in a cage...but at least a rat could chew his way out.

And, up until our six-month anniversary, I'd thought Santo had been a good husband. He was kind and patient, he treated me well, he talked with me kindly, and he always had a smile or a kiss or a hug for me. But now he expected me to overlook his infidelity and his upcoming baby and continue with our lives as if he hadn't hurt me.

But he had. He'd hurt me terribly. Undermined everything I thought we'd been building together and turned it into nothing but pain and sadness. Bleakness. The first cries of a baby that echoed in his house would not be our baby, it would be theirs. The first squeals of excitement, the first steps, the first words would not be from my baby. It would be from his baby with his mistress. The first child he and I had would not be his first; our firstborn would not be his firstborn. Nothing would be full of wonder for Santo because he would have already experienced it with her child.

Shaking off my despair, I pulled the casserole from the oven and set it on the countertop to cool. Then I put the salad, vegetables and rolls on the table and looked around for what else needed to be done.

"It smells delicious," my mother-in-law said to me, and her voice was kind, the way it'd always been before she came up to Santo's bedroom today, before we had our lunch this afternoon, before we went shopping for baby clothes for a child that was not mine.

With a nod of acknowledgment in her direction, I kept my eyes down as I filled the water glasses she'd put out when she'd set the table earlier.

"I'm not your enemy," she said to me gently. "I'm trying to help you settle into your role as the wife of a high-ranking Body man. I know how difficult it is, and my mother-in-law helped me settle into my role. I'm trying to do the same for you, Fiorella. I'm trying to protect you."

Again, I nodded but was saved from answering when the front door opened and Santo walked in, his eyes automatically searching for me. I looked away before his eyes met mine, and ducked into the kitchen to grab the casserole to either dump on my husband's head or to place on the table. It was a crapshoot which way I was leaning.