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Abigail C. Edwards Books

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“Lorel once told me that fate is a poet, organizing beauty out of chaos. I believed that for a long time—that life happens to a person, buoying them along on its tide whichever way it pleases, instead of bending and shaping itself around my will. And even now I’m not sure that I can entirely discard the idea, because God knows my life has spiraled into gothic prose, and even in the depths of my insanity I could not have thought up the repeating rhythms of horrible motif. Blood as oil, oil as sacred chrism, the suffocating paradox of its sacred and sensual nature, and can oil really run in a person’s blood? Because when I think of one, I think of the other—they are inseparable in my mind. When I think of the times I dipped my fingers in green-gold oil, memory calls forth the image of blood on a warehouse floor, and blood mixed with oil in the creases of my hands.”

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“He had the sleeves rolled up on his bathrobe, and it was a fairly jarring, chaotic picture he painted, yet somehow he made it seem lazily elegant. Like a sculptor shaping a lump of clay with muddy hands, like feeling along the edges of rolled-out pastry dough to check its thickness, or scoring a flour-dusted bâtard—something weirdly bold and confident about it. The seductive art of Nutella, as taught by one Tonio Salone. Unnerving.”

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“Pia, look, I’ve always known something was going on, but you don’t ask these questions—it’s a family thing, alright? I don’t keep up with what my little brother does. It’s just how our family works, it’s like how the Rondolfos down the street do palm-reading stuff in town by the dry-cleaner’s, you know the Rondolfos? Every family has stuff like that, that’s how it is, just go with it because they aren’t hurting anyone. Hey, it isn’t drugs—it could be drugs, but it isn’t.”

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“The smoke was heavy in the frigid air. Bitter in my throat. I leaned against the railing, stared out at the city: crawling traffic, flashing lights, darkness hanging over New York without a promise of sunrise to come. I was reminded of the nights we’d stood on this same balcony, a drink in Massimo’s hand, ice clinking against his teeth. Tonio exhaling long spirals of gray smoke into the neon-tinted night. Rubbing oil out of my palm, smoking one of Tonio’s cigarettes and taking drinks when my cousin offered them. I was reminded of last night when we’d stood in the courtyard outside the ballroom, blood on Massimo’s face and acrid smoke in the air. Ice water dripping from Tonio’s hand. And a shadow in the golden light spilling from the doorway. I missed Lorel, and Massimo, and the people we’d once been. Though maybe we’d always been the people we were now, just buried beneath layers. Regardless, I thought Mamma and Papa wouldn’t recognize the girl standing here now on a dark New York balcony, smoking one last cigarette, blood and oil in the creases of her hands.”

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“Tonio had disappeared again into the kitchen—I heard him banging around some dishes. He had this habit of making a huge dish once or twice a week, then freezing it and eating the same thing for every meal until it was gone. Except for breakfasts, which were usually composed of a cappuccino and heaping spoonfuls of Nutella on saltine crackers. As someone who had a lot of feelings about food, I found it a fairly scandalizing arrangement, but I figured it would be just as upsetting if witnessed by the average person.”

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“Innocence and idiocy aren’t the same thing. Sometimes it’s brave. Sometimes it’s just how a person is.” “So, ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’?” I raised an eyebrow; he elaborated. “Oscar Wilde.” I liked that. “It’s not wrong to look at the stars.” But it also wasn’t some failing of will or fall from grace that kept my eyes fixed to the ground. I’d just been down here in the gutter long enough to know to watch my step.”

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