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she couldn’t resist, not only for Maria’s sake but also because they gave her such a voluptuous sense of fulfillment. She loved the way her pulse quickened when she walked into the record store downtown to ask the clerk his advice on what to buy; she felt as young and excited as a teenager but without the crippling insecurity. She and Bea played the records constantly: “
Qui s’en fout?
That we must hear again,” Bea liked to say as she dangled a toy in front of Maria with one hand while holding a cigarette and a magazine—and often a gin and Coke—in the other.
    Though John was often perplexed to find himself on such a strange island, where his wife—on those days she stayed home—and mother-in-law were as likely to be laughing over some new facial expression of Maria’s as crying over the fact that she would never meet either of her grandfathers, he appreciated that his wife liked classical music. While he couldn’t resist an occasional quip, he understood that opera was one of those women’s things it wasbetter to keep his nose out of, plus he felt it gave him—or them, as a couple—a level of “class” that had been absent in his own family. Then, too—not that he was about to discuss this with anyone, even the guys at work—there was no question that Gina, whether because of the music, because of motherhood, or both, was becoming more adventurous, not just in how she made up her eyes and the fit of her dresses—which were somehow a little tighter in all the right places—but in the bedroom, where she now did things she had never done before, rendering him senseless for the duration, unable to do anything but mutter “Oh, jeez” over and over again.
    “How did you learn how to do that?” he asked when it was over.
    “Did you like it?”
    “Couldn’t you tell?”
    She pushed a strand of hair back from her round face. “Kiss me,” she demanded, and he did.
    O NE NIGHT, WHEN Bea and the baby were already in bed, Gina was watching TV with John when she—or actually John, who was turning the dial—stumbled across a broadcast of
Tosca
starring Callas, with Tito Gobbi as the evil Scarpia. It had been a tough day for Gina; Maria couldn’t keep anything down, and Bea had likewise been
trop malade et trop fatiguée
to help. Gina recognized the angry, luminous eyes on the screen and yelled at her husband to stop.
    “What?” John asked, as he furiously turned the dial.
    “That—that singing, that opera—turn it back!” Gina was thrilled to recognize her idol’s expression flash with a vengeance far beyond what she had seen on the LP photographs.
    John sagged. “Really?”
    Gina looked to her husband with an expression that mirrored the one she had just seen on the television. “Do I look like I’m kidding? I’m tired of baseball.”
    “Okay, have fun.” John yawned. “I’m hitting the sack.”
    Gina raised her cheek for a quick peck but kept her eyes glued to the unfolding drama. Seeing Callas in action was better than watching any movie, so that, within a few minutes, she felt like she was the one stuck in a small town in Italy, negotiating with the chief of police for her lover’s release from prison. She stared in disbelief as Scarpia dictated the terms of his bargain, and swallowed hard with resolve and disgust as she understood that Tosca would have no choice but to offer up her body to this horrible man. When Tosca drove a knife through his back and watched him collapse to the ground in a pool of blood, Gina had never imagined that revenge could feel so good. And at the end—when she realized that Mario was dead, shot by the executioner’s squad—she felt her own heart break as if it were the first time she had even been in love, so that she understood why Tosca ripped herself away from the guards to jump to her death.
    When it was over, Gina saw her reflection in the fading hues of the television screen and knew that she wanted to die, too. The simplicity of this wish was