The Godfather

 “The Godfather” By Mario Puzo
 
335
The Don, at the head of the table, watching everything, said to Kay, “Does it bother 
you?” 
Kay shook her head. The Don said to his wife. “He’s out of your hands, it’s no concern 
of yours.” The old woman immediately held her peace. Not that she feared her husband 
but because it would have been disrespectful to dispute him in such a matter before the 
others. 
But Connie, the Don’s favorite, came in from the kitchen, where she was cooking the 
Sunday dinner, her face flushed from the stove, and said, “I think he should get his face 
fixed. He was the most handsome one in the family before he got hurt. Come on, Mike, 
say you’ll do it.” 
Michael looked at her in an absentminded fashion. It seemed as if he really and truly 
had not heard anything said. He didn’t answer. 
Connie came to stand beside her father. “Make him do it,” she said to the Don. Her two 
hands rested affectionately on his shoulders and she rubbed his neck. She was the only 
one who was ever so familiar with the Don. Her affection for her father was touching. It 
was trusting, like a little girl’s. The Don patted one of her hands and said, “We’re all 
starving here. Put the spaghetti on the table and then chatter.” 
Connie turned to her husband and said, “Carlo, you tell Mike to get his face fixed. 
Maybe he’ll listen to you.” Her voice implied that Michael and Carlo Rizzi had some 
friendly relationship over and above anyone else’s. 
Carlo, handsomely sunburned, blond hair neatly cut and combed, sipped at his glass of 
homemade wine and said, “Nobody can tell Mike what to do.” Carlo had become a 
different man since moving into the mall. He knew his place in the Family and kept to it. 
There was something that Kay didn’t understand in all this, something that didn’t quite 
meet the eye. As a woman she could see that Connie was deliberately charming her 
father, though it was beautifully done and even sincere. Yet it was not spontaneous. 
Carlo’s reply had been a manly knuckling of his forehead. Michael had absolutely 
ignored everything. 
Kay didn’t care about her husband’s disfigurement but she worried about his sinus 
trouble which sprang from it. Surgery repair of the face would cure the sinus also. For 
that reason she wanted Michael to enter the hospital and get the necessary work done. 
But she understood that in a curious way he desired his disfigurement. She was sure 
that the Don understood this too. 

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