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"Then why don't you invite them over some evening and you can reassure your
sister?" Kay said. "The poor thing is always so nervous about what you think of her
husband. Tell her. And tell her to put those silly worries out of her head."
"I can't do that," Michael said. "We don't talk about those things in our family."
"Do you want me to tell her what you've told me?" Kay said.
She was puzzled because he took such a long time thinking over a suggestion that
was obviously the proper thing to do. Finally he said, "I don't think you should, Kay. I
don't think it will do any good. She'll worry anyway. It's something nobody can do
anything about."
Kay was amazed. She realized that Michael was always a little colder to his sister
Connie than he was to anyone else, despite Connie's affection. "Surely you don't blame
Connie for Sonny being killed?" she said.
Michael sighed. "Of course not," he said. "She's my kid sister and I'm very fond of her.
I feel sorry for her. Carlo straightened out, but he's really the wrong kind of husband. It's
just one of those things. Let's forget about it."
It was not in Kay's nature to nag; she let it drop. Also she had learned that Michael
was not a man to push, that he could become coldly disagreeable. She knew she was
the only person in the world who could bend his will, but she also knew that to do it too
often would be to destroy that power. And living with him the last two years had made
her love him more.
She loved him because he was always fair. An odd thing. But he always was fair to
everybody around him, never arbitrary even in little things. She had observed that he
was now a very powerful man, people came to the house to confer with him and ask
favors, treating him with deference and respect but one thing had endeared him to her
above everything else.
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Ever since Michael had come back from Sicily with his broken face, everybody in the
Family had tried to get him to undergo corrective surgery. Michael's mother was after
him constantly; one Sunday dinner with all the Corleones gathered on the mall she
shouted at Michael, "You look like a gangster in the movies, get your face fixed for the
sake of Jesus Christ and your poor wife. And so your nose will stop running like a
drunken Irish."
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
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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.
But after Kay gave birth to her first child, she was surprised by Michael asking her,