CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
DOMINIC
Gio was planning on coming with me to meet with the funeral home director about Donna’s service and burial. It would be a small, intimate affair on Tuesday afternoon, and we intended to close both restaurants until 6 p.m. Employees who were scheduled to work would receive full pay but were not expected to attend the service unless they wanted to. Sonoran Acres had offered us their conference room as an informal postfuneral gathering place, and I was happy to take them up on it. Most of Donna’s living friends were there anyway.
When I saw Gio this morning, I also had to tell him that I planned to contact Steven and let him know that our grandmother had passed away. It shouldn’t be that hard in this hyperactive social media age to locate a family member, but after an hour of drinking coffee at my bare kitchen table while scouring search results on my laptop, I wasn’t having any luck. Meanwhile, my phone was overflowing with messages that I didn’t feel like dealing with yet. I did take a quick look to see if any calls or texts had come through from Melanie. They hadn’t. The meeting this morning with the funeral director was at ten, and after that I planned to drop by Melanie’s apartment. I hoped to take her out somewhere and try to have a few hours of a normal relationship. I badly wanted that with her. I just hoped she wanted it too.
The knock on the door came early, just after eight. I was still unshowered and wearing only my boxers. Part of me immediately hoped that Melanie was here, but the knock was too loud and insistent to be the work of her delicate hand. That knock was all Gio.
“You’re early,” I said when I opened the door.
He wasn’t dressed either. In fact he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed in his flannel pajama bottoms. He didn’t have a shirt on, and I noticed the faded scar on his right shoulder. I’d forgotten about that scar and where it came from, but now I had a sudden flashback.
Gio was maybe five at the time—we were at a Fourth of July block party in Uncle Frank’s neighborhood in Brooklyn. It was dark outside, and my grandparents were twenty yards away at Frank’s house when some drunk dickhead ran through the crowd with a pair of Roman candles. A shower of sparks landed on Gio’s shirt and caught fire. I didn’t have time to react, and I didn’t know what to do anyway. But Steven did. Our big teenage cousin grabbed Gio and threw him down on the ground, rolling and smacking him until the fire was out. Gio was screaming, and people were crowding and gasping. I saw Papa Leo sprint our way at a speed that was remarkable for a potbellied gray-haired grandfather. Steven had gathered his little cousin into his arms as he assured him, “It’s okay. Fire’s out. You’re okay.”
More than twenty years later, Gio wordlessly stepped into my apartment and pressed a folded newspaper to my chest.
“What’s this?” I asked.
My brother sat on the couch and glared at me. “Read it.”
“You’re the only guy I know who still gets the damn newspaper delivered to his door every day,” I muttered as I leaned against the wall and unfolded the paper. According to the headlines the congressman who’d been on trial for running a prostitution ring out of a sporting goods store was going to prison.
“So what?” I looked up to find Gio was still grimly watching me.
“Section D,” he said.
I was drawing a blank until I sorted through the pieces of newspaper and saw that section D was the Food and Entertainment section. I’d forgotten all about the fact that the article was coming out today, the one written by the annoying reporter who came to the friends and family event and cornered Gio with a bunch of weird questions that didn’t have anything to do with food. I still didn’t know why Gio was slumped on the couch looking like I’d just run over his puppy. Maybe that reporter, Becky Baller, had given us a bad review. Maybe she hated pizza.
I was expecting a few paragraphs on one of the inner pages, but “Brothers Haunted by Family Failures” took up four columns on the first page, then continued for another half page on page four.
Gio rose from the couch while I scanned the article. He walked into the kitchen and stood at the window, staring at the gray morning. “Read the whole thing, Dom. Read every fucking word.”
I did what he said. I read every fucking word. Gio didn’t make a sound the entire time. He just stood there beside the window, a silent moral custodian. During the fifteen minutes or so that it took me to read and absorb the article in its entirety, I half forgot he was even there.
I was startled to read that Frank had done prison time years ago. He served nine months for tax evasion and racketeering. There was no mention of whether Steven had gone to prison as well.
“Can’t believe Uncle Frank was in prison,” I said to Gio.
“Keep reading,” was his curt answer.
As I continued to read, at first I was furious with the writer, then sadness filled me for the broken family described in these paragraphs. My broken family. All that history, came to this. I’d pictured my grandfather’s lonely death a million times, yet seeing it described in a couple of stark print sentences brought fresh waves of pain.
But the worst of the heartbreak was news to me; “death certificate . . . thirty-five years old.”
My throat tightened. I read those sentences again to make sure I understood them. Something heavy squeezed my chest and wouldn’t let go.
Beth, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
I never hated her. I hoped she didn’t hate me. She was lonely and sad, and I knew exactly what I was doing the first time I got her on her back and eased my way inside. She and Steven had been separated for six months when I started coming by to fix things around the house. She was grateful and pleased. She fed me plates of spaghetti. She asked me questions about school and life and really listened to the answers.
Beth was sweet with a delicate Snow White kind of beauty, but that wasn’t why I wanted her. Honestly, I wasn’t lacking for options. There were even prettier girls my own age that followed me everywhere in the hopes I’d give them a few minutes of my time. I liked being in her house, my cousin’s house. I liked knowing that she was eagerly waiting for me to come over after she tucked her daughter in for the night. Most of all, in my fucked up teenage head, I liked the idea that I was taking something important from the man who’d taken something important from me. Later on I was ashamed of that. But it didn’t change anything.
With care, I folded the newspaper along its original creases. The final paragraph had said positive things about the food and awarded a five-star rating, but that hardly seemed to matter.
Gio turned around, and I didn’t like what I saw in his face. He’d never asked me about it, never. I knew he watched me every time Beth’s name came up, but as the years passed that happened less and less. I could almost pretend history was different.
Donna knew. Maybe she’d suspected all along, but she guessed the truth for sure when Steven and I sported matching black eyes after brawling in the middle of his living room. He’d stopped by to talk to his estranged wife and found her with her head bobbing between my knees. Donna talked to me about it only once. She’d grabbed my hand and begged, “Dominic, let her go. Please.” It was the only thing she had ever asked of me, but it didn’t matter. Beth had already informed me she was reconciling with Steven. I didn’t even realize I’d fallen for her until I heard that crushing news. But it wasn’t the last blow to be dealt. The restaurant was officially lost, thanks to Frank and Steven, and so were Gio’s and my future hopes. All of a sudden there didn’t seem to be anything left for us in New York. Impulsively our grandmother called a moving van, packed us up, and shuttled us across the country. At that point I was glad to go.
Giovanni was waiting for me to talk first, but I didn’t know what to say. Of course I was sorry. I’d been sorry for a very long time.
“So, it’s true,” he finally said.
“Yes, it’s true,” I admitted.
He winced. “I guess I never really wanted to know. Or maybe I was afraid you’d just lie to my face.”
“Gio,” I said softly, “it was a decade ago. Yeah, I had an affair with Beth while she was separated from Steven. I was young and stupid and bitter.”
His shoulders slumped. It didn’t matter to Gio if it happened ten years ago or yesterday. He’d heard me admit it out loud now, so it was suddenly real, not just a shadowy rumor. Gio was hurt. The big brother he’d always worshipped had fucked his own cousin’s wife out of spite.
A gust of cool wind creaked the door open a few inches. It didn’t seem worth crossing the room to close it, though.
Gio crossed his arms. “What about the kid?”
“Your kid?”
“No, Dom, not my kid. Yours. What about her?”
I just stared at him, wondering if he’d really just said what I thought he’d said. It took a long time for me to scrape together an answer. When I finally could find the words, it almost hurt to say them.
“Giovanni Esposito, don’t you know me any better than that?”
He just shook his head sadly, lowered his head, and started to walk out.
“Wait, where the hell are you going?” I demanded. “We’re not done here.”
He was already at the door. He didn’t turn around when he answered. “Got to shower and get ready. We’ve got a grandmother to bury after all. I’ll meet you there, okay?”
“Gio. Fuck, come on. We need to talk.”
“Keep the newspaper,” he tossed over his shoulder before he left.
I didn’t chase after him. It seemed like he didn’t want me to. We had more shit to sort out, but I couldn’t force him to face me. We couldn’t get into this when Donna’s funeral was looming.
Yet when Gio met me at the funeral home, he wasn’t cool or angry. This wasn’t the place for that anyway. We were both sad, and even if he didn’t like me very much right now, we were still brothers.
The funeral director, a very pallid, very tall man named Ed Stock, talked scarcely above a whisper and was almost comically attentive as we described our desire for a very simple service.
“Thank you for entrusting your loved one to our care,” he said in a grave voice as he escorted us to the door after we handed him a check.
“Um, you’re welcome,” I said, offering him a salute for some strange reason.
When the double doors of the funeral home whispered closed at our backs, it gave me an eerie feeling. Gio didn’t seem to notice. He waited to make sure I was coming before he started for the parking lot.
“You want to grab an early lunch or something?” I asked him hopefully.
He shook his head. “Nah, I promised Tara I’d come home. We’re going to take Leah to the park before I head into work.”
“Sounds nice.”
He looked at me. “You’re welcome to come, Dom. I don’t want to talk about the damn article or ten-year-old scandals, but you’re always welcome.”
I would’ve loved to take Gio up on his offer. But I had something to take care of first. I couldn’t relax with my family or make a true commitment to the girl I cared about until I settled old scores. For ten years I’d been shadowed by the ominous clouds of the past. It didn’t matter at this point who had been more wrong and who deserved to pay for it the most. And maybe I wasn’t the only one who’d spent far too much time being haunted by memories and regret. I owed it to Donna to fix this.
“I’ll catch up with you later,” I said. “Kiss the little stinker for me.”
“I will.” He waved and left, a little too quickly.
What I wanted to do right now more than anything was go to Melanie. I ached to hold her and tell her about the things that had been haunting me for so long.
Instead I drove to Sonoran Acres. Walking in there was rough. Everyone knew who I was, and they’d all heard about Donna’s death. Gloria the nurse even gave me a gentle hug.
“She was so loved,” the woman said, and she suddenly had tears running down her cheeks. I was glad, though, glad my grandmother had so many friends here. I hoped when their grief faded, they’d celebrate the feisty woman who had loved everything about life.
The manager of the assisted living facility came out to talk to me. I’d met him before. He was a small, nervous man who always had ink stains on his white shirt and pulled obsessively at a thin, red moustache. After dealing with him for ten seconds, I realized his biggest worry was that we were going to sue the place for letting my grandmother roam around in the middle of the night and break her hip. I cut him off when he started yammering about releases of liability and shit.
“I need to see her room,” I said curtly. “I’m trying to get in touch with a family member back East, and I’m hoping she has contact information for him.”
“Of course, of course,” the man said. He led me down there himself. He was still talking when I stepped inside and shut the door in his face.
Donna’s cozy suite smelled like lemons. I felt the grief punch me in the stomach the second I entered. There was a bed, a low dresser, and a desk in the bedroom, which adjoined a full bathroom. A small living room area held a two-seater sofa and a television I’d bought her.
I didn’t know where to look, so I started with the bedroom desk. It felt wrong to be rummaging through Donna’s things less than twenty-four hours after her death, but there was a reason. I knew she’d approve.
From our conversation at the hospital, I figured out that she’d been keeping in touch with Steven all these years, although it didn’t seem like the contact was regular. She revealed she hadn’t heard from him in a while, but maybe there was an envelope or something with a return address label so I could track him down. I hadn’t had any success with my Google searches this morning. Gio had mentioned recently that Steven’s family might have moved up to Syracuse, but that information was old. According to the article, the family was living on Long Island at the time of Beth’s death and had since moved from their last known address. Perhaps that trauma had made him pull up stakes and try for a clean start with his two daughters. For all I knew they were living on the other side of Phoenix.
Donna’s desk was a treasure trove of family photos, yellowing menus from Esposito’s, and other odds and ends.
Gio’s fourth-grade report card.
A picture I’d once drawn of a frog eating a fly.
A frayed pink ribbon that must have some unknown significance.
I sorted through the photos with care. It was like staring down into a gallery of ghosts. There were faded pictures of Donna and Papa Leo when they were young, pictures of the old Esposito’s on Spring Street, Polaroid shots of my mother and her big brother, Frank, when they were kids, school photos of me and Gio, and an eight-by-ten family photo taken the day of Steven and Beth’s wedding.
My mouth went dry as I stared at the face I hadn’t seen in ten years. Funny, I didn’t remember her as looking at all like Melanie, and in my mind she still didn’t. Yet in this picture there was something about the way she posed with her chin tilted up, wide eyes looking straight through the long years between then and now. No, Melanie didn’t look like Beth. It was just the defiance of the pose that made me think of her. I gingerly set the stack of photos on the desk.
When I reached into the last drawer, I expected to find more of the same and for the most part I did. There were more pictures, a Broadway program from Les Misérables, and old Christmas cards. Most of the cards were signed with names I vaguely remembered as being friends from New York. I felt morbid, sorting through them and knowing that many of the senders were probably not alive anymore.
The last card I happened to open had a picture of a stately white chapel in a snowy wonderland with “Merry Christmas” embossed on the front in silver script. That wasn’t remarkable. But when I looked inside, the inscription almost made me drop the card.
Dear Donna,
Thank you so much for the American Girl dolls you sent. The girls really do love them. Alice refuses to go to bed unless her Molly is tucked safely beside her. We are doing well and planning to move down to Long Island in the spring. I wish it were sooner. The winters here in Syracuse are not to be believed. Maybe someday we can all come visit you out there in sunny Arizona. I know Steven would love to see you again. It’s been far too long.
Merry Christmas.
We love you,
Beth, Steven, Maya, and Alice
The rounded script blurred before my eyes. Beth had written this. There was a folded piece of loose-leaf paper in the card. I unfolded it to find a neat pen-drawn picture of two figures with long hair and flowered dresses. The word “Me” was scrawled over one figure. The other one was labeled as “My doll, Molly.” At the bottom the artist had written out her name and age.
Alice, age 7.
Alice would be nine now. This card and this picture were two years old.
I searched for over an hour but couldn’t find anything else that gave a hint as to a current address and phone number. I’d have to find another way.
Before I left, I tracked Gloria down and asked her if she could please lock my grandmother’s room until someone from the family had a chance to come collect her personal effects. She squeezed my arm sympathetically and promised that she would see to it.
As soon as I was back in my truck, I made a phone call. Jason answered on the first ring.
“How are you doing, man?” he said earnestly. “Been thinking about you and Gio.”
“Hanging in there,” I said. “Listen, Jay, I need a favor.”
“Anything, buddy.”
“You still keep in touch with that private investigator buddy from college?”
“Yeah. His name’s Arthur Cavendish. Most of his clients are justifiably paranoid upper-crust wives who want to catch their cheating husbands eating twenty-year-old pussy, but Artie can do anything. Why? You need to find someone?”
I touched the Christmas card. It was the only thing I’d taken from Donna’s room.
“Yeah,” I answered slowly. “I need to find someone.”