The Company She Keeps

by Georgia Durante

  A gangster’s girlfriend and another’s wife who spent most of her life in the shadows of the underworld, a witness to murder and unspeakable brutality, a woman whose own life had been threatened more than once. That was me too.

  A wheel-woman for the Mob, which is how I wound up doing stunts for a living, that early “getaway” training. I saw the “bad guys” do good things and the “good guys” commit crimes, distorting my view of reality. My young mind was manipulated by men who held tremendous power, not only in their own dark world, but also in our own government.

  The CIA has nothing on the Mob, except for the fact that no one investigates them. Back in my New York days, the CIA had a sixteen-year relationship with the Mob, starting with Carlo Gambino, working closely together in money laundering, extortion, and murder. The Mob pulled the trigger, but the CIA loaded the gun. I don’t know if it still exists; I’m no longer around as a witness. It wasn’t easy moving away from this world, and I suppose I will always be bound in some way.

  And then there’s the Georgia I was before I became Kodak’s Summer Girl and got married to the Mob: the good Catholic girl in my First Communion dress, looking shy and angelic, with a circle of white daisies surrounding my veil.

  After they got the Ferrari off my head and the shoot was over, I flew back home to Los Angeles and thought about my life. It struck me as odd how easily I could shrug off the face of death. Didn’t I believe my life was important?

  How did I get from there to here?

  I discovered I’d built an entire professional persona, not in conjunction with my life as a woman, not in support of it, but in contradiction to it. My career has been a perfect avoidance technique for truths about my life I never wanted to face. As I have so often in my life when I entered a crisis, I thought only of the external, inanimate elements of that crisis, never the woman at the center. High-speed avoidance of the bad guys isn’t just what I do in front of the camera; it’s what I’ve done my entire life. Too much speed at the turns, too many split-second miscalculations, somebody else’s fault, my fault—who knows? Stuff happens, I thought.

  And that is when I began writing this book.

  Chapter One

  In a way, I was born famous. I inherited my mother’s beauty along with her undeserved reputation. And like my mother and her sisters, I too never felt quite good enough. I never really understood why that was, but I vividly remember feeling that way as a child.

  I also inherited my mother’s spirit for adventure. She never kept a tight rein on me. She trusted me and gave me freedom to explore and open doors to the exciting, mysterious world she herself had been unable to explore, either because of financial reasons, social status, or because she was an emotional prisoner to the thought processes of a small town.

  In the Little Italy section of Rochester, New York, where I grew up, my mother attracted attention early on as the most beautiful of the four Perrone sisters. All the Perrone women were well-known to the gossips of this tight-knit little community.

  It started with my grandmother, Rose Mazzo, who was once married to a Mafioso who beat her. Divorce was unheard-of in those days, but she eventually left him and managed to escape the grip of his violence. She met my grandfather, Vincent Perrone, soon after. They fell in love and she started a new life with him. This wasn’t acceptable to those who believed in the old Italian traditions. In her quest for a happier life, she accepted the punishment of being excommunicated from the church and became the main focus of the gossipmongers.

  Rose and Vincent settled in East Rochester sometime around 1920. Upstate New York was a popular settlement region for early-century Italian immigrants. There was work to be had in the factories of what was then a booming industrial area. An Italian immigrant could get by without knowing English in a place like East Rochester, which made these upstate New York communities appealing.

  My grandfather went to work in the railroad-car shops as a blacksmith. He worked long days in intense heat to support his growing family. I don’t know how much he was paid, but it wasn’t enough to buy the $300 house they lived in, so they paid the required seven-dollars-per-month rent. Like most everyone else in East Rochester, Vincent and Rosie were poor—dirt poor. The houses in the neighborhood didn’t have bathrooms, only outhouses, and even those were shared by four separate families. The neighborhood consisted of several tiny houses clustered closely together. The space between them was barely enough to park a car, for the fortunate few who owned one.

  Everyone always knew what was going on in everyone else’s life. On hot summer nights when all the windows were open, the sounds of those lives traveled into neighboring homes. And as it was in Italy, and all small villages, East Rochester was a community that thrived on gossip.

  My mother, Angela, was one of nine Perrone children—three boys, six girls. The twins, a boy and a girl, died shortly after they were born due to lack of money for proper medical care. One of the younger girls was killed by a car while playing in front of the house when she was three years old. My grandmother, who was in her early twenties at the time, witnessed this. They say her hair turned totally white overnight, aging her by twenty years.

  My uncles were hardworking, decent guys who pooled their three-dollar-a-week paychecks—earned by delivering milk and picking up odd jobs—to help support the family, but it was the Perrone girls who captured the attention of East Rochester. In the Old Country, an obedient nature and a strong back were prized among female children. In the New World, it was beauty that was most valued. A beautiful girl could attract a prosperous husband and marry above herself, thereby advancing both her own station and that of the family. But in this town no wealthy men existed. Regardless, heads turned wherever the Perrone sisters walked, and the women of yesterday, not unlike those of today, were extremely jealous of them. Of course, this led to false rumors about their promiscuity, heard enough times that they were taken as truth.

  My aunt Theresa, the oldest, was a petite brunette with a dazzling smile and infectious energy. My aunt Sunda was the shy beauty who never viewed herself as beautiful. And my aunt Dolly, the youngest, was a wholesome beauty whose insecurities far surpassed those of her older sisters. But it was Angela, my mother, who really turned heads. Even as a child her devilish antics didn’t detract from the obvious beauty she was becoming. In 1945, by the time she was nineteen years old, she was breathtaking.

  That same year, my grandmother, whom I was never fortunate enough to know, died suddenly of a heart attack at age forty-three—while dancing the polka at a neighborhood tavern. From what I’ve been told, my grandmother was also a beauty with a huge heart and a loving spirit who always sought the light even in the darkest of times. This was one of the qualities she passed on to her children.

  My grandfather was devastated when she died. Due to his health he could no longer work to support the family. The children’s ages at the time of my grandmother’s death ranged from nine to twenty-three. The older kids took care of the younger ones. They somehow managed to feed the whole crew on two dollars a week. The death of my grandmother left all of the siblings feeling incredibly insecure and emotionally abandoned. They had only each other to depend on, which is why, I suppose, they remain so close today.

  As my grandfather’s health deteriorated, he became desperate to see his family in Italy. He left for the Old Country and died there. The children, penniless and uneducated, couldn’t raise the money to get his body back to the United States. Communication was a problem in those days as well, and they have no idea where his remains lie. After my grandfather’s death, there wasn’t any parental guidance. My mother and my aunts became prey to vicious gossip. Their insecurities lent to their helplessness to defend themselves, and they subconsciously allowed themselves to believe they were as everyone said they were.

  My mother married my sister’s father. It was a marriage that lasted only a few years. Ah, just like her mother, no good. A few years later she met my father and fell madly in love. She became pr
egnant with me and he left town quickly with no forwarding address. No one ever heard from him again. I never knew my real father.

  My mother stayed in the family home after the youngest of her siblings was grown and on their own. She worked double shifts as a waitress and sold cosmetics on the side to support my sister and me. My aunts all took turns caring for us. My sister and I were always surrounded by an abundance of love.

  Tony, who would become my stepfather, came into our lives when I was six months old. I will have him as my father for the rest of my life, but in the eyes of the gossiping villagers I would always be known as the bastard child of one of the Perrone girls.

  My immediate neighborhood consisted of two small blocks, Apple Street and Taft Street. Across from my house were cornfields, and directly behind it were the railroad tracks. This area of the village was called the “Northside,” and this was my childhood world. Though no one in the village was wealthy, the Northside was still considered the slums. The homes were all built exactly the same; shabby and extremely tiny, they were about nine hundred square feet. This is where my mother was born and where my sister and I would also grow up.

  Amazingly, even a few of those who lived on the wrong side of the tracks still found it in their nature to denigrate others. I remember playing on Apple Street with one of the neighborhood kids one day (I couldn’t have been more than five or six at the time), when a chicken with its head cut off came running into the street. I didn’t like that. Why did they have to cut off their heads? My playmate’s grandmother came out in search of the headless chicken. When she saw us playing together, she demanded of my friend, “Come in-na da house this-a minute. I told you I don-na want you playing with that puttana!” The little girl reluctantly walked to the door and her grandmother pulled her inside by her ear.

  Later, at home, I sat watching my mother get ready to go out somewhere. I asked, “Mommy? What’s a puttana?”

  My mother looked at me as if I had just stuck a knife through her heart. She thought for a moment, tears filled her eyes, and she answered, “Puttana is the Italian word for whore.”

  “What’s a whore?”

  “A whore is a bad girl, honey.”

  “I’m not a bad girl, am I, Mommy?”

  “No, sweetheart, you’re not a bad girl,” my mother said. “People call me bad names too. They think I’m bad because I had you and I wasn’t married. They wanted me to give you away, but I wouldn’t do that. You were created from love, and I loved you too much to give you away. They can call me all the names they want, but they can never take away the joy you bring to my life.”

  She took me by the hand and led me to the bathroom mirror. “Look in there and tell me what you see.”

  “I see me.”

  “I see a beautiful little girl, that’s what I see. That’s what everyone who looks at you sees too. Because you’re pretty, people will call you these names. It doesn’t mean that you’re bad. They’re just jealous of you. They dislike people who have something they want and can’t have. That’s called jealousy. No matter what anyone ever says about you, always remember one thing: Your real beauty is inside. If you’re a good person, one day the name-calling will stop. Try to feel sorry for those people who call you names. They aren’t as fortunate as you are.”

  I worshiped my mother. Her movements were so graceful it seemed to me that she glided rather than walked. Her high cheekbones and short raven hair balanced her oval face to perfection. But it was her eyes that drew you in, deep brown, caring eyes filled with love and concern. She spoke softly, and when she laughed the sound was like a child’s giggle.

  I used to love watching my mother get ready to go out on a date with my soon-to-be dad. She’d start with a clean face that needed no improvement, but when she’d finished applying her makeup she was absolutely gorgeous. I’d watch her for hours as she went through the process, and I’d fantasize about being grown-up, glamorous, and beautiful. She always sang to me while getting ready, making up verses that expressed her love for me. After a loving kiss she’d breeze out the door, leaving a faint trail of an Avon fragrance behind.

  My mother’s real beauty was within—her incredible generosity. I have never met anyone quite like her. She gives so freely from her heart, with no thought of the consequence to her own financial or emotional hardship. I remember one Thanksgiving when I was in my teens. My mother had to run to the grocery store for the cranberry sauce that she insisted we needed to complete the meal. The food was already on the table and we had just finished saying grace. She told us to start eating and she’d be right back. After forty-five minutes, dinner was over and she still had not returned.

  My father went out in search of her while my sister and I started calling the local hospitals, thinking she must have had an accident. She finally showed up about two hours later. We all breathed a sigh of relief. The thought had obviously never crossed her mind that we might be worried, or that she had missed the one big meal of the year that took her days to prepare. On her way to the store she had seen a woman crying her heart out, pushing a small baby around in a shopping cart. Of course my mother had to stop and ask her what the matter was. Between sobs, the woman explained that her husband had beaten her and she was heading to her sister’s house forty miles away. My mother told her to get in the car and she would take her there. Someone needed help. That was her only conscious thought. That’s my mom.

  My mother married Tony when I was five. Everyone called him “Pooch.” He got the nickname from chasing fire trucks down the road as a kid, just like a little puppy would. Poochie (as I called him) was a small guy in stature, only about five-eight, but he was a big man to me. I idolized him. Though he was quiet and soft-spoken, his loving personality came through without question. He had grown up like everyone else in East Rochester. Not a rich man, but a man of integrity. I had always thought of him as my daddy. He’d been there from the beginning of my life. He was a wonderful man, a good, loving dad who supported my sister and me in every aspect of our lives. How lucky my mother was to find a man who not only loved her, but truly loved her children as well.

  After they were married, my mother still had to work to make ends meet, but she didn’t have to hold down three jobs anymore. She worked days while my sister and I were in school and was able to be home with us at night. We hadn’t made extraordinary leaps financially, but life was a little easier for my mother.

  My sister, Sharon, was a beautiful child. She had dark hair and a delicate, angelic face. She really was the angel of the two of us. I was more outgoing. She liked staying around the house, while I was always off in the woods or looking for whatever trouble I could get into. Sharon liked the safety of the nest. She was Mom’s little helper. I was Mom’s little monster, always getting into some kind of mess.

  My sister and I used to laugh at the most inappropriate times. We’d giggle at funerals when everyone was wailing. Sometimes we’d really lose it in church. Every Friday after school we went to confession so our souls would be pure enough to receive Holy Communion. On Sundays, Sharon and I could always be found sitting with our friends in the balcony in St. Jerrome’s Church at the eleven-o’clock Mass. We’d pick fuzzballs off our identical pink angora sweaters and have contests to see who could land the most fuzzballs on the silliest-looking hats below. Then we’d start to laugh. We’d try to hold it in, but you know when you’re not supposed to laugh how you just can’t help it?

  Once we laughed so hard we had to duck down in the pew to hide from all the sour faces peering up to see who was causing such disorder in the church. Finally the priest asked us to stand. When we stood, we burst out laughing even louder than before. Then the entire congregation began to laugh too. The priest tried to bring some order, but it was all over after that. No one could control themselves. When things started to quiet down, Sharon and I burst into laughter again, which got everyone else going. That Sunday Mass ended about twenty minutes sooner than it normally would have.

  After that, Sh
aron and I were no longer permitted to sit together in church. And on Fridays after confession we could count on doing three entire rosaries for our penance. That’s a lot of Hail Marys for a little laughing. I would have hated to see how long we’d have been there if we had committed a mortal sin!

  I was the little sister, the tagalong. We always fought when we were children, but we also loved each other and were protective of each other. As adults we’re extremely close.

  Most of my early memories of Rochester are of love and laughter and feeling very secure. Beyond the cornfields across from my house were the woods. I loved those woods. To get there I had to walk through the cornfields, which immensely irritated the farmer who owned them. I loved running through his fields and stealing tomatoes from the old buzzard’s garden. I enjoyed it most when he got annoyed and chased me into the woods. They were my woods. I had lots of secret places to hide—he could never catch me. Sometimes darkness caught me unaware. I especially liked this because it was scary. Strange sounds from the bushes and the rustling in the underbrush heightened my curiosity. This place in the woods is where I first became aware that I was alone. That only I could protect me. At the time, it was the creatures in the forest that I sought protection from, but this awareness would come in handy when I became prey to human creatures.