Mafia Girl

by Deborah Blumenthal

  Then I start thinking about other beautiful things like my dad and our family and how I’m missing them and what I feel for Michael and about this whole extraordinary trip, so I go outside and find Clive and look at him with my misty eyes.

  “It was…overwhelming.”

  “I knew you’d feel that way, Gia,” Clive says, hugging me. “That’s why I love you.”

  Because everything is so perfect, I can’t leave it alone and I have to make it unperfect. Enter Michael again and I start to wonder how this whole trip would be if I were with him, but not just the sex thing, which we would obviously be doing like ten times a day, but everything else—like getting blown away by the risotto and the veal cotoletta and walking on the narrow, winding cobblestone streets and cursing at the insane drivers and finding perfect little boutiques with shoes in colors you didn’t know existed and freaking out about the palazzos with their glossy painted doors and the paintings in the museums and the people and what everyone is wearing.

  I wonder if he’d get into it as much as I do and think about changing his life and staying here forever and escaping from crime and everything ugly from back home. But how can I answer those questions because I don’t know Michael, at least not yet. And who knows if that is ever going to change because he’s so impossible to get close to because of his emotional body armor. And maybe he can’t escape either because it’s been a part of him for so long.

  For no reason I think of the mystery about Michael’s dad who was a cop too and the stuff that Clive couldn’t find out and wonder about how that could affect who he is and what he thinks. And when we get back and have our computers again, I’ll ask Clive and see if he can hack into his dad’s network again and get behind the firewall.

  We leave behind the magical thinking and the fantasy world we explored when we land back in New York and head for the limo waiting for us at the airport. The driver takes our bags, including the twelve new ones with all the stuff we bought, and fits them all into the trunk. While we’re waiting for Clive’s dad, the driver lifts his newspaper and I glance up and in a nanosecond my world implodes.

  On the cover of the Post, there’s a picture of Frankie with a one-word headline: Squealer.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “ANTHONY,” I scream as I walk through our front door, before I even drop my suitcase. “Anthony!”

  Then even louder, “Anthony!!”

  He runs out of his room and looks at me.

  “What’s going on?” I say, waving the paper in the air. Very slowly he comes down the stairs and looks at me with the darkest, angriest expression I have ever seen on his face.

  “Frankie turned.”

  “I found that out on the front page, Anthony. Why didn’t anyone call me? Did you forget you have a sister?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Anthony!”

  “It just happened. We didn’t want you to freak.”

  Frankie has worked for my dad for as long as I can remember. The feds were after him, everyone knew that, but we thought of him as family. He’d been taking me to school for years and he was at every family dinner on every holiday. Now, after he nearly died at our dinner table and he’s back on his feet after we paid for thousands of dollars for nursing care, he turns?

  “Why?”

  “Why? To save his ass. They were close to putting him away for life on ten different charges, that’s why. And the feds had tapes where dad was mad and said shit about him and what a dick he was. And they played those for him and it must have convinced him.”

  I watch him clenching his jaw. “What are we going to do now?”

  “Who the fuck knows.”

  “But Super Mario is on it, right?”

  “What do you think, Gia?”

  I drag my bags up to my room and instead of a homecoming, it feels like a wake. My mom is at the church, probably afraid to leave, and my dad is out somewhere hunched down with his associates, and stupid me actually thought it might be possible to escape for an entire three weeks without family stuff flying in my face.

  I now know for sure that my head is screwed on wrong and that I live in a dream world.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I’m still on European time and jet lagged, and I’m walking down the corridor passing the bulletin board. I casually turn my head and—whoa—see my name, and for a few seconds I can’t figure out why because there’s this disconnect.

  I’m president.

  What? Me? The little guidette? Do they really want me?

  “Gia,” Clive says, running up to me, putting his arms around me. “You did it.”

  Then other kids are congratulating me, and I’m saying thank you and thank you and thank you and getting the thumbs up, but my head is now thinking of my dad and how this is really for him because of how proud it will make him to know that I won. And how this is what he wants for me, because in his eyes it means achievement and respectability and success. And right now he needs any good news because it is in desperately short supply in our world.

  But this is a new direction for my head. Am I up for this now? Can I do the job? Do I really have something to offer the Morgan School?

  During the vacation they finally recounted the votes and the sign is up and I have really friggin’ won. Clive and Ro and Candy are applauding and going crazy while I’m trying to process this, and all I know for sure is that from now on, I’m going to be looked at differently.

  For better or worse.

  Even Jordan comes up to me and says in a really serious, decent, TV announcer kind of voice:

  “Congratulations, Gia, and I mean that. I think you’ll be a great president.”

  That kind of throws me, but I smile back at him. “I hope you’ll be willing to help me,” which is the kind of bullshit things that presidents say, I imagine, and he nods gravely.

  “Anytime, Gia,” he says with a warm smile. “Anything you need.”

  This is all too warm and fuzzy and I should shut up because—hold it—does Jordan actually like me? I don’t dwell on that thought for long because then Georgina comes by and looks at the sign, her eyes widening in horror, and right behind her is Brandy Tewl.

  “I don’t believe this,” Brandy says. “I don’t, not after I won, not her.”

  They give me a dirty look and storm off.

  Clive is leaning against the wall taking this all in and shooting me these amused looks, but best of all is when Wentworth comes by and looks up at the sign and then glances back at me with this suckworthy, patronizing smile.

  “I guess I better watch my back now, right, Mafia Girl?” he says, “because, I mean, I know you must be watching yours all the time.”

  As I’m fantasizing about the joy I’d get smacking Wentworth’s head, Clive must be having similar revenge fantasies because he sneaks up behind Wentworth and shoves the sharp corner of his math book between his shoulders

  “Hands up, fucker!” he yells. Wentworth nearly jumps a foot off the ground and we all start laughing at him until he slinks away. Even though I feel like a suck up, I go to the newspaper office and ask them if I can write a few paragraphs about how I’m going to keep my campaign promises about the fund-raising, the tickets, and especially the scholarships. I’ll also ask for volunteers to help me even though in truth I feel like barfing when I think of working with some of the people in this school. But when I tell Clive that, he just laughs.

  “Gia, you really don’t have to worry about that because it’s not like people here are going to be lining up to volunteer unless they think it will help their applications to Harvard.”

  And as usual Clive is right.

  I get the note from Mr. Wright when I’m in bio.

  Please see me at three.

  When the bell rings, I head for the office. There’s no one at the secretary’s desk, so I walk in and knock on Mr. Wright’s door. He looks up and waves me in. Sitting in the office is Domingo, the cafeteria worker. What?

  “I thought I owed you an explanation, Gi
a,” Mr. Wright says. “Mr. Caruso found the evidence.”

  “What evidence?”

  “The votes,” Domingo says.

  He opens the shopping bag that’s next to him and takes out a stack of folded pieces of paper. Only they’re not just pieces of paper, they’re ballots.

  “Where did you find those?” I ask.

  “In the garbage,” he says.

  I feel a lump in my throat. “Thank you, Domingo. Thank you very much.

  “But why did you take them? How did you know?”

  “Someone was trying to hurt you, right, Miss Gia?”

  I nod.

  “We appreciate it, Mr. Caruso. Thank you,” Mr. Wright says. “You can go home now.”

  But Domingo doesn’t move. He looks at me dead on. “You’re different, Miss Gia. You always throw away the garbage, even if it’s not your garbage.”

  And then I realize that he may be one of the smartest people in the school.

  After school the next day, Clive and Ro and Candy and I head to Central Park. It’s one of those extraordinary days when you’re convinced it’s due to global warming because on January 5, how can it be sixty? We all take off our down jackets and walk around in sweaters, and like a six-year-old, I’m excited about going to the park and fooling around and then getting hot chocolate and hanging out at Clive’s to do homework. We walk toward Fifth Avenue, but when I look up, I see someone I don’t expect to see. He’s standing in front of his red Jag. I stop for just a minute and stare.

  “Gia,” he calls, even though he knows I see him.

  Anthony.

  In all the years I’ve been in school, my brother has never waited outside for me. Not only that, he’s wearing a suit and a white shirt and tie, which he doesn’t do unless there’s a wedding or a funeral, so I freak and think, uh-oh, has Frankie died? Did my mom send my brother to drive me straight to the funeral home? Then I think no, I’m in jeans today and my mom saw me and there’s no way I could go in this so I’d have to go home first, and no, that’s not why Anthony is here, which brings me to think about other things.

  “Anthony.”

  “Wanna get some lunch?”

  “I had lunch three hours ago.”

  “So dinner, whatever,” he says. “Get in, c’mon.”

  I say good-bye to Clive and Ro and Candy and kinda shrug when they look at me like, what’s going on? because I have no idea. So I get in the car and he pulls out.

  Anthony’s car has white leather upholstery and even though his room is always a pigsty, his car is immaculate, which I can’t exactly figure. He keeps it parked outside the house and every few days he washes and waxes it himself. Even the white wall tires never have a speck of dirt on them. Once I actually saw him scrubbing a little dirt spot off the white leather seat with saddle soap and a toothbrush. I kind of stopped in my tracks because where did that come from?

  The only annoying thing in the car is the cheapo cardboard deodorant tree hanging from the rearview mirror that reeks of artificial pine.

  “Why do you have that shitty thing hanging there?”

  “For the good smell.”

  “Like a good cheap taxi smell?” It must be the word cheap because he rips it off the mirror, opens the window and throws it out.

  “Okay?”

  I look at him weird. “Yeah, but I didn’t mean you had to throw it out immediately.”

  He shrugs and keeps driving. We approach a red light and Anthony starts honking at the guy in front of us who slows down because he thinks the guy could have easily made it through the yellow.

  “A-hole,” he says.

  “A woman started crossing with a stroller. What do you want him to do, mow her down?”

  He looks at me and doesn’t say anything. “What are you in the mood for?”

  Actually nothing since I’m not hungry and it was his idea to eat, not mine. “Whatever.”

  “Want to go to Rao’s?”

  “Are they serving now?”

  “For me they are.”

  “Okay, whatever.”

  He heads uptown and I just sit there because I really don’t have a huge number of topics I feel like discussing with my brother. I notice that he’s wearing the cuff links I bought him in Rome. I point to his cuff.

  “You like them?”

  “Fuckin’ A,” he says. “They’re gorgeous.”

  “Does Dad like his?”

  He glances over at me. “He’s wearing them today. He loves ’em.”

  The cuff links are gold, almost like the beans Elsa Peretti makes for Tiffany, only these have a few tiny rubies on the side, which upgrades the whole look, I thought. The pair for my dad has a few more rubies and some tiny diamonds too. And for my mom I bought an eighteen-karat gold cross with tiny emeralds because she loves crosses and owns more of them than the Vatican. And every day, no matter where she’s going, she wears every single one, a total of about twenty, in different sizes and shapes, in case someone may not realize she’s a serious Catholic.

  When we get to Rao’s, Anthony manages to find a spot close to the restaurant windows so he can keep an eye on the car. We go in and it’s pretty empty at that hour and they give him a huge greeting like he’s made their day. I’ve totally lost my appetite, but I’m not going to sit at Rao’s and not eat, so I order a seafood salad and so does Anthony, but he also wants meatballs and ziti. We eat and Anthony looks like he’s in heaven, which always happens when he eats, which is why he’s about twenty-five pounds overweight. But I don’t go there because when you’re chowing down at Rao’s, you don’t exactly want to hear a lecture about how fat you are.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  He looks at me. “Home.”

  “Oh.” I pick up another forkful.

  As usual, Anthony manages to drop some seafood salad on his shirt and he goes “shit,” and the waiter runs over with a cloth napkin and a bottle of club soda, and Anthony says thanks and does a lousy job of trying to get it out, and what he’s left with is an oil stain with an enormous wet spot around it like a bull’s-eye. But based on his skills with his car, I’m sure he’ll rise to the challenge when he gets home.

  “How’s school?”

  “Okay.” I kind of look at him strangely because Anthony always hated school and never ever talked about it. After high school that was it for him and he never mentioned it again.

  “You’re like the president?”

  “Not ‘like,’ I am the president.”

  “Cool. So what do you do, make the rules?”

  “Yeah, I decide totally everything.” I shake my head because my brother is obviously a bigger moron than I thought. “It’s not exactly a job that comes with total power,” I say to disabuse him because he must be thinking that I’m like Castro was over Cuba or something. “It basically means I get to do the stupid volunteer stuff that no one else really wants to do anyway.”

  He nods and that kind of ends the conversation about the school and being president and I look up and—whoa—see one of the girls who was at the photo shoot with me at Vogue. It’s Bridget, the daughter of Jade Just, the designer. This time she’s wearing this over-the-top black cashmere sweater dress that looks like someone took a knife and arbitrarily made some significant slits in it so that it’s clear she’s got on a royal blue satin bra and a matching thong, plus these extraordinary over-the-knee suede boots in a dark eggplant color. We make small talk for a minute or two as she stands at the table.

  “Are you alone?” I say finally. “Do you want to sit with us?”

  “No thanks, it’s fine,” she says. A second later John Plesaurus walks in.

  I guess Bridget Just has an extraordinary body too and maybe she’s fine with having a Vogue photographer take porno pictures of her just for his personal viewing pleasure or whatever, because John Plesaurus is obviously not only a great fashion photographer but also a deviant child molester. So I smile at him and then turn back to Anthony, who, a second later, asks too loud, “who the fuck is that?�
��

  I roll my eyes. “The guy who shoots for Vogue.”

  Anthony looks at me confused.

  “He’s their favorite photographer.”

  “Oh, from those pictures?”

  “Yes, from those pictures.”

  After that I make a point of not looking up and watching them and I’m getting antsy about sitting there because all I’m wondering is whether this meal is before or after for them. And my mind is going places it has no business going because what do I care what she does? I’m wishing that Anthony would just hurry up and finish the stupid meatballs or take them home or whatever. Finally he cleans his plate and signals for the waiter to come over because I know he wants dessert.

  “I have a ton of homework, can we just go?”

  “Never mind,” he says to the waiter, “just the check.” He pays and we go outside and get into the car and I’m watching him and waiting and he starts the car and finally I can’t stand it anymore.

  “Anthony, what the fuck is going on?”

  He looks at me and bites his lip, staring off into the distance. An eternity later, he turns back to me. “The jury came in,” he says, so low I can barely hear him.

  Neither of us says anything and I stop breathing.

  “Dad’s not coming home anymore, Gia,” he blurts out finally. “This is it.”

  Then I see something I rarely see. My brother is crying.

  I sit there looking at him, getting more worked up than I would have if I just went home and found out or read it in the papers, because someone put him up to this lunch and I know it wasn’t my mom or my dad.

  “What does Super Mario say?” The words come out in a rush. “He’s on it, right?”

  Anthony doesn’t answer.

  “Anthony…what does he say?”

  “He says we’re fucked.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Gia…you don’t know how much they have against him this time.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like wire taps and all the Frankie shit.”