Skells

by F. P. Lione

  “The wedding’s almost paid for—don’t worry about it,” I said, nuzzling her neck. “I’d rather work the OT now and have a beautiful bathroom so after we get married, I can stay home and enjoy it.”

  She looked skeptical for a second, then said, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s beautiful.” She hugged me and whispered, “I can’t wait to get married to you.”

  “Let’s hope you feel that way tomorrow when you meet the rest of the family.”

  We got to Fiore’s house by 4:30. He lives in Holbrook, closer to Ronkonkoma, where he catches the Long Island Railroad. It’s real suburbia here and a lot more crowded than where Michele lives.

  Fiore lives in a white split-level home with green shutters on a cul de sac with about ten houses. Some of the houses are done up in brick or stone with professional landscaping, and others like Fiore’s are average but nice.

  He has three kids, Josh, Joey, and Grace. Josh and Joey are dark haired like Fiore, and Grace, who’s a little over a year old, has a head of dark peach fuzz. She’s adorable, and for some reason she took a liking to me. I guess because I’m over there a lot and always play with her. She dropped the ball she was trying to pick up and squealed when she saw me. She ran toward me with unsteady steps. Her arms were out, and she had a big smile on her face. She laid her head on my shoulder when I picked her up and started chomping on my shirt.

  “She loves you, Tony,” Michele said, holding her hands out to Grace, trying to see if she would come to her. Grace turned her face away and stayed on my shoulder.

  “I have that effect on women,” I said, then added, “She’s so light.”

  “She’ll get heavy after a while, Tony,” Donna said, kissing my cheek.

  “Where’s Joe?” I asked.

  “The tank was empty on the barbeque, so he went to the store. You want me to take her?” She nodded toward Grace.

  “No, I got her.”

  Josh, Joey, and Stevie went over to play with the Little Tykes basketball hoop in the driveway.

  “So Joe was telling me about the party,” Donna said, smiling.

  I nodded. I didn’t know what he told her, and I didn’t want to say anything I shouldn’t.

  “How was Nick this morning?” she asked.

  “Pretty hungover. I gave him some aspirin and a vitamin before he went to sleep and got something in his stomach this morning, so he should be alright.”

  She was looking at me like she was expecting me to say more.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Tony, are you hiding something from me?”

  Now Michele was looking at me too.

  “Why would I hide something from you?”

  Donna laughed out loud, a full belly laugh that made Grace smile at her. “I’m sorry, Tony. That was mean.” Her eyes were tearing from laughing.

  “What are you hiding, Tony?” Michele squinted at me.

  “Nothing, ah come on. I don’t even know what she’s talking about,” I said, wishing Fiore would get back here.

  “Nothing. Last night one of the cops from the precinct was drunk and came on to Joe. Or should I say came on to Joe stronger than she usually does?” It came out like a question and Donna raised her eyebrows at me.

  “Don’t ask me—I was too busy making sure Romano didn’t fight with Rooney,” I said.

  Joe pulled up then in his white Plymouth Voyager and parked it at the curb, I guess so the kids wouldn’t hit the van with the ball. I walked toward the curb, thankful to be away from the women.

  “Hey, Tony,” he said as he shook my hand. Grace might like me, but she loves him, and she threw me over the minute she saw him. He was kissing her cheek and saying “yum-yum” as he pretended to bite her neck while she giggled like crazy. Sometimes he acts like an idiot with the baby.

  “Your wife is grilling me about last night,” I said. “What’d you tell her?”

  “She’s playing with you. I told her about Terri Marks.” “Why?” I asked.

  “Why not?” he shrugged. “She’s my wife.”

  That would’ve been a good enough reason for me not to tell her.

  “Did she get mad?” I asked. I didn’t understand why he mentioned it.

  “Mad about what? Come on, help me carry this stuff in,” he said, dismissing it.

  He had food and ice and the tank for the barbeque. Donna took the baby while we carried the stuff inside.

  Michele and Donna got the food together, and we set up the grill. Joe hooked up the propane tank while I used a wire brush to clean off the racks of the barbeque. Once we got the grill going, we threw on some burgers and hot dogs.

  Fiore’s pool was still covered from the winter, and Stevie, Josh, and Joey were amusing themselves with the bulldozers in the sandbox.

  We had burgers and hot dogs and a London broil that Donna marinates for two days before it hits the grill. It was so tender you could cut it with a fork and tasted delicious. They also grilled zucchini and portabella mushrooms and corn on the cob and had homemade macaroni salad and coleslaw.

  Once we sat down at the table and Fiore said grace, the talk turned to the engagement party tomorrow.

  “Is anyone from your job coming?” Donna asked.

  “Just Rooney, Romano, McGovern, and O’Brien are supposed to, and Connelly,” I said.

  “What about the boss and Garcia?” Fiore asked.

  “Garcia’s working his second job, and the boss has a wedding,” I said, which was fine with me. I didn’t want anyone from work coming to begin with, so I limited it to just my squad. I didn’t want to insult them by not inviting them.

  “Are you nervous?” Donna asked Michele.

  Michele looked at me and smiled. “A little. After Christmas Eve, I don’t know what to expect—or maybe I do.”

  “If things get out of hand, we’ll just leave,” I said.

  “We can’t leave, Tony, it’s our party,” she said, exasperated.

  “It’s Grandma’s party. Let her deal with it.”

  “Who’s gonna be there?” Fiore asked.

  “I think all my cousins, aunts, uncles—how many from your family?” I asked Michele.

  “My parents and grandparents, Aunt Mary and Uncle Dennis, Aunt Ginny and Uncle Dave. Your grandmother told me I could only invite ten people—” Michele cut off, embarrassed.

  “You never told me that,” I said, getting angry.

  “Tony, it doesn’t matter. We weren’t planning on an engagement party anyway.”

  “So Tony,” Fiore said, changing the subject, “how do you like the stuff on fatherhood that Pastor’s been teaching?”

  I was still looking at Michele, thinking I was going to call my grandmother to tell her I wasn’t going. She invites almost a hundred people from my side and tells Michele she can invite ten—who does she think she is?

  “Tony?” Fiore said a little louder.

  “Yeah, it’s good. I like the stuff on fatherhood,” I said sharply.

  “Don’t get upset,” Michele said. “It’ll only make things worse tomorrow.”

  I nodded.

  Fiore had set up a volleyball net, and we spent the rest of the time playing with the kids.

  Michele, Stevie, and I piled in Fiore’s minivan at 8:00 and drove the twenty-five minutes out to Manorville. It was just about dark now, with a clear sky and a hint of chill in the air. I left my truck at Fiore’s. I was sleeping at his house tonight and would head home after church in the morning. Stevie fell asleep in the car, and I carried him inside and put him to bed.

  Fiore wanted to see how the addition on the house was going, so I let Michele show him around while I got my fishing pole and tackle box out of the garage. They were still up there when I came back in, so I went upstairs to hurry Fiore along.

  “This is nice and big,” Fiore said. They were standing in the bathroom, which is almost the size of my old bedroom in my parents’ house.

  “It looked bigger before the walls went up. It
’s coming along good; so far he’s on schedule,” I said. I had gotten the name of the contractor from Jimmy Murphy. He did work on Jimmy’s ex-wife’s house, and Murph said he was reliable.

  “You ready to go?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, I don’t want to be out too late,” Fiore said.

  I kissed Michele good night. “I’ll see you in the morning,” I whispered in her ear.

  “You okay about tomorrow?” she asked, searching my eyes. “I don’t want you to be upset about who was invited and who wasn’t—it’ll just get us off track. Let’s look at it as an opportunity to show our families God’s love. Jesus never got upset when people didn’t treat him right, and we shouldn’t either.”

  “Jesus got to drink wine,” I said. “When I drank wine, I didn’t get upset either.”

  “Jesus didn’t drink like that,” she chuckled and kissed me again. “Have fun fishing.”

  Fiore took 111 to Sunrise Highway and drove east toward Hampton Bay. One of the things I love about New York is you can drive an hour and a half in any direction from Manhattan and be in the country. It’s beautiful out here, wide open, with farms along the road and little country towns. There’s no streetlights out here. The only reflection of the headlights was the yellow line on the road.

  We drove out past the town of Hampton Bay over an arched bridge and looped around to a parking lot. We grabbed our gear and walked out onto a cement bridge with metal railings. It was chilly out here, and the wind was blowing in off the water.

  It was early in the season to be fishing, and there were only about four other people out there with Fiore and me. We used jigs for bait, but we could only see their sparkly green bodies when we reeled them in close. There were no lights out here, and it looked like there were a million stars over our heads. You don’t get stars like this in the city, but you don’t get the Manhattan skyline out here either. I think both are beautiful and powerful in their own way.

  The dark water was pretty turbulent as it swirled around us and through the cement pillars under the arched bridge. I didn’t talk at first, just enjoyed being out by the water. The smell of the salty air and the soft ping of the buoy out on the water reminded me of home. It was quiet out here, and aside from the clicking of the reels and the sound of the line going out, it was all nature.

  We caught a couple of small stripers, but nothing big enough to keep.

  “I called to check on Janice Ladeas,” Joe said.

  Janice Ladeas, the name sounded familiar. “Who’s Janice Ladeas?”

  Fiore chuckled. “You’re so bad with names. She’s the assault victim from the other night.”

  “Oh, right. You talked to her?” That surprised me.

  “Yeah, I wanted to make sure she was okay.”

  “You’re a nice guy, Joe,” I said, meaning it. I’d been thinking about her too, I just wouldn’t have called her. I’m careful with stuff like that. I wouldn’t want to give her the wrong idea and the next thing you know, you got a stalker on your hands. “How’s she doing?”

  “She was doing better. I didn’t talk to her long—she was pretty medicated. Her mother was there with her. She got on the phone to say thank you, telling me how the New York City Police Department is the greatest in the world and she was writing a letter to the mayor. She was nice.”

  Once in a while people do stuff like that, but it’s rare.

  I was quiet for a couple of minutes, and then said, “Janice’ll probably be traumatized by it for the rest of her life. I mean, it’s good we caught the guys and she’ll live, but the truth of the matter is we stepped in after the fact. She’ll be busy with the trial if they don’t plead, and they’ll go back to jail, but something like this stays with you.”

  “But she had a good attitude,” Joe said. “She was grateful to be alive, and she said she was praying and God helped her—sent us to help her.”

  A part of me wished his timing could have been a little better. We finished up around midnight, packed up our gear, and headed back to Fiore’s.

  11

  I woke up at 7:30, thankful that I was downstairs in Fiore’s house and didn’t have to compete with the rest of his family for the bathroom. The battery was dead on my electric razor, so I’d have to go to church looking like an outlaw. I changed into gray dress pants and a black silk shirt and followed the smell of bacon and coffee upstairs to the kitchen.

  Josh and Joey were eating pancakes at the table, and little Grace was in her high chair, playing with her Cheerios.

  “Good morning, Tony.” Donna smiled and grabbed me a cup of coffee.

  “Thanks, Donna,” I said, going in the refrigerator for the milk.

  “How about some pancakes?” she asked. I saw she had her makeup on and her hair done but was still in sweatpants and a T-shirt.

  “No, I’m good. Go finish getting ready. I’ll watch the rug rats,” I said, pulling up a chair next to Grace.

  Donna opened the oven and pulled out a dish piled high with pancakes and a second plate of bacon. “Thanks, Tony, but please eat something. There’s enough for an army.”

  “Where’s your husband? Why is he lounging around while you’re running around like a chicken?” She laughed, knowing I was kidding. In fact, Fiore probably made the pancakes.

  “He’s in the shower. Be a good friend and put more coffee on,” she called as she walked toward her bedroom.

  “There’s coffee in here,” I yelled back.

  “It’s old—make some fresh.”

  I rinsed out the pot and basket and scooped in some more coffee and hit the on button. I walked back over to the table and Grace had her face down on the tray of the high chair. I panicked for a minute, thinking she might have choked, and went to grab her out. Of course she was buckled in and I took the high chair with me, scaring her awake in the process.

  She let out an ear-piercing scream and Joey said, “What’s wrong, Tony?” looking scared.

  “I thought she was choking,” I half yelled. I unbuckled her and picked her up, but she was still crying, looking at me with big, teary, scared eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Gracie,” I said. “I thought you were choking.” “She was sleeping,” Joey said, logically.

  “She was awake a minute ago—what is she, narcoleptic?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  “Do you even know what narcoleptic is?” He was like eight years old.

  “No.”

  “What’s the matter, Gracie?” Fiore asked as he breezed in, getting a big smile from the baby, who was still doing pathetic little hiccup sounds. “Is Tony’s face scaring you?”

  She went to Fiore, then turned around and smiled at me; she never stays mad.

  “Joe, one minute she’s eating her Cheerios and I turn around to make the coffee, and the next minute she’s out cold. I thought she choked or something.”

  “No, she won’t choke,” he cooed. “Daddy’s girl has lotsa teeth—show Daddy your teeth.” She smiled and drooled; she really was adorable.

  I ate some pancakes and bacon while Josh and Joey cleaned off the table. Fiore and I had coffee and left in separate cars for church by 8:30.

  From Fiore’s house it’s only one exit on the LIE and another mile to the church. Michele was waiting for me by the door, holding Stevie’s hand. We brought him downstairs to the Sunday school and went upstairs to get a seat.

  Pastor had been teaching for a couple of weeks on being a godly father. Personally it couldn’t have come at a better time, since I was about to step up to the plate with Stevie. And to be honest, I didn’t know the first thing about being a father. I think if you start when they’re infants, you can screw up a little and they’re too young to remember, but Stevie was old enough to remember everything I did.

  Pastor was saying that what we do as fathers will affect our children for the rest of their lives. Even when they’re adults and long after we’re dead and gone, whatever we do, good and bad, is gonna stay with them.

  “Fathers have a powerful
role,” he said, “and the thing is, we can never go back and change what we’ve done. Like the hard drive on your computer, every memory is stored. One of the strongest influences in a child’s life is their father.”

  He talked about some book he read where the guy said if we didn’t stop being selfish parents, we could end up with a fatherless society. He went on to talk about daughters. I almost tuned it out, thinking that growing up a daughter wasn’t as important as growing up a son and then sat up, wondering where that came from.

  “I think one of the biggest reasons young girls are having sex is because they’re not getting the love and attention they need from their fathers, and they’re looking elsewhere for it,” he said.

  It reminded me of my sister, Denise. She went out looking for love when she was way too young. If she was a boy, it would have been applauded, but I remember my father calling her a putana when she came home with a hickey when she was about thirteen.

  This was some of the truest stuff I’d ever heard, and I felt the weight of the responsibility of being a father. As Pastor talked about being parents and the consequence of taking it lightly, I thought of my own parents. I factored in the effects Vietnam, the police department, my mother’s alcoholism, and my father’s cheating had on them as parents, but to tell the truth, they still sucked at it. Then a little voice inside me told me not to spit in the wind, that I had no idea what it was like to be a parent and I shouldn’t be so sure of myself.

  Service ended at 10:30, and I wanted to get on the road before traffic got too bad. Michele was leaving by 12:00 with her parents and would meet me at the hall. I had less than three hours to drive to Staten Island, change, shave, and pick up the cake.

  I took the Southern State Parkway into the Belt Parkway and over the Verrazzano Bridge. Except for a stalled car in the right lane in Coney Island, I sailed right through and was home by 12:00.

  I was running late to the party because I butchered my face while shaving and I couldn’t get a couple of spots to stop bleeding. I kept little pieces of tissue on the cuts while I wrestled with my tie. It took me three times to get the lip straight in the middle, and then I had to change my shirt because my chin bled onto the collar.