Death and Love at the Old Summer Camp

by Dolores Maggiore

  “Oh, I think there’s some more investigating to be done. We need to keep our heads together on this.” Joe coughed and then chuckled. “No, I’m serious.”

  “Yes…Did Roger ever come back to bug you again?”

  “No. I made good and sure I was never alone,” Joe said.

  “Like when you would sneak into my bed.”

  “Yes. Even if I had to sleep next to you on the floor.”

  “As you said, all of this needs more investigating.”

  “Ron, who’s teasing now?”

  “I’m not. But in the one case, I know we can rally the troops and get phone numbers. Track down the key players from camp. In the other case, I know what my feelings are. I don’t know about my courage or whether or not I’m willing to inflict that sort of pain on others, on my family, but I do know how I feel.”

  “Ron…”

  “No, I’m not going to lie anymore. That goes for you too.”

  “What?”

  “Get your father. I know he’s here.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  AN URGENT TALK WITH KATIE

  I had no choice now. I had to talk to Katie. I was afraid her father’s story would reveal too much about my feelings and our love story. But Katie was in pain, and I had to comfort her.

  As soon as the screen door slammed above us, I held Katie close and stroked her head. I asked her where she wanted to go to talk. We crawled out from our dugout, grabbed blankets from the cabin, and made our way to the rec hall in silence.

  The late afternoon sun magnified and expanded through the back windows, warming the floor of the rec hall. The vacuum-like silence there felt safe.

  “How could he…?” said Katie as soon as we were camped on the floor.

  Katie sobbed, mumbling that her father was really a queer. She pounded the floor and kept on screaming, “Why?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. “It sounds like they were really good friends.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But good friends don’t touch each other that way.”

  “Sounds like they fell in love. I mean, it didn’t sound like a dirty movie,” I said.

  Katie threw me a look that said, “A lot you know.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder and tried softly to dry a tear about to cascade over her cheekbone.

  “Katie, he married your mom. He must have loved her, and he certainly loves you. And I’ve seen him kiss your mom.”

  “God, if anybody finds out,” Katie said. “They’ll make fun of him! He’ll lose patients. What will they do to me at the Academy? I mean, he’s not Liberace. What makes him think he can get away with it?”

  “He’s not talking about getting away with anything,” I said.

  Katie was up on her elbow, staring down at me, saying, “Oh, yeah? My father wanted to go to that island and kiss Joe!”

  Man! I wanted to kiss Katie to shut her up. I knew that would have been it, curtains, end of show, if I kissed Katie. This was not the right moment. I had mush for brains. She was just so exciting when she was riled up. I had to focus and let myself feel what I would have felt if it had been my father. My father? A queer?

  I settled down and reminded Katie that Joe said he wouldn’t upset Katie’s family. She cried again on my shoulder while I patted her on the back. I was so afraid of being romantic that the gesture came out more like burping a baby.

  Finally, I pushed Katie up and looked at her from two feet away. “You can’t do anything now. He hasn’t changed in any way towards you. He’s loving and generous and kind. I like him…and Joe!”

  I went on to explain that her mom was already looney tunes, no offense. If Katie told her, it might push Mrs. McGuilvry over the edge.

  Katie stopped sniffling. She told me I was right. She kept on saying it was a shock.

  I guess it was. It would have been hard to picture her dad in Greenwich Village, wearing a motorcycle jacket and tight dungarees.

  My father had to drive us through Greenwich Village one time, through the homosexual neighborhoods. There were men in make-up and men in long, chiffon-like scarves. My father had made smooching noises and called them faggots.

  I didn’t think it was big news, like Khrushchev or nuclear test sites. Just strange. I didn’t think of myself like that, down there in the Village. I just wanted to be a Beatnik, an artist or a musician. I was planning on sneaking down there as soon as I was sixteen to listen to music, dressed in a cape and dungarees, and a beret.

  So, Katie was right. It was a shock. Her dad wasn’t like any homosexuals I could imagine.

  I asked Katie that question.

  “Yes. A homosexual is…is a pervert.” She lowered her eyes then and shook her head, mumbling, “But maybe I’m just wrong.”

  We really did have to go to dinner, and she needed to put on a cheerleader face before seeing her family, she said. Me too, I knew I had to put on the inscrutable teenager face. That was my dad’s phrase, not mine.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  TRUE CONFESSIONS, FAMILY-STYLE

  On my way back to the guest cabins, I was mostly silent, as was Katie. What Katie’s dad had said about hiding, from himself and from others, was playing havoc with my mind.

  We always joked about hiding our thoughts from our parents, but maybe I was more like Katie’s father than I thought. Maybe I lacked the spinal column, as I heard him say once.

  A memory of my successful cousin, Candida, flashed across my mind. In my Grammar School Graduation Memory Book, she had written, “Let your true self go out into the world and do a great deed.”

  I couldn’t very well do that in hiding. I had to unravel the mystery at hand, as well as the mystery of my father’s decision to allow me to go to school with Katie. As we neared the guest cabins, I could see him on our porch, just resting.

  “Daddy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Daddy, maybe I shouldn’t go to the Academy. I know you don’t have the money.”

  “Don’t you worry about that.”

  “But, you never accept money,” I said, trying to catch my father’s eye.

  “Who said I accepted money?”

  “Is it a bribe?’

  “What are you saying?” My father glared at me as he reached over to light up a Raleigh.

  “I know Dr. McGuilvry offered to pay for my schooling, and that you accepted. Why did you take the money? Were you afraid he killed Butch? But we know Doctor McGuilvry is innocent.”

  “You think you know so much.”

  “But Dad, you know I’m telling the truth! My dreams, just like Grandma, like in Sicily—that’s what you said! You know this is real.”

  In between puffs and swirls of smoke, my father spit out small shreds of tobacco. “So?”

  “So, I do know Doc McGuilvry didn’t do it. So, why? Why the whole thing? I want it so badly—to go to Albert with Katie. But I’m afraid you’ve made some strange deal, and I don’t know why. I’m afraid it will all fall apart, that it won’t happen.”

  “But it will. It will because it didn’t happen for me.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look, Toots, the Doctor has contacts. He can get you scholarships to the best schools. You’ll get the best. All the things I couldn’t have.”

  “But Daddy, you did. You paid your own way to CCNY and NYU.”

  “I never finished. You know that.” He turned away to tap his ash in the glass ashtray advertising Socony Mobil’s flying horse.

  “But you could have…”

  “No, Pina. I’m a scared man who listened too much to my father. I lacked the courage that I see in you. You do know that I wanted to be a doctor. My father told me over and over I’d never do it, that I didn’t have the palle, balls. I was full of myself, wanted to be like my grandmother’s father, Dr. Daidone.”

  My father spat out buffone in Italian. Clown.

  I’d seen this attitude in him before. I had felt it aimed at me, at times, oozing out of him. I didn’t like that it could tear him d
own. I knew the feeling, and I didn’t want anybody else to feel so small.

  “But Daddy, you were a big shot. Aunt Maria told me that you performed solo violin at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.”

  “Yes. My father said that was for ‘sissies.’ So I stopped it all before his prediction had a chance to come true, before I’d be a failure. He was right. I gave up. Pina, I want more for you. I don’t want to fail you anymore. I was a second-class husband and father. But, it’s not too late for you.”

  “Daddy, you’re not a—” I stopped short upon seeing my mother come through the second door to the porch, her face contorted with tears.

  She was red in the face and her feet seemed to want to do opposite things: come in or go out? Maybe that’s what we were all doing here, deciding whether to say what was really on our minds or just go along.

  She started slowly, “I heard you from outside. You’re not a second-rate husband. You’ve got to stop this kind of talk.”

  “Mommy, what are you doing here?”

  “Telling your father to stop being angry with himself. Stop doing what you’ve always done…quitting before things turn bad. Quit before you even get going. You’re angry, and you pull away from us. You cheat us, not just yourself. Look, remember the violin?”

  “Giusy, please stop.”

  “No, for once! Your daughter tried to surprise you. Polished your old violin, the Steiner that belonged to your maestro. She glued and restrung, all wrong, mind you, but she worked so hard, for days just to get it ready for your birthday. She was so pro—”

  “Giusy—”

  “Let me finish! She thought maybe, just maybe, you could play it for us, just once. She wanted so badly to hear you play.”

  “Mommy, stop! He’ll be angry.”

  “No! Enough anger and secrets. Why wouldn’t you play for your family?”

  I remembered this well. I was absolutely crushed. I wanted to know who my father really was. When I handed the violin to him on his birthday, with a red ribbon tied around the violin itself, I held my breath. Not out of fear. It was enormous for me. I had done the impossible, I thought. I put back together my father’s dried-up, dismantled violin. Above all, I was offering my father the way back in. The way to reclaim his past glory, or so I thought.

  The silence lasted what seemed like an eternity before he took the violin. Everything stood still. Without a word, he threw it, hurled it the length of the basement stairs. His face, almost blood red, seemed frozen as he stalked from the room. As a kid, I wondered where his soul had gone.

  I remembered my mother muttering something under her breath after my father left the room.

  “Hate,” she had said. That was the only word I caught.

  I misunderstood. I thought she was saying he hated me, and I crumbled. I fell to my knees and bawled on the kitchen linoleum.

  I carried that hate in me because I never understood what I had done.

  My mother’s voice interrupted my flashbacks. She was saying, “I couldn’t tell Pina. Couldn’t tell her that her hero, her beloved Daddy was scared. There, I’ve said it. Now, enough! I want you to let your daughter, our daughter, go to that Academy. But on one condition: you must play the violin again. Only if you have the courage. The same courage you’re asking of your daughter, to go off with the wealthier girls, to go off to New England and old money, to make it in a world that hasn’t been hers. I fell in love with you, the musician. You who, in the midst of poverty, touched my soul with your music. You never believed that I truly believed in you! Come back to me. Back to us.”

  “Giusy, will you let it go? Will you let Pina go? Whatever it takes, I want this for her.”

  “Do you want it for all of us?”

  “Yes.” My father’s voice was low and shaky.

  My mother pushed aside her second drenched hankie.

  “Pina, come, let me get your hair out of your eyes.” She pulled me close to her. “I love you, Sweetie, and I’ll miss you. I hate to let you go, but I won’t hold you back.”

  “I can go to school with Katie?”

  “Yes, but don’t start coming home with airs.” She laughed through her tears.

  “Daddy, will you play the violin for us someday?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  I told them I’d like to take a walk before dinner. I just wanted some cool air before I met them in the dining hall.

  I couldn’t believe how like my father I was. I flashed back to my earlier rambling thoughts, thoughts about lacking courage. About remaining silent when truth was demanding to be heard. About taking the easy way out…bribes…trade-offs. My father’s mystery made sense now.

  It seemed like all my choices lay right in front of me.

  On one hand, stood my father, a conservative, small man who threw away his gift for a mediocre life in a mediocre geographical setting. A big fish in a little pond. All the relatives and neighbors came to him for advice, he did everyone’s income tax, and at parties, he recited chapter and verse from a good many books. A big deal. We were intuitively connected, and I knew I loved him.

  On the other hand, there was Doc, bold looking, tall, and rugged. Selectively out-spoken about appropriate convictions. He wielded a great deal of power, and he stood ready to open doors for me. Big schools, big names, big opportunities among the wealthy and famous. He, too, had thrown away something of value.

  Back when I was that little kid with the rejected red-ribboned violin, I asked where my father’s soul had gone. Maybe I had lost mine too? I lacked the guts to tell Katie what was really going on for me. If I couldn’t tell her, even at the risk of losing her, I would lose my gift of loving, my way of holding on to life. Maybe forever.

  Ha! Was the Academy the right thing for me? Who was I kidding?

  I would be shunned. The lesbo. The queer.

  The other choice? Going back to Queens? I’d accept the status quo, shirk my dreams and my responsibility?

  Like my father, I could be a big fish in a little pond. I could easily get good grades. I wouldn’t even have to work hard. I’d be one of the most comfortable residents in a run-down neighborhood. I would be a model citizen. I would gag in silence.

  Right now, I really did have to silence myself. My parents were waiting, so again, I would go in hiding.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  LULLABY OF DREAMLAND

  After dinner, I was falling asleep on my feet. I swore to my parents I was going to our cabin and immediately get in bed and this time I was telling the truth. I flashed Katie a sign: I put my head on my hand, like a pillow, and closed my eyes. She understood.

  The next morning, the sun filtering through the thin shades awakened me even before my father lit a fire. I pulled on heavy dungarees, a long-sleeved polo shirt, and my gray, boatneck sweater. I was off into the crisp morning air that announced mid-August.

  I hurried to go hang out in the rec hall. Things got all hushed there, and the windows stood silent witness to so many years of secrets. I was still tired. I hadn’t counted on dreaming, but I was beginning to see the dream right in front of my eyes while I was still awake, like a film projector going, on and off. I thought it wouldn’t be about bloody hands or violence, maybe just violins.

  I never knew why Dad was so mad. It made sense now. I remember staying away from him for a week. I hated him, but I felt ugly too. My gift was wrong. I was wrong. I was so sleepy lying here in the sun, dust particles dancing in front of me, and there was a musical voice, a funny accent.

  “No, not Cortina, not Corleone, Cremona. The best. I used to have one, you know, the real one, the one by Stradivari. Yes, yes, I was a big maestro. I play at la Scala in Milano. For Enrico, I play. In old days, people pay to hear and breathe, respire, and live, vive. Then, no more. I go from Italia. Bastiano, Barney, I come to find you, in East New York. You, my little virtuoso, I bring you to Enrico where you a star, my stella. And then, pooh—you stop! You give up. You stop the sweet sounds, la musica dolce cause you tired. I tell you, tir
ed, pooh pooh! I spit. You coward. Where the grand artist in you? I turn my back on you. Pooh!

  So ha! You hold my second-class violin. They took my pride, my Strad from me. A shame! I give you my birthright, mia musica, musica d’Italia! You play again, eh? So you say. If…big if you play again, you bring me back to life. But, I don’t hold my breath. Pooh! Coward. My son, you betray me. Traitor!”

  I wiped my hands. I was wet and sticky, and my head was pounding with a strange music. I didn’t recognize it, but then…slowly…some more notes…Vesta la Giubba. My father used to sing it, said Caruso taught it to him. Just like he used to say he knew the endings to movies, because he wrote the story. Now, somehow, I knew the haunting, driving notes. There was also something from Bach, the Concerto in F Minor.

  Then I rubbed my eyes, and I knew, yes, I did really know that my father hadn’t been lying. He did know Caruso, his Maestro told me in this dream.

  So this was my father…a man who was being preened for greatness…a man who came so close, and then turned his back on it. No wonder he threw the violin. But I didn’t know. So my father was to play again. He would bring the memory of his Maestro back to life. But first, I had to succeed at Albert Academy for him.

  I couldn’t play any instrument. I couldn’t sing. Maybe…just maybe, I could help the doc with more details and dreams. Maybe I could figure out why my father was still afraid, especially at this point, the day before they were leaving. It wasn’t of failure, then, but…of what? I had to get out of the rec hall. I had to go find Katie.

  Chapter Thirty

  A REDEMPTION STORY BEGINS

  As I was about to cut over from the rec hall to the road, I saw Katie running towards me from the other direction.

  “Katie, did you just get up?”

  Katie rubbed her eyes and yawned

  “Yeah. I was dead last night. Things cool with your folks?”

  “Yup! Super cool. I talked to them yesterday,” I told her.

  “And? Can you really stay?”