The Exceptions

by David Cristofano

  The server rushes to the front and greets us with a smile, and as he walks us to a quiet and cozy table in a far corner of the place, he puts his hand on my shoulder and we exchange a brief conversation of pleasantries spoken entirely in Italian, a stretch for my limited vocabulary. I can almost remember his name from years back—Antonio? Antonino?—so I overcompensate by continuing the conversation longer than I might have considering our circumstances. ’Tone pulls the chair out for what he perceives is my date. As we sit, I push the menus aside.

  “Allow me to order for you, Melody.” I plan on using my acquired knowledge of her life to provide a segue into how I understand who she is, in every capacity.

  She winces a little, like I’m some greaser trying to work my magic on her.

  “I don’t mean to offend,” I say softly, “but I believe I know what you would like.”

  Melody turns to ’Tone and says, “We’ve been dating for a few hours.” She crosses her fingers and smirks. “We’re tight.”

  “She will have the rabbit in red wine. Three orders again, darling? And make sure Thumper is nice and rare.” She rolls her eyes, then looks to the ground, then around the room. I wait until the span of silence grows so wide she has no choice but to look at me. Then I stare at her and say to our server, “She will have the carpaccio of beef with watercress and garlic aioli and eggplant croquettes, and I will have the veal chops with lemon sage sauce and the risotto with arugula and goat’s cheese.” I quickly glance at ’Tone from the corner of my eye to see if he makes a face; he merely scribbles and nods. A few years ago I ate the veal here, a dish so memorable that recalling it now required no effort. The beef, on the other hand—don’t remember anything even close to it on the menu. Not that it matters; they’ll be making it today.

  Melody turns the corners of her mouth down like she’s trying to hold back a smile, but as she speaks, it escapes. “Raw beef was a risk, Jonathan. So was eggplant, especially for lunch.”

  A calculated risk; I saw her eat—and enjoy—the same dish at an Italian eatery two relocations earlier.

  “Did I fail?”

  She studies me with a look like she’s sizing me up for the first time, fights putting the smile away. “Not yet.”

  I order a bottle of wine and ’Tone leaves us. We’re the only people in the entire room.

  She takes a deep breath, sits up straight. “You wanted to talk.”

  Not as much as I feel that I have to. All those words, all the scripting I tried to memorize in the car while she slept, have vanished now that she faces me, her feminine voice misguiding every remark and thought that attempts to surface, her eyes sparkling with a hope or need for something real and life-sustaining.

  Here goes nothing. Here goes everything.

  I nod as I put my elbows on the table and lean toward her, speak at a low volume as if someone is seated at the table next to us. “Do you wonder,” I say, “how it is that I knew what was on this menu without even taking a glance?”

  She shrugs. “Photographic memory?”

  I lean even closer, speak even softer. “We’re the only customers in this restaurant because they’re not open yet, and will not be open for probably another hour. We were given the best table in the place because they would not give me anything less. We will sit and eat a delicious meal, the finest they will prepare today, and we will drink a bottle of wine, and when we’re done with our dessert and cannot finish another bite, we’ll get up and walk out of here without paying a cent.”

  More sour milk. “Should I be impressed?”

  “You should be concerned, Melody.”

  She leans toward me, shows no sign of intimidation. “I’ve been concerned my entire life, Johnny-boy. Every time I start my car, enter my apartment, see some guy standing near me in a coffee shop who looks even vaguely Mediterranean. This is why we’re here? For you to explain why I’ve spent my life in Witness Protection? I know more about it than you ever could.”

  “No, what I’m showing you is the depth of my family’s influence, okay? Are we in New York right now? Nowhere close, yet the folks here will do whatever I ask of them. People think you can run away to Tennessee or Ohio, but the truth is we have a presence in those places, too. I mean, really, you think there are all these Italian families vying for the same chunk of business in the five boroughs? Get real. Forget the Mafia, what about the damn Russians or the Chinese or the Dominicans? Even the fu—lousy street gangs are tapping into what used to be our exclusive interests.”

  “Nice. So you move to the suburbs like everyone else, bringing all your crime and misery with you.”

  We’ve gotten off track and I’ve only been working this issue for one minute. I take off my glasses and rub my eyes. “You’re missing the central issue here. You can’t hide, Melody. The marshals they assign to you cannot move you far enough away. You can’t outrun a sunset.” Then, as I unfold my napkin and place it in my lap, I add, “We could have snatched you long ago.”

  Another server emerges from the kitchen, puts a basket of warm bread on our table, and displays the label of a bottle of Medici Ermete Concerto Reggiano Lambrusco to me. I put my glasses back on, nod in approval, tell him I’ll do the pouring. He rips off a few lines in Italian that mean nothing to me; I smile and nod like I get it, then he leaves us.

  I take Melody’s glass and pour as slowly as possible, prevent even a single gulp of air from shooting back in the bottle and disturbing the sediment at the bottom. Melody looks at me like I don’t know what I’m doing.

  “I’m leaving the sediment in the bottle,” I say. “Keep you from denying the greatness of this wine.”

  She peeks at the label as I fill her glass. “It’s just a Lambrusco.”

  “Aye, Yankee,” I say, my eye still on the red pour. “Trust me.”

  She takes a breath as though she’s about to extend our dialogue on the wine, but instead: “What did you mean when you said you could’ve snatched me long ago?”

  I look up, catch her eye, twist the bottle to avoid dripping, and lift.

  Here we go: “I’ve been keeping an eye on you for years.”

  I let my comment settle along with the wine.

  Melody sits back against her seat, her breath now audible. I can see her chest undulate. “What… what do you mean?”

  I’ve seen Melody in some dire moments, seen her weep by the hand of man, by the hand of fate. But this is the first time it will be from my very words, from me. I feel the air escaping from my power; I sink in my seat as I deflate. I grab the wine and fill my glass, let it burble and splash down, sediment and bubbles and all. I chug a third of it.

  I’d love to win her, but I have to save her. And just like I took Ettore down in that muddy field, when I showed him no mercy, blasted him a second time to fortify a point he would never forget, I must do it here.

  “Jane Watkins,” I say. “Shelly Jones,” I say. “Linda Simms, Sandra Clarke,” I say. “You want me to tell you the kinds of jobs you’ve had? The places you used to get coffee in the morning? Your favorite restaurants? The cars you’ve driven? Places you’ve worked?”

  It was far easier collapsing Ettore; watching her reaction is more painful than any blow my body has ever received. Melody’s eyes glisten. Having held her breath through my explanation, she lets it out in a rapid sigh and single tears fall from both eyes.

  “That’s how you knew my size,” she says. I can see in the way her eyes are moving that the remaining pieces of the puzzle nearly assemble themselves. “And my eye color, and the kinds of food I like.” She shakes her head a little and more tears drift down. “And what you meant when you came into my motel room and said, ‘I like your hair this way.’ ” She looks me in the eye as she wipes her cheeks dry. “You knew me. You’ve known me all along.”

  By the time the food arrives, Melody and I have been silent for a while. She’s resisted making any more eye contact, failed to even look in my general direction. As the plates are set before us, Melody composes hers
elf and stares at her dish; it seems like she might actually consider eating.

  I nod toward the table. “Please.” She reaches for her fork, plays with the tines before she grabs her knife and begins slicing the beef. I wait until she has a mouthful before I ask, “Aren’t you curious as to why I’ve been watching you all these years?”

  She continues to ignore me, takes another slice of beef and brings it to her mouth.

  I go ahead and answer the question. “I was there.”

  She slows her chewing, head still down, finally responds to me as she scoops up a forkful of watercress. “Where?”

  “At Vincent’s.”

  There’s that eye contact I was looking for.

  “You should try the risotto,” I say, sliding my plate in her direction.

  She slides it back. “When were you there?”

  Considering how desperate I’d been for her to look me in the eye, I cannot maintain it. “That Sunday morning when my dad was gutting Jimmy ‘the Rat’ Fratello.”

  There is not as much a silence between us as there is a vacancy. I might as well have just told her she was the princess of some faraway kingdom. Either way it will cause a complete remapping of her life, of the actions taken and the interpretation of events.

  I try to fill the hole. A little. “Turns out Jimmy really was a rat. Which is why he got, uh… you know. He earned his demise, if that helps.”

  Keeping her eyes on me, she grabs the Lambrusco and fills her glass, fast. Some of it splashes out.

  She says, “You’re about to tell me some tragic news.”

  I prop myself up, put down my fork, clean my mouth with a large drink of water. “I was there with my dad,” I say, confirming her thought. “The kids in the family were always kind of around. I mean, where could we go, really?” I take a deep breath that stutters, that shows my anxiety, shows I care about her more than I’d ever admit to myself. I begin the story:

  “I was supposed to stay upstairs at Vincent’s, play with my cousins in a big billiards room on the third floor. It was a rule of thumb that us little guys weren’t allowed to touch the pool tables for fear we’d rip the felt or chip the balls or whatever, so it was supposed to be a big deal for us to hang out upstairs while my father and Jimmy did a little business. Of course, we were all old enough to understand that whenever all the kids were sequestered, something bigger and better was going on elsewhere.

  “Well, like any kid, I thought my dad was the greatest, you know? I wanted to see what he did for a living. I always assumed he was in the restaurant business. I mean, we were always eating in the best places, could always pick whatever table we wanted, order whatever food we wanted—and we never paid and stuff.”

  I glance around the room, realize I just described our current situation. Even though I truly am in the restaurant business, there’s no denying I have become too much like my father.

  “Well,” I continue, “I snuck down when no one was looking and tried to catch a glimpse of his high-business dealings.” I get lost for a moment in recalling this event, haven’t replayed this tape in a long time. Should I confess that I thought I might see him tasting sample foods or going over an accounting error with Jimmy? Is there any value in showing her I was innocent then, too? That we were, that same day, dragged away from everything that brought us security and an understanding of happiness?

  Melody nods in agitation, moves her fork in a circular motion for me to continue, tries to accelerate my story by finishing this particular scene. “You saw him slicing up Jimmy Fratello?”

  I take a bite of risotto and shrug. “No… actually, I saw my dad and Jimmy just talking. It was pretty boring, really. I watched them for a little while but lost interest, eventually walked down the hallway and went outside.” I gently plunge my knife in and out of my veal, seems the wrong thing to be eating right now. I drop my utensils on the table. “I remember that day: It was cold and overcast outside. I was kicking stones into the sewer near Vincent’s, kept staring at the gray sky.” I look at Melody; I’ve got her full attention. “Until I stopped to watch this guy try to parallel park his Oldsmobile. Would’ve bet twenty bucks it was his first time.”

  She releases a sigh and it comes out sounding like Ohhh. “Daddy,” she says, “he couldn’t parallel park to save his life.” She starts nodding as though she’s just figured out the twist at the end of a film. “You saw my dad.”

  “And your mom and…” I lick my lips. “And you, Melody. I saw you.” I get lost in the indelible image of her twirling on the sidewalk, a tape played too many times, an image that morphed from a simple memory to a recollection of invalid perfection. “You had the sweetest smile and the cutest blond curls.” She reaches up and touches the back of her head as though I’ve brought up a sensitive subject, tries to pretend she needed to rub her neck. “Anyway, a few seconds later you all come screaming down the alley, hop in your car, and zoom off.”

  Melody slides her dish to the left, her wineglass to the right, leans on the table where her food once was. She takes a series of microscopic breaths, small undulations that indicate we’re going awfully fast. She has just become aware that a part of her history exists in someone’s memory. Melody Grace McCartney is becoming real again.

  “Sean told me,” she says, “that the police got there long after the crime, and that nothing in my file indicated how the feds found my parents—or how they even knew we were witnesses in the first place.” She points her finger at me like she’s picking me out of a lineup. “It was you.”

  I blink instead of nod. “What can I say? I wasn’t the thirty-year-old guy sitting before you, Melody. I was just a kid, who wanted to be a grown-up and big and important like my father. I had no idea it was my dad that killed Jimmy. I didn’t even really understand what killing was yet.” I frown at my ultimate decision. “When the cops were asking everyone on the street if anyone saw anything, I told them I saw a family run out of the restaurant.”

  “And you just magically knew our address?”

  “No. But I did notice your car had Jersey tags, and I remembered two numbers and a letter.” Fig Newton. Florence Nightingale. “Apparently, it was enough.”

  She puts a fist to her mouth, stares me down. “So,” she says, “you are the one who brought all of this pain and misery and destruction into my life. You are the one responsible for my parents’ deaths!” She rises up, like she’s standing to leave. I lift off my chair to match her, let her know leaving is not an option, running is not a possibility. Yet.

  “The most I would have had to deal with,” she yells, “was some… some post-traumatic stress disorder, maybe some therapy. I still would have had parents and proms and friends and birthday parties and a heritage and something to look forward to!” She pops like a bubble, gushes this tirade as though she’d been waiting her entire life to unload.

  “Melody, I was ten years old—just a few years older than you were. Do you have any idea what this did to my family?”

  “I do not care.”

  “I turned my own father in—not intentionally, of course—but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m the one who did it!”

  “Your father is a sick bastard! Who wants a dad who eviscerates people?” She drops down into her chair.

  As I slowly ease down as well, I say, “My dad wasn’t Jeffrey Dahmer. It wasn’t all weird.” I finally lower my voice a notch, hope she’ll do the same. “I mean, he was still my dad, the guy who took me to Yankee games and taught me how to throw a football, how to appreciate things like this wine.” Taught me how to clock my twelve-year-old nemesis and beat him to submission, how to hotwire almost any car. “He wasn’t your stereotypical mafioso, with his Friday-night wife and his Saturday-night girlfriend. He taught me to respect women.” Unfortunately, also the guy who coined the street term for a woman he deemed to be half-skank/half-bimbo: skimbo. “We attended a Catholic church and he cried when I made my first Communion.” And only took the Lord’s name in vain three times during that s
ervice. “He cheered me on when I hit a homer in Little League and consoled me when I blew a critical double play.” And had an interaction with the umpire that involved more than kicking dirt on the guy’s feet. “He was a real dad. To me, at least.”

  “You don’t get it, Jonathan. I didn’t have a chance to play Little League or dance ballet or anything else. We were always trying to stay out of sight. My dad might have taught me how to toss a ball if he hadn’t been so worried about one of us getting plucked off in the process. I mean, getting mail from our mailbox was a stressful daily event.”

  “Look, I’m not comparing my parents to yours. My point is that my family—and the business we’re in—makes people do bad things. But the bottom line is it’s business.”

  “My family never did anything to the Bovaro clan.”

  “Your parents testified.”

  “And if they hadn’t?”

  I consider the question, do not consider answering it. I want to illuminate this scene, and her potential future, but it would be easily recognized as artificial light. I simply cannot lie to Melody, the way I cannot be profane in front of her, the way I struggle to light a smoke in front of her. My mother once gave me a piece of knowledge that rang with such truth, even as a child, that I might never forget it: A man finally understands the greatest sense of devotion, knows he has fallen to love’s greatest depth, when he voluntarily surrenders all his vices and addictions for a woman. Based on the way my father lived his life, I’m not sure what my mother derived from it. But the concept now scares me, that I possibly have some secondary motivation and interest in Melody’s welfare, for if I do it will surely mean her demise. Besides, the toughest vice remains; I may never be able to surrender the violence.

  No one wants you to surrender the violence.