My skin began to prickle with heat and I felt bile rising in my stomach. My mouth was so dry I could hardly swallow. This whole case was a travesty and yet I sensed that others wouldn’t see it that way.
When Gould sat back down with what seemed to me like a sigh, the judge asked my father if he had anything to add. Knowing that every word he said would be reported back down the long chain of betrayal, he cleared his throat, stood once more, and, in a voice I barely recognized, said how “deeply sorry” he was. Then he began to stumble over his words in a way that wounded me.
“This is the last period of my life and we close very poorly, very negatively…,” he began falteringly. He pleaded for leniency and appealed to the judge’s “indulgency.” Dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief, he claimed he had been the victim of “reprisals…by a son who has repaid me very badly.” Thinking of Paolo, he pulled himself together and declared, “I don’t know how to hate, Your Honor. I forgive him. I forgive anybody who wanted me to be here today, and others who have had the satisfaction of revenge that only God will judge….Thank you.”
I resisted the urge to leap to my feet and say something too. I wanted to cry, “This is not right! You cannot send this man to jail. Please—it will kill him!” Instead, I was frozen to the spot, rendered speechless as the judge spoke for several agonizing minutes before directing his gaze at my father.
“You are committed to the custody of the attorney general for one year and one day.”
Time in that courtroom stood still for me then.
“One year and one day.”
My eyes spilled tears but still I couldn’t move. Everything my father had ever achieved was going to be obliterated by this moment. For the rest of his life, he would be identified as Aldo Gucci, the man indicted for tax evasion.
Papà swayed on his feet slightly. Still unsteady, he bobbed his head in thanks when the judge agreed to defer the sentence for a month to give him—and us—time to prepare. He was instructed to surrender his passport so that he couldn’t flee back to Italy. There was commotion all around me as journalists rushed out to file their copy and further publicize my father’s shame. His lawyers murmured to each other as they filed away their papers. My attention remained fixed on my father, standing there alone. I feared his legs would give way at any moment—as mine might have done.
As I watched him be taken to a side room to complete some formalities, I struggled to comprehend the “justice” in jailing such an elderly man. How could it be that his immense contribution over the years would not be taken into consideration? The truth was, he was too high-profile for that. The government needed to be seen as making an example of him, as reiterated by the future mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani, who told waiting reporters on the steps that the sentence should serve as a lesson to others. To our great surprise, Gould told the press that he didn’t think the sentence “harsh or unjust.” Well, I bloody well did.
By the time I was reunited with Papà in an anteroom, he had composed himself enough to face me. He was so embarrassed by his black fingertips, which had been pressed into an inkpad, that he clenched his hands into fists. There was further indignity to come because he had yet to face the press, who were waiting for him outside, their cameras and microphones ready. He shepherded me through the baying to our waiting car. In the glare of the flashing bulbs, my father no longer looked like a defeated, besmirched man on the worst day of his life but once again like the indefatigable Dr. Gucci, who’d face this latest setback like any other. I had never been more proud.
When we eventually reached the car and the driver pulled away from the courthouse, he pressed his body back into his leather seat and undid the button on his jacket. All he wanted, he muttered, was to go home, see Mamma, and fly to Palm Beach.
We’d already agreed that she would come out immediately after the trial so that we could go to Florida together. We’d hoped to be celebrating the end of the nightmare there. Instead, we’d be counting down the days to when Papà would be taken to the Eglin prison outside Pensacola, Florida, in October—one month’s time.
It felt good to be in the sun. Santino flew in and out and we all tried to make the best of our time together. Mamma prepared lunch for us on the veranda; we rested and went for long swims, trying our best to take our mind off things. I loved watching Papà with his “Alexina” ever by his side, even if there was a constant aching in my heart knowing that the hourglass had been flipped.
When the dreaded morning came, we had to draw on every ounce of strength we had just to get through it. My mother and I were well accustomed to seeing my father in a suit, carrying an overnight bag and setting off to work. However, the morning of October 15 was no ordinary business day. We tried hard to be stoic but the knowledge of where he was headed broke us and we both wept.
Dry-eyed, my father kissed us good-bye.
“Okay, Papà, I’ll come visit as soon as they let me,” I promised.
He slid into the rear seat of his waiting car without even looking back. I don’t think he could allow himself to. He’d insisted that he go alone and nothing could persuade him otherwise. I would have gladly defied his wishes to spend every last moment with him, but prison rules stated that no family members could accompany a new inmate beginning his sentence.
Mamma and I stood in the driveway and watched as the car sped away and created a gravel wake. No matter how we tried to support each other, nothing we said could allay the deep-seated fears we shared about whether he might survive the coming year. We were tormented by thoughts of him in a prison uniform and having to sleep on a bunk next to God knows what kind of criminal, separated from everything he knew.
Federal Prison Camp Eglin was categorized as a minimum-security prison for white-collar offenders in what is known as the Florida panhandle. Situated on Auxiliary Field 6 at Eglin Air Force Base near Fort Walton Beach, it was dubbed “Club Fed” or a “country club” by the press, but it was still a jail and they weren’t the ones locked in with strangers each night away from all they’d ever known.
On arrival, my father had his fingerprints taken once more and was issued with prison number 13124-054-E, his new identity. He was assigned a bunk in a thirty-two-bed dormitory in section D. His clothes were traded for a starched blue shirt, pants, and a sweater paired with white socks and sneakers. He wasn’t allowed to keep his belt, his wristwatch, or any personal belongings apart from his horn-rimmed spectacles.
Shown by guards to a block housing seven hundred inmates, he was issued a pillow and blanket, a towel, and his uniform. He had his own bed and a small cubicle but no privacy beyond that. A prison officer apprised him of the daily routines, which included lights on at five thirty a.m., lights out at ten thirty p.m., and roll calls five times a day. Thirty minutes were allowed for breakfast and an hour for lunch, with dinner at four thirty p.m. Every prisoner was expected to work approximately forty hours a week for “performance pay” of a few cents per hour, which they could then spend on telephone calls, newspapers, candy, or fresh fruit. Papà was assigned to the tailoring department, tasked with mending and ironing numbers onto clothing—a suitable job for someone with his background, the warden must have thought.
Each inmate was allowed two fifteen-minute telephone calls a day while fellow prisoners lined up behind him. There was no privacy and the pressing feeling of somebody else waiting as they snatched a few precious minutes with loved ones.
My father’s first collect call was to Mamma in Palm Beach, whose voice he longed to hear. He stood in line with the rest of the inmates and waited his turn, the start of a daily ritual that would sustain them both throughout his incarceration. As soon as he said, “Hello, Bruna…,” and then stopped, she could tell he was not himself. It was only the second time she had ever heard him cry. The first had been when she’d tried to break away from him early on in their courtship and he’d shocked her by dropping to his knees promising to make her his queen.
Then, as now, she quickly put a stop to h
is tears. “Aldo!” she interrupted when he started to complain that the guards had taken everything. “Aldo, listen to me!” she insisted. His whimpering faded and she heard a sudden sharp intake of breath.
“I will always be here for you, but on one condition,” she told him. “You have to stay strong.” Her response was met with stony silence but she knew he was listening. “If I ever hear you like this, you will never see me again. Do you understand?”
Their minutes were almost up but there were just enough left for my father to gather his thoughts and tell her, “Yes, Bruna. I understand. Te lo prometto [I promise].”
When the line went dead, she prayed she’d done enough to help him get through that first long night. As she sat at his desk overlooking the garden, weeping her own bitter tears, she had no idea that her tough love would set the tone for the rest of his time inside. “Bruna is my Rock of Gibraltar,” he’d boast. “I get all my strength from her.”
I was shocked when she told me what she’d said to Papà that night. For the first time I came to realize how tenacious her survival instincts really were and how resilient she could be. I made a point of telling her so. “All your life you’ve believed that people dismissed you as the mercurial mistress. Now they’ll know you are a woman of courage, unwavering and determined. This is the woman Papà knows and loves. This is your legacy.”
More powerful than anything I could say, though, were the words of Ruby Hamra, who met her for lunch soon afterward. They had become friends over the years and before Ruby left New York for good, Mamma took her for blini at the Russian Tea Room. “Bruna, I don’t know if we are going to see each other again but I want to tell you something—you are the strongest woman I have ever met,” said the PR powerhouse as my mother listened in amazement. “Nobody handles Aldo the way you do. He’s like the devil with everybody but as soon as you’re around, he changes. I don’t know what you did to him, but it worked.”
My mother was taken aback but for the first time it dawned on her that maybe she was tougher than she’d imagined. “He grew up in a very strict family,” she told Ruby, defending the man she loved. “He was taught to show who was in charge. He could never relax until he was away from all that. I suppose I was the one person with whom he could really be himself.”
Stripped of his name and his pride, he had no choice but to do just that—be himself. And, with so few trappings of his former life left to him, he came to realize that there was only one person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with—his beloved Brunicchi with the hidden core of steel who loved him simply for who he was.
I can remember how much my mother and I longed for the next visit from my father when I was a little girl. We began to look forward to his company in the same way as we looked forward to summer. And like a welcome change of season, he’d blow in on a warm wind and change the color of our world.
Now the tables were turned. It was Papà whose life was monochrome, and it was he who was looking forward to our visits in just the same way. Frustratingly, that was forbidden for the first few weeks—a rule designed to let prisoners settle in. With nothing to do but wait, Mamma and I returned to New York, where she became his lifeline, accepting his fifteen-minute calls at approximately six p.m. every night—depending on when he could get to the phone—as he talked her through his day and she fussed over his welfare.
“Are you eating enough? Are you sleeping, Aldo? Are people being kind?” He, in turn, was only interested in one thing—when she might visit him. She’d promised to come soon but they both knew that was unlikely in the immediate future. He realized how hard it would be for her and didn’t want to pressure her into doing something that would upset her. Neither of them could give up on the other and each knew they couldn’t fall apart, but both needed time to grow accustomed to their change of circumstances.
Visitors were allowed at Eglin on Sundays between the hours of eight a.m. and three p.m. At the first opportunity, Santino and I flew to the Gulf Coast without any idea of what to expect. I was relieved that the place, with its sun-drenched landscape and oak trees dripping with Spanish moss, was nothing like the images I had conjured up of prisons I’d seen in the movies. Instead of guard towers and barbed-wire fences, there was a rudimentary checkpoint with nothing more than a yellow boundary line painted on the ground.
Each Sunday, the prisoners were assembled in an open picnic area with concrete tables, bench seats, and umbrellas for shade. Scores of families were already there when we arrived, each congregated around a prisoner in a blue uniform. They’d bought snacks and soft drinks from prison vending machines and the atmosphere was more like that of an outing in the park than a correctional facility. Nervously, my eyes darted left and right through the unfamiliar crowd, looking for Papà. Then I spotted him, standing in the distance. I waved and hurried across to him. Once I reached him, I fell into his arms as I fought back my tears. Overwhelming as it was to see him again, it felt strange to be with him in those surroundings and see him in the most unlikely clothes imaginable.
“White sneakers?” I cried, staring down at his feet, my mouth agape.
He followed my gaze and asked, “Do they suit me?” I was glad to see he hadn’t lost his sense of humor.
“No, Papà,” I replied, half laughing, half crying. “You look ridiculous!”
Settling down next to him and taking his hand, I stared into his face and asked how he was faring. Knowing how protective he was of Mamma, I expected that he’d glossed over things when he was on the phone to her. “I’m fine,” he assured me, trying to allay my fears. “Take a look around, everybody in here is harmless.” The men in blue, of every color, size, and creed, certainly didn’t look like criminals as they laughed and chatted with their loved ones. Most were doing time for drug offenses or fraud. “It’s really not too bad,” my father insisted. “I’ll be okay.”
Even so, I knew that it would be hard for my mother to see him there. When he asked about her I told him she was coping well but we both knew she wouldn’t be coming any time soon. Over the course of the next few hours, we chatted as normal and once we got business matters out of the way, I lightened things up by telling him about Alexandra. Then we all had a snack together before he took us to the chapel, eager to show us where he attended daily Mass. He was reading a lot and becoming increasingly conscious of his faith. Prayer had become a lifesaver for him and helped to while away the endless hours where time stood still and days felt like weeks. The restless man who’d rushed from one city to the next was suddenly forced to acclimatize to a whole new schedule, to slow down and contemplate his life.
Having found God on a big level, he was memorizing passages from the Bible and other books that had been recommended by Sari Nandi. In one of his first notes from prison to my mother he wrote, “I live in a world created by God and filled with divine blessings and power.” He also started sending maxims that encouraged her to “live life fully, feel love deeply,…see beauty brightly and hear Christ only.” As if she could live life fully without him by her side.
He told us there was a library where he could borrow books and a classroom where—on account of his Italian passport—he was obligated to sit through English lessons with mostly Spanish-speaking classmates. He was given homework to improve his reading skills and taught elocution from a fourth-grade textbook. It was like being back at school. One pronunciation exercise he showed us with a wry smile explained that taxes (pronounced tack-says) was the correct plural of tax (pronounced tacks). In spite of the fact that he was fluent in several languages, he did all that was asked of him uncomplainingly and tried to help others where he could.
Several of the prisoners came up to tell us, “Your dad’s the man. We love this guy!” They’d dubbed him “Bubba Gucci”—using the endearing Southern nickname for an older sibling or a “good ol’ boy.” One of them told me, “There’s not a day goes by when he doesn’t pick up his photos of you and stare at them.” I didn’t even know Papà had any photographs of us wit
h him until that moment and was deeply touched.
I was also reassured that—with the respect of so many of his fellow inmates—no harm would come to him there. When our time was up we hugged and kissed and said good-bye. It had been an emotional day. Making me promise to look after Mamma, he squeezed my hand and then it was time to go. “She’ll come soon,” I assured him.
The only member of my father’s family that visited him in prison was Roberto’s son Cosimo. Although I found it despicable that no one else ever came to see him from Italy, my father never mentioned it—almost as if that part of his family had ceased to exist. To my mother’s delight, he started to write letters again—after a thirty-year gap. In one “smattering of lines” dedicated to her, he said, “I love you darling as ever, ever before!” He told her that his thoughts were always with her as he imagined her at home, organizing her day, and then he sent her “a warm embrace and eternal love,” evoking memories of one of his letters from the 1950s in which he’d written from afar: “I was checking my watch throughout the day, imagining where you were and what you might be doing…how were you dressed today, my darling?” The very thought of her being without him made his heart “tighten with pain.”
I tried to visit Papà as often as I could, flying into Pensacola from New York for the weekend every two or three weeks and checking into a local motel. On Sunday mornings I’d show up at the gate and go through the motions with the security staff, who searched my bag and scanned me with a metal detector. Nothing whatsoever was allowed in, so bringing any personal effects or gifts was out of the question. The trepidation I felt when going through the protocol for the first time soon slipped away and I sailed through each checkpoint after that without too much fanfare.
In the Name of Gucci Page 24
