“No.”
“Goodfellas?”
“No.”
“Do you watch The Sopranos?”
“My parents won't let me. But I saw one episode at a friend's house.”
“They won't let you? This is barbaric! What about Rocky, at least?”
“Yeah. I saw Rocky.”
“All right, then. That's a goomba. Rocky Balboa is a goomba. Now you get it?”
“I guess.”
“We're going to watch The Godfather, right away. You need an education.”
An hour later, Grandma Tutti, Frankie and Nicholas had their dessert in the family room. Biting off the end of a cannoli, Frankie said, “I remember another time I got in trouble. Me and some guys met this nut who was passing phony twenty-dollar bills. This guy would sell us brand-new twenties for five bucks. We'd buy one each, and then make 'em look old—soak 'em in skin cream, bake 'em on the radiator and wrinkle 'em up. Then we'd take them to a candy store or an ice cream shop. We'd buy something that cost a dollar, and get nineteen dollars in change. Bingo! Free money!”
“You're a bad influence,” Grandma Tutti said.
“I'm teaching him a lesson,” Frankie said. “The thing is, not like the pizza thing, this was stupid. Passing bad bills is a serious crime. You can go to jail for a long time for that.”
“Did you go to jail?”
“No. I was lucky, and I didn't get caught. But the guy that was selling us the bills, he went away for five years. We never saw him again. He got killed in a robbery.”
“Wow.”
“Exactly,” Frankie said. “So let that be a lesson to you. Don't do something stupid!”
“Francis! You're turning Nicholas into a hoodlum!”
“Nah, Ma, I'm just wising him up to the neighborhood,” Frankie said. “Speaking of which … Not for nothing, but Nicholas doesn't sound right. What do your friends call you?”
“Nicholas,” said Nicholas.
“That's no good. It may sound right up there in Carriage Town, but it don't sound right in Brooklyn. From now on, you're Nicky. Or Nicky B. Or, since you're Nicholas Borelli the Second—after your father—how about Nicky Two? No! Nicky Deuce. That's a good name for a junior goomba. How about we call you Nicky Deuce?”
“Yeah,” Nicky said. “That's good.”
“All right, Nicky Deuce. Now, The Godfather. You got a lot to learn.”
icky was up early the following morning. The apartment was silent. Nicky sat alone with his sketch pad, drawing Grandma Tutti standing over the stove. He was still sketching when Frankie came in wearing boxer shorts and a sleeveless undershirt.
“Hey, kid,” Frankie said. “What's that?”
“Nothing,” Nicky said. “I'm just fooling around.”
“Lemme see.” Nicky handed the pad to his uncle. Frankie whistled. “That ain't bad, kid. Listen, there's a couple of bucks on my dresser. Go down to the candy store on the corner and get a newspaper, will you?”
“Which corner?”
“The one that way,” Frankie said, and pointed. “Introduce yourself and tell Mikey it's for me.”
Nicky put his shoes on and went down the hall to Frankie's room.
It was larger than Nicky's. There were heavy shades on the window, and it was very dark. Nicky bumped his shin on the gym bag he'd seen Frankie come home with the night before. It felt like big hunks of metal were in there. Nicky found the dresser, and the money, and went down to the street.
Moms were pushing strollers, heading for the market. Men in suits were going to work. Old ladies sat in their windows, staring down at the street.
Nicky went to the corner store. The shop was called Mazzetta's. Inside, there were cold drinks, and candy and snacks, and newspapers and cigarettes. The guy behind the counter wore an apron and had a pencil stuck behind his ear.
Nicky said, “Are you Mikey?”
“Who wants to know?”
“My name is Nicholas Borelli. My uncle Frankie sent me down for the newspaper.”
“Nicholas Borelli? You're Nicky's kid?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir? Get a load of you! How's Nicky doing? How's your dad?”
“He's okay.”
“How come he don't come down here no more?”
“I don't know.”
“I haven't seen him since high school. What a brain! He was a little genius! I remember when he got manied— not that got invited to the wedding, but still. That would be your mother, right?”
“I guess so.”
“You tell Nicky that Mikey said hello. It's a dollar for the paper.”
Back at the apartment, sitting on the stoop, was an elderly man wearing a black suit and smoking a cigarette. He appeared to be asleep: his chin was on his chest, and he was snoring. Nicky stepped around him and went upstairs.
His grandmother was up now. The kitchen smelled like coffee, and she was frying sausage.
“Your uncle is in the shower,” she said. “Give me a kiss and sit down. How do you like your eggs— scrambled?”
“I don't know,” Nicky said. “I don't usually eat eggs.”
“No eggs? Here, you get them scrambled. Sit.”
Nicky set down the newspaper and said, “There's an old man sleeping on the front steps. He smells funny.”
“He's drunk,” Grandma Tutti said. “His name is Moretti. He lives in the basement apartment. He was a friend of your grandfather's, from the war. He moved in here in 1955. He never left.”
“He was asleep, but he was also smoking a cigarette.”
“He's drunk, like I said,” Grandma Tutti said. “Don't pay any attention to him. He won't hurt you.”
Frankie came into the kitchen wearing a fancier tracksuit than he'd been wearing the night before and said, “Let's take a walk.”
Everyone knew Frankie. On every corner, in every shop, at every door, someone said, “Morning, Frank,” or, “Yo, Frank-o,” or, “Heya, Frankie-boy.” Every time someone new said hello, Frankie would stop, put his arm around Nicky's shoulder and say, “Howya doon? This here's Nicky Deuce, my nephew from the suburbs.”
Farther up the block there was an enormous fat guy sitting on a lawn chair next to his car. The trunk was open, and the smell of hot dogs filled the air.
“That's Fat Farouk Junior,” Frankie said. “I used to buy hot dogs from his dad, when I was a kid. Fat Farouk had four sons. One became a priest. One became a mailman. One became a wiseguy. And Fat Farouk Junior took over the family business. Hey, Farouk!”
Fat Farouk raised a fat hand and waved. “Heya, Frankie. How's it going?”
Along the way, Frankie showed Nicky the neighborhood. Next to the candy store was a barbershop. Across the street was the drugstore. On the next block was the laundry. Across the street from that was the beauty parlor. Next to it was the Italian deli.
“Very important,” Frankie said. “This is your sala-maña. This is where you go for sausages and cheeses, your cold cuts, your pepperoni and your mortadella. No place else. This is run by Italians. You can trust the food here.”
“Don't you ever go to, like, Super Buy or City Market?”
“Only for stuff you don't eat, like toilet paper, or soap,” Frankie said. “If it's something you're going to eat, you get it from people you know. Mozzarella from the supermarket? I skeeve that.”
“Skeeve?”
“Yeah. It's skeevy. It's disgusting to me.”
Halfway down the block there was a policeman writing out parking tickets and sticking them on windshields.
But there was something wrong with the policeman. His uniform was too small. The pants ended about five inches above his ankles, and his wrists stuck out from the sleeves. The badge pinned to his chest looked like a dime store sheriff's badge. On his feet were enormous white basketball shoes without laces.
When they were close to him, Frankie said, “Hey, Nutty. Writing some tickets?”
“Writing some tickets—yep, Frankie.”
“Good for you, Nut.”
A half block on, Nicky said, “Okay. What was that?”
“What?”
“That policeman.”
“That was Nutty. He's a neighborhood guy. He likes to dress up and do stuff on the block. Today, he's a cop.”
“Does everyone know he's not a real policeman?”
“Everybody knows Nutty,” Frankie said. “He's lived here his whole life. People love Nutty.”
On the next block they stopped at a storefront with the words “Bath Avenue Social Club” written on the door. Frankie said, “Come on. I'll introduce you to some people.”
Inside, a man was slicing bread rolls. Five men in suits were sitting at tables, playing cards and smoking cigars. One of them looked up and said, “Hey, Frankie,” and the others turned and said hello.
“Hey, you bums. Meet my nephew, Nicky. He's from the suburbs. I'm turning him into a goomba.”
Nicky went around shaking hands.
“This is Sallie the Butcher, Jimmy the Iceman and Oscar the Undertaker,” Frankie said. “That's Charlie Cement, and Bobby Car Service. Behind the counter, that's Eddie.”
Eddie said, “You want a sangwich, kid?”
Nicky said, “No, thanks. I just had breakfast.”
“Sit down,” Frankie said. “You can eat a sandwich. And a coffee for me, Eddie.”
The conversation went fast and was hard to follow. The men talked about sports, and horses, and going to the track.
Charlie Cement said, “I told Allie Bags, ‘Give me the Giants a hundred times.’ He says, ‘You're into me too much already. No more bets till you pay.’ Can you believe the guy? Five years I'm making book with him. I owe him a grand. What am I gonna do, rob a bank?”
“You shoulda went to see Ronnie Mack,” said Sallie the Butcher.
“What do you think I did? I went to see Ronnie Mack. He gave me the Giants two hundred times. The Giants win, and I pay off Allie Bags. He says, ‘Whatta you want for the Saints on Sunday?’ I said, ‘I want another bookie, you tightwad.’”
“He is a tightwad,” Frankie said. “I've known the guy twenty years. You ever see him pick up a check?”
“He's got alligator arms,” Sallie the Butcher said. “They don't reach all the way to his pockets.”
“Somebody ought to knock some sense into that guy,” said Jimmy the Iceman.
When they got back to the apartment, Frankie said, “I got to get to work,” and left Nicky with his grandmother.
“We're going shopping,” she said. “Then we'll have a little lunch.”
Nicky had been shopping plenty of times with his mother. They'd drive to the Super Buy and walk up and down the aisles, filling their cart. They'd buy the same things every week—cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes, bananas, tofu … They were back in the car in half an hour.
That wasn't how Grandma Tutti shopped. She had a little pull-along cart. On the way, she stopped every five feet to chat. She knew everybody. She waved to old women sitting in their windows on the second floor. She talked to old women sitting on the front stoops. She looked in at the flower shop and the beauty salon. She waved through the glass at the barbershop and the corner store.
And she bought her groceries from about six different stores. She went to the salamaria for sausages and mozzarella cheese. But she went to the cheese store for the parmesan. “You can't trust the salamaria for the parmesan,” she said. “It's sometimes not fresh.”
They went to a fruit store for pears and grapes. They went to a different store for cannellini beans, broccoli, garlic, lettuce and arugula. She spent a long time picking out two red and two green bell peppers.
When they were done at last, Grandma Tutti said, “Now we'll go to the market. I need canned tomatoes and paper towels.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Back at the apartment, Nicky sat with his sketch pad, drawing and talking while his grandmother cooked. She was very slow in the kitchen, and very meticulous. She sliced her garlic razor-thin. She pressed her tomatoes through a strainer to remove the skins and seeds. She roasted the bell peppers, browned the sausages and talked.
“Your grandfather's family knew my family from the old country. They were very poor. Your grandfather came to this country to try to make money. I met him here, at a dance. He was very handsome and charming. Go get the picture from the living room.”
Nicky took down the portrait of his grandfather—a handsome man with a bristly mustache and twinkly eyes. Nicky sat down across from the picture and began sketching his grandfather.
“There, you see? Handsome!” his grandmother said. “Also, a very good dancer. Ten years older than me. He was very smart, but uneducated. So he was a bricklayer all his life.”
Grandma Tutti stirred her sausages for a long time. She said, “He was ashamed of not having an education. That's why he wanted your father and your uncle to go to college. With Frankie, in the end, it didn't work out so good like with your father.”
“Why not?”
“Frankie wasn't book-smart. But he was a fine athlete. He was on the football team and the baseball team and the track team. He got many offers of scholarships. In the end, he decided on UCLA. But that summer, working with your grandfather, he had his accident and—pfffft! No college.”
“What accident?”
Grandma Tutti wiped her hands on her apron and sat down across from Nicky. “Your grandfather had a big job in New Jersey. He was building the fireplace and the chimney. He was not so young anymore, so Frankie was helping him. This made your father very jealous. He wanted to help, too. But your grandfather said, ‘Stay home and study!’ He was too little.”
“He's still not as big as Uncle Frankie.”
“Exactly. So one day the bricks were being delivered. Something happened, and a load of bricks got loose. Frankie was downstairs, and some of the bricks fell on him. His foot was crushed. For a while, they didn't know if they could save it. He was on crutches for almost a year. The scholarships—gone! He stayed home until he got married, to that no-good runaround. Ah! Let me see your picture.”
Nicky handed over his sketch pad.
“You made the eyes too small,” Tutti said. “But it looks like him. Maybe you could have a scholarship, too—for art.”
∗ ∗ ∗
That night, after another huge dinner, Uncle Frankie took out a stack of DVDs and said, “I'm gonna show you a whole bunch of goomba stuff. Siddown.”
Frankie played the scene from Mickey Blue Eyes where they try to teach Hugh Grant how to be a goomba and say “Fugheddaboudit.” He can't do it. He can only say “Forget aboouuout it” or “Forget about it.”
He played the scene from Analyze This where Billy Crystal pretends to be a gangster. He doesn't speak Italian, but he shouts out greetings that make him sound like a goomba: “Hey!” “Eee!” “Ai!” “Oh!” “You!”
He played the scene from Taxi Driver where Robert De Niro stares down his imaginary enemy in the mirror. “You talking to me? You talking to me? I'm the only one here ….”
They watched an episode of The Sopranos, the one where Christopher and Paulie Walnuts get lost in the snow and the woods. Frankie laughed so hard Nicky thought he was going to pop.
When it was over, Uncle Frankie said, “There you go. That's your goomba. You can see he's a pretty tough guy, right? He's a man. He's not afraid to fight. He's not afraid to stand up for himself. He likes to eat, and he likes to talk, and he likes to chase girls. You like that, right?”
“Well, I haven't really—”
“Fugheddaboudit. You're only twelve. That's for later. The point is, the goomba is loyal, and he sticks by his pals, and he's no quitter. He'd never betray a friend. That's the goomba code. The goomba is an honorable man—whether he's a gangster or a lawyer or a cop.”
“A goomba could be a cop?”
“Sure! A couple of goomba kids I used to run with, they grew up to be cops.”
“But most of your friends, they grew up to be other stuff, right?”
“Sure. They do all kinds of stuff.”
“Are most of them gangsters?”
Uncle Frankie gave Nicky a look. “My friends? Are you kidding? They have regular jobs.”
“What about you?”
“What about me what?”
“What do you do?”
“Me? I keep an eye on things for some people.”
“You mean, like, a security guard?”
“Something like that, yeah,” Frankie said. “Sorta like a security guard. Let's go get an ice cream.”
The streets were filled with people—kids running around, older people standing and talking, or sitting on their stoops. At the corner, taking up the whole intersection, a pack of boys was playing a game that looked like baseball, but without the bat.
“That's slapball,” Frankie said. “And up there, on the corner, there's a true-blue goomba. You see the fat guy with the cigar?”
“Yes.”
“That's the neighborhood patrone. Everyone calls him Little Johnny Vegas. You got a problem with the landlord, you go to him. You got a problem with your neighbor, you go to him. He settles all the local business—like Marlon Brando in The Godfather, only not so dangerous.”
“How does he make a living ?”
“Who knows?” Frankie said. “Don't ask! I'll introduce you.”
Little Johnny Vegas was huge. He needed a shave. His shoes needed a shine. His hair needed a comb. He smiled at Frankie and said, “Hey, Frankie-boy. C'mere, you gorilla,” and gave him a big pat on the back.
“Johnny, this is my nephew, Nicky Deuce. He's my brother Nicky's son. He's staying with me and Ma for a few weeks.”
“Nicky Deuce, huh?” Johnny stuck his hand out. “Howyadoin'?”
Nicky shook hands. It was like shaking hands with a baseball mitt.
“Good-looking kid,” Johnny said. “What's with the clothes?”
“I know,” Frankie said. “It's Brooks Brothers.”
“It looks more like Mario Brothers.” Johnny stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out an enormous bankroll. He peeled off a couple of bills and shoved them into Nicky's shirt pocket. He said, “Frankie, get the kid something decent to wear, will ya? The other kids see him in that L.L. Bean stuff, they'll tear him apart.”
Welcome to the Family Page 2
