The Pope of Brooklyn

by Joseph Di Prisco

  •

  Sometimes I’m asked when I “decided” to become a writer. It’s not something I know how to address. For one thing, I’m not so sure decision is the right term. I was always entranced by the idea of being a writer. Old Yeller, The Good Earth, Of Mice and Men, the stories of Flannery O’Connor and O. Henry, the poems of Stephen Crane and Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Carlos Williams—these works moved me as a boy, they made me wish to make such things on my own. Very early on, I remember reading what one writer said—cannot recall who, but it could have been any of a hundred—something to the effect, Don’t try to become a writer unless you cannot picture not being one. This ensnared my attention. But the admonition didn’t intimidate me at perhaps thirteen years old—definitely not the way pretty girls effortlessly did. Instead, the opposite: it emboldened me. Of course, I thought, of course, that’s right, and that’s me. It was related to a notion that transfixed me around the same time. I vividly recall my brilliant ninth grade English teacher (and he truly was, and by all accounts still is, brilliant) using in class a phrase exotic to me: vicarious experience. I struggled to wrap my mind around the idea of experiencing somebody else’s experience. After all, I was busy trying to have an experience or two of my own, even if it didn’t involve any of those pretty girls. And then it gradually clarified for me. Bingo, vicarious experience was literature’s best trick. And that was the thing, I would learn and relearn over and over, that keyed the pleasure, the work, the challenge of both the reader’s and the writer’s imagination. At thirteen I showed my teacher the stories I wrote before I sent them to magazines. He didn’t discourage or flatter me, either, but Esquire didn’t bite.

  All this brings up another question for somebody like me much later in life, perhaps predictably. Are writers gamblers at heart? Is it strange to think there might be resemblances between the two? Both risk precious assets. In one case, time and intellectual energy and earning capacity; in the other, time, intellectual energy, and cash money. Serious exposure, then, for both. Both may yearn for the big payout. Is the payout for an author obvious? Riches, fame, awards? It may be true what Samuel Johnson said, that “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” and who would be fool enough to take on Dr. Johnson? He’s inarguably correct to this extent: a writer without audience is often in dire straits, emotionally or psychologically and usually financially. Not to say that pleasing the public is ever the unalloyed objective of a good writer, nor does the measure of interest in a writer define achievement or success or satisfaction however defined—sales, likes, viral tweets, movie deals, book prizes, and so on. Well, that’s the story of me, and I’m sticking to it.

  Literary history is the chronicle of great writers disregarded or demeaned by their contemporaries; the tale of writers who created the audience for their work before the public was ready. But not so fast, buddy boy. For every obscure Joyce, there’s a rabidly popular Shakespeare; for every moody arcane dead-lettering Melville, there’s a show-stopping celebrity Dickens. Yet it was T. S. Eliot who said that, for the purposes of cultural advancement, a good poet is as valuable as a great poet, and may be more important. I never cared much for the world-famous Gentleman from Saint Louis’s cult of impersonality or his poetry (except for “Prufrock”), and his essays have not worn well over time. But as for most writers, why pony up to the betting window in the first place? I can only speak for myself.

  For me, I’m not sure where to find the writer’s betting window. Unless it’s inside myself. I’ll never find out immediately after the working writer’s equivalent of a football game, a race, a hand of cards, what I have earned. I do my work, and that is its own reward, if there is one. If somebody reads it and finds momentary delight, that’s a bonus, more than enough for me. If I lose a bet on the Warriors, say, I have lost my money, true. If I lose a bet on a book, if, that is, the reviewers ignore it or dismiss it, if readers stay away in droves, what have I lost? Snark monsters wield sharp knives. Honestly, it can be depressing recognition, even if I can expertly fake insouciance, and even if the bottle of Irish beckons with its midday Siren’s call. But one goes on. At least I have gone on, so far. That inclination may link to my lifelong disposition, coming straight out of my Brooklyn with a father like mine; it may indeed be that I am congenitally undiscourageable. Resilient or stubborn? Survivor or deluded fool? Or maybe too dense to absorb the message from the universe? Then again, my suspicion is that, ever since the Big Bang, the “universe” is probably too preoccupied to bother imparting a message to anyone, least of all me.

  As my old man put it so memorably to me as a young writer, poetry won’t pay the light bill. But if I am lucky, as I have been once or twice, I might confiscate some electricity, enough to illuminate my way for a while anyway.

  In this context, there’s one more thing I might say about my dad and mom and it’s something that, at this late date, surprises me to acknowledge. They were indeed incredibly difficult people, essentially unmanageable and maddening and unfathomably irrational. But some days I do miss them. Particularly my father. I feel sad for him, for the life he led and for the life he didn’t or the life he never conceived, to the extent that maybe this whole book in your hands is an elegy to him—and maybe also to my childhood and my brother's. If I could explain these feelings to my satisfaction, hundred to one I would have never written a single word.

  New York State Appellate Division

  RECORDS AND BRIEFS

  POLICE DEPARTMENT CITY OF NEW YORK

  Case #33613

  April 23, 1962.

  IN THE MATTER of Charges Against PATROLMAN PETER R. CELENTANO, #837237, Shield #4477, 30th Precinct, of the Police Force, Police Department, City of New York.

  Upon reading and filing cfertain written charges in this matter, wherein he is charged with Violation Of The Rules And Procedures, dated April 18th, 1961, duly made and preferred in the form and manner prescribed by law and the rules and procedures of the said Police Department by Captain Sydney C. Cooper, P.C.C.I.U., against the said Patrolman Peter R. Celentano, a member of the police force of said city, and it having been duly proved that a copy of such charges, together with a written notice that the same had been made and preferred against him, the said Patrolman Peter R. Celentano, requiring him to appear and answer thereto at a proper time and place named in said notice, has been duly served upon him, the said Patrolman Peter R. Celentano, in the manner required by law and the said rules and procedures; and he, the said Patrolman Peter R. Celentano, having appeared and answered at the time and place mentioned and required by said notice, and the said charges having been duly brought to a hearing, and duly tried, heard, publicly examined and investigated, in the manner required by law and the rules and procedures of the said Police Department before Hon. Louis L. Roos, Assistant to the Police Commissioner, on the 15th and 25th days of May, 1961, and before Hon. Leonard E. Reisman, Deputy Police Commissioner, on the 21st and 29th days of June, the 15th day of August, the 20th day of October, and the 2nd, 6th, and 14th days of November, and the 6th day of December, 1961, and a full opportunity having been afforded to the said Patrolman Peter R. Celentano, to be heard in his defense, and the proofs and allegations in relation to said charges having been duly taken and recorded as required by law and the said rules and procedures, and the determination of said charges, based upon the entire record adduced at the hearing, and the findings and recommendations made thereon, having been referred to the Police Commissioner, the Police Commissioner, upon due consideration and review of said findings and recommendations, and upon inquiry of and consultation with said Trial Commissioner, adjudges the said Patrolman Peter R. Celentano, to be Guilty, of the Charges, and Guilty, of specification 1, Not Guilty, of specifications 2, and 3, and does convict him of the Charges, and of specification 1, and upon such conviction, adjudges and determines that he, the said Patrolman Peter R. Celentano, be, and he hereby is, Dismissed from the Police Force, Police Department, Cit
y of New York.

  MICHAEL J. MURPHY Police Commissioner

  Joe and Caza Di Prisco. Berkeley, California circa 1967.

  Pope’s mother and father and his two sons (and his German Shepherd).

  Keeping Watch

  My brother Eddie died of liver failure at NYU hospital in February 2002. He was fifty-nine.

  My brother John died of a heroin overdose on his bathroom floor in San Francisco in January 2003. He was fifty-one.

  My brother Bobby died of lung cancer in a Coney Island hospital in the middle of night, March 2008. He was sixty-four.

  My mother died of congestive heart failure and Alzheimer’s in Florida in January 2010, one day after her birthday. She was eighty-six.

  My father died in Northern California in July 2012, like his wife also of congestive heart failure and Alzheimer’s, at his assisted living residence. He was eighty-seven.

  They are all buried alongside each other in a Catholic cemetery, overlooking Brooklyn.

  •

  Looking back over that cruel catalogue, I have a complicated reaction. On the one hand, life seems increasingly ephemeral. But on the other, I feel the opposite, too: that these lives my family lived will always matter, to me, of course, but to many others as well I could name—and in fact, people I have named in this book and in my previous memoir. So anything but fleeting, because look: there they are, memorialized on the page. Memorialized inadequately, to be sure, by me, using whatever limited resources of information and imagination I have at my disposal.

  There are few extant narratives of their lives, fashioned by themselves, except for some letters, those trial transcripts, and my recollections of their words and deeds. If I shunt them into narratives of my own devising, because they for the most part left no written record, I stand vulnerable to the charge of misappropriation, for my own self-serving purposes. I might also be accused of expropriation, though given they are all gone, I wonder if that is logically feasible. In any case, my motivations may indeed be suspect. You may believe I am selling myself as an example of redemption, and this book is nothing more than self-promotion. To that criticism I would respond: I have never felt redeemed, not for a minute.

  I remember them. Is that enough? No, not for me. I can hear the way they laughed, I can see the way they walked into a room, I can taste the food they cooked. I cannot legitimately suggest at every juncture that I am narrating pieces of their lives. All I can say is that these are my accounts of how I remembered them and what they meant to me. I don’t think I have treated them unfairly, though I may not be in the best position to know; that might be the task of my reader, if not my confessor or confidant. My complex relationships with each of them were sometimes painful, sometimes joyous, but they remain unforgettable.

  As for that catalogue of the dead above, I also envision the one name missing, so far. I glimpse the gaping opening for one more, my own.

  •

  One time my three brothers and I went out together, a night on the town. Early seventies, I believe. I could say we were partying, but it’s impossible to remember the plan or who formed it. I remember sitting on the subway taking the GG from Brooklyn to Queens, then the L to Manhattan, heading to a club of some kind. I wonder whose idea the excursion was, or the purpose, beyond being together. It must have been a fall or spring night, because winter coats are not in evidence in my memory, but I recall I was in college at the time, an alien place none of them would experience firsthand. The recollection is so crisp, so luminous, and at the same time so blurred, like so many recollections of me with them. I do know for a fact that I was happy to be there with my brothers. I don’t know how the evening went or how it ended, but I was conscious in the moment that the occasion would never be repeated—and it wasn’t.

  •

  Monsignor Shane has been there for so many big events in the life of my family and me. Another way to put it: he has been there in the sacred moments, which is the functional definition of a sacrament. He’s celebrated Mass for us and consecrated the Eucharist. He baptized and confirmed Mario and served as his spiritual mentor, too, when he was a boy who converted, of his own volition, to Catholicism. Shane also presided at the wedding of Patti and me. He visited John in prison, which doesn’t qualify as a sacrament, exactly, but maybe it ought to. He administered last rites to my dad. By my count, that amounts to at least five of the seven Catholic sacraments. I could also probably add a sixth sacrament of Reconciliation, what used to be called Confession, because he has heard me out in my darkest hours. I was talking with him recently and reminded him. He laughed when he said, “True, but I never gave you absolution.” Then again, I never asked. Sometimes, you can’t get forgiveness from someone else.

  What about my father’s religious inclinations—he who was tagged Pope for having been supposedly outed when he was caught strolling out of a church? And let’s stipulate that he did indeed make a visit. Did he light a candle, did he make his own confession, did he fall on bended knee and pray? I will never know what if anything he was seeking there.

  A handful of times in his seventies he asked us to take him to Mass, but he might have merely wanted to hang with his grandson on a Sunday morning. He never addressed the subject of belief, or disbelief for that matter, around me. In this context, I have to note that there was a seventeenth-century French genius of probability theory who is famous for a certain formulation. Pascal argued it was on balance better to subscribe to God’s existence, because the risk of eternal damnation outweighs any possible benefits of concluding otherwise. As he put it: “If you win you win everything, if you lose you lose nothing.” For most of his life, my dad rarely passed up a chance to make a bet. Considering the infinite upside of this speculative opportunity, he certainly made worse bets than Pascal’s Wager. Why wouldn’t he bank on the possibility—Baby needs a new pair of shoes—he just might hit the ultimate jackpot?

  •

  As his days began to dwindle down I took him to the track whenever he asked, memorable moments for me if not him, because the Alzheimer’s was already eroding his brain. For one such excursion, we went to Golden Gate Fields in Albany, California, and he put his money down on a horse to win the 2010 Kentucky Derby. The horse went off nine to one. “Sounds right,” he said before he bet it, spitting on the favorite, who would ultimately finish out of the money. Unlike millions of other gamblers, and despite his cognitive deficits, he bet the winner, a horse named Super Saver. Great call on the part of this handicapper, but there was no saving him from Alzheimer’s.

  •

  After he settled into his assisted living residence, he seemed to enjoy coming over for supper to our house, a thirty-minute drive away. We picked him up or arranged for a ride in a car service he had championed long ago, chauffeured by an Indian woman who treated him gently and respectfully. He always wanted the same dish for Sunday supper: Patti’s spaghetti Bolognese. She is a great cook, and he ate with deliberate gusto and in monkish silence, as was his custom, before his appetite permanently wandered off. And it soon became progressively more challenging for him to be away, even for brief spells, from his residence. A proud man, he was occasionally bushwhacked by the betrayals of his own bodily functions.

  Otherwise, we regularly visited my dad as his final descent began, virtually daily. Sometimes he was shuttled outside in a wheelchair into the lovely gardens to spend some time with a hospice dog. These outings became increasingly rare for him. It could be tough to sit up in a wheelchair. When he stayed indoors and we entered his apartment, he would usually be lodged in his easy chair, staring into the middle distance in the quiet and curtained shadows, which he preferred. When he noticed us, he invariably greeted us the same way each time:

  “Oh, shit.”

  This made us always laugh; how else could we respond? Was Oh, shit an exclamation of surprise, a complaint, a smack? I don’t know. It was the signature exclamation of my old man from B
rooklyn.

  He and I battled before dementia and we battled after, when it wasn’t a fair fight. I confiscated car keys; he was a danger on the road. He was always demanding more razor blades (he had a stock pile) or more toothpaste (the cabinet overflowed). Personal hygiene was always a major consideration for this fastidious man, even toward the end. The TV remote vanquished him. I commandeered credit cards, paid his bills. He loathed that I had financial control, though conceded: “Guess you’re an honest guy.” High praise from a man like him.

  He didn’t speak at length or coherently, and when he talked at all he seemed to be struggling to get his bearings. One fairly recurrent question emerged:

  “Have you talked to my wife lately?”

  And that’s the way he phrased it, not have I talked to my mother. Once or twice in the past, I had tried to tell him that his wife was not here anymore, which I know now was something I shouldn’t have done. That was when he looked at me like I was an idiot, or that I was pulling one over on him. It had been a couple of years since she had died, but what did that matter to him?

  We would pass the hours together, our conversation, such as it was, disjointed, haphazard, minimalist. After a while, I ceased responding to the literal content of his statements and queries, and I listened, even to the silence, tried to be present, till that, too, became excruciating—for me and perhaps for him.

  He had round-the-clock care on the part of a team of Tongan helpers, a concierge doctor, at some point hospice nurses, as well as other nurses and caremangers at the residence, along with his loyal care manager. And also my wife, Patti, who was a trooper and who faithfully showed up, often bringing fresh changes of clothes. She and my dad genuinely liked each other.