We sensed one day that the death watch had, almost without our awareness, already sneaked upon us. And we also sensed that, no matter how many of us were looking after him, we were outnumbered by the singular specter of dying.
I was leveled one day by a new question, one I had never anticipated and one that he would never repeat.
“Is John coming by?”
It had been almost ten years since my father and I embraced by the side of my brother’s casket. But yes, that was indeed a crucial question a dying father like him, and a brother like me, would wish to have answered.
•
So what is, finally, the truth about my family and me? How do I make sense of his life and how I grew up and who I became?
My father’s experience contributed to the making of who I am, for better or worse. I see traces of him everywhere—in my own domestic life, and in my own work. I think I understand better now what I dimly grasped as a little boy: that my journey from Brooklyn made me feel like I didn’t belong anywhere, certainly not California. But maybe that is one key to being a writer, at least one like me. My father had this in common with me: we always conceived of ourselves as outsiders.
These family traces can appear to be indistinguishable from scars, but scars can be eloquent if not always beautiful. At least they have their own stories to tell. My sometimes turbulent early home life necessitated the development of my own self-reliance, even as it richly colored my experience—and made the world seem risky and dramatic. Resisting my mother and father’s suspect values helped me create my own, or discover others that were more useful or profound for me. My internal life deepened. I found myself drawn, intellectually and emotionally, to the realms of literature and art. That didn’t mean that the darker realms didn’t hold their appeal at various times, and that demons similar to my dad’s wouldn’t have their way. Could I have spoken of such matters to my parents? I suppose I could have, although I cannot say I did, and I doubt my ideas would have made much sense to them. Does that matter? To me, it does, which is why my family reminiscences, including the happier ones, are tinged with regret and disappointment. I don’t blame them, let’s be clear, for their choices. They were who they were. And without them, I wouldn’t be me. Again, for better or worse.
As for my father, he will always be my dad.
My dad compulsively betting the horses.
My dad in the wind.
My dad testifying in trials.
My dad under indictment.
My dad who dragged us, without a plan beyond his immediate survival, to California.
My dad who had moments of pride and moments of incomprehension. My dad who couldn’t fathom the bottomless pain he felt when John was an addict and died alone on a bathroom floor. My dad who was the adoring, faithful grandfather of my son. My dad who was dominated by his gambling “vice,” and swallowed up by his insanely loyal relationship to my mother, his wife. Also my dad who in his thwarted way loved his boys and couldn’t do much about how they grew up.
Complicated man, Joe Di Prisco. All things considered, that’s maybe not the bleakest epitaph in the world.
His death is simply one final stage of our never-ending relationship, and there’s no simply about that. I will always be Popey’s son. And yet he remains a question mark. Maybe I did not know him while I was growing up, but then in the end we came full circle: as he was dying he couldn’t recognize me at all.
My whole life I tried to read him. I came to see how I had to write him for myself. I guess he was correct from the beginning when I badgered him with my childhood questions. I was always writing this book, my book about the Pope of Brooklyn. That was true at the time, and it still is.
Records & Sources
Criminal details and legal matters cited, including trial testimony contained in transcripts published in New York State Appellate Division Records and Briefs, in addition to case files that were unsealed:
New York Supreme Court
Appellate Division—First Department
In the Matter of Peter R. Celentano
Index #12162/1962
October 25, 1962
New York Supreme Court
Appellate Division—First Department
In the Matter of Baldasaro P. Ficalora
Index #15830/1963
November 18, 1963
New York Supreme Court
Appellate Division—First Department
In the Matter of John Tatarian
Index #14525/1963
November 15, 1963
New York Supreme Court
Appellate Division—First Department
In the Matter of John Tatarian
June 11, 1964
Supreme Court: Queens County
Criminal Term Part III
The People of the State of New York
Against Joseph Di Prisco, Defendant
Indictment No. 1120-61
December 11, 1962
Files unsealed November 25, 2015
Brooklyn: King’s County
Indictment number 543-62, filed in 1962
Records destroyed in a warehouse fire
U.S. Department of Justice
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Subject: Joseph Di Prisco et al
Freedom of Information Act request; December 10, 2010
FBI San Francisco File 156B-SF-92738
Poetics, Aristotle
The Color of Money, directed by Martin Scorsese; screenplay by Richard Price (1986)
Confessions, Saint Augustine
The City of God, Saint Augustine
Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Cheesebox: Being the Life and Times of Cheesebox Callahan, Paul S. Meskil and Gerard Callahan
Unauthorized Freud, Frederick Crews, editor
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
Among the Dangs, George P. Elliott
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Why I’m Over Confessional Writing,” Emily Fox Gordon; The American Scholar, Spring 2015
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
The Gospel According to John
The Divided Self, R. D. Laing
The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell: Confessions of a Bank Robber, Joe Loya
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor
The Complete Essays of Montaigne, translated by Donald M. Frame
The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Steven Pinker
Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, Andrew Solomon
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, Andrew Solomon
Serpico, directed by Sidney Lumet (1973)
The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming, et al; based on novels by Frank L. Baum (1939)
Saint Augustine, Garry Wills
Playing and Reality, D. W. Winnicott
The Child and the Outside World, D. W. Winnicott
On the Child, D. W. Winnicott
Bender, New and Selected Poems by Dean Young
Subway to California, Joseph Di Prisco
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to thank:
Mario Di Prisco and Family
Regan McMahon
Monsignor Shane
Katherine Palermo
Jennifer Palermo Bobe
Katharine Michaels
Elizabeth Trupin-Pulli, JET Literary Associates
Tyson Cornell, Publisher, Rare Bird Books
Alice Marsh-Elmer, Julia Callahan, Hailie Johnson, and Andrew Hungate of Rare Bird Books
Not-Naomi, Esquire, and research staff
Robert Gearty, intrepid and invaluable researcher
Kathleen Caldwell and A Great
Good Place for Books, Oakland, California
Kim Dower (aka Kim-from-LA), muse
Francesca Applegarth. Nina Rothberg Bailey. Jim and Lela Barnes. Tracey Borst and Robert Menicucci. Jennie Chabon. Peter Chastain. Brent Cohen. Laura Cogan. Josephine Courant. Diane Del Signore. Anthony and Nan Fredotovich. Jane and Jeff Green. Bernard and Cheryl Hooper. Blair Jackson. Kathy and Tony Laglia. Ralph and Liz Long. Amber Lowi. Christine McQuade. Donald McQuade. Jim and Katherine Moule. Beth Needel. David Robins. Anne Rosenthal. Peter Sackman. Vickie Sciacca. Robyn Simonett. A. R. Taylor. Robert Tembeckjian. Carlton Tucker. Oscar Villalon. Dan Wilcox. Laurie Saurborn and Dean Young.
Patti James and Family
The Pope of Brooklyn Page 22
