by A. J. Benza
“Daddy, you’re a terrible singer,” Gino finally said, as his father tries to hit a Louis Prima high note toward the crescendo end of “I Ain’t Got Nobody.”
“A soprano, your father is not,” my father said to Gino.
“Gino, give me a break here,” Uncle Larry replied. “No one can sing like Louis Prima.”
“He’s just yelling,” I interjected over the old men’s joy. “It’s not really singing.”
“He’s saying beautiful things in Sicilian,” my father assured us. “Things a young boy can’t understand. But one day you’ll sing along with him too.”
With the needle skipping at the edge of the thirty-three, Uncle Larry perked up in his chair, walked to a big bag he had brought with him, and fished out a Jackson 5 album and held it up in an ecstasy I secretly shared with him.
“Al,” Uncle Larry proudly began, “how much have you listened to these boys? The young one is amazing. A pure genius.”
My father put up his hand.
“What’s the matter?” Uncle Larry asked. “Have you really listened to their music?”
“I’ve listened enough to know I’ve listened too much.”
I couldn’t grab the album out of Uncle Larry’s hand fast enough and search for some of my favorite songs. I hadn’t seen a Jackson 5 album up close. My father wouldn’t allow it. Just like he wouldn’t allow my sister Rosalie to buy an Elvis record during the 1950s.
“Alfred . . . you can’t mean that,” Uncle Larry continued. “This kid is going to be the biggest star in the music world.”
“Whose fuckin’ music world?”
I dropped the needle onto a very young Michael Jackson singing “Who’s Lovin’ You.”
“Al,” Uncle Larry went on. “Would you just listen to that? These are all kids. A whole family of beautiful kids who sing and dance like nobody else.”
“Wow,” I yelled over to Gino, “I remember seeing them do this on Ed Sullivan.”
Gino looked as though my remark might start a war, but I didn’t think my father heard it over his bubbling anger.
“One black kid is cute, two are called trouble, and five means you got a fuckin’ riot on your hands,” he said.
“Dad, Uncle Larry is right,” I said, taking advantage of the soft side he reserved for my sometimes disagreeing with him. “Cathy Krager let me kiss her in gym class while we were dancing to ‘Rockin’ Robin.’ ”
“Another sweet song,” Uncle Larry said.
“Krager’s an Irish name or, even, German,” my father thought aloud. “You want a crazy mick or kraut wife?”
The speed and honesty of this discussion was whirling around Gino’s enthused head. “They let you guys kiss in school?”
“No. No way. But I like her, and I just went for it. The first time I kissed her was kindergarten,” I said. “I remember we were finger painting at the time . . .”
“And how’d that go?” my father said.
“She ran out of class and cried all the way to the nurse’s office.”
“Now she sounds German. Very cold people,” my father said. “Do yourself a favor, stay away.”
“Alfred, you’re going to tell me you didn’t find that song beautiful?”
“I’m looking at the bigger picture, Larry. I’m saying that something’s off with this kid,” he cryptically said. “That kid looks like he’s been here before. Look deep inside his eyes. He’s hurt, Larry. He’s not happy. Whenever an eight-year-old can sing the blues better than a grown man, you gotta ask yourself where has he felt that pain before?”
“Ah, come on,” Uncle Larry said.
“No, no, no. And I’ll tell you where he’s felt that pain,” my father said. “At home.”
“What’s the use?” my uncle said. “I’m right, but I can’t win.”
After an awkward pause, and before the next song on the album could even begin, my father shot me a quick look to get back to his music. “Put on Frank again and then you guys go hit the rack so my brother and I can shoot the shit a little.”
Before both men sent us off to bed, Uncle Larry was gentle with his kisses and hugs and pats on the head. My father’s send-off included a relentless bout of tickling; a mock prize fight; hard, loud kisses that roused the dogs from sleep; and a promise that “tomorrow is gonna top today.”
After being sent to bed, Gino and I had a few laughs before he passed out in his cot right next to my single bed. With no TV in the room, the only entertainment I had was eavesdropping on the conversation downstairs. Amid countless replays of “My Way” and “That’s Life,” I heard the brothers make promises to each other through their tears. It wasn’t easy, and I had to stand real still and cock my head just right, but I swear I could make out the sounds of the twisted emotions of two devoted brothers that night. Sinatra was loudly singing, “But if there’s nothing shaking come this here July / I’m gonna roll myself up in a big ball . . . and die.” But what bit deeper into my ear were the sniffles, hard hugs, and whispered promises my father and uncle shared as the giant consoled stereo huffed out and my big old house went silent for the night.
4
COME AND GET YOUR LOVE
Even the sun had a hard time beating my father out of bed in the morning. I could hear him shuffling around at five or so, rifling through the newspapers, sucking down coffee, lighting a cigarette, talking to the dogs, and doing all sorts of stuff in and out of the house that would weigh heavily on the kind of day we were headed for. As much as I wished to fall back into a deep sleep, there was something so comforting about the noises he made on an early Sunday morning. I looked forward to them as much as I did sleep. Whether it was hearing him squirting lighter fluid into his silver Zippo lighter or going in and out the kitchen screen door or backwashing the pool filter, it was all music I stayed half asleep to. He would arrange the pots and pans we would need later on that day for dinner, tune the old AM radio to Goombadah Joe Rotolo’s Italian music countdown. He would get the dogs into a tizzy, rolling them over and rubbing their bellies until they panted for their lives.
He was a father. He had a day off from work. He made noise. And it was a symphony to me.
I heard him talking through the slats of the guest room door my uncle was still asleep in to give him some shit.
“Paging Dr. Pazzo (crazy). Paging Dr. Pazzo. You have patients who need your assistance. Dr. Pazzo . . . che cosa stai faciendo? (What are you doing?) Stai ancora dormendo? (Are you still asleep?) Sei ancora ubriaco? (Are you drunk?) Paging Dr. Pazzo . . . dove sono le sfere. (Where are your balls?) Scuso, Dr. Pazzo . . . possiamo anche avere della palline? (Pardon me, do you even have balls?)
“Jesus Christ,” Uncle Larry said. “You can’t possibly be awake and fine with everything we drank last night. What the fuck are you made of?”
“Sono forte,” my father said, loudly. (I am strong.)
“What are you cooking for breakfast?”
“Cazzo (cock), calcazelle (squash), l’uove (eggs).”
“Oh, my favorite. I’m coming. Gimme a minute.”
It would be a couple of hours before Gino and I woke up and wandered downstairs, but I slept with more comfort knowing that was the man I hung my whole day upon. We had a small dish of a pepper-and-egg omelet he had prepared for us and a quick chocolate egg cream before I checked the papers to see the Yankees box score from the night before. They had lost. Again.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “When will the Yankees stop sucking?”
“Who knows,” said my father, who was at the sink with Uncle Larry, washing some peaches that had fallen to the ground during the night. “Makes no difference anyway. Unfortunately, you’ll never see the Yankees of my day. Those were ballplayers. Am I right, Larry?”
“Oh yeah.”
“They were dignified; they had class. They wore goddamned suits and ties to the ballpark. N
obody had a friggin’ Afro pick in their hair. And that’s what you got now. Anyhow . . . there’ll never be another Joe DiMaggio.”
“No. Never happen,” Uncle Larry chimed in.
“He was a pretty ugly guy,” I said, drawing a laugh from Gino. “I don’t understand what Marilyn Monroe saw in him.”
“I don’t really know who this Jody Maggio is,” Gino said. “But no one was as gorgeous as Marilyn. She was just so, so beautiful. So sad what happened to her. I cut out a whole bunch of pictures of her and glued them to the covers of my schoolbooks.”
A flash of exasperation and embarrassment flushed my uncle’s face as he leaned into my father and said, “You see what I’m working with here?”
“Non tu preoccupare (don’t you worry),” my father whispered. “Watch.”
Then, back to us, my father said, “Well, that was a situation Joltin’ Joe didn’t know he was getting himself involved in,” my father said.
“What do you mean?” I said. “What was wrong with it?”
At this point some of the women of the house had meandered into the kitchen and caught a whiff of our conversation. My mother was pouring herself a cup of coffee. Aunt Mary was reading the paper’s comic strips—Dondi was her favorite. And NuNu had scooped up one of our five cats onto her lap.
“What did I miss?” my mother said, grimacing at the first sip of coffee.
“My son wants to know about DiMaggio and Monroe,” my father said.
“Be careful, Al,” she said. “Larry, help me please. It’s too early in the morning and too early in their lives to get into this.”
“Hold on, Lil,” Uncle Larry said. “A.J. is just curious.”
“Basically . . .” my father began, “Joe didn’t know what he was headed for. And Gino is right—Marilyn was beautiful. She was also very powerful in the movie studio system. But, ah, you know . . .”
My father at a loss for words? This threw me for a loop.
“ ‘But, ah, you know’ . . . what?” I said.
“Maybe Jody Maggio knew she was too beautiful for him?” Gino offered.
“Oh, Jesus,” Uncle Larry huffed. “Gino, it’s Joe Di-Maggio. His name isn’t Jody. He’s the greatest ballplayer of our time. I’ve told you about him. I know I have.” My father pinched his brother’s cheek, as if to reassure him.
Gino kind of shrugged his shoulders.
“What’s the big mystery here, Dad?” I said.
“Joe married a hua, but he didn’t know it,” my father said. “Nicest guy in the world, best ballplayer you’ll ever see, got taken for a ride by a fuckin’ hua.”
“What’s a hua?” I asked.
“Al . . . please watch what you say here,” my mother went on.
“You dug a pretty deep hole for yourself, Alfred,” Uncle Larry said, laughing a little.
“A hua is a woman who sleeps around. She goes from one man to another.”
“A slut,” I offered. “Everyone called Sue Whalen a slut in fifth grade ever since she let five guys go into the closet with her when we played Seven Minutes in Heaven at Marlon Houseman’s house party.”
“Yes, exactly, more or less, like her,” my father said. “Monroe slept with President Kennedy, his brother, the mobster Sam Giancana, Paul Newman, Howard Hughes, Rubirosa—”
“All right, Al,” my mother interrupted. “We don’t know for sure—”
“Frank Sinatra got in there; Dean Martin, Peter Lawford. I think the whole fuckin’ Rat Pack except for Sammy Davis, but who knows, that one’s got an eye for white women.”
“Probably his good eye, right, Dad?” I said, drawing a laugh from the adults.
“Maybe it’s all not true,” Gino said. “People think they know everything about some people and they really know nothing.”
“No, Gino,” my father calmly said. “This is based on facts. You could look it up.” He turned to my mother: “Lilly, you read the rags. What do they say? What does your girl, there, Rona Barrett say on this matter?”
My mother, as usual, wanted to muzzle my father. “All I remember reading is that they said she was a dirty woman. You know . . . she ate in bed and left the plates under the covers. She left her room messy.”
“She was a pig,” my father said. “And what else?” Being that he was an ex-undercover cop in the 1950s, my father had that attribute that all law enforcement has—they ask only questions to which they already know the answer.
“Well, I’ve read she didn’t wear any underwear and sometimes stayed in bed for days,” my mother said reluctantly.
“Exactly,” he said. “And that’s when guys like Milton Berle, Yul Brynner, Mickey Rooney, John Huston, Tony Curtis, Marlon Brando, and Monty Clift would swing by.”
Gino and I were just trying to make sense of all this. This entire diatribe, all because I simply lamented that the Yankees sucked in 1974.
“The studio knew she was like this. They fed her drugs; they sent the guys over. They knew they had a putana (slut) on their hands. But she was a putana who made them millions. So in a way, it’s very sad what they did to her. Anyway . . . that was what Joe DiMaggio walked into.”
“That’s sad,” Gino said after a long pause.
“What are you gonna do? That’s the way the cookie crumbled,” my father said.
The rest of that Sunday morning stayed pretty somber as Uncle Larry readied to leave. He had a private talk with Gino in the backyard, telling him he was basically with us so his mother, my aunt Geneva, could recover from the hysterectomy she’d recently undergone.
“And Mommy needs rest?” Gino asked, his eyes bubbling with tears.
“Yes, Gino,” Uncle Larry went on. “And the one main thing the doctor said is that your mother doesn’t need to be on her feet every day. Getting up and down all day wouldn’t be good for her recovery. She needs to get better.”
Gino was getting a bit nervous with the blunt news and the realization that for the next two months or so, he wouldn’t be seeing his family. He would be all ours. And our respective homes were worlds apart—his being as quiet as a silent auction, and ours as calamitous as a casino.
“But I could be quiet, Dad. I’ll do things for myself. I’ll be good.”
“Oh, Gino,” Uncle Larry said, sweeping him up into his arms. “You’re always a good boy, and you know how much I love you. We talked about this. Just a few weeks with Uncle Al and Aunt Lilly and before you know it, you’ll be home again.”
Gino squeezed his father tighter around his neck.
“And when you get home, your mother will be healthy and you’ll feel better and better about yourself having spent time with your cousins.” He kissed Gino several times on his head.
Uncle Larry saw my father staring through the dining room screen door and raised his eyebrows in a manner of desperation and concern. And when my uncle turned his body from the house, we could now see Gino’s tear-stained cheeks from the various spots we were all stationed at inside the house. Suddenly I was able to make a deeper connection between this tender scene and the frantic, late-night phone call my father fielded just a few nights earlier. What that connection was, I hadn’t yet figured it all out yet.
Before we all went to the front yard, my father had packed Uncle Larry’s sports car with some clams, a bundle of fresh basil and mint, a peach tree sapling, and several bottles of wine that had a matured peach at the bottom. “It’s better to wait a few weeks, so that the peach can give off its flavor,” he told my uncle.
“Well, we’ll see how long that lasts,” Uncle Larry said. “I think I may need this tonight.”
We all hugged and kissed my uncle good-bye, my mother going last. “Larry,” she whispered. “Don’t you worry about this little boy. We’ll take care of him as if he’s ours. Everything will work out.” She pulled him closer. “I don’t care what your brother says, God works in myst
erious ways.”
“Lilly, there’s no one like you,” Uncle Larry said, choking up. “And there’s no one like my brother. I know you’ll do what you can. I love you.”
“Larry,” she said. “We love you too. With all our heart, our soul, and our guts.”
As was somewhat of a custom whenever relatives left, my father liked for us to break the sadness with a dose of insanity. “Always leave them laughing,” was something he drilled into me. On that particular morning, Rosalie teased her thick black hair sky-high and placed newspaper over her two front teeth. My mother wore a ridiculous sombrero. Frankie wore a kung fu getup and whirled around his nunchakus; Jack held over his head two Spanish swords he had bought in a garage sale, and my father bent over backward to moon his brother as his car pulled out of the driveway. The bunch of us yelled “Ciao, ciao” at the top of our lungs, and Uncle Larry screeched away with happy tears streaking his cheeks.
Gino, however, had different tears on his face.
“Don’t worry, cuz,” I said. “It’ll be all right.”
“No, I’m fine,” he said. “It’s just allergies.”
Once the costumes were put away, my father quickly mapped out the day. He always felt the sun and the bay were the best ways to make everything fine. That’s where he found his happiness, and he gently pushed that medicine on us for years. And, over time, we all became followers. Now it was Gino’s turn to take his hit.
I don’t recall how my father ever found our Long Island home, while we were cooped up in that two-bedroom walkup in Bensonhurst. It was an hour east on the Belt Parkway and the Southern State Parkway, and then he had to know to get off at the Robert Moses State Park exit some fifty miles later. It had to be the water that drew him off the exit ramp and down a long, straight street called Snedecor, which took its name from the Indian tribe that once inhabited the area. When we first moved there, in 1965, there weren’t too many standing houses that separated our home from the beautiful and inviting Great South Bay. We were mostly surrounded by dirt lots and big, weeded hills in every direction. But that meant we could see the Captree Bridge from anywhere on our lawn, outside our bedroom windows, and even from the kitchen. It was beautiful and majestic and seemed brand-new. And there was a magic about it, knowing that virtually everyone driving on it was headed for the beach or for a fishing trip or for a boat ride to Fire Island. And who’s ever in a bad mood when those are the choices?
