Frankie’s body aches for sleep, but he kicks off his shoes and boils water for a cup of Cozy Comfort tea. He pours Mariano another of the sugary Mexican fruit sodas the boy adores, then sits down at the island, selecting a serpent, a dragon, and a winged predator for his army, ready to answer the call to battle.
“Te amo,” Mariano says shyly, uncertain if he’s been forgiven for his latest disappearance. “Feliz cumpleaños. Happy birthday,” he says, handing Frankie a box of drugstore chocolates tied with red ribbon. The card expresses his sincere birthday wishes for a special love, signed YOUR MARIANO, in crude block letters.
“Te amo, too,” Frankie assures him, squeezing his palm and planting a gentle kiss on his forehead.
MARCH 11, 2008
“I don’t feel like I’m forty-eight, Mikey,” Frankie says, unfolding his napkin and placing it on his lap.
He could pass for ten, even fifteen, years younger than a man rapidly approaching his half-century mark. Strangers probably assume he’s the younger of the two brothers. Michael’s own hair, clipped close to the scalp, is thinning slightly on top and he hasn’t escaped the curse of a big man, his solid weight constantly threatening to settle into pounds of fat.
“Mikey, good to see you. You never change,” the waiter greets him as he approaches their table.
He’s either blind or angling for a good tip. Michael’s known him since the first day of first grade at Saint Catherine of Siena Elementary. Donnie’s his name, Dante on the baptismal certificate.
“Hey, Donnie. You’re looking good,” he lies.
Donnie’s looking like a pack-and-a-half of Marlboro Reds a day and a steady diet of gristle and grease on a fresh-baked hoagie roll. But Michael’s always on his best behavior whenever he returns to the neighborhood, solicitous, full of compliments, remembering to ask after people’s parents, sending them his best. He’s under constant scrutiny. People who have known him since he was born study his body language, the inflections of his voice, searching for any telltale sign that success has gone to his head, that he thinks he’s better than they are and needs to be reminded who he is and where he came from. Everything about him is suspect. His wife. His address. His car. Even his choice of apparel—his suits boxy rather than fitted, button-down collars, no cuff links or French cuffs, blunt-toed lace-ups, never loafers—is questionable in a neighborhood where success is measured by sartorial excess.
“I still hate that asshole,” Michael confides in a stage whisper after thanking Donnie for reciting the menu specials twice. “I can still hear his fucking voice mocking me in the changing room at the Montrose Street pool. Moolie Cazzo, he called me. Now he acts like we were best friends, hoping for a big tip.”
“Mikey, they didn’t circumcise baby boys back in the old country. Papa probably thought some witch would steal our foreskins and use them to put a curse on the family. He believed in that kind of stuff.”
“It was fucking embarrassing. Donnie told all his friends I must be half-moulinyan because the black guys who came down from South Street were the only other boys at the pool who were uncut. Papa should have stayed in Italy if he didn’t want to live like an American.”
“He was eight years old when he came over. I don’t think he had any choice in the matter.”
“He could have gone back and left us alone.”
“Why are you getting so worked up about a waiter making fun of your uncut cock thirty-five years ago? Your wife isn’t complaining, is she?”
Donnie appears and uncorks a bottle of very expensive Barolo tableside.
“That’s fine, Donnie. Thank you,” Michael says, turning his attention back to his brother. “She’s just happy it’s bigger than three inches,” he says, almost gargling a glass of wine. “I don’t know how that piece of shit she was married to before me gets so much action with such a tiny cazzo. He must be a magician when it comes to using his tongue.”
“You’re such a damn hypocrite, Michael. You’re forgetting I changed your son’s diapers.”
“Things are different now. Times change.”
“How so?” Frankie asks, skeptical.
“Kit and I decided it would be traumatic for Danny when he got older if his penis didn’t look like his father’s. Besides, she’s a progressive woman and thinks the ritual is barbaric.”
“So there you have it. Give Papa credit for being ahead of the times. Oh, I almost forgot. Paulina left me a birthday message Sunday, Mikey. She didn’t sound well when I called her back yesterday. Maybe we shouldn’t wait for her birthday to visit.”
“She’s been dying for five years. I think she’ll make it to the end of the month.”
Their childhood memories of their half sister are shrouded in a cloud of smoke from her Lucky Strikes. She returned to Philadelphia only for state occasions like funerals and christenings, and contact with her father’s second family is now limited to annual birthday visits by her half brothers, infrequent telephone calls, and monthly deposits to her bank account to supplement her meager disability checks. The tenuous connection is one Michael would happily sever. He’s never understood his brother’s attachment to their resentful half sibling. But Frankie is sentimental and believes that blood is thicker than . . . well, if not water, than at least apathy.
“Speaking of my wife, she was really upset about Sunday night.”
“I told both of you I’d get there if I could. No promises.”
“Well, you scared the shit out of her when she couldn’t reach you. Why the hell did you have your phone turned off? Isn’t that the point of modern telecommunications? So you can be reached at any time?”
“My Way” is being piped in through the speakers. It’s the lousy late-vintage Ol’ Blue Eyes who’s revered here. Michael wishes they would play the classic Capitol recordings or gems from the exquisite Columbia era. Donnie brings Michael a fourteen-ounce strip steak, oozing blood, and filets a Dover sole tableside for Frankie. There’s a sudden buzz in the restaurant, the distinctive energy when a presence enters the room. The maître d’ is seating the head coach of the Villanova basketball team two tables away. Men young and old approach him, wanting to wish him success in the upcoming tournament, offering unsolicited advice on how to deploy his point guard. The Gagliano brothers, the sons of a barber, appreciate his fine tailoring and impeccable grooming. Frankie admires the sharp lines of his razor cut. Michael takes advantage of the time-out in their argument over Polly to reach for the envelope in his pocket and hand Frankie a birthday card enclosing a very generous Nordstrom gift certificate.
“And I’ve got tickets for the Red Sox series in June. You and me and Danny. A Gagliano family outing. Men only. No women permitted. How about it?”
“Maybe Mariano would like to go, too,” Frankie dares to say, knowing that the subject is going to spoil the rest of the evening.
He wants to seem appreciative, but his brother’s resistance to his relationship with Mariano is frustrating. Marriage and fatherhood have mellowed Michael, who, at times, can be the true son of the father he’d hated: obstinate, hot-tempered, quick to criticize, judgmental. He’s become more tolerant, though Frankie isn’t so dense as to not recognize that his brother’s comfort level with homosexuality is directly correlated to the level of sexual activity in Frankie’s life. Charlie Haldermann’s presence irritated Michael, but the arrival of Mariano clearly angers him.
“What I really want for my birthday is a little help. It’s not like I’m asking you to do it yourself. I know you’re not an immigration lawyer. But you said you’d help me find one, a good one.”
“I never said that, Frankie. You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“What have you got against him, Mikey? Is it because he’s Mexican? You’re no different from the boys down at the Leisure Timers clubhouse, bitching and moaning about how the wetbacks are taking over.”
The refugees from Puebla are the latest wave of immigrants to infiltrate South Philadelphia. Ten, fifteen years ago it was the Vietnamese
and Cambodians who were struggling to save enough money for down payments on the row houses of dead Italians whose heirs had decamped to housing developments across the bridge in Jersey. The Asians, their hard work rewarded, are moving on to greener pastures, meaning suburban real estate with more convenient parking for their pho shops and nail salons. Now it’s the Mexicans who gather at the corner of Ninth and Washington at sunrise, seeking offers of day work. At night, they return to crowded apartments meant for families of four, sleeping in shifts on mattresses thrown on the floor. The mom-and-pop groceries do a brisk business in phone cards and CDs of mariachi music.
They don’t seem to shy away from backbreaking labor. Michael certainly admires their work ethic. Overnight, they seem to be everywhere he goes. Emptying wastebaskets and scrubbing toilets after the office closes for the night. Hauling sod and pruning azaleas at his home in lovely Wayne. Clearing tables in the front rooms of expensive restaurants. Hell, there are probably four or five of them chopping onions and scrubbing skillets back in the kitchen. He’s sure they’re all perfectly nice people wanting nothing more than a little piece of the American dream. They’re no different from the first Gagliano to reach these shores, arriving at the Port Authority of New York with three dollars in his pocket and the drive to become a respected citizen with his own prosperous business and a legacy to pass on to his son. Michael, the child of an immigrant, has got nothing against Mexicans, but this Mariano is a different story. He’s been a prosecutor long enough to recognize a stone-cold sociopath when he sees one.
“Has he ever told you how he got here?” Michael asks, trying to sound like a rational lawyer rather than a suspicious brother.
“What difference does it make how he got here? He’s here. And I want him to stay.”
“Look, Frankie, I’m no expert, but I think immigration would like to know if he came here legally or if he snuck across the border.”
“If you don’t want to help us, I can ask Jack. He’s done counseling for one of the immigration advocacy groups and has a lot of contacts in the Mexican community. I’m sure he knows someone who can refer us to a good lawyer.”
Frankie’s rolling the dice, banking on his brother’s inbred resentment of the priest. Mikey’s never completely overcome the jealousy he’d felt as a motherless boy competing with the future pastor for his brother’s attention and affection. Michael doesn’t know Jack dislikes Mariano even more than he does and has already refused to be a party to what he thinks is a disaster in the making.
“Hey, Donnie,” Michael calls. “Can you bring me a bourbon on the rocks? Is this what you really want, Frankie? Are you sure?”
“Yes. Please.”
“Don’t make me regret it,” Michael grumbles, trying to ignore a small, nagging voice in the back of his head warning him he’s making a big mistake, urging him to put an end to this folly before it’s too late.
“You won’t. I promise,” Frankie swears, as Donnie presents him with a surprise tiramisu, complete with a single burning candle, leading the diners at the neighboring tables in a chorus of “Happy Birthday.” Even the famous coach joins in, his loud, unmusical voice, used to issuing commands from the sidelines of the basketball court, drowning out the others.
MARCH 17, 2008
“I’d love it if the campaign could get his endorsement. Maybe we could peel away some of these kids who think Obama’s the Second Coming of Christ.”
Steven Kettleman is staring wistfully at the dog-eared copy of the Born to Run album cover, the Boss’s autograph scrawled across his youthful face, preserved for posterity under museum-quality glass and proudly displayed on Michael’s office wall. Back in high school, Michael beat his rusted-out Gremlin to death making countless road trips up the New Jersey Turnpike, blasting “Hungry Heart” and “Prove It All Night” full volume on the cassette deck. He was a true fan boy, obsessed and demented, chasing Springsteen up and down the Atlantic Seaboard, from the Spectrum to the Meadowlands to the Garden, spending every spare penny he earned bussing tables five nights a week on gas and tolls and tickets and official tour merchandise. His 3.9 average at the Academy earned him special dispensation to make school-night road trips to North Jersey and Manhattan, though his father blamed Bruce for costing him a perfect score when he got home from a Long Island Coliseum show at three in the morning the day of the SATs. (Princeton didn’t hold it against a heavily recruited sixty-minute player that he only scored 1580.)
Tonight is a command performance. No excuses permitted. Perfect attendance is mandatory at the Clinton fund-raiser hosted by Steven Kettleman, the first Democrat in living memory to be elected District Attorney of Delaware County. His legal career is almost an afterthought these days. Kettleman’s taken up residence on the Acela line, his life in constant transit up and down the North-east Corridor as he travels to and from top-secret campaign strategy sessions, accessible by BlackBerry in the event a crime occurs that’s salacious enough to warrant an interview on the evening news. He’s certainly more fashionably attired these days, always prepared to give a sound bite to the national press on behalf of the campaign.
“Ride with me into town, Michael. We’ll talk about it in the car,” Kettleman says, his exasperation at Michael’s insistence they discuss the Corcoran stay of execution apparent by his mirthless smile. His tiny eyes bore through the lenses of his stylish glasses. Designer frames might be rakish on the angular faces of the young models in GQ and Men’s Vogue, but they look slightly ridiculous on a middle-aged lawyer from Media, Pennsylvania.
“I got roped into it,” Michael complains when he calls his wife at her office. “I’m coming into town with him. It’s the only goddamn time he can find to do his actual fucking job.”
“Well, thank him for not allowing me to be a grass widow again tonight.”
This evening will be the third fund-raising event she’s attended this month despite having reached the permissible limit on individual donations to the campaign two days after the senator announced her intention to run. God knows how much she’s given to PACs and the DNC and senate candidates in states she never has and never will visit. Kit is hell-bent on spending her share of the family trusts paying reparations to progressive causes for generations of misfeasance by reactionary right-wing ancestors who’d called Highbrook their home.
“Don’t leave me alone tonight to justify my existence to all those bitter, middle-aged dragon ladies,” he says, only half joking.
“You’ve got a dispensation to have more than one bourbon if you promise to be a good boy and be on your best behavior tonight. Just come tell Mommy if any of those mean girls aren’t being nice to you,” she tells him with a laugh.
This is the first anniversary in nine years that Frankie hasn’t driven two hours to Ephrata, Pennsylvania, to lay a memorial wreath on Charlie’s grave. He remembers as if it were yesterday the afternoon the principal of Washington’s Crossing High School had called and asked if he were speaking to Charlie’s “friend.” Charlie had been taken by ambulance to the emergency room. The kids in the Drama Club had arrived for rehearsals and found him slumped in a seat in the auditorium, a heart attack, most likely. Frankie will trek out to Lancaster County next week and lay an offering on his tombstone. Life goes on. He’s sure Charlie would understand. He’d want Frankie to be happy, after all.
The grating voice of Cathy Criniti snaps him to attention. She’s clearly irritated that he isn’t jumping up and down and clapping his hands because she bumped into Jennifer Aniston in the feminine-hygiene-product aisle at Walgreens while she was visiting her daughter’s family in Miami.
“No, I’m listening,” he insists.
He tries to sound interested, but he doesn’t really give a damn whether the former Mrs. Pitt is a tampon or a napkin girl. Mondays are sacred to him, his one day of freedom from the litany of woes and troubles of confiding women. But tonight’s a big night for Cathy, and Frankie has never refused a loyal client just because it was his day off. Jimmy O’Connell, a wid
ower of three years, is going to propose to her tonight at the Ancient Order of Hibernians formal dinner in observance of the Irish high holy day. Frankie’s determined to help her look her best, knowing all too well how rare a chance it is to have a last, best hope at finding your one true love.
Michael wonders if the starstruck contributors to Hillary! 2008 realize their hard-earned dollars are making it possible for him and Steven Kettleman to endure rush traffic in a luxury town car provided by the campaign, their privacy ensured by a thick glass partition separating them from the disinterested driver.
“I should have taken a piss before we left the office,” Kettleman complains.
A full bladder is only one of the many distractions Michael is competing against.
“Will you please turn that fucking thing off for ten minutes, Steven? Ten minutes. The least you can do is give me ten fucking minutes of your undivided attention.”
Michael has made Kit swear to stand him before a firing squad if she ever finds him barking self-importantly into a Bluetooth headset. Kettleman, of course, believes it’s the perfect fashion accessory, complementing his collection of John Varvatos Trim Fit suits. He holds up two fingers, silencing his Chief Deputy while he urges whoever he’s speaking with to get on with it so he can move on to more urgent business.
“Sorry, Michael,” the District Attorney apologizes, sounding almost sincere as he removes the offending electronic earpiece. “McAuliffe can wait. You now have my undivided attention.”
Michael makes his pitch quickly, knowing Kettleman won’t be able to resist taking the next incoming call.
“I don’t know why you’re struggling with this. It’s not a difficult decision. What we need to do next is as obvious as the substantial nose on my face,” Michael argues.
“I know this is killing you, Michael. You got the conviction. You got the death sentence. You did everything within a conscientious public servant’s power to put that piece of shit in the morgue.”
The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter Page 17
