“Tell me you’re not planning to spend the rest of eternity under the same tombstone as that miserable motherfucker.”
“You’re too hard on him, Mikey. He did the best he could. He loved us, Mikey.”
“That is absolute bullshit. Why are you always defending him?”
“He brought us up the only way he knew how. We turned out all right, didn’t we? Better than all right. Especially you,” he says calmly as he lays Sal Pinto’s flowers on their mother’s grave.
“Can I have a few of those, please?” Michael asks.
Frankie plucks a few gladiolas from the bouquet and offers them to his brother to place on Miss Eileen’s plot.
“You know what I could go for right now, Mikey? A nasty old cheesesteak and a chocolate shake? What do you say?”
“What about the funeral lunch?” Michael asks, grateful for the reprieve.
“Fuck Sal Pinto. You’ve done enough good deeds for the day.” Frankie laughs, breathing a sigh of relief that the subject of the cause of his bruises seems to be closed, at least for the moment.
MARCH 21, 2008, GOOD FRIDAY
“Trust me. Just this once. I know what I’m talking about. You won’t regret it. I promise you.”
Jack’s fringe just looks awful. Frankie’s been trying to persuade him to agree to a shorter cut for years now, but the damn priest is so stubborn, refusing to give up a style he’s been wearing since the seminary. His wispy hair is shoulder length, carefully groomed to cover the pointy ears that make him look like a malevolent elf. Even worse, Jack insists on combing a few thin strands over his bald skull, apostasy to any self-respecting stylist.
“Just give me the usual, Frankie. Don’t take off too much. Maybe we’ll try something different this summer.”
If only he would agree to a clean, sharp buzz cut. There’s no law that says a priest shouldn’t make the best of the looks God gave him. Not that there’s a lot to work with. It’s a sin, totally unfair, that so many beautiful people have hideous souls yet a man who would give you his last piece of bread if he were starving and the shirt off his back in a blizzard is as ugly as ten puckered assholes. Poor Jack has always been homely, a faccia di culo. He was saddled with the nickname Secretariat in high school after some wiseass remarked on his resemblance to the Triple Crown winner. His teeth are crooked and his skin pitted with acne scars because his parents thought dermatology and braces were an expensive vanity wasted on a son who was destined for the priesthood. Papa claimed the Centafore family had been hideous for generations. Legend had it that Jack’s great-grandmother, a puttana con coscia lorda, a whore with dirty thighs, had given birth out of wedlock to a hideous Cyclops. She’d smothered the baby and buried it in the woods so its evil soul wouldn’t defile the consecrated ground of the cemetery. The one-eyed monster had cast the maliocch’ as its mother dispatched it to hell, and the curse of ugliness has plagued the family since that day.
“You are coming to stations of the cross this afternoon, aren’t you?” Jack asks, watching Frankie like a hawk in the mirror, ever vigilant against the possibility of the scissors snipping away more than a half-inch of hair.
“If I can get out of here on time. I’m taking Mariano to the dentist after I finish you and then Mary Gianfranco is coming in for a perm at one.”
“Do you want to go for fish and chips tonight? My treat.”
“I promised I’d color Mariano’s hair later. He wants me to take him blond.”
Mariano’s been begging Frankie to strip all the gorgeous color from his beautiful head of hair and transform him into a spiky lemonhead. Frankie feels Jack’s neck and shoulders stiffen and senses he’s about to hear a sermon about the consequences of failing to do what the priest insists needs to be done. He has no intention of tossing Mariano into the street. He’d made a mistake the other night, one he now deeply regrets. He wasn’t thinking straight. His bruises were fresh and painful. There’d been too much confusion and he’d allowed Jack’s melodramatic concerns about his personal safety to cause him to impulsively cancel the long-awaited appointment with the immigration lawyer his brother had begrudgingly recommended.
“But if you want to come over to the shop tonight we can order an anchovy pizza and have a glass of wine.”
“Careful,” Jack says, wincing. “You’re taking too much off around my ears.”
Arnie Strong knows the Deputy District Attorney’s reputation for fairness and reasonableness. He’d thought Michael would recognize his client’s not a bad kid. He’s got no priors. He’s not a junkie or a drunk. He’s just an unlucky schmuck who drank too much at his brother’s wedding, almost a prerequisite for accepting the responsibility of being chosen best man. No punishment the Commonwealth can mete out could be as cruel as having to live until the day he dies with the image of his own fiancée’s crushed skull and broken neck. Arnie argues Michael will never get a conviction of vehicular homicide. The kid’s inebriation didn’t cause the collision. A truck driver, sober as a judge, trying to beat a red light, had crushed the passenger side of the boy’s car. His client will plead guilty to a DUI and a charge of reckless endangerment to avoid a mandatory three-year minimum sentence. But Michael’s intent on nailing the poor guy to the cross, no pun intended considering the significance of the day. Let’s take it up again next week, Strong suggests, hoping that Michael will come to his senses.
“No more calls today, Carol,” Michael shouts after getting off the phone, forgetting for a moment his assistant is off today, observing the Crucifixion of Our Lord by picketing Planned Parenthood to protest the tragic disregard for the sanctity of human life. Every judge in the courthouse has adjourned for the holiday weekend. It’s just a little after one when he shuts down his computer and turns off the office lights, locking his door behind him.
Frankie hopes Jack is taking notice of Mariano’s piety and perfect genuflections. The boy’s spine is rigid as his knee touches the floor, no slouching or lazy shortcuts. His voice is loud and clear; he doesn’t mumble his prayers to hide his poor pronunciation. He’s dressed respectfully, in a white shirt and tie, and wearing polished black leather shoes. His attire is far more appropriate for Good Friday services than the Leisure Timers’ baggy sweatpants and dirty sneakers. Jack will surely give Mariano proper credit for being one of the two males of the congregation under the age of seventy, the other being Frankie, willing to give up an hour of this beautiful spring afternoon to spend inside a gloomy church.
We adore You, O Christ, and we bless You.
Because by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
The elderly crucifer entrusted with carrying the processional cross seems overwhelmed before he and the priest reach the second Station. It’s been a good six or seven decades since the man first donned the vestments of an altar boy. It’s obvious his knees are aching and he’s longing to sit down in the nearest pew. The consternation is visible behind the Coke-bottle lenses of his eyeglasses. The incense is making him feel faint. He’s never going to make it until the end of the service. It’s a sad time we’re living in, Frankie thinks, when the superannuated and feeble are forced to perform what had once been the responsibilities of children. Suspicious parents insist their sons are too burdened by other commitments to take on the added responsibility of serving at Mass. Dinosaurs will roam the earth again and the country will be handed back to the British Crown before a Catholic priest will be left alone with their boys.
We adore You, O Christ, and we bless You.
Because by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.
Mariano’s stomach is rumbling, loudly. He hasn’t eaten since this morning’s dentist appointment, his gums too sore and swollen to chew. There’s reconstructive work yet to be done before they can even think about beginning purely cosmetic treatments. Implants, crown lengthening, caps, veneers, retainers—the estimates to date are staggering. It’s going to set Frankie back seven, maybe eight, grand. But this isn’t the time or the place to be thinking about m
oney. His mind is wandering when he should be paying attention to the service. There’s a spirited competition among the women of the parish, each trying to outdo the others with florid displays of piety. They crank up the volume of their groans and moans lest anyone doubt the physical challenge of kneeling and rising, up and down, again and again. Joanne Portella is headed for the doors, the first to throw in the towel. The service is dragging on longer than it should and she can’t go forty minutes without a cigarette.
It’s insurance, pure and simple, that draws Michael back to stained glass windows and padded kneelers. He’s agnostic the other three hundred sixty-four days of the calendar, or would be if he bothered to give much thought to God and religion. Yet, year after year, he returns on Good Friday to make his annual confession, indoctrinated as a schoolboy in his Easter duty to purge his soul during this most sacred season of the liturgical year. He’s hedging his bets, just in case he’s wrong and someday finds himself trying to cross the threshold of the pearly gates. His sins are barely worthy of being disclosed in the ancient ritual of confession. His most grievous offense is being guilty of impure thoughts about women who aren’t his wife. Actually, one woman. Charlize Theron. It’s something a chastened adolescent boy, too embarrassed to use more graphic descriptions for the act of masturbation, might sheepishly confess. But here he kneels, under the reproachful watch of marble saints and martyrs shrouded in the mourning black of Lent until the Easter vigil, the air he’s breathing redolent of incense.
His penance is as trivial as his venial wrongdoings. Two Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, and an Act of Contrition. How easy it is to satisfy the demands of such a generous God. He’s running late and Kit has given him a long list of chores for the Easter festivities so he rushes through a rote recitation of the assigned prayers and, making the sign of the cross, solemnly vows to go forth and sin no more, at least until his next fantasy date with the lovely Charlize.
Frankie should have told Jack to wear his clerical collar tonight. His Neil Diamond World Tour 2005 souvenir T-shirt and Nike cross-trainers aren’t nearly as intimidating as black priestly garb. Mariano’s been pouting since Frankie announced he’d invited Jack for pizza and now he’s acting out. He’s putting on a show for their guest, arguing with Frankie, lapsing into Spanish when he can’t find the right words in English to express his displeasure with the progress on his new look. Frankie’s losing his patience. Mariano is embarrassing him in front of Jack, squandering any goodwill he might have earned with his pious behavior in church, proving all of the priest’s dire prognostications correct. It’s a relief to finally stick Mariano’s head under the dryer for thirty minutes and hand him copies of Vogue and Celebrity Hairstyles to keep him distracted.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Jack protests, his smug smirk suggesting otherwise, when Frankie shoots him a don’t-even-think-about-it look.
Frankie washes his hands and pours a glass of wine.
“The stitches are making him irritable. It’s only a few more days until they come out.”
“What time is your first appointment tomorrow morning?” Jack asks.
“Eight thirty, why?” Frankie asks, claiming to be stuffed after one slice of the cheese-and-anchovy pie, since you can’t be too careful about calories at the age of forty-eight.
“I’m going to the hospice to give Father Parisi the sacraments around seven. You ought to come.”
“How much longer does he have?”
“He should have been dead six months ago.”
Frankie can’t even imagine what would have become of the Gagliano brothers if it hadn’t been for that kindly old man. His rectory was their refuge, a quiet place where Mikey spent countless hours with a glass of milk and a plate of Hydrox cookies, reading inspirational (at least in the opinion of Father Parisi) books written for much older readers and watching reruns of old black-and-white shows like Hogan’s Heroes and The Beverly Hillbillies. Frankie would sit on the floor, rubbing the priest’s arthritic bare feet and pouring his heart out, talking about their difficult home life, their critical father, and the flame-haired woman trying to take their mother’s place.
“When Mikey and I were boys, I used to pray that Father Parisi would adopt us,” Frankie says.
Jack lowers his voice to almost a whisper, ensuring the boy under the dryer, deeply engrossed in the glossy pages on his lap, can’t hear his question.
“Frankie,” he asks, using his confessional-box voice, soothing, inviting the sharing of shameful confidences, promising understanding and compassion. “Did Father Parisi ever touch you?”
“No! Of course not!” Frankie sputters, startled and offended. Mariano looks up from his magazine and, seeing nothing of interest, returns to his intensive study of Angelina Jolie’s latest cut. Frankie’s indignant at being forced to defend the honor of a harmless old man. Absolutely not, the answer is an unequivocal no. Never, not once, did Father Parisi ever put his hands where they didn’t belong or show Frankie and Mikey things their innocent eyes shouldn’t see or ask them to do anything a young boy shouldn’t do. He’s glad now he never told Jack about the Polaroids. It’s obvious he wouldn’t have understood.
“What would make you ask such a thing?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything. He goes in and out of lucidity. Nothing can comfort him. The poor soul is terrified of dying.”
The old priest had survived into his nineties, though he’d been confined to a wheelchair for nearly two decades, crippled by arthritis. He became a recluse, an odd duck in his old age, sometimes going weeks without speaking, obsessed with penance, becoming inconsolable whenever he made his confession. He’s spent the last few months in the hospice unit of the Sisters of Mercy nursing facility. His wasted body barely makes an impression under the heavy bedclothes. Jack confided that the staff was shocked by the scars on his back from years of self-flagellation. On his last visit, Frankie brought a big, beautiful bouquet and box of Godiva chocolates, remembering the priest’s love of bright flowers and his insatiable sweet tooth. But Father Parisi was beyond sensory indulgences. The old man’s voice was barely strong enough for Frankie to hear his insistent apology for some transgression that existed only in the dying man’s mind. His ancient, bloodshot eyes were wet with love and longing and shame. Frankie leaned over and kissed the priest on his parched lips, unable to absolve him of unknown sins.
Mariano doesn’t hear the shrill ring tone, “Picture to Burn,” of his insistent cell phone. Frankie grabs it and answers rather than letting it go into voice mail. He’s made up his mind to do what he can to separate Mariano from bad influences. He doesn’t recognize the harsh voice on the line, spitting a torrent of incomprehensible Spanish words, obviously angry about something.
“Excuse me?” is all Frankie can think to say.
The caller turns gracious, friendly, inquiring after Frankie’s health. Frankie’s flustered, completely rattled when the stranger calls him by his name, speaking in flawless English, his accent more California than South of the Border. He casts a quick glance at Mariano, who’s still leisurely flipping through the glossy pages of his magazine, unaware of the conversation occurring with the caller on his cell.
“Of course, we haven’t been introduced. I’m Mariano’s brother. Randy. Our little burro,” the gruff voice says, sounding cheerful. “He forgets our mother’s birthday is today. She calls me in tears. She’s afraid something has happened to him. I could wring his neck.”
Frankie’s confused. This man who claims to be his boyfriend’s brother must be mistaken. He drove Mariano to the bank and helped him facilitate a wire transfer to Puebla of a thousand dollars, a generous tribute by Frankie to a mother-in-law he’s never met for her sixtieth birthday. On February twenty-ninth. Leap Day. Mariano didn’t understand Frankie’s joke about his mother being fifteen years old.
“Do you want to talk to him?” Frankie asks, anxious to get off the phone.
“Just make sure he calls our mama. You will do that, won�
�t you, Mr. Gagliano? And tell him I need to speak with him. Soon.”
“Call me Frankie. Of course,” he says, hanging up.
Frankie’s apprehensive, suspecting secrets and deception, a pattern of lies.
“What the hell was that all about?” Jack asks. “Is something wrong?”
“No. It was nothing,” he says, sounding unconvincing even to himself, certainly not fooling Jack. “Call me when you’re ready to leave for the hospice in the morning. I’ll wait for you outside.”
MARCH 23, 2008, EASTER SUNDAY
“I’ve got a gun and I’m not afraid to use it!” the mighty warrior shouts as he races down the hallway.
The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter Page 21
