The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter

by Tom Mendicino

  MARCH 30, 2008

  The motel was the best Latrobe had to offer. The mattresses were lumpy and the rugs and curtains reeked of mildew and industrial shampoo. Frankie was dozing when he was awakened by the telephone long after midnight. Mariano was in the mood to talk, chatting up a blue streak, barely pausing to catch his breath. But it was strictly a one-sided conversation, conducted entirely in Spanish despite Frankie’s pleas that Mariano speak English, slowly, so he could be understood. Something, or someone, distracted Mariano and he’d wandered off. Frankie waited ten minutes for him to return, then hung up.

  He should have insisted they bring him along. Mariano would have been perfectly content in the backseat of the car watching videos on Frankie’s laptop and listening to his iPod and there’s a decent selection of in-room movies that would have kept him occupied while Frankie and Michael visited with their sister. But his presence would have only further irritated his brother, who was already grumbling about making the dreaded trip. He slept fitfully after the call, having foolishly left his Ambien home, not thinking he would need it. He dressed before dawn, showered and shaved, made a run to Dunkin’ Donuts, and roused Michael from a deep sleep when he returned.

  “No donuts until you’re dressed and packed,” Frankie announces. “If you hurry, we can be on the Turnpike by eleven.”

  Suddenly, Michael is full of energy, raring to go. They were supposed to spend the entire day with their sister before driving back to Philly in the late afternoon. Michael suspects this unexpected good fortune has something to do with Frankie’s phone ringing in the middle of the night and Frankie barricading himself in the bathroom to answer. He’s in and out of the shower and ready to check out in twenty minutes.

  “You better stop at that Dunkin’ Donuts again,” Michael says as they drive away from the motel parking lot. “I wouldn’t mind another cup of coffee.”

  “How many of those donuts have you eaten?”

  “Three,” Michael admits sheepishly. “Maybe four. Who called you in the middle of the night?”

  “It was Jack. Father Parisi’s probably not going to make it through the night,” he lies, a convenient alibi for their early departure.

  “Jesus, is he still alive? How old is he? A hundred?”

  “I told you he’s in hospice. Do you ever listen to anything I say? I feel like I’m talking to a brick wall. I’m going straight to the hospice when we get home. Do you want to come?”

  Frankie knows it’s bad luck, tempting fate, to lie about death, especially the passing of a priest, but it’s better than Michael knowing Mariano was high as a kite, alone (hopefully) in the house where they grew up.

  “I haven’t seen the man in thirty years. Why would I show up at his deathbed? You’re the one who’s made him a saint of the church. You know what I remember best about the guy? I’ve been in a lot of locker rooms in my life and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cock on a white man as big as the piece of equipment that fucking old priest was packing. He was even bigger than Papa. What a waste!” Michael laughs.

  Frankie is speechless, his brother’s casual observation a punch in the gut.

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Mikey? I never saw Father Parisi naked and neither did you!”

  “Don’t bitch at me about this. I get enough lectures about the evils of refined sugar from Kit,” Michael pleads as he helps himself to yet another donut. “I never get to eat these fucking things at home. Don’t you remember showering with him, Frankie?” he asks as he licks the last of the sticky glaze from his gooey fingers. “Are there any napkins?”

  “Never. I never showered with him. Never. Ever. Father Parisi was the most modest man I ever knew!”

  Frankie remembers Jack saying the old man is terrified of dying, fearing an eternity in the burning flames of hell. He can’t grasp the idea of that gentle priest exposing himself to his little brother, refuses to believe it’s possible. He’s surprised to hear himself calling his brother a liar.

  “Don’t get yourself all twisted over nothing, Frankie,” Michael says, amused by his brother’s indignant defense of the old man. “It’s not like I’m accusing him of being a child molester, for Christ’s sake. Remember when he took us swimming at Neshaminy State Park? There was one of those big open showers in the dressing room. There were at least twenty guys with their kids in there at the time. He caught me staring at him and promised me I’d be as big as he was when I grew up. Fucking priest was a liar!” Michael laughed.

  Frankie remembers now being too shy to undress in a room full of naked men and riding back to the city in cold, wet trunks, sitting on a towel to protect the upholstery of Father’s new Plymouth sedan.

  “Jesus, Frankie. I can’t believe how you overreacted. That old man was a little weird with his Polaroids and shit, but he wasn’t a pervert.”

  Polly is almost pleasant, pleased with the offering of donuts, her mouth and cheeks dusted with powdered sugar. She’s even turned down the volume of the television so that Fox News Sunday is barely audible. She has something to discuss with her brothers, with Michael especially as the lawyer in the family, something too important to be entrusted to her stepfamily. Michael can recite her instructions word for word, the same directives she repeats year after year. She slowly and solemnly reminds him where to find her last will and testament and to use the proceeds of a small life insurance policy she maintains to pay for the disposal of her remains. She insists he write down the name and number of the local mortician (just as she had the last time he’d seen her), and solicits his solemn assurance as her executor that he will ensure a direct cremation, no viewing or service. Finally, he agrees, again, to personally transport her ashes back east to be interred in the family plot. Frankie shows her photographs of the new headstone for her approval. She’s pleased to see her name etched in marble below her mother’s and next to her son’s.

  “And you,” she asks, pointing a half-chewed donut at Michael. “Where are you going to be?”

  “I’m being cremated, too, and my wife’s gonna sleep with my ashes under her pillow,” Michael jokes. It’s a sore subject with Frankie that his brother’s urn will be buried with the family of his wife in the ancient columbarium of St. Peter’s Episcopal.

  “What about my dad? You just gonna leave him here alone?” a deep voice inquires, startling Frankie and Michael, neither of whom had heard Carl, Polly’s morbidly obese stepson, silently enter the room on his padded feet.

  “You can be buried with him if you’re so worried about him being lonely,” she snorts. “He can rot in hell, for all I care.”

  Her relatively benign mood is short-lived. The mere presence of her stepson irritates her. Michael had hoped to escape back home without seeing the giant ne’er-do-well, but Carl wouldn’t miss an opportunity to hit up his prosperous kin for enough cash to tide him over until his next worker’s comp payment is deposited in his account. He disgusts Michael, always has, though now for different reasons from when he was the malevolent tormentor of his gentle older brother. Carl stands six-five. His large frame and broad Slavic shoulders can support a lot of weight, but he’s clearly pushing north of three-fifty on the scales these days. He wheezes as he shuffles toward the donut box on the kitchen table. His fingers are gnarled and swollen; the nails are broken stubs, covered with a thick fungus. He pokes the donuts, searching for one filled with yellow custard.

  “How are you, Carl? How’s your back?” Frankie asks, forever polite and solicitous.

  “I got good days and bad, Frankie,” he responds with a shrug. “I been seeing a pain guy down in Pittsburgh.”

  Michael suspects the health-care professional he’s consulting works out of the backseat of a beat-up Camaro in a Wal-Mart parking lot, dispensing pharmaceuticals in Ziploc bags.

  “You look like you’ve lost some weight since last year,” Frankie says.

  “Yeah, ten, fifteen pounds. Still got a ways to go,” Carl says, patting the flabby pouch drooping over the elastic waistband of
his sweatpants.

  “Then keep your filthy hands off my donuts,” his stepmother curses. “Where is that daughter of yours? Go see if she’s passed out somewhere.”

  “I’m right here, Mimi,” Melissa announces. She’s obviously just crawled out of bed, her hair unbrushed, her stale breath noticeable even from a distance. “Who stuck their fingers in these donuts?”

  “Ask your father,” her step-grandmother sneers.

  She looks at her dad and giggles. Michael, the prosecutor, doesn’t miss a trick. He sees the meaningful look between father and daughter as Carl subtly taps his finger on the zippered pocket of his nylon jacket. How sweet of him to supplement the dosage his kid can extort from her grandmother. For a small price, of course, probably ten bucks a pill. Carl and Melissa excuse themselves, seeking privacy to conduct the transaction.

  “I should have been nicer to your mother,” Polly mutters. “I’m going to apologize to her as soon as I get to heaven. Right after I see my Sonny.” She’s been patiently awaiting her reunion with her only son since he came back from the Gulf War in a body bag. “She used to tell me how pretty I was, how she wished her eyes were as blue as mine. I still have the sterling comb and brush set she gave me for my sixteenth birthday. They’re in a bag in my dresser drawer. You should have them, Frankie. Take them home with you. They’ll just sell them for drug money after I’m dead,” she says, spitting contempt.

  “Your mother was too good for Papa. Mine was, too,” she says, taking a sip from a cup of cold coffee and clearing her throat. “He slapped me so hard he knocked me to the floor when I told him I was pregnant with Sonny. Even marrying that drunken hunkie was better than living with Papa. I don’t think he ever said a nice word to me, not one. Maybe he did, but I just don’t remember.”

  The thought of Papa makes Polly irritable. She turns up the volume of the television and devotes her attention to the histrionic ranting about the liberal agenda. Frankie goes to the bedroom to retrieve his bequest. Michael sees a pack of Benson & Hedges and a Bic on the counter and steals a cigarette, slipping out the back door to sneak a smoke. He’d taken up the habit to cope with the pressures of law school and had smoked until Kit, then his fiancée, forced him to give it up. Sometimes he still yields to temptation. Three or four low-tar-and-nicotines a year aren’t going to kill him.

  He stands under an awning, protected from the light drizzle. The first drag sears his throat and sets him off on a coughing jag, but, after a few puffs, he’s sucking the smoke into his lungs as if he never quit. The fucking yard looks dystopian, post-apocalyptic. The metal garbage cans are overflowing with empty wine bottles and beer cans. A trash bag on the porch has been torn open by vermin—raccoons or stray cats—and the lawn is pockmarked with sinkholes. A rusty propane grill is upended in the mud.

  How the fuck do people live like this? he wonders, flicking his cigarette butt in the wet grass. Not just people, these people, tied to him by blood and marriage? It’s a goddamn joke. This fucking squalor mocks all his accomplishments and achievements, linking him to a lineage that feels like the history of a complete stranger. He looks at his watch and sees it’s nearly eleven. It’s time to say their good-byes and put this weekend in the rearview mirror. He goes inside, catching Frankie red-handed in an act of misplaced charity. Frankie’s wallet is open and he’s counting out twenties—one, two, three, four, five—into Carl’s open palm.

  A man’s home is his castle, impregnable, a fortress surrounded by a moat teeming with flesh-eating sharks and crocodiles and secured by a raised drawbridge and iron portcullises to fortify the gate. The dreaded annual visit (most likely, the last) is over and Michael’s safely ensconced in his National Register of Historic Places–designated neighborhood. He’s lying on his leather sofa, digesting takeout pad thai, watching highlights from the early rounds of the Big Dance while sipping an IPA from a local craft brewery. His son is fast asleep upstairs; his stepdaughter is in her room, sharing confidences with her electronic social network. His wife is reading P. D. James in bed, nursing a mug of herbal tea. He can finally relax now that the barbarians are on the far side of the ancient mountain range, out of sight and out of mind.

  He’s going to insist there be no further contact with Polly’s stepfamily once her ashes are tucked away in the family plot. The chasm between their worlds is unbridgeable. Their lives are case studies in self-destruction, their lack of ambition incomprehensible. Frankie will put up an argument, insisting that, like it or not, they are family, even if they aren’t blood relatives. He’s naïve and gullible, easily manipulated, a sucker for their plots and schemes. But right now there’s a more immediate problem than the Shevchek tribe three hundred miles away. He’s confirmed Mariano doesn’t have a criminal record, at least under the name by which Michael knows him. There aren’t any prints on file. He’s certainly not enthusiastic about fighting to keep the kid in the country legally, but he isn’t objecting, either, conceding to his wife and brother’s united front. But it doesn’t feel right. His gut instinct, rarely wrong, is telling him it’s only a matter of time until that fucking little Mexican disappears with the clothes on his back, the cash in Frankie’s wallet, and Papa’s ridiculously expensive timepiece that had formerly belonged to Frannie Merlino’s late husband. And that’s the happiest of the many bad endings he can imagine for their toxic relationship.

  After the ominous phone call from Mariano in the wee hours of the morning, Frankie wouldn’t have been surprised to arrive home and find the doors wide open, the windows busted out, the entire contents looted and destroyed. He’s relieved to discover the shop in perfect condition, not a comb or scissor out of place, and a strange blonde calmly sitting in a stylist chair, holding a drowsy toddler in her lap. He’s startled, not knowing what to say, when she rises to greet him.

  “You must be Frankie. I am so glad you made it home before we had to leave. We really wanted to meet you.”

  She’s a rough-looking woman, with a ravaged complexion and brittle hair.

  “Cameron, say hello to Uncle Frankie. Be a good boy and shake his hand.”

  Cameron isn’t interested in making a new acquaintance, much to the embarrassment of the woman Frankie assumes is his mother.

  “He’s really tired. He’s been up since seven this morning and missed his nap.”

  “Would he like some juice? There’s apple cranberry in the refrigerator,” Frankie asks, before ascertaining the identity of these strangers who seem quite at home in his shop. His instinct for hospitality trumps curiosity.

  “Thanks, but he’s already had plenty. Mariano was sweet enough to find him something to eat and drink.”

  Frankie is finally about to ask how this woman and child ended up in his salon when Mariano and an older, taller man—busily engaged in an animated conversation—enter through the shop door.

  “Hola, Frankie!” Mariano shouts as he embraces his confused boyfriend with an affectionate hug. “This is my brother, Randy. From Baltimore. And his baby.”

  Frankie’s finding it hard to see the family resemblance except in the broadest sense, in the way that a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus are both enormous mammals that live in the jungle. Randy is a scary guy, his skin thick as hide and pebbled with scar tissue. His lazy left eye drifts from object to object, never settling, finding nothing worthy of engaging its interest. His bloodlines are pre-Columbian; his bulk is solid muscle, his body a blunt object built for power.

  “My father brought our mother and me to Los Angeles when I was three,” he explains when Frankie compliments his command of the English language.

  Frankie’s curious, of course, but is too polite to ask prying questions. And, he’s afraid of probing areas that might be sensitive, not meant to be shared beyond the intimate circle of blood relatives. But Randy generously offers more details of the Garza family history.

  “After he was killed, our mother returned to Puebla and married his younger brother, who is Mariano’s father.”

  Despite his thug
gish appearance, Randy’s manners are impeccable, almost florid. He’s got an old-world sense of dignity and propriety as he extravagantly praises Frankie’s generosity, expressing his gratitude for rescuing their little burro from a Snyder Avenue flophouse.

  “Have you eaten?” Frankie asks. “We can walk over to Ninth Street and have a late dinner. My treat.”

  “No, no,” Randy insists. “We must be going. It’s late and we should be on our way.”

  “Well, I hope to see you both again soon. Come for the weekend. You are always welcome to stay with us.”

  “That’s very kind of you. I have business here in Philly and hope to see you often.”

  “What do you do?” Frankie asks.

  “Distribution. Mostly soda from Mexico and candy.”

  Frankie notices Mariano is distracted by a new telephone. Randy says something in Spanish, growling in a harsh voice, sounding intimidating.

  “Excuse me. That is very rude, speaking our language in your home,” he apologizes. “You’ll help him with his English, I hope. We don’t want our little burro to sound like a wetback forever.”

  APRIL 5, 2008

  “Roll over, please.”

  The spa attendant grabs Frankie’s arm and twists it behind his back, exposing a wide patch of dry skin to attack with his loofah sponge. Something stronger than a gentle touch is needed to scrub away the damage caused by four months’ exposure to the winter air.

  “Turn on back, please.”

  Frankie’s treating himself and Mariano to this small indulgence tonight. It’s almost sinful, lying splayed across a table, buck naked, not moving a muscle to lift an arm or a leg while his chapped and flaking skin is restored to a pink, healthy glow. He feels like a decadent Roman senator, Laurence Olivier in Spartacus. Closing his eyes, he imagines the young Tony Curtis, not a buck-toothed, ancient, half-naked Korean midget with garlic breath, is giving him a soothing bath. The attendant dumps a bucket of warm water over his supine body.