On their way to school one day the next week Richie Gates told Roy that his brother was delivering cakes again for Koszinski’s.
“Is Leberko’s mother still working there?”
“Yeah. Floyd heard her tellin’ a customer that Logo’ll get the chair unless he gets whacked in stir first, like his father. She says her son is already dead to her and it’s like he never even existed. Think she means it or she’s just sayin’ that to make herself not feel bad?”
“Both, maybe,” said Roy.
“I’m sure if somethin’ happened to me,” Richie said, “my mother wouldn’t try to convince herself I’d never been alive. What about yours?”
Tell Him I’m Dangerous
Roy came home from work at the Red Hot Ranch around ten-thirty and found his mother sitting alone on the couch in the livingroom watching TV. He was fifteen years old and his mother was thirty-eight. She had recently been divorced from her third husband, by whom she had a child, Roy’s sister, Sally, who was almost four.
“Hi, Ma, Sally asleep?”
“Yes, Roy, just now. I let her stay up late. I was teaching her how to play gin rummy. She caught on fast.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, Sally’s smart.”
“I was smart once, too,” said his mother. “How was work?”
“All right. Busy, like every Saturday. I thought you were going out tonight with Kay and Harvey.”
“They wanted me to meet a friend of theirs, a guy who’s in town from Minneapolis, to show him Chicago. A business associate of Harvey’s. Made a lot of money in jukeboxes, Kay told me. But I’m not up to it. Besides, Madeleine couldn’t babysit tonight, she’s got a date.”
“She’s a cute girl,” said Roy, “lots of boys like her. She’s sixteen. I think her babysitting days are over.”
“Madeleine’s a nice kid, I hope she makes good choices. I’m off men for now.”
“I’m a man.”
“You’re my son, my beautiful boy. Come sit and watch a movie with me. It’s just about to come on. I saw it when it came out, in 1948, just before you were born. Roxanne Hudnut and Diane Root as sisters.”
“One good, one bad?”
“Both kind of bad, if I remember right. One more than the other.”
“Okay, Ma, I’ll wash up a little first.”
The movie’s title was Tell Him I’m Dangerous. Roxanne Hudnut and Dianne Root were still in their twenties when it was made, as had been Roy’s mother when she’d seen it in a theater. She always identified with Roxanne Hudnut, whom she resembled. Both of them were brunettes with slightly slanted chestnut eyes that gave their faces an almost oriental look. When they looked up at you slowly or sideways it was easy to believe they were keeping dark secrets. Tell Him I’m Dangerous was in black and white, as were most of Roxanne Hudnut and Diane Root’s movies, many of which were mysteries of some kind involving crimes of passion. Roy sat down on the couch half way through the opening credits. His mother had a blanket over her legs.
“Tell me if you get chilly, Roy,” she said. You can share the blanket.”
The time of the movie was present day late 1940s. A young woman named Ann Rivers, played by Roxanne Hudnut, arrives in a small midwestern town, asks for and gets a job in a flower shop run by an older woman, Mrs. Morgan. Ann tells her that she’s recently dropped out of business college, secretarial school, in the capital city. She needs a break from that hectic life. Ann says she has no immediate family, that both of her parents are dead and she has no siblings. Mrs. Morgan is a kind lady and helps her find a room to rent in a local boarding house with a good reputation run by Mr. and Mrs. Drummond, a middleaged couple.
At the Drummond house Ann meets another resident, Lee Lockwood, a contractor and structural engineer, who is in town working on the repair of a bridge. He’s a few years older than Ann, calm with a pleasant manner.
“He looks a little like Dick Brothers, only shorter. Remember him, Roy? That car dealer I had a few dates with?”
A few days after their first meeting, Lee Lockwood invites Ann out to dinner. They begin spending time together but she avoids giving him any detailed information about her background other than what she’s told Mrs. Morgan. Three weeks later another young woman arrives in the town, also a stranger, and tells people that she’s searching for her younger sister, Ann Rivers. Her name is Sarah Rivers. Sarah is directed to Mrs. Morgan’s flower shop, where she introduces herself to Mrs. Morgan. Ann enters and does not seem surprised to find her sister there. Mrs. Morgan is surprised because Ann has told her she had no family. Sarah explains that she and Ann had a falling out and Ann left home, that’s all, but Mrs. Morgan remains suspicious, as if there is something left unexplained.
Sarah also rents a room at the Drummond house, where she encounters Lee Lockwood, to whom she introduces herself as Ann’s slightly older sister. The sisters argue in Sarah’s room. Ann had accused Sarah’s fiancé, Bob Dean, of attempting to rape her. He was found guilty of sexual assault and sentenced to six months in prison. Sarah has never believed this accusation. Bob Dean denied it, but Ann has stuck to her story.
Ann abruptly stops seeing Lee Lockwood without giving him a reason. He’s puzzled but doesn’t demand an explanation; after all, he doesn’t really know her very well. He becomes friendly with Sarah, who finds a job as a ticket taker in the box office of the local movie theater, the only one in town. Sarah tells Ann that Lee has asked her about Ann’s refusal to go out with him any more, to which Ann replies, “Tell him I’m dangerous,” that he’s better off not seeing her.
Lee is a straight shooter, well-liked in the community, doing a good job on the bridge. He and Sarah begin going around together, then become intimate. One night he comes back to his room and finds Ann there, she’s been waiting for him. Ann tells Lee that the only reason Sarah is pretending to be interested in him is out of jealousy, that Sarah wants to cause her trouble because of what happened with Bob Dean. She tells Lee about Bob Dean trying to rape her, that Sarah claimed Ann was lying. This is why Ann left home, to escape the controversy and the gossip. “I stopped going out with you because I knew Sarah would try to poison our relationship,” Ann says. She then seduces Lee.
“Do you think I look like her, Roy?” asked his mother. “People used to compare me to Roxanne Hudnut all the time.”
“Your hair is the same color,” Roy said. “Her eyes always seem a little out of focus. When she’s supposed to be looking at someone her eyes are staring in a different direction.”
Lee Lockwood is mixed up, vulnerable to both sisters. A few days after Ann seduces Lee, Sarah is found dead, hanging in the early morning from the bridge Lee is repairing. People initially assume it was suicide, but then Ann accuses Lee of murdering Sarah because she was pregnant with Lee’s child. Lee admits he has been sleeping with Sarah but swears he didn’t kill her. Lee is arrested. At his trial Ann tearfully testifies that Sarah told her she was afraid of Lee, of what he might do since Sarah has told him of the pregnancy. She tells the court that she went to see Lee and that he raped her. He denies both charges of murder and rape, and says that Ann formerly accused Sarah’s fiancé of attempting to rape her. The prosecuting attorney declares that information to be irrelevant to this case and forces Lee to admit that he made love to Ann when she came to see him about Sarah. Lee is sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Sarah Rivers.
“I told you one sister was worse than the other,” said Roy’s mother.
“Sarah wasn’t good, either. Maybe she was trying to set Lee up,” said Roy, “that she was really pregnant by Bob Dean.”
“That’s good, Roy. I didn’t think of that.”
Soon after the trial, Ann is found dead hanging from the bridge. A crowd has gathered to watch the removal of her body by the police, which is shown through the point of view of a man among the spectators. After Ann’s body is loaded into an ambulance and driv
en away, the man walks to a car and begins driving. As he drives, the movie flashes back through his mind, reliving the sequence of events that have led up to Ann’s death: Ann seducing this man, whom we now realize is Bob Dean, then accusing him of attempted rape; his being confronted by Sarah after Ann tells her that Bob attacked her; Bob’s contention that Ann acted out of jealousy over Sarah’s relationship with him; and finally Bob is shown appearing in Ann’s room at the boarding house and forcing her to write a letter confessing that she killed Sarah and hung her from the bridge, which is also shown in flashback as Ann writes.
The movie switches back to present time as Mrs. Morgan is opening a letter in her flower shop. It’s the confession Bob Dean forced Ann to write. Also enclosed in the envelope is a second letter, written by Bob. Both letters are heard in voice over by Ann and Bob as Mrs. Morgan reads them. In Bob’s letter he admits that Sarah was in fact carrying his child and that he killed Ann and hung her body from the bridge. The final two shots in present time are of Bob Dean driving away into the distance and Lee Lockwood being released from prison.
Then comes a surprise, a coda in which two little girls, each about four years old, are sitting next to each other on chairs playing with dolls. One girl says to the other, “I couldn’t sleep last night.” Girl number two says, “What did you do?” Girl number one answers, “I woke up my sister.” “Why?” asks girl number two. “If I can’t sleep, she shouldn’t either,” says girl number one. Girl number two asks, “Do you like your sister?” “I hate her!” answers girl number one, who then tears her doll apart.
Roy got up from the couch and turned off the sound on the television as the end credits rolled, then sat back down.
“Do you think that was a good idea to have a scene with those two little girls?” asked his mother.
“Sure, it’s so you know that Ann was jealous of Sarah from the beginning. Ann was more evil than her sister.”
“Do you really think Sarah was evil?”
“Yes, like I said, she stole Lee Lockwood away from Ann and wanted him to believe that he was the father of her unborn child.”
“But Ann had stopped seeing him.”
“I think she was still keeping him on the hook, to make him uncertain of how she felt, to control him.”
“Roxanne Hudnut played bad good,” said Roy’s mother. “When they put her in more sympathetic roles she was never completely believable, especially musicals. She couldn’t dance.”
“Why did she stop making movies?” Roy asked.
“She got involved with the actor who played Bob Dean, Mark Brown. She married him. They had a couple of kids, then she had a nervous breakdown, maybe even tried to commit suicide, and was in and out of mental hospitals for years.”
“Is she still alive?”
“I think so. Brown divorced her. It’s a rotten business, the movies. A girl gets old, you’re no use to them. The producers need fresh faces. Beauty sells. Once it fades a girl gets desperate.”
“There are parts for older women.”
His mother threw off the blanket and stood up.
“It’s not the same, Roy. A pretty girl gets used to the way the world looks at her. Not just men, women, too. Roxanne Hudnut wasn’t prepared for life after she changed, and she probably didn’t have any help, the right kind of help. I guess the same thing happens to everyone. Good night, sweetheart, I’m going to bed. Thanks for staying up with me.”
Roy stared at the TV with the sound off for a few minutes before he got up and turned it off. He knew his mother thought of herself as being a little like Roxanne Hudnut, even though she hadn’t been a movie star, as if she didn’t have much to look forward to, even the lives of her children. Roy was old enough now to know there was nothing he would ever be able to do about it.
The Shadow Going Forward
Roy’s father never spoke to him about his illness. Roy was ten when he first noticed that anything was wrong. Since his parents were divorced and he lived with his mother Roy did not even know that his father had been in the hospital let alone had surgery. It was not until he was at his father’s house a month or more after the surgery that Roy saw his father sitting on a round rubber pillow at his kitchen table.
“How come you’re sitting on that pillow, Dad?” Roy asked.
“Well, son, when somebody gives me a pain in the ass this makes me feel better.”
“Was it Moe Jaffe? You always say he’s a pain in the ass. Like the time he went to the track before depositing the receipts in the bank and dropped everything on a longshot named Remy’s Desire?”
“Not this time.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Only when I think about my trusting Moe or some other vecchio rimbambito to do something.”
“Jimmy Boyle couldn’t sit at his desk in school for two days after Angelo’s monkey Dopo bit him on the ass.”
“Why did Dopo bite him?”
“He saw Jimmy snatch a doughnut from Angelo’s stand and start eating it without paying for it first.”
His father gave a little laugh but Roy could see him grimace whenever he moved, so he didn’t ask him about it again.
A few months later Roy’s father began spending more and more of his time at home in bed and didn’t want to have any visitors, even Roy.
“He needs to rest, Roy,” his father’s second wife, Ellie, told him. “You can see him when he feels better. I’ll let you know when it’s a good time.”
Roy liked Ellie and trusted her, so he waited, but before he was allowed to go over to his father’s house again Roy’s mother told him he was dead.
“Your dad fought hard,” his mother said, “you know how tough he was, and the doctors did everything they could for him.”
Roy’s father was only forty-eight when he died. Too young to die, Roy heard a dozen or more people say at the wake. Moe Jaffe was there, and he draped his long right arm around Roy’s shoulders. Roy looked up at Moe’s nose, which also was very long and dotted with pockmarks; the tip of it hung over his upper lip. Everything about Moe was long, even the lobes of his ears reached to his shirt collar.
“God must’ve needed him,” Moe said to Roy. “He must need your father to help straighten somethin’ out, somethin’ he can’t fix all by Himself. Trust me, Roy, Rudy’ll be the man for the job. You can be sure of that.”
“Do you know what a vecchio rimbambito is?” Roy asked him.
The deep wrinkles in Moe Jaffe’s forehead tangled together like vines in the Amazon jungle and his eyes crossed and uncrossed before he said, “No, Roy, I don’t. What is it?”
“My dad’s not one, so maybe you’re right.”
Moe removed his arm from Roy’s shoulders and Roy walked away, past his mother and Ellie, who were talking to one another, past a bunch of people he didn’t know who were eating pastries and drinking wine and whiskey, and out of what had been his father’s house. It was hot outside, so Roy took off his sportcoat, dropped it on the ground next to the front door and walked down the street.
Some older boys were playing baseball in the park at the end of the block. Roy sat down on the grass next to the field and watched them. God didn’t need his father, he thought. The kid playing shortstop kept booting ground balls. He didn’t have soft hands. One thing Roy knew for sure was that if you want to play shortstop you have to have soft hands.
Years later, when Roy was in Rome, he asked an older Italian man, a writer, what “vecchio rimbambito” meant. The man raised an eyebrow, laughed briefly, and said, “That’s a very old world expression, Roy. It means old fool or dotard, someone who behaves in a childish manner, perhaps due to senility. Where did you hear it?”
“When I was a boy my father used those words to describe someone who worked for him, a person who sometimes acted foolishly.”
“You grew up in Chicago, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I
was born there, but my father didn’t go to live in America until he was ten years old.”
“It’s the kind of description you could still hear in Napoli or Reggio Calabria, more-likely in Sicily. Yes, it’s Siciliano, a term an elderly mafioso might use. What was your father’s family’s business in Chicago?”
Feeling the Heat
Standing outside in the oppressive heat and humidity of Miami at eleven o’clock in the morning was not what Roy’s mother expected. She and Roy, who was five years old, were waiting in a long line to enter a theater in order to attend a free advance screening of the new Hopalong Cassidy movie and have an opportunity to obtain the autograph of William Boyd, the actor who had portrayed “Hoppy”, as the cowboy hero was familiarly known, in movies and in a television series for more than twenty years. William Boyd had been a leading man in silent films and early talkies before taking on the black-clad character of an Old West crime fighter. Boyd had been a matinee idol in his youth, was renowned as a ladies man, and now, in his fifties, he sported a full head of wavy, snow-white hair that crowned a still-handsome face.
“I don’t know how much longer I can take this,” Roy’s mother said to him. “There’s no shade and no place to sit down. I know how much you like Hoppy, Roy, but maybe we just ought to wait and see the movie when it opens.”
This was in 1952, when westerns were very popular. Most of the kids waiting in the hot sun were dressed like Hopalong Cassidy, wearing stovepipe-high black cowboy hats, black shirts and pants, with a white bandanna tied around their neck and double holster gunbelts housing a pair of white-handled cap pistols.
“But Mom, Hoppy’s here!” Roy said. “I want him to sign his name on my hatband.”
Before Roy’s mother could complain again, many of the kids began shouting and pointing.
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