You're nobody 'til somebody kills you

Sixteen

I was the center of attention as soon as I entered LaPolla’s Funeral Home on Rockaway Parkway in Canarsie. Of course, it helped that Jerry came in with me, wearing a houndstooth jacket, which he said was the closest thing he had to black.

Cousins shook my hand and asked how the hell I was.

My brother and brother-i n-law stayed on the other side of the room, glowering.

My sister had a tissue to her face, looked like she had just finished crying. When she saw me she started all over again.

“There’s a lot of people here,” Jerry said.

“And this looks like only half the family.”

“They don’t seem so crazy,” he said.

“Wait for it.”

“Your cousins seem nice. How many you got?”

“About thirty-two.”

“Huh?” He looked shocked.

My father was sitting in the front row. He turned to see what the hubbub was all about. When we locked eyes he got up and came over to me. He’d aged badly, the skin on his face sagging, his clothes hanging on a frame that while no means thin, was not as bulky as it once was. And he was smaller than I remembered. Even though I’d left New York when I was in my late twenties and a man myself, he’d always made me feel like a small boy in his presence. But when he took my face in his hands I could still feel the strength. That hadn’t changed.

“I’m so glad you came, son,” he said. He shocked me by kissing me on the cheek, and then hugging me.

“My boy, my boy,” he kept saying.

Over his shoulder I could see Jerry watching us. I’m sure he was wondering where the crazy was.

Wait for it, I thought again.

My father stopped hugging and held me at arm’s length. My sister moved up alongside him.

“You look good, boy,” he said. “Doesn’t he look good, Angie?”

“Yes, he does, Poppa,” she said. “He looks good.”

My sister was the baby of the family, but while I knew she was thirty, she looked like she was in her forties. Her face was lined, her hands rough, and she wore very little makeup.

My father held my shoulders a little longer, his eyes wet, and then I saw it. For years I called it “the change.” My father changed his “tune.” His attitude could turn on a dime. Sometimes it happened when he was out of the room. One version of my father would leave and moments later the new version would enter. But every so often it happened in front of us. We could see it, and prepare for it.

He slapped my upper arms and said, “Are you happy now that you killed your mother?”

The room got quiet. I could still see Jerry behind my father, and he looked as if he’d just been slapped.

“Why don’t you go and look at her?” my father shouted. “Take a look at your handiwork!”

I turned to my sister. She did what my mother had always done when I looked to her for help. She shrugged helplessly. I grew up with a crazy man, a bully, knowing before I could talk that my mother would never be there for me. Once she mouthed the words, “I’m sorry,” during one of my father’s tirades, but that was the most I ever got from her.

My brother came over and stood next to my father.

“Why don’t you go take a look, brother?” he asked.

Joey was older than me by two years. Early in my childhood I realized I was different. Nobody was on my side. I usually took the brunt of my father’s anger, even if I had nothing to do with the reason he was so mad. Joey always took such delight in the fact that I was the target, and it was always very important to him that my father know he was there, on his side. I always felt that as brothers, it should’ve been us against my old man, but that had never been the case.

“Go on,” Joey said. “Look at her.”

“She’s been dying since the day you left,” my father said. “I’m surprised it took this long.”

Tears were streaming down my sister’s face, but she remained silent. My cousins, aunts and uncles found something else to look at. When my father got like this, nobody got in his way.

“If anybody killed her it was you, old man,” I said. “Living with you.”

“Your mother was happy with me,” he said. “It was only when you kids came along-” He stopped short. “When you came along-”

I looked at my sister, and then my brother.

“Are you listenin’ to this?” I asked them.

My sister hid behind her tissues.

My brother hid behind his bluster.

“It broke her heart when you left!” Joey said. “We stayed.” He looked at my father. “We stayed, Poppa.”

“Oh, shut up,” my father said. “You all killed her. I don’t care about any of you. But you-”

All of a sudden he drew back his fist and I knew I was going to take the hit for everybody. There was no way I’d ever hit him back, and why I didn’t think to block the blow is beyond me. But his fist never reached me because Jerry reached out and caught my father’s arm by the wrist. My old man tried to pull away, but Jerry was too strong.

“You brought a hoodlum with you to attack our father?” my sister shrieked. “Tony! Tony!”

She was yelling for her husband, my brother-in-law, but he was too much of a coward to come anywhere near Jerry. He stayed where he was across the room.

No one else rushed forward, either. Jerry was just too imposing a figure.

“Mr. G.?” he asked me. “Ya want I should snap it?”

I didn’t know if he meant the wrist or the whole arm, but I didn’t want either. And truth be told, after my father berated me in front of the entire family-or half the family-I was kind of ticked at my mother all over again for all the times she never stood up to him. I didn’t particularly want to go up to her casket to see her.

“No,” I told Jerry, “let him go.”

He released my father’s wrist and the old man stepped back, rubbing it, warily regarding Jerry.

“Get out, Eddie,” my brother said, “and take your hood with you.”

“You want I should bust him up, Mr. G.?” Jerry asked, pointing at my brother, who shrank back as if he thought I was going to sic the big boy on him.

I was tempted.

“No, that’s okay, Jerry.”

“Then why don’t we get outta here, Mr. G.?” Jerry suggested.

“I’m with you, Jerry. Let’s go.”

Under the watchful eye of everyone Jerry and I left.

Out in the parking lot Jerry said, “Geez, Mr. G., I’m sorry.”

“For what? You didn’t do anythin’.”

“I made you come here,” Jerry said. “You’re right, those people are nuts.”

“Yeah, they are,” I said. “They sure are.”

The next day Jerry drove me to the cemetery at the very end of the procession of cars. I stood off to the side during the ceremony while he waited in the Caddy. Then I walked to the car. We were the first ones to drive away.

To La Guardia, and back to Vegas.

Back to my life.

My Vegas, where the people tryin’ to kill you were the bad guys-not family.