“Son, I’m sorry about Maryann.” He said hoarsely lifting his head his eyes meeting mine. He shook his head. “I wish you would’ve called me after the car accident. I would’ve been here sooner.”
I stared at him for a moment. “You would’ve been here sooner?” I repeated his words back to him. “Why the fuck would I call you?” My voice sounded broken even to my own ears. It didn’t matter how angry I was there was a part of me that still wished this man would’ve lived up to the promises he made the day we buried my father.
I was sixteen when my father was murdered. The newspapers called it a “Mobbed Up Massacre”. My father was shot twelve times total they said. He lay dead in the street in front of Rosalie’s Bakery for hours before they finally brought his body to the morgue. They roped off the scene of the crime with yellow tape that stood there for days. I recall seeing the tape the day of his burial when the limousines drove passed the bakery on the way to the cemetery.
The media loved the rivalry between crime families and they ate that shit up printing whatever it was to sell their paper, not caring if my mother or I saw the gruesome photos of my father. His death made the newspaper every day for a week after, labeling him the second in command, the Underboss to the Pastore crime family. Each day another photo was printed. The one image imbedded in my brain is the one of his body lying in a pool of his own blood. I remember thinking to myself how he looked like someone’s prey lying there covered with a sheet as a police officer outlined his body with chalk.
I cut the articles out of the paper and for years, I’d look at them memorizing the tiniest of details. The officer held the chalk in his left hand. He wore a watch on his right wrist. I could tell you so many details about the detective in that picture, but could only tell you one thing about my father. He was wearing his favorite black loafers because they were all that was visible as they peeked out from beneath the sheet.
Aside, from the photos I had also memorized the articles. They said my father made the ultimate sacrifice to protect Victor. He shielded Victor with his own body, allowing the rival family to riddle his body with bullets. In the days that followed his death, I often found myself wondering if my father thought of my mother or me before he stepped in front of the gunfire. Did we cross his mind at all? Or was he too wrapped up in being Victor’s right hand man that he completely forgot about his only son and the woman who would love him until she drew her last breath.
The police didn’t arrest Victor this I know because I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast when he showed up to our house. His face was drawn, his eyes bloodshot the man who was always so put together looked disheveled as he broke the news to my mother and me that my father was dead. When I close my eyes and allow myself to think of that day, I can still see my mother falling to her knees. Her anguished cries haunt me from time to time. Her fists pummeled against Victor’s chest, as she screamed “NO!”
I stared into Victor’s eyes as he held my mother in his arms trying desperately to calm her down but failing miserably. I was numb as I stared at him standing in our kitchen alive while my father’s lifeless body lay on a slab in the morgue. It hadn’t seemed fair to me, I guess that’s why his death didn’t hit me right away.
We had to keep the casket closed because one of the bullets had gone through his face. At the wake, I sat beside my mother, holding her hand as she wept while I stared at his coffin disbelieving that he could be inside the mahogany box before me. My eyes glued to the array of flowers that lay over the coffin, mainly on the banner that adorned the spray of flowers that read “Beloved Father”. It felt as if I was living in a nightmare, never feeling real maybe because I didn’t see him lying in the coffin.
I never accepted it as my reality, not even when they lowered his body into the dirt. It wasn’t until Victor pulled me aside after the burial and promised in not so many words to take the place of my father to be the man I could turn to in life because the only one I’d ever known was no longer with me. It settled in then, that my dad was gone. The irony of it was that the man promising to take his place robbed me of a father.
Now here he stood all these years later never living up to his promise. The bathroom door opened and the blonde came charging into the bedroom. She stopped right in front of me shoving my chest with the palm of her hand. “Forget you ever met me Michael-- Val whatever the fuck your name is anyway.” Ah, it was good to know she was just as confused as I was in the name department.