The Exceptions

THIRTEEN


I managed to nod off at some point, long after vetting every scenario through my head while I stared at the ceiling, mentally running each play over and over like a coach the night before the championship game, and with all the anxiety; you spend an entire season—in my case, years—trying to get to the big game, only to eventually face down the stress of turning it into the final win of the season. If we triumph, Melody goes free; if we lose, Melody never gets to play again, gets kicked out of the league.

The moment the sun breaks through the slit in the curtains, I open my eyes, destined to remain awake. I slip out of bed and return to my room, leave Melody to sleep off the bruising and trauma from the night before.

I sit on the corner of my bed and watch the news and wait, drift into a daze as the talking head rambles on about newfound long-term complications associated with steady consumption of carbonated beverages. I begin reading the news ticker at the bottom of the screen and it makes me numb, hypnotizes me like a metronome. Until, scrolling across:

INVESTIGATORS ARE LOOKING INTO THE SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE OF MANNY PASTULO, LONG ASSOCIATED WITH THE BOVARO AND RICCI CRIME FAMILIES.

And so it goes. If I recall from our family meeting, Pastulo was being handled by three crew members, his takedown led by Tommy Fingers. The reality of our grand plan—the first evidence it actually occurred other than term-encrypted cell phone conversations—brings an alertness no amount of caffeine could ever deliver.

I call Pete, wake him up. He answers with a one-word grunt, something between yeah and what.

“Everything still looking good?”

He yawns. “When you coming back?”

“Be there shortly, this afternoon. Everyone happy and healthy?”

I hear a woman groan in the background, then she says, “I gotta pee.”

“Who’s that?” I ask.

Pete takes a deep breath, rustles a little like he’s sitting up. “I don’t know.”

Of course he doesn’t. “We come straight to Pop’s, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We gonna have a full house?” Is everyone going to be attending?

“Eddie put together the invitations.” We’re having an official family meeting.

“There gonna be cake?” Good news or bad news?

“With extra icing. Pop says he gets the piece with the flowers on it.” All good. Especially once you bring the dead girl home.

“Yeah, I figured. I just wanted to make sure he’s gonna be there, that everyone is gonna be there.” My eyes remain glued to the news ticker. “I’m thinking we’ll be there early afternoon.”

I’ve become quite in touch with the rise and fall of adrenaline in my bloodstream, this most recent wave caused by the assurance that the final event will occur. How much easier it would’ve been if something went wrong, that my family muffed the grand plan, that we’d just have to continue on the course of a less risky plan offering no closure whatsoever, no mandate for completing the mission.

As I hang up, I hear Melody moving around in her room. Since the adjoining door remains partially open, I go through it—still feels like I should enter through the hall door—and find her in the bathroom, her mouth filled with toothpaste foam. She glances my way, spits quickly. We sort of hug and share a peck, move like a pair of actors running through their first take of a love scene. My phone vibrates in my pocket: Pete again.

“You still bringing the skim’?” Yes, short for skimbo. I hear him flick a lighter, take a pull off a cigarette.

“Yeah.”

“Huh. Figured you would’ve grown bored with her by now.” A few days equals a decade in Peter years. Then through his exhale of smoke: “Got off the phone with Pop. Thought you’d be interested to know he says he’s ‘looking forward to meeting both of your girls.’ ”

I rub my eyes. “That’s great.” I slap my phone closed.

“What’s great?” Melody asks.

“Uh,” I say, looking down, “my whole family will be there today. Just as I’d hoped.”

She sits on the bed, presses her knees together, stares at the floor as well. “They know I’m coming?”

“Not exactly.”

She doesn’t flinch. “They know what you’re about to do? What you’re about to ask of them?”

“No.”

She stands and walks to me; my eyes are still on the floor. She tries to catch my eye, looks like she needs reassurance, and in the absence of my offering it, she says, “Remember, you’re the unpredictable one. They should be prepared for something surprising.”

As I kiss her forehead and hold her, I say, “They can be surprising at times, too.”



Melody and I return to our separate rooms to shower and dress. I finish first, continue watching the news ticker—only the Pastulo item, so far—and wait for her to finish. She peeks her head in the door and asks what I think she should wear to meet my family. I suggest armor. She suggests one of the skirts and a blouse from the shopping bags from Norfolk. I counter with something more practical: jeans and a light sweater. She nods and half pouts, probably thinks practicality translates into in case we have to run.

Three minutes later, she shows me how she looks in my picks. The jeans look good, but the sweater is what captures my attention. She’s wearing a tight-fitting red sweater, a pullover that Melissa recommended. As we were quickly perusing the store that morning, Melissa said, “If your girlfriend has the frame you describe, this’ll look perfect on her.” Except she got it backward: Melody looks perfect in it. We make our way down to the outside café to force down breakfast before our journey to New York. With visions of Sean the Magnificent in my head, I hold her hand the entire time, grip it with no affection, keep it clasped as though I might pull her in a different direction at any second.

We find a table with an enormous umbrella for us to hide under, order coffee and juice and a table of food: eggs, bacon, French toast, sausage. The only thing I really want is a smoke. The nicotine gum, as it turns out, only rectifies the chemical part of the equation; the mental part remains unsolved. What I want—sadly, need—is the slapping of a fresh pack against my palm, the shaking free of a single cigarette, the feel of the smooth paper as it rests between my lips, the sterile taste of the filter against my tongue. I need the crackling sound of the match as it ignites, the flicker of the end of the cigarette as it lights and the wincing at the short blast of fire, that first deep breath of earthy heat, the curls of smoke, the cloud that forms from my mouth as my lungs empty, the temporary fumes that overwhelm every other scent in the air. Such is the curse of any addiction: Part of the rush exists in performing the act that produces the other part.

Melody dives in, eats like we skipped dinner last night, picks up with the feasting. I can’t get beyond playing with the yolk of a broken poached egg. I reach in my pocket, pull out the small box for the nicotine gum, shake it and realize it’s empty. I stare at it, crush the box in my fist, start brutally stabbing it with my coffee spoon. Melody stops chewing, says with a partially full mouth, “I find this… disconcerting.”

I drop the spoon and cover my face with my hands, realize the lack of gum and cigarettes are not my problem; the issue is with finding a way to overcome the fear of potentially failing her again. “I wish… I wish it could be easier for you.”

She swallows her food, takes a drink, puts her utensils down. “What do you mean?”

“Here I am asking you to face the people who put all this misery into your life. You shouldn’t have to go through this. It’s not right.”

“What choice do I have? I mean, geez, you’re the one who helped me realize that.” She takes my hand, becomes the stronger one. “I agreed to your plan because, well… I really had no place left to go. I couldn’t run anymore, couldn’t wonder what was waiting around the corner every moment of my life.”

I look up at her. I am struck with a disturbing realization: All the anxiety I’ve been feeling for the past few days, feeling right now, wondering if Sean will be pouncing on me from behind the bushes, if a bullet will be shot into my unshielded flesh, these are the precise worries and fears she has faced every hour of every day. For twenty years.

It is inhuman, this punishment. No one should have to live this way. And I’ll never permit my family to threaten her again. This surge of clarity is far better than any cigarette.

I will die for her if I have to.

Sometimes a superlative embodies the truth.

Melody tightens her grip on my hand and says, “But more importantly, I’ve come to trust you, Jonathan. I know you’ll take care of me. I truly believe it—and no one could be more surprised at that than I am. You let me be myself these last few days. I was Melody Grace again. How else could I have had her back in my life?”

How she speaks of herself in the third person, her implication that it will come to an end, breaks her comments into two distinct pieces: that I will take care of her, but that she will never be free to be herself.

My final act will encompass the truth—and will culminate in four hours.



We return to our rooms, and while Melody freshens herself, I pack all of our clothes in my bag, can barely zip it closed. We check the rooms for anything we could possibly be leaving behind, talk only in short requests and answers, like we’re cleaning up the scene of a crime.

We return the door cards and check out, walk outside as we wait for the valet to return the Audi to the front of the hotel. Melody and I stand side by side, eyes cast down like married lovers whose vacation has come to an end and the notion of bills and childcare and unmowed lawns returns to the forefront of our minds.

I hand the valet a twenty and open the door for Melody, toss our bags in the trunk, filling the very spot where my family envisions Melody’s body is wrapped in blankets and waiting to be buried. As I pull onto the empty city streets on this Sunday morning, Melody watches the hotel disappear over her shoulder.

We break free of the lights, zoom toward the interstate, past Camden Yards and up an exit ramp built like the first hill of a roller coaster; it twists us over to the northbound side of I-95. Within minutes, we’re through the Fort McHenry Tunnel and out past the Baltimore Beltway. I shove a Death Cab for Cutie disc in the player and we listen to the gentle music without a word between us. We’ve been on the road for fifteen minutes before I rest my hand on Melody’s thigh and say, “Three and a half hours and you’ll be in the presence of the Bovaro clan.”

She places her hand on mine, raises an eyebrow, and asks, “Anything I should know?”

A far different question from “Anything you want to tell me?”



It takes most of the journey from northeastern Maryland to central New Jersey to explain the details of each member of my family, what it was like to grow up around them, share the embarrassing nuances that make each of my brothers who they are. I tell her of the miserable life my mother had to live, how her only reward was a husband who remained faithful to her, how I was the only one who could tell it could’ve never been enough, how she needed more and didn’t live long enough to receive it. I explain how my father had periods of normalcy, could’ve been a good man, but swam into a sea of crime that eventually engulfed him.

I try to tell her things that might make her think the Bovaros are a real family—the true G-rated vignettes—to ease her into what’s about to happen. As we pass the exits for roads leading to Atlantic City, I tell her a story about a family vacation gone awry, right down to the flat tire and food poisoning from bad shellfish. What I avoid telling her is that we stopped in a housing development on the return ride home, looked at houses under construction, listened to my father and Peter make jokes of how loose all the dirt seemed to be. From that trip came the genesis of a Bovaro trade secret: One of the best places to bury bodies is in a community under construction—not in the concrete foundations, but in the landscaping. All those tree-lined streets? Those are new plantings, easy to move, and the soil underneath is typically rock-free. At night, when all the construction teams are gone, the Bovaro crew arrives, moves a tree from its spot, digs a deeper hole, puts a body in it, covers it with dirt, then puts the tree right back on top. When was the last time someone moved a tree to look for a body? I’d imagine some of the heartiest maples and oaks in New Jersey are being fed by those who’ve betrayed my family.

After two hours of briefing, it turns out she’d been patiently waiting for me to discuss one person in particular. I never brought him up on my own.

“Will your cousin be there?” She swallows, is trying so hard to be casual. “The, um, one who killed my parents?”

I look at her for a second, turn back to the road. “Uh, no.” The one good thing about my cousin’s terrible death is being able to deliver some semblance of good news, of relief for Melody. “He was killed a few years ago. Bullet right through the throat, choked on his own blood for a long time before Peter eventually found him. Pete just let him die right there in an alley in midtown Manhattan.”

So much for keeping the topic of my family nice and light. Melody’s reaction forces an understanding that she’s not one of us; where I expected a fist in the air, I instead get a flinch and slouched shoulders, like we’re all nuts, cannibals feeding off our own flesh.

“Why didn’t Peter try to save him?”

“Uh… it’s kind of complicated, but we let my cousin get killed. It was payback for a mistake we made—he made—against another family. The whole thing’s sort of ridiculous.”

“Sort of.” She rolls her eyes, turns and stares at the road. “Well, I can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead.”

“You shouldn’t be. But in terms of your folks, the truth is he just pulled the trigger. As crazy as he was, my cousin really had no more stake in the murder of your parents than the bullets that killed them. All he did was follow orders.” Mr. Roboto.

She glances sideways at me, slides her hands down the length of her thighs like she’s wiping sweat from her palms. “Whose orders?”

I shrug and sigh. “My father’s.”

And then, not another word.



We’re closing in on my father’s house with such speed we’re likely to arrive early. Near Bayway, New Jersey, Melody stares out her window as I fly past the exit for the Staten Island Expressway. “I’m probably not the greatest with New York geography,” she says, “but wouldn’t that have been the shortest way to Brooklyn?”

“Sure. Why?”

She scowls a little. “Doesn’t your family live in Brooklyn?”

“No, no—I live in Brooklyn; my family lives in Tenafly.”

She turns in her seat, pulls her knee up and faces me. “Tenafly?”

“It’s in Jersey, just north of the George Washington Bridge.”

“I know where it is. Tenafly is barely twenty miles from where I lived before my parents and I went into Witness Protection. You kept saying we were going to New York.”

“Melody, my father’s house is, like, a mile and a half from the Hudson.”

I don’t understand why, but this causes a swell in her anxiety. She starts wiping her hands on her jeans again, takes deep breaths like she’s going into labor.

“You never said Tenafly. I’m certain you said Brooklyn. I mean, man, a New Jersey address would’ve stuck in my head.”

“Well, my folks grew up in Brooklyn. Maybe that’s where you got it from. Or maybe because you called my father’s business line in Brooklyn. Or maybe we just got our signals crossed.” Now, this is probably the wrong thing to say, the wrong moment to mention the brevity of our acquaintance, but it comes out of my mouth anyway: “I mean, we’ve only been together for a couple days.”

Melody throws up all over her floor mat.



We clean her face the best we can (bottled water and convenience store napkins) and dispose of my floor mat (jettisoned onto the shoulder of the Jersey Turnpike). She accepts my offer of some Nicorette from the stash in my glove box—to freshen her mouth and calm her nerves.

By the time we get to Englewood she’s starting to relax, says, “I haven’t been back here since I was a little girl.” She chews the gum slowly, gazes out the window like a kid spying the entrance to Disney World. “I’m so close to home.”

I begin to steady my pace, catch glimpses of Melody taking long looks across the suburban landscape, her head twisting to keep a lock on various buildings and places and signs. I attempt to provide her with the opportunity to reminisce in whatever way she can. These very roads may have been the last she traveled with her parents on that cloudy morning twenty years ago. I hadn’t anticipated the emotional toll it might take on her; to me it was nothing more than pavement leading me to my father’s home.

And as I stare at her, watching her try to recapture pieces of her stolen youth, for the first time since she and I have been together I get choked up, really have to fight back tears. I recall my own uneasy youth, the nights I stayed awake praying that the McCartneys would be safe. I want to set her free, yet I lament having to make it happen at all. The whole if you love something set it free thing serves as nothing more than a platitude for personal liberation. Over the course of one’s life, the odds are the things that were set free weren’t very difficult to let go in the first place. The stuff you truly love you fight to keep by your side, right to your final breath. But even Melody comprehends the higher concept better than I—nothing can ever be more beautiful than sacrifice were her words—and it’s clearly not only what she needs, it’s what she wants. And I’m the deliveryman.

As we drive through the sleepy streets of Tenafly, creeping closer to my family’s home with every stop sign and crack in the pavement, I glimpse the normal residents as they make their way—the couple loading golf clubs instead of a body into the trunk of their sedan; the minivan that empties boys in soccer uniforms instead of cases of weapons; the lazy, numb stroll of men pushing mowers—and for a fleeting second it feels like what Melody and I are doing is real, that we arrived here through aspiration instead of condemnation, that I really am taking home a girlfriend to meet the family, that we’ll break the ice over a bottle of wine and a table of food, progress beyond the nervous excitement to becoming a larger family.

I wind us toward our home, to the section of our neighborhood built first, where the lots are bigger and more wooded than the newer homes closer to the highway. The streets remain in moderate disrepair, and the car shakes as we roll over broken branches strewn across the road from a recent storm. A few hundred feet later, I see our home near the end of the block, a Tudor built with so much wood and stone it could never be affordably replicated in today’s market. The dwelling predates me by forty years, went from a home to a house after my mother died. My parents bought it to escape the city—escape people like us, my mother would later joke—and they turned it into a grand entertaining space, though it quickly fell into poor condition once my father lost his only love and all of the emotional capacity that came from sharing a life with her. One day when we’re all dead and buried, little kids will ride their bikes down the uprooted sidewalk out front and point and say it’s haunted. They will be right.

I nod, indicate to Melody which house is ours. She begins noshing on the gum a little harder, and when she sees how many cars are scattered around the circular driveway she starts lightly tapping her feet.

After surveying the array of vehicles, I do the math, say to myself, “Looks like everyone’s here.” I aim our car directly at the front door, park at the bottom edge of the semicircle. She and I stare at the house, motor running.

Melody takes a deep breath and says, “What did you use as an excuse to get everyone together?”

“I didn’t really have to make an excuse,” I answer. Then unspoken: “It’s a celebration of murder! Salut!” Melody could never comprehend the jubilant manner with which some in my family celebrate the abuse and disposal of humanity, and I pray they do not tell stories in her earshot, for she could only imagine the same conversation occurred after her parents were leveled. Instead, I offer this: “It’s Sunday.”

“What’s that mean?”

“My family tries to get together for a big meal here. My father, he, uh… he likes to cook. It seems to have a calming effect, so we indulge him as much as possible.” I stare at the house. “It was a long-standing tradition when my mom was alive—she was the culinary master in our family—and I think we all want to see it continue… you know, to honor her.”

We sit and stare ahead like we’re waiting at a red light.

“Part of me wants to kill your father,” she says, “and the other part wants his acceptance.” I break my lock on the house and turn to Melody. She continues, “This whole thing is a ridiculous long shot, and were I not at the end of the line with this life and the way I have to live it, I’d have never taken the risk. It wasn’t that big of a deal a few days ago, when I had nothing left inside of me. Problem is, now I want to survive—to be with you longer.” She drops her head, looks at her lap. “I’m resting my hopes on two things, the first being that you’ve really thought this out and that you understand your family better than I ever could.”

I wait, but no part two. “The other?”

“I’m assuming somewhere inside your dad is a good and decent man, like you suggested.” She looks at me again. “He raised you, after all.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. I respond with a smile. “I’m sure he would’ve done anything to protect you over the years.”

My smile vanishes; my father may have helped raise me, but he also raised Peter. And the good and decent man hasn’t come around in a while, been kept under submission by a life no longer tempered by the warmth of a woman.

Then Melody adds this: “I’m sure your father would have left the world of crime if he’d needed to for one of his sons, right?”

My eyes fall and land on the dashboard, though I’m seeing nothing but memories of my mother begging him to break free in the desperate and broken days after her attack by Morrison. I was there when she said it, pleaded for it. I was there when my father said, “Anything for you,” and I was there a week later when he told Tommy Fingers, “You put two in Agata’s head, and I mean today,” and then a month later when he told my brother Gino that “the hole left by the Cuccis means we’ll be picking up a big chunk of business.” (My father became obsessed with taking over the Cucci turf and eventually won the Cucci Coup). Soon after, I witnessed my mother’s reluctant acceptance of my father’s offerings—jewelry, expensive clothing, and cars—to appease her, offset the crimes set against her. The more she longed for him to abandon this life that was riddled with risk, where no one was safe, the more money he dropped on her. And now I realize why my throwing bills around with Melody bothered me so. What was it I was offsetting? Was I merely paying in advance for an upcoming crime? Who exactly had I become?

I can’t lift my eyes, neither to her face nor the house. “My family has never been very comfortable with the notion of sacrifice,” I say. Then, all at once: I see our odds dwindle, our horse fade as it rounds the last turn. But I’m not giving up, not letting Melody down. I’m not tearing up that ticket yet. I turn off the ignition and grab the keys and pop my door open. “Let’s do this.”

Just before my door closes, I hear Melody say, “Wait, I—” As I walk around to her side of the car, she flips down the visor and checks her lips and face and hair, spits out her gum into a wrapper, takes a deep breath and forces it out in a blast.

Melody takes my hand as soon as she gets out. Her hand is cold and wet, trembles a little. I hold it firmly as I take broad steps to the front of our house. She walks behind me but speeds up to get to my side. We walk the long brick path covered in debris from months past, each step a crunch of leaves and twigs.

Melody whispers so softly I’m not certain the words are for me: “Are you sure?”

I just keep walking, hold her hand like a child’s while crossing through a bad part of town, my eyes leveled at the front door like I’m looking down the barrel of a gun.

“Are you sure?”

We’re within a few steps of the entrance, greeted by the enormous two-inch-thick oak door with its rounded top, beveled panels, and small cut glass windows in the upper sections, the product of some long-dead craftsman’s time and attention and artistic capacity. It takes all my strength, all my will, to keep from kicking the thing right off its rotting frame. As we step upon the stoop, I feel Melody tighten her hand around mine. With a held breath, I reach down and grip the handle and latch in my hand, and gently open the door.