The Exceptions

MALE E BENE A FINE

VIENE

(EVIL AND GOOD COME TO AN END)



Two years and nine months later





ONE


Maggie Mullen swirls a glass of wine she started aerating an hour earlier, stares at me and laughs and says, “You’re so funny.” I can’t remember the words I just spoke, distracted with tidying up the kitchen of her father’s restaurant. “You can really make me laugh when you want to.” When you want to—the point of her statement. Over the last couple years, women have drifted in and out of my life, relationships where the strongest bond occurred the first days of our meeting and slowly dissolved over the course of weeks or months, where we shared a mutual warmth that I eventually chilled over like a berg of ice; Chuck’s daughter has yet to drift out, seems committed to trying to make something of our intense friendship. A decade ago she might have been my ideal companion—a soft-spoken, sweet-natured gal who inherited the bulk of her family’s Irish genes, down to the red hair and fair skin and a face that readily blushes and carries a perpetual smile. But I know now how this will go. Her words will reshape as they did for the three women before her, will shift from you’re so funny to you’re so distracted. Maggie and I are partners, in a sense. We open the place, close it down at night, are together through the full bell curve of activity that any successful restaurant experiences over a day’s time. She and I are not just friends; we possess a rhythm, offset each other’s abilities and deficiencies. We keep the tables full and the customers happy and the restaurant well reviewed while her father completes his long recuperation from back surgery. And every night after we step out the back door of the restaurant, I walk her to her car, where she leans forward and gives me a peck on the cheek and pauses, wonders if tonight is the night I will turn my face and capture her affection in the form of a kiss on the lips, take the first step toward a physical encounter that could lead to love.

As I wind down the last few chores before we leave, Maggie picks up the bottle of Syrah and wiggles it a little as she catches my eye. I wave her off while wiping the counter. She stares at the wine like it has failed her, frowns as though I didn’t notice she was wearing a pretty new dress or had gotten a new haircut. She swirls the wine in her glass less vigorously, then gently empties the contents of her glass in the sink.

Chuck and Maggie, this ready-made family for me to join, meet every requirement I could’ve wanted, a tidy package comprised of warmth and security and attraction. Yet the table of contents suggests more than the chapters provide.

After Maggie steps outside, I set the alarm and lock the door. I walk her to her car, perform what has become the final task of my day. She stares at me a second longer than usual, feels like minutes. She stands on her toes and I can smell the wine on her lips as they meet my skin. And now I see: The offer of wine was not to loosen me; she required the loosening. This moment was planned if not practiced. She lets her peck linger a few seconds and exhales against my cheek, to which I cannot respond, feels as though I am about to cheat on my spouse. She drops her body back to the ground and gently turns my chin so I face her.

“It’s okay to let her go,” she whispers, referring to April Martin, the wife who lived and died without a single breath, created to fill a gap in my fabricated life.

But there was no April; she could’ve never been on my mind. That last image of Melody had recurred through my head instead, my final glimpse of her as she disappeared into the center of the Greyhound station. I tell Maggie, “I’ll never be able to let her go. She was the best part of who I was, of who I am. How do you let go of what makes you stronger?” She could never understand how the person I have become these last few years is a replica of my former self, made with better parts and stronger materials; Maggie would not recognize the cursing, smoking drunk with bloodied knuckles and a bruised body and an anger toward mankind, the man with a disbelief that anything pure and innocent and good could exist, could survive in this world. She slips her hands behind her back and cocks her head as I try to explain in the simplest terms: “Whatever it is you like about me, whatever you’re attracted to, it’s because of her.”



My name disappeared from the news almost two years ago. Justice bored the media into not caring anymore. In fact, not much information surfaced at all about any of the families in and around New York, those few stories usually buried beneath the mire of reporting about terrorism and financial disasters and foreign affairs. And just like me, those few guys who got pinched seemed to show in one or two articles, then quietly vanished. Either the Times and the Post found no more information to report or stories about the Italian Mafia were not helping sell newspapers.

And since I’ve been living in my little apartment in the Villages, I have never again seen the name Bovaro in print unless used loosely in reference to me. Peter’s chain of candy stores most likely remain in operation—and thriving. I hope he’s saving his money; someday all that sugar is going to riddle him with decay. I know, even in my seclusion, that my father is still the balance and power in the operation; when Pop passes and Pete inevitably takes the reins, I give my family one year before my brother bullies his way into territory that my father had respectfully left to other crews.

But with all their flaws, with our entire combined corrupted DNA, I miss my family more than I’d imagined when I bolted from New York so abruptly. My first Christmas alone was the most difficult. I recalled the tables so brimming with food you could barely find a spot for your wineglass, remembered the camaraderie as we seemed to eat and drink for days on end, shared unusually carefree moments with the outer edge of the family—the wives and children and outcast crew members. That week between Christmas and New Year’s Day felt as close to normal as our strange unit ever could. We would toast one another around the table at the start of our Christmas feast, would give thanks and honor those the way most do at Thanksgiving. I wondered what was said when the chain stopped at my empty chair, at my obvious absence. I wondered if a toast was made, if they hoped I was surviving.

Each year, I raise a glass, pray they’re surviving, too, then try to sleep straight through to December 26.

I still miss the subtle things about my family that I’d overlooked, that I’d taken for granted as I lived as one among them. I miss the way Pop would put his hand on my neck and rub it when we walked together, then ruffle my hair like I was an eight-year-old instead of his grown son. I miss how Pete would opt to give me a quick hug when we saw each other instead of a handshake or a what’s up, instead of nothing at all. I miss the beauty of hearing the Italian language every day, its sweeping flow and gentle lingering vowels, how its structure and sound could make the most violent and hateful things sound as sweet and soothing as a lullaby. I miss being around people who would lay down their lives for one another, no matter how terrible and flawed they are. I miss being recognized, being called by my name, being able to share a memory from prior to three years ago.

But for all my longings, for these things I miss and wish I could bring back into my existence, they had to be surrendered, were far easier to surrender than what still, to this very moment, occupies me, possesses me less like a demon than an angel: memories of Melody, from my first sight of her as a child to the way it felt when we let go of each other in the bus station. Every woman is compared to her, ranked in order of similarity, noted as poorly drawn knockoffs of a perfect work of art. I’ve memorized not only every conversation, every possible word, but the way the words were pronounced, the direction the corners of her mouth turned as she spoke them, how many times she batted her lashes when she told a story, when she looked directly in my eye, when she could not face me. She is my favorite movie; how I long for a sequel.

For everything I have given up, I still miss nothing more than I miss Melody.