There is a line of five other customers in front of me and one cashier, a local or Frank himself perhaps, a thin man with a circular bald spot on top of his head and stringy gray hair pulled into a strange-looking ponytail. His nails are yellowed, presumably from smoking.
Those fingernails resemble my late father’s, yellow and cracked. They bring me back to my childhood, sitting at our dining room table, a dinner plate in front of me with an untouched portion of green beans. My father was tapping his yellowed fingernails on the table. I must have been Sam’s age, maybe younger. I had finished eating the meat loaf and the mashed potatoes, but I was not able to get myself to ingest any of the beans. My mother had kindly suggested that I be allowed to leave the table but my father stood up, shoving his chair back into the dining room wall.
“He will sit at this table until that plate is clean,” he said. He was the king, and we were all his subjects. My little brother gave me a sympathetic look before pushing his chair back and hurrying to carry his plate into the kitchen. He knew the storm was brewing; the air was thick with tension. My stomach threatened me with bile. My mother touched my shoulder on her way to the kitchen, but said nothing. I heard her murmuring to my father in the other room, smelled the sulfur from the match he’d blown out after lighting his cigarette.
“I told you he will finish it all. That’s final,” he yelled at my mother. I could hear the sliding glass door to the back patio open as he stepped outside, closing it with a solid thud.
I remember I wished then that we could lock him out there forever. I remember that feeling of hope and escape if it were possible. But I knew in my heart, from my earliest childhood forward, there was no escape from a dictator. He was bigger than me, larger than life. I had to learn to outsmart him, to play his game better than he could. Until we were teenagers, he beat us. He had a fondness for yanking his belt out of his pants loops and slashing our thighs and bottoms with it for the smallest offenses.
I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, of course. Everybody has to go through things in this life. Sure, I sugarcoat my childhood when I’m talking to strangers, when I’m talking to anyone, including Mia, about it. I tell them about cozy family dinners, at the house and out at the fancy restaurant. But that’s a survival trick I learned from my mother, I suppose. You don’t discuss family dirty laundry, not at all. You smile and quietly accept what comes your way. Don’t make waves, not until you’re the one in control. Then you get your revenge.
My six-year-old self finally gave in after a couple of hours sitting alone at the table in the dark. I picked up one of the green beans, grown limp and cold and slimy, and placed it on my tongue and then slid it to the back of my throat. Of course, I vomited my dinner all over the table, and myself. I knew I would, I suppose, somewhere down inside. I won that battle. Never had to eat a green bean at my house again. They’re symbolic of victory for me now. I made a point to eat them whenever we were someplace else, like the nice restaurant in town. I pretended to love all green beans except the ones he wanted me to eat. Each green bean I ate in his presence, say at a restaurant, slowly and with a smile, reminded my father of the night I won. It was a green-coated foreshadowing of my ultimate victory.
By now you’re probably wondering why my wife and I were comfortable living in a home next to my parents, the same dictator and his accomplice who were the villains of my childhood. Well, the simple answer is we needed help with childcare, for starters. Plus I am too old to beat with a belt, and I didn’t need his money to live. He couldn’t hurt me anymore and he wouldn’t dare touch my boys.
Perhaps I also wanted to allow my parents a glimpse at how great my life is compared to theirs, how beautiful my wife is, how rich we are. Our house is bigger, of course, twice the size of theirs and we have double the backyard. It was almost as if they lived in the outhouse of my large mansion, or at least I liked to think of it that way. My life has more of everything. I proved to them that I could move into this upscale suburb now, when it was the place to be. When they moved here, it wasn’t. They were just lucky. Me, I’m übersuccessful. I wanted them to see that, to see each of my boys and how happy they are. Watch as they eat whatever they’d like, as much or as little as they wish. Yes, living well is the best revenge.
I’m the opposite of my father in many ways. I fight to be like that, to be his opposite, every day, tamping down the anger that’s there, the fire-filled rage he instilled inside me from an early age. It’s like a wildfire that is 80 percent contained. It flares up sometimes, but it’s mostly under control. In fact, most people who meet me in the business world think I’m easygoing, friendly, the life of the party. And I am, because I work hard to be those things.
Living next door to the person you despise gives you a constant reminder to be better, to do better. My little brother, Tom, moved away years ago, and none of us have heard from him since he graduated college. Well, he did “call in” to the private funeral, but that hardly counts. His absence all these years was a strain on my mom, I’m sure, no doubt contributing to her early onset Alzheimer’s, even though he would never take responsibility for that, I’m sure. He’d rather hide in California, pretend none of us existed until there was a chance for an inheritance. Too bad, Tommy, too bad.
Who knows, maybe it wasn’t Tom’s fault. Maybe my mom just wanted to fade away from the ogre she had married and allowed to rule her roost. That could be the case. My hope back then was that it was contagious, the Alzheimer’s, that soon I’d see my father decline into a babbling, drooling mess. I dreamed about that too often, imagining his slip into helplessness as a just punishment for his crimes. It never happened, but that’s fine because the gas took care of it. It doesn’t bother me that I now live next to the house where my parents died, though as I mentioned, Mia thinks it ought to. Why should it? We all go sometime. It was their time.
As for my long-lost brother calling in to the funeral, that really happened. Mia and the boys and I walk into the funeral parlor, both caskets closed up in front, the rent-a-pastor standing stoically, awaiting our arrival.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the preacher said, nodding at us. “I’m sure you won’t mind that we have one more person here who wishes to pay his respects. Your brother, Tom, couldn’t be with us today in person, but he did want to participate in the service remotely.”
That’s when the preacher pointed to a cell phone propped on top of my dad’s casket.
“Are you kidding me? Tommy?” I managed before Mia grabbed my arm.
“Hey, big brother. How’s it going?” the cell phone said.
I tilted my head, the shock clearing at the sound of his voice. I knew why he’d made contact, but there was nothing left. I’d made sure of it. “I’ve been better, Tommy. Where are you?”