Chapter Twenty-One
There is nothing worse than waiting, and it seems like that’s all I do lately. I waited for my test results, I’m waiting for the fucking nurse to call my name and then I’m sure I’ll wait some more once they stick me in a room and tell me the doctor will be right with me.
I’m hanging onto my sanity by a thread. Between my health scare and learning my father’s dying, I don’t know what to do with myself. One minute I want to lock myself away and cry, the next, I want to scream and hit something. In the end my tears win and I cry for my father, for my mother, and for me and my sister.
Growing up a mobster’s daughter was never easy, me and my sister lived life differently than our friends. We followed a different set of rules than them and were overcompensated for the things we couldn’t do because our father was a dangerous man. Friends never slept over at our house because their parents wouldn’t allow them to, too freaked out by the bullet proof windows and the bodyguards lurking around the front door.
Dating was no picnic either. The few guys brave enough to date us went through the ringer. Look at Anthony for instance, my father fucked him harder than anyone. Then there was the other type of guy that went after the mobster’s daughter, the one who hoped one day to be part of the Pastore organization. Let’s not forget the guys like Rico who used and abused me to get close to my father. That ended in bloodshed.
However, all of those things weren’t as bad as waiting for the dreaded day the inevitable happened and we got the call that daddy’s not coming home. I always thought my father would die just as Mikey’s dad did, caught off guard, shot in the broad day light, his lifeless body lying in a pool of his own blood. If you ask Adrianna, she’d tell you our dad would go down guns blazing until he couldn’t physically pull the trigger anymore.
If someone really wanted to kill daddy, they’d have to blow his trigger finger off.
Those were her exact words.
Surprisingly, we were both wrong and I don’t know if I should be grateful for that. Is suffering from cancer better than dying from a gunshot wound? Which is the lesser of the two evils?
I was just accepting the fact he’d be in prison for the rest of his life, thinking he’d live to a ripe old age and I’d still be able to see him, still be able to speak to him on the phone and even write to him. Bottom line is he’d still be in my life one way or another.
Now I have to get used to the fact my dad is dying and by the time I do he will already be dead and I’ll have to live with the fact I no longer have my father in my life.
It’s a vicious cycle.
I think we all sometimes think about losing our parents; we wonder how we will feel, how our lives will go on and imagine how empty life will be, not just on holidays such as Mother’s Day or Father’s Day but the ordinary days, the days when you get a speeding ticket and you want to vent to your dad. For so long your parents are by your side, guiding you, cheering you on and making sense of the things you don’t understand. Even as an adult they never cut the cord, they simply take a step back, never too far, always there for you as you face the things that scare the shit out of you.
There was a time in my life when I felt bitter, when I resented my dad for his lifestyle, a time when I blamed him for everything wrong in our family. My dad made a lot of mistakes in his life but he’s still my daddy, my first hero, my first love, the first man who ever loved me unconditionally and the man who brought back the love of my life. He gave me my eternal love; he gave me Mikey.
I only hope that he knows how grateful I am.
I turn to Mikey and watch as he flips through a parenting magazine, shaking his head in amazement at the article he pretends to read. I lean close to him, placing my hand on his knee and wait for him to turn his gaze to me.
“Remind me to thank my dad when we go see him,” I whisper.
“Thank him for what?” He questions, closing the magazine and taking my hand in his.
“Everything good in my life,” I reply, glancing across the room at my mother sitting in her chair reading her prayer book.
I smile at her, she took that little green book everywhere. She’s had it since I was a kid, starting every morning with a cup of coffee and a prayer to Saint Anthony. Some people pray to Saint Anthony when they lose something or when they really need something good to happen, my mom prays to Saint Anthony because her father’s name was Anthony and praying to his patron saint makes her feel close to him. She prays for our health, for our happiness and for my father. She always prays for my father.
For his sins and for his redemption.