I couldn’t work out any other reason a soul would enter a sanctuary at that god-forsaken hour.
I kneeled. They sat behind me. I shivered at the thought of them staring straight into my back. The clunk of my swallow and that weight sinking down, down in the pit of my stomach told me they knew I had the cross and chain and finally I was about to meet my own foreboding retribution. Soon enough, I found myself wrapping up my prayers so I could get the hell out of there.
Grandma insisted that I light two candles in front of Mary every day, one from me and one from her, since she couldn’t make it down there herself. Luckily, my route to Mary and back down the side aisle totally avoided the men. I had deduced a great likelihood of their “being up to no good,” which radiated from their imposing, irreverent postures—inappropriate for inside a church. So, keeping my distance seemed wise. I stood, crossed myself, and proceeded toward the altar. As I stood, the cool, metallic crucifix touched my chest. I had it draped around my neck and tucked into my shirt. Surely only one thing was true; those guys could not see me with that chain. My mind raced to find a way to get it off.
I stepped forward. A pair of familiar shoes caught my periphery. Carmine Carmidio hadn’t left after all. Beneath the horizon of the pew to my right, there he lay, flat on the pew, face down, stiff as a board. I would have thought he’d died, but I hadn’t heard him fall. I tried not to think about it.
I tried to continue my slow pace to Mary and proceeded to light the candles—without looking like anything was off. I stretched up to the top, back row, as most people never lit the candles there. As I did so, I held my shirt close to my stomach to avoid being lit on fire. But even though I tried to avoid the flame, one of them licked my right elbow. It took a second to notice it, because elbows are not exactly the most sensitive part of the body. But then . . . I saw. Flames! I threw down the match and flipped my arm over. A very light pink patch already formed at the tip. My attempt at inconspicuousness was drastically failing. I could feel their eyes. The wick’s smoke swirled into the air, and with a surge of enthusiastic dread, I turned down the side-aisle, breaking into a sprint. I didn’t care what those dagos thought. I’d already called attention to myself multiple times. There just wasn’t much to hide anymore.
Just after I passed the confessional, the door opened behind me. I tripped over my own foot and slammed onto the whirling gray, marble floor. I immediately shot up and beetled to the door.
“Are you all right?” a man’s voice asked.
I spun around. It was Father Piccolo.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I proceeded my scuttling out the door.
“Did you fall?”
“Yeah.” I entered the vestibule and leapt out the doors.
My knees didn’t start aching or my elbow burning until I had peddled halfway home. All that adrenaline wore off. And I could feel something again.
Chapter 5
I peddled onto Elm. When I rounded the corner, I could see Dad and Angelo. Angelo stood, arms folded, on the grass next to the tool box, looking down at the bottom of our ’57 station wagon. Dad rolled out from under the car on his little red creeper. It wasn’t all that unusual to see Dad rolling around under that dusty-brown piece of junk at least once a week. Basically, something was always wrong with it, and my guess is he also just liked rolling around.
I hoped off my bike and walked it over, my saddle shoes slapping their way across the concrete. As I got closer I could see the blackness of their hands and the sweat swelling on the base of their necks.
“What’s goin’ on?” I yelled as I made my way up the sidewalk and landed beside Angelo.
“Brake line,” Angelo said.
“Ah-h,” I nodded, arms folded, as I stood on the other side of the tool box from him. I had no idea what that meant. But judging from the slight edgy quality of Angelo’s answer, I decided not to ask. I found that it is better in times like those to just keep my mouth shut. But I stood there for a few more seconds, acting like everything was normal. When the silence continued, I figured it was in my best interest to split.
I ran up the stairs and swung around the banister to effectively launch my body into my room. I jiggled open my dresser drawer, which had a tendency to get stuck at about two inches open. The drawer lurched open so hard the whole dresser clanked around. The lamp on top tipped from side to side like a sailor home from sea. But before it even had a chance to think about leaping off the dresser I seized the base and brought it, seemingly, back to sobriety. Dad’s voice in unformatted syllables pounded on the window. After grabbing a pair of shorts from the drawer, I scooted over to the pane. As I slid off my nice shorts and slid into my play shorts, or in this case work shorts, I leaned toward the window to see what was going on.
Angelo had rolled himself from under the car. And Dad was crouched down with one of his hands supporting his weight while the other flailed around like a chicken with its head cut off—honestly. It takes forever for chickens to die. That past spring we visited Mom’s sister’s family’s farm out in Butler. Yeah, glad I lived in Mahoningtown—that’s all I got to say.
I squinted, trying to see Angelo’s face as he lay there on the ground. Black crap and anger all over it. Then both of them stood up and started screaming at each other. Hands flew all over the place.
Nicky came out from the house across the street and calmly made his way over to the two raging dagos. Hands in pockets, he moved his head back and forth while the other two stopped their ruckus and listened. Then Dad put his arm up around the back of Nicky’s neck. Nice like. While patting Nicky on the chest with his free hand, he continued yelling at Ang. Angelo didn’t seem to take this very well. He threw the tool across the yard and stormed into the house. Next, he slammed the door to the bathroom. I rushed away from the window and continued getting ready for work.
Nicky was Dad’s favorite, and to the rest of us, that was obvious. I didn’t mind it much. It’s just how it was. It’s just Italian fathers and sons. Nicky was the oldest, so he was the favorite—plain and simple. Just like Mugga is his Dad’s favorite, and Marco is his Dad’s favorite and even Dad is Popi’s favorite. Plain and simple. But for some reason Angelo just didn’t get it. I never did understand why. Instances like that forced me to notice that Ang was just a big baby. He took stuff too personally, especially stuff that Dad said. I never had a problem with it; it’s just the way it was. But, then again, I disregarded any ridiculous expectations of Dad. I didn’t think he had many emotions. I sensed that we were alike in that way. But when it came to Dad’s own opinion, disregarding the whole “favorite” systems, he really did like Nicky the best of us.
I heard Angelo’s muffled stomps thudding up the carpeted stairs. When he stepped onto the landing, he slammed his palm against the wall next to his bedroom doorway and slammed the door to his room.
“Ang?” I walked across the hall and knocked on the door. “Ang?”
Silence.
“Ang? You . . . you there?”
“Enough Rosie!” he shouted. “Enough!”
I didn’t have any more words than that. My hand dropped to my side and I turned back to my room. I couldn’t do anything anyway. I slipped on my shoes and started my way over to the shoe shop.
After spinning around the banister at the bottom the stairs, I saw that the back door was open. Just wide open, letting in all the flies. And through the opening, Nicky’s
