Benny & Ray 32

Paul

 

 

This whole thing was a trip.  I can’t believe I’m back in Chicago after all these years.  Damn. Ma looked so much older than the last time I saw her at Pop’s funeral.  So did Ray; he had a full head of hair last time I saw him, which I think was summer of ’93, maybe ‘94.  He had it buzzed now, and it was as short as peach fuzz.  Me—I had given up ten years ago and had completely gone for the Michael Jordan look. 

 

Maria was mostly the same but she looked tired—on account of all the kids, I guess, and this husband of hers? Well, Maria was a smart girl—always got straight A’s in school.  I always pictured she’d end up with a college guy, an engineer or something like that, and move out to the ‘burbs.  But she was still living in the Vecchio household, had never cut the apron strings.  Don’t know how she could stand it.  Life in the house had been unbearable to me. I left for college one day and never, ever slept in my childhood bed again. 

 

I could understand why Fran finally had left.  Life in New York was no cakewalk either, living in one of the largest cities in the world, attempting intimacy with a stranger.  I’m surprised she stuck her marriage out as long as she did.

 

Fran.  Wow.  She grew up nice.  Francesca had been my baby, growing up.  I was the one who always looked after her.  When she cried, she wanted me, not Ma.  Many nights she fell asleep on my stomach as I lay in front of the TV.  She was so little when I left— eight years old— skinny, with big buck teeth and thick coke-bottle glasses.  I really didn’t even believe it was really her when she showed up at my condo one day.  It wasn’t until she spoke that I knew it was her.  We had been talking by phone for months, and we finally connected at the holidays. She was in a pickle with that sham marriage of hers.  She wanted to leave her husband. Of course, I had to help her out.  She had been living with me since Christmas.  Just came up to spend the holiday and never went back. I guess I actually have some family loyalty after all.  Ha.  Pop didn’t manage to beat it all out of me.

 

Somehow, I’d let her talk me into escorting her back to Chicago.  I had been sick with dread and anxiety about it for days.  Sitting in the parlor, in this house, smelling the combination of household cleaners, soaps, lotions and perfumes that were unique to our home after so much time had passed was a very surreal experience. 

 

We had had a nice lunch a Scarpetti’s.  Old Pat. Can’t believe he was still there in the same old place. I had waited tables for him when I was a senior in high school, and the year after, saving up money for college.   

 

We went back to the house on Octavia after lunch.  I got to see all Maria’s kids gathered together.  It was a little daunting, I gotta tell you.  David was solid, a heavy-set kid—the kind football coaches drooled over.  He was in pre-school, and Paul was in kindergarten last time I saw them, when Pop died.  They just kind of looked at me strange when I was introduced as their uncle.  Can’t say I blame them.  And Raphael was a newborn when I saw him last. I think he was kind of psyched about having another uncle.  We quickly bonded.

 

 And these new ones—let me see if I have it straight:  The youngest boy was Donny, then there was Rosanna, and then the baby’s name was Marissa.  Marissa reminded me of Francesca as a baby.   

 

I could definitely see who got the Vecchio genes among Maria’s kids.  Like Ray, who was a Vecchio to a ‘T’, Paul, Donny, and Rosanna were tall for their age, and thin like string beans.  Too bad for them, because they inherited a whole lot of bullshit with that set of genes.  Pop and all his brothers were reprobates to one degree or another; all Mobster wanna-be’s, but really just small-timers.  Alcoholism ran through the Vecchio family like a putrid blight and had killed quite a few of them prematurely. 

 

On the other hand, Maria and I followed after Ma’s people, the Esposito’s.  We were both like our grand-dad; we had inherited our nonno’s smarts.  Ma and I carried on his passion for medicine.  Ma was still nursing at the Med Center where she had worked most of our lives.  I had started out with an intention for med school, but ended up at the pharmacy school instead. 

 

And then there was my cousin Valerie, who I don’t remember too much, quite frankly.  I remember her ma pretty well from when they used to live in the neighborhood, but I just can’t remember having any long conversations with her back then.  She seemed nice enough over lunch, but just a little standoffish. But who was I to talk, I guess?

 

And this boyfriend of Ray’s, Ben?  Woah.  Fran had told me all about it.  Well, that was one hell of a shocker when I heard that!  But then again, maybe it shouldn’t have been.  Maybe Pop kind of knew back then, even if he didn’t know that he knew, and that’s why he singled out Ray so much as a kid.  Don’t know. 

 

Well, as homosexual relationships went, Ray had done pretty well for himself.  I mean, even I could see that Ben was a hottie.  Shit.  Maybe for him I’d want to ruin my life too.   

I just hope for Ray’s sake that he crosses back over to this side soon and dumps this guy. Life could be so brutal for gays and bi’s. I had a couple of gay friends who lived in the South End, and they just drew trouble like metal filings to a magnet.  

 

Growing up with the kind of guys we grew up with, childhood was no cakewalk for a gay, either.  I just think of that poor kid Marco.  He was one of those kids that you just kind of knew was “a fag”, a sissy, even at an early age, and he used to get the crap beaten out of him a couple of times a year.  Frankie Zuko put him in the hospital once, he beat him up so bad.  Ray started hanging out with Marco after that; I think he kind of felt sorry for him.  Ray was really his only true guy friend in junior high.  Tommy, Marco Matroni, and Ray hung out together.  They were the dorky misfits that really tried hard to fit in.  Tommy tried, mostly by acting out and getting into trouble to try to look cool.  He became the guy you went to when you wanted to score some pot, or get a fake ID; that kind of thing.  Ray did it the right way, by sheer determination.  His grades were lousy, he was on all his teachers’ shit list for cutting up in class, and a lot of kids didn’t like him because he ran his mouth all the time.  But Ray got good at basketball, finally made the cut his junior year, and so he became The Jock.  He learned to be a smooth-talker with the girls, and he got by okay. 

 

I felt bad leaving Ray behind.  It literally made me feel sick to my stomach. I actually tried to talk him into coming to Boston with me and going to school.  But Ray wasn’t having it.   

 

We had been close as kids.  We were only thirteen months apart, so Ma, and in fact most of our friends and family treated us like twins.  We did everything together.  We took baths together, slept in the same bed, did a paper route together…But as time went on, I was placed in the academically advanced classes, and Ray was in the regular ones.  He actually had to be put in remedial reading for a couple of years.  He did have some developmental dyslexia that was pretty severe when he was a little kid.  It got better as he got older, although he never grew to like reading and writing.  He avoided it as much as possible, so he got promoted to the next grade usually by the skin of his teeth most years.

 

We were into cars back in the day, too.  Let me tell you.  We could talk about them all day, and stay up half the night talking about what kind of car we were going to get as soon as we turned sixteen.  When Pop was in a good mood, like when he won money at the track or hit his number or something, he’d buy us model airplane and model car kits.  Our favorite was the cars.  My favorites to get were the T-Birds and the Mustangs. Ray’s were the Rivs and the Impala low riders.  I never did get my T-bird, or my Mustang; my first car was a piece-of-shit 1970 Plymouth Duster.  Ray eventually got his Riv. I wonder what ever happened to those old models.  Maybe they were in the attic or basement someplace; Ma wasn’t too keen on throwing things out.  Probably my whole life was still embedded in the house; dozens of small mementos scattered everywhere.

 

Ma and I sat outside in the backyard, underneath the old maple, new spring leaves nearly chartreuse.  My mind silently summed up all the leaves to be raked in the fall.  “Why are you so angry at me?” Ma asked.  She was frustrated.  We had been outside for an hour, trying to hash it out.  I stared through the thin leaf canopy at the azure sky, trying to articulate an answer for her.

 

1977.       I told Ma that I was looking at schools back east.  I had to get out of the house.  Ma had been in tears all week.  Ray was giving me the silent treatment.  Pop had alternately begged, badgered and tried to bully me into not going to college at all.  One day, he was screaming at me at the top of his lungs, out in the street, for all the world to see and hear.  Calling me a pretty-boy pansy faggot, running off the college so I could stick my nose up in the air at him later in life.  In his day, college was for draft-dodgers—guys who couldn’t cut it.  He had been in Vietnam, for Christ’s sake, at the siege at Khe Sanh, watching his buddies get blown away.  Blown the fuck away, he had said.  He was drunk, stumbling, slurring his words.  Said he never had to worry about Ray running off; Ray was too dumb for college; he’d never go anyplace.  Ray heard him. How could he not? The whole damn neighborhood heard him.  Ray cried in bed that night once he thought I was sleeping.  The next morning, Pop had sobered up.  Ma begged him to apologize to both of us for the cruel things he had said, but he wouldn’t. A father did not apologize to his sons.  A couple of months later, Ray had joined the Army and the was the last anybody saw of him for two years.

 

 

1979.       I had finally saved enough money to get me through a couple of years of college. The night before I left for Boston, Ray and I went out to celebrate; just the two of us.  Ray had been out of the Army for a few weeks.  I told Ray he could just come with me, even  if he didn’t want to go to school.  He could just get a job, and we could get an apartment and split it. It’d be just like living at home, just without the hassle.  I could tell he liked the idea by the wistful look in this eye, but he turned me down flat.  Ray said he needed to stay, to make sure nothing happened to Ma, Maria, or Fran.  He’d learned out to defend himself; he was now a weapons expert thanks to Uncle Sam.  But the women, he feared for.  There was some blame in his voice, a subtle accusation towards me that I willfully disregarded.  I told Ray I felt sorry for him for being stuck in Chicago, and he had only shrugged.

 

A couple of months after that, Ray had moved out of the house, and lived in a two bedroom apartment in The Heart of Italy with three other guys, some dump off Oakley Ave.  He told me that Ma and Pop had been fighting a lot, and it was mostly over me.  It had become unbearable at last.  Ray got a job at a garage painting cars, doing auto detailing, and some minor repair work.  Wasn’t the best-paying job in the world, and Ray had developed a taste for expensive, flashy clothes.  On the weekends, he’d hustle in the streets for cash, playing craps, shooting pool, or whatever he had to do to make sure he had cash for the latest threads.  Next thing I’d heard from Ray, he had gotten accepted into the police academy.  Couldn’t have seen that one coming.  I think he did it to piss Pop off.  Pop hated cops.

 

1989.       Pop died of heart failure on September 29.  Cardiomyopathy.  Ma found him, stone cold.  At least he died in his own bed.  I was back in Chicago a few hours after Ray called.    After the service a few days later, Ma and I had it out.  I couldn’t understand why everyone was crying, mourning him.  No big loss as far as I was concerned; all they needed to do was backfill the grave and keep it moving.  Ma wanted me to forgive Pop, but I wouldn’t. Couldn’t.  We said some pretty awful things to one another that day.  Cursing, hysterics.  The next morning, she asked for an apology, but I didn’t feel I had said anything to apologize for.  In fact, I wanted an apology from her, because she damn well knew Pop was abusing us, but did nothing about it during all those years.  That was like saying it was okay that he did what he did.  She told me that it was my fault that I got hit as much as I did.  If we boys could have just minded him, we would not have had so many problems. “Oh yeah?” I had asked.  “What did I do to deserve having my arm broken, Ma?!  What can a five-year-old do so wrong that his father breaks his arm? Answer me that!”   

 

She had gasped, and covered her face with her apron.  “I didn’t think you remembered!” she cried.

 

“Oh, I remember, Ma.  I remember plenty.” 

 

   

“I’m sorry,” Ma said.  “I should have been stronger.  I should have protected you better than I did.  What kind of mother doesn’t protect her own children?”  I know Ma felt bad about that.  It was the only time she ever left her husband.  She took us all to Aunt Gigi's house, but a couple of weeks later, he came for her...for all of us.  And we went back home, and that was that.  She forgave Pop. Gigi never did, which was why she never spoke to her brother-in- law again.  I never forgave him, either, though I learned, in time, to move on. 

 

Ma started to cry.  I started to cry too, for her.  And for me. We sat together, these two lonely islands of misery, each immersed in the past for the moment.  I looked over at Ma.  The lines in her face were so deep, at the corners of her eyes, her mouth, her face contorted with pain.  Her hands were speckled with age spots. 

 

I suddenly felt like a monster.  Cruel.  Hard.  Like my father.

 

I did something I hadn’t done in about thirty years.  I leaned over her, reclining until I had placed my head on her generous lap.  Her hands came up and caressed my head, her hands warm, dry, and soft.

 

She began to talk to me. To tell me how things really were back then.  And I explained to her how it was for me.  And we just kept on talking until the pain was quelled. 

 

Ma and I forgave each other that day.