by Alexa Hart
Pop was going to die.
Suddenly I wanted my father’s company very much.
He was awake, munching some popcorn and watching re-runs of Friends. I grinned at him, closing the door behind me. I had barely avoided conversation with Dario just trying to get to Pop’s room. I just needed to be left alone for a while, see Pop... regroup.
“My Natalia! My love! Come! Sit with me!” He patted the hospital-style bed, gleeful that I was there. I gave him a hug – trying to not focus on his frailty – and determined to have a nice evening with my father.
“Gimme some of that,” I ordered, reaching for his popcorn bowl and stealing a handful of the goods.
He laughed and put the bowl between us while I laid out beside him, propped in the same awkward angle now, and staring at the TV screen.
“That one – that one there – ” he said, pointing at the box. “That one that’s always cleaning. I never did like her. So much trouble that one! Your mother was always cleaning – everything spotless! And she only ever spoke kind words to me! None of this nagging and nitpicking – no one wants a wife like that!”
I let him have his old man rant, thinking but not saying that not every woman wanted to be a wife at all. But that was a world Pop didn’t understand. And at this point – I wasn’t going to waste any of the precious moments we had left trying to open his eyes past his own generation. It just didn’t matter now.
I put my head on his shoulder, careful to not allow the full weight of it to rest on him. “You and Mom. Now there was a great love story, Pop.” I smiled, knowing his absolute favorite thing in the whole entire world was to speak of the life that he and my mother had created together.
“Ah, Natalia – it was magnificent! One of a kind!” He put a shrunken, gnarled hand on mine then, both of us still staring at the television, but neither of us really seeing it. I was prepared for one of his excited accounts of the wondrous love he shared with my mother, but that wasn’t what he had to say.
He cleared his throat, and I turned slightly, making sure he was alright. “Pop?” I didn’t want the worry to show in my tone – but that’s nearly all there was anymore. Worry. Fear. Expectation of the worst.
“Natalia, my love. I know my time is short. I know it better than the doctors and the nurses. I know it better than your brother. I know it better than you,” he spoke quietly – but clearly. Calm dark eyes sought out mine and he squeezed my hand – taking me so off guard with his statement that tears were burning in my eyes before I even knew they were coming. “I need to tell you something, sweet Natalia, and you must listen to me.” He paused, and I nodded, my composure quickly fading. “You must not waste it. You are my child, and I know you are in love. You are in love and you must not waste it. Do you hear me, sweet girl?”
Tears were freely coming down my cheeks now. I didn’t have the strength to keep them in, and I really no longer saw any point in doing so. My father had seen me cry many times before, and there wasn’t a need to hide it from him now.
“Pop... I...”
“You love Maximo, do you not?”
He was still holding my hand, his eyes glistening now. I didn’t know if this was too much for him – I wasn’t sure how much emotion he could handle. But he wouldn’t look away, and I knew I couldn’t hide anything from him.
“Yes, Pop. I do, but – ”
“You do not have time for buts! Do not waste it, Natalia! Do not waste it!”
He was openly crying now also, and I hugged him for lack of knowing what else I could possibly do. I understood what he was saying. I couldn’t respond, but that wasn’t what he needed from me right now anyway.
I tried to imagine what it must be like, feeling yourself waste away and knowing every single person you loved would be going on without you. You wouldn’t be there to help them, guide them, love them, hug them... Pop must have felt such an urgency to share the things he needed Dario and I to hear... I could see that it was torturous for him.
And Max... He loved Max like his own child. He knew I loved Max. He knew Max loved me.
He knew I wanted no part of the business he and Rafaele had bequeathed to their sons.
There was a time in my life when I had wanted to hate him for bringing us into this. I had wanted to blame him for my not being able to have a normal life with Maximo. I had needed someone to blame. But I’d never been able to feel anything less than love and compassion for my father. He had been born into this too. And whatever else he might be, he was an amazing dad.
Amazing.
“I love you, Pop,” I whispered to him, still embraced and once again scared to let go.
“I love you, my sweet Natalia,” he whispered in return, patting my back with one of his withered hands. “You must let yourself be happy, my child. It is all over so fast... Do not waste it.”
We stayed like that for a long while, both of us allowing the grief to flow out. We were quietly accepting – together – that this was truly happening. We would soon part ways.
Time was up.
Shortly after, Pop fell asleep – again without any real warning. One minute he was hugging me, crying softly. The next he was passed out. I gently laid him back on his pillows, and stared at him. What a strong man he had been. Kind, but intimidating. Pure hearted... but full of the unthinkable...
I had so many lovely memories of my father. And a few that were wholly the opposite.
My eyes closed and I began to doze, while also recalling the first time that I had realized my prince of a father was also part monster.
“Why ya always gotta ruin everything, Nat?” Dario was whining.
Max gave him a slap on the back of the head. “She doesn’t feel good, numb-nuts. It’s not her fault.”
I didn’t look at either of them. I was too embarrassed. How did you tell your brother and your best friend – both of whom could not possibly understand due to the fact that neither of them would ever experience it – that you were thwarting their plans for some viciously competitive basketball (every man for himself) due to the merciless cramps ripping through your uterus?
I was only eleven, but Mother Nature had seen fit to grace me with the gift of menstruation earlier than almost all of the other girls in my grade. What made it worse was that my mother had been dead a year – victim of an aneurysm that took her out instantly while she was quietly preparing a Sunday dinner roast beef – and all I had was my father to “guide” me through the experience.
He eventually turned to Elena Fanucci for help, realizing he was completely inadequate to handle the situation in the full capacity that his daughter needed. Elena had been a lifesaver. She had talked me through – and walked me through – literally everything regarding my “change”.
But at this point, it was still just me and the package of maxi pads my father had awkwardly placed on my nightstand, telling me “This should get you through it, Natalia. It’ll be okay.”
I tried to walk faster than the boys, to no avail. We all entered the Angelone backyard sweaty, cranky, and completely unexpected.
Our fathers’ voices were booming out the back screen-door – carrying tones that almost instantly froze us all in our tracks.
“This is getting a little extreme, Rafaele! You can’t take out every single fool who crosses us! The feds are going to sniff us out like the dogs that they are! We’re drawing too much attention to the business! Too much!” Pop ranted, sounding angry but mostly scared.
The three of us looked quizzically at each other. Our fathers ran a store together. Sure, sometimes it seemed like they were a bit heavily stressed, considering their occupations – but we had never heard them openly arguing – and certainly not with each other.
And had he said “feds”?
“You let a problem stick around and you end up with exactly that, Dante. Fucking problems. Would you rather dodge the feds, or take your chances dodging some rat bastard asshole’s gun to your head while you’re sleeping like a dumb fat pig?” Rafaele had
replied just as heatedly, and I saw Max tense out of the corner of my eye.
“It’s just a lot of death lately, Rafaele! It seems like everyone is losing their goddamn minds! Who do we trust? How do we know?” Pop sounded exhausted now, the anger fading into exasperation.
“We don’t know, Dante. We use our best judgment. When that isn’t good enough, we make it good. We keep going. E fatta.” Rafaele had also seemingly calmed down, though he sounded less concerned with the matter at hand and more-so engrossed in convincing Pop that they were doing the right thing.
“Fat pig...” Pop now burst out laughing – the sound erupting out of him like an elixir. “You’re the fat pig, idiota!”
They were both laughing now, and the three of us exchanged slightly relieved glances, although denying the nature of this conversation had become impossible.
“You want to see a fat pig? Joe Ricci – when I found him naked in the bathtub with his puttana. Ugliest vision you could ever imagine. I would have shot him anyway just for making me see that, I think. And I think I did her a favor, to be honest,” Rafaele was jolly now, recalling what could only be a scene where Joseph Ricci ceased to exist.
Pop was beyond himself now. He was laughing so hard he was coughing, and the two of them carried on with the merriment for quite some time after.
They had killed Joe Ricci, and they were laughing about it.
They were laughing about it.
Chapter 8
Maximo
I hadn’t been sure how that day would end. The looks on Dario and Natalia’s faces had sent a sudden shrieking fear through my young mind that I was about to lose my two best friends.
They hadn’t known.
I had.
That was the main difference between the Angelone and Fanucci households. My father believed in giving me the blunt truth from a very young age, whereas Pop wanted his kids to get to be kids for a few years, at least. I had always envied them for that. I couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of what was actually going on at the store, with the business, etc.
Rafaele Fanucci had declared to his young wife one evening long, long ago, that if his son was going to run the business someday, there was no time to waste in getting him accustomed to the lifestyle – to the truth. I had been two when this conversation happened, according to my mother. And though she never said so herself, I believed it to be the reason why they never had any more children. This was a matter they did not agree on.
But you didn’t win an argument with Rafaele Fanucci. You just didn’t. Not even if you were married to him.
I had kept my knowledge to myself – feeling almost protective of Nat and Dario. We were nearly all the same age, but they were really children. Even as a boy I had known there was something worth protecting in that.
It had twisted my gut to witness them find out the truth – or at least enough of the truth to begin piecing the full truth together. They were going to think my father was scary now. They were going to think Pop was scary now.
I didn’t want them to be afraid of me, too.
So, I had pretended to be surprised – to the best of my ability. I’m not sure Natalia ever believed that I hadn’t already known something, but maybe that was partially because she had always suspected something herself. In any case, it hadn’t injured our comradery. It seemed to bring us all that much closer together.
We instinctively knew that no one else was ever going to understand us and what we came from, like us.
We had all processed it differently – coming to terms with our “inheritance” in our own individual ways. I always thought that the most important part was that we had all come to terms with it, and therefore it was going to be okay.
I had thought that right up until a 21-year-old Natalia said she was leaving and not coming back.
This all raced through my mind as I drove to the Angelone house to check in with Dario and visit Pop. He had looked steadily worse every time I had seen him this last week, and I now had decided that seeing him every single day was of urgent importance. He wasn’t going to last much longer. In some ways I felt like I was losing a father all over again.
I could have walked to their house in less time than it took to drive there if I still lived at my mother’s. Our family home was only one street over, and only two backyards plus Oak Street had separated us as kids. My house was a bit further – still only seven actual blocks away, and well within the neighborhood. But with Natalia being home, I now felt like I lived on a different continent.
I hesitated at the front door. The normal policy had always been a quick knock, door open, “Anybody home?”, and someone called back from whatever corner of the house they were in. I didn’t want Nat to feel like I was intruding, however, or forcing myself upon her; so I knocked politely – and awkwardly – like a new guest who had never been inside the Angelone walls.
Unfortunately, it was Natalia who answered the door, which made my entry more intrusive and pronounced than it would have been if I had simply followed normal protocol. I had taken her completely off guard, judging by the shocked look on her face. She was in ripped jeans and a simple white T-shirt – both of which snugly hugged her small frame in a painfully tantalizing way that I knew she was completely oblivious to. She was holding a spray bottle in one hand, her hair up in one of her adorable messy buns, and a slight glean of sweat on her forehead.
Cleaning. She was cleaning the house.
“I’m just here for Dario – and to see Pop,” I said quickly – so quickly that it came off borderline rude.
“Oh – oh okay,” she replied, swiftly recovering her composure and nodding as she let me in. “They’re back in Pop’s room.” She then motioned towards the hallway and began to walk in the opposite direction.
“Nat,” I called after her, feeling that surge of panic that came anytime she walked away from me.
She spun around, straining to look pleasant – and failing. She was nervous – terrified – of what might come out of my mouth right now. I almost broke down and grabbed her face to kiss her. But I didn’t.
“You still run?” I asked, grinning slightly.
“Y-yes. Yeah. I run every day in California,” she answered – relaxing slightly but still unsure as to what I was getting at.
“Me too. I mean – not in California. Here. I run here,” I stuttered out, and this brought a small smile to her face. Not wanting to waste the moment, I quickly continued. “Come run with me tomorrow. Same course as always. As friends – just friends. There’s a lot going on right now. It’d be good for both of us, I thought... I mean... I dunno...”
“Running. Yeah, I can do that,” Natalia responded awkwardly, nodding and clutching her spray bottle so tightly I could see the white of her knuckles. “Sure. What time?”
I hadn’t expected her to agree so easily, and I certainly hadn’t planned a time to follow up the invitation with. “Four?” It came out as a question for both of us. “I’ll pick you up?”
She hesitated then, and I realized my vehicle was now associated with something a bit heavier than running. But I held my cool, raising an eyebrow and waiting patiently for an answer.
“Yeah. Okay. Four. Running at four,” she agreed, repeating the details and eyeing me wearily. And then a typical Natalia panic seemed to set in and she waved me towards Pop’s room. “He’s awake. Go give him some hell.” She smiled and twirled around again, apparently off to put out a fire judging from the speed she had assumed.
I felt like a teenager again, watching her ass bounce gracefully away.
God. That ass.
“Max! Buddy!” Dario’s voice echoed down the hallway, jarring me out of my daze.
Pop. You came to see Pop. Go fucking see Pop, Maximo.
And then I was heading towards Dario, returning his infectious smile and steeling my insides for what I knew would be a slightly more disturbing sight than the last time.
He always looked worse.
Today the topic was f
ootball. Pop was having a terrible time accepting this year's performance of his beloved Eagles. It was a long-standing tradition for him to swear that the next year would be better for x, y, and z reasons. He held to that tradition even now, but the predictions and the lecture had a flat tone to them that was very untypical of Pop Angelone.
He wouldn’t be here for next season, and we all knew it.
“I think we’ve got a new recruit for our local jobs, Pop,” Dario interjected almost desperately into the conversation. Pop raised his eyebrows, waiting for more information. “You probably know him – Leo Bianchi? He’s a few years older than us, but he’s been in the business his entire adult life. He got a good job down here in the city, so he’s moving his family down to the neighborhood. He’s askin’ to transfer stores.”
“Leo... Yes. I remember that little shit. Turned out to be a rather decent associate – though we all had our doubts when he was young. He’d be a great asset to you, but I guess that’s Maximo’s call now, isn’t it?” Pop looked at me expectantly.
Dario and I had only briefly discussed Leo’s possible transfer. I’d been too preoccupied to form any real opinion on the matter. And now they were both looking at me, waiting for my final say-so.
“We definitely need more bodies. This overnight shit is getting old really fast,” I threw out, still having absolutely no actual feeling about the situation.
Dario was nodding, and Pop joined him. “That’s about as official as it gets, then. Lighten your loads! You kids got lives to live!” Pop declared, still having an undeniable note of authority and decision, even though he looked like a skeletal depiction of his formal self.
Apparently, that was good enough for everyone, and I relaxed a little, hoping we could talk about fucking anything besides the business – except for possibly next year’s football season. There was knocking at the Angelone front door and Dario hopped up to get it this time.