But if you ask me, the biggest tragedy here is not that my father killed people, or that he had an affair with my aunt, or that my mother shed her career, family, and friends to try to save an ex-convict with a dark past that always beckoned him back. For me, the most tragic part of this complex tale is that they died. No arrest record or eyewitness or unearthed letter or dusty, yellowing court transcript can change this for me. Because I know why they did what they did, at least as far as I was concerned. Impulsive and misguided as it may seem to the logical mind, my mother risked everything for love. Maybe it was sick, maybe it was pathological, but it was a love that only the two of them could understand. She loved my father in such a passionate, abiding way that she lost herself in it. And he clung to her, suspended perilously between violence and peace. Out of this union, I was created—their hope for a normal life, their one shot at absolution for my father’s ugly sins, for harboring secrets that woke them in the night. Though they yelled and cursed each other, and though their love ebbed and flowed dramatically through the years, they had the real thing, the kind of love we all wish we could find: inconvenient, risky, unconditional. It cut through all the adultery, the bankruptcies and the addictions, all the crap that doesn’t really change what people mean to each other. And my love for them is precisely the same: It never wavers. And if we could choose our parents, I still would have chosen them. They were a lot of work, but shit, what a ride.
I started the lonely walk back to my apartment, and the blustery air hitting my face reminded me that I was still crying. I wiped my tears on my sleeve and reminded myself that I should be grateful for my mother’s lies—they’d enabled me to have a blissfully ignorant childhood. I laughed out loud as I considered the parallel lives we’d been living under the same roof: I had Play-Doh, my father had cocaine, and my mother had a shopping addiction, and a secret. Maybe the illusion of a placid childhood was my mother’s final, enduring gift. It was a generous one, considering the turbulent childhood she’d had, infused with sorrow and disappointment. Could I blame her, then, that she fought like hell to keep her husband and child together, even if he was a killer? Even if he was a drug addict? Even if he told her to shut up and yelled and screamed and cheated? I had a childhood filled with love, so now I can give my children the same thing. Maybe that can be my final gift to her.
Standing on East End Avenue and facing a future yet to be written, I finally understood what she must have felt all those years ago when my father gave her a choice to be a family or watch him leave. For Eleanor, there was no choice to be made: She packed up her house and infant child under cover of night and seized the opportunity to begin again. She never looked back and she never apologized for her choice, because more than anything in this world she wanted a family—a real one that sat down to dinner together and explored and traveled together and showed each other real love. She thought she deserved a second chance, and I know exactly how she felt.
I’m ready for mine.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Nancy Sharkey—without you, there would simply be no book. (Thanks also to Joe.)
Dan Jones, a truly great editor, for pulling this story out of me for the column.
Trip Gabriel, for taking a chance with such unconventional subject matter.
Alice Martell, for your constant nurturing and support, and for taking on a news clerk who’d never written a book before.
Joe Siano, for the perfect title.
William Rashbaum, for offering himself as an invaluable resource. James Imperatrice.
Mark Johnson and Carole Weaver at the New York State Division of Parole.
Joseph Green and Michael Zeppieri at the Department of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Carolyn Wilder, for all those Accurint searches.
Jill Abramson, because I don’t actually expect to be the first woman executive editor of The New York Times.
Alexis Rehrmann, Margaux Laskey, and Steven McElroy, for juggling my schedule so I could fly to one interview after another.
Jennifer 8. Lee, for being so generous with your time, and for your invaluable guidance.
Peter Khoury, Karin Roberts, and Denise Fuhs, for pretending not to notice as I wrote my book every night on company time.
Jackson McPeters and Bill Gorman at the New York State Archives.
Roja Heydarpour and Magdalena Sharpe, for being among my first readers.
Christine Kelly.
Angela Rimi, for returning to some dark places and divulging so much. Tina Haines, the family historian, for prizing the past as much as I do. Donald Halsband, for your frankness and humor.
Rita Stier.
Barry Addison, “Mr. B,” for accurately remembering my mother as a “hottie.”
Arthur Johnson, Mark Gruss, Benita Kaimowitz, Gabe Kaimowitz, and Willa Williams—if only you all knew how much you meant to my mother. I was so glad to have found you all again.
Robert Gangi.
Jerry Capeci, my erstwhile partner in crime, and www.ganglandnews.com. Dr. N. G. Berrill, for telling me what I needed to hear, even though it hurt. David M. Hardy at the Department of Justice.
Doree Shafrir.
Lynn Buckley, for your dedication, and your truly unique cover design. Emily DeHuff and Beth Pearson, for their thoughtful and thorough copyediting.
Stephanie Smith, for shrewdly advising me to write down everything that happened that week in the hospital.
Dr. Diane Meier, for being our angel in the night all those years ago.
Natalie Aitkens Auger, for reminding me that my life didn’t peak in high school.
Erin and Nash Padula.
Carol Levithan, for always listening.
Jack Levithan, for sharing his grief and wisdom.
Grace Cassese.
Angela Macropoulos, for being among the first to believe in me, even when she barely knew me.
Arline Russo, for loving my mother as much as I do, and mourning her as intensely as I do.
Monika Hryszkiewicz, for waking me up from my grief-induced stupor and forcing me to clean my apartment.
Bruce Tracy, for setting this project in motion.
Jill Schwartzman and Lea Beresford, for your invaluable editing skills. We did it!
Raymond T. Colleran, my Lester Bangs. For your inexhaustible patience, you have my eternal gratitude.
Ji Young Park, for seeing the potential of this story very early on, and for your continued support throughout this process.
Jeffrey Matthew Mulligan, the brother I never had and always wanted.
Sarah Levithan, for filling the gaps in my memory, and for being the first to suggest that this should be a book. And for reading and advising and reading some more.
Bruce Springboard, a.k.a. John Angelo, a.k.a. Frank Cassese, a.k.a. Nicholas Angelo, a.k.a. John Mascia, for giving me the freedom to be my own person. You always knew just what to say when I was down and you will always have my respect. I miss you terribly.
And Eleanor Teodora Sacks Margulis Mascia, who told me so much more than a mother should ever tell a daughter. Whenever you thought I wasn’t paying attention, I was, and I remembered everything. I have never had a friend like you, nor will I ever again. You are my heart; you are the best. No wasted talent, Ma.
Some names have been changed to protect the good, the not so good, and those who may run for public office.
To all those contained within these pages: I tried to recollect these episodes as accurately as I could. If my recollection differs from yours, it was not intentional. Sometimes impression weighs more than fact. I tried my best.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Miami in 1977 to Brooklyn-reared parents, JENNIFER MASCIA was raised in Southern California and New York City. She graduated from CUNY Hunter College in 2001, and in 2007 received an M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She has spent the past three years as the nightside news assistant on the Metro desk of The New York Times. She lives in Manhattan.<
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Never Tell Our Business to Strangers is a work of nonfiction.
Some names and identifying details have been changed.
Copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Mascia
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Villard Books,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
VILLARD BOOKS and VILLARD & “V” CIRCLED Design are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following
for permission to reprint previously published material:
ALFRED PUBLISHING CO. INC.: Excerpt from “Danny’s Song,” words and music by Kenny Loggins, copyright © 1970, 1973 (copyright renewed) by Gnossos Music. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Alfred Publishing Co. Inc.
New York Daily News: “Piecing a Murder Case Together” by Francis M. Stephenson (6/16/63), “Mascia Given 20-to-Life in Dope Murder” by Edwin Ross (1/09/64), and an excerpt from “Murder Victim Linked to $4M Robbery in Queens” by Bernard Rabin and Robert Carroll (3/26/77). © New York Daily News, L.P. Reprinted by permission of New York Daily News.
The New York Times: “Two ‘Wrong Men’ Freed” from The New York Times (3/8/57). © 1957 The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution or retransmission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited.
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