The Godfather's Revenge

by Mark Winegardner

  “When would I ever do that?” Al said.

  Michael reached across the booth and gave his old friend a pat on the shoulder.

  IN LIGHT OF THE SITUATION WITH HAGEN, AL AND his driver—Donnie Bags, who’d proven himself loyal in the months he’d been reporting to Tommy—opted to stay in Maine as long as Michael did. When it came time to go pick up the kids, they took Al’s car—a black Coupe de Ville—since it was bigger. Donnie Bags stayed behind at the inn. Al drove. Rita prattled on, sweetly vulnerable, about not knowing how to behave around kids. He’d told her before that all she needed to know came from having been a kid herself, but now he just let her talk. The trick with women is knowing when to just let them talk.

  Soon they were coming up the winding, tree-lined road to the Trask Academy. Not far behind were a delivery van and two pickup trucks, one towing a boat, the other a trailer. Kay taught in the middle school here, and she and the kids lived on a lake, in one of the old stone houses supplied to faculty. Every time he visited this place, Michael Corleone couldn’t shake the feeling that he was coming home. Kay and his children were having exactly the life Michael had planned for them, except that Michael found himself standing outside it. He could trace the events that had made this happen. Explaining it was another matter.

  Back when he was in college, he’d hoped to someday teach mathematics, either at a university or at a prep school like this. When Michael had been in the Civilian Conservation Corps—and, later, when he’d lived in the Sicilian countryside outside the town of Corleone—he’d vowed that he’d raise his children in the fresh air, away from the literal and the metaphoric filth of the cities. Kay was from New Hampshire, and after an initial period of excitement over living in New York, she’d gotten her fill of it and had come to share this dream with him. And they’d tried. The house on Lake Tahoe had come close. There were times at Lake Tahoe he’d looked around and thought that—despite the difficulties—he was living his dream. And maybe, for a time, he really was.

  But there were other times. The worst times of all. The machine guns that opened fire on him and his family. What Fredo allowed to happen to himself. The bloody and intricate nightmares that lay behind those things.

  This place, though, was the genuine article. Ordinarily, Michael hated himself for second-guessing any of his decisions, business or personal. In his world, that was a defect that could get a man killed. But the Trask Academy was—to paraphrase a line from a short story often taught here—a summons to all his foolish blood: perched on a wide, sloping hill, surrounded by a lush Maine woods and yet only an hour away from the beach, featuring such other attractive qualities as finely coached athletic teams and the opportunity to grow up alongside boys and girls from America’s ruling-class families.

  Now he was coming here as a guest, to try to get reacquainted with his children and to introduce them to the woman he was dating, who’d gotten it in her head that maybe someday he’d consider marrying her. Despite her background in the entertainment business, Rita was a lovely person in every sense of the word. He was very fond of her. He was accustomed to her. She was easy to be with. It was possible that he loved her.

  But at the first glimpse of Kay on the white porch of her stone house, Michael knew that he could never be married to anyone else.

  Like most intelligent women, Kay was getting better-looking as she grew older. Her hair was drawn back, pleasantly askew in the summer breeze off the lake. Her arms were bare, and she had a deep tan a half-shade lighter than her blouse. Her cream-colored slacks had a 1940s-style drape that couldn’t help but remind him of when they’d first met, but there was so much more to her now: fuller-hipped, her arms toned from swimming and playing tennis, her girlishness conquered and replaced by what looked like serenity.

  Best of all, she was flanked by her children, with her arms around them, but not possessively: it looked, in fact, more like she was gently pushing them toward their father. Mary, on the left, was all coltish exuberance, an eleven-year-old girl in a summer dress, her dark hair meticulously styled, barely able to contain herself. Anthony was on the right, gawky from a recent growth spurt, sulky and insolent-looking from being a thirteen-year-old boy. Although his game wasn’t for a few hours, he was already wearing his baseball uniform—Wolves written in red chenille script across his son’s newly broadened chest.

  For a giddy moment, Michael wondered what it would take, how it might be possible, to get Kay back, to reassemble his broken family.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Rita said, grabbing him by the knee, startling him. He’d almost forgotten she was there.

  “They’re not worth it,” Michael said. “Keep your money. You ready?”

  She nodded.

  Rita, by comparison with Kay, seemed starved-looking and uselessly pretty. A flamingo to Kay’s lioness.

  “You’ll do great,” Michael said.

  They got out of the car. Mary sprinted across the lawn to embrace him. Anthony, carrying their suitcases, dutifully walked over and followed suit.

  Michael made the introductions. This was no surprise to any of them. They’d all heard about one another and seen pictures. Everything was cordial. Kay stayed back but Michael drew her in, too. What disturbed him, though, was the look of alarm in Kay’s eyes when she sized him up. “You’re looking good, Michael,” she said, without a trace of sarcasm. “Have you lost weight?”

  “Kay,” he said, “this is Marguerite Duvall.”

  “It’s an honor,” Kay said. “I saw you on Broadway in Cattle Call.”

  “Call me Rita.”

  From his perspective, the woman’s handshake did not seem unduly awkward.

  “Yeah,” Anthony said. “It was really great. I loved the burning bordello scene and that one song, the one about Dallas. We talked about doing it in drama club.”

  Rita thanked him.

  Michael plucked at Anthony’s uniform. The boy flinched, but only slightly. “I thought we were all going out to lunch before the game,” Michael said.

  “I get too nervous,” Anthony said. “I can’t eat until after.”

  “That’s fine,” Michael said. “We can just get hot dogs or something.”

  “You don’t have to go to the game, Dad,” Anthony said.

  “Are you kidding?” he said. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Anthony looked skeptical.

  “It’s fine if you and Mary and Miss Duvall all go and do something else. I may not even play today.”

  Michael glanced at Kay, and she gave him a look that let him know he was on his own. “Are you saying you don’t want me there?”

  “No, sir.”

  Michael had to admire that sir. It was both respectful and got its dig in at the same time. It was the sort of thing he’d prided himself on doing at that age, before he grew up and came to understand his father’s greatness.

  Just then, the delivery van and the two pickups rolled up. They parked behind the Coupe de Ville, and Al Neri got out of the car to help them. A tractor sputtered toward them as well.

  “Oh, my God,” Kay said. “This is a joke, right? You brought Al here?”

  Abashed, Al gave her a little wave and went to talk to the man on the tractor.

  Anthony seemed to shrink back behind his mother. Suddenly, he looked more like a boy than a man. There was something akin to terror in his eyes.

  “Michael,” Kay said, “if you thought you needed Al Neri’s protection, then explain to me what you’re doing here? What you’re doing anywhere near my children.”

  Anthony, his eyes still on Al, took another step back, toward the house.

  “Our children, Kay. And it’s not what you think. He came up here to give me a message.”

  “He couldn’t have called you?”

  “He also came up to help me with this,” Michael said. A lie, but a white one. He was helping now, wasn’t he?

  “What’s this?” Kay said.

  But then the back doors of the trailer opened. />
  “A pony!” Mary shrieked. “Oh, Daddy!”

  She threw her arms around him and then ran to the horse.

  “Connie had one,” Michael said to Kay.

  “Wait,” Kay said. “You just show up here for a visit, and you bring—”

  “I called the headmaster,” Michael said. “He said it would be fine to stable it here.”

  “You called the headmaster and not me?”

  “The fishing boat is for you, Anthony,” Michael said. The man with the tractor was hooking up to the boat trailer now.

  Anthony scowled as only a teenage boy can. “I don’t fish.”

  “You’ll love it,” Rita said. “It is so relaxing, to fish. When I was a girl, my father…”

  Rita caught the looks from Kay and Anthony and her voice trailed away.

  “You’re giving him a boat? Michael, I…” Kay seemed almost to be sputtering for breath.

  “Of course you fish,” Michael said to Anthony. “You used to fish with…” He stopped himself. “We can go fishing together, this week, just you and me.”

  “You need a license,” Anthony said. “It’s the law.”

  “We’ll get the license.”

  “If you don’t have a license, it’s poaching.”

  “What did I just say?” Michael said, and Anthony took another small step back.

  Red-faced, Kay pointed at the delivery van.

  “Please tell me that whatever it is that’s behind Door Number Three,” she said, “it’s not for me.”

  “‘Door Number Three’?” Michael said, confused.

  “It comes from a television game show,” said Rita, who, until recently, had a game show herself, though not that one.

  “Thank you for your help,” Kay said.

  The women stared each other down. “You’re very welcome,” Rita said.

  Mary was still gamboling around the horse, ecstatic, accompanying it as the groom led it to the stable. Nearly every other girl on campus—other faculty brats, since classes didn’t start for another two weeks—had come wandering out to see it, too. But only girls. It was as if the receipt of a gift pony sent out a high-pitched whistle only girls could hear. Rita took it as an excuse to tag along.

  “It’s a pool table,” Michael said to Kay. “It’s a donation to the school, although I was hoping that the kids and I could break it in while we’re here. Do you play, Anthony?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’ll teach you,” Michael said.

  “I guess,” Anthony said, and went to put the suitcases in the car.

  “I called the headmaster on this one, too,” Michael told Kay. “He said that the school was already redoing the rec room.”

  “News to me.”

  “It was his suggestion, Kay. I asked him to mention a few needs, and pool table was on the list. It sort of spoke to me. When I was your age, Anthony,” Michael called to him, “your uncle Fredo and I used to go into the city all the time and play pool. We both got to be pretty good. Made a little money, too.”

  Michael caught Kay’s look.

  “Give it a rest, Kay. When did you become such a…” Words failed him. It was contagious. “He’s thirteen,” Michael said. “He’s a man.”

  Anthony slammed the trunk shut and looked at his father as if he were grateful for the recognition, which had been the effect Michael was hoping for.

  “He is a man,” Kay agreed, “but he’s never going to be a man who—”

  “Let’s not get into all this, Kay,” Michael said. “All right? If you and I need to talk alone, that’s fine. But otherwise, let’s not.”

  Kay took a deep breath. “Forget it,” she said. “Just…forget it.”

  “I’ll try,” he said.

  She gave him a list of typed instructions—a lesson plan, she joked, but she wasn’t joking. It spelled out all the activities the kids had this week and detailed directions about everything, as if he’d never taken care of his own kids before. She told him she had a carbon copy of the list in case he lost it.

  What he was trying not to lose was his cool. Around everyone but his wife and his kids he was unflappable. His ex-wife, rather. It was pathetic how she could get to him, so fast, with so little apparent effort or volition.

  How long had it been that he’d wondered about getting back with her?

  How goddamned crazy was that impulse?

  Kay’s hypocrisy about him using his money and influence to help the school, and help make this visit a nice one—it was a little much, he thought. Kay didn’t need to teach, of course, but she’d been determined to do so. Michael had no quarrel with that. She found it rewarding and so God bless. Trask had, in fact, been her dream job, a place she’d talked about teaching, back in college, when they were still dating. As far as Michael knew, Kay believed she’d gotten this job on her own, and not because of an anonymous donation from the Vito Corleone Foundation. She must have had her suspicions. Her previous experience—she’d taught briefly, right out of college, at a school in her hometown in New Hampshire, and then not at all for twelve years—hardly made her an irresistible candidate for a position at perhaps the best coeducational prep school in the country.

  AS THEY WERE MAKING THEIR WAY TO THEIR SEATS, Michael thought he was aware of furtive whispers from the other parents, but no one had the nerve to come up and introduce himself. Al Neri stayed in his Cadillac, listening to the Yankee/Red Sox game on the car radio. The car was parked beside a pay phone. They sat in the bleachers behind home plate, right next to the concession stand. Michael went to get the hot dogs and sodas himself.

  “I saw Cattle Call, too,” Mary said to Rita. “Mom said to be sure to remember that no matter how good you were in that play, it doesn’t mean you’re really a prostitute. Isn’t that hilarious?”

  “Mmm,” Rita said. “Yes, that’s hilarious.”

  “Like I haven’t seen my own brother in plays. Like I haven’t been in them myself. Like I’m a little kid who doesn’t know the difference between real and make-believe.”

  “Sometimes it’s hard,” Michael said, “for mothers to see their babies grow up.”

  Mary didn’t react to this. “Do you like baseball?” she asked Rita.

  “I don’t understand it,” Rita said.

  “I don’t understand why people like it,” Mary said. “I like to watch my brother play, though. Sometimes. He’s a pretty good player.”

  Anthony actually did seem like a pretty good player. Not great, but pretty good. He played third base and—to Michael’s surprise when his son stepped up to the plate the first time—batted left-handed. He was right-handed and, like all third basemen, threw right, too.

  He asked Mary if Anthony had always batted left-handed. She said she had no idea.

  “Is he a switch-hitter?” Michael asked. “Because the pitcher is a righty.”

  “I’m not sure,” Mary said.

  Some of the other parents within earshot craned their necks to fish-eye him for this, passing silent judgment, no doubt, on a father who didn’t know how his son batted and everything that implied.

  Mary cheered politely for the Wolves, but she had a faraway look in her eye.

  “You want to be with that horse,” Rita said, “don’t you?”

  “This is OK,” Mary said. “This is fine.”

  She leaned over to Michael and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “You didn’t have to do that, Daddy,” she said. “But thank you.”

  Michael was too overcome with emotion to talk, and so just returned the kiss and gave her a wink.

  The game wasn’t even close. The other team, the Senators, had nicer uniforms and newer equipment, but Anthony’s team, the Wolves, owned them. The Wolves had a couple great players—the shortstop and the catcher—and a solid supporting cast that didn’t make many mistakes and in short order they were ahead by more than ten runs. It was the sort of game anybody would have left early, except that nearly everyone there was somebody’s ride home.
r />   In the last inning, the coach brought Anthony in to pitch. Michael, Rita, and Mary all stood up to applaud, and for no reason Michael could comprehend, several other people in the stands gave them dirty looks. Anthony looked over, too. Michael waved, and—despite himself, no doubt—the boy grinned and gave a barely perceptible little wave back. Michael sat. “That’s my boy,” he said to no one in particular. He didn’t shout it. It was a simple, proud declaration.

  Anthony sailed three of his warm-up pitches to the backstop, but he did throw hard.

  Another buzz began to sweep over the parents in the bleachers, this one much more pronounced than the one Michael had perceived upon arrival. This one was unambiguously not a figment of his imagination. Almost as a reflex, he looked around and, sure enough, Al Neri had gotten out of the car and was walking toward them. Al stopped and crooked a finger toward Michael. Michael shook his head. He couldn’t leave now, not with Anthony about to pitch. Al frowned and continued toward them.

  “What’s going on?” Mary asked.

  Michael had no idea. This had nothing to do with Al—no one else was looking that way. Al’s news, Michael presumed, had something to do with Tom Hagen, which of course was of no concern to anyone else there. It had to be about Anthony, but that, too, was puzzling. How could a wild pitcher in the final ending of a lopsided game provoke anything like this, no matter who his father was? There was shock on some of the faces, what seemed like anger on others. One of the coaches pulled the umpire aside.

  The umpire was just a kid, probably a college boy home for the summer. Michael heard him ask the coach if he was sure, and the coach nodded.

  The umpire’s face was ashen. He strode toward the plate, then turned to face the bleachers. Behind him, Anthony stood on the mound with his glove on his hip and scowled.

  Rita and Michael exchanged a glance, but he shook his head. He didn’t know what was going on.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the umpire said, “may I have your attention. There’s just been…we’re suspending the…” And then he hung his head and started sobbing and did not move from the spot where he stood. Anthony came off the mound toward him.