“Good to see you, Louie.” Fred rubbed the butt of the pistol in Lou’s waistband, under the heavy car coat. “Use this lately?”
Lou guffawed and pretended to frisk Fred. “You packing? I figure you’d need to…all this Pilcher talk of yours has got me worried.”
“I keep my word, Lou. I vowed I’d kill the scumbag.”
“So what took you so long? I figured you forgot about it.”
With an uneasy smile, Fred replied, “Not fucking likely.”
They entered the cabin and settled around a small table loaded with a big platter of sandwiches and chips. The old wood-burning stove was pumping plenty of heat.
“Courtesy of our host,” Fred said, raising his beer bottle.
Fred related his discussion with Tom Houlihan. How the old man had announced the Amalgamated Steelworkers would throw their support to Leonard Pilcher for president.
“Sounds like the old guy’s gone soft in the head…or fat in the wallet. Maybe both,” Lou said between bites of ham and cheese. “You think Pilcher bought him?”
“Yep…no other explanation that I can see. Just between you, me, and the lamppost, ol’ Tom’s got some big gambling debts. You’d think an old guy wouldn’t care that he’s into the Caputo family for big bucks…I mean, it’s like ‘what are they going to do, kill me? I’ve got one foot in the fucking grave anyway.’” Fred paused and took a big draw on his beer. “But the old prick thinks he’s gonna live forever.”
“But you told him you’re not going to do the Pilcher endorsement, right?”
Fred squirmed in his chair. “I ain’t told him shit yet.”
“Why? What’s he gonna do when you tell him? Shoot you?”
“Maybe,” Fred replied. “Or just get up a recall vote and get me thrown out as union president.”
“You think he’s got that kind of clout?”
“He might.”
“You ready to bet your ass he won’t go for the first option, Freddy?”
“You mean shooting me?”
“Yeah. It’s a lot easier, ain’t it?”
Fred slumped in his chair. The look of resignation on his face spoke louder than any words.
“And killing Pilcher makes your problem go away?”
“It makes two problems go away, Lou… two birds with one stone.” Fred paused, gazing into space. “You gonna help out me here?”
Lou knew that question was coming, ever since the phone call that prompted this meeting. He rose from the table, letting out a big sigh in the process. He began to stroll around the cabin, as if searching for an escape that did not exist. Finally, the words came.
“I ain’t got no dog in this fight, Freddy. I wasn’t the one who vowed to kill Pilcher. I never cared about that rich cocksucker then and I don’t now. I’ve got a business to look after.” There was a short pause before Lou added: “So do you.”
That was not the answer Fred wanted. “We’re brothers, Lou, ain’t we?”
Lou was annoyed his loyalty was being questioned. “You’re damn right we’re brothers! I’ve got your back on this Houlihan business. You and your family are covered, Freddy. I guarantee it.”
Lou offered his hand to seal the deal. Fred took it gratefully.
Lou had one more question. “If Houlihan does come after you, you want to hit him back, right?”
Fred pondered that for a moment. Then his face broke into a knowing smile.
“Louie, I think the Caputo family will take care of that for us.”
Lou beamed a smile of his own. “You’re learning, my friend. You’re learning.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Joe Gelardi smiled as he watched his daughter fly up the steps of the junior high school, a plaid blur beneath a lustrous mane of auburn hair, racing eagerly through stagnant pools of students in no hurry to go anywhere. She excelled at all things academic, the perfect blend of her father’s analytical abilities and her mother’s love of the arts and literature. As she approached the tender age of 14, it was obvious to all that Diane Gelardi was destined for great things. She seemed completely comfortable holding the world by the tail, and yet she was completely unspoiled and untouched by hubris. To Joe, his daughter was pure joy.
She had chattered non-stop on the short drive from home to school, about algebra tests (which would be a cinch!), student council meetings (she was president), a volleyball game that afternoon, a certain ninth-grade boy she was sure would ask her to the dance, and maybe, since this was Mrs. Riley’s night off, they could have pizza for dinner tonight?
Diane’s birth in April 1946 had been the event that had temporarily saved the marriage of Joseph and Mary Catherine McSweeney Gelardi. After Mary’s clandestine first step toward annulment had been tripped up by the pregnancy, her maternal instincts took over. She relished the thought of motherhood. Both she and Joe came from large families; the thought of creating a family of their own just seemed so natural. As the months passed, concepts like internment, desertion, and dishonor were flushed from her mind by the flood of love and joy for this wondrous creature growing within her.
She began to take a more academic and sympathetic view of Joe’s sexual proclivities, as well. Maybe that’s what going to war does to men, she reasoned. Releases primal urges that are usually suppressed in the normal, peaceful world. Her cousin Katy thought so, too, as she spoke of sex with her husband in a less refined, whisky-fueled manner: He fucks me like a goddamn animal since he’s been home…I kinda like it.
Joe had never physically hurt her, and she was sure now it was never his intention. Maybe after the baby was born, they would be able to make a fresh start at normal sex, without the sicko bondage stuff. After all, they were parents now. Grown-ups.
As her belly grew, Joe, too, became captivated by the magic they had caused. He would disengage from his murky world of equations and stacks of dissertation pages to press his ear, in wonder, to her swelling midriff. And when he did, she would set down the book she was reading or the notebook in which she composed her poetry, run her fingers through his wavy hair, and smile contentedly. Their life was back on track. They had been through a rough patch—a very rough patch—but he was still her Joey.
The months after Diane’s birth seemed a crazy whirl of sleepless nights, baby formula, diaper pails, and a thesis that hovered frustratingly close to completion. With both their large families in close proximity, babysitting was never an issue. Mary was able to return to teaching and provide the lion’s share of income for their young family so work on Joe’s dissertation could progress, uninterrupted by the need for cash from temporary teaching jobs. On a grand and glorious day in 1947, with the Gelardi and McSweeney broods in proud attendance, Joseph Gelardi donned colorful doctoral robes for the first time and became Joseph Gelardi, Ph.D. He quickly accepted the junior, tenure-track faculty position offered him by MIT.
Later that year, Joe and Mary traded their Cambridge apartment for the little Cape Cod house in Brookline and a G.I. mortgage. Young Diane blossomed, her fertile imagination turning the small backyard into her own fantasy kingdom. The white picket fence was fortress walls; the swing set a parachute jump; trees were rocket ships; the dilapidated, one-car garage nestled in the far corner was a magic mountain, full of mystery and treasure; a rusty monkey wrench hanging on its wall was a key to heaven. Leaf rakes were stood upside down to become secret radio aerials. To compensate for the lack of flowers in the yard, Diane had convinced her parents to allow her to decorate the garage’s barren sides with a finger-painted garden.
The time was right, Joe and Mary thought, to conceive another child. But events in Mary’s career would derail that plan before it bore fruit.
In 1949, when Diane was three, several of Mary’s poems about childbirth and child-rearing appeared in a New England literary journal. These poems became the core of a collection entitled A Mother’s Joy, which was published the following year. Sales of the book were encouraging; the publisher pressed Mary for another volume. A Mother’s J
oy became the foundation for a master’s degree in literature, granted by Boston University in 1953. Mary said goodbye, with no regrets, to high school teaching and joined the faculty of Simmons College in the fall of that year.
1953 became the last good year of their marriage.
The change in her was subtle, gradual. She became more certain of herself—stronger—more convinced that the things she said were of great importance. The way she dressed changed, too. She pushed the frilly dresses and crinolines that marked her as a good wife and prim schoolteacher to the back of the closet, pulled back her fiery red hair, and began dressing in the sleek tweed suits worn by women of position and power. And Joe liked that very much; she had become a whole new Mary, incredibly attractive and desirable. He wanted her like never before.
But to Mary, it meant something quite the opposite: a pulling away—a repulsion—from the conventional life they had had before, a desire for something new and stimulating. Something intellectual. Joe was blind to this, until one day, as he waxed nostalgic about his abilities as navigator on the big bomber, she retorted, “Those vaunted abilities of yours didn’t prevent that little vacation in Sweden.”
The cancer of his internment had not been cured; it had merely been in remission.
He was startled, as if the words had physically struck him. She was defiant, issuing a challenge without an ounce of hesitation or remorse. He needed no words to ask the question; his face spoke it eloquently: Why? Why now?
“War is a ridiculous game, Joe…a deadly farce played on a broad stage. Why do you think they call areas of combat theaters? It’s not to be taken seriously…or glorified. Only prevented.”
She sounded exactly like that clique of pacifist faculty at Simmons, led by the notorious Professor Jeffrey Dawkins.
“I’m confused,” Joe said, and he clearly was. “Are you ridiculing me specifically or just the institution I couldn’t help but be part of?”
“Oh, you could have helped it, all right. You could have had that deferment…you had the papers in your hand. But, no, you just had to go play the great American hero.”
“You sound just like that imbecile Dawkins. Didn’t that phony bastard discover he was a c.o. only after he got his draft notice?”
“Being a conscientious objector is an honorable thing, Joe. Jeffrey Dawkins is a great man. A genius.”
“Oh, Christ! He’s a commie son of a bitch whose greatest achievement is the number of co-eds he’s screwed…and God knows who else! Don’t tell me you’re palling around with his little fan club?”
“Now you’re going to decide who I can associate with, Joe?” Her voice was even, calm, and still defiant.
At that exact moment, Joe Gelardi knew his wife was sleeping with Jeffrey Dawkins.
He should have realized it sooner, the moment he read the foreword Dawkins had written for her second book, In Love’s Wake. The way he spoke of her unique sensitivity, her brilliance, her fiery passion (to match her fucking red hair, no doubt!)…Shit! The title alone was a dead giveaway our marriage was finished. I should have actually read a few more of the goddamn poems…at least I might have gotten a chronicle of my failings!
One poem he had failed to read was entitled The Honorable Guest. Now, upon close inspection, he realized it was a malignant account of his time in Sweden, which used forms of the word intern as a noun, a verb, and even a phonetic substitute for in turn:
To cross the frontier that separates
Warrior from internee
His honor he must too intern
And intern…the truth so none could see
But the final line summarized her feelings most concisely: An oath betrayed…a trust denied.
He did nothing. He listened to the hope deep within him that somehow they were still a unit, inseparable, with a child. No matter what had happened, no matter how painful, they could not be driven apart.
There were other clues he should have caught. Like the name change—suddenly, she had insisted on being called Maeve.
“I’ve known you my whole life, Mary…I married Mary…our daughter’s mother’s name is Mary,” Joe said. “Where does Maeve come from, anyway, Mary?”
“The Celtic goddess-queen,” she replied. “Legend has it that she was intoxicating.”
More likely, intoxicated, Joe thought.
“And how did you come by this particular gem…no wait! Let me guess! Jeffrey thinks it suits you?”
She used no words to respond, just that look she had become so adept at wielding, that cold admission of unpleasant truth that contained not a hint of remorse or apology.
Something within Joe broke at that moment, a spring stretched beyond its limit. He was plummeting without falling, caving into an emptiness that could only mean irretrievable loss. Defeated at last, he said, “I can’t take any more of this.”
“You won’t have to, Joe. I’ll be the one…I’m leaving.”
“What? How can you leave? How can you do this to our daughter?”
“I’m not doing anything to our daughter, Joe. She’ll stay with you.”
Joe could not believe what he was hearing. “You’re rejecting your daughter? Your seven-year-old daughter?”
“No, Joe, I’m not rejecting her. She’s better off with you…better off without having to endure this silent war between us. She’s more like you…more analytical. She prefers puzzles to poetry. She prefers you…or haven’t you noticed?”
“But we’ve been married by God! We can’t just turn our backs…”
“Oh, bullshit, Joe…we were married by some priest, not God. And if there really was a God, he wouldn’t want us to live together like two strangers, would he? Can’t you see how destructive that is for Diane?”
Joe sank into a chair at the kitchen table. He struggled to imagine the future Mary—Maeve—had just ordained. She was so different; he was so blind. How could I have not seen this coming?
“Besides,” she added, “Jeffrey detests children…and Diane detests him.”
Joe felt the blood rise to his face.
“When the hell has my daughter been around that son of a bitch? You had no right…”
“Our daughter, Joe. Ours. That makes her mine, too. I have every right.” Her tone softened. “Look…it’s not like you to be combative. I know you’re not going to be an asshole over custody.”
Custody. That word sounded alien to Joe. It was something that involved criminals, not children.
The next morning, Mary coldly explained to a quiescent Diane that Mommy would not be living here anymore, but they would still do all those important things together that they had always done. Everything would be fine…better, in fact.
And then, suitcase in hand, she walked out the door to Jeffrey Dawkins’s waiting sports car: an Austin Healy. Incongruously, Joe’s mind began to ruminate on just how impractical and typically British such vehicles were. Cramped and noisy, their occupants froze in winter and were windblown all year round. In the States, they were owned by pretentious, aging assholes who were convinced the cars made them appear more adventurous, more sexually attractive, with those stupid, flat English driving caps hiding their receding hairlines.
Then the bastard smiled and waved to Joe and Diane as he hoisted the suitcase into the boot. Like everything was hunky-dory, perfectly fucking normal.
Mary did not look back.
Four months later, she collapsed while teaching a poetry class at Simmons College. She died before the ambulance reached the hospital. The cause of death was listed as cerebral hemorrhage.
They had not even begun divorce proceedings. Joe had been determined to avoid the issue for as long as possible; he had not even retained a lawyer. For Mary, it was a minor administrative detail, something she would get to eventually. There was no rush; Jeffrey’s first two marriages had been disasters, drawn out and messy in their dissolution. He did not believe in marriage anymore. The concept insulted him intellectually.
The funeral was a tumultuous outpouring of
sorrow, a melting pot of Irish and Italian mourning, one camp fueled by whisky, the other by enough food and wine to nourish an army. Many of Mary’s colleagues from the college—neither Irish, Italian, nor Catholic—were startled and not a little intimidated by the noisy spectacle. There was loud sobbing, grief-stricken outbursts, and oaths, with some old women in black trying to throw themselves onto the casket while others formed a wailing cordon around bewildered little Diane, as if to protect her from the clutches of death itself. Surely, all the noise they were making could scare away the devil.
Those colleagues wondered Had these people no sense of propriety—or dignity? After stiffly enduring the church and graveside ceremonies, they had had enough and declined the invitation to the McSweeney home for more eating, drinking, and loud commiseration.
Little Diane did not understand all the theatrical fuss. Did they not realize that her mother had actually departed four months ago? She had done her crying then, in private. All this ceremony—and silly talk of life after death—seemed a bit after the fact.
One colleague who was not in attendance was Jeffrey Dawkins. The day after Mary’s death, he had phoned Joe and announced he would be delivering the eulogy. Joe told him, politely, to go fuck himself. He was free to attend the service if he so chose, but he would not have a speaking role.
So, in an apparent snit for being denied this chance to pontificate for an audience, Jeffrey Dawkins had absented himself entirely. Or, perhaps, he was not too vain to realize that if he appeared, the peasant factions of the Gelardi and McSweeney family—a term he had frequently used, to Mary’s muted annoyance—would join together to beat the living shit out of him, and Joe would not have stopped them.
Chapter Thirty
“And this just in…”
The grandfatherly newsman launched into the final story of the evening’s broadcast. When he first received the copy for this story—mere moments before he was to read it on camera—he was taken aback, even shocked, that the producer had deemed it worthy of airing on a network evening news program. His network evening news program. He almost began the reading with a humorous tone, as though this piece might have been intended as a lighthearted, closing punch line. But then he thought the better of it and delivered the piece with the gravitas and concern for which he was famous. After all, he was the most trusted man in America. There would be no jokes.
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