“Call me Francesco.”
“Sorry, Mr. Francesco, what brings you to the neighborhood? I mean, what exactly do you do?”
Francesco’s fork drops and hits the plate with a clack. He wipes his lips with a white cloth napkin, rests his forearms with their rolled-up sleeves on the table, and leans close to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Greta turning her neck, looking away. They’ve answered all my questions up to now, but this time they don’t answer. Instead Greta elaborates on her answer to a different question. She says they don’t believe in marriage and instead have a civil union.
When Francesco speaks again, he also doesn’t answer. Instead he says once again that he knows all about me. In fact, he knows not just about the incident with his son, but much more. He knows my last name, where I currently live, and that I’m from the inner city. He describes me, or at least my actions and persona: flaunting authority, believing myself to be street-smart and untouchable, trying to express a carefree vibe.
And then he says something that hits hard, that he knows I have a troubled home life. This feels like a step too far. I go from uncomfortable to nervous to scared, a part of me even petrified because I can’t figure out how on earth he would know what happens in my home. Again I fall silent, this time because I’m too shocked to ask how he knows so much about me. Francesco continues on and even though I’m entranced, his accent is so thick that at times it’s impossible to decipher his words without having to think really hard about what he’s trying to say. What comes through loud and clear though is his telling me that he and I are at a crossroads, a focal point, and that he wants to make a deal. At one point, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a key, and tosses it in my direction. It makes a ringing noise as it hits the table.
“You can have the girl of my son if you accept this key of friendship.”
My eyes widen at this and I am baffled to the extreme. We’ve never met before and yet not only do they know all about me, they’re offering me what I think is a key to their home. I nervously turn to look at Giovanni and notice for the first time that he has a peach fuzz mustache and dark eyes, just like his father. His spiked hair makes me think of a frightened cat.
“What’s this mean, dude? What do you guys want?” I ask Giovanni, spilling my insecurity all over the place. He is quiet, so I look back at his father. “I can be friends with Giovanni, sure, no problem,” I say, the worlds tumbling out. I just want to leave.
“You don’t make threats to my family without . . . Greta, what’s the word?”
“Repercussions,” she chimes in with such charm that I become enthralled all over again.
There is silence for a moment, and then Francesco clears his throat. “Good,” he says. “If you are friends with one of us, you are friends with all of us.” He holds his arms out wide, gesturing that the friendship will include Giovanni, Greta, and himself.
“What if I don’t want to?” I ask, squirming. The panic that’s been stored in my gut since I arrived is finally releasing.
“Then I take you into the garage and I break your fucking legs with a baseball bat.”
Greta smiles, picks up the key, and holds her hand out to me. I reach for it because they’re all looking at me and I’m not sure what else to do.
She says, “That is a house key, young man, and you can come over whenever you like.”
The instant my fingers grasp the key, Francesco, with a raspy voice and a grimace, asks, “Friends?”
“Yeah,” I reply coolly, though with a tangible feeling of danger, “Friends.” I begin to hate everything that’s led to this moment.
Time passes and somehow I agree to join them for dinner. I think I have to. I’m certainly keen on staying far away from Francesco and his baseball bat. Besides, while I’m utterly confused and pretty freaked out, I’m also very curious. And then there’s the fact that I can avoid my parents while I’m here.
Once seated at the dining room table, Greta serves dinner: meatballs floating in a large rectangular dish with some sort of balsamic vinegar and red wine sauce; two metal trays of grilled sliced vegetables, kinds that I’ve never had, stuff like eggplant with parmesan sprinkled all over; a bowl of cheese-stuffed ravioli pillows mixed with spaghetti noodles; a napkin-laden basket with sliced Italian bread, which is steaming; and bowls of red and white sauce for the pasta. Everything is homemade, even the noodles, and smells so good. “What’s that stuff?” I ask as I point to a cutting board with several types of meat sitting next to a knife.
“Shark, alligator, and iguana,” Francesco answers, and then, “Want olives?” He passes me a bowl of gigantic olives. I ask if I can try the mysterious meat and when he asks which one, I tell him I don’t know. He laughs and says, “You want all of it.” Then he turns to Greta. “I like him, he’s very brave, not afraid to try something new.”
While we’re eating, they say that they’ve been fascinated with me and indicate that they think I’m respected in the neighborhood and at school, which is weird. Giovanni must have told them everything he thought of me, and then some. “With respect, a man can do anything, and without it, he’s got nothing,” Francesco says. “You can do anything you want and get away with it.”
I try to normalize the conversation, complimenting the food as the best I’ve ever even caught a whiff of, let alone eaten, and they pour me a glass of red wine, which I’ve never had before. Then Francesco and Greta tell me that if there’s anything at all that I ever want, all I have to do is ask one of them for it. I’m confused, but nod thank you and let them continue to lead the conversation. Francesco looks at me and asks, “Do you ever ask questions in your mind?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, so I mutter, “Uh, yeah, I guess,” and then what he says gets even harder to follow. The conversation, if you can call it that, quickly becomes impossible to make sense of, as if they’re speaking a different language. Eventually, I’m so lost that I can’t help but ask what they’re talking about. Francesco answers vaguely, his accent so thick that his words become even more unintelligible. I can make out only that he’s suggesting I can talk to the universe—that I can talk to the universe and the universe will answer me. I nod, but my body recoils and I start to feel repulsion sinking in. Under the table I crumple a napkin in my sweaty palms. I can tell that they’re deep into some spiritual shit. I’m now thoroughly creeped out—yet captivated.
The supper culminates with Francesco chuckling at me and speaking with Greta in Italian. Then, as if they have eyes everywhere, he says, “Pick your hands up from under the table and put your balled up sweaty napkin on your plate. Why don’t you go downstairs and get to know Giovanni better?” His words are more a directive than a suggestion.
Once downstairs I tell Giovanni how I feel, even though I barely know him and it’s his parents I’m talking about. He tells me not to worry about anything at all, and shows me his drum set and guitars. He has a Tama kit, an upgrade from my Yamaha starter kit, and assorted Sabian and Zildjian professional grade cymbals.
From this day forward, my life is never the same. Giovanni and I hang out at school and then I head home with him and we play music and eat the most delicious food. Soon, I’m going to the Russo home after school every night for dinner and spending every weekend with them at their house. I even get my own room there. They buy me clothes and take me on family outings to places like the movies or a theme park. I even learn how to cook a bit because it means I can spend time in the kitchen with Greta. For the first time in my life, I’m being treated with love, perhaps even spoiled. I mostly tune out Francesco when he speaks about his brand of new age universal philosophy, though I act as if I’m listening politely. I know that if I play my cards right, this newfound family will see me as a second son.
Being treated like a son is all I’ve ever wanted. At my house, I am treated like a dog. There’s no other way to say it. My father must see me as a dog-man bec
ause he beckons me with, “Come;” calls me to dinner with, “Sit;” and tells me, “Eat,” if there is still food on my plate, and it’s always been like this. My sisters are treated like pretty young girls, which they are, and my younger brother is told in front of me, “You’re the good son. Everything I have is yours, do you understand?” I may as well own the hard labor chores of the home because they are all mine. I’m the only one who has to do them.
Looking back, it will be clear that this period of my life is when the Russos took control of me. I even began dreaming about them on most nights, especially Greta. I get to know Giovanni’s sister too. Adriana is three years younger than me and we develop a friendship that will have a certain romantic quality to it over the years. To be perfectly honest, though, I never seriously pursue her out of a fear of disrespecting her family and ruining my friendship with them.
Never with the Russos does it feel like there is a sinister motive behind their treatment of me. Never do I think there could be some sort of catch yet to be revealed. But this doesn’t make their behavior any less weird. One night, Francesco gives Giovanni a book about how the mafia started and tells us to read it. It’s all about how the mafia, or La Cosa Nostra, started back in Western Sicily at the turn of the nineteenth century. Ultimately, it reveals how important it is to be the boss of your territory, your family, and your life.
Chapter 3
It’s while I’m fourteen and first getting to know the Russos that Giovanni and I start making a habit of procuring weed and beer on weekends to escalate our chances with older girls and up the ante of fun to be had. It’s my job to get the alcohol, which usually involves inviting Gavin to join us, since he can get beer from his dad. Giovanni, who is quickly becoming a brother to me, takes care of scoring the weed. He is always able to obtain the highest quality kind, seemingly without effort, pulling it out of thin air. When I ask how he gets all this bud, he tells me it’s from his friend in Chicago. Sometimes he simply says, “Chicago.” It’s more complicated for me because not only do I need to get the alcohol, but I also invite the girls and have to figure out how they get to and from the Russo house. It always seems to work out though. Where there’s a will, there’s a way!
Giovanni’s parents must know what’s going on because every weekend we smoke in his room with the girls and they never intrude. We have a good few months doing this, but then, in early summer, my parents want my siblings and me to join them at their summerhouse on the water, which is well out of our neighborhood, far away from my friends. I get out of this as often as I can, choosing to spend weekends at the Russo house instead, and it’s not long before it hits me that my home is vacant with my parents and siblings at the beach; we could have fun there without any adults around. So Giovanni, I, and a few guests start using the hot tub there, along with the rest of the house’s features. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner.
One night, while hanging out at my house, one of the girls gets so drunk that she decides she needs to leave. She’s only fifteen so she doesn’t have a license, and she wouldn’t be in a state to drive anyway, so she calls her mother from our home phone to arrange a ride. A little while later, the girl’s mother tries to call her back on the number the girl called from, presumably to say she’s on her way, but the call is automatically forwarded to my parents’ summer home. When my father answers the phone—at an ungodly hour—he figures out what I’m up to. He busts me the next day.
And so it is that my actions finally catch up with me. My parents, of course, do not hesitate to punish me severely for “breaking their trust,” as they put it. It’s mandated that I go to the summer home with them and stay there until summer is over, and they assign me a rigorous never-ending gauntlet of chores. Most are basic house care but others are ridiculous, such as picking up sticks in the yard from sunup to sundown and raking the beach every day with a heavy steel rake.
My days begin bright and early. I’m woken at the crack of dawn by my dad turning on the lights in my room, hitting me in the face with a flyswatter, and stating my list of chores for the day before he heads to work. If I pull the covers up over my head, he smacks my stomach. Afterward he sneaks off to the liquor cabinet in the garage and through the thin cottage walls I can hear him unscrewing the cork on a scotch bottle and then taking a few glugs straight from the bottle. As I sit on the edge of the bed, dazed and half-asleep, my mom barges in and starts yelling, “Get up! Do what your father told you!” She continues to hound me as I get dressed, ignoring my request for privacy while I do so.
When the berating is at its worst, inhumane, really, I can’t help but scream back. “I didn’t do anything! Why are you treating me like this? Leave me alone!”
A look of disgust overtakes her at this point and she replies with a comment like, “We just might have to get rid of you,” and then slams the door. Moments later, I hear her in the garage consoling my father, who no doubt has been listening to our interaction. “Are you okay, dear? Did I go too far?” she asks him while he weeps. Why he weeps, I don’t know. Could it be that he hates me so much, or is so disappointed in me, his son, that the feeling overtakes him? I try not to think about it.
This is the summer I learn how to cook, do laundry, clean, and shut down emotionally. My parents treat me like shit, and what’s even worse than that is that my siblings are punished if they don’t also treat me poorly. I’m turned into the family scapegoat.
My oldest sister, Lindsay, manages it best. She always wanted to be an only child and is a very tough person to interact with. She can also be extremely selfish, with no real concern for her siblings, so when the mandate comes down from our parents, she simply carries on in the same way she’s always treated me, with disregard. Allison and Austin are horrified and confused as to how to handle the situation. We were friends! When a relative or someone else drops by the home, they blurt out, “We’re supposed to treat Nick like he’s a child, like he’s ten years old,” to sort of warn them. Allison and Austin, however, God bless them, never once join in. Allison gets grounded many times for being kind to me, and Austin gets sent to his room for things like being caught playing video games with me, but they never cave and always show me love.
When no one is looking, I do my best to talk with them about what’s going on. I sneak into Austin’s room at night to level with him about the situation and say that I’m sorry. He receives it well. Then, to avoid being heard as I pass my parents’ bedroom door, I get on my hands and knees and quietly crawl into Allison’s room to talk with her too. She always says that it’s not my fault, that our dad is a sick person and our mother enables him to be that way. I try to delve deeper into this conversation with her, but she doesn’t want to go there, so she politely asks to be left alone so she can read her Animorphs books. Allison is willing to do anything to get ungrounded, and that usually involves doing laundry or babysitting, while her allowance of ten dollars per week is withheld. Once free, she does the same thing I always did, getting out of the house and bouncing around her friends’ houses for as long as possible.
With retrospect, I’ll know that this is a turning point for my siblings too. They do their best to ignore how my parents treat me, but their overall morale and emotional health noticeably deteriorates as the months go by. I’ll later come to believe that they must have suffered just as much, if not more, than I did by being forced to act like they condoned the abusive behavior directed at me over the years, and to sometimes participate in it.
Toward the end of the summer, my parents decide to enroll me in a private Catholic high school for the upcoming fall semester. I don’t want this, but no one asks or cares what I want. There’s no discussion. They tell me after the fact. As I am preparing to start a new school and face a new crowd, I discover that Giovanni, two of my other friends, and several of the girls we hang out with took the school’s placement test late that summer and are also scheduled to start there in the fall. I don’t know if they’re a
ll going there for me, but Giovanni makes it clear to me that my going there is the reason he’s switching. He says, “My family will always be here for you.” It seems strange to me that he would do that, though I am deeply touched. And so with school around the corner, I begin to feel optimistic again. However, those feelings prove to be short-lived.
Shortly after making the varsity football team as a freshman, I tear my right hip flexor tendon so violently that during the course of its separation, bone fragments are ripped from my pelvis. The injury is so bad that I can barely walk. It’s a particularly big blow because the only time I am allowed to leave the house other than to go to school is to lift weights with the football team two or three times a week.
Then, a rumor spreads through this smaller, snobbish private school that Giovanni and I are supplying older kids with pot, which inexplicably doesn’t afford any favor with the student body. Sure, we caught a few rides with older guys here and there and smoked with them, perhaps selling a few bags to them at a football game, but I’m essentially on lockdown, lucky enough just to be able to spend time at the Russo house. Kids pass by us in the hallway and one of them will stop, point a finger, and say, “You do drugs,” and then keep walking as though we’re stinky swine. To be cool at this school means to be better than other people. Kids are constantly trying to place themselves above those who threaten their social status. My flashy watch gets stolen out of my backpack during lunch and days later I see an upperclassman I thought was my friend wearing it. What can I do or say? “That’s my watch, give it back?” How can I ever become cool and fit in? Without winning football games, it seems as though an intangible bargaining chip that once existed with my peers and the school administration has disappeared, and I’m totally out of luck. The girls I once courted on a regular basis no longer look at me. Several teachers scorn me. They refuse to call on me or rudely respond to my questions.
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