I desperately miss having contact with the ladies, so Giovanni and I start arranging outings on weeknights with several girls from our former school. We all sneak out from our houses, and the girls pick us up late at night. We drive around for a while before parking to get high and fool around. It’s not long before we get pulled over by the police at an inner city park and are arrested for possession of a controlled substance. The cops say they’ll let us all go if our parents come get us, so I reluctantly make the call home. My dad is not happy when he shows up at the park and takes me home. Giovanni later tells me that his parents weren’t upset about having to get him, but were mad that we don’t just hang out at his house, that we don’t just ask them if it’s okay for us to have girls over. I’m so used to sneaking around that I never even thought to do this. My parents really can’t treat me much worse, so nothing changes at my house and it’s as though the incident never happened. I go to court about a month later and my parents pay a small fine.
As the weeks go by, I basically become a recluse who survives by evading my parents’ strong grasp. I sneak out constantly—pretty much all I want to do is stay out of my house and get high. The wonderful herb provides a mental escape from the hell at home and the ridicule at school. It dumbs emotional responses and pain.
At one point, I arrange for a weed deal to take place in the middle of the night at a gas station a few miles away. A lot of the pot comes from Erik, but we get it from older guys too. The guy I’m meeting now I know through my sister, and I make it to the gas station on foot. I buy the weed and then he offers to also sell some stems and caps from the most potent kind of magic mushrooms. Weed is the hardest thing I’ve done so far and I’ve been wanting to try shrooms for a while, but I’m pretty sure I can only sneak around if it’s just pot that I’m getting high on, and that I’ll get caught if I take the stems and caps home. The guy understands, but offers a single cap of a mushroom the size of my thumb for me to try then and there, free of cost, and this is too hard to resist.
Afterward, I head home and sneak back into my house through the ground floor window. A couple hours later I’m stoned out of my mind when all of a sudden the cap hits me. I’m instantly surrounded by the noise of a blown-out speaker turned all the way up, the sort of white noise someone gets when they turn the television volume way up when it’s not turned to a channel. My bell is rung, and I’m thrown into outer space as the innards of my own home become foreign to me, like I’m experiencing them for the first time.
Just as I’m crawling into bed, my bedroom door slams open and the lights go on. My dad must have heard me fumbling around and now let’s out a “What the hell . . .” I don’t follow what he says next, but I think he’s saying that he heard a noise; I think he thinks I’m sneaking around, but his words sound so completely jumbled that he might as well be speaking in tongues. Unable to understand him, I call upon my reserves of wit and slowly explain that I had just been reading a book, and dropped it against the wall, where it fell loudly, and I fumbled putting it away in the dark, having just turned off the lights. I must sound sober and intelligible enough, because he sniffs the air, looks around, and then goes out into the dark hallway. His shadow fades slowly, but his eyes pierce into mine, staying on me as if I’m a threat, until he’s fully out of sight.
The bust by the cops was annoying, but I put it aside. I still sneak in and out of school during the day to smoke with the older guys. I also catch rides to and from school with them, often getting so stoned that I can’t remember much about the contents of my classes throughout the day. I last one full semester of my freshman year at the school before I’m asked to leave, which means I’m getting kicked out. The administration meets with my parents and says that my grades, combined with my rebellious behavior, make me unfit for their program. They suggest that I’m poison and not even Catholic, so I have no business being there any longer. I don’t even know what we are—Congregational or Presbyterian or some kind of Protestant denomination? Religion doesn’t make any sense to me, and from my experience with it so far, I have no desire whatsoever to try and figure it out.
Giovanni is not asked to leave the school but does so voluntarily once I’m expelled. He tends to blend in with other kids pretty well, so he avoided being singled out like I was. Over time, all the friends of ours who followed us also return to our old district, except one girl who graduates from the private school.
My home life deteriorates even farther after I get kicked out and I can tell it’s now nearing its breaking point. My father’s abusive treatment and scorn since he caught me throwing the party have not subsided. I’m trying my best to humor them and endure their parenting tactics in the hope of eventually regaining my freedom to resume my former lifestyle, but the level of abuse is getting worse, as is my parents’ drinking. After the company my dad presides over is sued by both the bank and the state, he starts coming home from work and going straight into the walk-in bar across from the kitchen. He pops the cork of some scotch, and bellows my name. If I don’t come running, he gets violent—outbursts I’ve experienced my whole life—so I scurry up the stairs only to have my father slam me on the head with a stiff arm. The blow is so hard that my neck will sometimes crack and I’ll careened back down the flight of stairs. I don’t know why, but the man just has it out for me. I’ve always been his whipping boy, as my mother puts it.
My mother isn’t far behind on the alcohol abuse spectrum and is often described by my girlfriends as a “wineaholic.” When my parents drink together, they leave me alone for the most part, but if things take a turn for the worse for any reason whatsoever, all eyes are on me, the family scapegoat. I’ll never understand why I was given this role, but that’s how things always play out. In the end, they take any grievance or frustration out on me.
Knowing this family dynamic all too well, during my brief one week hiatus from school, which is the time it takes to transfer from one school to another, I disappear to the Russo house. Each time I return, my father tries to whip me with his belt, but no longer afraid of the invariable and inevitable abuse, I shove him off over and over again until he is too tired to continue.
One night toward the end of the week between schools, I’m in the kitchen at my parents’ house when my father comes in and starts taunting me for no reason, and then pushing me around, like a first grade bully. I’m used to this behavior, but when I go upstairs to try to escape him, he begins chasing me around the house. This continues until he injures his leg and then he begins cursing at me. My blood boils as he does this, and I run away from him.
I head to the Russo home and let myself in. Greta can immediately tell something is wrong, and this goddess of a woman hugs and caresses me as I hyperventilate into her breast. “I need your help,” I plead. I can’t understand how a grown man, a father of four, can treat me the way my father does, and I’m starting to crack. I don’t know if I can handle him anymore. Greta tells me Francesco will be home shortly and will be able to help.
Downstairs I find Giovanni practicing Blink-182 guitar tabs he found on YouTube. When he sees me, he offers a hit from his pipe and I gladly accept, proceeding with what has become an all-too-familiar cycle as I tell him my problems. This continues until we are interrupted by a knock on the bedroom door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Papa, come in?” replies Francesco. I immediately enter panic mode because if that had been my dad, there would be hell to pay given how smoky it is. My friend would be escorted out of the house and I would be dealt with physically. My room would be turned upside down and my stuff thrown into the hallway. Maybe the police would be called, or maybe I would be put on the street and locked out of the house with absolutely nothing. But Francesco walks calmly up to his son, who is sitting in a desk chair, and gestures politely for him to take a seat next to me on the bed, adding, “Okay . . .” as he sits down with us and then addresses me directly. “I am here to help you and you should know
before you ask me, that once you ask me to help you, it is already done, so think before you speak.”
This is the first time I solicit the help of Francesco Russo, a man whose intimidating presence inexplicably seems to charge me with hope and energy as he listens to my plea through his cigarette smoke, nodding his head and staring directly into my eyes.
I’m not one to show emotion, but everything has gotten very heavy and I am desperate. The words come pouring out. “I have to get away from my dad for a while. I just can’t take it anymore, I think he might kill me, or I might do something I’ll regret. The other night they made me cook for them and I did it as nicely as I could, but my dad made me eat it first because he thought I had poisoned it or something. I just need a place to live . . . you know, like permanently.”
He thanks me for coming to him for help and tells me how much his family has missed me these last few months. He also says he always knew the day would come when I would reach out to him with the problem I now have. He tells me that his father was also incredibly physically abusive, and that he hated his father with a fire that still burns inside him.
Francesco immediately knows what to do, and I am amazed because it seems as though he has planned it all out from day one. To start with, he tells me he will call my father and vouch for me having been away without my father’s express permission because I was locked out, which sometimes happens. He says that he and Greta will soon be heading to Italy for a week and will send Giovanni to live with me during that time. Giovanni would otherwise have stayed home with Adriana.
I tell him that my father will never accept this, but Francesco tells me firmly that he will. Francesco never seems to question anything. He speaks firmly, and is unwavering about how things are, have been, and will be. Francesco then proceeds to dial my house number and before I have a chance to react, he is speaking with my dad. They’ve only met once, the previous summer when the whole Russo family came to see me while I was on lockdown, and even stayed for dinner. Everyone was polite, but the parents certainly never hit it off as friends.
I listen quietly to Francesco as he tells my dad he needs a favor from him. “I need to ask you to look after my son for a week while we’re away and see to it that he behaves. Your son has turned into a good boy and I want Giovanni to become more like him . . . Will you please teach my son some good manners? . . . Okay, ciao . . .” Then he yells out, “Adriana!” She appears in the doorway within seconds. “I need you to stay with a friend next week, okay? Pick whomever you like best.”
Adriana happily thanks him and when she closes the door, it’s us men again, having a good old-fashioned sit-down. Francesco says, “Giovanni, I want you to find out how bad it is. Act like you are not even there. I want you to protect him. If anything happens, call me.”
“Yes, Papa. I will.”
After speaking with Francesco, I am in better spirits and head upstairs to chat with Greta as Giovanni has a final word with Francesco, who soon appears and informs me that Giovanni will be escorting me home to stay the few extra days before he and Greta leave for Italy. Giovanni and I giddily pack his things into a large backpack and a small suitcase.
For a few days nothing happens, and I am totally ignored by everyone in my family. Then Francesco calls to say he and Greta are leaving and asks if everything is okay. It was okay for those few days, but then the abuse resumes. My father drinks that weekend, and early Saturday he proceeds to demand that Giovanni and I scrub the rims of his car tires until they shine, using only a bucket of soap and water. Without the proper polish, though, we don’t achieve the effect that my father desires and so he ridicules our progress. Giovanni asks how much longer we have to do this and I sigh because I don’t know. It’s exasperating, but the truth is I’m relieved to have my situation seen by someone who might have the power to help me. Everything seemed so hopeless before. Giovanni is not happy with the answer; he throws down the rag, kicks over the bucket, and loudly refuses to comply with my father’s demand.
My father walks out onto the deck and the two of them begin to fight. He’s amused at first, but the situation escalates quickly, “You’re going to do exactly what I tell you to—”
“No, we’re not! We haven’t done anything wrong, and you can’t treat us like this! We’re not gonna do it! Are we?” Giovanni glances at me.
I stand up and sheepishly and add, “I’ve had enough, Dad.”
At these words my father spikes his glass onto the concrete stoop, shattering it, and like a defensive lineman rounding a corner toward the quarterback, charges at me at in full sprint. I’ve never seen him so enraged. I stand frozen as Giovanni hurls himself between me and my father, bouncing off him like a pinball and landing hard on the driveway pavement. My father’s arms swing upward, his open hands hitting me from underneath, upending me. I land on my head, upside down, on the driveway. My father then sits on me and begins slapping me open handed, with the front and back of his hands, across my face.
The next thing I know, Giovanni is charging into my father from the side, knocking him off me. Turning his rage on Giovanni, he quickly climbs on my friend, cursing him and striking him repeatedly in the torso. My mother rushes outside at the commotion and begins screaming. “The neighbors are going to call the police! Stop it! Get off him!” she shrieks at the top of her lungs in a panic as she tries to pull my father off Giovanni. Finally he lets go and she walks him inside, along the way consoling him as if he’s a child who has fallen off his bike.
Giovanni is breathing heavily, and we sit on the pavement catching our breath and watching my parents console each other as they head back into the house.
Once they’re inside, Giovanni stands up and says, “I’m calling Papa.” I’ve never seen him so upset. He runs to the other end of the house, not waiting for me to follow.
I slowly get up, gather the rags and bucket, and then walk around the house to the garage, where Giovanni is already talking on a cordless phone he must’ve grabbed from inside. The conversation must have been short because as I turn the corner I see him going back inside the house to hand the phone to my father and then walk back outside to join me. We stand silently and listen through the closed door separating the interior of the home from the garage. I’m embarrassed by my father, but I also want the world to know what he’s really like.
My father speaks to Francesco in a hushed voice, “Yes, I understand. That’s right—boys will be boys. No harm, no foul. Sure, I can do that. I will, you too.”
He hangs up, and then I hear my name called, so I open the door and walk in. My father looks at me, his eyes fire red and his face flushed. “Why don’t you take Giovanni home now, since you boys don’t seem to like it here.” The words are an order, not a question.
In an instant Giovanni is off, gathering his things and leaving my father and me alone.
“After all I’ve done for you, you don’t appreciate me. You can just stay over there for all I care. That’s right, why don’t you stay there? And don’t you ever come back!” My mother comes in while my father is screaming and starts crying while he continues on with a frantic, irrational, and accusatory monologue.
When Giovanni enters the foyer with his bags, he opens the door without saying a word and lets himself out, giving me a look and a half-smile as he passes me, as of to say, We did it, we won. At this, I erupt with what has been stored inside me for months. I let my father know how much I hate him and that I never want to see him again and that I wish he were dead. To which he replies, “What did you say?”
“I said I hate you.”
He looks at me perversely. “Good,” he says, looking satisfied.
We walk out and I’m angry, scared, confused, and sad. We go to Giovanni’s house and Francesco ushers us in, as if saving us from a murderer on the loose. It turns out that Francesco and Greta hadn’t gone to Italy—in fact they’d never even planned to. The whole thing was a ruse in order to
catch my father in the act.
Francesco speaks to me loud and clear, and tells me I’m to live at the Russo house from now on. He says, “Now you’ll never have to see that fucking motherfucker again” and waves his hand to the side, as if my father is a fly he’s swatting away. He says he wants me to understand that sometimes you have to lie in order to make the right thing happen, which in this case was to catch my father red-handed in his drunken and abusive rage. He looks at me firmly, man to man, and says that if he hadn’t convinced me that he and Greta were leaving the country, then knowing me, I would have fought with my father, said, “Fuck this,” stayed at the Russo home for a short period of time until my father cooled down, and then let the cycle repeat itself. He says what’s happening is not okay, not normal—things I’ve long suspected.
With mixed emotions I thank him, all while wondering what he told my father, because he ignores my questions about the specifics of their conversation. I’m speechless and filled with questions no one will answer. The way Greta and Francesco seem to know more about what is going on in my life than I do can be frightening. Sometimes when it really feels like they’re reading my mind, my hands shake and I can’t bring myself to make eye contact. I go silent at these times and I wonder if they notice and think I’m the weird one, or if they just brush it aside. As soon as I can, I escape to play drums or get stoned.
As I settle into my new home, Francesco wastes no time vaguely explaining that from time to time he and Greta host “spirit meetings” in their living room, what I will realize in retrospect must be some sort of séances during which past and present details of my life are supposedly revealed to them. When I inquire “Why me,” why am I their focus, both of them fall eerily quiet at this, and then one changes the subject. No matter how odd the things they say to me are, or will ever be, I always avoid acting in any way that might seem remotely disrespectful. I know they don’t freak out over things the way my parents do, but I don’t want them to ever have a problem with me. I never initiate a conversation on the topic of their spirit meetings and I never go to one, but Francesco and Greta will continue to reference this mysterious topic to me in an indirect manner. Eventually they bring it up almost daily. Over time, the bombardment of strange spiritual activity in the home becomes so thick that I am convinced these people are into some sort of satanism or witchcraft. I do my very best to ignore this and stay focused on being polite and getting high.
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