He has me call my mother every week, so it’s no longer just her calling me. I keep the conversations simple and do what she tells me to do, whether it is to show up for a meal, do yard work, go to a family gathering, or go to church with them—go figure.
But the rotten meanness and inhumane treatment of me by my parents, especially my dad, is always waiting for me. I’ll act the part of a son with my mother if she wants, but it’s the Russos’ guidance, what should be parental guidance, that pushed me to earn a football scholarship, which leads to a recruiting visit during my junior year and an offer from Carroll University to play for them when I graduate. This arrangement pays for half of my future college tuition. When the offer comes in, Giovanni immediately applies to the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee because it’s only a half hour away from Carroll.
With my life transforming so rapidly, I decide to focus on football during the summer before senior year. I also have some inexplicable sentimental need to have closure with my biological family, or at least my siblings. I track down both my sisters, whom I never fully lost touch with. They’re now living and working a few hours away, in Madison where they both attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Lindsay finished her undergrad degree there and is now attending its law school. Allison is still an undergrad, but is taking a leave of absence to focus on modeling. She often travels to Chicago for work and is scheduled to leave soon for work in Western Europe. She has events scheduled in Paris, Athens, and Milan. I head to Madison to spend a few weeks with them before she leaves. I get to know them all over again, and get to know better Lindsay’s fiancé, Tommy, my soon to be brother-in-law.
Spending summer days with time split between each sister proves to be a healing experience for me. Even with everything that happened, there is still so much love between us, and they tell me this will never change. One night I stay with Tommy in a spare room in the men’s rowing house of his former frat house and the next day we drive to meet my sisters for lunch. We go to a large, two-story sandwich shop where a musician with a microphone and guitar plays what feels like Bob Dylan’s entire repertoire. I love Dylan’s unique twang and raspy voice and this guy is butchering his music, so Tommy heads upstairs to look for a table away from him.
I’m now alone with my two pretty sisters, so in a gruff voice loud enough for the table behind us to hear, I say, “Hey pretty lady, give me a kiss,” and grab Allison’s arm, pulling her in close. She laughs, kissing me on the cheek, and I cockily turn to the table behind us and say, “That’s how I roll.” Then as Tommy beckons us upstairs, I pull Allison under my arm to walk up the winding staircase together. I peer back at Lindsay who follows behind and she smiles a sheepish grin, as if to say, “You’re ridiculous.” Being with them, laughing with them, feels so normal. I’ve really missed this.
After we sit down, my sisters tell me how Allison has recently curbed her drinking habit, after Lindsay had, “for the last time,” gone out to save her. Both of them drank and partied almost every weekend when they were in high school, and in college, Allison developed a pattern of going out, getting wasted, and then needing someone to help her get home. Usually this fell on Lindsay because they’re really close, and it came to a head just before my visit.
Allison says she’s been doing a lot of thinking lately and has realized why she drinks so much and acts so crazy. Tommy interrupts to says it’s because she’s not afraid of getting caught by our dad, and she says that’s part of it, but that there’s more to it and it relates to how we grew up. She mostly talks about this at a surface level over lunch, and doesn’t reveal any sensitive information regarding its root, but later, in private, she shares a memory with me that sticks with her and relates to her comment about the way we grew up.
The memory is of an event that happened when we were kids. I had to be in first or second grade at the time, which would’ve put her in third or fourth. It took place by the laundry chute on the second floor of our parents’ house. The chute is behind a small cabinet door, which has an elaborate note written by our mother taped to it, one complete with stick figure illustrations, about what to do and what not to do concerning putting laundry down the chute. As Allison tells it, I opened the cabinet door one day and called her to come out of her room and into the hall where I proceeded to act out the illustrations that were on the note, complete with vivid oration, in a way that she found to be so utterly hilarious that she started rolling on the floor, laughing hard. My father came upstairs to see what was going on, and stood looming behind me as I made my sister laugh.
“You looked over your shoulder at him and thought nothing of it because you weren’t doing anything wrong,” she says. “But he came up behind you, picked you up, and dropped you on your head.” She begins to weep. “And to this day, I still don’t know why.”
I try to divert the conversation since she’s getting so upset, telling her that our dad is a hothead and always gets carried away.
“No,” she says, “You don’t get it.”
I look at her, surprised that she is still so affected by this memory. She then continues to reveal other things that I have no recollection of, such as how when we were even younger, we shared a room. Her bed was on one side of the room, opposite mine. At night, like other toddlers, I would cry until my mother came in to soothe me. However, on one occasion, I apparently kept crying after being tucked into bed and my father was so angered by this that he burst in and beat me until I was unconscious. “I’ve cried myself to sleep so many times thinking about that,” she says. “You were so young.”
Later that evening, Lindsay and I also talk briefly about our childhood, while Allison quietly listens. Lindsay admits to me that in recent years she’s gone to counseling to learn how to deal with how what we experienced growing up was affecting her. While I’m talking with Lindsay, I realize that we have each come up with our own coping mechanisms, but Allison has not.
Lindsay tells me about how when I was a toddler and she was about ten years old, our mother threatened to take the girls and leave our father after he hit Lindsay so hard that she was knocked unconscious. After the threat, our father promised never to hit the girls or our mother ever again, but justified his treatment of me by saying his father had treated him the same way. The three of us agreed that this was a pathetic and pitiless excuse, but I believe my father’s excuse was true, and I think my mother also unfortunately had to endure similar circumstances with her parents growing up. In our experience, however, we’ve only seen our four grandparents, now in their eighties or nineties, act caring and kind.
By the end of our weeks together, I’ve grown so close to my sisters that I’m invited to be a groomsman in Lindsay’s wedding a few weeks later, in late August. When I get home, I quickly buy a suit and make arrangements to stay in a motel near the beach where the wedding will take place—my parents’ beachfront property.
The time with my sisters brought back old memories. Sometimes when we spoke I thought about the day I realized that I lived in an abusive home, a day that will recur to me for years to come. It happened when I was very young, only in first grade, and sneak-watching my favorite show, professional wrestling, in the dark in the basement. The time was mid-morning going on lunchtime and I had been down there since the crack of dawn. (My parents made me go to bed at 7:30 p.m. up until first grade or so, so I would always wake up super early and hunker down in the basement.)
That morning, I didn’t even hear the door at the top of the stairs open when, out of nowhere, a voice screamed in such a violent manner that it shook me to the core. “Nicholas! Do you need an engraved invitation?” It was my dad’s voice and I froze, not sure if I should run upstairs toward the danger or stay put where it was safe. After a moment I sprinted up the stairs and took a spot at the table where the soup was already on and my sisters were waiting. I was eager for my father to join so that I could apologize and let him know that I hadn’t meant to do anything wrong.
Surely, he would understand. He came, sat down, and proceeded to ignore me entirely. I remember so vividly the expressions on my sisters’ faces, a mix of frustration given the circumstances and sadness for me, with pleading eyes that screamed, “Don’t you get it yet?” I knew then and there that something was very wrong with my father; his rage was so disproportionate to the “crime” I’d committed.
On Lindsay’s wedding day, my father seems to come tumbling down. That morning, he goes to check if I’ve hauled in the boat hoists from the water so they’re out of view of the picture-perfect wedding to come, and when I see him, he’s heading up from the beach. He’s barefoot, in shorts, and not wearing a shirt, and I’m surprised that he’s not yet dressed for the ceremony, which is scheduled to start shortly, so I ask him if he’s going to have enough time to get ready. I don’t mean any harm when I ask, but he gets pissed anyway, actually more than pissed, with a reaction so beyond appropriate that I’m pretty sure he’s having a mental breakdown. He starts pacing back and forth after I ask, breathing heavily, and then suddenly bursts into tears that becomes wailing. For a split second he strikes me as such a sad man that my heart almost goes out to him. I instinctively step toward him, as if to comfort him. Despite my anger toward him, there is a natural, very human impulse to help someone in pain and my body reacts to this; but then he growls, “Stay the hell away from me.”
I don’t know what’s going on with him and after all the abuse I’ve endured, after years of frustration and not understanding why he has always been so neglectful and cruel to me, I want the man to suffer. But curiously, I find no satisfaction in seeing him in this infant-like meltdown. I feel embarrassed that he is my father, embarrassed to see him so totally out of control, but also frustrated to see him in this incoherent, inconsolable condition with no apparent cause or reason for the behavior. I do my best to pacify him and, thankfully, the ceremony goes on without a hitch.
Once my newly married sister and her husband walk down the beachfront aisle and into the limo waiting to drive them to their honeymoon, a group of us proceed to steal a few bottles of liquor from the wedding bar and gather a select list of guests, including my baby brother, Allison and some of her friends, and several of the attractive females on the waiting and bartending staff. We then head to the small motel nearby, where I’m staying, and throw an amazing after-party. At seventeen, I am thrilled to see that I am welcome inside the hotel bar. I dance and make out with different girls as they come and go from the rooms above, in between heading upstairs myself to drink and smoke. We keep the party going until 3:00 a.m., when the bar closes.
By the following day, word has gotten out among the other wedding guests about my exploits, which doesn’t seem like a big deal until I stroll up to the brunch filled with nicely dressed family and friends and am received with a small round of applause.
A little earlier, my mother had apparently been overly dramatic in telling everyone at the wedding brunch she is hosting that I had “shtupped” the bartender and her friend. From what I’m told, she went on and on about this, what she had apparently heard through the grapevine about the prior evening. Some family members and friends apparently expressed their condolences—they had teenage sons of their own—others, however, gave me a pat on the back and a “Welcome to manhood!” when they saw me, as if they’d heard I got laid for the first time. This seemed to continue without end, as my father became more and more visibly displeased. Eventually, my father stomped over to me, grabbed me by the ear, and hauled me aside.
Looking back, it will seem like my father’s relatives were purposefully egging him on, encouraging him to let me have it. If so, they got the reaction they were hoping for because my father berates me and accuses me of making a mockery of the wedding and a fool out of him. Infuriated and enraged, he promises there will be consequences and that I will never defy him again. I listen in disbelief, realizing he had clearly misinterpreted the jeers, comments, and jabs taken at me in good fun by my extended family, reading them as insults and laughter directed at him. After he is done, I head out without rejoining the brunch. I’m furious at first, but calm down by reminding myself that I’m untouchable and don’t need to put up with his behavior.
A few weeks later, as if in direct response to my feeling of being untouchable, police arrive very early in the morning at the Russo home. They’re there to get me, but Greta and Francesco jump in to protect me, demanding to know what this is about. The police are actually quite polite in response and adamant that everyone stay calm, saying that no one is in any trouble. I’m told to grab my things and let them take me home to my parents. I argue, but the two officers are having none of it and tell me to get a move on as they have better things to do than collect a minor. I say, “Fine, I’ll be right back,” and walk straight out the door without grabbing anything.
I leave my car outside the Russo house and walk home, where I find my very annoyed father waiting for me with my mother; they tell me it’s time to have a serious discussion. My father then informs me with the smuggest attitude I’ve ever encountered that I am being sent to military school the following day. He says they’ve picked a school and that I need to go pack my stuff because there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I laugh, roll my eyes, and matter-of-factly tell them I’m not going to go and if they try to make me, I’ll leave and they won’t be able to find me. They respond with threats to call the police again. “We’ve had enough, son,” my father says in a delusional and self-righteous manner, “I’m the one who has to accept that I’ve failed as a father; all you have to do is go to military school.”
I honestly don’t think this will fly, so I calmly call Giovanni and get through to Francesco. After all, senior year of high school starts tomorrow and football practice is already underway. Francesco tells me that there is nothing he can do to keep it from happening, that my parents have legal rights. Suddenly, it sinks in that this might really happen. I try to remain calm, but start frantically pleading with Francesco, asking him for help. He tells me things aren’t as bad as they seem, that I will be turning eighteen soon and that he’ll come get me on that very day. I will miss my senior football season, but with my scholarship already accepted, I am ensured enrollment in college despite this setback.
Each year, some of the senior varsity guys invariably have a crying fit in the locker-room after their last game, when they realize they’ll never again be playing under the lights. I am too angry to cry as I ride with my father to the military school. Instead, I sit there with my arms crossed and my head against the window, my body as far away from his as possible.
This is the time in my life that is the most difficult to write about. I felt as though I was suffering the epitome of injustice and couldn’t understand why God, the universe, or whatever ridiculous supreme spiritual force capable of interacting with my life would allow this robbery of my senior year to happen to me. Have I not suffered enough under this man? I decide that I will get out of the school one way or another, and then get revenge. There is no getting even, the year of my life with the most potential is being stolen from me and I’ll never get that back, but he needs to pay for this crime. I’ve also never been as furious with my mother as I am now. When my father and I part ways, the fury is so hot that I truly want to kill him.
Two cadets greet me on arrival and lead me to the barracks, a building resembling a medieval castle. It has two projecting towers on each end, narrow concrete windows, and a roof made of giant concrete crenellations. As we walk across the campus, one of the cadets tells me I’m going to hate it here. I resolve to keep to myself and wait it out until January, when I will be picked up on my glorious eighteenth birthday by someone, anyone.
The place turns out to be a nightmare. Younger cadets outrank me and under the supervision of the administrators, who are all former active duty military personnel, try their best to break me; however, I’m a big guy and an athlete, so I can hold my own. They are the ones who become e
xhausted as I am drilled all through every weeknight for various infractions: my bed wasn’t made according to specifications, my windowsill has dust on it, I blinked during formation—you name it, I am drilled for it.
It becomes apparent that I need no further physical training when I show that I can endure being forced to wear a raincoat atop my cadet uniform and march in the sun with a heavy dummy rifle all day. At night I am forced to do as many as one thousand push-ups and to relay between the parade ground and the barracks for hours, until about 4:00 a.m., when I am ordered to shower and change into my uniform for the day. At 4:45 a.m., I am marched to corrective formation where cadets receiving disciplinary action are forced to stand absolutely still and in perfect order until breakfast at 6:00 a.m. This manner of trying to break me goes on until the school’s nurses intervene. I get sent to them for falling asleep in classes every day and they learn the cause of my exhaustion.
I’m not at the school for long before I hate everybody, and as the late summer and fall drag on into early winter, I adopt a sinister, diabolical attitude and demeanor. One day my company commander summons me to his office. I’m pretty sure he’s going to accuse me of stealing money from other cadets or sneaking off to smoke cigarettes, or say he knows I know where the pot on campus grounds is kept. All are true. I’ve also stolen some of the pot and some of the booze hidden with it and traded whatever I could for pills, usually OxyContin. I have no negative thoughts anymore about taking the pills. I don’t really care what might happen to me; I just want to kill the pain and popping pills is much easier to get away with than smoking weed. What I’m not interested in doing is selling drugs, which would, in a place like this, arouse suspicion immediately. Any contraband that people smuggle in is kept a complete secret. There is no scene, no avenue, and no point in trying to make money—our survival is on the line.
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