Respect

by Aleatha Romig

  Undoubtedly, it took more than half of the say in his decisions to convince him to attend those dinners. Time had moved on. He was now old enough to drive, yet to ensure I didn’t end up alone at the table, I insisted on picking him up.

  During eighteen years of marriage I missed countless obligations with Angelina and events for Lennox; yet after the divorce, I made every effort to see my son. If it meant cutting a meeting short or rearranging my schedule, I did what I could do.

  Yes, I was keenly aware that I should have tried these things earlier.

  As I’d sit in the driveway and Lennox would glance back into the house before begrudgingly moving outside and entering my car, I knew the real force, the wonder, the propulsion that made him attend our father-son meetings. Sometimes she’d peer outside and wave. Sometimes she’d simply smile sadly and shut the door. And there were times I never saw her; nevertheless, Angelina was there, encouraging Lennox to see me.

  It was at Lennox’s high school graduation that I gained newfound appreciation for the woman who had been my wife. Together with Angelina, Silvia, Vincent, Bella, Luca, and Luisa, we sat in the auditorium as one family supporting Lennox. After they announced his name and he walked across the stage to receive his diploma, I realized that Angelina and I were holding hands. I wasn’t sure which one of us initiated it; the action was at one time too normal to always take a conscious effort.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as I loosened my grip.

  For the first time in the nearly two years since our divorce was finalized, she smiled—no tears or sadness. Happiness radiated from her being as she squeezed my hand. “Don’t be. I’m not.” She tilted her head to the stage. “He did it. We, Oren, we did it. Did you see him?”

  “I did.”

  “He’s going to NYU in the fall.”

  “A legacy,” I said wistfully, recalling a beautiful girl in my sophomore English class.

  “On both sides, second-generation college-educated.” She swallowed, her eyes going to Vincent’s family, and lowered her voice. “Luca doesn’t have plans for school, not yet, Bella said.”

  I sighed. “His education began a long time ago.”

  With our hands still intertwined, we both looked down at the way we fit together.

  When her blue gaze came back to mine, she said, “Together, we made this happen.”

  “Mio angelo, was it worth it?”

  She nodded. “I’d do it again. I’d do it all again. And knowing us, it would turn out the same.” Before I could respond, she went on. “We have a wonderful son whom we both can be proud of.”

  I wasn’t sure that was the only do-over she meant, but she was right. I wouldn’t do anything differently if it would result in a different outcome for Lennox. I glanced at the poised young lady sitting on the other side of Angelina. Silvia was in that decision process too. “We did good.”

  Later that night after a celebration in Angelina’s home, I was getting ready to leave when she stopped me. “Oren, I need to ask you something.”

  I looked around, finding us alone. “Yes?”

  “I think I know something, but before I ask, I have another question.”

  My head shook as I grinned. “I never thought it would be possible, but I think I may even miss your riddles.”

  Angelina smiled. “This isn’t a riddle. I wanted to ask you how you’d feel if I were seeing someone.”

  My breath caught in my chest, and immediately, I recognized the absurdity and injustice. I had recently begun to see someone. If I could, shouldn’t Angelina have that right, too? I knew the answer, but that didn’t make it easier to say.

  Why did it feel so different to think of her with someone else?

  My ex-wife laughed softly. “Oh, Oren, I don’t know why Vincent and Uncle Carmine think you’re such a great negotiator. Your every thought is telegraphed in your eyes and body language.”

  “That isn’t true,” I replied, sounding appalled that she’d called me out when at the same time I knew she was right.

  “It is.”

  “Then it’s only with you. Only you see the real me.”

  “Is it?”

  “If it weren’t, I’d suppose I’d not be here today.”

  “No,” she said. “It was only with me. I asked how you’d feel if I saw someone because even though you haven’t said anything, I’ve noticed something different about you lately, just recently. I can see you, Oren Demetri, and for the first time in too long, you seem happy, perhaps lighter. Is it because of Lennox’s graduation, or could it be a woman?”

  I took a deep breath. I hadn’t told anyone about the woman I was seeing. Our relationship was secret and complicated, but then again, my life was a series of complicated secrets. Maybe that was why it felt right. For the first time since the lovely girl in my English class, another woman caught my eye. I tried to fight it, knowing she was married, but the pull was too intense. I’d only experienced that one other time in my life. I couldn’t walk away and not try to learn if she felt the same.

  “Mio angelo, you will always be my first love.”

  “And you mine. That’s not what I asked.”

  “You asked two things,” I said. “You saw my initial reaction, but it was wrong. I love you enough to want you to be happy. It hurts me to think that another man can make you that way, can do for you what I couldn’t, but if it’s what you want, I support you. Honestly, the question is moot: I gave up my right to an opinion.”

  “You did, as did I, but I know us. Having the right to an opinion and having an opinion are two different things. We’ve never had trouble voicing them, so I’ll voice mine now. No, I’m not currently seeing anyone. And I don’t know if I ever will. If I do, I’ll be honest with you...” She allowed her words to hang in the air.

  “I am.”

  “You are honest?”

  “I am seeing someone. It just started recently. I wasn’t looking. We met at a charity dinner.” Technically that was true. I knew who she was, just not how dynamic or lovely or breathtaking. How the first assessment I’d heard of her was totally incorrect. She was the opposite of an ice princess. For the second time in my life, I was rendered tongue-tied. It took a special woman to do that to me. I was looking into the blue eyes of one of those women.

  Angelina’s petite hand came to my chest. “Thank you for being honest.”

  I reached up and held that same hand, our fingers intertwining. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I want you happy. I want me happy. Maybe one day I’ll meet her. For the kids’ sake, we need to be honest and open.”

  “Maybe one day. I’m not sure of the future. It’s complicated.”

  She shook her head. “Our past was complicated. We should make an attempt to make the future easy.”

  “Oh, if only.”

  “I saw you and Vinny talking. How was that? How is it going?”

  I didn’t think she wanted specifics, but despite the lack of information I’d shared over our marriage, my Angelina was intelligent. She knew the way our world worked. “Demetri Enterprises is and will forever be involved with the Costellos. The web is too twisted to break free.”

  Her blue eyes clouded. “I’ve had time to think. There was so much I refused to see. It’s becoming clearer.”

  I kissed her forehead. “Be happy, angelo.”

  “You know what, I am. Maybe one day it will involve another man, but right now, I think I need time to get to know me again.”

  A smile tugged at my lips. “Enjoy the relationship. You’re a good person to get to know.”

  My earlier conversation with Vincent hadn’t been about Costello investments or money. Carmine had a rule about business discussions at family gatherings. It was something Vincent honored. His questions were more personal and ones I chose not to bring up to Angelina at this time. Vincent had asked about Lennox.

  “College?” Vincent asked.

  “Yes, NYU with a business major.”

  Vincent nodded. “There’s
more to education than sitting in a classroom. The world is a classroom.”

  Costello 101.

  My chest ached at the familiar conversation. I spoke low. “Remember me saying that one day it’d be you? Now it is. I hope you remember the entire conversation. Lennox isn’t Luca.”

  “No. Luca understands family. He respects family.”

  Standing near the wall of the living room, we both moved our gaze toward our sons. “Angelina and I—”

  “Can you still use that phrase or that excuse?” Vincent asked, interrupting my comment.

  “Yes. We may no longer be married, but we’re still Lennox’s parents. That will never change.” I went on before he said more. “And together we wanted him to have choices. NYU will give him that. Demetri Enterprises will need him one day.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a choice. It sounds like you’ve made his decision: Demetri over Costello.”

  I took a drink from the tumbler in my hand, trying to calm my nerves as I constructed an appropriate response. “Why does it have to be that?”

  “It doesn’t,” Vincent said. “You managed both.”

  I scoffed. “At the expense of my marriage. Is it wrong to want it easier for my son?”

  “To want...no. To expect...yes. My work is different than my father’s and my grandfather’s. We all have had the same title and same responsibilities, yet mine isn’t easier than Pop’s or harder. It’s different. That’s what’s right for Lennox. Keeping him away from his heritage and sheltering him—pampering him—isn’t helping him. He’s family, and one day he’ll need to respect that.

  “Luca,” Vincent went on, “he’s been learning that since he was young. He understands.”

  “I’ll talk to Angelina.”

  “His name may be yours, but he has her blood. He can’t walk away from blood.”

  Blood in. Blood out.

  “I don’t want him to walk away. I want him to have choices.” That wasn’t what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that Angelina and I didn’t want him to walk away, but we also didn’t want him to be bound as we had been bound. We wanted him to have his freedom.

  I knew the binding ties brought on by that blood. They wrapped around my life until they controlled every aspect. I willingly accepted that. Perhaps it should be up to Lennox, but the way Angelina and I saw it was that it was our responsibility to break those bindings—break the chain.

  When given the opportunity, I didn’t discuss it with Angelina. Not on that night or during other conversations. There wasn’t a need, in my mind. From the day that our son was born, we were painfully aware of the dangers associated with Cosa Nostra. Together we’d made mistakes; we’d said things we both regretted. Our decisions for Lennox and even for Silvia didn’t fall into those categories. They were made out of love and commitment. Changing Silvia’s name from Greco was similar to allowing Lennox to live as a Demetri.

  I continued to pray that our sacrifices and good deeds were sufficient penitence for past sins.

  The mistake with our way of thinking was in not fully explaining it to our son.

  Chapter 39

  The frequency of the dinners with my son, or sometimes Silvia, waned as the clock ticked, and the pages of the calendar turned. There came a point in the lives of young people where they felt the need to break free. In retrospect, I don’t believe I’d ever had that opportunity. My parents were taken from me at that critical age—the time when as a young person I would have yearned for adulthood yet possessed no idea of what that would entail. My mother was the first to pass, and a short year later, my father followed. I couldn’t think about them without experiencing the painful ache that always accompanied the thought of their loss. And yet my son wasn’t faced with that same difficulty. His father was present—in the same realm—and he wanted nothing to do with me.

  I tried to think as he would. Perhaps as my parents represented a void in my life, Lennox thought of me the same way. I was the devil in his eyes, the one who’d brought his mother sadness, who’d left him alone with Silvia and Angelina. I was the one who rarely supported his extracurricular achievements and had often been quick to reprimand him. I was the one who worked too many hours and had too much happening away from our family. It was a vicious circle, one shortcoming the impetus to another.

  Lennox didn’t see me as the hardworking father who provided him with countless opportunities or the financial resources for limitless possibilities. He didn’t know the sacrifices made on his behalf. And that shortcoming fell on Angelina and me. In sheltering him, we’d limited his scope of vision. At the time, it seemed right until he took it too far.

  With organized sports part of my son’s past, Lennox Demetri took to a rising sport phenomenon, one with increasing popularity. Prior to his endeavor, I’d heard of mixed martial arts, like a New Yorker heard about polo. It wasn’t baseball, basketball, or football, yet it was an activity that some enjoyed. There’d been pictures of fighters on the news and in the newspaper. It was something that others did that had no bearing on me—until it did.

  I didn’t hear about my son’s underground career from him, Silvia, or Angelina. Later, I’d learn that my ex-wife had been unaware. It began while Lennox was living on the campus of NYU. His activities were his—until they meant more.

  “Talk to me,” Vincent said one evening when he called me to an unscheduled meeting over actual drinks.

  With the years lessening our previous familiarity, the spark of fear that I used to experience with his father came back. It was that uncomfortable twist of the gut and acute awareness that only a direct demand from the boss could elicit. “I feel like I should know what you’re talking about,” I said as my mind did a mental checklist of Demetri-Costello dealings. While I was assessing business connections, Vincent was discussing something much more personal.

  His dark stare bore into my gaze. “It needs to stop. The talk is getting louder and, Oren, when it gets to me, it’s gone too far.”

  I nodded. “Everything is in order...everything that I’m aware of.”

  “Jimmy Bonetti is talking it up. He’s making bank and wants everyone to know it’s with a Costello.”

  Jimmy Bonetti was Johnny’s son and Benny’s grandson, a powerful capo in the Bonetti family by his own right. He’d surpassed his father years ago in rumor and in hits. He also had a big mouth that had begun a fair share of beefs between families and within the Bonetti family.

  “Jimmy Bonetti likes to talk.”

  “I’ve checked it out. It’s real.”

  I was so confused.

  One would think that with time I’d get better at unraveling Costello riddles.

  “A Costello?” I tried. “Who is Jimmy talking about?”

  Vincent’s voice lowered. “We’re family, Oren, and I know more about your son than you do?”

  My pulse thumped against my veins as the rush of circulation warmed my skin. My dealings with Vincent, with the family in general, had simmered over the last few years—not the boil it had been and not still, but somewhere in between. It had gotten to that place that had become comfortable. The deal I’d originally made with Carmine still worked. The Costellos received a percentage of my income—my tax to the family—with territorial deals. I received a cut from the money laundering. As they said, it all worked out in the wash.

  However, with the stare pointed my way, something had changed. Something wasn’t right. “My son? We’ve talked about him—”

  Vincent interrupted my reminder with a hiss. “This isn’t about him. It’s about all of us. It makes us all look bad. If you won’t teach him respect, I will. Family looks out for family. Sometimes it takes a stronger hand. What do they call that nowadays...tough love?”

  “What are the Bonettis saying about Lennox?”

  “Do you know he fights?”

  I closed my eyes and sighed. “It’s a phase. I got wind of it. I tried to talk to him. He’s just strutting his stuff.” I waved Vincent off. “A rebellious stage.”r />
  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Do you know where he fights?”

  My mouth went dry as the conversation replayed. I’d been busy with work and deals. The overseas investments were taking more time. Lennox was technically an adult. I’d figured he could make his own mistakes and learn from the consequences. That wasn’t what Vincent’s expression was saying. “No. I don’t,” I admitted. “How does Lennox have anything to do with the Bonettis?”

  “Does he even understand the territories? The boundaries?”

  Frustration grew as I waited for one of my questions to be answered. I lowered my voice. There wasn’t anyone close enough to hear. Jimmy had uncharacteristically left us alone, yet as always, he was nearby. “Vinny, I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Fucking Costello riddles.

  “He fights. Not for the family. Not doing our work. But that isn’t the worst of it. He fights in Jersey. People pay to see him. They call him Nox.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “You will or I will. It’s past time. That boy needs to learn respect for his family.”

  “He is a boy,” I tried.

  Vincent’s chin rose in indignation. “He’s a man, nearly twenty years old. Do you know what I was doing for our family at that age? What Luca is doing?”

  I had seen Luca’s name under arrests in the newspaper. Like his father, nothing stuck. Nevertheless, he was following in familiar footsteps. “Please, Vincent.”

  His head slowly shook. “This has gone beyond us.” He motioned between us. “This is public. Others are laughing at a Costello bringing business to Newark.”

  “Newark?”

  “Oren, be a man and a father to that boy, or I’ll take care of it.”

  With that he stood and without another word walked away, Jimmy once again at his side.

  That night I drove to Newark, to a warehouse in the Ironbound District. I knew the location, but I hadn’t realized that this was where he fought. There was no signage, but the cars in the dilapidated parking lot let me know I was in the right place. I followed the sound of people and paid for admittance at the door. The stench of sweat and testosterone permeated the stale air until my nostrils flared, begging for something fresh.