It wasn’t until I was twenty-eight years old and living in Manhattan that I decided I needed to tell my parents I was gay. Until then, it was the secret we never spoke about, which was convenient for everyone at the time. Then I started dating someone and fell in love. Suddenly, coming out seemed so important: I wanted to share my newfound love with my family.
My plan was to tell my parents on my next visit home for Sunday dinner. It was customary for them to drive me back to Manhattan. That day, I offered to drive so my father could relax in the backseat. I didn’t want the news to startle him into an accident on the Verrazano Bridge. As we passed the first of two powder-blue towers, I looked into the rearview mirror as my hometown faded away. It was time. I calmly and quietly told them I was gay. There was a long pause. For a while, I could hear only the car engine. I kept my eyes straight ahead because I couldn’t bear to look at them. Waiting for their response, I drove their Cadillac across the bridge. It felt as if we were floating because an incredible weight had been lifted. Regardless if they accepted me, I was finally free.
Seconds ticked by. My father stayed silent, which was not unusual, while my mother started to ask questions, which was. Still, we were communicating. Had I not been an adult, I don’t think my parents would have been as receptive. They were disappointed, but they understood. For now that was enough.
When the ferry pulled into the terminal that Sunday so many years later, I grabbed my knapsack containing Bill’s book and made my way to the parking area where I knew my father would be waiting to pick me up. Once I stepped out of the building, a blast of salty air washed over me. Across the street, my father was standing outside his car, waving.
“Hey, Pop,” I said. “Waiting long?”
“Long enough.” I threw my knapsack in the backseat and got in the car. As my father pulled away, he asked, “So how’s the doctor business?”
“Busy as usual.”
“It must be nice to live off the misery of others.”
“At least I get paid for it,” I said. “How’s retirement?”
“It’s like waiting to die.”
This banter—a mixture of gangster movie talk from the 1940s mixed with Henny Youngman–like one-liners—was the way we communicated.
“Pop, do me a favor and take the road over Grymes Hill. I want to see the Verrazano Bridge.”
“Why?” he asked. “Are you planning on jumping?”
“Not today.”
Driving the winding roads, I stared out the window at the large homes: ranches with bright green, sprawling lawns, and tall, Spanish-style houses peeking out behind neatly manicured shrubs. When I was young, I wanted to live on this hill one day. Now I could barely force myself to visit once a month.
“Is Josephine coming for dinner?” I asked.
My father continued to stare straight ahead. It was then that I remembered he was nearly deaf and always seemed to have trouble with his hearing aids. I didn’t repeat the question. Instead I stared at him, thinking about how old he looked squinting through his glasses. He’d had a heart attack and undergone a quadruple bypass and an aortic valve replacement ten years ago, and after that, illness began chiseling away at his health, little by little each passing year. For the rest of the ride, I wondered whether I was going to look like this squinting old man when I turned his age.
It seemed inevitable. He was my father, and genetically I had half his chromosomes. But unlike other boys who had close ties with their fathers—throwing baseballs, watching sports, and washing the car on Saturdays—I was never very close to my dad. My father worked all the time. Then on weekends, my mother made us participate in Little League or basketball games. She thought it would be good for us, except my father wasn’t very encouraging, because he didn’t particularly like sports himself, having grown up on a farm in Italy. I’m sure my father didn’t even know how the games were played, so our mutual reluctance to participate in these forced outings only strained what little relationship we already had.
Once we arrived at my parents’ house, we entered through the garage. My mother was in the basement cooking. Like most Italians, she did not use the main kitchen. The first order of business assigned to my father when we moved into this house was for him to install an oven in the laundry room downstairs so my mother didn’t have to get her “real” kitchen dirty.
Each time I came home, my parents’ house seemed smaller, but now it did more than ever, since I had stayed away for so long. Walking down the hall toward the laundry/kitchen, I passed by the small makeshift studio where I used to paint. Two self-portraits were still propped up against the wall in the far corner. I followed the aroma of tomato sauce and cheese toward the kitchen. I stuck my head inside the doorway. My mother was standing over the stove with all four burners lit. “Hi, Mom.”
“Is that my son?” she asked, setting down her wooden spoon. Over the years, my mother’s appearance had changed little. Her once-dark hair was now dyed blonde, but other than gaining a few extra pounds, my mother was still a small Italian lady who wore Versace eyeglasses, lots of gold jewelry (even at the beach), and sequins whenever possible. Grabbing my face with both hands, she kissed my cheek and said, “You look tired. How was your trip? Where did you go, California?”
“San Francisco.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” she said, picking up her spoon to stir the tomato sauce. The washer and dryer doubled as countertops displaying fresh baked loaves of bread wrapped in clean dish towels, a bowl of tomatoes picked from her garden, and a large block of Pecorino Romano. “Why did you go there? Was it for work or for the book?”
“It was a reading,” I said, tearing off a piece of bread.
“You’re hungry,” she said. “Let me make you a dish because your sister and Joe are always late.”
“No, that’s okay,” I insisted, dipping the bread into the boiling pot of tomato sauce.
My mother ignored me and placed two links of pork sausage on a plate. She cut a huge piece of bread off the remaining loaf and handed it to me. “Here. Sit down like a human and eat.”
I reluctantly took the dish from her hand, knowing it was very easy to overeat at my mother’s house. Over the years, I’d learned to pace myself.
“Did you sell a lot of books?”
“Not really.”
“Oh.” I heard the disappointment in her voice. My father walked in from the garage. “Angelo, go get your son a glass of wine.”
“Huh?”
“Go get your son a glass of wine,” she repeated, loudly.
He looked at me. “You want wine?”
“Of course he wants wine,” yelled my mother. “Don’t ask stupid questions. Just do what I say.”
He shuffled back down the hall, mumbling under his breath as he waved his hands overhead. In the garage, my father stored his famous homemade wine in huge wooden barrels. Since it had a pungent, almost vinegary taste, Josephine had taught me to cut it with ginger ale. The soda diminished the acidic quality without compromising the quick onset of inebriation. When he returned with a glass, I didn’t ask for ginger ale. I downed the wine and handed it back to him for more.
“Uh-oh,” he said, staring into the empty glass. “Hey, Lina, I think your son has a problem.”
My mother ignored him as she tended to her eggplant. Once my father returned to the garage for more wine, she looked over at me. “Come and help.” She beckoned me with her wooden spoon. “Bring this basket of bread upstairs, but be careful. It’s hot.”
The kitchen on the main floor was brighter and larger than the one in the basement. My mother had already set the table and laid out slices of provolone and dried sausage for us to nibble on while we waited for my sister. My gaze wandered around the room as I chewed a thick piece of cheese. On the refrigerator, there was a photograph of a statue of the Virgin Mary. A scene from the Last Supper, carved in white marble, hung on the wall over the head of the kitchen table. Pictures of my niece and three nephews were everywhere. When my mother came u
p the stairs, she was balancing plates on both arms and in each hand like a seasoned waiter at a steakhouse.
“Did your father get you the wine?” she asked, setting the plates onto the table. Before I even had a chance to respond, she began shouting down the stairs. “Hello, Angelo!” she yelled, flicking the light switch on and off. “Hello?” When he failed to reply, she walked back into the kitchen. “I don’t know what to do with that man! He is completely deaf.”
Realizing I was still wearing my knapsack, I removed it and set it down on my lap. Without hesitation, I pulled out Bill’s book and placed it on the table. My mother stared at it as she wiped her hands with a dish towel. After several seconds, she looked at me blankly.
“Do you recognize him?” I asked.
“Who, this man?” she said, pointing to the picture of Bill. I noted a hint of recognition.
“It’s Bill. Remember Bill, my Scoutmaster?”
My mother picked up the book to inspect it. Then she scowled. “He wrote a book?”
“Yes, he did. He adopted that boy in 1982 and wrote this book.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true,” I insisted softly. Then I added, “I spoke to him on the phone.”
“What!”
My father appeared in the doorway, holding a glass of wine and carrying a full bottle. I motioned him over. He raised his eyebrows. “Since when did you become such a drinker?” he asked, setting the glass down in front of me. I took another good swig.
“Do you recognize this man?” My mother waved the book in front of him.
“Huh?”
“It’s Bill. Do you remember Bill?”
I gulped down more wine. It burned my palate like scalding pizza. I shoved a piece of sausage in my mouth to soothe the sting while my father stared silently at the cover of Bill’s book.
“Did you hear me?” asked my mother. “He was your son’s Scoutmaster at—”
“I know who he is.”
“He wrote a book!” she shouted. “Your son called him.”
My father flashed his eyes in my direction, but he didn’t say anything. Then he set the bottle of wine on the table and silently walked into the den. My mother placed the book back down on the table and returned to the basement. There was no further discussion, and I decided not to bring it up again, even once Josephine and her husband arrived.
After dinner, I stumbled into the den, drunk, and fell onto the couch. On the far wall, above the television, was a painting of a fishing pier my mother had made in art class. The year after I graduated from college, I created my largest and most personal work for Olga.
Inspired by Van Gogh, I painted a rowboat lost at sea. I imitated his swirling brushstrokes from Starry Night in the turbulent water and then repeated this technique in the blackened sky above. At the bow of the boat, a lone Boy Scout stood with his hands tied behind his back and a hood placed over his head like a scarecrow, fastened around his neck by a rope. Also in the boat were several nuns—wearing traditional, large-winged habits—inspired by the costumes worn in the television show The Flying Nun. In the water, nuns were drowning, and in the distance, their habits transformed into seagulls flying overhead in the dark, chaotic sky. It was overwrought and self-indulgent, but I painted it in 1990 when I was a very angry twenty-three-year-old punk. When I showed this painting to my mother, she made no comment. Instead she studied it suspiciously, wringing her hands with a dish towel as she always did before walking away without uttering a word. I never painted again.
When I returned home after my first year of medical school for summer vacation, I noticed the fishing pier painting hanging in the den. It was exactly the same size canvas I used to paint my masterpiece for Olga. When I confronted my mother, she didn’t hesitate to confess she’d painted over it.
“You never liked that painting anyway,” was her response.
I cannot describe how appalled I was, staring into my mother’s eyes, searching for a glimmer of remorse and realizing there was none. My painting was simply another casualty of her denial.
Seeing that painting in my inebriated state that Sunday afternoon only fueled my anger. Once again my parents had refused to talk about Bill. My father had turned his deaf ear, and my mother had avoided the truth as she always had, though not with a fresh set of sheets or layer of paint this time; now she busied herself with cooking.
I’m still ashamed of what I did next. I stood up and walked over to that painting. I wanted to rip it down and throw it on the floor. Instead I picked off a small area of paint in the bottom left corner with my fingernail. I did it just so that I could see a remnant of my former painting underneath. But I couldn’t control myself, and I ended up peeling off a section about the size of a quarter. Now there was a circular window of dark blue peeking through the fishing pier, as though someone was staring out of a peephole from the other side of the wall. I backed away, horrified that I had damaged my mother’s painting, and ran up the stairs to my old bedroom.
My mother hadn’t changed my room much. Gone were the movie posters, and all my first-edition Stephen King novels were stacked out of sight in the closet, their once-glossy covers faded and the pages yellowed. Rummaging through the closet for a shopping bag to pack them in, I found a shoe box of Boy Scout memorabilia, including my old merit badges, my Scout belt, and other patches awarded to me for completing hiking trips. After all this time, this box was hidden in the back of my closet. I placed it under my arm and headed back downstairs.
TWO DAYS LATER, JOSEPHINE CALLED.
“I just got off the phone with Mommy,” she said. “You’ve got her all nervous because you called Bill. Are you crazy?”
“I wanted her to know. She’s the one who insisted he was dead. Now we know the truth. Plus, I wanted to tell her he adopted a son.”
“Are you trying to give them both a fucking heart attack?”
“No,” I said. “But honestly, Jo, I didn’t tell them everything.”
“What else?”
“Bill told me he adopted fifteen boys. He still has three with him, and they’re handicapped. God knows how many kids he’s molested, and all because nobody ever wants to talk about it. Maybe you don’t remember what happened to me, but I live with it every day. So don’t tell me I’m crazy for wanting to get this out in the open now.”
For once, Josephine was speechless.
My relationship with Josephine had been evolving since our childhood, when she treated me like an annoying little brother. Years later, Josephine retained a bad-girl edge that she felt stemmed from being a middle child; she often said what was on her mind, not caring what other people thought. Deep down, I knew she was a softy, and learning her little brother was being sexually abused by a man was too much even for a tough girl like Josephine. All these years later, those feelings of guilt had surfaced.
“Oh my God,” she said. Her words sounded muffled, as if she was covering her mouth. “I know we let you down. I’m sorry. It’s just that Mommy sounded so worried. She thinks he’s going to come after you.”
“What would you like me to do, Jo? Because I’m not going to live in fear. He has to be stopped.”
“Okay. Just please don’t talk to them about Bill,” she said. “Call me instead.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Yes, from now on, I want to hear all about it.”
PART II
CHAPTER 13
Evel Knievel versus Billy the Kid
IT WAS A MONTH BEFORE MY ELEVENTH BIRTHDAY. My mother had us walking the aisles of the boys’ clothing department at Korvette’s, searching for the right size Billy the Kid–brand pants.
“Ma’am, we don’t carry Billy the Kid,” said the woman sorting through clothes in the fitting room. “Try Sears.”
When she looked up at me, I quickly diverted my eyes to avoid her pitiful stare. Billy the Kid was the only brand with “husky” sizes. Other resourceful adjectives that applied to fat young boys included “stocky” and �
��rugged.” These three words made up the holy trinity of large, extra-large, and too fat to fit into anything else.
I suppose the people at Billy the Kid wanted to maintain a strong, masculine perception when parents had to look beyond normal sizes for their sons. This sleight-of-hand marketing didn’t work on me. I knew I was fat, and I was grateful Billy the Kid made pants that fit my build, or what Chris Reynolds, a classmate, described as my “girly curve.”
We were in the school yard after lunch. I was talking to Matthew Seabream when Chris interrupted us. “You know, Spinelli, you have a girly curve to your body.” Matthew giggled, then bit down on his lip when he noted the hurt expression on my face. I wasn’t sure how to respond, but I prepared myself to be enlightened.
Chris was the class know-it-all (or so he thought). He earned this title in fifth grade after he callously explained to a small group of students where babies came from. Julie O’Connor’s mother had recently delivered a baby girl, and the class was congratulating her on the arrival of her new sister. At recess, we were all standing around Julie, listening to her coo about the baby, when Chris walked right up to us and said, “You know where babies come from, don’t you? They come out of a woman’s hole.” Then he gestured with his hands over his crotch. Julie grimaced so vehemently it caused her cheeks to blush all the way to her ears. I just stared at Chris in horror. For years, I thought babies hatched from their mothers’ protruding bellies like chicks out of eggs. Chris’s assertion, although crude, made much more sense. I suppose that’s why his unprovoked observation about my body shape bothered me so much. “Spinelli, you have an hourglass figure,” he continued, “just like a woman’s.” Then he motioned with his hands to outline the exaggerated curvature of my hips.
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