“It didn’t take Mama long to get married again. Another longshoreman who knew Papa. Oh, he was a bad one, that Johnny. Call me Pop, he’d say, your father would want you to. Like hell he would, Frankie said, like hell. Oh, he and the new one had a terrible time of it. And Timmy, he just up and left home. He was maybe fourteen—ten years older than I. He just up and left home and no more than a year later, there he was, killed in a barroom brawl. Poor Tim, wanted to be just like Papa, and I guess he was.”
She squeezed her niece’s hand. “That’s why your dad and I never touch the booze. God, we were afraid to. After Mama … well, she started drinking because of troubles with Johnny. After three more kids …”
“You have half-brothers and sisters? I didn’t know that. Dad never told—”
“Oh, they weren’t part of our lives. They went off to the Protectorate. Same as I did, when I was nine. Your dad was old enough to take care of himself, I guess—fourteen, fifteen, when Mama died. Just under forty, and here I am, an old woman in my seventies, still here. How do you explain that?”
“Maybe because you didn’t drink? I always wondered about that, you and Dad, not even a taste at Christmas.”
“Oh, we signed the pledge. Remember? All Catholic-school kids did, promised not to drink until twenty-one years of age. Oh, boy, do I remember parties, schoolmates hoisting a beer and saying, ‘Well, here’s to the pledge—I’ll drink to that.’ It was a big joke in those days, but to Frankie and me, it was no joke.”
“When did you get out of the Protectorate, Aunt Catherine?”
“Well, I was thirteen. Your daddy and mommy got married then, and he took me out, to live with them. Oh, your mom wasn’t too happy about that, with a new baby on the way and them struggling to make ends meet. But it was a promise your dad made, and he kept it. I was supposed to help your mom, but boy, I guess I was a pistol—playing the hook, running around with all the freedom in the world. No one was ever gonna tell me what to do again. Not me! A real terror. Now, I can feel for your poor ma. God, she was just a teenager herself. But your dad, bless him, he tried to keep peace, he worked so hard, three jobs at one time, and he always knew the ropes. Hung around the Democratic Club, had some uncles who knew the score, could always get himself a job. Your dad never forgot the hard days, that’s why he’s always so good to the underdog. Frankie, boy, he put up with a lot from me, I’ll tell you!”
“How did you come to live with ‘the old man’? I’ve always wondered about that. Why didn’t you get married? God, you’d have made a great mother. I always felt closer to you than to—”
“No, don’t say a thing about your mom. She had a full plate, with your dad involved in union politics and coming home with a busted head in the early days, before he got himself connected with the right side of things. And the babies. Frank junior, the first, who died on the day he was born, God love him, and your oldest sister, Maureen, not ten months after, and James and Edward and then, that time … when Eddie was only four months old and her pregnant again, poor thing.”
Megan leaned forward. There had been no child for four years after Edward. Then Frank junior, the second child with that name, then. Megan, then the last, her younger sister, Elizabeth.
“But she wasn’t pregnant again for four years … was she?”
Her aunt smiled. “Oh, darling, you think all you younger women in this modern day and age know everything—how not to get pregnant, what to do if you get caught.”
“Do you mean my mother had an abortion? I don’t believe it. Aunt Catherine!”
Her aunt shrugged. “Believe it. She wasn’t the only one. Young Catholic women, Jewish women. Plenty of them got things ‘taken care of.’ They all had so many kids in those days. Yes. My God, there’ve been abortions since there’ve been pregnant women. And there I was, not helping her out one bit, skipping high school, skipping the secretarial school they scraped and scrimped to send me to, and your dad, getting me a decent job in an insurance office as an office girl. God, I hated it.”
Megan said, “I remember when Mom told me I had to take shorthand and typing so I could get a good office job, and I had a fit—not me, not me—and she said, you are a brat, just like your Aunt Catherine.’ I was so proud.”
“Ah, darling, she had so much to deal with. You don’t really know your mom. She and I had our moments, but when I needed her, she was there.”
My God. What?
“There I was, Miss Smarty-ass, working when she felt like it in this office, running off and doing what I pleased with whatever boy I fancied. You see, Catherine would never get caught, but I did, baby, at seventeen. I couldn’t even say which boy it was. I was so stupid; it couldn’t happen to me. Ha. If your dad ever found out, he’d have killed me. And probably about four or five boys. I tried to handle it on my own. God. Went to some back-alley butcher.”
Megan clenched her teeth. “What happened?”
“Oh, a back-alley botched job is what happened. And your mom rushed me to the hospital in the middle of the night, bleeding like to die, and they did what they had to do. Hysterectomy at seventeen. Imagine. That’s why, when you were born, with that red hair, that chin, that Megan-Catherine attitude, God, I felt reborn. I loved you so much.”
“But surely you and Mom had to tell Daddy what happened? How did he handle it?”
“Oh, sweetie, remember, I told you a long time ago—men have convenient minds, don’t they? Your mother told him it was something that somehow went wrong with girls sometimes, and he never asked another question. What he didn’t know, he didn’t have to deal with, did he? But I’ll tell you, Megan, to your dad, you were his Catherine from the start. What he wished for in me, he saw in you. Not that he didn’t love you for yourself, because he did, but also for the me that he saw in you. The baby I’d never have.”
“But how did you ever get to live with the old man?”
“Funny, everyone always called him that—‘the old man.’ Well, I went back to the typing and shorthand and I landed a job in his company. I was a crackerjack, once I made up my mind to it, fast and smart and not afraid to let anyone know it. The old man’s company had these contracts with the government, they made uniforms, and boy, when the war broke out—the First Big One—sweetheart, the company quadrupled in size. We employed, God, so many people, and I was moved along pretty fast and was secretary to one of the big shots, one of the top assistants. And one day the old man’s secretary came down with influenza and he needed some letters sent off real fast, and there I was, and there, it was. I was faster and brighter and, I guess, cuter—little Irish kid with a big mouth and a mess of red curls.” She batted her eyes and held her head coquettishly. “And, oh, those eyes—there was a song about that, ‘Them There Eyes,’ and sometimes we’d get into a thing—I mean I’d just open up my mouth and tell the old man if I thought there was something wrong in the letter he’d just dictated, or in the presentation he was getting ready to make—and he’d get sore, or pretend to, and then he’d shake his head and start to whistle that song and I’d get madder, because I thought he wasn’t taking me seriously. He was just teasing, having me on, because he did listen, at least sometimes, and he gave me a lot of responsibility, and I made a good salary.
“And then, after the war, the old man had a stroke. It damn near killed him, but he was a tough guy, a real fighter, and he didn’t even consider turning the company over to his sons. Three big dummies, those guys, for all their Harvard-Yale educations. And they’d send a car for me, right from the Bronx, up to his estate in Westchester. His wife was the nicest lady; she was the one suggested it’d be better, maybe, for me to move in with them. Do my work right there, with a driver—a real limo, kiddo—to take me to the office, or to bring the work back and forth. It was an unbelievable place. My room was beautiful. And they had a real honest-to-God library, books from floor to ceiling, and I could read anything I wanted to. You got that from me, Megan, your love of books. And then the missus died and I just stayed on and worked
for him. And took care of him—he was all alone, the boys had moved out, had their own homes and lives. When he retired, why, I just stayed on with him. We traveled all over the world, and he bought his home down in Florida and the one in Providence and of course this place, here on the Drive. His wife never wanted to leave Westchester, and she thought he couldn’t travel, but we did. Oh, boy, did we ever.”
“But why didn’t you ever get married, Aunt Catherine? It doesn’t seem fair.”
Her aunt tapped her hand playfully. “Why, darling, he was an upright Episcopalian, a good church member, an elder, heaven help us. And here was I, this Irish Catholic girl with red hair no less, and not even a high school diploma to my name, against his fancy Harvard education. It didn’t matter, dear, not to me or to him.”
“Well, I’m glad he took care of you. It could have turned out badly. His sons could have protested the will and made trouble for you.”
“Oh, he took care of all that. With a lawyer and statements for them to sign, don’t you worry. And, oh, Megan, what a life I had with him.”
“Were you lovers, Aunt Catherine?”
“Oh. In a manner of speaking. But then, there are some things I’ll keep to myself, some specific things, if you don’t mind, kiddo.”
“Well, you always did seem happy to me. And I always thought the family—you know, they always had something to say about it, but I thought they should just mind their own business. Hell, you lived your life the way you wanted.”
Catherine poured more strong, dark tea for both of them, studied the surface of her cup, then looked up at Megan, her eyes glowing.
“Let me tell you this one secret, Megan, just for the two of us, something you’ll never repeat, all right?”
“God, Aunt Catherine, of course.”
Her aunt’s face was radiant almost girlish. “We loved each other dearly. He was the only man in my life I ever loved or wanted to love. So much for all those ‘missed opportunities’ the family filled my head with through the years. So don’t you ever feel I missed out on anything in life, or that I was somehow gypped by not being his wife. I had the very best of it with Albert William Harlow. After his wife died, and until the day he died, I had his love and he had mine.”
Megan nodded. What more could anyone want, to live with the person you love, and who loves you?
“And I’m not grieving for his loss, either. He was a good bit older than me, and he had a full life and I had a large portion of it. I made him a promise—and I’m like you in that, Megan, a promise is a sacred vow. I promised him that I would get on with the rest of my life, however long I had left. Let’s face it, baby, I’m no spring chicken, but I’ve got some more living to do myself. There’s still some things to see, some people to love, some things to care about. So I’ll do what I promised him and myself. I’ll get things organized, get myself down to Florida and get on with my life. Oh, you’ll visit me down there, won’t you, darling? You and your darling Mike. Maybe he could do a book set down in Florida; the colors are so lush, the water so blue-green. And even Jordan, if he ever gets around to taking some time off from his graduate school. But you, Megan, you’ll come, right?”
Megan nodded and grinned. “You better believe it.”
And she meant it as much as her Aunt Catherine meant the invitation—another promise between them to be kept.
PART THREE
CHAPTER ONE
WILLIE RUBBED HIS STOMACH. THE PAIN was terrible at times, bearable at best. He swallowed three or four pills with a mouthful of orange juice, but he had been drugging the pain for so long they were hardly effective. He didn’t even get groggy anymore, which was good. He needed to be very clear-headed for however long he had left.
What a bitch, Willie thought, stomach cancer at fifty-three.
Until last year he had looked damned good. He had the right kind of skin for the lifts, and a hell of a good surgeon who did just a bit here and there to make him look healthy, relaxed, and, damn it, ten years younger. He’d kept himself in good shape: slim but strong, hair more blond than gray. Alan Ladd.
When his illness was diagnosed, he had refused the chemotherapy right off the bat. He knew, the way you just know, it wasn’t worth it. He didn’t want to speed into that awful cancer-look. He didn’t want to lose his hair. Hell, he’d go as far as he could with the damn thing and then he’d bail out on his own terms. One powerful injection.
Willie wondered what effect his death would have on his brother, Mischa. Through the years he had supported his misshapen, retarded brother. Various housekeepers—some good, some not so good, it was all the same to Mischa—saw to it that he bathed and changed his clothing regularly, ate on some sort of schedule. The three-room apartment in the Bronx was Mischa’s home until he had a massive heart attack in his early forties.
Willie had been in New York “doing a deal,” and he took one look at the small body with its large head, the feeble but happy sign of recognition in Mischa’s usually blank eyes, and he had his brother transferred from a ward in Fordham Hospital to a private room in the Harkness Pavilion at Columbia Presbyterian, New York’s best hospital.
Mischa was the only one in his life who offered Willie total, uncomplicated, undemanding love and admiration. It was both comfortable and comforting to have Mischa live with him at his villa, some fifty miles south of Rome. He never asked for anything, was delighted by the smallest glance or gesture. Like a pet dog, little Mischa.
As he thought about the deformed body topped by its mop of graying blond curls, Willie wondered, was Mischa his penance? Against all the things in his life, would this final kindness to his brother count?
Damn Catholic reasoning. It wouldn’t count if that was how you considered it—part of a deal. All the rules he’d broken, sins committed, confessions made with conscious calculation. Hell, what did it all add up to, anyway? Some kind of games played by priests. He didn’t really believe in any of it.
Well, it wouldn’t be long before he found out. And that thought, in itself, was an admission of belief.
Or was it?
This last year, despite the pain and sickness, had been extraordinary. He spent his time speaking softly from his deepest memory, into his tape recorder. Willie hadn’t forgotten—or forgiven—one single moment of his life. Not one lousy bitch-nun, not one single punch in the head, not one terrifying screaming fight that paralyzed his childhood. The telling came with a sense of relief—and, of course, it was for a specific purpose.
He talked about people and events from his earliest memory, at three or four years old, through his latest production, a small, graceful, low-budget film about a woman’s coming of age, which had won a prize at Cannes. Added to his other awards. But this had been his own favorite film, and the most surprising one to the critics, who always decried the violence and sexism they claimed permeated his films. Well, Willie knew what he knew. His critics might not like his vision, but every one of his films made money. In this business, that was the fucking bottom line, wasn’t it?
Willie knew things no one in the world would ever imagine he knew. He knew, through the years, what they had all been up to: who they’d met, influenced, corrupted, screwed. How they’d lived their lives in public and in secret. There was an army of invisible investigators out there, drones willing to spend their lives going through endless dusty records, gathering names and places and times and dates. As long as you had the money to pay them, you could hire the very best.
Now Willie was telling it all. Not just about himself, his marriages, his seven or eight legitimate and illegitimate children, his own crimes and misdemeanors, secrets and mysteries. He had painstakingly traced the lives of those who were at the very center of his boyhood. He knew now how they had all turned out, what they had done and achieved. What they would want to keep hidden. He knew the public and the private facts. Some unsubstantiated, some inferred, and some actually fabricated. It would be just as difficult to refute fiction as to disprove truth. And the reader, reali
zing Willie had told the most godawful things about himself, wouldn’t doubt what he told about the others.
Willie savored the irony—in due time, he would be the one in control of the rest of their lives.
Payback time. Even though he wouldn’t be around when it all blew up, it was enough that he would die knowing he had done it: little dispensable Willie. That fact gave him the courage and strength to go on against the pain. A lifetime’s achievement. A completed circle.
Yet his satisfaction was mixed with a finally-admitted sadness and frustration. At the pit of his life was a great sense of loss and emptiness. It might have been so different.
He had known by the age of fourteen who and what he was. The hated, hateful outsider. The punching bag, the kid who didn’t matter.
If they had only acted differently, at that precise moment when that single shared event transformed all of their lives—if they had included him, acknowledged him—none of this would now be about to happen to them.
After they had beaten Walter Stachiew to death, Dante had rounded them all up. He took care of Megan first: She hadn’t been with them that night. Her cousins, the O’Brien brothers, looking out for each other, and the Jew Herskel and Dante, all together and safe in their lifelong friendship, had discounted him. No one had said, Willie, you’re one of us. We did this thing together, and it binds us all more tightly than brothers or cousins or best friends. You are in; you are one of us now, and for all time.
That was what he had needed.
But Dante had just told him to go home and keep his mouth shut, and that was what he had done. No one had come to him later, when his father was arrested. It wasn’t that they trusted his silence. It was that whether or not he spoke didn’t matter. His old man had confessed and been arrested, and no one, not even Dante, the would-be President who told people he felt their pain and suffering, had come to him.
Willie had hoped, for one fleeting moment, that everything in his fourteen years of life would be changed. His two worst tormentors, his father and Walter Stachiew, were out of his life. He was part of something immense and important. But nothing had really changed. It was as though he hadn’t been with them that night.
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