The Family Hightower

by Brian Francis Slattery

  She doesn’t say anything after that. Just opens her arms, beckons him upstairs. Leads him into the bedroom. They hurry. They’re feeling young, like they’re misbehaving, getting away with something. Neither of them knows that they’ll never sleep together again.

  Because, dear reader, Peter is lying, to himself as much as her. Not about the business; ever since his meeting with Joe on the shore on the lake, he’s been extracting himself from the financial kingdom he built. He’s been naming successors, setting up managers, creating funds to pay for his transition out. Shooing away some of the vultures, he’s thought to himself. His business associates are at first jolted by the suddenness of it. They say they need a couple days to think about it, but it always turns out they need less. Within a day, sometimes a couple hours, they’re talking about what they’d like to be in charge of. If that sounds good to you, of course, they say. A little too deferential for Peter to buy it; he knows that as soon as he relinquishes power, takes his hands off the steering wheel, the real jockeying, the serious squabbling, will start. By then he’ll be a silent partner. Showing up for quarterly meetings, if that. Taking a phone call now and again. He’s been moving his investments around, too, setting up an array of stocks, bonds, real estate holdings that don’t need him to look at them every day to see how they’re doing. The money won’t perform as well that way, he knows that; he just doesn’t want to think about it that much anymore. Most of his money is in this city, his hometown, and maybe he knows it’s not the smartest decision, that there are better places to put your assets. But he knows his town so well; knows, too, that so far it has risen and fallen with the fortunes of America. If Cleveland goes down, he thinks, it’s because America is going down, too. There’ll be no place to hide. He’s not an idiot; he knows that can change. Though in another way, he’s right, will always be right—even in the 1960s, when it’s sunny in California and Cleveland is on fire. In 1995, the people of Cleveland are living in the future. They’re still living in it now. Stand on the west side of the Cuyahoga’s valley and take a good look around, at the giant machinery, the rusting bridges, the white arcs of new buildings downtown hard against the sooty older ones. Look at the colors in the water below, the unmoving barges, the flocking seagulls. Take a good fucking look. Then turn around and listen to the way people talk. The friendly sarcasm in their voices, the skepticism. They’re through pretending they’re sure of anything. Things’ll get better, you might try saying to them. They always get better here. By here you mean America, but they know better than to think that means anything. See if they don’t laugh a little. Not bothering to ask you how you’re so sure, because they know you don’t know. They know that nobody knows. And in the way they laugh is a message for you: Things are always getting better, always getting worse. Always something. Get used to it. You might be next.

  No, Peter’s not lying about the business side. It’s the crime he keeps from Caroline. He’s not trying to be devious. He lies because he thinks it’s just a matter of timing, and he doesn’t think he’s asking too much. He tells her what he wants to be true, what he hopes will be true in just a matter of months. He thinks, too, that she’ll never find out the difference. Which means he underestimates Helene Rizzi. Joe’s wife.

  It’s March 8, 1948. Caroline is standing under the overhanging roof of Clark’s Colonial Restaurant on Euclid. A few flakes of snow in the air. Her daughter Jackie holding her hand. She’s just had lunch with Cecily, a couple plates of scallops and vegetables, a little heated conversation. The outspokenness that Cecily was all about when she was younger has turned into her way of talking to people, by debating them, and Caroline’s one of the few people she knows who’ll argue back without making it personal. Her father gave up on her years ago; he’s never quite accepted her opinions, has despaired that she’ll never get married. One evening in May 1940 he stands up at the dining table and accuses her of being a lesbian. Her mother is shocked. Caroline, for the first time in a while, doesn’t say anything. Lesbianism is just the beginning of what the last decade or so has been like for her, if they’re going to talk about things the family considers immoral, and Cecily doesn’t need their condemnation of the things she’s done, the people she’s done them with. So she likes talking to Caroline. There’s never judgment, and Cecily’s told her a few times over the years how grateful she is for that.

  Which is why Caroline is surprised by what Cecily says now. Before the scallops have arrived, they’re arguing about the Supreme Court decision that day—McCollum v. Board of Ed—which is all over the papers. The sisters start with the question of banning religious instruction in public schools, run through the separation of church and state fast—because they agree—and then, because of the spiritual persuasion of the case’s plaintiff, they get into atheism. They haul out the usual arguments. Then, when Caroline mentions that she’s herself an atheist, Cecily’s eyebrows rise.

  “Really?” she says.

  “Yes,” Caroline says.

  “Aren’t you concerned about your immortal soul?”

  Cecily’s teasing her a little; both of them are smart enough to know that if you’re an atheist, you’re not worried about whether you have a soul, never mind its immortality. But something else sneaks into the statement, a certain concern. I’m worried about you, Cecily is saying. You don’t seem okay. Do you need help?

  “No,” Caroline says. “And you shouldn’t be concerned, either.”

  The check comes and Caroline pays. In front of the restaurant, Cecily bends down and gives Jackie a long hug. Then her sister. It’s always so good to see you. Take care. Then Cecily’s off, leaving Caroline there with her daughter in the falling snow. Caroline’s about to raise her arm to hail a cab when a woman approaches her wearing a black scarf on her head.

  “Mrs. Hightower?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Helene. Helene Rizzi.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Helene.”

  “I wish I could say the same, Mrs. Hightower, because you seem like a nice woman, and you have a beautiful daughter. But we need to talk. It’s about your husband.”

  She’s serious, and Caroline knows it.

  “What do you have to tell me?”

  “Not here,” Helene says.

  They find a coffee shop without too many people in it, a place where they can sit down. Helene insists on buying Jackie something sweet to eat. Then clasps her hands on the table in front of her, shaking her head. Working up some courage.

  “How much do you know about what your husband does?” Helene says.

  “It depends on who’s asking,” Caroline says.

  “Do you recognize my last name? Rizzi?”

  “As in, Lou Rizzi?”

  “Yes,” Helene says. “Good.” Caroline can see Helene relax, and realizes why she was so nervous; there was a chance, of course, that Caroline knew nothing, that everything would have to be explained to her, and what Helene had to say would be lost in it all. It all would have been too much to get through at once.

  “Do you know he had a son, Joe?” Helene says.

  “No.”

  “Joe Rizzi was my husband.”

  The past tense, Caroline notes. The black scarf.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Not as sorry as you’re going to be, after what I have to say. Mrs. Hightower, your husband killed mine. Well, he didn’t do the killing—had him killed is more like it—but it’s the same to me.”

  Caroline’s skin is buzzing, the hair on her arms standing up. She knows Helene is telling the truth. She has no reason to lie; and Peter has every reason.

  “There’s no body yet,” Helene says, “and everyone’s saying they just sent him away somewhere. But I’ve seen this before. I know what happened to him. He’s down on the bottom of the lake, or he’s been thrown into an incinerator, or he’s in a drainpipe somewhere. And I’m not saying my hus
band didn’t deserve it, Mrs. Hightower. God love him, but he wasn’t too smart and thought he was.”

  “Why would Peter have him killed?” Caroline says. She can’t get her voice above a whisper; her brain is on fire.

  “My husband was the one who came to your house. He broke a few rules by doing that, Mrs. Hightower. It made him fair game. Fair enough, anyway.”

  “I see,” Caroline says. She’s almost not holding it together.

  “He’d been blackmailing your husband for a few months already. Your husband called him on it. Then my husband went too far.”

  Caroline is having trouble seeing.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I have something for you,” Helene says. “I know that Joe overstepped. Your husband wasn’t wrong to act as he did. But I want to make sure that it ends here, Mrs. Hightower. I have kids that need me, you understand? We both have children. I don’t want anything else between us.” She reaches into her purse and takes an envelope. It’s pretty obvious what it’s filled with. “This should be everything my husband took from your family. If it isn’t, my phone number’s on the back. Please call me. We can settle this between us. Mother to mother.”

  Caroline’s crying now, and she can’t stop. Helene takes Caroline’s hand in hers, pats it. There, there. Then looks over at Jackie.

  “I’m sorry your daughter was here for this,” she says. “But that’s how it gets passed along, doesn’t it?”

  It’s never this easy—marriages more than two decades long don’t just come apart in one shot—but if there’s a moment when you could say Peter and Caroline’s marriage is over, this is it. Because Caroline thinks it: This is it. Everything’s recast in her mind. The power she thought she had, the partnership she thought she shared. All of it is revealed to her as a delusion. Her husband has been playing her, she thinks, letting her believe a fantasy, that the crimes he committed amounted to cooking some books and evading taxes. She reads the paper; she knows what the mafia does. But she imagined that her husband dodged all that, never got any blood on his own clothes, even as it flowed all around him. She understands all at once how stupid that was to think; and now the entire thing comes apart. The animal is slaughtered. She wonders what else he’s lied about. How many other people he’s killed. Whether any of their money is theirs, or if it’s all borrowed, all leveraged, a complicated farce. How much of that speech he gave her in front of the house all those years ago was true. If she’d never met his family in Tremont, it would all be open to doubt, that he grew up in Cleveland, that he’s a South Side boy. That his name is Peter Henry Hightower, or Pete the Uke, or Petro Garko. That he’s anyone he’s ever said he’s been.

  Years later, Caroline and Peter will both remember 1948 and 1949 as a long string of awful fights. At first there are a few rules. They wait until all their children are asleep or out of the house. If it’s at night, they try to keep their voices down. But by the end of the second year, they’ve stopped caring. So in 1949, family life for the kids is a small boat in a rough storm. They never know when the next big wave’ll pitch them over. The waves break at breakfast, in the afternoon, very late at night. They don’t hear them coming. There’s a tiny comment, a tone of voice. Sometimes just a glance from one parent, and the other says what. What. Then the shouting starts. The kids learn to read the pitches of their parents’ screams so they know when they’re as angry as they can get. Their father’s highest note is a holler; his throat opens up and the words pop out, like small bombs going off. Their mother, they find out, can yell so loud that their eardrums cut out the higher frequencies of her voice, so it sounds like they’re listening to her underwater. Their father likes to point his finger when he’s angry. Their mother shakes all over. In time, the older kids have their own responses worked out. Henry, who’s seventeen, goes to his room and shuts his door. Sylvie and Rufus, eleven and nine, head off together to the opposite side of the house, as far away from the fight as they can get. But Muriel’s only seven and doesn’t know what to do. She just stands there and cries; after ten minutes or so, Jackie, who’s four, starts crying, too.

  The last fight is near the end of 1949. The parents scream at each other until their children can’t recognize their voices, and they all end up in Henry’s room, scared. Are Mom and Dad going to hurt each other? Muriel says. Is Dad going to kill Mom? She’s heard it too many times now, that her father’s a killer, and she believes he’s capable of anything. Sylvie’s wise beyond her years even then. No, Mom and Dad are both going to be okay, she says. Telling Muriel what she needs to hear. Rufus is angry. Why can’t they just stop fighting already? he says. Will you all just be quiet? Henry says. I want to hear what they’re saying. He opens the door without a sound and goes out into the hallway. Stay here, he whispers, and closes the door behind him. In the hallway, he hears everything. Who it was that had his sister in the front yard. What he was there for. It will never leave him. For the other kids, there’s a lot of language they can’t quite decipher through the door, because their parents are talking so fast. You sold us out, Peter, Caroline says. Every time. You sold us out. Over and over again. Then they hear her say this: I hate you so much. So much more than I ever loved you. The kids all look at each other. Muriel starts crying. If they were different children, the others might have hugged their sister then. But they’re too much like their parents to do it.

  By January 1950 the marriage has been shot in the head, torn limb from limb, dumped in the lake. But it’s 1950, and people don’t get divorced; not people like them, anyway. So they all go on living in the same house, or at least sleeping there, until the death of their marriage is enough of an open secret that Peter can take a small apartment downtown, close to his office, the kind of apartment the young Caroline always believed he lived in when they were courting. There are rumors of affairs, that Peter’s taken up with a younger woman from somewhere on the West Side, that Caroline has a lover somewhere in Shaker Heights. These rumors are unfounded. The truth is that as much as they despise each other, they miss what they had. Maybe each of them could find something as good again, but despair keeps them from trying.

  When Caroline’s diagnosed with cancer in 1962, Peter pays for everything. The treatments that don’t work, the painkillers that don’t work well enough. She won’t see him, but she will see Stefan, and they talk for hours, though she never tells him what occurred to her back in 1947. Only that she’s always so glad to see him. You should see Peter, too, Stefan says. Even if it’s just for me. He’s my brother. In February 1963, she relents and tells Peter to come visit her while there’s still enough left of her to visit. They hold hands for two hours and don’t say a word. She dies toward the end of May and he pays for the funeral, suffers the nasty things her family says about him, and they don’t know the half of what he’s done, because Caroline never sold him out; all they know are the rumors. It’s been a long time since Peter’s been to church, but he’s still Catholic enough to know that he didn’t deserve someone as good as Caroline was, and deserves her family’s loathing now. Deserves much worse than that. By then, Henry’s been in New York for years. Rufus is just out of college and has no permanent address. Muriel’s in college and restless. Jackie’s halfway through her second stay in a hospital. Which leaves Peter, sixty-four years old and feeling older than that, alone in the big house with Sylvie. He has three years left to live, though the left-hemisphere stroke comes sooner than that.

  And he can’t hide anything from his daughter. Even before the stroke, she hears him on the phone, sees how he comes and goes. Starts asking questions. Who are the Rizzis? Who are the Ukrainians? And when Peter starts to explain, starts to give her the history, she just has more questions: Why did you start with the Italians instead of the Ukrainians, anyway? Peter’s proud at how hungry she is for the details, how good she is at putting them together. The various little organized-crime concerns in town all have their own little rackets going, the
protection and loan-sharking that’s tied to neighborhood, to ethnicity, language, food, home. It’s the logic of the family applied to an economy; values on everything are bargained for and agreed. You love me? How much? You say you trust me? How much? But when the money gets big, it breaks the family logic; the calculations need to be colder, the partners not as connected. That’s where Peter lives, has lived for Sylvie’s entire life. There’s camaraderie, of course: Peter and just about every crime boss in town can have a drink together, and the congeniality smooths the edges of every transaction. But everyone makes sure it doesn’t get too friendly, because one day, they know, they’re going to have to screw each other over. It’s all right if they think of that as part of the deal, a decades-long game of poker, millions of dollars whirling around their heads while they sit at the table, hiding their cards, looking at each other and smiling. At that level, it’s when things get too close that they get ugly. The honor killings, the stabbings, the shootings, the drownings, the explosions. That’s why families should never be rich, Peter says to Sylvie, in spite of himself, and then stops there, because to keep going would be to unravel his entire life, his life and Caroline’s and the lives of all his children. He’ll never admit the crimes he’s committed against them. But by mid-1964, Sylvie’s handling her father’s books, knows where all the money is, what to record in one ledger and leave out of the other. The structure of her father’s organization is right there in front of her, all the names of everyone involved, though she’s never been to a single meeting. There’s no need to do that; Peter’s still as sharp and able-bodied as ever. Until, on October 24, he isn’t.

  When it starts, Peter’s alone at the kitchen table. There’s a throbbing behind his left eye, a hammering pain, like the eye’s trying to pop itself out of its socket. He looks down at the cup of coffee he’s holding and doesn’t recognize his own hand. Doesn’t see how his hand is separate from the cup, how his clothes are separate from his body, his feet not part of the floor. He’s losing himself—Peter Henry Hightower, Pete the Uke, Petro Garko—and expanding, growing, rising, flowing into the house, into the lawn outside the window, the trees turning orange and red near the shore. Into the lake. He’s in an infinite present, forgetting who he is and what he’s done; he can’t say whether he’s there or not anymore. It’s euphoria, to feel it all fall away, and in that second—maybe it’s a second, maybe it’s an hour, he’s not sure—he’s never been happier in his entire life.