Cold Fury

attack while making a buccellato, the circular, sugary cake given by godparents to their godchild’s family on the baby’s christening day. Someone on Taylor Street was always asking Grandpa to be their kid’s godfather and he usually agreed with a warm smile. He had just taken the cake out of the Vulcan before he died, flipping it out of the hot pan that bore our family initial. The distinctive baked R was probably the last thing that he saw.

No one said anything until Greta sighed impatiently. When I looked up, she was on her feet.

“Decisions have to be made,” she said, pacing the room like a four-star general.

“He just died a couple of hours ago,” my dad murmured, lowering into the nearest chair and massaging his forehead.

“Nevertheless,” Greta continued, “after an unexpected death, who gets what and how much has to be hammered out immediately!”

“Greta. .,” Uncle Buddy said in a low voice, staring at his hands.

“Greta nothing, Benito! If you don’t stake your position this instant, you’ll get the short end of the stick, as usual!” she cried, waving her arms wildly. Her elbow bumped a shelf and everyone but Greta saw Frank Sinatra tip and fall into the air.

Uncle Buddy leaped to his feet, arms extended, and caught the statue head like a football, just inches before it shattered on the ground. He sheepishly handed it to my dad and they looked at each other for the first time since I got home. My dad paused, then turned and put it back on the shelf, where the bust continued to stare at the room. It was the tackiest thing we owned-a white plaster Frank Sinatra head with a garland of leaves in its hair, like Julius Caesar, and eyes tinted blue. Although my mom hated it on an artistic level, she insisted that it never move from its honored place on the shelf.

The bust suddenly took on the significance of people I loved who were dead.

It had been a gift to my parents from my nanny.

She gave it to them as a good-bye gift, only days before she died.

Lucretia Zanzara-Elzy, as we called her (for her initials, L.Z.)-was petite, tough as nails, and always perfectly dressed in a retro-mod sixties style, complete with jet-black beehive hairdo and cat’s-eye glasses. She was an organizational Einstein who ran our household from breakfast to bedtime with a gentle iron fist. Elzy knew someone who could do anything at any hour, from delivering a perfectly crispy pizza margherita at eight a.m. to fixing a refrigerator at midnight, to scoring a badly desired Tickle Me Elmo for three-year-old me the day before Christmas. Her contacts were limitless, ability to get things done, genius, and devotion to my family, seemingly inexhaustible.

Elzy had come to our family via the bakery. Long before I was born, Grandpa Enzo employed her father, Bobo Zanzara, as a baker or pie maker or something. Grandpa and Bobo worked closely until, according to my dad, Bobo took a vacation and never came back. When I asked my dad what kind of vacation lasted forever, he smirked and said, “The federally funded kind,” and nothing else. If I asked for more details, he shrugged and changed the subject. Later, Elzy’s older brother came to work for my grandpa at the bakery, too. Elzy always referred to him as “Poor Kevin,” before shaking her head and tsk-tsking. Apparently, Poor Kevin had been a lethal combination of knucklehead and hothead. There had been an incident at the bakery, but again, no one ever explained exactly what had happened. If my dad or Uncle Buddy began to discuss it, Elzy would hold up a hand with perfectly polished nails and say, “The past is the past. Poor Kevin made a mistake. Only the strong survive.” Her voice was solemn in an Italian way that made further words on the subject indulgent and unnecessary.

Elzy had two unmistakable characteristics. One was her voice-a nasal combination of West Side Chicago and a lion suffering from strep throat-and the other was an undying love for Frank Sinatra. Her gargle-growl took on a terrifying tenor when she sang “Fly Me to the Moon” or “Witchcraft,” making dogs howl up and down Balmoral Avenue. The more the cancer spread and the sicker she got, the less she sang. After a final visit to her doctor, Elzy knew that she was going to die. It was right before Lou was born that she gave my parents the Sinatra bust, touched my mom’s belly tenderly, and told them that Frank would watch over them when she was gone.

He has sat on the shelf in the same spot ever since.

I was thinking of them both, Grandpa Enzo and Elzy, hoping they died happy, and it was only the fingernails- on-a-chalkboard tone of Greta’s rant that brought me back.

She had her fists on her hips and was wagging her head from side to side, speaking her piece about “unfair to Buddy” this and “our share of the pie” that.

When she paused to take a breath, my father said, “Calm down, Greta. Buddy knows full well that he’s going to get half the business.”

“Yeah?” she said, crossing her arms and arching an eyebrow. “Which business?”

Then it was my mom’s turn on her feet. I was surprised at how fast she crossed the room, right into Greta’s face. In a tone that was quiet but full of nails, she said, “We don’t discuss that business in front of the children. Not in this family.”

“I’m just as much a part of this family as you are, Teresa! And don’t you dare think that you’re entitled to more than Buddy and me just because you have them. . with their blue eyes. . especially him. .,” Greta huffed, pointing at Lou.

Her words drifted around the room like balloons broken free of their strings.

I should have stood and demanded to know what they were talking about, just like Willy had advised me. But I didn’t because Grandpa Enzo had just died, and Lou was burrowing into me like I had burrowed into my mom, and-and because I was scared to know. Even though I’d held it at bay, even trying to punch it away, I’d been frightened since I was a little kid of my parents’ whispered conversations about money, and “doing the right thing,” and especially Uncle Buddy’s increasing anger and steady withdrawal from our lives. I wanted everything to go back to how it had been when I was little, one big, tight-knit, happy family; I wanted Uncle Buddy to rise up and stand between Greta’s accusatory finger and us. But he just sat there inspecting his hands, satisfied to let her do the dirty work she was so good at.

My mother cleared her throat and said simply, “Get out.”

They left without a word and without looking back.

I heard Uncle Buddy’s convertible cough to life and squeal from the curb.

I didn’t see them again until Grandpa Enzo’s funeral at Our Lady of Pompeii, which was so packed with mourners that people stood in the aisles and outside the doors. Our family was on one side of the first row of pews and Buddy and Greta sat on the other. While my grandma wept quietly and touched her nose with a white lace handkerchief, Greta attempted to set the hysterical-crying-at-a-funeral record. Each time the priest murmured Grandpa’s name, Greta shrieked with tears like she’d been touched with a cattle prod and buried her face in a bright-red handkerchief. After one explosive outburst, I couldn’t help but glance over. Greta peeked from beneath the red silk square and sneered at me, mouthing some Russian obscenity.

Afterward was a hundred-car procession to Mount Carmel, where Grandpa was laid to rest inside a family mausoleum built from mossy limestone. Our name, RISPOLI, is etched on the green bronze door, while the small building itself is topped by a molasses barrel carved from marble. Waiting inside were my great-grandparents, Nunzio and Ottorina, each of whom died decades before I was born. When the service ended and it was time to leave, Grandma Donatella touched Grandpa Enzo’s casket and said, “A presto, mi amore. See you soon, my love.” I had never witnessed anything so sad in my life. I was still thinking about it later, at Gennaro’s on Taylor Street, where the entire neighborhood had come to dinner to honor my grandpa.

As I pushed fettuccine around a plate, I felt a small elbow in my ribs.

Lou wiped red sauce from his mouth and said, “Who are all those guys talking to Dad?” I looked up at a line of men of all sizes and ages in dark suits waiting patiently to mumble to him. At first I thought that they were offering condolences, but then I noticed something that froze me a little-Uncle Buddy sat only one table away, but none of the guys paid him the slightest attention, much less spoke to him.

Uncle Buddy, however, was paying attention to my dad.

He was staring at him hard enough to burn holes in the back of his head.

Greta hissed something at my uncle, who nodded, straightened his tie, stood up, and forcefully tapped my dad’s shoulder.

After exchanging a few muttered words, they cut through the crowd and headed toward the kitchen, passing