Cold Fury

Doug smiled sadly and said, “Did you learn nothing from About Face? The only way to combat violence is with nonviolence. Aggression begets aggression.”

“Yeah?” Max said. “Well, someone needs to beget a fist in Billy’s mouth.”

Doug shook his head. “Dinwiddy turned away from violence. Bully the Kid or no Bully the Kid, I shall do the same.”

I had to admire Doug-his commitment to passivity was rock solid. He had created a set of rules for himself and vowed never to break them. I’d been boxing for years, where physical engagement inside the ring came with a set of hard and fast rules too. You played by them or were disqualified. You respected them or did not compete.

At that point in my life, rules were important to me.

I thought that if I followed them, they would apply order to the universe.

I foolishly believed they kept chaos at bay.

I didn’t know yet that the lesson my mother had taught me-knowing how to break or even ignore the rules- would become the only rule I would follow.

8

There's nothing louder or more disruptive to a family than prolonged silence.

Before my grandpa’s funeral, my dad and Uncle Buddy spoke only on a functional basis about orders and inventory. In the days that followed, that stilted conversation broke down even further, descending into monosyllabic grunts.

And then something so sad happened that it forced them to speak, at least briefly.

It forced them to make funeral arrangements again.

Grandma Donatella had returned to work almost immediately after Grandpa Enzo died, reclaiming her place behind the front counter. She had always been a tiny bundle of energy, constantly in motion-boxing up cookies and cakes, ringing the cash register, scrubbing display cases-but now she sat motionless on a low metal stool watching customers come and go with her mouth drawn down. Whenever someone from the neighborhood asked her how she was doing, her eyes filled with tears as she silently reached into a display case, removed a heart-shaped cookie, and broke it in half. She began to complain about her own heart, how it ached for my grandpa, and then how it just ached, and then she died too. She had made good on her promise to join my grandpa a presto-soon.

After she was placed inside the Rispoli mausoleum, my dad and Uncle Buddy stopped speaking completely.

The silence between them was so deafening that I had to leave the bakery kitchen if they were both there at the same time.

It was as if my grandma were the last structure standing after an earthquake, and when she died, everything in the family quietly fell to rubble.

In that short period between my grandparents’ deaths, Uncle Buddy’s work habits had grown erratic; now they were just plain weird. He came in late and left early, mixed batter and dough in a lazy, halfhearted manner or not at all, and barked at customers if they were too slow in making up their minds. Sometimes he just sat in the kitchen smoking a Sick-a-Rette, staring hard at my dad, as if the power of his hateful gaze would force my dad to do or say something. I was unsure of what that something was, but then it didn’t matter anymore because Uncle Buddy stopped coming to work altogether. Instead, he used his keys to come in after hours and rummage through the kitchen, storage rooms, and basement, ripping open boxes, splitting sacks of flour, pushing over shelves. My father would find the mess, shake his head, and clean it all up, muttering, “He’ll never find it.”

“Find what?” I asked, picking up broken dishes.

My father shrugged, answering vaguely, “Whatever he’s looking for.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, sweetheart?” he said.

His eyes were full of a sad sense of looking beyond the here and now, it rattled me a little, and I lost the nerve to ask more about Uncle Buddy. Then something caught my attention, and I glanced past him at thin lines of smoke seeping from the Vulcan. “Something’s burning!” I said.

“Damn it! The melassa biscotti!” he cried, dropping the broom and rushing to the oven. A plume of black smoke rolled up to the ceiling as he pulled open the door, yanked out a tray of smoldering cookie lumps, and threw it on the mixing table. The stink of scorched sugar filled the room and I gagged a little. Overhead, fire sprinklers coughed and spurted streams of tepid water. My dad leaned on the table with both hands, hanging his head, and then pounded it with a fist so hard that I jumped. “It’s all ruined! Everything!” he shouted into the indoor thunderstorm.

“It’s just cookies,” I said.

“No, it’s everything! Everything,” he said, and then moved so quickly across the room that I jumped again. He was staring at me intently, almost like he was going to cry. “Sara Jane, you’re the oldest. You’re so smart and so. .” He trailed off, then pursed his lips and bowed his head. When he looked up, the possibility of tears was replaced by something cold and rooted on earth. “Innocence fades for everyone,” he said slowly. “If a person has any hope of survival, it must be substituted for plain reality. Listen to me closely, not with innocent ears, but with the ears of an adult. If something happens, you need to know about our family. .”

“What could happen?” I said, a shudder racking my body.

“Anything,” he said in a voice that I’d never heard before. He had made the leap into plain reality and I had to join him. I stopped shaking, or at least tried my best, as he said, “I have to tell you important things about our family business. And about the bakery. .” He paused as his eyes flicked past me.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“Yeah, what is it?” Uncle Buddy said from the kitchen door, striking a match and lighting a Sick-a-Rette. Its rotten-garbage smell mingled nauseatingly with burned molasses as he came toward us, a little grin on his lips. “Or should I say, where is it?”

My dad squared his shoulders and positioned his body sideways, a boxer setting his stance.

Uncle Buddy did the same thing, cautiously.

I moved closer to my dad, determined not to leave his side, mirroring his posture without realizing it.

Uncle Buddy chuckled. “Well, look-it here, a daddy-daughter boxing team. Hey, Sara Jane, before you unleash the stunning power of those spaghetti arms on old Uncle Buddy,” he said, his laugh turning to a sneer, “just remember it was me who made time to get you into boxing, not him.”

“But he’s my dad!” I said, surprised at the acid in my words.

“It doesn’t make him right,” Uncle Buddy declared. “Remember what I’m teaching you, kid, it’s an important life lesson. Just because he’s your dad does not make him right. In fact, your dad recently made a very wrong decision that could be very, very bad for your family.” He smirked at my dad, saying, “You’re surprised I know about that, huh? Stupid old Buddy? Well, stupid old Buddy has been hacking your voice mail and peeking at your e-mail. . techniques just like the government uses.”

“Buddy,” my dad said, his voice full of warning.

“I know, I know. . not in front of the kiddies, right?”

“Sara Jane can handle anything you can dish out and more,” my dad said.

“Oh, please.” Uncle Buddy chuckled again. “She’s still mooning over a kiss that happened five years ago.”

“Three,” I mumbled. I’d never heard my uncle’s mocking tone directed at me. It crushed my heart a little, but I also realized that I was curling my left hand into a fist.

“Come on, Anthony. Enough of the playacting and bullshit. You know that I know all about that notebook,” Uncle Buddy said.

“What notebook?” I said.