Cold Fury

“Buddy,” my dad said, this time almost growling.

“I’m tired of looking for the damn thing, and besides, it’s not like you’re going to need it anymore,” Uncle Buddy said. “Just give it to me and then you and your little family can go on your merry way to wherever they send your kind of people.”

“They who?” I said. “What does he mean, ‘your kind of people’?”

Uncle Buddy grinned at my dad, the Sick-a-Rette stink-smoldering between his lips like something scooped from a litter box. “You want to tell her or should I?”

My dad paused, his jaw rippling, and said, “Even if I did give it you, Buddy, you wouldn’t know what to do with it. It’s too dangerous for someone like you.”

Buddy’s smart-aleck smile stayed in place, but his voice was ice. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means someone. . who wants to be like me,” my dad said slowly. “And you’re not, Buddy. You’re not like me.”

“Maybe I could be,” Uncle Buddy said, in a tone both angry and wishful, “if you give me the notebook.”

My dad remained silent, his face full of iron, as he shook his head no.

Uncle Buddy said, “Okay, kid, here’s exactly what we’re talking about-”

My dad cut him off abruptly, saying, “Sara Jane, go wait in the car.”

“But Dad. .”

“Yeah, kid, go wait in the car. Go do your nails or something else just as girly,” Uncle Buddy said. “It’s a perfect example of one of the important things he was going to tell you about the family business. . a woman’s place is on the outside looking in.”

“Yeah?” my dad said. “What about Greta?”

This time Uncle Buddy’s smile slipped. “Keep her out of this,” he said.

“You’re the one who put her in it. Right between us.”

“She’s not between us!” Uncle Buddy said. “This is! This family and its secrets! It has always been between us!”

“Not for me,” my dad said quietly.

“Of course not for you. You’re the older brother,” Uncle Buddy said, pointing the stinking Sick-a-Rette at him. “You have a healthy, blue-eyed son.”

They stared at each other until they remembered I was there, and then they slowly turned toward me. Their faces were so different, my dad’s weary and worried, my uncle’s smug and disdainful. Fragments of the past-Uncle Buddy’s unhappy response long ago at the announcement of Lou’s impending birth, my parents’ urgent “doing the right thing” conversations they’d been whispering about for years, the line of men at my grandpa’s funeral waiting to talk to my dad, the older son, while ignoring my uncle-appeared like pieces of an unfinished puzzle. My conversation with Willy about the history between them echoed in my mind, especially his ominous words “in a family like yours.” Whatever it all meant, I at least understood that the rift between my dad and uncle had shifted from depressing to dangerous. Even more clearly, I saw that danger creeping toward Lou. My entire body was shaking when I said, “What’s this about, Dad?”

“Go to the car, Sara Jane.”

“No, Dad! You keep talking about brothers, and about Lou! What about him?”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Oh yes there is!” Uncle Buddy said.

“What about me? Does it affect me, too?”

“No,” my dad said.

“Oh yes it does!” Uncle Buddy cried.

“Dad!”

“Sara Jane!” he thundered, stripping the air of noise, my lungs of air, and Uncle Buddy’s face of confidence. We stepped away from him, me in one direction, my uncle in another. Veins stood out on his forehead, but his eyes were as frigid as two blue ice cubes, the gold flecks glowing brightly. He was vibrating with fury and yet weirdly calm at the same time. The combination was terrifying, and something clicked in my head as a little movie began to play. It was a memory from when I was four or five, when I witnessed a nearly identical phenomenon that scared me just as badly, except it wasn’t my dad.

It was Grandpa Enzo.

I toddled through the door of the bakery kitchen looking for a cookie.

I came upon my grandpa hissing like a Sicilian snake.

His back was to me, while before him stood one of the Men Who Mumbled. The man was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than “Enzo the Biscotto,” yet he stood quaking with fear in a dark suit and sunglasses while staring at his feet. My grandpa tapped the blunt end of a mixing spoon in time to his words against the man’s chest-mi (tap) capisci (tap) idiota? (tap)-while the man’s lower lip trembled and his forehead beaded with sweat. I realized that I was witnessing something I shouldn’t, so I backed away, bumping a bowl from a shelf. It shattered on the floor. My grandpa spun on his heel, and I looked into two quietly furious blue ice cubes. It was him, but it wasn’t-with flaring nostrils and gritted teeth, this was Evil Grandpa from the coldest corner of hell. It terrified me so badly that I began to wail and ran from the kitchen. By the time I was buried in my grandma’s apron, the mumbling man had left the bakery.

I felt a soft tap on my shoulder.

With one eye, I peeked up at my grandpa, who was himself again.

His face was warm and regretful.

He crouched on his knees, placed his hands gently on my shoulders, and stared at me with the same blue eyes decorated with bits of glittering gold as mine and my dad’s. “Cara mia. . my sweet, that wasn’t really Grandpa, oh no-no-no. That was just work. . part of being a baker.” He kissed my forehead, patted my cheek, and with a profoundly sad smile, produced a molasses cookie from behind his back.

It was as if the devil had peeled back his mask to reveal Santa Claus.

I was staring at that same mask now, on my dad, except that the mask seemed much more real than what was underneath. My own worst fears-isolation, abandonment, rejection-flooded my brain and gut, leaving me limp and helpless.

“Go to the car, please,” my dad said in a placid tone that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I opened my mouth to object, but his eyes froze the words in my throat.

I gladly turned for the door and my uncle did too.

Before Uncle Buddy’s foot even hit the floor, my dad said, “Stop. Sit,” like a stern master training his dog, and my uncle obeyed, quickly finding a chair.

I pushed through the kitchen’s swinging door almost as fast as I had when I was a tiny kid escaping my grandpa, but this time was different. Once I was away from my dad, separated by a brick wall, fear was replaced by curiosity. As the door swung back, I heard him mutter “molasses,” “Nunzio,” and “notebook.” Of course I knew about the Rispoli amp; Sons molasses cookies, and about my dad’s own grandpa, Nunzio Rispoli, who founded the bakery in the 1920s. At the time, though, I wasn’t yet aware of the notebook-that ancient collection of criminal secrets that would become central to my survival-and it intrigued me.

Carefully, I peeked through the door’s porthole window.

My uncle sat trembling in a wooden chair, trying and failing to look defiant.

My dad popped an index finger off of Uncle Buddy’s chest as he spoke.

The look on Uncle Buddy’s face was almost identical to the mumbling man who had stood before Grandpa Enzo, but this time was different too. That giant thug was afraid to make eye contact, while Uncle Buddy held my dad’s gaze. He was scared, that was plain, but not too scared to look at him, and I asked myself why.

I thought, Because he’s determined.

I thought, He’s determined because he wants that notebook.

“I’m gonna get it, Anthony,” my uncle said, his words so soft that they blew past my ears like a breeze. “And no one had better stand in my way. Not you. . and not your family, either. Or else.”

My dad’s hands darted like angry eels and suddenly Uncle Buddy’s feet were dangling above the floor. His face turned purple along with my dad’s hands, which were wrapped around Uncle Buddy’s neck, growing tighter