“Nobody’s trying to butt in,” said Vin, playing peacekeeper again. “We just came over here to tell you to be careful.”
“Why?” Carla dropped a protective hand over the baby in her stomach. “What’s going to happen?”
“Nothing.” Teddy perused the kitchen cabinets. He looked over at his niece. “Say, you got anything for dessert?”
“I think there’s still some Jell-O left in the refrigerator,” said Carla, her mouth scrunched up and her eyes shifting. All this scrutiny made her uncomfortable.
“How ’bout a little grappa to wash it down?”
“Hey, Uncle Ted,” she said, bumping against the refrigerator. “Is Aunt Camille starving you or something? I thought you were trying to lose weight.”
Teddy waved for her to move out of the way so he could look in the refrigerator for himself.
Just lately, the hunger had been worse. When he tried to fill it, there was a pain. For some reason, he couldn’t eat enough anymore and he wasn’t sure why.
He fixed himself a bowl of strawberry Jell-O and sat down at the kitchen table across from Vin. His chubby right arm curled around the bowl protectively, a habit he’d learned in the reform school mess hall, where other boys made a sport out of stealing his lunch.
Carla put her nail file down and brushed a stray piece of foil off her shoulder. “Why do I have to be careful?”
“You should always be careful,” said Vin, lighting a cigarette and putting his feet up on the kitchen table. “It’s a dangerous world out there.”
Teddy stopped eating for a moment and reached inside his jacket. He took out the .38 caliber revolver that Larry DiGregorio had fired at Vin and set it down on the kitchen table. “There,” he said. “If anybody tries to give you a problem, you show ’em that.”
Carla’s mouth formed a perfect O of horror. “What the fuck are youse two doing?!” she cried out. “I got children in this house! I don’t want any guns around here!”
Teddy frowned and went back to eating. “Carla,” he said, letting the Jell-O gush along the gutters inside his cheeks. “I don’t got any son to succeed me and my own daughter’s feebleminded. I know you’re only the girl in the family, but it’s up to you to look after yourself sometimes. I’m sorry it has to be that way, but maybe if you’d married a real man of respect, things could be different.”
Carla was still looking at the gun like it was a poisonous snake on her kitchen table. “Get rid of that fuckin’ thing! I don’t want little Anthony playing with it!”
Ted looked over at Vin, who took the gun and hid it in the red flour can on Carla’s counter. Carla watched him, trying to decide whether she should protest any further.
“Maybe I’ll send Richie over,” Teddy said to Vin, who was taking a long drag on his cigarette. “He can sit here in the kitchen and make sure nothing happens.”
“Oh no,” said Carla, forgetting the gun and wagging her head furiously. “I am not having Richie Amato in my house.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you remember?” She put her hands on her hips. “I used to go with Richie. You wouldn’t treat a dog the way he treated me. Whatever bad you can say about Anthony, at least he ain’t Richie.”
She looked over at Vin, who was sitting down and putting his feet back up on the kitchen table. “Hey, get your damn feet down and stop smoking in here. Don’t you know I’m pregnant?”
Vin took his feet off the table and grabbed an empty beer can out of the garbage, so he could put his cigarette out in it.
Teddy was looking up at the little peels of paint that looked like fish gills on the ceiling over his head. “Youknow you could use a paint job in here,” he said. “You sure that Anthony’s providing for you?”
“He provides,” said Carla, going to get a glass of water.
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“What do you want me to do, Uncle Ted?” She whirled around to glare at him and the tinfoil in her hair made a soft
“Where do you get a word like that?”
“I heard it from Anthony,” she said, without embarrassment. “So don’t try turning me against him. I got too many responsibilities depending on him.”
“I still say he’s a bum,” Teddy muttered under his breath.
“And I say you don’t know him,” Carla lashed back, her face turning red. “Anthony was the only boy who’d talk to me in high school and we pledged our love. We may be having our problems now, but we’ll work them out. And if we can’t, I’ll be the one to take care of it.”
She glanced over at the flour can where Vin had left the gun. Teddy stood up and started to put his arms around her, but there was too much flesh between them.
“Carla, you’re a very special girl,” he said. “Any man who doesn’t appreciate you, doesn’t deserve to be around himself.”
18
I FORGOT ABOUT FINDING a bar and took Rosemary back to the Family’s stash house in Marvin Gardens. The apartment was empty that night, though you never knew when somebody was going to come by to drop off some money or pick up a gun. The white shag carpet fired off little static shocks as I walked in.
Rosemary took a look around the place and saw the bar next to the kitchen, the wall with the mirrors on it, and the black leather couch from Dave D.’s that folded out into a bed. The lamps all had identical bulb-shaped bodies and shades thick as plaster. The door to the other room was opened just enough so you could see some of the swag stored in there. My father had just gotten in a shipment of Iranian pistachio nuts and Nigerian hand soap from someone he knew in New York. I hoped Rosemary wouldn’t ask me about any of it. She was probably already thinking it’d been years since a woman had a say in how the place looked.
“Let’s go for a walk on the Boardwalk,” she said abruptly.
It was a beautiful night, with a soft breeze coming off the ocean and amusement park lights blazing from the other end of the Boardwalk, but I hardly noticed it. I was too busy thinking about all the things that had happened since my father killed Larry. Now I had Nicky coming after me and my family. I figured that he wouldn’t do anything right away. It would be better to wait and torture me. But I knew I had to get my wife and kids out of the house soon to protect them.
“Hey,” said Rosemary. “Are you a made guy?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, right.”
We walked along quietly for a couple of minutes as a light from a Coast Guard ship cut through the fog on the water.
“You know, I always thought you had to be Sicilian to be a made guy,” she said. “You don’t look like any Sicilian to me.”
“How come you know so much about it?”
“I read books. Just because I dance doesn’t mean I can’t read.”
“My father now,” I told her, “he’s Sicilian.”
“What do you mean, ‘my father now’?” She stopped walking. “Isn’t he your real father?”
“You know, it’s very rude asking questions like that. Something could happen if you ask too many questions.”
“Oh, I am so scared.” She opened her eyes wide.
“I mean, how would you like it if I started asking questions like that?”
