Final Appeal

been following me?”

He shifts heavily in his seat. “Not exactly. Just watching, a little.”

“Why?”

“Tryin’ to decide, you know. When to make my move. In the beginning, I just wanted to see what you looked like.” He appraises me for a minute. “You grew up nice, pretty. Very pretty.”

Let’s change the subject. “So they let Italians in Virginia. You like it there?”

“No. No calamar’, no nothin’. I had nothin’ keepin’ me there, so I came back. That’s my life story.”

“Never remarried?”

“No.”

“No other kids?”

“Not that I know of.” He laughs, then spots my glare. “No.”

I shake my head, and another silence falls between us. We have nothing to say to each other; we have everything to say to each other.

“You’re a lawyer?” he says.

“Yes.”

“Here’s a good one. You’re in a room with Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, a lawyer, and a revolver loaded with two bullets. What do you do?”

“What are you talking about?”

He waves his hand. “It’s a joke.”

“Okay, what?”

“Shoot the lawyer twice.” He laughs, but I don’t. “Okay, strike one. Here’s another. What’s black and brown and looks good on a lawyer?”

“Listen—”

“A Doberman.” He laughs again, his eyes crinkling at the corners. An attractive man for his age, with a kind face. Except that he’s a wife beater. Did I mention that appearances are deceiving?

“You beat my mother, didn’t you?”

“Did she tell you that?”

“In a way.”

He exhales heavily. “Madonn’.”

“Well?”

“I never laid a hand on your mother. Never.” He points a thick index finger at me.

“Bullshit. I remember.”

“You remember wrong, lawyer.”

“The hell I do. Don’t you dare come here and tell me what I remember,” I say, my voice rising. “I know what I remember.”

“Mom?” Maddie calls uncertainly from the living room. The child has been traumatized enough; now her mother is going off the deep end.

“You want to go play outside, honey?”

“No.”

“You want to watch a tape?”

“Even though I watched cartoons this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah!” She leaps off the couch.

“You know how to put it in?”

“I do it all the time, Mom. Jeez.” She rummages under the TV for her tapes.

My father watches Maddie slip a tape in the VCR. “Smart little girl.”

I feel a knot in my chest. “She sure is. So was I.”

He pushes his mug away and folds his hands. “You want to know why I left?”

“For starters.”

He looks down at his wrinkled hands, the only giveaway as to his age. “I met your mother at the Nixon, at Fifty-second and Market.”

“We’re beginning at the beginning, I see.”

He gives me a dirty look. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the Nixon was one of the biggest ballrooms around. Cost a couple bucks to get in. Had a mirror ball, spotlights, ten-piece band. Soup to nuts. You had to wear a tie and jacket.”

“Very classy.”

He nods, missing the irony. “Very classy. Why your mother was there that night, I still don’t know. She was from Saint Tommy More. She was a great dancer, the best.”

“My mother, dancing?” I blurt out. It’s inconceivable, she barely smiles.

“God, yeh.” He nods. “I was there with the goombahs, the boys from the corner. Louie, Popeye, Cooch. She was there with the Irish girls. They were all in a corner, talkin’ to each other. The Italians never asked the Irish to dance, the Irish never asked the Italians to dance. They weren’t from the neighborhood. Lady of Angels.” He smiles, lost there for a minute. “I remember her eyes, she had gorgeous eyes. Bedroom eyes.”

“So?”

“So I asked her to dance, but she wouldn’t dance with me. I kept after her for the slow dance. Finally she did. I remember the floor was slippery from the powder.”

“Powder?”

“Yeh. Talcum powder, on the floor. Made it even more slippery, for slide dancing. Slow dancing, you know. Big band. Ah, your mother was good. So was I. You had to be good; otherwise you’d slip on your goddamn ass.” He laughs thickly. “They had a contest, too, for the best jitterbug. We won some money, coupla bucks, I forget how much.”

I hear the first strains of Cinderella coming from the living room and Maddie jumps back up on the couch, already lost in the fantasy world of Disney. Someday my prince will come. I should burn those tapes.

“Then we went outside for a drink. You couldn’t drink at these things, but we found a way to drink. We always found a way to drink. Then we got married and you came along.” His smile fades. “I decided to stop then, went to AA, the whole bit. But she didn’t.”

I don’t understand. “You mean Mom drank?”

“I tried to get her to stop, but she couldn’t.” He leans back heavily in his chair.

“But Mom doesn’t drink. Not even beer.”

“Maybe not now, but then she did. I tried everything. Hiding the bottles, throwing them away, pouring that shit down the toilet. I dumped her whiskey and she came at me—”

“Came at you?”

He reddens slightly. “That was the last straw. I couldn’t take it anymore. I knew if I stayed, I’d go down with her. So I left. Took off. The only thing I did wrong, the thing I regret, is I left you.”

My chest grows tight. I can’t say anything.

“I can’t even tell you I tried to get custody, because I didn’t. They wouldn’t have given it to me, not in those days, but that’s no excuse. I heard she stopped drinkin’ after I left, but I still didn’t go back. We were bad for each other, we would’ve gone down together. And you too.”

I swallow hard, disoriented. This isn’t my family history. My history is altogether different: a father who drank, a no-good, and a mother who suffered. A victim, a saint. I don’t know whether to believe him. I can’t look at him. “You should go,” I say.

“I’m not so dumb that I expected everything to be all right with us. I came because I wanted to make it up to you. I have a little money. Maybe I can help out.”

“You can’t. You should go.”

“Maybe you need to think about it. I know I sprung this on you. You can call me any time.” He puts a card down on the table. EMEDIO “MIMMY” ROSSI, CERTIFIED ESL INSTRUCTOR. “I’m startin’ a little business. I teach English as a second language. To Koreans, Vietnamese, like that.”