Mick Sinatra 2: Love, Lies, and Jericho (20 page)

At the Sinatra home in Jericho County, Jenay and Roz
were setting the dining room table.
 
Unlike
Mick’s palatial estate in Philly, this home was tame, almost small and dainty
in comparison. But in context, however, it was the largest home in town.

“It’s just strange seeing him with his brother,” Roz
said as she and Jenay sat down plates and forks and spoons for the big brood
that was scheduled to come.
 
“It was very
awkward at first.”

“They’ll work it out,” Jenay said.
 
“Charles is a stubborn mule and I suspect
Mick is too.”

Roz smiled.
 
“You suspect right.”

“But they’ll work it out,” Jenay said.
 
“The love is still there.”

“I was hoping it was,” Roz said, “but now I’ve seen it
with my own two eyes.
 
Mick doesn’t allow
anybody to backtalk him, and that includes me.
 
And he doesn’t take a backseat to any man.
 
But he takes a backseat to your husband.”

Jenay laughed.
 
“Everybody takes a backseat to my husband,” she said.
 
But then, as they finalized the setting,
Jenay turned serious.
 
She looked at
Roz.
 
“It’s not going to be easy,” she
warned her.
 
“Sinatra men can be very
unbendable.”

Roz smiled.
 
“I
certainly know of one who can.”

“But . . .”

Roz looked at her.
 
“But what?”

Jenay wasn’t going to mince words.
 
“From what Charles has told me of Mick, he
has that Sinatra toughness on steroids.
 
He’s going to be even more of a challenge for you.”

Roz’s smile faded.
 
She understood what Jenay meant.
 
“I know.
 
And it has been
challenging.”

“Even before the marriage?”

“Even before the proposal,” Roz admitted.

“Please don’t think it’s going to get easier after the
marriage,” Jenay said.
 
“Because it’s not.”

Roz nodded.
 
“Mick has already schooled me on that.
 
That’s why I went to Philly in the first place.
 
I was living and working in New York, but he
felt I needed to see for myself what kind of lifestyle he lives, and how he
handles that lifestyle.”

“Is it legal and illegal?”

“I don’t discuss his business,” Roz said bluntly.
 
“But you’re right about the challenge.”

“You’re sure you can live with that challenge?” Jenay
asked.

“I’m not losing Mick,” Roz made clear.
 
“So I guess that means yes.
 
I can live with it.
 
I know what I’m getting myself into.”

Jenay suspected Roz didn’t know the full extent of
it.
 
From what she read about Mick, and
seeing him in person, made her certain there was a lot more to his story than
anybody knew.
 
But she had respect for
Roz.
 
She couldn’t say that Roz could
handle Mick, she hadn’t seen enough of their interaction to make such a bold
statement as that, but she believed Mick wasn’t going to simply handle Roz.
 
He would be in charge of her.
  
He had that take charge persona in
spades.
 
But Jenay didn’t think Roz was
the kind of girl that would lose herself in her man.
 
At least, Jenay hoped she wasn’t the type.
 
“Hold your own no matter what,” she decided
to warn Roz anyway.
 
“Strong men only
respond to strength.
 
Never forget that.”

Roz nodded.
 
She
wasn’t certain what Jenay meant by that, but Jenay was the older, more
experienced woman.
 
And Charles “Big
Daddy” Sinatra looked like a handful and a half himself.
 
So Roz gave her the benefit of the
doubt.
 
Jenay, she believed, knew what
she was talking about.

Mick and Roz felt as if they were on display as they
sat in the beautiful living room and met Charles and Jenay’s children as they
arrived for dinner.

First, there was Brent Sinatra, his bosomy wife
Makayla, and his young son Brent, Junior.
 
What amused Mick was how all three of them sat in one chair: Brent in
the chair itself, his African-American wife on the chair’s arm, and Junior on
his father’s lap.
 
It was as if Brent had
told them to stay close to him, until he got a sense of just who this Mick
Sinatra really was.

First it was the usual niceties: small talk all
around.
 
And then Mick leaned back.
 
This guy fascinated him.
 
“So you’re the chief of police?” he asked
him.

Roz, who had been preoccupied with Junior, looked at
Brent.
 
“The police chief?” she
asked.
 
“You’re the police chief?”

“Believe it or not, I am.
 
And Makayla’s the chief prosecutor here in
town.
 
She’s the District Attorney.”

Roz glanced at Mick.
 
She knew how much Mick hated cops, and wasn’t crazy about lawyers
either.
 
She looked back at Brent.
 
“You guys cover the law and order of the
business,” she said.
 
“How nice.”

“Nice my ass,” Mick said, and everybody laughed.

“Don’t worry,” Brent added with a smile.
 
“I stick to my jurisdiction.
 
You’re safe here, Uncle Mick.
 
I don’t go to Philly tracking anybody down.”

Mick laughed.
 
“Bring your ass to Philly if you want to,” he said.
 
“You won’t like it.”

Although Brent and Makayla both laughed at that little
joke, Roz could tell they were a little uneasy too.

Then Charles’s other three sons, Anthony, Robert, and
Donald, arrived together, just as they were all sitting down to dinner.

And at dinner, when everybody was around the table,
Roz understood why she was so quick to believe that Jenay ran the Sinatra
household.
 
The children, her husband,
their grandchild, all responded to her as if she was the final arbiter.
 
And although none of the grown children were
her biological children, as they were all a product of Charles’s first
marriage, Roz found out, but Jenay still had clout.
 
Charles was the final word, that was clear
too, but the way Roz saw it, they could only get to Charles through Jenay.

Tony was the next oldest of Charles’s grown
children.
 
They discovered that he was a
clinical psychologist by trade, and a local radio personality.
 
He and Roz hit it off right away.
 
Mick found Tony’s slick sense of humor a
little too disarming for his taste and kind of kept his distance, but Roz
didn’t see it that way at all.
 
She saw
an insightful man who danced to the beat of his own drum.
 
She liked his uniqueness.

Robert was the next child, and was obviously the
playboy.
 
He was getting more calls and
texts than he could keep up with and had to constantly be reminded by Jenay
that this was a family dinner that required his full participation.

Donald, the youngest son, seemed like his polar
opposite, as he was more quiet and introspective.
 
He was by far the least outgoing of the
Sinatra clan.

Then there were the little ones.
 
Charles and Jenay had one child together,
little Bonita, and she was adorable.
 
Brent, Junior, Brent’s son from a previous relationship, was equally
charming.
 
But Bonita stole the show, as
she couldn’t stop telling Junior, who was older than she was, what to do.
 
“I’m your auntie,” she kept saying.
 
“You will obey me!”

“What I don’t understand,” Tony said as they all sat
around the big dinner table eating dinner, “is how you guys could stay apart
for so long without getting in touch.
 
I
can’t imagine going decades without talking to my brothers.
 
I can’t stand them sometimes,” he added to
laughter from them, “but it’ll never get to that.”

“If you had a brother like me,” Mick said breezily,
“you would find a way to make certain it gets to that.”

“But that’s the thing,” Tony said.
 
“All of my brothers are awful.”
 
They all laughed.
 
“Yet I still deal with these jokers.
 
I don’t treat them as if they don’t exist.”

Mick and Charles exchanged a glance.
 
Roz looked at Mick too.
 
For his sake, she hoped it didn’t get any
deeper than this.

“There’s a difference,” Brent said.

“Yeah, like what, big brother?” Tony asked.
 
“Dad’s strictness?”

“Like don’t worry about it,” Charles said.
 
“It happened, it’s over.
 
Let’s move on.”

Mick and Roz were relieved to hear that.
 
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Jenay said with a
smile.

“So, Uncle Mick,” Robert asked.
 
“You have any kids?”

“Yes, I have four children.”

“Dad’s got you beat,” Donald said.
 
“He has five plus two adopted daughters.”

Mick looked at Charles.
 
“They don’t live in Jericho?”

“One does, Ashley,” Charles said, “but she’s in
California visiting her sister, my daughter Carly.
 
She’ll be back in a couple weeks.”

“You have any little girls, Uncle Mick?” Bonita asked
him.

“Not as little as you, but yes, I do,” Mick said with
a smile.
 
“Her name is Gloria.”

“And she’s a princess just like you,” Roz said.

Bonita blushed.
 
“Thank-you,” she said.

“I bet you’re a cool dad, Uncle Mick,” Robert
said.
 
“Driving around in that Masi, I’ll
bet your children just love you.”

Tony was staring at Mick.
 
He had the very opposite thought.
 
“Are you a great parent, Uncle Mick?” he
asked him.

Mick looked at Tony.
 
“No,” he said bluntly.

Charles and Jenay looked at him.

“Why not?” Tony said.

“I have been an absent father in my children’s lives.”

“Until recently,” Roz added.

“Why?” Tony asked.

“The same reason your father and I have not
communicated in decades.
 
Too much in
between.”

Tony nodded.
 
He
understood.
 
His siblings, however, were
lost.

But the biggest takeaway from the dinner that Mick
could see, other than the surreal-ness of being in his brother’s house with his
brother’s family, was the interaction of Charles with his children.
 
That interaction amazed him.
 
He remembered when he was a kid in Jericho,
and although his brother was only six years older, he thought he was a
saint.
 
Charles could do no wrong in his
eyes.
 
All of his children seemed to
respond to Charles in that same way now.

And that night, after taking a shower, Mick sat up in
bed and thought about his own children.
 
He was in his brother’s guestroom, with his back against the
headboard.
 
The way Charles and his
children laughed and joked around.
 
The
way Charles seemed so at ease with them.
 
The way they looked at him with respect rather than that fear and
loathing Mick saw in his own children’s eyes.
 
That was the kind of relationship he wanted.
 
But he knew he had a very long way to go.

He grabbed his cell phone from the side table and
pressed a number.
 
When the ringing
stopped, Joey’s voice came on.
 
“What’s
up?”

Mick exhaled.
 
Here
goes.
 
“Hey.”

“Oh, hey, Dad.
 
You’re in Maine yet?”

“Yeah, we got in this afternoon.”

“How’s your brother?
 
I would call him Uncle, but since I never met him before . . .”

Mick closed his eyes.
 
Another failure on his part.
 
Charles could have been a great role model for his children.
 
“I’m sure you’ll meet him soon.
 
If all goes well.”