“So Andy,” he said as he dried the sweat off his balding head with a dish towel, “tell me about the big night.”
His smile was big and happy, and I had to smile back, not just in reflection of the momentous night I'd just had but also at the walking, talking, drinking, Hindu-squatting contradiction that stood before me.
“Dad, it was probably the best night of my life, I mean we had theâ”
He cut me off. “Which means you used the Trojans, didn't you, kid?”
The guy was actually beaming, he was so happy. I considered humoring him, but couldn't bear to stain Terri's reputation with even a phantom sexual encounter. “Actually, Dad, I didn't use any of them.” With that the huge smile became a mask of concern.
“Don't tell me you rode bareback, Andy, not in this day and age. You know they've got that AIDS thing floating around.”
“No, Dad, I didn't ride bareback, I justâ”
He cut me off again. “Oh, did you opt for a littleâ”
I interrupted him as he was making the universal hand-and-tongue signal for oral sex. “No, Dad, we didn't do anything, we didn't even kiss, but I had a great time, I really like her . . . and she . . . she held my hand.”
“Whoa! Ho ho! Whew! Sheeeew!” my dad laughed. “We've got a wild man on our hands. Watch him, officer, he's a hand holder!” Then, in an instant, I saw his expression change. I can't call it compassion, but it seemed almost to border on understanding. “Andy,” he said softly.
“Yeah.”
“Do you like this girl?”
“Yeah.”
“And did it feel nice when you held her hand?”
“Yeah it did, Dad, it felt nice.”
“Well that's what counts, kid. You'll have plenty of time to do that other stuff later.” Then he stepped forward, and for the first time he hugged me. I hesitated just for a moment, just to make sure that it wasn't a joke. It wasn't. Then I hugged him back. I hugged my drunk, naked father . . . and how many kids can say that?
My dad stepped away, not embarrassed, but obviously not used to this father-son bonding thing. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I'm glad you didn't use those condoms tonight, son.”
I didn't quite know what to say, so I opted not to say anything. In the wake of my silence, my dad finished his thought. “Because I'm all out, and that broad upstairs would never forgive me if I didn't plow her field another time.”
“Hey Dad,” I said, smiling in preparation for what I had to say next.
“Yeah, kid.”
“I thought you said the second one was all about ol' Tietam.”
With that my father grabbed me and tousled my hair the way he might have if I'd been ten and hit the winning home run in Little League, or any other number of reasons that fathers who don't disappear for sixteen years and nine months might have for tousling their son's hair. He then followed the hair tousle with a bit of verbiage that most children won't hear from their dads in their lifetimes. “Now give me those condoms, you little muskrat.”
Then he was off, condoms in hand, bounding up the stairs, gold medallion slapping off his chest, middle-aged balls slapping off his thighs. “Hey Gloria,” he yelled as he opened the door, “let's just hold hands tonight!” Gloria laughed.
Gloria, I knew, meant Gloria Sugling, as in next-door neighbor Gloria Sugling, whose cop husband Charlie worked the midnight shift in Cortland, keeping the streets safe while my father, in his own words, plowed his wife's field.
By my own count, this was Mrs. Sugling's third visit to Tietam Brown's bed, which meant, whether she knew it or not, it was also her last, in accordance with my dad's “three strikes, you're out” rule. As I pulled the half gallon of vanilla out of the freezer, I couldn't help but think my dad was right. Over the sound of bouncing bedsprings and the thumping of the headboard, I could hear Mrs. Sugling's voice, and she certainly did seem to be having a good time. Or maybe she was just agreeing strongly with whatever my dad had to say.
I lay down in my little bed with my half gallon of vanilla, and Nat King Cole's angelic voice competing with the not-so-angelic acts in the room next door. It took a couple of flips of the album, but then the headboard and bedsprings stopped, and Mrs. Sugling headed down the stairs and out our door for the very last time, and now Nat had the room to himself. I closed my eyes and listened in the darkness, the last taste of vanilla ice cream still cool upon my tongue. I listened to the beautiful voice sing about “the dear Savior's birth,” and I listened to each sacred scar and crack of my mother's old LP, each one as beautiful to me as the music itself. With my eyes still closed, I thought of Terri, her head against my shoulder, her hand holding mine, and even that slightest hint of her breast against my arm. And then, for the second time in ten years, a tear rolled down my cheek. I slipped into a beautiful dreamless sleep with one last thought . . . she had wanted me to kiss her.
The Rage / 1973
My mother died giving birth to me in 1968, and after Antietam Brown IV realized that changing diapers and warming bottles wasn't his heart's desire, I was sent to live with Maria DelGratto, the wonderful woman I would come to call Auntie M, my mother's best friend in the town of Boyer, just outside of Richmond.
She was a big buxom woman, my Auntie M, and Italian to the core. Indeed, my initial remembrance as a part of this world was not one of sight or sound, but of smell, taking in the fragrance of her culinary efforts, which never seemed to end, as she cradled her ladles, spoons, and spices with one hand and took turns cradling me and her one-year-old son Johnny with the other.
A year later, little Rachel was born, and Maria DelGratto took turns handing out generous portions of love, attention, and her patented big-boob hugs. When she pulled me close, I would close my eyes and nestle in real deep, and there was not a place in the world that I would rather be. Come on now, don't read too much into it, I was just a baby. I didn't equate those boobs with sex, but with warmth, comfort, and most of all safety. And safety, unfortunately, was often a scarce commodity in the DelGratto house once Big Vinnie came home.
I'm not sure what Vinnie did for a living, but he was out the door every morning at eight with a cheery “Better have supper waiting!” and back every evening at six with an equally chipper “Get me my dinner.” No, I'm not sure what he did to put that food he was so concerned about on the table, but if he could have thrown a baseball half as well as he threw plates and glasses around the house, he would have been a twenty-game winner for the Yankees for sure.
Any little thing seemed to set him off. A toy in the kitchen? Yeah, that was reason enough. The monthly mortgage? Like clockwork. Even the faintest smell of poop drifting from one of our little baby butts could set off an eruption of rage that included not only the throwing of objects but the whipping of those little baby butts, extreme verbal abuse directed at anyone in his path, and the occasional stinging backhand that left Auntie M bruised and bleeding at intervals that became more frequent as time marched on.
And always, she'd hold us. Against those breasts. Those warm, soft, safe breasts. Hold us until the fear was gone, until the anger was gone. Until it was just Big Vinnie sitting in front of the TV, a ball game on, wondering where the hell his beer was.
I cried a lot back in those days, especially between the ages of two and three, when I realized there really were monsters in the world, the worst of which slept in the bedroom down the hall. God, I shed a lot of tears back then. Tears in the form of loud screams when he was hitting any one of us. Tears in the form of silent sobs when I'd hear his loud and drunken sexual escapades down the hall. Escapades that, by the sound of things, my Auntie M neither wanted nor enjoyed.
And always, always, always, my tears were met with a big hug, even those silent sobs were soothed by a visit to the tiny bedroom that housed all three of us kids, where one by one she'd hold us close and kiss our tears away. “Andy, Andy, it'll be okay,” she'd whisper as she rocked me in her bosom. “Don't cry now, Andy, I'll make everything okay.”
It was Auntie M who took to calling me Andy, derived, I guess from my full name, Antietam Brown V, in honor of my great-great-great -grandfather Sean Brown, who died defending the Union on the battlefield of Antietam, in Sharpsburg, Maryland, in 1862. The battle, I was told, was the bloodiest single day of the Civil War, with the number of dead bodies far outpacing the army's ability to bury them. So Sean Brown, nineteen, only a year off the boat from his native County Clare in Ireland, was rewarded for his heroic efforts by being torn to pieces by the wild boars who ravaged the blood-soaked fields that ran along each side of Antietam Creek. I would later find out that the wild boar incident was one that my father had never forgiven, a character trait of his that had already altered the course of my life and would continue to as well.
Not to be outdone, Big Vinnie had his own nickname for meâ little bastard. The name seemed to bring him joy, and as a result he used it often, to the point where for a while I thought it really was my name. It was a name for all seasons, a multipurpose phrase, I guess you could say, kind of like “aloha” is to Hawaiian people.
School started in late August in Boyer, so on a cool summer's eve, with big sheets of rain pouring down, Big Vinnie DelGratto packed his wife, two kids, and little bastard into his '65 Cadillac and drove to the five-and-dime for a year's worth of school supplies. I don't think Big Vinnie gave a damn about his kids' education, and I knew he couldn't care less about mine, but he wasn't about to let his wife drive his puke green pride and joy. Not out of any concern for her safety, but instead out of a firm belief that a woman's place was not behind the wheel. He even drove her to the grocery store every Wednesday, where he passed the time with the newspaper's sports section and a six-pack of Bud.
“We'll be right back,” said Maria in a cheerful tone that was met with a Big Vinnie grumble, a newspaper rustle, and a cracking of that first Bud. If a grocery trip meant a six-pack, then I guessed that Vinnie was probably good for three by the time we collected our black marble composition pads and number two pencils.
I was wrong. For on our return, Vinnie DelGratto was already soaking his liver in Bud number five and cursing out loud at the fate of his beloved Atlanta Braves. “Goddamn, Aaron,” he yelled, “home-run king my guinea ass. Strikeout king is more like it.” When Auntie M finished squeezing her sizable frame into the Caddy, Big Vinnie took off, ran a red light at the edge of the parking lot, made a sharp left at the next stop sign, and passed by row after row of neat little 1930s-era houses en route to our eleven-hundred-square-foot home on the far end of town. The trip averaged about ten minutes, but even with the rain pouring down and visibility damn near nil, Big Vinnie seemed intent on making it in five.
I looked at Johnny to the immediate right of me in the Caddy's backseat, fumbling with the bags, a frown on his face. Little Rachel peered in from the far right as if not to be shut out of some big secret, and said, “Whatcha looking for, Johnny?” in her cute, four-year-old way.
“Get away, Rachel,” said Johnny, who turned his back to his sister and continued his search. “Mom, I can't find my protractor.”
I heard Vinnie grunt as he turned up the radio, which was broadcasting the tail end of an embarrassing Braves loss.
Rachel persisted. “Whatcha looking for, Johnny?” she repeated, and attempted to reach into the bag.
“Stop it, Rachel,” Johnny yelled, and called for his mom to get Rachel to end her reaching ways.
Auntie M, as usual, was the voice of reason and attempted to stop their sibling quarrel. “Come on now, Johnny,” she said, “don't talk to your sister like that.”
“But Mom, I can't find my protractor.”
This time Big Vinnie spoke up as he gunned the car's motor and made his voice rise above the rain, and the radio. “Goddammit,” he yelled, “I'm trying to listen to a ball game.”
“But Dad, I don't have my protractor.”
“Shut up.”
“I need one for school.”
“Shut up.”
If there ever was a time not to speak, it was then, for Big Vinnie was in full scumbag mode, and even though I was seated behind him and could not see his face, I could see the fat on the back of his neck twitching, a sure sign that he was about to prove his manhood by smacking a small child.
Johnny leaned forward to plead his case, but before the one syllable of “Dad” was even finished, his father caught him in the face with a stiff backhand swat. For the first time since I'd known her, Maria DelGratto got mad. “How dare you?” she yelled, which caught Big Vinnie off guard, but before another word could be heard, Vinnie DelGratto, her husband, filled the air of the Caddy with the loud cracking sound of fist meeting nose. I saw Auntie M sag down from the force of the blow, and something happened inside of me.
I heard Johnny scream, I heard Rachel cry. I heard Vinnie laugh. I said not a word, but that something inside me happened all the same. And for the first time in my life, I felt that rage take over.
I stood up in that seat, and as Vinnie admired his wife-beating hand, I reached both my five-year-old arms over his head, felt them graze over the flesh of both his chins, clenched both hands together, and pulled back on that fat bastard's larynx with everything I had.
Johnny still screamed, Rachel still cried, and the radio still played, but now Auntie M joined in the cacophonous roar, but her pleading fell on ears that were deaf to all but Vinnie DelGratto's fading gasps.
I leaned over, intent on seeing life fade from his face, and when I did he grabbed hold of my head and, in a last desperate move, pulled my fifty-two-pound body over his shoulder and onto his lap.
Then I felt a huge fist smash down on my jaw, and I saw Maria grab hold of her husband's arm and make a plea for some sense.
“Please stop the car! Just please stop the car. You're going to kill us! Just please stop the car!”
For a moment, just a moment, I thought Vinnie might just grant her wish, but that crucial moment only seemed to help him make a conscious decision. He could stop the car and save his family, or he could continue to pummel. He chose the latter.
“Die, you little bastard!” he screamed, and brought down that big fist with enough force to jolt me off his lap and down his knees, so that my legs waved awkwardly in the air and the right side of my face became wedged on the accelerator.
I heard little Rachel's voice cry out, “We're all going to die!” and though that thought turned out to be not entirely true, it seemed a good bet, and with consciousness fading quickly, I reached up with my right hand and closed it real tight on Vinnie DelGratto's balls.
The green Caddy finally stopped, courtesy of a huge oak tree that was nearly ripped out, roots and all, from the impact of an automobile decelerating from ninety to zero in a fraction of a second. Just enough time to see Johnny's body fly through the windshield like a sixty-pound missile, and I knew he was gone.
Time seemed to stand still as I lay in that car, until Rachel's small screams filled the Caddy's steaming carcass with hope. “Mommy, Mommy,” she yelled over and over, her first word on this earth now the only one worth knowing. “Mommy,” she cried again, but Mommy was gone. Not gone in the way that Johnny was gone, but gone in the sense that she was no longer in the Caddy's right front seat.
I struggled to get out of the would-be green coffin, and found the going tough. Big Vinnie's fists had done a number on my face, leaving my eyes swollen grotesquely, my mouth barely able to move. I eased my hand out of the area of Vinnie's crotch and felt like the hand was going to explode. Literally. Then all feeling was gone, my nerves having shut down like a faulty fuse box.
I kicked with both legs against Vinnie's big gut, planning to exit the floorboard as I had entered it, through his lap. Not a chance. The steering wheel was embedded in his chest, and his lifeless head hung over the wheel, dripping blood onto my shoulder. I pushed off the left door and wriggled my way into Auntie M's passenger side, hoping to exit the same way she had. I noticed that blood was cascading down the right side of my face, beating down on the rubber floor mat in a rhythm that blended with the falling rain. I felt the right side of my face with my functioning left hand, and felt only a stub where my right ear should have been. For a moment I panicked, not out of pain, but from the illogical fear that I might get in trouble for losing my ear. So my left hand darted out and searched the floorboard where my body had been, found the ear in question, and tucked it neatly in the right pocket of my shirt, which had turned from white to deep red over the past half a minute. It was only years later that I learned that my right ear had never been found. Apparently I had placed Vinnie DelGratto's tongue in my shirt.
“Mommy, Mommy,” Rachel cried on, and I tried my best to calm her. Maybe my words were wise, maybe not, but they were inaudible amid the sounds of that horrible night. Rachel's cries, the sounds of the still-blaring radio, the whine of police sirens that now entered the night with their flashing blue strobes, shedding some semblance of light on the whole grisly scene.
Then I saw her. Auntie M. Reaching out for me. Her face. Bruised but smiling. The blue lights danced off her big round frame, and I thought I'd never see anything more comforting in my life. God, I wanted her to hug me. In the rain, in the mud, with blood streaming out of the hole where my ear had been. One hug, and I'd be safe again. With the last of my strength I met her outstretched hand with mine, threw my body on top of hers, and held my sad, beaten face between the mounds of her warm, safe breasts. I looked up and saw her smile at me, the most peaceful smile I had ever seen. Then I put my head back into the safety of her bosom, and cried tears of joy until a man touched my shoulder and said “Son, you have to go.” I cried some more. “Son,” the man said again, this time a little louder, “it's time to go.” I looked up and saw the last remnants of her peaceful smile being gently covered by a sheet. “It's too late, son, it's too late,” the voice said, and then I was being lifted off her body, my little face never to feel her safe breasts again. I looked again at the sheet, hoping for one last glimpse of her smile, and noticed that her severed head lay a good three feet from her body.