FRANCIS ANTHONY MOZZARELLI WAS the cannoli of his mamma Mary’s eye, a torta di mele, her Italian apple pie.
Red Delicious.
Rome Beauty.
Northern Spy.
Like Bella, from the moment he entered the world, he stirred things in people that were better left unstirred.
What a lovely or sweet or darling little girl was what most people said.
Mio piccolo femminiello, his mamma Mary called him. My little Caravaggio saint.
His papa, the nasty old barbershop bookie Xavier Patrizio Mozzarelli, despised his son. He drank and beat the kid regularly, yelling, “See what you made me do!” until the day Mary stepped between them with a gun on the boy’s eighth birthday.
“Say goodnight, old man! Your day is done!”
At the tender age of twelve, Francis already had the strut of a tiny tiger in heat. He swung his hips like a dandy little randy bonobo monkey. A pack of Chesterfield’s rolled in the short sleeve of his crisp white T, stiff blue jeans cuffed around his ankles, a pair of spit-polished Buster Browns on his feet. He had the face of a mini matinee idol. His aspect was pretty much Rudolph Valentino in Uncharted Seas. But the attitude was all Clark Gable in The Easiest Way.
At thirteen, the kid loved to light matches, stand behind Old Man Martinelli’s garage in the middle of the day, and strike them against the cement wall there. It was especially good in summer when he could watch a hot breeze catch and carry the smoke up past the woodpile. Sometimes he burned bugs with the tip of his lit cig, watched them curl into themselves until they hissed and exploded. Sometimes he let the match he was holding burn down to his skin.
It was a great place to shuck off his clothes with a friend.
He loved to swap a pack of Beech-Nut or Curtiss fruit drops for a playful peek into a buddy’s knickers or a quick sniff up a girl’s dress. Sugar tempters did little to get pants to drop or a skirt to rise. But chocolate went a long way. Especially a Baby Ruth or a Snickers surprise.
At fourteen, he started working out at Loprinzi’s Gymnasium. Pumping iron like a little Strongman. Sweating his body into something Leonardo da Vinci would have pined over. He glowed like one of Saint Anthony’s painted saints. Girls (and even boys) followed him around like lost puppies.
“Here comes that gorgeous kid! Here comes Saint Francis!”
When he was a ripe sixteen, the Roman Catholic Arch Diocese of Clifton, New Jersey, commissioned a portrait of the crucified Christ to be painted by artist and community leader Monsignor Teschio. It was the old padre’s idea to place the painting above the altar in Saint Anthony’s.
It was Mary Mozzarelli’s idea to have her son pose as Jesus.