Nineteen

I inspected yet another picture of Dad, one of many hanging on a wall of memories. He was smiling, his hand on JT’s football-padded shoulder.

I remembered my football pads. I had done four weeks of hard time in high school football, sentenced by my dad for the purposes of “toughening me up.” My pads fit so poorly. They chafed my collarbones and gave me bruises on my neck. Running in them was a nightmare. Getting hit in them was worse.

The coaches seemed hell-bent on teaching me that collisions were fun. The drills exhausted me, bruised me, and humiliated me. After four weeks of drilling, we played our first game. I looked into the stands and saw that Dad had found the time to come see me play. It was the first time I had seen him at a school event. For a moment, football held out the promise that it would bring us together. I spent the whole game standing on the sidelines, forgotten by the coaches.

After the game, I threw the pads onto the equipment pile and walked away from football. Dad gave me a speech about how winners never quit and quitters never win. I told him that brain-damaged
idiots didn’t find work and that I was too busy for football. He shook his head and walked away.

The picture on the wall showed that Dad had not given up on his dream of siring a football player. JT stood with his parents, holding a gigantic trophy. My dad stood between JT and Cathy, one arm around JT’s shoulder and his other hand resting on Cathy’s hip. His fingers on her hip curled down, their tips resting inside the pocket of her jeans.

The son, the father, the mother; they were all gone now. Someone had erased Dad’s second legacy. Nothing was left but these pictures in this house.

Sadly, I had never gotten my Starbucks coffee. I didn’t even get juice or a cookie. Lieutenant Lee had driven out from Boston and we had come back to the house to meet him. Lee was done talking to Bobby and turned to me.

“You’re sure that you never knew about any of this?”

“You think this would have slipped my mind? Of course I didn’t know about any of this.”

Bobby said, “Tucker, Lee’s just doing his job.”

I turned on Bobby. “Well he sucks at it.”

Lee said, “You never saw strange people at family events? Perhaps people you didn’t know.”

“I always saw strange people at family events. My mother’s family is huge. It’s like a family bush. I had all these second cousins, or half-aunts, or nieces once removed, or whatever the hell. She had the whole damn thing memorized, but I couldn’t follow it. Shit, Bobby had to tell me that my cousin was in the Mafia. I didn’t know that.”

Bobby said, “Tucker’s cousin is Sal Rizzo.”

Lee said, “Your cousin is Sal Rizzo? You could have mentioned this. Why didn’t you mention it?”

“Which part of ‘I didn’t know’ didn’t you understand? Look, this is bullshit. I don’t even know if you guys are telling me the truth about Sal. I don’t really know anything about him. I have no fucking clue. And if I don’t have a clue about my first cousin Sal, why would I have any clue about a family that my father was hiding from me?”

Lee said, “It seems impossible to me that he kept you completely separate. What about his funeral? In Genesis, Abraham died and it says ‘his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him.’ You and your brother didn’t see each other at his funeral?”

I turned away from Lee and wandered through the house. There was so much here. The place was a tribute to a full and happy family life. I stopped in front of a picture of my dad with a young JT in a Cub Scout uniform. They held another trophy and a Pinewood Derby car. The car was low and sleek. Clearly it had been sanded, painted, shellacked, and, judging by the trophy, tuned to win by an adult.

I didn’t remember my dad being very interested in the Pinewood Derby. I’d made my car myself. It looked like a Kleenex box on wheels. I had painted it blue with red flames on the side. My dad had come home from Pittsfield to watch the race. I proved that aerodynamics was less important to Pinewood Derby cars than you would think. I came in seventh out of thirty. No pictures were taken.

I looked across the wall of photos like a hobo peering through a restaurant window. The family life that I hadn’t known was possible had been here all along, hidden from me in Pittsfield.

Bobby gripped my shoulder and squeezed. “Here,” he said, handing me a handkerchief.

My face was wet. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. “I need to get out of here.”

Bobby said, “I know. I’ll finish up with Lee.”

“I need to see my mother.”