'74 & Sunny (17 page)

“Ah, shit, is right,” I said, pulling my shorts back on.

We followed the anchor line back to the boat, stopping to grab a couple of clams on the way in. When we were on board, my father lit up a cigarette and told us we had one more stop to make before we headed home. “Nothing can top that spot, Uncle Al,” Gino said, kissing my father's cheek. My father smiled gently, pulled Gino in closer to him, and told him to take the wheel.

“Just go nice and straight,” he said. “I'm right behind you. I'll tell you where and when to turn.”

“Can I curse?” Gino asked us out loud, over the hum of the outboard.

“Of course,” came our reply.

“
Holy shit!
I'm driving a boat.” He laughed.

My father took the wheel back in the deeper water. He was a good uncle; he wasn't crazy. As we headed east and nearer shore, my father was aiming the boat toward a tiny canal that had signs posted all around:
PRIVATE PROPERTY
and
KEEP OUT
. The sun was setting so that the sky on the horizon looked like a mix of orange and pink sherbet. This was always when the anxiety in me kicked in.
Where the hell are we? Is someone going to confront my father? Do we have enough gas? Is my mother worried about us?
But a couple of stolen glances at my father's eyes always settled me. He seemed to be more at ease in dangerous situations. But, still, I am also my
mother's
son.

“Dad,” I said. “Should we be here? Can we get arrested?”

Jack and Frankie laughed. “Yeah,” Frankie said. “This can get us heavy time. Driving down a private canal? How many years can that get us, Pop?”

“Ten . . . maybe twenty years,” my father said. “Depends how many fish you pull out of here.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, turning to an equally anxious Gino.

“If
you're
scared, then how should I feel?” Gino piped up.

“I'm all right,” I lied. “At least we aren't gonna see any clowns.”

“Or dolls with busted eyes and wooden teeth.” Gino laughed.

“Lines in the water, men,” my father told Jack and Frankie nice and quietly. “We might even get a few weakfish in here. I see them breaking water.”

My father cut off the engine as we drifted down this beautifully cryptic canal with stately waterfront homes to our left and right. All we could hear were the last of the stubborn seagulls sitting on poles and the sound of the men casting out and reeling in their shiny lures.

“Where are we,” Gino asked.

“This is Sayville,” my father said with a bit of reverence. “And all the people in these houses don't want us here.”

“So why are we here?” Gino said, as he swatted away a swarm of mosquitoes dancing on his hair and face.

“I want you to meet someone,” he said. “If she's home and she sees us, believe me, she'll leave a mark.”

As we neared the end of the canal, and Jack and Frankie had managed to wrestle in a couple of beautifully colored weakfish, the boat came to a mysterious stop in front of what looked like the back of the White House if it were built on the water. And then, as if on cue, we heard a small engine starting up and within a few seconds an elderly woman was tear-assing toward us in her golf cart right to the edge of her property to make a stand.

“Here she is,” my father said, his eyes lighting up.

“Here
who
is?” I said.

“Julia Thorne.”

As it turns out, Julia Thorne was an eccentric eighty-year-old widow who was somewhat of an infamous recluse. My father knew about her only because he had stumbled down the canal years earlier and had gotten a verbal whipping from
her for trespassing. But, ever the romantic, the next weekend he drove down her canal again. But this time he brought her steamed clams and mussels to make up for it. They went on to forge somewhat of a crazy relationship. He would play the hapless boater, and she would play up the irate homeowner. But it had become a familiar game to the both of them, unbeknownst to me. This trip was purely to introduce her to Gino and me.

Mrs. Thorne got out of her golf cart, wearing a giant floppy hat and a thin scarf around her neck. Her hair was long and thick and red as heartbreak, and her eyes were pale blue, almost silver. As she walked toward us, the huge gold bangles she wore bounced from her wrist to her elbow. She held a bullhorn but never bothered to bring it to her mouth. She didn't make too many appearances outside her home, but when she did, she made sure her performances were memorable.

“What are you mutts doing on my property?” she demanded. “Every fish you catch, that is, if you even have the mental capacity to know
how
to fish, belongs to me. Me, Julia Thorne, 315 Mayhew Street, Sayville USA.”

“This is crazy,” Gino said. “Are we at Greta Garbo's house?”

“Do you understand me?” she demanded. “Are you all slow or retarded?”

As far back as my childhood went, this was obviously another one of the people my father collected. From the sad to the spiritual to the far-flung, he knew them all.

My father had a hard time stifling a laugh. “Signora Thorne,” he said, “my nephew Gino here didn't believe a beautiful woman like you existed. My brother drove him all the way from New Jersey to see you and your magic fishing hole.”

She put down the bullhorn and snapped open a butterfly fan and fanned her face a few times, taking a glance in Gino's direction.

“That boy is too precious to have your wild Sicilian blood pulsing through his veins, Al.” She called Gino to the dock and onto her property to have a better look. “You're lucky you look like Leonard Whiting in
Romeo and Juliet
,” she told him. “Now tell your uncultured uncle that unless he gets me fluke fillet, I'll have his dago ass arrested for trespassing. And the policemen here are all my friends. I call them and they come.”

“You don't want to do that,” he told her, smiling.

“Why, it is. It is. It is what I want to do.”

At this point, with Jack and Frankie even chuckling, I knew we were dealing with a fun, crazy old broad. She was harmless and she loved the company, and my father knew that about her. But she did have Gino hostage on her property.

“What's it gonna be, Al? The fluke or this fella?”

My father gave Frankie a wink and a nod before climbing on her dock and handing her a bucket of fluke meat and a couple dozen clams. Thorne inspected the bounty before giving my father a tender smack on the chest. “This'll do.” She laughed. “Come back anytime, but not anytime soon.”

“I love you too, signora. Ciao,
bella
!”

“Oh, bullshit, you do!” she yelled over her shoulder. “You think you're the first sailor to lie to me?” Then she climbed in her cart and sped off like a maniac.

My father and Gino hopped back in the boat, we flipped on the lights to the bow and stern as we made our way back up the canal and turned the boat west toward home.

Later that night, Gino ate my father's Sicilian pizza, steamed clams, and fluke fillet with as much enthusiasm as the rest of us. By the time we were done, we couldn't get to bed quick enough. We were spent. A whole day on the bay will do that.

“Julia Thorne looks like an old movie star,” he said. “I
love
her.”

“She's a classic, I gotta say.”

Before he dozed off, Gino whispered, “I feel like Julia Thorne is my favorite actress, and she's not even an actress! Does that make any sense?”

“A lot of things didn't make sense today,” I said. “You had a starfish on your chest with your pud hanging out.”

When I turned to share a laugh with him, Gino was already out. A slight smile creasing my little cousin's sleeping face.

13

ROCK THE BOAT

M
y father made it his point to leave work and get home a little on the early side as the summer went on. He was always happiest entertaining people, and with Gino staying with us, it sort of made my father feel like he had a captive audience to perform to. And I don't think anybody loved it more than I did. I had spent so many nights of my childhood trying to keep my eyes open as my father split his sales job at 10:00 p.m. and finally arrived home around a quarter past. But it was the ritual leading up to his arrival that helped keep me awake. First, my mom or I would open the garage door around nine thirty, so he could pull his Mustang inside and walk in the house through the side door. And once he stepped from his car, he usually started to jingle the coins he had in his
pocket, so even if I had dozed off, that unmistakable sound of loose change would snap me awake. Not to mention our dogs would start to go wild at the sound the keys made in his hand. And then, once he finally stepped inside the house, the energy he gave off—whether it was through a joke, a compliment, or a complaint—gave me another hour or so of life.

“A.J., you're lucky,” Gino said with a hint of envy. “At least you get to actually see your father every night and hear him tell you all these great stories. Try being the son of a very busy doctor.”

In the summer of 1974, it wasn't just me who waited anxiously for my father to come home. It was becoming more and more apparent that Gino was also doing all he could to be there for his entrance and what high jinks might lay ahead. And that didn't go unnoticed by my father. So there were many nights when he might have passed up a sales commission or two, just so he could spend some quality time with us boys.

He came home really early one night, took a few shots at the basketball hoop with us, and then ran into the house to change clothes.

“Dad, what are you doing home so early?” I said, passing him the ball.

“I got things for us to do,” he said.

Even my mother was shocked at how early he was home. “Was it that slow at the store?”

“Can't I
do
something with my son and my nephew?”

“
Yes!
” I said. “What are we doing?”

“The Bay Shore Theatre is showing a double feature of
The Cowboys
and
The Omega Man
. John Wayne and Chuck Heston. It doesn't get better than that. Go get cleaned up. Nolan's gonna meet us there and hold our seats.”

My father disappeared upstairs to change while Gino and I washed up in the bathroom. “I know
The Cowboys
is a Western,” Gino said, “but what's the other one about?”

“It's like a science fiction thing,” I said. “Whatever. It'll be good. Wait till you see this theater. It's huge and it has a giant chandelier in it.”

“Oh . . . I love chandeliers,” Gino said.

“I figured you would.”

“Um . . . can I sit next to Nolan?” Gino asked a bit shyly.

“Yeah, whatever, I don't care.”

“It's just because I'll probably have questions and he's so nice and likes to help me with things.”

“Yeah, yeah. We'll work it out.”

The Bay Shore Theatre was only a few miles away, across an ugly stretch of road where Montauk Highway gave way to Main Street, which over the years had given way to a porno theater, a junk shop, a great Jewish deli, and a couple of naughty bookstores. There was some sort of mental-health facility nearby, because at various times of the day, these miserable people would walk the streets in various states of breakdown. If you weren't used to it, it could make you feel somewhat uneasy.

“Uncle Al,” Gino said. “Is it safe around here? We just passed a man with his pants down, spinning in circles on the sidewalk.”

“Oh, yeah, that's ‘the Swinger,' ” my father calmly replied. “I see him every day. He's harmless, but I've never seen him with his ass out.”

A few blocks later we came across “the Screamer,” an old, white-haired man who liked to lean into the street and yell at slow-moving vehicles. I remember “the Screamer” never being at a loss for words but not ever caring if the words he strung together were making any sense to anyone besides himself. “What happens to people like him?” I asked my father as we passed by his sidewalk pulpit.

“I can't say. Sometimes . . . people just snap,” he told us. “Life gets too hard; they lose people they love . . .”

“You'd think their family would take care of them,” Gino said.

“Not everyone has a family. That's why family is so important,” my father said, looking in the rearview mirror. “Family can make you feel wonderful or it can be a real pain in the ass.” As he said that, he whipped his right hand off the wheel and began tickling Gino and me at every vulnerable spot on our thighs, knees, and stomachs. “
You love your family?
” he shouted.

“
Yes, yes!
” we shouted back. “
Please . . . stop!
”

“I can't hear you guys. . . .”

“Yes,” we screamed.
“We love our family!”

That was my father's way of getting our minds off the crazy people wandering around our car. When we finally parked, paid for the tickets, and had our Cokes and popcorn, my father took us by our arms into the darkened movie theater. The previews had already begun. We could barely see a few feet in front of us after coming in from the bright streets. And, never caring about making a scene—too large or too small—my father yelled out for Nolan.

“Nolan!” he said quickly and loud enough to hear over the flickering projector.

“Down here, Al,” came a reply a few rows back. “Follow my whistle.”

And we did. And, thankfully, nobody got upset. We settled in. Gino sat next to Nolan, and I squeezed in between him and my dad, who was sitting on the aisle.

It was a long, exhausting experience.
The Omega Man
opened the evening, and
The Cowboys
closed it out. I remember the whole theater letting out hoots and hollers the first time John Wayne's face filled up the screen. I wasn't much for Westerns, but my father had always used John Wayne as the right measure of a real man. His character in this movie was a lot like the roles Wayne had played before. Only this time, he wasn't in Iwo Jima or at war anywhere. He was a rancher named Wil Andersen, who lost his ranch hands to the gold rush. And being forced into finding replacement riders for his yearly four-­hundred-mile cattle drive, Wayne begrudgingly hired local schoolboys. He taught them how to rope, brand, and herd cat
tle and horses. There were plenty of fights and scuffles along the way, but I was getting the message loud and clear—that my father wanted me and, mainly Gino, to see how boys grow into men or confirm their manhood through acts of violence and vengeance.
That
part of the movie, I loved. It was the movie advertisement that made me feel like Wayne was going soft. The actual advertisement for the film just didn't play right in my ears: “All they wanted was their chance to be men, and he gave it to them. The youngest was nine. There wasn't one of them over fifteen. At first, he couldn't stand the sight of them. At last, he couldn't take his eyes away.”

I noticed Gino
was leaning forward in his seat enthralled, while I was somewhat disappointed. This wasn't starting out as a typical John Wayne flick.

“Dad, what's this all about?” I whispered. “The Duke with little boys?”

“Just watch, just watch,” he assured me.

By the end of the film, my father was nudging my elbow and softly squeezing my arm when the boys were tending to a dying Wayne, the victim of a knife fight. Wayne tells the boys how proud he is of them
.
“Every man wants his children to be better than he was,”
Wayne says as he fades away.

There were some sniffles in the theater, but none louder than Gino's. Nolan comforted him a bit outside on the way to the car, and again sitting at our dining room table once we got home and were discussing the films. As usual, Nolan was especially sweet and understanding to Gino. And Gino, a
few nights earlier—and quite bravely—confessed to me that he felt a special bond with Nolan. There was absolutely no hanky-panky going on—and Gino was never alone with the guy—but, from what I could see, he was just a man who listened intently to Gino's feelings and responded in a kind and gentle manner. But to Gino, Nolan's visits meant more. That night changed everything in my father's eyes.

“It's okay you cried, Gino,” Nolan said. “I got a little choked up too. Did you notice?”

“No . . . but I really wasn't crying. My eyes were watering a little,” Gino said.

Nolan laughed some, pulled Gino closer to him, and mussed his hair. It came off as an awkward attempt to comfort him.

That moment seemed a bit out of place for me. Nolan wasn't blood and, for my liking, wasn't close enough to the family to show that kind of affection.

I watched my father's posture change somewhat for the worse when Nolan pulled Gino in. I saw the muscles in his jaw clench a bit while his eyes seemed to go flat. I changed the subject as quickly as I could, saying how much better I liked
The Omega Man
.

“Come on,” I said. “
The Omega Man
ruled. Heston had to deal with a plague from China, a cult of albino mutants who are out to kill him, and the whole time he's going crazy. That's a lot more exciting than a bunch of kids helping John Wayne with his cows.”

“But
The Cowboys
is saying so much more,” Nolan tried to explain.

“And Heston got to kiss a black girl,” I said, sensing I could redirect the anger bubbling within my father that was about to be channeled toward Nolan.

“Easy does it,” my father said, firing his first salvo over my bow.

“Gino, my boy,” Nolan said. “You'll understand what John Wayne felt when you're a little older. He loved being around those boys for a lot of reasons. Trust me.”

“Well . . . maybe A.J. is right,” Gino said, pulling away from Nolan a little. “There was a lot going on in
The Omega Man
. I think I was just getting tired at the end of the night.”

Nolan lowered his head to be eyeball-to-eyeball with Gino. “Look at me,” he said, squeezing his nose between his fingers. “
The Omega Man
was garbage. John Wayne made men outta all those dumb kids. He was the best thing that ever happened to them. Without him, they'd be nothing.”

My father slowly pushed his chair away from the head of the table and stood up. “Well, it's getting to be that time,” he said.

“Ahh, already?” Nolan said, checking his diver's watch.

“Yep.”

“No ices tonight?” Nolan tried. “A.J.? Gino? Tell Uncle Al he's a stinker.” He let out a loud laugh, expecting us to join in. But he was met with silence from our side of the table.

“Nah,” my father said tersely. “I gotta measure a house at seven a.m., and the kids gotta hit the rack.”

“Ahh . . . then that five-gallon can of lemon ice is gonna go to waste, Al.”

This wasn't a typical good-bye in my house. There was too much distance between four people in such a tight space. And too much silence between the words.

“It's not gonna go to waste,” my father said.

“Sure it is, Al,” Nolan said as he stood up.

“No it's not, Nolan,” my father repeated. “Because you're gonna take it somewhere else.”

Gino and I stared at the ground as my father walked to the kitchen freezer. I could hear him wrestling the can out of the back of the box. Then he walked to the front door, cracked open the screen, and cocked his head for Nolan to follow. Nolan didn't even look at us as he slowly peeled away from the table and began to meet my father in the foyer. “Al . . . what's going on? Was I out of line? I don't understand. . . .”

“No more ices, Nolan,” he said. “When I need some, I'll find you.”

When my father shut the door that night on Nolan, he immediately turned the dead bolt. For a man whose front door was always open to anyone, this message was clear as a bell.

In my twelve years as Al Benza's son, I could have taught a master class in what I had learned from my father's nuances and gestures and fragile Sicilian code. And what I
picked up was Nolan most likely overstepping his boundaries when it came to his role—not only around my father, but more important, around Gino and me. His attempts to be almost paternal to Gino just greased the wheels for his quick exile. You didn't have to know my father for more than a few minutes before you understood he didn't need any assistance protecting his family. And most of all, he had no use for any other man assuming anything close to resembling a parental role when it came to his son. Or, in this case, his brother's son.