Johnny made a discovery of his own while he was searching Dad's drawers for items he'd be wearing in his coffin, a concept that made the skin prickle on the back of his neck. Just thinking of being locked inside a wooden box, lowered into the ground and covered with six feet of dirt made his lungs constrict and his heart race, until he thought he couldn't breathe... no, when he died, he was getting cremated, no question. Cremated, and kept above ground, maybe in an urn Val could keep on the mantle. Then again, what would stop Val from just letting his cremains float on the wind, or maybe straight into the trash? She wasn't his biggest fan right now, her disdain swallowed down only because of the sad circumstances that had brought them to his mom and dad's house on a Saturday night, praying the rosary when he could have been with...
He shook away that thought, and of how he could get back into his wife's good graces, when he came upon the blue aluminum toolbox in Dad's closet, up on the highest shelf where he'd always kept it. Johnny remembered Dad keeping his cash in there, in a plastic bag, of all things, drawing out bills and placing them in his wallet whenever he needed them. Every payday he'd deposited his paycheque at the bank and withdrawn a set amount of money sufficient for the household expenses until the next payday. This had been in the era before credit cards; Dad had never bought anything he couldn't pay for then and there, preferring to save the money over time, probably in this same toolbox, until he'd had enough to pay for the item in full. The only exception had been his properties. Mortgages had been the only debt he'd ever carried. A simple and sound economy, so unrealistic nowadays, but when interest rates had been through the roof in the early Eighties it had been a smart way of living.
Johnny had often considered raiding Dad's toolbox for cash whenever he wanted to take Val out on a date and found himself short. He'd never done it, though, always fearful of the consequences of getting caught. Val had always suffered for it, having to settle for cheaper food and entertainment, at least until Johnny had started working at Gastaldo Concrete, but to her credit she'd never complained; she'd always been content just being with him, and when Johnny looked back now, he kicked himself for taking her for granted all these years. She'd given him two healthy and capable sons, kept a well-oiled machine of a household, and Johnny had repaid her with one stupid act that now threatened their marriage, and it hadn't even been worth it.
He placed the toolbox on Mom and Dad's bed, opened it, and found there was still a bag containing cash. He wondered if Mom continued Dad's practice. He knew she had credit cards and often still used a chequebook. Maybe this cash had been part of Dad's last withdrawal before viral encephalitis had ruined him and Mom had taken over the financials. Did Mom even know this money was there? He'd bring this to her attention and see.
He pulled out the bag and discovered there were other papers inside. Among them were Dad's and Mom's passports. They were Canadian passports. Before the encephalitis scare, Dad and Mom had finally taken the citizenship test and became Canadians after more than thirty years in the country, having been only permanent residents until then. Joe and Johnny, by contrast, had become citizens after moving to Burnaby back in the Eighties.
Dad had been so proud after becoming Canadian, lamenting the amount of time he'd taken to decide to be one; it had been hard for him to let go of Italy, his mother country, even if his life there before moving to Canada had been gruelling and unrewarding. For example, his hat, shaped in the Tyrole style with the feather in the brim, a relic from his days in the Alpini regiment of the Italian Army, in which he'd given his mandated two years of service, still rested on his hat stand, and Dad would probably be buried with it on his head.
He opened Dad's passport and saw a picture of a man still vital and strong, an older version of the man who'd often carried both Johnny and Joe on his shoulders with barely any effort when they were kids, but still recognizably Dad. Johnny never told anyone this -- it would have been blasphemous to even mention it -- but when Dad passed away in his sleep two days ago, the first emotion Johnny felt was relief. Now he could remember the Dad of his youth, and not have to look any longer on the doddering fool who'd made his wife into a nursemaid. It was mean to think that way, but he couldn't help it. Mom would be free now; she was still of sound mind if a little frailer than the woman who'd whipped her boys into shape, and she could enjoy her remaining years without having to worry constantly about what Dad was doing while she was out. Luckily, most of what Dad had been doing was sleeping, but even that had imposed a burden on the normally active woman.
He put the passports next to the bag of cash on the bed and saw other important papers inside. The deed to the house. Life insurance papers. He'd have to check if they'd been keeping up with their premiums and make a claim once they got the death certificate.
He put these on the bed and saw, at the very bottom, a plain white envelope ripped open along the top. Curious, he plucked it out and saw, on the front of the envelope, Dad's name written in cursive script.
There were pages folded inside the envelope. He gently pulled the fragile paper out and smoothed it open, careful not to tear it. That same beautiful cursive was written on the pages.
April 5, 1971
Dearest Umberto
Johnny planted the page face down on the bed. No. He didn't want to see this. This was not a love letter from Mom. For one thing, Mom had barely known any English in 1971. She would have written the letter in her native Italian dialect, in that old world way he remembered, with lower case Ps and Gs falling way below the ruled line. This letter was on ruled paper, too, but the script wasn't Mom's.
Fuck. What had he uncovered?
He closed his eyes, sighed, and turned the page back over again.
Dearest Umberto,
I want to thank you for your discretion, and assure you that I make no claims on your heart. As you know, I am a married woman, and happily so. Our time together was beautiful, and made me feel young again, but I know very well nothing more can come of it, and I am content with that. You need not worry about other consequences, either. I have no transmissible diseases and am past child bearing age; in fact, it isn't a coincidence that I have no children of my own, as a medical emergency in my youth prevented me from ever bearing them again. Please don't be sad about that; it is a condition I have come to accept.
You and I come from two different places and two different times, and honestly I don't know how much of this letter you will understand. My English lessons, in exchange for your help in my garden, have so far yielded only enough proficiency to get by at your job at the mill, and my ramblings must seem like hieroglyphics to you.
I never predicted our time together learning a new language would bring us close like this, but I am happy it did. However, I don't want to imply that I expect it to happen again should we find ourselves in similar circumstances. You have a beautiful young family, and I have no desire to be the cause of its destruction just as you are settling yourselves in a new country. If, however, your hand happens to fall on mine while we are practicing our phonemes, and if we are alone and with no possibility of discovery, I won't say no to another encounter. You remind me of a beautiful boy I once knew in my youth, and your physical attributes, which I will not describe here because I'm a lady, have made me feel alive again just when I'd become resigned to the decline in vigour that comes with age, both in myself and in my husband, who is still my soul mate, and whom you could never replace.
Yours,
Signora
Johnny closed his eyes and shook his head. "Jesus fucking Christ," he breathed.
"Hey, language."
Johnny's eyes flew open and saw Joe at the bedroom door. Too late, he tried hiding the letter, which had the effect of drawing Joe's eyes to it. "What's that?" Joe asked.
"Come in and lock the door," he said.
Joe frowned. "Why?"
"Just do it!"
Joe still listened to his older brother sometimes, and did as he asked, then sat on the bed, his weight making it sink. Johnny handed him the letter.
Joe read it, and when he was finished, his face was pale. "Oh. Fuck."
"Yeah."
"Where did you find this?"
"In the blue toolbox." No other explanation was needed.
Joe looked like he was going to be sick. "He kept this letter in the blue toolbox, all this time? Didn't he think Mom would see it?"
Johnny shrugged lugubriously. "Maybe Mom never went in there."
"Jesus," Joe said. "If this letter says what I think it does, Dad was paying Mrs. Anderson booty calls."
Johnny's mouth twisted. "I don't know if I'd put it in quite those words, but, yes. She didn't give her name, but Dad called only one person Signora."
Joe read the letter again. "Maybe it only happened the one time," he said, desperate for something to grab on to. "It looks like this letter was written after the first time, but maybe Dad didn't do it again."
"Jesus, why would he even do it the first time?" Johnny asked. "Mrs. Anderson had to be at least thirty years older than him."
Joe shrugged. "A kind woman teaching him English, welcoming him to this new country. Maybe a kind of affection blossomed from such close contact. The two were always close even after we left Queensborough."
Johnny sighed in frustration. "We have to burn this. We have to forget we ever read it. This wasn't for our eyes, and I bet Dad forgot he even had it in his final years."
Suddenly the doorknob turned, but because the door was locked, Mom couldn't get in. She knocked hard and shouted, "Hey! Whaddya doin' in there?"
Joe sprang from the bed as if caught doing something indecent. Johnny grabbed the letter, crammed it and the envelope in his pocket, then opened the door. "Sorry, Ma," he said. "I think the door was locked by accident."
Mom's red-rimmed eyes glared at him, and he could tell she didn't believe him, but she made no comment. "You find the suit?" she asked.
Shit. The very thing she'd asked him to find in the first place. "Yeah, it's in the closet, right?"
She looked at the toolbox and its emptied contents on the bed. "Why you lookin' at that?"
"Dad had some cash in there, I meant to tell you about it. I don't know if you knew."
She grunted in disgust and flicked her hand. "'Course I know. Whoddya think pay for everything since Dad get sick?"
Johnny met Joe's eyes. Joe made the tiniest grimace.
Mom strode forward and shoved everything back into the toolbox. Then she paused and gently took every piece out again, stopping to examine every bit of paper. She whipped around and stared hard at both of them. "Where the letter?" she asked.
No point denying they knew about it now. Johnny gulped and pulled it out of his pocket, and slowly handed it to her.
She stared at it for a second, then put it back into the toolbox along with everything else.
"Ma," Joe said. "You knew?"
Mom sighed and seemed to deflate. "We gotta talk about this now?"
"No, Ma, not if you don't want to," Johnny said.
She didn't, apparently. Instead, she spun on Joe and demanded, "Why Lauren no come tonight? Why Naomi and Toshiro no come?"
Joe looked like a deer in the headlights. He was never good at defending his wife to his parents. Johnny, who'd always thought Lauren had gotten short shrift from them, and who secretly had a small crush on her himself, came to her defence instead. "Ma, it's already a full house with Val and the boys here," he said. "You know Lauren's not Catholic; the rosary wouldn't mean anything to her. And the kids wanted to see their friends and be happy for another day or two before the funeral; they'll be there then, don't worry."
Mom wasn't having that. "Don' they have no respect for you Dad?!" she cried indignantly.
Johnny pointed at the toolbox and said, "Did he really deserve it?"
Mom's chin quivered, but she stormed toward him and slapped him in the face. It was more surprising than painful, and Johnny regretted what he'd said even before she'd slapped him. It wasn't as if he could talk about respect anymore.
Joe stared at both of them in dismay. Mom sank onto the bed and buried her face in her hands, sobbing ugly, wracking sobs.
"Ah, Ma," Joe cried, his own face crumpling. He sat on the bed, and his gravity tilted Mom into his chest, and he held her tight while she wrung herself out.
Johnny sighed and sat on Mom's other side, placing a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Ma," he said. "That wasn't fair of me. It just shocked me, that's all, seeing... that... in there."
Mom eventually quieted, and when she'd spent herself, not for the last time, she wiped her nose on her sleeve like a child and stared at her eldest child for a few seconds before saying, "He had a lock on that box, before," she said.
"A lock?" Johnny asked, not following.
She nodded. "A tiny one, with a tiny key only he have; only he get the money, so only he had the key, you know, until... until he get sick."
Now Johnny understood. "So, after he got sick, you took over the finances. You took his keys so you'd always know where they were, because Dad misplaced things, because he'd forget where he put them."
"Was that why he had the lock, Ma?" Joe asked. "So no one would find that letter?"
She shrugged in resignation. "Maybe to keep you from taking the money, too, and it have the... you know, the... come si chiama... documenti importante," she said, reverting to Italian when she couldn't remember the English words, which was when she was in distress, like now. "So, maybe that why he keep the letter in there."
"And you only found the letter after he got sick?" Johnny asked.
Mom nodded.
It must have been doubly infuriating, Johnny thought. Almost overnight, she'd had an old man to take care of, and she'd found out he'd cheated on her with a woman twice his age almost a lifetime ago, when he'd been the man she'd wanted, the man who'd supported the family and worked hard to grow their food. To be the jilted wife near the end of her life, and have no recourse available, because her husband could no longer answer for his adultery, probably because he'd have no memory of it... impotent rage was the worst kind of rage, because it had no outlet. Maybe if she'd found out when she was younger, she could have divorced him, but she would have had to go against her own religion's teachings against divorce. Now, the only solution available to her would have been to smother him with his own pillow in the night... and maybe that was how he really died...
No. Murder was even worse in the eyes of the Church than divorce. She wouldn't have risked committing a mortal sin and condemning her soul to Hell, not when she'd played by the rules all her life; it would have been akin to being tackled on the five yard line.
"I still love him," she said softly, as if she'd been reading his mind and had a better objection to the solutions he'd pondered. "I hate him too, a bit, but I still love him."
That frank admission, more than the fact of his death itself, the sheer honesty of his mother's sufferance, was what finally made Johnny cry, and now it was his mother's turn to comfort him.
He hadn't even noticed Val was in the doorway until he wiped his eyes and looked up. She stood there, arms crossed, mouth twisted. He didn't know how much of their conversation she'd heard, but he had to assume it was all of it. It was right then and there that he decided that whatever she wanted, whether it was a divorce or whether it was permission to go out and get her own back, he'd give it to her, because he'd do anything not to be the man he now knew his father had been, the man he himself had been up to now, because he saw the reflection of himself in his wife's eyes, and he didn't like what he saw.
He could have told her it was all Joe's fault, that he'd wanted the arrangement Joe had, an arrangement that somehow worked against all odds, maybe because both parties got something out of it. That was the difference; there'd been no way he could comfortably discuss with Val the possibility of opening their marriage, so he'd done the easy thing and just cheated. He was a coward.
Vic and Tilly joined Val in the doorway. "What's going on?" they asked. Thankfully, neither of them knew what their father had done, because Val was too proud to air her dirty laundry to their children, but if they ever found out, they'd take their mom's side, no question; their devotion to her was unshakeable, because she'd treated both of them like princes from the moment of their birth, to the point where sometimes Johnny felt superfluous in his own home, not that that was any excuse for what he'd done.
To Johnny's surprise, Joe answered for them. "Just going through Nonno's clothes and getting emotional."
"We have his hat," Tilly said, holding up the Alpini hat.
"Good," Johnny said, standing and taking it from his son. He found Dad's best suit, still in its drycleaning bag from the last time he'd worn it (when would it have been? Rachel and Al's wedding?) and laid it on the bed with the hat on top.
Joe looked at the outfit, then went into the closet and found a clean white shirt and a tie. It was Dad's trademark green, white and red tie, the colours of his birth country. This was the tie he'd worn at the ten-year dinner back in 1979, when Johnny had been in his prime and Valeria had been the fantasy of every male in that banquet hall in her thin slip of a dress. They'd had so much sex back then, they could barely keep their hands off each other. How had it come to this? How had they lost each other? When had he become a middle-aged man with a pot belly and thinning hair, searching for his lost youth? When had he become so pathetic?
Mom found a shiny pair of wingtips and socks to complete the ensemble and said, "Perfetto."
"He'll look good in that," Johnny said, sighing.
Sniffling drew his attention to the door. Val was wiping her eyes. Johnny's heart broke, and he opened his arms to her. She shook her head and huddled closer to her sons, and nobody, not Joe, not Mom, not Vic or Tilly, failed to notice that. It looked like Val was willing to air her dirty laundry after all, and she didn't even have to say a word.
Thanks for reading this far! You might have been surprised to see Johnny's POV for the first time, but he's been sitting on the sidelines of the LSDC's adventures for too long, and this story involves him quite a lot. Readers of past titles in this series might remember him as Joe's lecherous older brother, and unfortunately that characterization won't soften much, but hopefully he'll be filled out by the end of this book.
If you enjoyed what you read so far, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. Leave a comment and let me know what you think!
Let's go back to Johnny as a nine-year old, and the first evidence of his dad's bad behaviour, by clicking on "Continue reading."