“Go to the car, Sara Jane.”
“No, Dad! You keep talking about brothers, and about Lou! What about him?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Oh yes there is!” Uncle Buddy said.
“What about me? Does it affect me, too?”
“No,” my dad said.
“Oh yes it does!” Uncle Buddy cried.
“Dad!”
“Sara Jane!” he thundered, stripping the air of noise, my lungs of air, and Uncle Buddy’s face of confidence. We stepped away from him, me in one direction, my uncle in another. Veins stood out on his forehead, but his eyes were as frigid as two blue ice cubes, the gold flecks glowing brightly. He was vibrating with fury and yet weirdly calm at the same time. The combination was terrifying, and something clicked in my head as a little movie began to play. It was a memory from when I was four or five, when I witnessed a nearly identical phenomenon that scared me just as badly, except it wasn’t my dad.
It was Grandpa Enzo.
I toddled through the door of the bakery kitchen looking for a cookie.
I came upon my grandpa hissing like a Sicilian snake.
His back was to me, while before him stood one of the Men Who Mumbled. The man was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than “Enzo the Biscotto,” yet he stood quaking with fear in a dark suit and sunglasses while staring at his feet. My grandpa tapped the blunt end of a mixing spoon in time to his words against the man’s chest-mi (tap) capisci (tap) idiota? (tap)-while the man’s lower lip trembled and his forehead beaded with sweat. I realized that I was witnessing something I shouldn’t, so I backed away, bumping a bowl from a shelf. It shattered on the floor. My grandpa spun on his heel, and I looked into two quietly furious blue ice cubes. It was him, but it wasn’t-with flaring nostrils and gritted teeth, this was Evil Grandpa from the coldest corner of hell. It terrified me so badly that I began to wail and ran from the kitchen. By the time I was buried in my grandma’s apron, the mumbling man had left the bakery.
I felt a soft tap on my shoulder.
With one eye, I peeked up at my grandpa, who was himself again.
His face was warm and regretful.
He crouched on his knees, placed his hands gently on my shoulders, and stared at me with the same blue eyes decorated with bits of glittering gold as mine and my dad’s. “Cara mia. . my sweet, that wasn’t really Grandpa, oh no-no-no. That was just work. . part of being a baker.” He kissed my forehead, patted my cheek, and with a profoundly sad smile, produced a molasses cookie from behind his back.
It was as if the devil had peeled back his mask to reveal Santa Claus.
I was staring at that same mask now, on my dad, except that the mask seemed much more real than what was underneath. My own worst fears-isolation, abandonment, rejection-flooded my brain and gut, leaving me limp and helpless.
“Go to the car, please,” my dad said in a placid tone that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I opened my mouth to object, but his eyes froze the words in my throat.
I gladly turned for the door and my uncle did too.
Before Uncle Buddy’s foot even hit the floor, my dad said, “Stop. Sit,” like a stern master training his dog, and my uncle obeyed, quickly finding a chair.
I pushed through the kitchen’s swinging door almost as fast as I had when I was a tiny kid escaping my grandpa, but this time was different. Once I was away from my dad, separated by a brick wall, fear was replaced by curiosity. As the door swung back, I heard him mutter “molasses,” “Nunzio,” and “notebook.” Of course I knew about the Rispoli amp; Sons molasses cookies, and about my dad’s own grandpa, Nunzio Rispoli, who founded the bakery in the 1920s. At the time, though, I wasn’t yet aware of the notebook-that ancient collection of criminal secrets that would become central to my survival-and it intrigued me.
Carefully, I peeked through the door’s porthole window.
My uncle sat trembling in a wooden chair, trying and failing to look defiant.
My dad popped an index finger off of Uncle Buddy’s chest as he spoke.
The look on Uncle Buddy’s face was almost identical to the mumbling man who had stood before Grandpa Enzo, but this time was different too. That giant thug was afraid to make eye contact, while Uncle Buddy held my dad’s gaze. He was scared, that was plain, but not too scared to look at him, and I asked myself why.
I thought, Because he’s determined.
I thought, He’s determined because he wants that notebook.
“I’m gonna get it, Anthony,” my uncle said, his words so soft that they blew past my ears like a breeze. “And no one had better stand in my way. Not you. . and not your family, either. Or else.”
My dad’s hands darted like angry eels and suddenly Uncle Buddy’s feet were dangling above the floor. His face turned purple along with my dad’s hands, which were wrapped around Uncle Buddy’s neck, growing tighter every second. My uncle flailed his arms like he was swimming through air and made wet smacking noises with his tongue while his eyes rolled back in his head. There was a slight crick, like a twig snapping, and a line of scarlet blood trickled from his nostril.
“Come near my family and I will kill you.”
My dad’s statement was uttered in a matter-of-fact tone, as if asserting that “water is wet” or “ice is cold.” And then he dropped Uncle Buddy and turned for the door in a motion so fluid I only had time to push against the wall. As my dad walked away, Uncle Buddy rolled onto his back, gasping for air, and croaked, “Or else, Anthony.”
The door stopped moving, half open, with me cowering on the other side.
I could feel the cool electricity of my dad’s anger a foot away.
He was trying to decide whether to turn and finish with Uncle Buddy, while I silently begged him to leave the kitchen.
A moment later he strode through the bakery and out the front door, the bell jingling behind him. I fled after him without a look back, catching him at the curb where the Lincoln was parked. He must have heard my footsteps and spun quickly, his fist cocked with a car key jutting between the second and third knuckle. I skidded to a stop, my hands going up instinctively to block a punch, and then we were facing off, each in our stance. I could see in his eyes that Evil Dad had retreated to wherever he had come from. Now they filled with alarm as he said, “You were in the bakery?”
I nodded, slowly lowering my fists.
“How much did you hear?” he said. “Tell the truth.”
“I heard Uncle Buddy threaten us. I heard you tell him that you’d kill him.”
“Oh God,” he said, dragging a hand over his face. “Forget it, Sara Jane. Forget what you heard and saw.” He put his hands on my shoulders and tried on a weak smile. “None of it matters now, sweetheart.”
“Of course it matters!” I said, pushing his hands away. It was that word, sweetheart, that set me off, like I was some kind of idiot girl. After his soul-rattling transformation from Dad to Evil Dad, and the horrible scene with Uncle Buddy, he was behaving as if a few reassuring words were all I needed to pretend nothing happened. I felt a small blue flame of anger kindle in my gut as I said, “You were about to tell me something important about our family. You can’t start a conversation like that, especially after what just happened, and ask me to forget it.”