There's nothing louder or more disruptive to a family than prolonged silence.
Before my grandpa’s funeral, my dad and Uncle Buddy spoke only on a functional basis about orders and inventory. In the days that followed, that stilted conversation broke down even further, descending into monosyllabic grunts.
And then something so sad happened that it forced them to speak, at least briefly.
It forced them to make funeral arrangements again.
Grandma Donatella had returned to work almost immediately after Grandpa Enzo died, reclaiming her place behind the front counter. She had always been a tiny bundle of energy, constantly in motion-boxing up cookies and cakes, ringing the cash register, scrubbing display cases-but now she sat motionless on a low metal stool watching customers come and go with her mouth drawn down. Whenever someone from the neighborhood asked her how she was doing, her eyes filled with tears as she silently reached into a display case, removed a heart-shaped cookie, and broke it in half. She began to complain about her own heart, how it ached for my grandpa, and then how it just ached, and then she died too. She had made good on her promise to join my grandpa a presto-soon.
After she was placed inside the Rispoli mausoleum, my dad and Uncle Buddy stopped speaking completely.
The silence between them was so deafening that I had to leave the bakery kitchen if they were both there at the same time.
It was as if my grandma were the last structure standing after an earthquake, and when she died, everything in the family quietly fell to rubble.
In that short period between my grandparents’ deaths, Uncle Buddy’s work habits had grown erratic; now they were just plain weird. He came in late and left early, mixed batter and dough in a lazy, halfhearted manner or not at all, and barked at customers if they were too slow in making up their minds. Sometimes he just sat in the kitchen smoking a Sick-a-Rette, staring hard at my dad, as if the power of his hateful gaze would force my dad to do or say something. I was unsure of what that something was, but then it didn’t matter anymore because Uncle Buddy stopped coming to work altogether. Instead, he used his keys to come in after hours and rummage through the kitchen, storage rooms, and basement, ripping open boxes, splitting sacks of flour, pushing over shelves. My father would find the mess, shake his head, and clean it all up, muttering, “He’ll never find it.”
“Find what?” I asked, picking up broken dishes.
My father shrugged, answering vaguely, “Whatever he’s looking for.”
“Dad?”
“Yes, sweetheart?” he said.
His eyes were full of a sad sense of looking beyond the here and now, it rattled me a little, and I lost the nerve to ask more about Uncle Buddy. Then something caught my attention, and I glanced past him at thin lines of smoke seeping from the Vulcan. “Something’s burning!” I said.
“Damn it! The melassa biscotti!” he cried, dropping the broom and rushing to the oven. A plume of black smoke rolled up to the ceiling as he pulled open the door, yanked out a tray of smoldering cookie lumps, and threw it on the mixing table. The stink of scorched sugar filled the room and I gagged a little. Overhead, fire sprinklers coughed and spurted streams of tepid water. My dad leaned on the table with both hands, hanging his head, and then pounded it with a fist so hard that I jumped. “It’s all ruined! Everything!” he shouted into the indoor thunderstorm.
“It’s just cookies,” I said.
“No, it’s everything! Everything,” he said, and then moved so quickly across the room that I jumped again. He was staring at me intently, almost like he was going to cry. “Sara Jane, you’re the oldest. You’re so smart and so. .” He trailed off, then pursed his lips and bowed his head. When he looked up, the possibility of tears was replaced by something cold and rooted on earth. “Innocence fades for everyone,” he said slowly. “If a person has any hope of survival, it must be substituted for plain reality. Listen to me closely, not with innocent ears, but with the ears of an adult. If something happens, you need to know about our family. .”
“What could happen?” I said, a shudder racking my body.
“Anything,” he said in a voice that I’d never heard before. He had made the leap into plain reality and I had to join him. I stopped shaking, or at least tried my best, as he said, “I have to tell you important things about our family business. And about the bakery. .” He paused as his eyes flicked past me.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“Yeah, what is it?” Uncle Buddy said from the kitchen door, striking a match and lighting a Sick-a-Rette. Its rotten-garbage smell mingled nauseatingly with burned molasses as he came toward us, a little grin on his lips. “Or should I say, where is it?”
My dad squared his shoulders and positioned his body sideways, a boxer setting his stance.
Uncle Buddy did the same thing, cautiously.
I moved closer to my dad, determined not to leave his side, mirroring his posture without realizing it.
Uncle Buddy chuckled. “Well, look-it here, a daddy-daughter boxing team. Hey, Sara Jane, before you unleash the stunning power of those spaghetti arms on old Uncle Buddy,” he said, his laugh turning to a sneer, “just remember it was me who made time to get you into boxing, not him.”
“But he’s my dad!” I said, surprised at the acid in my words.
“It doesn’t make him right,” Uncle Buddy declared. “Remember what I’m teaching you, kid, it’s an important life lesson. Just because he’s your dad does not make him right. In fact, your dad recently made a very wrong decision that could be very, very bad for your family.” He smirked at my dad, saying, “You’re surprised I know about that, huh? Stupid old Buddy? Well, stupid old Buddy has been hacking your voice mail and peeking at your e-mail. . techniques just like the government uses.”
“Buddy,” my dad said, his voice full of warning.
“I know, I know. . not in front of the kiddies, right?”
“Sara Jane can handle anything you can dish out and more,” my dad said.
“Oh, please.” Uncle Buddy chuckled again. “She’s still mooning over a kiss that happened five years ago.”
“Three,” I mumbled. I’d never heard my uncle’s mocking tone directed at me. It crushed my heart a little, but I also realized that I was curling my left hand into a fist.
“Come on, Anthony. Enough of the playacting and bullshit. You know that I know all about that notebook,” Uncle Buddy said.
“What notebook?” I said.
“Buddy,” my dad said, this time almost growling.
“I’m tired of looking for the damn thing, and besides, it’s not like you’re going to need it anymore,” Uncle Buddy said. “Just give it to me and then you and your little family can go on your merry way to wherever they send your kind of people.”
“They who?” I said. “What does he mean, ‘your kind of people’?”
Uncle Buddy grinned at my dad, the Sick-a-Rette stink-smoldering between his lips like something scooped from a litter box. “You want to tell her or should I?”
My dad paused, his jaw rippling, and said, “Even if I did give it you, Buddy, you wouldn’t know what to do with it. It’s too dangerous for someone like you.”
Buddy’s smart-aleck smile stayed in place, but his voice was ice. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means someone. . who wants to be like me,” my dad said slowly. “And you’re not, Buddy. You’re not like me.”
“Maybe I could be,” Uncle Buddy said, in a tone both angry and wishful, “if you give me the notebook.”
My dad remained silent, his face full of iron, as he shook his head no.
Uncle Buddy said, “Okay, kid, here’s exactly what we’re talking about-”
My dad cut him off abruptly, saying, “Sara Jane, go wait in the car.”
“But Dad. .”
“Yeah, kid, go wait in the car. Go do your nails or something else just as girly,” Uncle Buddy said. “It’s a perfect example of one of the important things he was going to tell you about the family business. . a woman’s place is on the outside looking in.”
“Yeah?” my dad said. “What about Greta?”
This time Uncle Buddy’s smile slipped. “Keep her out of this,” he said.
“You’re the one who put her in it. Right between us.”
“She’s not between us!” Uncle Buddy said. “This is! This family and its secrets! It has always been between us!”
“Not for me,” my dad said quietly.
“Of course not for you. You’re the older brother,” Uncle Buddy said, pointing the stinking Sick-a-Rette at him. “You have a healthy, blue-eyed son.”
They stared at each other until they remembered I was there, and then they slowly turned toward me. Their faces were so different, my dad’s weary and worried, my uncle’s smug and disdainful. Fragments of the past-Uncle Buddy’s unhappy response long ago at the announcement of Lou’s impending birth, my parents’ urgent “doing the right thing” conversations they’d been whispering about for years, the line of men at my grandpa’s funeral waiting to talk to my dad, the older son, while ignoring my uncle-appeared like pieces of an unfinished puzzle. My conversation with Willy about the history between them echoed in my mind, especially his ominous words “in a family like yours.” Whatever it all meant, I at least understood that the rift between my dad and uncle had shifted from depressing to dangerous. Even more clearly, I saw that danger creeping toward Lou. My entire body was shaking when I said, “What’s this about, Dad?”
“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.”
“I’m not asking you,” he said, the smile vanishing. “I’m telling you.”
“To do what? Erase my brain? I saw what I saw and heard what I heard,” I said. “Tell me, Dad, at least about that notebook. Tell me right now.”
“Don’t speak to me like that,” he said, unlocking the old car.
“You said I can handle it and more.”
“I know you can handle it,” he said. “I just don’t want you to have to handle it.” He gazed at the bakery and set his jaw. “Like I said, none of it matters anymore. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Leaving where?”
He opened the car door. “Leaving Chicago. You, Lou, Mom, and me.”
“But. . since when?”
“Since now, Sara Jane. Things have changed.”
It was too much, too fast, and I stammered, “But I have school, and my friends. . this is insane, Dad. None of it makes sense. There’s no way we’re leaving tomorrow. .”
“Get in,” he said, starting the engine.
I shook my head. “Not unless you tell me the truth. About everything.”
His mouth was a tight line as he shook his head. “We’re done talking.”
Without another word, I turned and walked down the sidewalk.
He dropped the car into gear and followed me, saying, “Sara Jane, please.”
Silence-walking and looking straight ahead.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I just. . please get in.”
No acknowledgment-still walking.
“Okay, fine. Walk if it will make you feel better. But come straight home.”
And then I watched him drive away, waving sadly.
He assumed the short walk to our house would put me only twenty minutes behind him. That assumption made me less angry than depressed, since he’d obviously forgotten that it was Friday night, the Fep Prep spring dance, and that he was to drop me off at Gina’s house. And that my dress was hanging in the backseat of the Lincoln.
He’d forgotten that I was meeting Max Kissberg.
He’d forgotten that today was my sixteenth birthday, and that the best gift I could’ve received was a date with Max.
I knew what a supremely terrible afternoon my dad had-it’s not every day that formerly loving brothers threaten each other’s lives. If my dad was at the point where he was prepared to flee Chicago in twenty-four hours, it was obviously much worse than I could imagine. Still, it was extremely disturbing how something so important to me could be so easily pushed aside. I’ve never been a person who needs a lot of attention from the outside world. But I grew up in such a protected way that my emotional core is centered within my family; I depend almost fully on them for attention, approval, and support. So if there’s one thing that sets off a flock of just-about-to-cry butterflies in my stomach, especially when it comes from my parents, it’s disregard-that lonely, empty sensation of not being thought of, or even considered. Those butterflies were moving now, and I wiped at my eyes and began the long trek to Gina’s house.
I was angry at my dad for refusing to tell me those important things about my family, but even angrier that he drove away without a simple “happy birthday.”
Much later, I would remember his sad wave.
I would wish that I’d waved back, since it was the last time I ever saw him.