The Accidental Pallbearer (17 page)

“Passport or drivers’. No credit cards.”

Arms akimbo, she stares at his drivers’.

“Who knew? Mr. Conte, as I declared, I’m not a so-called doctor and can’t ethically give you medical information. Follow me, but not too closely.”

She takes him to a deserted area near the Coke machine. She whispers:

“Congestive heart failure. It’s obviously been going on for years. Or don’t you notice your father’s health status?”

“The prognosis?”

“He has end-stage symptoms.”

“How much time does he have?”

“Do I look like God to you?”

“I never saw God.”

“You have a mouth on you, Mr. Eliot Conte.”

“Sorry.”

“Never fails. After forty years in this job, they can’t stop themselves from joking around near the dying and even to the dying. Who knows? Maybe it does everyone some good, including the ones on their way out. You heard nothing from me, Mr. Conte. I lose my job in this economy?”

“One more thing.”

“You’re insatiable.”

“A
passport
?”

“These days they come from all over. Mr. Conte, Utica is globalized.”

“Thanks, Teresa.”

“For what?”

Donatella Tomasi sits on the bed. Father Gustavo stands, swaying a little, one foot to the other. In an armchair upholstered and cushioned in the Italian tricolors – brought by his Mexican assistant – Big Daddy is at rest. Legs crossed. Not hooked up to an IV – or anything else. Not dressed in a hospital gown. Instead he’s flamboyant in one of his tailor-made Italian suits (his single indulgence), tan and pinstriped, with a flowered tie. Big Daddy is the son plus thirty-three years. Once two inches taller and much heavier in solid muscle, he’s now gone skeletal and gaunt-faced: flesh receded, cheekbones thrust forward. Emaciated except for the last-stage symptom of the abdomen – six months pregnant there. Big Daddy is big with gaudy death.

Eliot enters and his father is overtaken: “My son is here.” He struggles to his feet, falls back into his chair, struggles again to rise, succeeds, waving off his son’s assistance. They embrace. Silvio warmly, relaxed – Eliot awkward, stiff.

Silvio says, “Assist me to my chair, if you don’t mind, Eliot.” Eliot helps him back down.

“Thank you. I’m afraid to sit down too hard. The bones.”

“How are you, Dad?” (Standing by the father.)

Silvio, pointing to Father Gustavo: “He’s come to
administer what he calls Last Rites. I prefer to call it Extreme Unction. I enjoy the old-time words. This is a thing” – catching his failing breath – “my son and I have a common pleasure in, the sounds of words, don’t we, Eliot?”

“Yes.”

“Extreme Unction.”

Father G responds, wagging his finger: “My dear Silvio, this is the eighth time in the last five years that I’ve performed this sad ritual on your behalf and here you are, and here I am again, and I look forward to rendering this melancholy service eight more times at a minimum.”

Tootsie says, “
Cent’anni
! Silvio.”

Silvio replies, “This beautiful woman, who reminds me of her mother, thinks every day is my birthday.”

“Something wrong with that, Big Daddy?” Tootsie says.

Looking at his son: “What’s your opinion, Eliot?”

“
Cent’anni
, Dad, in advance of tomorrow, your actual birthday.”

“Oh, my God! I forgot!” says Tootsie.

“And I?” says Father G. “I’m in the dark, as usual.”

Silvio’s breath failing, a brief cough. “I never knew that I wanted anymore to know such a thing,” breath failing again, “until my son here just wished for me a hundred more.”

Eliot nods, pats his father’s shoulder. Silvio places his hand over Eliot’s, as Eliot begins to caress Silvio’s shoulder – intimacy virtually unknown to them since Eliot’s childhood. It occurs to each, simultaneously, that it may be forced (it isn’t) because the occasion – the father’s imminent death, the long-alienated son’s last-minute affection – triggers self-consciousness and feelings of falsity for both, how could it
be otherwise? Though less, much less, for the father than the son.

Tootsie needs to get to the bank. Father G has promised to lead the meeting of the parish theological book club, whose membership is wholly (blessedly, he thinks) comprised of women. Tootsie and Father G are grateful to have excuses to leave, having witnessed this moment of father and son. They imagine reconciliation at last.

“Have to go to work, Silvio. See you later.” She kisses him and he has memories of Angie Tomasi.

He replies, “
Speriamo che sì
.” (We hope so.)

Father G, “I’ll be back this afternoon.”

Tootsie’s gone. Father G is halted at the door by Silvio’s mischievous, “Be careful of the pretty women! Or should I say, the pretty women need to be careful of The Great Cuban,” failing breath, coughing, “Lover?”

Father G replies, “Formerly. Ages ago.”

Silvio says, “I believe her name is Marina, that sexy Russian?”

“You’re bad, Silvio.”

“Yes, Father, we are.” Father Gustavo leaves.

Eliot and his father are alone. Silvio breaks the silence: “No more beating around the bush, is there?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“How about, this is our last chance? The arrhythmia is almost out of control. A massive stroke waits for me around the corner. I cough blood. It’s not that I can’t pee because of the prostate – the problem is my body wishes to preserve my urine in ridiculous places. Look at my ankles! Swollen with poison.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“Who has the time for sorry or self-pity?”

“Neither of us.”

“We’re on the same page, Eliot.”

“Really?”

“We were always on the same page.”

He stares at his father.

“Think I belong in the crazy house for saying that?”

“Afraid I do.”

“We’ve both been lousy fathers. That’s the page.”

“What can I say?”

“Agree or not?”

“I agree.”

“Please pull up that uncomfortable chair. Come a little closer. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Let’s be extremely blunt: When your kids were babies, you left them. I never left, but I wasn’t there for you and it had nothing to do with Antonio. Nothing. Stop torturing yourself with that thought. Think I don’t know?” Brief cough, then a second, more sustained. “It had to do with my political life, which crowded out everything. My political life was my irresistible and illicit woman. She ate up all my time.”

Eliot rises and looms over his father: “Don’t give me that shit! You found time every third week of every August to go fishing with your pals up to the Saint Lawrence River. Except you never said the Saint Lawrence River. It was always ‘The River.’ The words were magical. ‘The River.’ I imagined, and still do, the two of us there, in that enchanted place, but it never happened and never will. That’s what I need. Not the
fucking house on Mary Street. Goddamn you! Blunt enough for you, Dad?”

“At fifty-five years old, you still need your father so much?”

Eliot, in a monotone: “Don’t play dumb. After you’re dead, I’ll still be a son who needs his father.”

“Is that why you abandoned your kids?”

“What?”

“Give unto your children what was given unto you? Almost nothing? Your children are dead and you’re alive. This is the problem. Your children no longer have the pain of losing their daddy. What are the words for such pain as you gave when you abandoned them for the wife of the provost of UCLA? As I abandoned you. We’re still here, Eliot,” sustained coughing, choking on phlegm. “I have a week or two, maybe. Shall we? No? Yes? You’ll think about it? Shall we take a chance? Don’t think about it too long.”

“I never told you or anyone else it was the provost’s wife. How the hell do you know that?”

“You asked the provost to give his wife a divorce. He said something to you and you did that crazy thing that you did.”

“How the hell do you know all that?”

“From my friend, the original Big Daddy – Jesse Unruh himself, may he rest in peace, who ran the Democratic party in California. One of the great old-style political bosses, greater than Richard Daley – Jesse had his fingers up everything. The original Big Daddy was very big and he was your best friend in California, which you never knew. Know what he said about the University of California you were so proud of? A pimple on the ass of the state.”

“You knew him? Jesse Unruh?”

“Democratic convention 1960, when we nominated JFK in Los Angeles. The first Big Daddy and I spent a lot of time together in consultation with Bobby, drinks and sandwiches and cigars in the middle of the night and Jack checking in once in a while to tease his younger brother, how we were going to ward off LBJ.”

“You devised strategy with Bobby Kennedy? You never told me. How come?”

“I’m telling you now. Try to accept me now. In those days, we had only a couple of these stupid primaries, where they spend millions to convince the ignorant. They didn’t spend millions back then because it was mostly done by the big bosses.”

“You were a really big boss. Still are.”

“Thank you. The first Big Daddy threw California to JFK and that made him almost unstoppable. Almost. My own role, I was at the tender age of thirty-three already the big boss of upstate New York. The Democrats up here were scared of nominating a Catholic, not to mention the Italians had a hard time forgetting what the Irish did to them when we came over. Downstate delegates were in Jack’s pocket. I got him upstate and that gave him New York and California. Illinois and Pennsylvania followed our lead, and the nomination and then the presidency and then Dallas. That’s the favor we did him. November twenty-second, 1963. We were in so many words helping to take his life. (My breath is coming back pretty good now.) They wanted him dead and they got their wish.”

“Who wanted him dead, Dad? Who are ‘they’?”

“Talk about an electric personality? I shook his hand in Los Angeles and I thought I was getting electrocuted.”

“You shook his hand?”

“I’m changing this bitter subject.”

“Okay. Back to the original Big Daddy. Tell me the story.”

“At the time Big Jesse and I met, the boys in upstate used to call me The Machine. I didn’t care for it. Sounded inhuman. So when I got back, I told them from now on refer to me with affection as Big Daddy. Jesse called to tell me about your troubles. The police out there had you in custody, think I don’t know? You were going down for a very long count. The original Big Daddy made it all go away.”

“How did he do it, Big Daddy?”

“Say it with more affection.”

“Big Daddy?”

“That’s an improvement. I reached out to him and he reached out on your behalf – this is all we need to know.”

“Politics.”

“I call it love.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Taking care of one another? That’s not what love is? What else could it be?”

Eliot says nothing.

“Taking care of people in need, isn’t that it? That’s how I showed it to you, getting you the house, even though I never took you to The River.”

“Politics – so many cruel bastards who only take care of the wealthy.”

“That’s true. But I got involved because Utica’s biggest minority group, the Italian people, were getting the short
end. And they were getting it rammed you know where. I changed that. I made mayors. Police chiefs. I got them city jobs. I got their modest homes
properly
revalued for lower taxes. I got their streets fixed and plowed equally to the rich people up on the Parkway. I got their kids summer jobs supervising the playgrounds. I got an Italian boy, a black boy, and a Polish boy into West Point. I got a Lebanese into the Naval Academy. I went to a lot of wakes and funerals, Eliot. I showed up when they were very happy and I showed up when they were very sad.”

“And they gave you their votes.”

“Don’t make it sound dirty. They repaid my love with theirs in the only way they could. One hand washes the other. With votes, they voted. All the while, I didn’t love you well.”

“If I hadn’t left my kids, they’d be alive – I have blood on my hands, you don’t.”

“That’s a tough idea to reject if you think life is all about if.”

“What’s it all about, Big Daddy?”

“I’m not hearing it with enough affection yet. Eliot, I never dealt in what’s-it-all-about speculation. Doesn’t put bread on anyone’s table.”

“You still live in that rickety old two-family house on Catherine Street that your parents lived in. You never took a piece of the pie. You bought and made over for me a house much better than your own. Guilt of the absentee father?”

“Who knows? Who cares? The result, that’s what counts. My breath is coming good now. Have you noticed? If I improve, listen, if I improve a little more in the coming days, I know a special place on The River, where we fish together
for big northern pike – three, four feet long with teeth like razors! Watch out, El, he’ll take your hand off!”

“Out of season?”

“We were always that, son. Why stop now?”

“The game warden will have our ass.”

“That would be Alex Thompson. I got his wife’s punitive divorce settlement reduced in half.”