The Family Corleone

  Behind him, in the farmhouse, Kelly was spotting. She wanted him to take her to the hospital. They’d been doing pills and coke all day, and now she wanted to go to the hospital in the midst of a snowstorm because she was spotting. Luca looked out over the water. He was bundled up in a fur coat with galoshes over dress shoes. A full moon peeked out from a break in the clouds. His fedora was soaked, and he stopped to shake snow off the brim. The Giants won the series and the city went wild and a brutal winter settled in. It was something below zero; he could tell by the way the air felt when he breathed through his nose. He’d made a killing on the World Series, betting on the Giants early while the Senators were still the big favorite. He had a lot of money. More money than the boys or anyone else knew, and he tried to tell his mother this, but she wouldn’t shut up about it all being her fault. Kelly never quit whining. She whined and he fed her pills. He hadn’t dumped her in the ocean, and now she was seven months gone.

  Luca saw his mother’s round, white belly in his mind’s eye. His father had been excited at first. He had come home with flowers once, early, before things changed. Luca couldn’t even know for sure that the baby Kelly was carrying was his, and why should he care? She was a whore, her and her whole race, a race of whores. Something about her face, her body, made him want to lie close to her and hold her. One minute he wanted to smash her; the next he wanted to hold her. When he was with Kelly they were crazy with pills and lately coke: something they did to each other, with each other.

  Luca looked up to the sky and snow fell on his face and into his mouth. He massaged his temples while water hissed over sand and snow fell on the bay in flakes that drifted down out of darkness into darkness, only white and fat and drifting in between while they were falling, before the choppy water swallowed them, the moonlight like a golden trail over the surface of the bay. He breathed and was motionless and the sound of water and wind eased him some, brought him down to earth. The bay in front of him stopped being disturbing and instead again it was inviting. He was tired. He was tired of all of it. He hadn’t dumped Kelly in the ocean because he didn’t want to give up holding her at night when she was quiet sleeping alongside him, because he didn’t know why, only that he wanted her, if she would only shut up and if only she wasn’t seven months gone, things might be better, even if there would still be his mother and her constant whining and the headaches that wouldn’t quit and all the bullshit unending that just went on and on and on. He took his hat off, brushed snow from the brim, blocked it, and put it back on, and because there was nothing else to do he started toward the road and the farmhouse.

  Luca’s headache came back as he trudged up the driveway to his white clapboard house with long icicles hanging down from the gutters, a sheet of ice several feet long in places. Some of the icicles reached all the way to the ground. Through the basement windows a red glow seeped out onto the snow, and when Luca crouched to look through one of the narrow windows he saw Vinnie in his undershirt, shoveling coal into the furnace, and even with the wind whistling under the eaves and through the bare branches of an ancient, massive tree that hovered over the house as if keeping guard, he could hear the furnace rumble and groan as Vinnie heaved wide shovelfuls of coal. In the kitchen, the boys at the table greeted Luca by shouting his name as he came through the door stomping snow off his feet and peeling off layers of clothes, which he tossed onto the already overburdened hall tree. The place reeked of coffee and bacon. A tall stranger scrambled eggs at the stove, a pot of coffee perking on the back burner. The guy was older, maybe in his fifties, wearing a heavy olive green three-piece suit with an olive green tie and a red carnation pinned to his lapel. Luca watched him, and Hooks said, “That’s Gorski. He’s a friend of Eddie’s.”

  Eddie Jaworski, seated between JoJo and Paulie at the kitchen table, grunted an affirmation in Luca’s direction. A pile of bills and coins made a little hill in the center of the table as Eddie studied the five cards he held fanned out in his left hand. In his right hand he held a ten-dollar bill poised over the pot. “Raise,” he said, finally. He tossed the ten onto the pile and took a swig from a silver flask beside him, alongside a neat pile of cash.

  Vinnie came up from the basement buttoning his shirt. “Hey, boss,” he said, by way of a greeting. He took a seat next to Hooks. Gorski, holding a dish of bacon and eggs in one hand and a fork in the other, came over from the stove and stood behind Eddie.

  Hooks and Eddie were going head to head. Hooks called and raised twenty, and Eddie muttered something in Polish.

  Luca took a long swig from a bottle of scotch in front of Hooks. “Freezin’ out,” he said to no one in particular, and then he left Eddie staring nervously at his cards and went upstairs to the bedroom. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was a little after ten at night. On the way up the stairs, he stopped and looked out the hall window, where a line of icicles partially blocked the view of the driveway and the trees and the snowdrifts in the road. It was like looking out through a set of teeth at a frozen world, and Luca felt as though he was watching a movie. It was a weird sensation and he didn’t like it when it happened, and it seemed to be happening more and more. It was as if everything outside of him was happening on a movie screen and he was out in the dark someplace, where the audience sat, watching it all. He had waited in front of the window with his head throbbing, and he’d tried to blink it away, the sensation of watching a movie, and when it wouldn’t quit he’d climbed the rest of the stairs to the bedroom. He found Kelly pale and disheveled, the sheets, wet and blood-streaked, kicked to the bottom of the bed.

  “Luca,” Kelly said. “My water broke. The baby’s coming.”

  Luca could barely make out the words. She issued a few words, paused, breathed, issued a few more. Luca pulled a sheet over her, covering up the white mound of her belly. “Are you sure?” he asked. “It’s too early.”

  Kelly nodded. “I need to go to the hospital.”

  On the night table beside Kelly, the bottle of pills he’d left her was empty. “How many of these did you take?” he asked, showing her the bottle.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and looked away.

  Luca took another bottle of pills out of his jacket pocket and shook out two into his hand. “Here,” he said, showing them to her. “Take a couple more.”

  Kelly pushed his hand away. “Luca,” she said, struggling to get the words out. “The baby’s coming. You got to take me to the hospital.”

  Luca sat beside her on the bed. He touched her shoulder.

  “Luca,” Kelly said.

  Softly, as if talking to himself, Luca said, “Shut up, Kelly. You’re a whore, but I’ll take care of you.”

  Kelly’s lips moved, but no sound came out. Her eyes closed, and she appeared to be falling asleep.

  Luca started to get up from the bed, but as soon as he had lifted his weight from the mattress, Kelly leapt at him and clutched his arm, pulling him back. “You’ve got to take me to the hospital!” she yelled. “The baby’s coming!”

  Luca, startled, yanked his arm from Kelly’s grasp and pushed her to the mattress. “Crazy fucking gash,” he said. “I just told you I’d take care of you.” He picked up the phone from the night table, wanting to throw it at her face—and then he put it down again and left the room with her calling to him, weakly again, saying his name over and over.

  In the kitchen a husky black voice came over the radio singing “Goodnight, Irene.” The boys around the table—his boys and the two Polacks—were all quiet, studying their cards or staring at the table. In the basement, the furnace groaned and throughout the house radiators gurgled and hissed. Luca took his fur coat off the hall tree. “Vinnie,” he said. “We’re going for a ride.”

  Vinnie looked up from his cards. As always, the kid’s clothes looked a size too big for him. “Boss,” he said. “The roads are a mess out there.”

  Luca put his hat on, went out to the driveway, and waited. Clouds had swallowed up the moon, and all around him was dark and wi
nd and falling snow caught in the light from the kitchen. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took off his hat. He stepped out into the wind and let it blow over his forehead and through his hair. He hoped the cold might numb the throbbing. In his mind’s eye, he saw Kelly’s white belly over the blood-streaked sheets. A jolt of heat went through him and he thought he might have to kneel and wretch, but he was still, facing into the wind, and the feeling passed. Behind him, the kitchen door opened and Vinnie came out of the farmhouse, rubbing his palms together and turning sideways to make a smaller target for the wind. He said, “Where we going, boss?”

  Luca said, “There’s a midwife lives on Tenth Avenue. You know who I’m talking about?”

  “Yeah,” Vinnie said. “Sure. Filomena. She delivers half the Italian babies in the city.”

  Luca said, “That’s where we’re going,” and started off into the dark, heading for the cars.

  Light seeped out along the top edge of Michael’s blanket, where he had pulled it over his head. He was huddled down under it, reading by flashlight. Across the room from Michael, in a matching single bed, Fredo lay on his side with his head propped up on his hand and watched snow falling in the streetlight beyond their bedroom window. A Jell-O commercial downstairs on the radio had just segued into Jack Benny yelling at Rochester. Fredo strained to hear the radio but could make out only a few words here and there. “Hey, Michael,” Fredo said, softly, since they were both supposed to be sleeping. “What are you doing?”

  Michael, after a moment, answered, “Reading.”

  “Cetriol’,” Fredo said, “what are you always reading for? You’re gonna turn out to be some kind of pointy head.”

  “Go to sleep, Fredo.”

  “You go to sleep,” Fredo said. “We might not even have school tomorrow with all this snow.”

  Michael turned off the flashlight and pulled the covers down. He settled on his side facing Fredo. “How come you don’t care about school?” he asked. “Don’t you want to make something of yourself?”

  “Ah, shut up,” Fredo said. “You’re a pointy head.”

  Michael put his history book on the floor beside his bed and stood the flashlight on top of it. “Pop’s taking me to city hall to meet Councilman Fischer,” he said, and he turned onto his back and settled into bed. “The councilman’s giving me a tour of city hall,” he added, talking to the ceiling.

  “I know all about it,” Fredo said. “Pop asked me if I wanted to go too.”

  “Yeah?” Michael said. He turned to face Fredo again. “You didn’t want to go?”

  “Why would I want to tour city hall?” Fredo said. “I’m no pointy head.”

  “You don’t have to be a pointy head to be interested in how your own government works.”

  “Yes, you do,” Fredo said. “I’m gonna work for Pop when I get out of school. I’ll be a salesman or something to start, I figure. Then Pop’ll bring me into the business, and I’ll be making plenty of dough.”

  Downstairs, a peal of laughter issued from the radio. Fredo and Michael both turned to look at the door, as if they might be able to see what was so funny. Michael said, “How come you want to work for Pop, Fredo? Don’t you want to do anything on your own?”

  “I’ll do something on my own,” Fredo said, “only I’ll be working for Pop too. Why? What do you want to do, hotshot?”

  Michael put his hands under his head as a big gust of wind smacked into the house, rattling the window glass. “I don’t know,” he said, in answer to Fredo’s question. “I’m interested in politics. I think I might be a congressman. Maybe even a senator.”

  “V’fancul’,” Fredo whispered. “Why not president?”

  “Yeah,” Michael said, “why not?”

  “Because you’re Italian,” Fredo shot back. “Don’t you know anything?”

  “What’s Italian got to do with it?”

  “Listen, pally,” Fredo said, “there’s never been an Italian president and there never will be. Ever.”

  “Why not?” Michael said. “Why won’t there ever be an Italian president, Fredo?”

  “Madon’!” Fredo said. “Hey, Michael! I got news for you! We’re wops, we’re guineas, capisc’? There ain’t never going to be no wop president.”

  “Why not?” Michael repeated. “We’ve got a wop mayor. People love him.”

  “First,” Fredo said, leaning out of the bed toward Michael, “LaGuardia’s a Neapolitan. He’s not Sicilian, like us. And next, he ain’t ever going to be president.”

  Michael was quiet then. After a while the radio went off downstairs, and their parents turned off the house lights and climbed the steps to bed. Mama, as always, peeked into their room, muttered something under her breath, which Michael took to be a brief prayer, and then closed the door again. After that, some more time passed in which Michael listened to the wind as it gusted and rattled the windows. He thought Fredo was probably asleep, but he said anyway, “Maybe you’re right, Fredo. Maybe an Italian will never be president.”

  When Fredo didn’t answer, Michael closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep.

  A moment later Fredo’s voice came softly, sleepily out of the darkness. “Hey, Michael,” he said. “You’re the smart one. You want to dream of being president, why not?” He was quiet again then for a while before he added, “And if it don’t pan out, you can always go to work for Pop.”

  “Thanks,” Michael said. He turned onto his belly, closed his eyes, and waited for sleep.

  Hooks washed his hands in a bowl of warm water as Filomena, seated at the foot of Kelly’s bed, swaddled Luca’s newborn son in long strips of thin, white cloth. The boys were still playing poker in the kitchen downstairs, and their occasional laughter or excited or angry shouts were background to Kelly’s low moaning and the racket of steam hissing in the radiators as the ancient iron furnace in the basement roared and struggled to keep the farmhouse heated. Outside, the wind kept up its nightlong howling, though the snow had stopped falling a while ago. It had taken Vinnie and Luca hours to pick up Filomena in the city and bring her back out to Long Island, and then more hours passed while Filomena attended to Kelly and before the infant was born, and now it was deep in the night. Filomena had been angry from the moment she saw Kelly lying in Luca’s big bed looking half dead, her eyes clouded and her body frail and wasted around the mound of her belly. She’d seen Kelly and turned a furious glance on Luca, who had hardly seemed to notice. He’d left Hooks with her to help, and then gone down to play poker, and as soon as he’d closed the door behind him, Filomena had cursed him in Italian. When she had finished cursing the closed door, she’d turned to Hooks and started barking out orders. She was a stout woman, probably only in her thirties, but with a look about her of antiquity, as if she had been on earth since the beginning of time.

  When Filomena finished swaddling the infant, she held it to her breast and pulled a sheet up to Kelly’s chin. To Hooks she said, “They must both go to the hospital, or they’ll both die.” She said it calmly, and then she approached Hooks and stood toe to toe with him and repeated it.

  Hooks touched her arm and told her to wait. He went down to the kitchen, where he found Luca sitting back from the table with a bottle of whiskey in his lap, watching the others play out a hand. Everyone was drunk. In front of Luca, a stack of soggy bills was piled beside a broken whiskey glass. Vinnie and Paulie were laughing about something, while the two Poles and JoJo, still in the hand, studied their cards. “Luca,” Hooks said, and his tone asked Luca to step away from the table so that he could have a word with him.

  “What?” Luca answered, his eyes on the broken tumbler and the pile of wet bills. When Hooks didn’t speak, Luca turned to face him.

  Hooks said, “The baby’s born. Filomena wants to see you.”

  “Tell her to bring it down here.”

  Hooks said, “No, listen, Luca—”

  Luca yelled up the stairs, “Filomena! Bring that fuckin’ thing down here!” He held the bottle of whi
skey by the neck and broke it on the edge of the table, sending a shower of whiskey and glass over the players. The two Poles jumped up cursing, while JoJo, Vinnie, and Paulie slid back from the table but kept their seats. The Poles looked dumbfounded. Their eyes went from Luca to their money, now drenched in whiskey.

  Behind them, Filomena appeared at the foot of the stairs, holding the infant close to her chest.

  Luca told the Poles to take their money and get out. To Filomena he said, “Bring that thing down to the basement and throw it in the furnace, or bring it over here”—he held the broken bottle up—“and let me cut its throat.”

  Gorski, the tall Pole, the older guy, said, “Now, wait a minute,” and he took a single step around the table toward Luca before he stopped.

  Luca, watching Gorski, said to everybody and to no one, “Cowards.”

  Gorski laughed, as if he finally got the joke, and said, “You’re not really gonna harm that baby.”

  Luca said, “Take your money and get out.”

  Eddie Jaworski, the other Pole, said, “Sure,” and went about quickly stuffing bills into his pocket. Gorski, after a second, joined him.