He loved competition, any kind of competition in which he could pit his sons against each other, the oldest and the youngest versus the two middle ones in football games, tag-team wrestling…. The grass in that yard never had much of a chance to grow with them tearing it up all the time.
Then there were boxing matches, with the Captain standing on the sidelines barking commands or insults as his sons swung at each other with pillow-sized gloves. The Captain and his three oldest boys were in the middle of a boxing competition one Saturday afternoon when I came up the path to take Lynn to the movies.
“Hey, Mick, you box?”
I’d been waiting for something like this. Before I could say a word he tossed a pair of gloves at me. I caught them against my chest. His sons stood staring at me, breathing as hard as horses.
“Put ’em on,” said the Captain, who pulled the gloves off his oldest son’s hands and began putting them on his own.
“Actually, I’m taking Lynn to the movies.”
“So you’ll miss the coming attractions. Let’s go.”
There was no getting out of it. I pulled on the gloves, which had no laces and went on like big mittens. I actually felt the whole thing was a little silly, until I looked at the Captain’s face. He’d been waiting a long time for this, and there was no compassion in his manic grin.
Gloves up, chins back, we squared off against each other, waltzing around in a circle bordered by his sons’ widespread legs. He threw a short jab, which I blocked. He chuckled.
“Hey, not bad. Eddie teach you that?”
“No.”
“Eddie never taught you to box?”
“No, sir.”
“I mighta known. Italians prefer guns, eh?”
“If you say so, sir.”
“Also, they believe in surrendering. World War Two. They were great at wavin’ that white flag in Dubya-Dubya Two!”
On “two” he let it fly, and I never saw it coming. It caught me on the chin and I went straight back, flopping on the grass like a kid making a snow angel on a winter morning. I don’t know how long I was out but I heard Lynn scream in the midst of my swoon, and when I opened my eyes she’d already pulled off my gloves and placed one under my head to make a pillow. She knelt beside me, stroking my forehead as the Captain regarded me from a standing position, his nostrils wide from exertion.
“You dropped your left, Mick,” he said evenly. “Never, ever drop your left.”
“I’ll remember that, sir.”
Lynn gazed up at her father, her throat choked with words she couldn’t quite release. So he helped her.
“Go on, say it,” he invited.
She spoke plainly and calmly, like a doctor giving a diagnosis.
“You’re a bully, Dad. You hit him on purpose because you’re a bully.”
The boys stepped back, as if to give their father room for whatever the hell he was going to do, but there was no need. The guy had taken it right in the heart-lung region. After a long moment he shook his head as if to get rid of a dizzy spell, and pointed a still-gloved hand at me.
“I taught him a valuable lesson in self-defense, is what I did.”
“No, you didn’t, Dad. You’re cruel. It’s just the way you are. Maybe you were born that way.”
This was even worse than what she’d already said. He was not to blame for his dreadful behavior. It was the result of a birth defect. He was a deformed soul.
All he could do was stand there and take it, suddenly looking silly and cartoonish with his heaving chest and those big gloves on his hands.
Lynn turned to me, so she missed the malevolent gleam in her father’s eyes as well as her brothers’ horrified faces. Had any of them said such a thing, Jesus Christ, they’d have been decapitated….
“You okay, Mickey?”
“I’m fine.” I pushed myself up to a sitting position. “Let’s go to the movies.”
“Are you up for it?”
“Sure.”
I got to my feet, dusted myself off. I grabbed the Captain’s gloved right hand with both of my bare hands and pumped it in farewell.
“Thanks for the boxing lesson, sir.”
“Get the hell out of here.”
We got out of there, holding hands all the way to the Little Neck Theater.
“Jesus, Lynn, I can’t believe you said that to him.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Still, the fact that you said it!”
“He’s a cruel man, period. Do you think he really wanted to teach you how to box?”
“I know now never to drop my left.”
“Don’t stick up for him!”
“I’m not! I just want to believe…I don’t know…he’s got to have some good qualities.”
“Oh, he knows what to do when a building’s on fire. That he’s good at. But once the fire’s out, he’s a menace to all living things.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“He doesn’t like me either, which is fine. Most of the time we can stay out of each other’s way.”
“What about your mother?”
“She’s numb to it. The only hope she has is to outlive the bastard. I hope to God she does that. She’s entitled to a few peaceful years, my mom.”
She shut her eyes, slid an arm around my waist. “Oh, God…Will you come with me to Italy?”
“Sure, baby.”
“I’m serious. We’re both saving money. I want to make this trip before we’re ancient.”
“We will, we will.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. Some day…”
It was about to get even worse between the Captain and me. He’d always loved cracking Italian jokes and I’d always let them slide, but no more. By the time we got back from the movies he’d showered and had a few beers, and was all ready to pick up where we’d left off.
“No hard feelings, Mick?”
“No, sir.”
“Good, good. Hey, I got a good one for you. Haddaya know when an Italian wedding is over? They flush the punch bowl!”
He roared with laughter, then put a hand over his mouth. “Whoops! Sorry, Mickey. No offense, huh?”
I was ready for it with a knockout punch of my own.
“That’s all right, Captain Mahoney,” I replied. “Being half-Irish I’m actually too dumb to get the joke, anyway.”
His eyes went pig-small in his squinty face, and from that day on I waited out on the sidewalk for Lynn to meet me.
“I don’t want that half-breed in my house anymore,” he supposedly said to his wife. (That’s what it was like out on the edge of Queens. Irish people were white, Italians were black. And if you happened to be both, you were always just a suntan away from trouble.)
But