PART ONE
1
CASTLE POINT, N. J.
Although he was starving, Richie Cavelli pulled his hand back from the bowl of peanuts on the bar, hearing his mother’s voice in his head say, “Don’t touch that; there are other people’s germs all over that bowl.” Chemicals, germs and exterminating sprays were the three things Rose dreaded the most, and she warned her sons about them the way other moms told their children not to accept candy from strangers.
Acknowledging a rare, simultaneous appearance of the pestilent trio, Richie detected a trace of insecticide that had escaped through the trap door in the floor where a tiny, browbeaten Vietnamese man artfully balanced a case of Genesee Cream Ale on his head until the burly bartender was good and ready to take it.
“Got a bug problem, huh?” Richie asked the bartender.
“Whadda ya mean by that?” the Black Irishman asked.
“Never-mind.”
“Yeah, never-mind is right. Whadda you, a Smart Guy? Shouldn’t you be in school?” he asked, flipping a filthy towel from his left shoulder to his right as a sign of disapproval.
“On a field trip,” Richie answered, cryptically.
He was at Finnegan’s Wake Pub on New York City’s West 46th Street. In the center of that block was the home of an internationally renowned, flamenco dancing troupe. Richie’s fourth year, high school Spanish class was taking in an afternoon performance; the highlight of a cultural field trip.
Richie had slipped away shortly after the lights had gone down. Everyone knew how strict his Spanish teacher, Mr. Vello, was but Richie would hear from colleges in several days and an acceptance letter from any of the out-of-state schools would make real his decision to abandon Reggie. He needed to be sure he was doing the right thing.
He glanced towards a beer promotion display clock and saw that he had stayed too long. He felt like he had squandered precious moments, but his whole methodology was flawed. He thought he could bury his doubts with forty-five minutes of mental effort, but the forces which were about to emerge could not be so easily suppressed.
He tried to reach the front door but was blocked by an altercation between a drunken behemoth and a beggar with a club foot; he side-stepped the beggar and moved through the door. Stepping into the sunlight - the rays temporarily blinding him - he heard the familiar whispers, mimicking his mother’s voice, warning him: "Watch out! Watch out!" If Vello caught him coming out, he would have Richie expelled.
Richie scanned the area, did not see Vello, and felt relieved. Across the street, he spotted Reggie and the rest of the class walking slowly toward the bus. Reggie sauntered about ten steps behind the others, wearing a short, blue print dress, which had a ruffled effect around the chest and fit snugly around her waist and hips. Her hair was pinned up on top of her head, but several strands fell forward and shielded her eyes.
A speeding cab blasted its Titanic-like horn just as Richie was about to step off the curb. He jumped backwards, barely averting getting struck. He immediately looked for Reggie and saw her shaking her head in disbelief. Embarrassed, he shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
The beggar with the club foot got in Richie’s face, blocking his view of Reggie.
“A penny to eat. A goddamn penny to eat!” the old man angrily demanded.
“Here,” Richie said, handing him a dollar.
“Bless you, bless you, my son,” the man said before moving on.
Just as he saw Reggie bust out with laughter and turn her back, Richie felt a strong hand clutch his shoulder from behind.
“Ohhh, shit…” he said, turning around.
As Richie’s eyes dropped to meet the penetrating stare of the 5’1” Vello, he realized that he should have paid closer attention to the whispers.
"Ricardo, I am highly disappointed in you," quipped Vello sternly.
"But I wasn’t drinking, sir," Richie replied, already on the defensive. "I just went in there to get some cigarettes."
Vello leaned his face in close to Richie’s and sniffed for the smell of alcohol. Shaking his head with contempt, he continued.
"Ricardo, you realize that it is my duty to call this incident to the attention of Mr. Capalupo. It saddens my heart to think that some disciplinary action might be taken against you so close to graduation, but I would not be remaining faithful to the vows I took when I became an educator if I allowed this flagrant violation to pass without some retribution. It just wouldn’t be fair to you, me, or the rest of my students."
Vello paused. He was as accomplished at cultivating guilt in his students as he was at teaching them. Finally, he stated the lines that Richie knew he was building to from the start: "I am very distressed that my one of my very best students is the one who has betrayed me. I am truly heartbroken."
With that comment, the scolding was complete.
“Please have your father meet Mr. Capalupo at 8:30 sharp tomorrow morning.”
The bus ride from Manhattan’s West 46th Street across the river to Richie’s high school in Castle Point, an industrial port city in New Jersey, was just long enough for him to reflect upon what a big mistake he had made. There he sat, the class valedictorian (Central High School’s principal had informed him of his selection earlier that day), two months shy of graduation and facing possible expulsion.
While the deck seemed stacked against him, he calmed himself by thinking about the one thing he knew was in his favor: his father’s friendship with the Vice Principal, Mr. Capalupo. Capalupo and Richie’s dad, Sal, had grown up together in the Italian corner of Castle Point’s "Iron-Bound" section and had been drinking wine since the age of seven. Although in his official role, Capalupo might have to make an example of Richie, Richie didn’t think Capalupo personally objected to a seventeen-year-old drinking a couple of beers. With neighborhood bars on most Castle Point street corners, many of the taverns were gathering places for adults and teenagers alike. Richie also took solace in the well-known fact that Capalupo disliked Vello.
Just as the bus reached the entrance to the tunnel which connected Castle Point and Manhattan, the smell of Johnson’s Baby Lotion surrounded him.
"You’re busted now," Reggie whispered in a husky voice. "I tried to warn you, but you were dodging cabs."
He looked into her eyes which were fixed on his own. Her skin appeared slightly tan all year ‘round: the positive result of an Irish mother and a half-Russian, half-Italian father, she often stated. She had clear skin and straight, white teeth, which often made Richie feel self-conscious about his crooked bottom teeth and the occasional emergence of a zit minefield on his face.
"Don’t worry, Reg. My dad will bail me out. He and Capalupo go way back."
"Well, let’s hope so, Mr. Valedictorian. Personally, I think I should initiate a motion within the student body to have you removed on the basis of shitty character."
Richie smiled but she could tell he was worried.
She fondled the ten, oversized safety pins on the right arm of Richie’s wrestling warm-up top. Each pin represented one pinned opponent from that year.
"I think your dad’ll be cool about this, but what about your mom, Nexy?”
"Nexy" was the name of a noncarbonated, chocolate drink bottled in a one hundred-year-old factory in Castle Point. Reggie and Richie’s best friend, Billy Cooley, suspected that Richie was Nexy’s number one consumer.
"I don’t want to freak you out or anything but this could really screw you up with some of those snooty colleges you applied to, and your mom is really serious about that stuff. I mean, she’s been pushing you forever to go away to school." She saw an opportunity to possibly unearth some sacred ground.
"Oh sure," Richie acknowledged, "but she’ll be cool too."
"Oh yeah? As cool as the night you drove me home in your dad’s car and you ran out of gas?”
"I couldn’t help it, Reg. The gas gauge doesn’t work. All you can do is estimate what’s left in the tank."
"Yeah, well, that didn’t stop her from blaming me. I didn’t see you for two weeks.”
"It was just because it was three in the morning, Reg. That’s why she got so excited.”
"Uh-huh,” she said, with disbelief. "Well, you took a big chance for a few beers. I’ll bet they were Old Milwaukee Big Boys, too. You could’ve at least had two Heinekens and gone out in style."
“I barely finished one. I just went in there because I couldn’t think straight with all the vicious guitar strumming and heel stomping going on.”
“Yeah, pretty Spanish guitar and fluid dancing are like fingernails on a blackboard to you. You’d rather listen over and over to a guy from Freehold sing howling songs about Nebraska,” she retorted, making him laugh a little.
“Shit. I hope I didn’t fuck up.”
"You didn’t, Nexy. I’m just busting your chops."
"No, I know," he said, turning away from her.
"You are going to tell your mother, aren’t you?" she blurted out, testing her theory that he hid certain things, including the nature of his relationship with Reggie.
"Of course I’m gonna tell her, Reg. She won’t be elated about this but she won’t freak out either. I don’t know what else to tell ya," he said, raising his voice.
He hoped that he sounded convincing. His mother was the only thing he had ever lied to Reggie about. Rose would go berserk if she found out he had jeopardized his chances of being accepted at an Ivy League college. She had pushed him to be the first person in either hers or Sal’s family to make it to college. More than that, it was going to be a top college that would take Richie away from the smoke stacks of Castle Point, and ensure he could stay away. She had repeatedly warned him about protecting his academic record by paying attention to little things, like not letting his grades drop during his senior year or not getting on an influential faculty member’s bad side. At that moment, he didn’t think it was an exaggeration to conclude that things might never be the same between him and his mother if he got expelled.
He knew that if he didn’t say anything else, Reggie would drop the subject. Although they had dated for more than two years, she’d never been inside his house or invited to any of his "family" birthday parties. Despite her suspicions about why she had been excluded, she always exhibited the perfect balance between prying and backing off.
"I’m gonna go talk to Kelli," she said, and then added, "It’ll be okay, Nexy. What’s the big deal? You’re almost legal. Besides, it’s not the first time one of us has been in a bar.” She kissed him on the cheek. He watched her move five seats forward, and yank on the back of Kelli Green’s hair.
"Ouch!" Kelli cried out.
"Gotcha!" Reggie exclaimed, with genuine joy.
Richie thought about his mother. He hoped that Vello had enough sense not to call her.
Fifteen minutes later, the school bus pulled into Central High School’s parking lot and Reggie’s lightly freckled face broke his concentration once again. "Your dad’s here early today. Tell him I said ‘hi’ okay?" she said in a sweet voice. "I’m gonna see you at D’Angelo’s tonight, right?" she continued. “We haven’t had any time to talk lately."
"What’d ya say?" Richie asked. He was so preoccupied looking out the window trying to locate his father that he hadn’t heard her. He feared his dad was going to stick his head inside the bus and shout "Richie, Richie" repeatedly, as he often did when the wrestling team bus pulled into the parking lot later than scheduled. That was his father’s way but it embarrassed Richie sometimes.
"I said," Reggie repeated, waving her hand in front of his face, "call me tonight or come find me at D’Angelo’s so I know what your parents said about Vello, and so we can talk about some other things. You know. Upcoming events?" She hopped off the bus and caught up with some of the other girls. She waved to Mr. Cavelli as she ran by his car.
Richie followed Reggie with his eyes until he spotted his dad’s blue-green, ‘65 Chevy pumping out black exhaust in the center of the lot. He thought it was peculiar that his father’s car exhaled black smoke all the time, whether it was cold (like on a winter’s morning), or warm (like on a spring evening).
He threw his Adidas® gym bag filled with books into the back seat. Moving into the driver’s seat, Richie listened to Sal sigh as he slid over to the passenger’s side.
Sal preferred that Richie drive home from school every day, partly to give Richie some highway driving experience and partly to give himself a few moments to relax. Richie’s high school was located only a few miles from the Cavellis’ house but because chemical factories, industrial storage lots and oil refinery tanks lay in between, the only practical route between the two was via the crumbling elevated highway.
As the Chevy slowly picked up speed climbing the entrance ramp, Richie thought about his high school, crammed so close to a highway overpass and near the banks of a polluted river. He wondered what a traveler barreling down Route 9 thought as she caught sight of the ugly brick building surrounded by chain-link fences. He wondered if it was even identifiable as a school or if the building was mistaken for a sewage plant. He speculated that suburban kids passing through Castle Point on their way to New York City would appreciate their high schools more after getting a look at Central. "Well, at least our school isn’t down the block from an Exxon refinery," they might say.
As Richie pushed the Chevy to fifty-five miles per hour, his father launched into one of his many anecdotes about Castle Point’s faded greatness. Richie tried to be attentive when Sal talked about the ferry boats, the Catholic Feast Day celebrations, and the powerhouse sports teams at Central, but with SAT’s, proms, and college applications on his mind, he couldn’t afford to be interested in what happened in Castle Point twenty-five years before. Besides, the Castle Point that Sal described was totally alien to the one Richie knew.
"You know, Rich, it doesn’t look like it now, but at one time that river was home to the busiest port in the country," Sal began, looking out over the river.
The highway guardrails partially obstructed Sal’s view, so he kept tilting his head, trying to get a better look.
"Houston, dad. I think it’s Houston,” Richie offered, halfheartedly, not listening closely but attempting to participate in the conversation anyway. He was trying to remember what Reggie had said. Was she gonna call him or was he supposed to call her?
"Oh no, not Phil Houston, Rich," Sal corrected him. "You can’t blame one man for this city’s downfall - the deterioration was inevitable regardless of his fiscal policies."
"What?" Richie asked. "I’m not talking about the old mayor, dad. I mean, I think Houston is the busiest port in the country."
"Oh, sure," Sal said, still staring out over the river. "Houston is the busiest port. It’s ‘The Gateway To The Southwest’."
Richie felt bad that he wasn’t paying attention, so he decided to bring up politics. As a young man, Sal had worked on a few campaigns for the local ward bosses in Castle Point, spreading street money to get people to the polls. Sal always had some eye opening insight into a corrupt local politician or knew the inside story about some event in Washington, D.C. that hadn’t been widely reported in the media.
"Well, speaking of politics, dad, what’s your latest thoughts about Reagan? He’s been in for a few years now."
"He’s not for the working man, Rich, I’ll tell ya that much. He’s giving Big Business free reign."
"That doesn’t sound good for us."
"Nope," Sal said, shaking his head. "He was governor of California, you know, and he left it in a shambles."
"Oh yeah?"
"How’d he get elected then?"
"’Cause of the hostages," Sal added. "If they had gotten out before the election, Carter would’ve won."
Richie nodded his head in agreement.
Sal looked over at Richie, noticing his ripped jeans. Richie was dressed in a familiar outfit - torn Levi’s, black T-shirt, wrestling top and white, hi-top Chuck Taylor sneakers with purple laces.
"Why don’t you buy a new pair of jeans? Those are ripped. I’ll give you the money.”
"That’s all right, dad. This is the style now.”
"I also have some white shoelaces at home that I picked up ‘3 pair for a buck’ at Woolworth’s. I’ll get them for you."
"That’s okay, dad. I like the colored ones."
"Well, I’m only telling ya because the girls aren’t gonna go for a guy who dresses like a bum. In the old days, everyone wore a suit. Even the poor people. All the time too; not just on Sunday or special occasions. You couldn’t go out unless you were impeccably dressed," Sal said definitively, as if there had been a law against being out in public without a suit on. "The wealthiest men in the neighborhood always wore three piece suits and had gold watches in their vest pockets, on a long chain."
"Oh yeah? Where’d everybody go all dressed up?”
"Are you kidding? There were so many places in Castle Point back then. There were plenty of fancy bars, for one thing. Both in Castle Point and down the Shore. We wore tuxedos or zoot suits, and went to hear Sinatra or Mario Lanza play with a fifteen piece band. And every time you bought a beer, you got a shot of whiskey for free. Sometimes, out of the blue, the bartender would ring a bell and shots were on the house for the next hour.”
"C’mon dad. That can’t be right. The bars would go outta business in a week."
"Free shots - every time the bartender rang the bell. That’s just how it was. You can ask anyone from Eighth Street," Sal said, sticking to his guns. "Your mother would get a Pink Lady in a crystal cocktail glass and afterwards drink coffee, which they poured from a silver pot with a long spout," Sal added, motioning with his fingers to show how long the spout was.
"That sounds pretty good,” Richie agreed, "but there aren’t any places like that any more."
"Yeah, well, you know, there were dances on Saturday night, too. They were in the ballrooms of the plush hotels. Couples from the neighborhood would ride together with whoever had the fanciest car at the time. Tony Roma always had a Cadillac so we went with him. Actually, that’s where your mother and I met. And afterwards, there were the Italian pastry shops. They were the best. You could pick out any pastry for a nickel.”
"What? C’mon, dad. A nickel?”
"One nickel. That’s all. And if they were outta something you wanted, they’d make it for you: on the spot. I used’ta have them make authentic Neapolitan cannoli for me. A huge cannoli for a nickel. LaPagio’s, it was called. The family was from Naples, like us. This goes back twenty or twenty-five years now. It was where the One Hour Martinizing is now.”
"Well, there certainly aren’t any places like that any more, dad."
"Oh, I bet there are. You gotta get out a little more, Rich."
"Trust me, dad. A nickel nowadays gets you half a March of Dimes gumball from a rusted dispenser."
Sal grew quiet. He was no longer looking at the river. He was now seeing the people and events of Castle Point’s past that were just a blur to Richie, as the shaking Chevy struggled to make it past seventy.
"So what’s happening at home?" Richie offered, knowing that his dad called his mother every day.
Since his question was left unanswered, Richie suspected that something might be wrong again. No audible reply was his father’s way of telling him that his mother "wasn’t feeling well." He was going to press for details but decided to let his father ride in peace.
The Cavelli family had recently moved from their house of eleven years into a new home. Although Sal was just four years shy of paying off the fifteen year mortgage, he acquiesced to purchasing the new one in the way he gave in to many of his wife’s recent requests - with outward acceptance but some inner resentment.
Rose had pleaded, demanded - even begged - for a new house; one further away from the chemical factories that bordered their old neighborhood. She wanted to move out of Castle Point altogether and into the suburbs, but knew they couldn’t afford such a step up, so she settled for one of the first new cluster homes to be built in Castle Point in many years.
Richie examined his father’s physical appearance. Sal’s black hair had turned partially gray and his shoulders had curved inward - as if the weight of the new thirty year mortgage was too much to carry.
"Dad," Richie began, breaking the silence, "I have a small problem. Can you see Capalupo?" he asked, cringing at the thought that he was adding another concern to his father’s growing list.
"Tomorrow at 8:30," Richie meekly stated. “It’s really no big deal. My Spanish teacher…”
Changing moods sharply, Sal grumbled: "This better be important. I won’t get paid for the hours I miss at work, you know."
As their house came into sight, Sal grew angrier.
"I told Tony to bring in the garbage cans when he came home from school today. What the hell is wrong with that kid?" he asked, raising his voice.
Richie wasn’t sure why Tony, his twelve-year-old brother, hadn’t taken the garbage cans in. Tony was a well-behaved kid and very mature for his age. It was unusual for him to neglect one of his father’s requests. Richie also thought it was peculiar that Pudge, his seven-year-old brother, wasn’t outside playing.
After parking the car, Richie put the garbage cans away and slowly made his way to the front door. His father had already gone inside.
The Cavelli’s new house - a split-level colonial with a brown brick front and living room bay window - looked much nicer than their old World War II era, two-family row house. Unfortunately, Richie could not say the same about the new house’s front lawn. Brown dirt patches had sprouted, in a checkerboard pattern, from within what had originally been a healthy, green lawn.
Just to the left of where Richie stood on the front porch, on one of those scattered brown squares, stood two plaster religious statues; one of the Virgin Mary and the other of an adult Jesus Christ. Rose was an ardent Roman Catholic, and Richie could remember a few years before when his mother painted the statues at the first sign of chipping and carefully positioned them side by side on granite pedestals. Now faded and peeling, the statues touched each other at a skewed angle, as if the Virgin Mary and her sacred Son were giving each other headbutts.
An image of Reggie in her stylish dress from earlier that day flooded Richie’s frontal lobe; a memory fighting to stay alive. Seeing her in such feminine attire made him realize how easily she made the transition from athlete to aspiring fashion model. Just the afternoon before, he had witnessed Reggie the jock demonstrating the strength that made her Captain of the Central Gymnastics Team. He had been feeling down and kinda lost all day and went to find her after school. Central had a sandbox-sized gym, bounded by a wooden stage at one end and a cinder block wall at the other. He had found her working out on a punching bag left over from when local Golden Glove boxers trained at the school. She hadn’t noticed him approaching because she was concentrating on kicking the bag.
"Hey Reg, hi," he had said, getting her attention, and wrapping his arms around the bag.
She had her hair tied in one thick braid that fell down the back of her head; her signature athletic tape was wrapped around her wrists and ankles.
"Eighteen, nineteen, twenty!" she had said, kicking the bag three times with her right leg. The thumping action pushed Richie back a little further each time. "Hey there," she had added. She circled around until she was in front of him. "One advantage of this crummy ol’ gym," she had said, tilting her head towards the bag. "Central girls have the strongest thighs in the state. Here, feel," she had said, putting her leg out. He had felt different muscles tighten as she flexed them.
"Isn’t that great?" she had asked, looking at the muscles herself.
"I didn’t interrupt, did I? I could’ve waited until you finished."
"Oh, no. That’s okay. What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing. Just thought I’d see what you were up to,” Richie said, his mood improving.
She had smiled widely, noticing his facial expression turn, frankly, from sad to happy. “How nice! I need to work on the apparatus some now but let’s do something after I’m done."
"On the har-rap-aratus?” Richie had joked, mimicking Central’s octogenarian athletic director who referred to every piece of gymnastics equipment - no matter what it was - as the "har-rap-aratus."
She had laughed at his impersonation and he instantly felt better. For the next fifteen minutes, he had silently watched her flip and twist on the uneven bars, and when she had finished, everything was fine.
"Hey, Buttface. Are ya comin’ inside or are ya gonna stare at the drain gutters all night?"
Looking at one of the upstairs windows, Richie no longer saw Reggie but a grinning Tony, poking his head out of his bedroom window.
"I’m coming," Richie answered.
He opened the front door and heard the whispers teasing him to come in. He peered into the foyer and saw his mother glaring in front of him, looking quite different from the images that figured so prominently in his favorite childhood memories. He often relied on such cherished memories to get through the more trying times of high school. Two that he always returned to involved major religious holidays. One was being dressed up in red and gold wrapping paper as he ripped open present after present on Christmas morning; the other was tearing through cellophane-wrapped baskets, and searching for chocolate bunnies that Rose had secreted throughout the house, on Easter Sunday morning.
Hearing Rose angrily shout out a command to Sal while she burned a hole through Richie’s forehead, those precious Christmas mornings and magical Easter egg hunts suddenly seemed so distant and so vulnerable.
END OF CHAPTER 1