“Not yet. I made some calls but the few people who interested me don’t have appointments for weeks, which doesn’t bode well. I’ll keep looking. Did you find other women to yell at for the way they were dressed?”
“Nope, I only yell when I care about something or someone. Everyone else can go fuck themselves.”
“Ah, I’m touched. You care so you get to yell at me. I’m pretty sure it should be the other way around. If you care then you should treat a person better than you treat a stranger.”
“I don’t give a fuck about a stranger. I save my emotions, my energy for people I care about. It’s not that I’m treating a stranger better, it’s that I’m not wasting my time on a stranger.”
“Hmm... I don’t know. I don’t like yelling. I’m pretty sure there are better ways to convey a depth of emotion instead of raising your voice.”
His soft laughter sends a shiver through me. “Last night you said I spoke formally. Convey a depth of emotion? I’m Italian—we’re loud. During the day in public we do our best to keep it down, but when we’re comfortable we get loud.”
“Cesare isn’t loud, neither is Enzo... oh yeah, no, they do get kind of loud the longer the night goes. I never noticed it before since it’s only when they are talking to each other. I didn’t grow up Italian where I could be loud. I always had to watch everything I said while being meek and mild with my granny, then for Alicia so she wouldn’t worry.”
Was that wistfulness I hear? “Did you want to be loud?”
“I don’t know that I wanted to be loud. I did want to find my own voice, to not be what everyone expected me to be. Which doesn’t sound fair to Alicia. Alicia never tried to put me into a hole or anything, but she had so much to worry about I never wanted to add more to the load she was carrying.”
“What way would you have added?”
“I don’t know really. I felt like I should never ask for more than she offered. I should do everything I could for her so she didn’t have to do more than she was already doing. Everything from doing laundry to keeping our room and apartment clean to cooking.”
“Hmm, I was the same way for Che and Enzo. I did the cooking and cleaning around the apartment. Che was working hard all day at the grocery store then bouncing at a club at night. Enzo went a little nuts for a few months there, drinking, getting high, trying to get numb. The first time Che came home smashed up from a fight, Enzo jumped on it fast. Dom wouldn’t put him in the ring though, he said Enzo was too damn young. Only problem was Enzo was as tall as Che at six three and almost as wide. Enzo found someone else who took his word and gave him fights.”
“Are you fucking serious? He was street fighting at sixteen?”
“Yeah, he had several fights before Che put a stop to it. By then Enzo was in a better head space, and Che had enough money to put into a property we could flip to make money. Enzo having a new focus, another way to work out his anger, helped. And we made a lot more money than we did from those fucking fights.”
“Your brothers are nuts, they could have been messed up for life. I’m glad they got through it intact. Then again, I could never imagine going through something like that. Did you want to hit something?”
He sighs. “No. Don’t get me wrong, I was angry. At my dad and at my mom. The thing is, I didn’t grow up with the myth we had this happy family like my brothers did. My mom was never home, she flitted in and out. And when she was there she couldn’t wait to be somewhere else.
“My dad, he was there every day. He loved being a dad; he treated us like we were his greatest accomplishment, he was patience personified, caring, and we never doubted he would do anything for us. Then in those last two years he became agitated easier. He still cared, but he steered me more and more to Che for questions and help I needed. Things were beginning to unravel for almost two years. Only I didn’t see it for what it was until I looked back”.
He’s quiet, then sighs. I hate how weary it sounds. “When it happened it didn’t seem real. I didn’t miss my mom, I missed my dad. And I felt really fucking guilty for missing him when he did this horrible thing. There was a lot of confusion, but I wasn’t angry like Che and Enzo. I already had begun to rely on my brothers. While I missed my father, there was no gaping hole in my life the way there was for them.”
There’s an ache in my chest at his admission. I’m honored he would share it with me. I feel the need to return his honesty. “Can I tell you something and you swear you won’t tell anyone?”
He’s quiet for a minute. “I won’t tell.”
“I wished my mom would leave. I didn’t like her. I don’t have a lot of memories of her. Alicia was already my mom. Whenever she came and tried to push Alicia out of the way, I hated her and wanted her to leave me and Alicia alone. When she left us at my granny’s I wanted to do cartwheels to celebrate.
Will he hate me now? I wonder as I sigh with the relief finally saying it out loud gives me. “It was selfish of me to make my mom leave, then I went and made Alicia’s life worse by being a brat and demanding she keep taking care of me when she finally could have been free from me after Granny kicked her out. As bad as it was for her to get kicked out at only eighteen, at least she would only have herself to worry about. But no, I freaked out and made her feel guilty enough to take me with her.”
“Bethany, you were four years old. You didn’t make your mom leave. Your mom was a piece of shit who probably should never have been allowed to have children. It didn’t matter if you told her every day you wanted her to leave. She was the adult and she had a choice. As far as Alicia taking you with her when she was forced out of your grandmother’s house, Alicia doesn’t regret it and would do it again. She told me so. Twelve years old is a kid, and there isn’t a damn thing wrong about asking for what we all want and need, and that’s to be taken care of and loved by someone we trust and love. For you that was Alicia. I’m thinking you shouldn’t waste your money on therapy if none of your therapists were willing to tell you that.”
“Asshole,” I mutter as I wipe my eyes from the tears his words caused. It’s sounds simple the way he says it. It couldn’t really be that simple, could it?
“Yes, it is and it can be.” I had no idea I said the words out loud. “I’m not an asshole. I’m just honest.”
“You’re honestly an asshole. I’ve never told a therapist that before.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want them to think I was a bad person for what I did to my sister. I was afraid they wouldn’t like me enough to help me.”
“You aren’t a bad person. You didn’t do a bad thing. Even if you had done something bad, we all do bad things from time to time; it doesn’t necessarily make a person bad. And just because a bad person does something good, it doesn’t make them a good person. Although I do believe the same way life can turn a good person bad, the reverse is also true.”
“I never thought of it like that before. There are times I still feel like a horrible person for fucking up with the whole Kelsey and getting drunk thing.”