It took me another hour to get to South Ocean, slowed by traffic on Florida’s Turnpike and then again when I caught a bridge going up over the Intracoastal Waterway. When I finally was making my way up the driveway, I saw Vincent Amato waiting for me outside, smiling as he walked toward the car to greet me.
I hadn’t spent much time with him. He and his father had moved permanently from New York City to Florida after Vincent’s mother passed away. I was struck again today by how much he reminded me of my brother Thomas, a slightly older version. But handsome in a dark Italian way, same as his father had been as a young man. I’d seen the pictures, sometimes of Nick standing next to a younger version of Joe Wolf.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, taking my hand and kissing it the way his father always had.
“It’s been too long between visits.”
“In more ways than one,” Vincent said.
The inside of the house was as spectacular as I remembered. I knew that the ocean views from the upstairs rooms were even better. As he walked me upstairs, I was reminded of an interview I’d read with a comedian talking about his first visit to Johnny Carson’s lavish home in Malibu.
“Where’s the gift shop?” the man had asked.
“Listen,” Vincent said, “I should have prepared you.”
“For what?”
“This.”
We walked into the spacious den where I’d last sat with my uncle, all dark wood and floor-to-ceiling windows facing the water, and saw him sitting there in his wheelchair, blanket covering his legs, the chair turned away from the Atlantic, staring blankly at a huge flat-screen television showingWheel of Fortune. Pasty skin hung from his face. He looked to have aged a hundred years since I’d last seen him, almost as if he had collapsed within himself.
He didn’t turn as Vincent and I walked in, either because he hadn’t heard us or didn’t know we were there.
“How long has he been like this?”
“About a year,” Vincent said.
“But I’ve spoken to him a few times recently.”
“You spoke to me,” Vincent Amato said. “A tiny deception, for which I apologize. When he was more lucid than he is now, before the decline really began, he ordered me not to tell anyone about his diminished state. Said it might be bad for business.”
“Which you’re now running.”
He nodded.
“The way I’m running my father’s businesses.”
“I resisted for a long time,” Vincent said.
“We may be more alike than we ever realized.”
“Reluctant bosses,” he said.
“So it was you who was calling the shots?”
“He was always fond of you,” Vincent said. “You know that. I simply honored his wishes to give you whatever support you needed. He hardly speaks anymore. But he made that quite clear.”
“I might need your help again, by the way. This man Michael Barr seems to be even more formidable than my father and I thought John Gallo was.”
Vincent offered a small smile.
“It’s already being taken care of. Or perhaps I should say we have set in motion plans to take care of it.”
By then we had walked out of his father’s study and were at the top of the stairs when I suddenly turned, went back, and hugged Nicholas Amato, kissed him on top of his head.
“You were a better father to me than he was.”
He didn’t move, change his expression, or indicate that he’d heard. But I believed he had, perhaps because I wanted to believe it. And I wondered in that moment if my father, his childhood friend, might be better off.