Mark Winegardner - The Godfather returns

Every morning, Fausto Geraci-it’s Jair-AH-chee, but, what the hell, people’ll say it how they want-was always the first one up. He’d make coffee and go out on the back patio of his little stucco house in his boxer shorts and an undershirt, where he’d sit on an aluminum lawn chair, reading the morning paper and chain-smoking Chesterfield Kings. Once he finished the paper, he’d stare out at his empty swimming pool. Even having his granddaughters in the house for the better part of a school year had had little visible effect on his mood.

Fausto Geraci’s heart was pickled in a bitterness more corrosive than battery acid. He was a man convinced that the world had fucked him over. Years and years of dragging himself out of bed and climbing into the freezing cab of some truck and hauling anything a person could imagine and a lot of things a person wouldn’t want to imagine. Loading and unloading his own trucks, hard work that was taken for granted by everyone who wound up with any goddamned thing he’d ever hauled. Driving what maybe were getaway cars; he wouldn’t know. But he did it. He spent a lifetime standing firm against everyone who was against the Italians, and he stayed loyal to that prick Vinnie Forlenza and his organization. He went to prison for those people. Did he complain, say a word about it? No. To them he was just Fausto the Driver, some quiet ox who worked hard and followed orders. He did all that work for them, jobs that doomed his soul to Hell so long ago even his own wife told him she stopped praying for it, but did they cut him in as an equal? No. He got some money, sure, but they gave Jews and niggers more of a break than they ever gave Fausto Geraci. He was supposed to be grateful for how they set him up in the union. Ha. He was still their puppet. The pay was good but not enough to make up for having to sit at a desk all day and listen to petty complaints from lazy people. Still, he listened, said almost nothing, and did his job. He spent years solving other people’s problems, but who ever gave two shits about Fausto Geraci’s problems, huh? Then after all those years of loyalty, one day: pow. He’s out. They gave his job to someone else (Fausto knew better than to ask why), and they gave Fausto the Driver “early retirement.” Hush money. Go-away money. What did he do? He went away. Loyal to the end. Loyal past the end. Good old Fausto.

And, Jesus Christ, don’t get him started on kids. His daughter was a dried-up old maid schoolteacher who moved from Youngstown to Tucson just to make his life miserable-every night after school she comes by and it’s eat this, don’t eat that, how many cigarettes is that today, Poppa? On and on. And the boy, his namesake ? He thought he was better than everybody else. His mother encouraged it, too. Everything came easy for that kid. Married a blonde with tits out to here. Went not just to college but to fucking law school. And that business with the flying? Just another way of showing the world he wasn’t his old man-a hotshot private pilot, see, not some broken-down truck driver. Every breath that ungrateful shit drew was an affront. Even says his name wrong. Ace Geraci. Goddamn. Who’d he think paved his way? Vinnie Forlenza, that’s what he probably thinks. Or those cocksuckers in New York.

When the others started waking up, before they could start bothering him, Fausto got up from his lawn chair and went to the garage. He kept a robe and slippers in there. He’d put them on and work up a sweat doing yard work. On their way to school, Barb and Bev, bless their hearts, would come out and give him a kiss. He wanted to protect those sweet kids from a world that was going to disappoint and then destroy them, but instead he’d just stand there in his robe, holding a hose or a rake, smiling like a happy peasant and waving good-bye.

Then he’d go in and clean himself up and drive across town to Conchita Cruz’s house trailer. She barely spoke English, and he barely spoke, but somehow they’d met in a bar not long after he’d moved here and come to this arrangement. He couldn’t remember how, that’s how relaxed this thing he had with her was. Hair-AH-see, she pronounced his name, which was a fuckload closer than how his own son said it. Sometimes they’d fuck, but more often they’d spend an hour together not asking questions. Just existing. Television’s good for that. Other times there’d be cards, dominos, maybe a foot massage. They’d eat lunch, there or at the diner on the corner, and then he’d kiss her on the forehead. They’d declare no love and make no promises, and she’d go to her second-shift job at the cannery and he’d go for a short drive in the desert. Every day but Sunday, on the same straight stretch of road, he’d stomp on the gas and blow the carbon off his engine-and his heart, too, or so it felt once he buried that speedometer needle in the black space beyond 120. Once he did, he’d ease off the gas, letting his speed and pulse and spirits drop. Then he’d go home, where his sorry-ass namesake and that goddamned Swedish wife would be bickering. When they’d first gotten there, Charlotte had been a model wife, and Nick was humbled by having just fucked up so bad. But a few weeks later, about the time he got that cast off his leg, the bickering started. Even the turning on of the television would touch off some stupid argument. Especially that. Day by day, they behaved more and more like Fausto had with his late wife, another way the boy seemed determined to mock him.

They had nothing to do. Nothing. The amount of time they wasted made Fausto Geraci sick. Charlotte went out and spent Nick’s money on things she didn’t need. Sometimes Nick drove around in a rented car making calls from random pay phones and stopping by this rathole bar and grill he’d muscled into, but most of the time he sat around reading books and talking to the men who came by to give him messages.

One day, Fausto came home and Nick was filling the fucking swimming pool. All it took was a little frown from Fausto, and he went on some long explanation that even though his ma had died in that pool when her cancer-weakened heart gave out, she’d died doing what she loved. She’d never have wanted him to drain the pool. What did that boy know of such things? He wasn’t the one who fished her dead body out of there. Selfish punk. Her wishes, Fausto Geraci’s ass. Nick only wanted to fill the pool so he could use it himself. Sure enough, next day, Fausto came home and not only was the boy floating on an inflatable raft, he was reading some book about Eddie Rickenbacker. More mocking! For weeks he wouldn’t stop with the flying ace stories, the race car driver stories, the lost-at-sea stories, the airline magnate stories. A remarkable man, Fausto Geraci couldn’t deny it: American hero, all that good shit. But you know what? Fuck Eddie Rickenbacker.

Nick treated both his daughters like boys, especially poor Bev, who worshiped her father and would probably grow up to be an old maid gym teacher just like her dried-up shrew of an aunt. He and Charlotte took those kids to everything under the sun: the zoo, the circus, concerts, ball games, movies-like they were trying to make something up to them.

Still and all, those little girls had adapted to their move out here like champs. They’d made friends in the neighborhood, they did good in school, the works. They were happy just being children, but their parents couldn’t see it.

When out of the blue it came time for them to go back to Long Island, it was Charlotte who told him. Apparently his hotshot son couldn’t be bothered with anything having to do with his old man’s feelings. Fausto Geraci snapped. He wasn’t proud of it, but for once he’d spoken his mind. Those girls had transferred schools in the middle of a school year and come here and done just great, and now what? They want those poor kids to transfer back, two months before the school year was even over? What a selfish load of shit! Don’t they know anything about how hard it is for kids to fit in? He wouldn’t stand for it. Let Nick go back. Charlotte, too. God knows, there were more places to blow money in New York than out here. But the girls were staying. Did she think Fausto Geraci, after a life full of taking care of other people’s problems, couldn’t take care of those two little angels for a couple months? Was she really such a stupid cunt that she thought she’d do a better job than he would?