Andrew Vachss - Only Child

He stared at me, as if his eyes could decode my words. Said, “So why’d you ask me?”

“Sometimes, a kid will tell a stran— someone she’s not close with, things they wouldn’t tell their own mother, right?”

“I told you, I never spoke to her in my whole life. Not even on the phone,” he said. A vein throbbed in his temple.

“Hi, Gio,” said the dark-eyed girl with a Bronx accent, a lot of lipstick, even more mascara, and still more hair. She looked up at him from behind the receptionist’s desk.

“Hey, Angel. How’s my girl?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “How is she?”

“Don’t be like that, baby,” Giovanni said, taking her hand and kissing it.

“Oh, don’t play with me,” she said, pouting her lips. “You’ve got so many women, I’m surprised you can remember my name.”

“I’m going to surprise you good, one of these days,” he said, smiling.

“I wish!” the girl said. “I know he’s waiting for you. Wait, I’ll go back and tell them.”

I guess she could have used the phone on her desk. But then Giovanni wouldn’t have gotten such a good look at what he’d been passing up.

“Uncle T!” Giovanni crossed the room to where the remnants of a man sat in a wheelchair, his wasted frame propped into position with carefully wedged pillows. Giovanni bent to kiss the old man. “You look a hundred percent better than the last time.”

“Who’s your friend?” the man said, his voice sandpapery but clear.

“Uncle T, this is Nick. Nick, my Uncle T.”

“I’m honored,” I said, offering my hand.

“You Irish?” the man asked.

“Me? No. Why?”

“The Irish, they got that bullshit thing down perfect. Or maybe you seen too many movies, huh? You so ‘honored.’”

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” I said tightly. “Giovanni told me you were a very important, very special man. I didn’t think he brings just anyone here to see you; that’s all I meant.”

“Yeah?” he said, making no secret of studying my face. “But I don’t know you, right?”

“No. You don’t know me. And I don’t know anybody you know, either.” I looked over at Giovanni, said, “You want me to wait outside?”

“Stay right here,” he said. “Uncle T, he’s just looking out for me. Like he always does.”

“Sit down, sit down,” the man said, gesturing to a pair of pinkish side chairs. “Don’t pay no attention to my bad temper; it’s the fucking chemo—takes all of the sugar out of your blood.”

“But it’s working,” Giovanni said. “That’s the important thing.”

“It’s not working, Little G,” the man said, sad and loving, the way you tell a kid Christmas is going to be lean that year. “What it’s doing, it’s keeping the lupi back in the hills, that’s all. They’re just waiting for the right night. That’s when they come, you know. In the night.”

“Hey! You don’t know—”

“I know,” the old man said. He turned to me. “You think I care about who you know? Like your bloodlines? Where you come from? You know how I get my name? Little G, he give it to me. When he was a baby, he couldn’t say my name, ‘Carmine.’ What he says, he says ‘Tarmine.’ What kind of name is that? So we made it into ‘T,’ just for him.”

The old man shifted his head slightly, making sure he had my eyes.

“Little G called me ‘Uncle,’” he said, “because he couldn’t call me ‘Pop,’ the way he always wanted to. You getting this?”

“I got it,” I promised.

He read my face for a full minute. Then he nodded.

I looked over to where Giovanni was sitting. His thumb was pressed against the wall, making a screw-driving motion.

“Anyplace you can smoke around here?” I asked.

“Outside,” the old man said. “They got a little patio thing. Ask the girl out front.”

Igave them a half-hour, most of it spent with Angel pumping me about whether Giovanni was married. Or, even if he was, did he ever...?

When I came back into the room, Giovanni was next to the wheelchair, whispering in the man’s ear. He saw me standing there, gave his uncle another kiss, got up to leave.

“Be careful,” the old man told him.

“Uncle T’s not what you think,” Giovanni said, on the drive back.

“How do you know what I think?”

Giovanni made a bent-nose gesture. “Right?”

“How would I know if a guy’s made?”

“Made? For get that. Uncle T, he was never in our thing. He was a craftsman, you know what that means? A shoemaker. Not some fucking flunky, puts on soles and heels, like in Grand Central. I mean, he could make shoes, starting from scratch. Custom. He had a little shop on Broome Street. Everybody with coin went there.”

I didn’t say anything; sometimes, that’s the only way to keep the tap open.

“He’s old now. And his mind...from the chemo, it’s not like what it was. Sometimes, he’s sharp. Like today. Other times...

“But what he said. To you, I mean. That was the truth. My father, he was nothing. Nothing to me, nothing to nobody. He went Upstate when I was just a little kid. You believe the movies, you think—what?—the ‘boys’ come around, make sure my mother’s got everything she needs? That’s not the way it happens. My father, he was what they call an around-guy. Only he was never around, you staying with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, my mother never takes me up to see him. What’s the point? I’m just a little kid; I don’t even know him. And my mother, she’s got to earn a living now.

“Uncle T, I got to know him ’cause he hired my mother to work the front of his store. The neighborhood, this I find out later, they always thought he had something going with her. But that was never it, no matter what they said.”

Giovanni took a deep breath. Let it out, said, “Finally, my old man catches a shank in Greenhaven, so he never comes home.”

“How old were you then?”

“Four, five, I don’t remember. See, I never thought he was coming home. He wasn’t like a real person to me.” He zipped down his window, lit a cigarette. “My mother, all she ever really told me was, A nigger killed your father. Like it was worse than if a white guy had done him. She said it over and over. Like so I’d never forget.”

“Your mother and T got together?”

“Never! It wasn’t her he wanted, it was me,” Giovanni said. He looked over at me, then flushed scarlet at what he thought I was thinking. “Not for...Uncle T, he couldn’t have kids. I didn’t know why. Something happened, back home. Roma, I mean, not here.

“He was real up-front with me. From the very beginning, soon as I could understand. He always wanted a son, he said. A fine son, like I was. He couldn’t be my father. He didn’t feel that way about my mother, and it would be...dirty, like, to take up with a woman he didn’t care about just to have a son.”

“That’s stand-up,” I said, bowing my head slightly to show respect.

“Oh, let me tell you, Burke. Uncle T, he was a hell of a lot harder than those goombahs sitting around in the sun on Mulberry Street, smoking their Parodis and sipping their anisette.

“One time, the summer when I turned thirteen, I never forget it, I slugged it out with Fat Vinny,” he said, nodding to himself, as if to confirm the memory. “It was right around the corner from Uncle T’s shop. He heard the yelling. It wasn’t just the other kids, the old guys always gathered around when there was a fight; they fucking loved it. And he ran out. Fat Vinny was the biggest of all the kids in our grade, but he was a stone punk weasel coward motherfucker. What happened was, he pulled up Marcella’s skirt. She was the same age as me, but she went to Catholic school. You know those stupid uniforms they had to wear? He pulled up her skirt, right in the street. Big joke, letting everyone see her underpants.