Demise

The Panuzio Home, East Lake Monday, 19 September, 5:47 a.m.-3

Studding the wall were pictures of siblings and cousins and many, many of the kids—Todd, Jason and Jennifer—on horseback, in soccer uniforms, in canoes with largemouth bass dangling from their lines, Todd’s high school graduation photo. Even pictures of Dog Corleone, the family’s collie-shepherd mutt. To the far left, almost as an afterthought, there was a cluster of small framed newspaper photographs: one of John Panuzio and Mitch Williams, arms over each other’s shoulders, in their Lakeport High School football jerseys, with the cutline Scoring Leaders Ready for Turkey Day Final; one each of Johnny’s cousins Richard and Louis, both in military uniforms, these with the stories folded back under; and one of Johnny’s brother Nick, also in uniform, with the cutline Local Man Wins Bronze Star. Johnny’s eyes lingered. An unpleasant thought shot through his mind. Goddamn militant family.

Johnny moved to the front room. He stood amid Julia’s new Chippendale or Louis XIV—or whatever she’d told him it was—furniture, gazed across the road to The Point. In the crook of The Point and the shore, where half a dozen mallards glided effortlessly, large raindrops created expanding, interlocking rings.

Johnny stared at the birds, the water. He felt pulled by the lake, to the lake, his lake, his water. From childhood, growing up on the other side in the City of Lakeport, he loved the lake. He loved it on the day he and Julia married 20 years earlier, on the day they bought their spacious Queen Anne right there on The Point on Lake Shore Drive in the perfect little town of East Lake; loved it every day after work, walking the rocky shoreline before going in; in those early years strolling hand in hand with Julia after dinner, or chasing her, catching her, there, here, on The Point in the dark; or loved it in the light, before leaving for NSC in Lakeport. How he loved his lake, mornings, evenings, summers, winters, fishing, boating, just staring, smelling, listening, breathing.

Johnny closed his eyes, sighed, reopened them. He checked the window thermometer. The temperature was a damp fifty-one. He pursed his lips, thought of the coolness not as normal climatic progression but as the start of the heating season, as fuel-oil bills. He did not want to think about money. He rethought the temperature, thought, If tomorrow it doesn’t rise above 80, perhaps Jason won’t embarrass me by wilting in the second half. Then he thought he was being unfair, that Jason hadn’t wilted against Hayestown but had taken a hard kick to the thigh and had played the last 15 minutes with his quadriceps in spasm.

Johnny tried to close down his thoughts, to force away the indistinct grating ire oozing from within, to deflect the abrasive yet intangible dissatisfactions which seemed to be coming from all directions. His thoughts tumbled on. Something’s missing. Something from his game, from his studies, from his life…good at everything, a natural—a good kid, loves, of all things, physics—but it’s like he’s a passenger on a train. Something typical of their entire generation, of the entire region—like that pip-squeak Tripps—enjoying the ride, the view, taking whatever they want. Something typical of this family, enjoying the ride but without…the entire country…me…without…?

In the kitchen, Johnny found Rocco at the Wolfe stove, hunched, concentrating on the dials.

“Hey, Pop.” Johnny’s voice was loud yet short. He didn’t want to disturb Julia. “Pop. You want me to do that?”

The old man raised his eyes askance. Johnny stepped to his side. Rocco looked back to the stove, concentrated on the eggs and milk already in the small frying pan, swirled the mix with a silver fork in Julia’s best Teflon-coated omelet cookware. Two shells drooled egg white onto the counter. The butter in its antique milk-glass dish sat on the range top, melting, dripping an oil slick onto the metal surface. Egg drippings were smoking on the hot unit.

“Pop!”

“He can’t hear you.” Jenny pirouetted into the kitchen. She raised her arms dramatically. “He doesn’t have his hearing aids in.”

Johnny turned, chuckled. “Good morning, Sunshine.”

“Hello, Daddy-oh. Mama’s goina like bi-itch about her pan.”

Johnny put a finger to his lips. “Don’t talk like that, Sweet-ums.” Jenny popped four frozen waffles into the toaster oven, two for herself, two for her father. “You’re running late, aren’t you?”

He didn’t answer but put a hand on Rocco’s shoulder. The old man started, rasped, “You want me to make you some? You don’t eat enough eggs in this house. Back home we ate eggs two, three times a week.”

“No. Thanks. I wanted to know if you wanted me to make ’em. You shouldn’t be standing.”

“They’re all done. Get a dish. Jenny can eat these. I’ll make more.”

“No, Pop. No. She doesn’t like ’em. Sit down.” He glanced at Jenny. He didn’t worry about Jenny. At twelve she was tough, tougher than either of her brothers, maybe tough because of her brothers. She had pizzazz or as she like to call it, “Zazz.”

Quickly Johnny slid the eggs from the pan onto a plate. “Jenny, make Grandpa some toast.” He served the eggs, cleaned up the shell, sponged the counter and range. He checked the time, knew he didn’t have time to wash the pan but didn’t want Julia to find it when she came down. He stretched to arm’s length, cooled the pan first in hot then cold water, did a perfunctory cleaning, careful not to splatter soap, water, or egg on his suit. While he dried he called, “Pop, stay out of the basement today, huh?”

Again the old man did not respond.

“Pop! Stay out of the basement today. It’s bad for your leg.”

Rocco waved him off with his right hand, uttered harshly, “Æ.” The sound was that of a short, clipped a, as in the word at, yet it was harder, dismissive, and contemptuous.

“Yer leg ulcer’s not goina heal. You gotta keep off it.”

“Yer house is falling down. Call Nick. He can help.”

Nick! Johnny exhaled forcefully. Nick! Where the hell was he? He could help out more.

“He knows how,” Rocco said.

“It’s not a matter of knowing how. It’s a matter of the edema. You want ’em to cut off yer foot? Go ahead. Ask Nick. He’ll tell ya.”

“Daddy-oh,” Jenny interrupted, “can I have four dollars for the dance on Friday?”

“What dance?”

“This Friday. At school. The student council dance.”

“Did your mother say you could go?”

“Jason could help,” Rocco broke in. He had not heard, had not seen, that his son and granddaughter were speaking. “I need to move the chair.”

“He can’t,” Johnny said quickly. To Jenny he said, “See me tonight, Sunshine.” Then again to Rocco, “Not with school and practice and games.”

“He spends too much time with all these…” Rocco could not think of the word. “Too much. No good for kids to do so much. He should spend more time here. I’ll teach him how to do foundations.”

“He’s already made the commitment.” Exasperation came through in Johnny’s voice. They had had the same exchange a dozen times. Johnny wasn’t sure if Rocco was being insistent or if he’d forgotten all the earlier ones.

“Call Nick,” Rocco ordered. “He could send his boy.”

God, Johnny thought, he’s what, ten? Eleven? Don’t bust my coglions, Pop. He ignored his father’s command. “I gotta go pick up Mitch,” he said.

“That colored,” Rocco said. His voice was thinner, raspier, than usual.

“You know him.” Johnny gritted his teeth. “He and I have been friends for over forty years.”

“Colored?”

“African-American,” Johnny said. “Or black. I gotta see if he’s heard anything more about Tripps. About the reorganization.”

“You find my box?” Rocco asked.

“Huh? Oh. You mean from Uncle John’s?”

Rocco glared. “I don’t want anybody lookin in there.”

“Ah…” Johnny stumbled. “We won’t. It might be in the attic. In Jason’s computer room. Or under the eaves. I’ll see if I can find it tonight.”

“You know what that ciuc of a brother of mine did?” Johnny raged as soon as Mitch settled himself into the car. Johnny used the dialect form of ciuco faccia: face of a donkey; dumb ass.

“Probably nothing as dumb as what Vernon did,” Mitch answered. Panuzio had driven his leased, deep-green Infinity Q-45 north on Lake Shore Drive. He’d left late, yet still he’d lingered to gaze at the water. The rain had abated; a dreary overcast remained, reducing visibility over the lake to less than 500 feet. He’d sighed, turned from the water, turned right, onto Third Street, then passed under Route 86, the Lakeport Turnpike, skirted downtown and headed into The Hills. He’d been slowed by a school bus which threw a muddy mist onto his windshield; had been grossed out by a fat kid in the rear seat who’d jammed a chubby finger into his nose then withdrawn it and…Johnny had lowered the visor so as not to bear witness. At Red Apple Hill Johnny turned right, followed the curving pavement up past the elementary school and down into Cottage Glen. The Glen, once a summer resort area, was now East Lake’s shabbiest neighborhood. Under the somber sky, under high, scraggly trees with blotches of dense overhang, the trailers and small dwellings surrounded by dozens of dented and rusting vehicles had increased Johnny’s feeling of eeriness, of gloom. He’d checked mailboxes for names: Thompson, Watts, Otto. He’d expected to see Sanchez, he didn’t and dismissed the thought—most of the boxes didn’t have names. Quickly he’d pulled back uphill into a newer tract of small, nicely maintained capes.

Along the way he’d turned on the front and rear window defoggers, the intermittent wipers, the surround-sound stereo-radio—Dr. Dave McNichols, WLAK AM & FM; news, weather, commuter reports, light chatter, and inflammatory sound bytes. He’d felt irritated, antsy, unfocused, unsettled. His thinking had been continuous yet fragmented: Tripps, Rocco, the kids, Julia, Nick. As he’d pulled up behind Laurie’s eleven-year-old Toyota Corolla, he realized he’d driven across town totally unaware of his driving. On the Toyota’s bumper he’d spotted a new sticker: Fight Crime/Shoot Back. Johnny had smirked. Aaron! He’d thought. I wonder if Laurie or Mitch has seen it.

“Nick’s a ciuc.” Johnny momentarily ignored Mitch’s opening. “A jerk. He calls me Friday at work. Right in the middle of the afternoon. Tripps is there in my office, sitting on the edge of my desk, and Nick says, ‘Hey, Johnny, guess what! Your number hit big. I got five big ones here for you.’ I couldn’t believe it. Right there. Tripps staring down on me. Lisa—my receptionist…

“Uh-huh.” With a handkerchief Mitch wiped raindrops from his smoothly balding pate.

“…she hadn’t even put the phone down yet. You know the way that keeps the speaker on, right? Christ! In front of little Mr. Moral Majority.”

“What’d he say?” Mitch patted his closely cropped, salt-’n’-pepper beard.

“Nothin. You know he wouldn’t. But he’s like his old man, like a video camera recording everything you say and do. He’s sitting there on the corner of my desk, recording me for his old man. You know, he’s there in his eight-hundred-dollar suit and his gootsie-bootsie loafers. Mr. Impeccable. Even his nose hairs have been shaved.”

“Probably waxed.” Mitch chuckled.

“Yeah, probably,” Johnny said. “Anyway, goddamn Nick doesn’t even ask, you know, ‘Hey, gotta minute? Can you talk?’”

Again Mitch chuckled. “Yeah.”

“I’m like this. ‘Ooo! Hey! Aaah…look, this isn’t my phone.’ That’s what I said. ‘This isn’t my phone.’ With Tripps right there, in my office, on my desk. I’m fumbling like a jerk. So I hung up on him. Maybe I said something like, ‘Call me tonight.’”

“Ya hit for five hundred, though, huh?”

Johnny smiled. “Yeah. About time, huh?” Mitch didn’t respond. Johnny knew that his friend didn’t approve of his gaming, of gaming in general, or of Johnny and Julia’s spend-all lifestyle. It was a frequent topic of their commute conversation. After the mortgage, the car leases, the credit card charges, all the insurances and incidentals and dining out, and after Todd’s tuition, there was little discretionary capital for a side toot. Johnny switched the topic. “Vernon take your car again?”