Page 12 of Reckless At Raleigh High
That’s why I came here, after all. Because this is a good place to think.
Eterno riposo, concedere a loro, o Signore, e lasciare che perpetua risplenda ad essi la luce. Maggio le anime dei fedeli defunti attraverso il ricordo di Dio, riposa in pace, Amen.
The words aren’t welcome. I haven’t searched them out, but they push to the surface of my memory anyway, shoving aside my other thoughts. I remember the susurrus ofhervoice, catching on the consonants and vowels, creating a melody out of the prayer every All Souls’ Day in November. I knew Thanksgiving was only a few weeks away when my mother decked our apartment out with chrysanthemums, set three extra places at the table, and lay out food for people I’d never met before. Nor would I, since they were all dead. My grandparents were long gone by the time I was born. So was my uncle, her half-brother, who managed to fall from the third-floor balcony of a hotel room in Rome when he was drunk and landed on his head.
She’d cook every single Italian recipe she could remember from her childhood, and then she’d wrap me up in my thickest winter jacket, and we’d go knocking on our neighbor’s doors, offering themdolci dei morti—the sweets of the dead. She’d told me that the small white biscuits were supposed to sweeten the bitterness of death, and that in Italy, children would knock on doors for them along with other candies and treats in return for a prayer for the dead.
Eterno riposo, concedere a loro, o Signore, e lasciare che perpetua risplenda ad essi la luce. Maggio le anime dei fedeli defunti attraverso il ricordo di Dio, riposa in pace, Amen.
All Souls’ Day is long behind us now, but my mother’s voice chants her prayers regardless. The door to the church groans, and a rush of cold air makes my arms break out in goosebumps. Someone’s just come in. Part of me is irritated that the silence is going to be marred by someone else’s presence. Then again, I’m glad I’m not alone anymore. Another second of solitude and I might never have resurfaced again…
“Thought I might find you here,” a gruff voice says behind me. Not the voice of a priest, that’s for sure. Far too whiskey-soaked. The hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention, an alertness returning to me that’s been gone ever since I answered that stupid fucking door to Maeve.
For a second, I think it’s Zander, come to drag me to the funeral at Greenwood, but then—
“Heard you were living here in Raleigh. Guess I didn’t really believe it. Not ’til now.”
Being tasedis a unique experience. Hard to describe.Your body locks up, screaming in pain, jaw clenched, hands clenched, asshole clenched, fucking everything clenched, and your mind is screaming at you toMOVE! Get. A. Way. From. The. Pain. But you can’t. You’re frozen in place, lungs seized, and all you can do is lay there and take it. I’ve never felt anything like it before. Until this moment right now.
If the best memories of my childhood are of my mother, then the worst, without a shadow of a doubt, are of my father. Even when she was manic and hysterical, making wild, outlandish threats, he was still worse…because he was indifferent, and then he was fuckinggone. Over the years, I’ve tried to erase the stain of him from my head, but Giacomo Moretti has always been paradoxically indelible.
And now, it seems as though he’s standing right behind me.
I don’t turn around.
I hear him—the scuff of old, worn boot soles against the stone floor. The huff that comes out of him as he sinks down onto the pew behind mine. I smell him, too. Cold winter air, and snow, engine grease and clove cigarettes.
“You’re bigger than I thought you’d be.” He says it casually, like he’s commenting on unexpectedly good weather to a stranger. “You were a scrawny mite when you were little. Way shorter than the other kids at school.”
Alex…
Do not…
…turn around…
Giacomo—Jack—is quiet for a moment, as if he has every right to waltz in here and destroy my peace, and he isn’t planning on losing any sleep over it. Meanwhile, my synapses are firing so rapidly and randomly that I can’t formulate a single thought beyond ‘KILL HIM.’
A tapping sound breaks the silence—the toe of his boot, knocking against the underside of my pew, directly beneath me. “I came because…well, you know why I came. I came because of Benny.”
My first words to my father in over ten years are this: “I’m surprised you even remembered his name.”
The stranger behind me sucks on his teeth disapprovingly. “C’mon now, A. That’s not very fair. Of course I remember his name. He was my son.”
“No.”
Somewhere outside, a car horn keens.
Ten seconds later, a young woman enters through a door at the head of the church and dips to her knees before the life-sized depiction of Christ on the cross. She prays, quickly crosses herself, and then hurries down the aisle toward the exit. The sound of the heavy door closing after her echoes for what feels like an eternity.
Giacomo’s had plenty of time to stew on his response. “I’m sorry? What do you mean,no?”
“You weren’t his father. You were the guy…who lived with our mother for a couple of years…knocked her up twice…cost her the national debt of a small country in lost fucking bail money...sold our television…then fucking disappeared off the face of the planet.” I don’t mean to keep taking breaks before each statement. I just can’t speak properly. I never thought an emotion would be able to eclipse the grief I’ve been experiencing the past few days, but I was wrong. The fury hurtling along my nerve endings and forging fires within my bones is like white lightning.
Giacomo laughs under his breath. “Alessandro. You have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t just up and disappear. No, shemademe leave. You were too young to remember the fights. The screaming. I wasn’t perfect, son, but your mother was fucking cra—”
I could give two shits about being in a house of God. I twist, spinning around, hurling myself at the back of the pew, practically throwing myself over it. Suddenly, I have a handful of t-shirt material in my left fist, and my right is raised high above my head, ready to come crashing down into the miserable fucker’s face, which is…
…so much like my own.
