He looked out the window at the parking lot as though it were a portal back in time. “What do you want?”
He asked the question as though I were the last person on Earth he expected to see, and that my arrival necessarily meant I needed something from him, which of course, it did.
I could barely look at him. Sadness over his physical deterioration and guilt over our recent past left me in a constant state of melancholy whenever I thought of him, let alone was in his presence. If I tried to ease into the conversation, we might never get started. I couldn’t even imagine him pretending to have small talk with me. To get his cooperation, I had no choice but to provoke him.
“I saw Donnie Angel the other day,” I said.
It was a cheap shot of a greeting, and I almost felt guilty about it. Marko’s head turned on a swivel. His expression didn’t betray his emotion, but the turn of his neck made my heart sing. No matter how much he hated me, the thought of me anywhere near Donnie still infuriated him. He’d left the house by the time the Grantmoor incident took place, but I’m sure my mother had told him about it, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d confronted Donnie and threatened him without telling me anything about it.
“Why are you going anywhere near that psychopath?”
“It wasn’t planned. Our circumstances collided in New York.”
“Do yourself a favor. Next time collide with someone else.”
“Why?”
It was pathetic, I knew, trying to provoke him into another display of affection, but I couldn’t help myself. Marko realized it immediately. He contemplated saying something — probably a scolding for being so obvious in my search for a kind word — but turned to look out the window instead.
“Do you know anything specifically about what he does for a living?” I said.
“Sure. He’s on staff at Hartford Hospital on the cutting edge of medical research. Is that why you’re here? To talk about Donnie Angel?” He added a sarcastic ring to his pronunciation of the name.
“I saw Mama this morning.”
He barked a laugh. “Good for you, Saint Nadia. What are you doing, some sort of lost-cause tour?”
“Thought I’d swing by and see your place.”
“You are doing a lost-cause tour. Lucky me.”
“What’s with the name? Brasilia? I didn’t hear any Portuguese out there.”
He rolled his eyes as though the answer were obvious. “It sells. You take any product, mix in the Brazilian theme, and men eat that shit up. Now answer the question. Why are you here?”
I walked farther into his office, lifted a stack of fliers promoting some XXX-rated movie star’s appearance at the club, and sat down. He grimaced as I approached, no doubt wishing I’d jumped out the window rather than made myself at home.
“You weren’t at my godfather’s funeral,” I said. “Or the panakhyda, or the reception.”
“Very observant.”
“Why not?”
“Because your godfather was an asshole.”
His characterization shocked me. I didn’t remember him holding any animosity toward my godfather growing up. If anything, they’d been closer than Marko and my father, not that this was saying much. My godfather’s presence seemed to mollify my father, which was reason enough for all of us to love him. But my godfather also had taken a special interest in Marko, buying him baseball cards, offering him a sip of Narragansett when my father wasn’t looking, and making fun of his sideburns when he came back from a PLAST camp looking like Elvis.
“Why would you say something like that?” I said.
He chugged from one of the beer bottles. My eyes went to the grotesque middle finger of his right hand. It looked as though it had fallen off and had been reattached by a sleepy child. The digit protruded at an odd angle from the hand. He appeared to have two knuckles on that finger instead of one, and they both pointed sideways. I suppressed the gut-wrenching memory it summoned and tore my eyes away. That finger defined our childhood, the effect of our parents’ childhoods on them, and always left me wondering what it would have been like to have had a normal American upbringing.
Marko put the bottle back down and wiped his lips with his sleeve. “Because it’s true. Your godfather was not a good guy. But I believe in letting the dead rest, so let’s not talk about him anymore. Let’s talk about what you want so you can get out of here and leave me alone.”
“No. You can’t make a statement like that and not back it up. We will discuss it some more.”
He bored into me with a toxic gaze that reminded me that no one told him what to do, let alone his no-good, ungrateful, bitch sister.
“Please,” I said. “He’s the reason I’m here. The faster we talk about him, the faster I’ll leave you alone.”
“You do know how to bribe a guy. Like I said, the guy was an asshole. Pick your poison. For one thing, he tried to get with Mama after our father died.”
The image of my godfather making a pass at my mother flitted through my mind. It was grotesque. He was like a brother to her, or so I’d thought. “What?”
Marko nodded firmly.
I laughed. It was an uneasy nervous laugh, the kind that escapes your lips when the foundation of your life teeters and you question everything you’ve ever believed. “She told you that?”
“Not only did she tell me that, your godfather confirmed it when I had a discussion with him about it.”
Another vision flashed before my eyes. This time it was Marko pushing my godfather down the stairs. But that was ridiculous. If Marko had wanted to intervene, a few choice words would have delivered the message to stay away. There would have been no need for violence.
“He tried to romance her,” Marko said. “He took her out for the best veal on Franklin Avenue. She thought it was just a dinner with an old family friend so she said sure. She said it was real nice, mixing pasta with the past, talking about old times and all that. After dinner they stopped at Mozzicatto’s to get some pignole cookies and baba al rum, and she wasn’t suspicious about his motives at all. But then he tried to slip her his cannoli from behind while she was making espresso in the kitchen.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Lines sprang in Marko’s forehead. “Who would make stuff up like that about his mother?”
“He must have been drunk—”
“He wasn’t that drunk. He was just an old lecher. He fooled me for the better part of my life. Fooled you your entire life. Why do you think he never married?”
“I used to think it was because he never found anyone. Then as I got older, I started to think he might have been gay.”
“Wrong on both counts, though I wouldn’t put it past him to have been some kind of bisexual deviant.”
“Marko!”
“The guy was a swinger in his younger days. Trust me. We were naïve. He belonged to a sex club in Hartford. Used to go to orgies and shit. In a Victorian house right next to the building where we went to the dentist. What was that guy’s name?”
A wave of nausea left me weak. “How do you know all this?”
“Once he hit on Mama, I asked around.”
“Asked around where?”
“I asked an old friend in the Uke community. One of the guys I grew up with. He pointed me in the right direction. When you work on bikes, you get to know a certain clientele. You get to know the right people to ask about something like this.”
“So what did you do?”
“I paid him a visit and told him to leave our mother alone. That I knew all about his lifestyle and if he didn’t, I’d expose him for the pervert he was. Ruin his reputation in the button-downed Uke community forever, and possibly kick his ass all over town to boot.”