And Never Let Her Go (6 page)

The twenties were an untroubled decade along the Delaware River; it was
the
place to reside—Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived just down the river from the Raskobs, and between one estate or the other, there was a constant flood of famous visitors. But as John Raskob became more well known and word of his wealth spread, he worried. The rest of the nation was caught in the Great Depression and feelings ran high. In 1931, Raskob was gravely concerned when a kidnapping threat to one of his children was conveyed to him. His children meant more to him than his great wealth, and he moved away from Archmere, leaving behind its Italianate Renaissance mansion—the Patio—and Manor Hall, where the servants lived. The Raskobs had their memories of parties, meetings with the Democratic National Committee, and visits from presidential nominee Governor Al Smith, for whom Raskob was campaign manager. When the Lindberghs' baby
was
kidnapped the next March, the Raskobs knew they had done the right thing in moving to a less accessible home.

A year later, the abbot of the Norbertine order of Catholic priests purchased Archmere for $300,000 and opened a boys' prep school with an enrollment of twenty-two students. Archmere expanded its student body and built more and more buildings, always adhering to its motto,
Pietate et Scientia
(By Holiness and Knowledge).

And so in the sixties the sons of a once-poor carpenter attended Archmere. Tommy was not only a superior student, he was student council president and a star on Archmere's football team. He was undeniably his parents' favorite child, quiet and conservative like his father, hardworking, and disciplined. Father Thomas A. Hagendorf, one of his teachers at Archmere Academy, recalled that “Thomas was a shining star.”

Tommy always seemed to do everything first—and best—but Louie, two years younger, didn't resent his big brother. Rather, he idolized him. Tommy was good to him, someone he could always go to for advice. They each had distinctive personalities and a different circle of friends. Louie was the charmer who could work a roomful of strangers and leave with a bunch of new friends. He already had the attributes that would one day give him the Midas touch.

The priests at Archmere were nervous about the effect the sixties
would have on the adolescent boys they supervised. One headmaster wrote with relief, “Through the anxious, emotional, and intellectual years of the sixties, Archmere kept to a sane course, adhering to its philosophy of teaching religious, academic, and moral fundamentals, while at the same time improving the quality of its course offerings.”

The Capanos had always invited their parish priests, especially their beloved Father Roberto Balducelli, who had been pastor at St. Anthony's for twenty-five years, home for dinner or for weekends at the shore, and the Archmere priests were brought into the family, too.

As always, the boys' friends were welcome in the Capano home. Blair Mahoney, whose father was Dave Mahoney of the Four Aces, the top-ten vocal group whose records swept America in the early to mid-fifties, was one of Tom's best friends. While the Four Aces were traveling the country singing “Tell Me Why” and “Stranger in Paradise,” Blair virtually lived with the Capanos during summers at Wildwood, and in Wilmington, too, when he and Tommy went to Archmere. “Mrs. Capano was like a mother to me,” Mahoney recalled. “I wasn't the easiest young man to manage. She did great keeping me in line.”

Although Archmere was then strictly a school for young men, coeducational dances were held there, and an invitation to attend was much to be desired by teenage girls in Delaware and New Jersey. Tommy was especially close to his cousin Donna, his aunt Mary Rizzo's daughter, and he often invited her and her girlfriends to the Archmere dances. The hall where the dances were held was fairly prosaic and it was the cachet of Archmere that drew them. That, and Tommy Capano.

“He was so handsome then,” Donna's friend Emily Hensel remembered. “He was just about anything a teenaged girl could want—good looking, popular, and a football star. I can close my eyes even today and see Tommy dancing on the floor. For some reason, the song I hear in my head when I think of Tommy is ‘Time Won't Let Me,' by the Outsiders. It was
his
song—at least in my own memory.”

Tommy was always known as the good brother, the dependable brother. Marguerite and Lou were proud of all of their boys, but Tommy was the one they could count on. Marian was in college, studying to be a psychologist, but she was only a girl, after all, and it was to his sons that Lou looked for his immortality.

For some reason, perhaps by their own private agreement, Tommy always drove a black sports car and Louie had a white one.
Everyone who lived in Brandywine Hundred hung out at the Charcoal Pit on the Concord Pike. It was a hamburger joint not unlike any other teenage hangout in America, but the charcoal-grilled burgers and the fancy ice cream floats, and most of all the ambiance, packed it every night and especially on weekends. When the Capano boys drove up in their new cars, young hearts beat a little faster. The Capano brothers cruised the boardwalk and the strip at the shore when the family summered in Wildwood, so tanned and good looking and sure of themselves.

In prep school, Tommy seemed unattainable for most girls. He was polite and friendly enough, but it seemed a given that he would choose a girl that everyone wanted. “I remember him in his black convertible,” a Wilmington woman recalled. “He was dating this really rich girl—beautiful, of course—but I can't even remember her name. She lived in a house that was basically Tara, with the white pillars and all. Tommy's car would be parked out in front. I knew then that he was kind of—well, when you were around Tommy, you thought you were in the presence of a god. None of the rest of us could ever hope to actually
date
him.”

Tommy Capano was just under six feet tall, not as handsome as Joey or as dynamic as Louie, but he
did
have the full lips and classic nose of an Italian statue. More than that, he was such a nice guy with a wonderful soft voice. “When Tommy talked to you,” a woman who met him at a party said, “you had the feeling that you were the only person in the room. He focused
entirely
on you—no eyes darting around the room or over your shoulder.”

Even the guys his own age who were jealous of Tommy because of his wealth and popularity, and because his father had bought him a sports car, admitted that he had earned his popularity. No one ever said he was less than kind to everyone. He was the leader, the one who would keep them together for reunions for decades to come. One of Tommy's classmates was a diabetic who sometimes went into a coma. It was Tommy who kept the syringe of insulin just in case, and Tommy who didn't hesitate to use it to bring his friend around.

“You could literally trust him with your life,” a man who graduated from Archmere with Tom said. “He was always more mature than we were.”

Joey, three years younger than Tommy and a year younger than Louie, attended Brandywine High School rather than Archmere. He was the huskiest of the brothers and the least academically inclined,
but he was an outstanding wrestler in high school, competing in the 185-pound class.

During the time that his big brothers were at Archmere and Brandywine High, Gerry Capano was still a little kid, in kindergarten when Tommy was about to graduate from Archmere in 1967. Tommy, Louie, and Joey were like three extra fathers to him, and he adored them. He still got pretty much everything he asked for. Nobody saw any reason not to spoil Gerry.

Tom graduated from Archmere in 1967 and was accepted at Boston College. Louie, graduating in 1970, went to the University of Delaware in Newark. Joey went a year after that. Tom would remember his little brother, Gerry, sitting on his chest and begging him not to go away to college. It was a wrench for him, too; he considered himself as much Gerry's father as Lou was.

R
OBERT
F
AHEY
S
R
. failed to get himself together when he was widowed. “After my mom died,” Brian remembered, “the family situation deteriorated—slowly at first, but completely after a while. My father eventually stopped working, and he had been a heavy drinker beforehand, but became an even more intense alcoholic.”

Fahey's own insurance and pension plans ran out. And the commissions due on policies he had written in the past slowed to a trickle, then stopped completely. The Faheys had done so much to help others before their world collapsed, and now, without asking questions or pointing a finger of blame, friends stepped in and quietly paid their electric and phone bills.

While her five siblings were old enough to work, Anne Marie was not. Providing her with clothing and food was “haphazard,” according to Brian. “We tried to look out for each other as best we could. It was complicated. We couldn't go and ask the neighbors for food or money, so we just tried to get by as best we could. We all just sort of hung in there together.”

Most teenagers responsible for a nine-year-old could not have managed as well, but all of the Faheys were bright and resourceful, and devoted to family. In time the older brothers and Kathleen moved out, managing to attend college on grants and scholarships,
until finally just Brian and Anne Marie were still living with their father. And when he was drunk, they stayed away from him. Anne Marie lost herself in books when she was sick and home from school. Sometimes she wasn't sick but didn't want to go to school, so she hid in the closet.

As young as she was, Anne Marie had a fierce pride. She never wanted anyone to feel sorry for her because she didn't have a mother, or a nice house or new clothes. She developed a persona that hid her insecurities and her sorrows; her laugh boomed louder than ever, and she was clever and full of mischief when she was with her friends. But she always went to
their
homes, because the Fahey children had long understood they couldn't bring friends home.

Anne Marie's home life was unpredictable, to say the least. And like all children of alcoholics, she and her siblings had come to fear their father's sudden outbursts of temper. They learned to absorb his words without really listening or simply to block out his rages, but they didn't want to have their friends know how bad things were.

Sometimes their house was cold because the electricity had been turned off again when the bill wasn't paid. Their father had used the social security checks to buy liquor instead. When there were no lights at home, they would study at friends' homes or at the library. There was often no hot water, and sometimes no water at all, a situation that would last for many months at a time. Once, the Faheys' telephone was cut off for an entire year. Anne Marie took her hot showers at school after gym class, and never told her friends that it was the only way she
could
take a shower. She went to tremendous lengths to appear to be just like the other girls her age. She could not bear to be pitied.

Anne Marie had love—from her siblings, her grandmother Nan, and a few other relatives—but she had little else. Her clothes came through hand-me-downs and a few Christmas presents. Even putting food on their table was problematic for the Fahey children, but somehow they managed. After they were grown, they sometimes wondered how they had done it—but something or someone always came through with clothes or food or a little money.

And they were all workers, just as their grandmother had taught them to be. Everybody but Annie worked at one time or another in the Freel's tavern, O'Friel's Irish Pub. On a busy Saturday night, Robert might be tending bar upstairs, and Brian was the bartender downstairs. Kathleen worked at O'Friel's for nine years. Kevin, the tall redheaded Freel brother, used to tease Anne
Marie, “We'll get you one day, too, Annie. Don't think you'll get away from us!”

She would laugh and say, “I don't work for you, Kevvy.” She loved Kevin, and Bud and Ed and Beatrice. And they loved little Annie. She was too young to work then, only in school at Springer Junior High. Even so, she wanted a more exciting job than as a waitress. She had wonderful dreams for her future, and her dreams helped her make it through the present.

When Anne Marie was in the seventh grade, Robert Fahey married again. His new wife, Sylvia Bachmurski, had a son and a daughter by an earlier marriage. And so, in 1980, Anne Marie had a stepmother, and far from resenting her, she was delighted. It was comforting to have a grown woman in the house looking after things, and Anne Marie was so happy when she saw their dining room table covered with a white tablecloth and set with nice dishes and candles. It had been so long since they had eaten at a pleasant table the way other people did.

But her father's second marriage lasted only a few months. Sylvia had believed that Robert Fahey was working, and it was a terrible jolt when she found out he had lied. Too late, she realized that he was a practicing alcoholic and that she had walked all unaware into the chaos and deprivation his children had known for the last few years. She really cared about Brian and Annie, but Sylvia knew she couldn't stay once she found out how things really were. She pulled Annie and Brian aside one day and said, “I'm so sorry—but we're leaving. We just can't stay.”

Anne Marie was so sad. Sylvia had assured her she could call to talk, and she did a few times. But she knew Sylvia wouldn't be coming back. The house quickly reverted to the way it had been, with everyone eating wherever they felt like eating, and no more pretty tables or flowers or candles.

In a vain attempt to change her father's downward spiral, Anne Marie hid his bottles and poured his drinks down the drain. She dreaded the sight of him sitting on a chair in the kitchen, drinking the evenings away. She would hide in her room until she heard him stumble off to bed. Her friend Beth Barnes later summed up Anne Marie's ordeal. “Annie's had the shittiest life,” she said. “A lot of people who had what she had would fold, but she was strong.”