Home for the Holidays (8 page)

“This ain't so hard,” Tommy said.

“No, it's simple,” Nicky said. “Now you try leading.”

The boys switched positions. Tommy took Nicky's hand and began moving him around the floor, counting, “One, two, three, four …,” out loud.

The lesson was almost over when Clarence walked in, carrying one of Nicky's father's briefcases and fumbling in his pockets for his keys. He saw the two boys dancing and stopped suddenly. Nicky and Tommy broke apart.

“Sorry, guys!” Clarence said. “Didn't mean to barge in.”

“No problem,” Tommy said. “I was just teaching Nicky here how to, uh, fight.”

“Really?” Clarence looked embarrassed. “It looked more like—well, whatever, right?”

“Well, actually,” Nicky said. “We—”

“Hey—it's cool,” Clarence said. “You guys are friends. Why shouldn't you dance together, right?”

“Uh, right,” Nicky said. “But actually it was a dance
lesson.
I was teaching Tommy the box step and the waltz. He was teaching me some dance steps. Some of his
moves.”

“What moves were those?” Clarence asked. “You know all the latest steps or something?”

“I don't know,” Tommy said. “I was just going like this.”

Tommy did a quick turn. Clarence started laughing. “Smooth!” he said. “Can you do this?”

Clarence put down the briefcase and the keys and did a few steps.

Nicky laughed and said, “Clarence! That's great. Let me put on some music.”

Tommy said, “Show me that again,” and Clarence did.

For the next ten minutes, Clarence showed Tommy, and Tommy showed Clarence. Then Clarence said, “Now you, Nicholas.”

Nicky clumsily did a few turns.

“Very
smooth,” Clarence said. “Now check this out.”

With that, he did a wicked spin, went into the splits and hit the floor.

“Wow!” Nicky said. “Can you teach me that?”

“I don't know,” Clarence said. “Let's try.”

Going to bed that night, worn out from the dancing, Nicky was quiet. Tommy said, “You wanna do some quick BP
Two!”

“No, thanks,” Nicky said. “I think I'll just go to sleep.”

“You tired from all that dancing?”

“A little.”

“You still freaked out about your mom?” Tommy said.

“A little.”

“It's probably nothing,” Tommy said. “If you knew what was going on, it'd probably be something really normal.”

“Yeah?” Nicky said. “Like what?”

Tommy thought for a minute. “Okay, it's not normal. But I bet it's nothing bad.”

“Bad?” Nicky said. “Like what?”

“I don't know,” Tommy said. “But it's your
mom.
She's not like other moms.”

Nicky raised himself up on one elbow and looked at Tommy. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, she's Mrs. Borelli,” Tommy said. “She's your mom. She's, like, the best mom. Bringing me up here, that was her idea, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there you go. She's the best, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Besides that, you gotta remember, even if she's your mom, she's still a girl. Right?”

“So?”

“So girls are not like us, is all I'm saying,” Tommy said. “It's worth remembering. Girls are not like us at
all.”

Nicky woke up early the next morning. It was only seven-thirty. He got up anyway.

He found Grandma Tutti making coffee downstairs and gave her a hug.

“Good boy,” she said. “Now you can help me make breakfast. We're going to have
sfogliatella.
Nicky, bring me the flour.”

Nicky helped his grandmother break the eggs, break the butter into little pieces and mix the dough. Grandma Tutti rolled it out onto the kitchen table, patted her hands with flour and showed Nicky how to cut it into little squares.

“Now we gotta make the filling,” his grandmother said. “Get the ricotta.”

Something outside the window caught Nicky's eye as he was going to the refrigerator. He said, “Is that Mom?”

“No,” his grandmother said. “She's upstairs. Give me a sharp knife, please.”

“Wait,” Nicky said. “I saw Mom. What's she doing outside?”

Nicky went to the window. His mother was standing at the bottom of the garden, near the pool, with a man wearing black jeans and a black parka. He was nodding while Nicky's mother pointed at the ground and made a circle. Was it the same man he'd seen her with at the mall?

“Nicholas!” Grandma Tutti said. “Come away from that window. I need the knife before my dough gets too warm!”

Nicky pulled himself away. Whatever was going on, he wasn't supposed to see it. He decided to pretend that he
hadn't
seen it. Like Tommy had said, his mom might be his mom, but she was still a girl. Maybe he should ask Donna what she thought about it. She was a girl, too, and a smart one. But on the other hand, what if it was something weird, or bad? He wouldn't want Donna to know anything weird or bad about his family.

Nicky got the knife for his grandmother, who said, “Okay. Now we got to cut the dough in little lines, like so.”

Tommy came downstairs an hour later, his hair sticking up and a big smile on his face. The house had filled with the smell of baking pastry. Walking into the kitchen, he said, “It smells like something good in here.”

“Sfogliatella,”
Nicky said.

“Bless you,” Tommy said. “What's for breakfast?”

More snow had fallen in the night. The backyard looked like a painting. Clarence came in, stamping his feet and clapping his mittened hands together.

“Cold!” he said.
“Crazy
cold! Is your dad ready yet?”

“I haven't seen him,” Nicky said. “Why are your knees all wet?”

“I had to put snow chains on the car,” Clarence said. “The roads haven't been plowed, and your father has a meeting.”

“About the thing with Mr. Van Allen?”

“I don't know,” Clarence said. “Maybe.”

“Have some coffee,” Grandma Tutti said. “And you can try the first
sfogliatella.
Nicky, get Charlton a plate.”

“It's Ciar— Thank you, Mrs. Borelli. These look delicious.”

“Look nothing,” Grandma Tutti said. “How do they taste?”

Clarence bit into one and sighed. “Perfect.”

When Nicky's father came downstairs, he said, “You boys got big plans for the day?”

“Not really,” Nicky said. “Not with this snow, and the roads messed up.”

“It's pretty bad out there,” his father said. “I was just
listening to the news. The interstate is shut down. Do you want to come see my building? Better than being cooped up here.”

“Sure, Dad,” Nicky said. “Tommy?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said. “Can we take some pastries?”

“It's
sfogliatella,”
Grandma Tutti said. “You can take two each.”

The little town of Carrington was half-asleep in the fresh snow. Most of the shops were closed. The streets were empty. Everything was muffled and silent. Clarence drove the Navigator slowly, its tires making a soft crunchy sound on the pavement.

The old brewery building was in a broken-down section of Fairport, New Jersey, a city that had once been a big commercial fishing port and had later become a factory town. Now it was a collection of abandoned brick buildings and a little downtown strip that was being taken over by what Nicky's father called yuppies.

“Look at this,” Nicky's father said. “Around the corner, on First Street, there's a bookstore, a sushi bar and an Internet café. You can get a cappuccino and a California roll, but there's no police station, no public telephones that work and no post office.”

“Is that bad?” Nicky said.

“Yeah—but it's beautiful!” his father said. “It's a great opportunity. We're really getting in on the ground floor. Stop here, Clarence. Look at my building. Isn't it great?”

It wasn't. It was old and dirty. The brick was chipped
and stained. The windows had no glass in them. Nicky's father was beaming.

“We're going to turn this into a real showplace. Clarence, drive over to First Street.”

Nicky's father dropped the two boys on the main street and said, “We'll come back for you in an hour. You can cruise around, get a bite to eat, whatever you like. Just stay out of the abandoned buildings, including the stuff on the beach. All right?”

The boys spent half an hour wandering the waterfront. Across the sand was a ruined amusement park, where a roller coaster now crumbled into the sea. Closed storefronts along the empty boardwalk still had signs for a tattoo parlor, a pinball arcade, a hot dog stand, a fun house and a doughnut shop.

“That reminds me,” Nicky said. “We gotta get my grandma to make
zeppoli.”

“She
makes
those? The doughnut things?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, man. I love
zeppolis.
They sell them at Santo Pietro. You remember—the school festival.”

“I remember the school festival, but I don't remember the
zeppoli”
Nicky said.

“That's because you were too busy thinking about Donna.”

Nicky blushed.

“See? Ha!” Tommy said. “You
still
got a crush on her!”

“Cut it out.”

“Cut
you
out,” Tommy said. “I could use a
zeppoli
right now. It's freezing, and I'm hungry again.”

“Let's go in the café,” Nicky said. “I bet they got something.”

The boys sat in a high-backed wooden booth and ordered hot chocolate and cannoli.

“Not as good as Grandma Tutti's,” Nicky said, “but not bad.”

“Delicious,” Tommy said with his mouth full. “I was starving.”

“We'll get something good for lunch, I bet,” Nicky said. “I think Grandma Tutti is going to make lasagna.”

“Let's go back outside and look at that amusement park thing.”

“I don't know,” Nicky said. “My dad—”

“Relax,” Tommy said. “We won't do anything stupid.”

There was a fence around the old ticket booths, but someone had cut through it and left a gaping hole leading down to the old midway. Nicky and Tommy slipped inside and walked among the buildings. Hand-painted signs, faded almost to white, promised a sideshow with a bearded lady, an India rubber man and someone called Sealo the Seal Boy. Next door to that was a haunted mansion. Next to that was a house of mirrors.

At the end of the row of ruined buildings was an old Ferris wheel, creaky and rusted. Tommy climbed into the lowest cart, then climbed up to the next one. The metal groaned when he stepped onto it.

“Come on,” Tommy said, and put his hand down to drag Nicky inside. “Look at the view. I bet you could see Manhattan if it was clear.”

“And not so cold,” Nicky said.

“I wish we had another hot chocolate,” Tommy said. “Whoa—get down.”

The boys got low in the Ferris wheel carriage. Nicky whispered, “What?”

“Don't look now, but three guys just walked through the fence, and they're coming this way.”

“Oh, great,” Nicky said. “Is it my dad?”

“No,” Tommy said. “It's a man in a suit and two wiseguys.”

Nicky peered over the edge of the carriage. “It's Peter Van Allen,” he said. “The father of the kid who hit you with the snowball.”

“What's he doing here?”

“He's supposed to be my dad's partner on the brewery building.”

The three men came closer. Nicky and Tommy scrunched down low. The footsteps stopped just beneath them.

“What a place,” a heavy voice said. “When I was a kid, this was paradise.”

“And look at it now,” another voice said. “Destroyed.”

“We're going to change all that—me and my ‘partner.’”

The three men laughed. Nicky raised his eyes at Tommy. He whispered, “That's Van Allen talking.”

The men moved a few feet away. Nicky strained to hear what was being said.

“What's the deal with this Borelli guy anyway?” the heavy voice said. “You know I hate doing business with Italians.”

“He's not Italian—not like you mean,” Van Allen said. “He's just a lawyer. But he's the guy who's making this deal look legal.”

The three men laughed again.

“He's got big plans—first the brewery building, then the old cannery, then the old city hall,” Van Allen said. “There's a fortune for us here. So once we get the building permits, he's out.”

“Just like the old days, Patty,” the other voice said.

“Don't call me that,” Van Allen said.
“Ever.
The old days are gone, and Patrick Arlen is dead and buried. Don't go digging him up now—or the next guy I kill and bury will be
you.”

“Don't worry—
Peter,”
the heavy voice said. “Soon as the deal closes, we'll take care of Borelli. We'll make him an offer he can't refuse.”

The three men moved away, their footsteps heading back toward the amusement park gates. Nicky and Tommy stayed low. When a minute had passed, they heard a car door slam and an engine start. They peeked out in time to see a black town car pull away from the boardwalk.

“Wow,” Tommy said. “That was intense.”

“Yeah,” Nicky said. “I gotta warn my dad.”

“I don't think so,” Tommy said. “We'll get a licking because we went into the amusement park. Which he said don't.”

“You're right,” Nicky said. “He'll be mad. I'll get grounded. Or he'll take away the BP
Two.”

“He'd do that?”

“Or worse,” Nicky said. “When he says don't, he means
don't.”

“Then what are we gonna do?”

“I don't know,” Nicky said. “I have to think.”

That night, lying in his bed, Nicky felt scared. His father was in business with a crook who was going to double-cross him. His mother was doing something she had to hide from him—and maybe from his father, too.

Nicky had to do something but had no idea where to begin.

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