Mafia Girl (12 page)

So Clive and I are both lonely and strung out in our own different ways, but I mean maybe other people are strung out in their own ways too, because I don’t really believe that people who I think look normal are really happy, happy, happy all the time either.

But instead of thinking too hard about deep stuff like that we veg out in front of the TV. And while we’re surfing past the History Channel and prohibition stuff and
Sopranos
reruns, which remind me of me and my life, I yell stop when Clive starts to skip past the New York 1 story about my dad being busted.

It’s not because I want to see him on the big screen. It’s because while I’m watching, I’m looking at the people around my dad and all the back-up cops, and my eye catches something in the corner of the screen, and I sit up straight and focus and—Holy Christ!—one of the faces of one of the cops looks familiar. Is it Michael?

Only no, it’s not. My brain is playing tricks on me and I have to stop this obsessing because Michael is on some other planet.

Or might as well be.

MafiaGirl_INT_FinalPages-spellchecked.indd 105 10/18/13 4:36 PM

106

“Sure you’re okay?”
Clive asks.

I walk away from the TV and toward the window and look down on the entire panorama of New York City and Central Park and the crowds of people swirling around below us in slow motion, each of them going off purposely in one direction or another, like they’ve captured by some filmmaker who’s made a living map of the world.

Only I’m not on it.

And I am feeling more alone than I’ve ever felt and I don’t know where to turn anymore because if the guy I am obsessed with actually was one of the massive NYPD patrol that backed up the feds assigned to put my dad behind bars for the rest of his life, where does that leave me? And even if he wasn’t, he is on their side. Otherwise what is he doing working for the NYPD?

Ro is right. Someone like me cannot fall for a cop.

I start feeling this overwhelming rage at Michael and everything he stands for. Then again, what did I expect? It’s not like he led me on. Everything that’s happened was my doing.

So really, what’s left? Go home and maybe call up Dante. Tell him that I’ve been thinking about him, and I know where that will go. But at this point I don’t care anymore. At least I know who he is and which side he’s on and all that truth means a lot, and anyway, he’s not all complicated like Michael and I can just close my eyes.

Clive comes back into the living room holding two mugs of hot chocolate. He hands me one, which I don’t feel like having, but there’s an expression in his eyes like a little kid who hopes you’ll like his surprise. I take the mug and smile at him because that is so Clive to think of something like hot chocolate at a time like this. I sit down next to him and sip it.

“It’s the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had.”

He smiles this megawatt Clive Laurent five-year-old happy-to-please grin, which does make me feel better. Not only that, something about sharing hot chocolate with him does help, which could be the chemical perk-up thing in chocolate.

But whatever, Clive knows my mood is changing because he picks stuff like that up on this visceral level. I finish the whole thing and get warm inside and say without really thinking, “it’s so warm in here, don’t you want to take off the scarf?”

He looks away and doesn’t answer.

“Clive?”

He turns back to me and his face changes and grows distant, which gives me an uneasy feeling. He looks down for a few seconds as though he’s deep in thought before he reaches up and slowly unties the scarf. I sit back and look at all the books on his shelves, half of them about history, and think about how he reads so much and how smart he is. And I look up at him again just as he pulls the scarf away, watching my face, waiting, with this expectant look.

My eyes get wide and I feel my mouth open. There’s a thin white scar all along his neck.

“Now you know why I wear the scarf, Gia. I tried to kill myself.”

I’m speechless
for I don’t know how long.

Something like that never, ever, entered my mind and I’m in free fall and feeling sick inside at the thought of my wonderful, decent, gentle, sweet, loving, brilliant Clive actually doing something like that, which seems so desperate and not like what he would do. Almost worse is the thought of him suffering so much that he’d get to that point.

“No one knows,” he whispers. “Please don’t tell.”

I stare at him and swallow and finally hear myself whispering, “Never. Never…don’t worry…when…when did it happen?”

“A little over two years ago.”

“What happened?”

He bites the corner of his lip and he looks so sad suddenly, so alone and so young. “I was home alone one night and the maids had gone to bed.” He stares off, a hurt look on his face, as if he’s reliving it. “I wanted to call someone, to talk to someone, anyone, because I felt so lost. Do you know how that feels, Gia? To need to talk to someone and have no one in the whole world to call who will listen to you? No one to confide in or trust? No one who cares? I went over all the names of the people I knew and I realized I had no one—not one friend to call. No one I could talk to who would understand everything. I started thinking that I had nothing to live for anyway and that if I were dead it wouldn’t matter to anyone.” He shrugs. “My parents obviously didn’t care enough about me because they were never home and their work was more important that I was…”

I stare at him and feel the tears welling up behind my eyes.

“It was so easy, Gia. Just me and the razor. It would be over fast. So I went into the toolbox and grabbed a new blade out of the pack and did it—one straight clean cut, then another.”

“Who found you?”

“My dad. He came home for a day or two—I wasn’t expecting him.

“His timing was impeccable because I had just done it.”

“Oh God, Clive…what happened then?”

“He called an ambulance…there was blood everywhere. I fell on the bathroom floor and nearly passed out…but he screwed it up for me like he ruins everything in my life.” He looks off again, sadness spreading over his face.

“What happened after that?”

“Therapy. Lots of therapy. Talking, talking, talking about everything. Pills. I was sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. It was like I was lost in a dream for two months. And nurses here, all the time, like prison guards. And then I stayed with my aunt and uncle.”

“And now?”

“Now what?”

“Tell me you’ll never do it again, Clive, please, please.”

“I will never do it again,” he says, repeating the words like an obedient child.

“You mean it, Clive? I want you to mean it, you have to, because I don’t want to lose you. I
can’t
lose you,” I say as hot tears pour from my eyes because it hits me how much he means to me and I don’t have many people either. And it’s selfish to be thinking about me and what I need when this is all about him, but that’s what I’m feeling and my father is leaving me and Michael is afraid to call me and I have so little left, and he is one of only two true friends I have in the entire world. And I love him so.

“I can’t lose you, Clive Laurent,” I whisper. “I can’t. Do you hear me? I love you and need you and you are so much a part of my life and you have to be here for me because I am here for you no matter what, no matter when, no matter anything, ever, ever, ever. Do you understand?”

“I hear you, Gia, I do. And I mean it,” he says. “I was different then. Younger, whatever. I don’t want to lose you either, Gia, so promise me you’ll be here for me.”

“No matter what. You have my word. And my word is everything.”

“Because you’re the don’s daughter,” he says, super straight-faced, mocking me, making those stupid quote marks with his fingers.

“Yes, and just shut up,” I answer, sticking my tongue out at him, which makes him laugh. Although what I want to do is cry because I think of my dad again and how I don’t know when he’ll be back, and how I hate good-byes.

I suddenly yank my gold earring out of my ear and prick my middle finger with the post, then grab his finger and prick it too. We press our fingers together and our blood mixes, and through my tears I smile at him.

“You’re now a made man,” I say. “Welcome to my family.”

And Clive is crying and laughing too and he looks happier than I’ve ever seen him and we hug and hug, and just screw everything else in the world that isn’t right because he’s the world to me and it feels like all the black clouds have lifted and that we’re floating together in this new universe of oneness and happiness and special friendship and closeness and love…

And then my cell rings.

More shit with my family,
of course, because it never ever ends.

“Somebody whacked Carmine G.,” Anthony says like he’s in overdrive, “and the heat’s on so Ma wants your ass home now.”

I can’t do this again. I can’t. I don’t want to be part of this.

“I don’t care, Anthony. I’m with Clive and I’m better off staying here than running home and parading past the cameras and being on the six o’clock news.”

“Talk to her,” he says, handing my mom the phone.

“Gia,” she says in crazed mode. “Frankie’s in Jersey somewhere, and I can’t think without the two of you around, and God knows what will happen now because you know how they love to come after us to get your father mad.”

But for the first time I’m not giving in. I don’t care what my mom needs. I don’t care what Frankie says. I don’t care what Vinnie says. I don’t even care how it looks or doesn’t look for my dad and what he thinks because why is everything in the whole world about him?

Why doesn’t someone think about me for a change and what I need and what I want and how it affects who I am and what happens to me? I am so tired of everything I have to put up with in school every day because of them.

And right now the last thing I need is a gang of so-called reporters shoving microphones in my face and asking me if I think my dad had anything to do with it like I would know what it is. Like I would ever know anything or actually tell them if I did.

All I do know is that the world is a better place without that pig of a gangster because Carmine G. was known for putting coke up his nose and concrete shoes on people he didn’t like and torturing gays because he probably was one and couldn’t deal and setting up middle-of-the-night meetings with my dad so that our whole house went crazy because my dad walked around furious that he had to get dressed and go out at three a.m. And then he’d come home exhausted, in a rage because he had to come to agreements with someone he’d like to throw into a pit of alligators.

“No one knows I’m here, Mom, and there are a thousand locks on the door and the pope couldn’t breach this security if he wanted to.”

“Gia…” she says.

I don’t answer. We both wait for what seems like an hour.

“Mom, I’m not…”

“Okay, okay,” she says finally. “Stay there, stay there. But don’t go out. Stay inside.”

“Okay.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

We hang up and then I’m back in default mode and feeling guilty about not caring what she wants, but am I going to spend my entire life running home when there’s trouble or running away until it dies down? And I feel even guiltier because I think about running away from this life and then I stop that because how can you run away from something that you are? And even if you could, it’s not like the world has amnesia.

Then I have nightmarish thoughts again about my dad and not seeing him and not being with him ever again. It could happen, it could, I know. But I just can’t deal with that and try to push the thought out of my mind the way I do whenever I start going down that road, because it’s unthinkable not to have my dad around anymore and our family ripped apart.

I think of the families of men in prison and how they spend their weekends and holidays getting on buses to spend the day in depressing visiting areas with armed guards standing by. I tell my head to shut up because Super Mario always saves him and always will, no matter what. He’ll get him out of trouble whatever they try to pin on him, otherwise why would they call him Super Mario or Superman?

I look over at Clive and think about what he said and the desperation he must have felt, and I feel sick inside to think of him here, feeling alone and desperate. Life doesn’t get more unfair than that. No kid should ever be left alone with no one to talk to, feeling totally shut out with no options.

I think about my life and I know that no matter what, I will never, ever try to kill myself because death is not a solution. And no matter what happens, you can always find a way to deal. I believe that.

“What?” Clive asks. “What is it, Gia?”

I sit there for a few minutes before I tell him and he leans over and takes my hand.

“Gia, I’m so sorry you are always getting drawn into these messes.”

“Messes?” I look at him in disbelief and then crack up laughing because
messes
isn’t exactly the word for what perpetually happens to me and my family and it makes me think of something like spilled Cheerios. But really, it’s so crazy and off the wall that, yes, it does fit.

“Messes,” I say out loud, trying it out. Yes, messes does fit. Big fucking messes.

And Clive laughs. “Yes,” he says. “We both live with messes.”

At some time during the night I hear music, only I’m deep asleep and not sure where it’s coming from. And then I realize it’s my cell because Mick Jagger is singing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” which was the song playing at the bar when I walked in the first time, and it just seemed so symbolic of my whole life that I made it my ring tone.

Only now at—what is it, two a.m.?—I am not thinking about satisfaction. I’m thinking about who is calling me and I look down at the phone and see
private
, which kind of jazzes my brain because I don’t get too many of those. And what I want to do is just not answer and turn off the phone, but since there’s so much going on with my family…