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Chapter 24:  Father

            The legal system dragged its way toward Alberto’s trial.  By the time Cousin Alberto’s case finally made it to court, I was three months pregnant.  I still felt tired, but I was no longer subject to morning sickness.  Through some connections at Columbia, I found part-time work as an editor at a small publishing house.  Angelina continued her blithely positive attitude toward all things regarding the baby.  She was convinced it was a boy. He would be beautiful; we’d find a nanny for him so I could keep working in the mornings.  She advised me not to tell Father about the pregnancy.  I wore loose-fitting blouses and dresses, but it didn’t matter.  Father was so absorbed in his own misery that he barely noticed me at all.

            Gradually Father sank deeper into a dark sea of worry, shame, and depression.  Angelina arranged a trip to Italy for him, thinking it would give him a fresh perspective and some comforting scenery.  He came home early, having been shunned by most of the relatives except for Uncle Gio and Gio’s immediate family.

            Early one afternoon I arrived home from work and found Father unconscious, lolling sideways in his recliner.  An empty pill bottle sat on the coffee table next to what was left of a bottle of gin.  After the paramedics wheeled him away to the ambulance, Angelina and I combed through the house, removing pills and hard liquor, anything we thought could abet suicide.  When he came home from the hospital four days later, Father hardly spoke.  He wouldn’t go to the office, no matter how Angelina badgered him.  He refused to see a counselor or a psychiatrist. 

            Late at night, a few weeks after Father came home from the hospital, I woke up freezing.  A chill breeze swirled around my room.  I got up to check the thermostat in the foyer.  The night was alive with sound, as it always is in New York City.  I heard shouts and sirens and vaguely realized that the ruckus came from nearby.  In the living room, the big window was wide open.  Snow speckled the carpet.  The drapes billowed like red damask sails.  I knew then that Father had found a way out of his pain.  I screamed for Angelina, and then I passed out.

            When I came back to consciousness, there was a stethoscope on my chest and a gentle hand was pushing up my right eyelid.  From where I lay prone on the sofa, I could see Angelina sitting in a chair across the room.  I kept hearing a strange, moaning sound and finally I realized it was coming from Angelina.  Another paramedic was giving her an injection.

            The medic who was checking me sat back on her heels.  “How are you feeling?  Any pain?”

            “My side hurts,” I said.

            “May I look?”  She lifted my pajama shirt and pulled my pants down below my waist.  “That’s quite a bruise you have there.  Why don’t you let us take you to the hospital?  How far along are you?  Twelve weeks?”

            “Fourteen,” I said.  “But please, can I wait until this afternoon, or even tomorrow?  I need to stay with Angelina.”

            When at last I did see my own obstetrician, he said everything looked fine, except for the multihued bruise above my hip.  I’ll never know if it would have made a difference had I agreed to go to the hospital that night.  The doctors and specialists could not agree on what caused the damage to Marco’s legs.  He was born as perfect as any cherub from his hips to his head, but his legs never formed properly.  The physicians tried to fix his poor little legs, and that is what caused his death.

            Father’s funeral was well attended.  Our family’s notoriety was now complete.  We had legions of reporters hounding us wherever we tried to go.  Debo and Dolly came home for three days.  Both had just started their first year of college.  Dolly was at Boston University.  She planned to go straight through undergraduate and graduate school to obtain a Masters in Business Administration.  As for Debo, after her graduation from New York Military Academy, she decided to become a police officer. 

            Sometimes I thought that Debo was trying to be another Junior for Father.  It had pained me to watch her work so hard for his attention and approval just as I had, and with the same result.  For Father, nothing we achieved changed our gender or the fact that Junior, his shining star, was dead.

            After the funeral, Angelina arranged a buffet at Father’s favorite Italian restaurant.  We all agreed that holding a brunch in the apartment carried a gruesome shadow. 

            “People will be staring out the window and looking down to see how far he fell,” Dolly said.

            In fact, none of us felt comfortable in the living room.  Angelina and the twins and I sat in the kitchen for meals and did all our conversing and planning there.  At one of these sessions, Angelina said, “Girls, I’ve been thinking about the living room.  The furniture gives me the creeps now.  I was wondering if you’d mind—” she paused.

            “What?” I thought she was going to sell the apartment.  Then where would the baby and I live?  But that’s not what she said.

            “I was wondering if you’d mind having the living room redone,” she finished.

            Debo, Dolly, and I burst out laughing.

            “When in mourning, redecorate!” said Debo.

            “It’s a good idea,” said Dolly.  “Get new curtains, too.”

            The apartment felt different with Father gone.  I hated to admit, even to myself, that the atmosphere was lighter.  Angelina plunged right into the renovation project.  After the living room was finished, the dark clouds that had filled the rooms with their thick sadness were finally released.  Don’t get me wrong.  I grieved for my father.  But without the heavy brown leather sofa set, the heavy red curtains, and the ever-present odor of cigar smoke, the whole apartment felt clean and fresh. 

            The night that the living room was completed, and all the paintings and knick-knacks were replaced, Father’s ghost appeared to me for the first time.