MURDER AT ANY AGE
Tony DeMarco
Published by BurliBooks LLC at Smashwords
Copywrite 2011 Tony DeMarco
This is a work of fiction. Although there are people--good, wholesome, ethical people, who serve as the template for some of the characters, in the end they are fictional. No real person acted in any way like the characters in the story. And the story itself--it too is fiction. Some of the location is based on reality, some incidents are based on actual experiences; but most of it is made up to fit the plot. Any similarity to actual persons, events, and places is a figment of my imagination.
BOOK ONE
Nineteen Forty-six
1
The bed was soft; he remembered it well. The room darkened, because back then the shades were drawn until you got up, a holdover from WWII air raid drills. The sounds coming from the living room were muffled and sounded dark, like the drawn shades, way too dark. It only added to his realization that his mother was dead.
He lay on his back, stiffened, his large, wide-open eyes looking straight up. On each hand his middle finger was twisting around its index finger, untwisting again in a rhythm with his cadenced breathing. His aunt, in whose house he was staying while his mom was in the hospital, came in. She had on the dress reserved for serious Sundays. He could feel her smiling at him as she held her warm, clean smelling hand to his cheek but he didn’t want to look at her.
She whispered, “You’ve been crying, is everything all right?”
“Where’s my mom?” he asked. He could see his mother in his mind, dressed in her apron, sitting on the kitchen chair and he wanted to be safely on her lap again, but he knew she wouldn’t be there any more.
“She’s in the hospital with your baby sister; babies take a long time to be born.” She moved her finger to his lips as if to stop any difficult questions.
“Then why are all these people here, why is my dad crying, I can hear him; and it sounds like everyone’s ready for church, she’s dead, isn’t she?”
Aunt Margaret took way too long to answer.
That’s all he remembered, he doesn’t know what happened next. Why didn’t he just get up, go into the living room, see who was there. Isn’t that what you’d expect him to do, an eight year old?
But now his memory turned blank except for one tiny scene, sitting on his mother’s lap. She was a big woman, round face with dark hair, a little curl plastered to her forehead. No conversation, no recollection of what was going on around them, just sitting there, on her lap, the only thing he remembers about her.
* * *
Little Alexander Fazio was almost eight years old when his mother died. He was left with his father Frank and his sisters: Dolores age eleven and Maria age six and now Francine the newborn. None of the children went to their mother’s funeral.
Over the next several weeks Alex figured it all out. Each morning and again after school as he walked by the Donnelly and Parcel Funeral Home on the corner across from Blessed Sacrament Church, he knew that’s where the wake had been held. He’d slow and steal a glance whenever the doors were open. He would try to imagine what went on in there. He wanted his mother to be inside but he wasn’t sure and didn’t know where she was.
The church, school and funeral parlor were within walking distance from their flat on Autumn Avenue.
“Where is my mother?” he asked the nun who was his teacher. She was kind to him and he felt safe asking her, rather than his dad, or anyone else in his family.
It is difficult for an eight year old to comprehend her answer. “She’s in heaven, with God. She is very happy, although she misses you and your sisters a lot, and your dad too, but God called her to Him. She wants you to be a good boy and when you die, we all have to die eventually, don’t we, you all will be together again. Now run along and play outside, young boys are supposed to be outside playing during recess. Don’t think about it too much. Everything will be okay, won’t it?”
“But she’s in a coffin. Where is the coffin? The door was open to the funeral home and I walked in and saw a coffin. That’s where she is, I saw it.”
“No Alex, that was someone else God called to Him. Your mom is in the cemetery. Her coffin is buried next to your Grandma, your Uncle Carmine ... and she is keeping a place next to her for your dad, your sisters and you. I don’t want you to be thinking of such things. When you say your prayers ask God to bless you and keep you safe until you join Him and your mother in heaven. Now run along, I’ve got work to do.”
2
Aunt Margaret and her husband Bart were two of the finest people on earth. Surely there is a place reserved in heaven for them. They aren’t pretty, not by a long shot and in fact Alex’s dad always said, “She is as homely as a mud fence.” She was short, not fat at all, but her build was funny. Her stomach stuck out and she had no ass whatsoever. Seemingly always dressed in a black dress with a white lace collar, her torso was way too large for her short stubby legs, accentuated by the ridiculous brown lace-up shoes that looked too large for her tiny feet. Then the face, the face said lots of things:
It said, “I love you no matter what.”
It said, “If you need help, don’t ask me, just let me know what it is.”
It said, “Life is good, I am so happy. God has blessed me with my husband and my kids.
It said, “ I am grateful to Him for letting me take care of little Alex.”
“Poor Alex,” she often said to her lady friends when they met at the store or chatted for a few minutes on the front stoop, “losing his mother at such an early age. I don’t think he realizes it; it hasn’t sunk in. He never mentions it, or cries, or asks for her. It worries me a little.”
Aunt Margaret had a thick Brooklyn accent but her voice was soothing, even when she called to Bart Junior, her oldest. Everyone except her just called him Junior. He too was nice enough to Alex; had two younger brothers, younger than Alex, to pick on when the mood caught him. Margaret’s only daughter Vicky was Alex’s age, just a few months older.
“This is my new brother,” when she would introduce him, “he’s only part Italian.” Why that was so important was not very obvious on the surface but if you knew more of the background it was understandable.
Alex’s mother was Irish, his father Italian. This was Brooklyn in the mid thirties where Italians could marry Irish women but Irish women were not supposed to marry Italians! Or seemingly that is what was behind the friction with the Irish side of Alex’s family.
Margaret and Bart didn’t care; they liked Alex’s mother --a lot. That’s why they took Alex in when she died in childbirth.
* * *
On the Irish side was Aunt Anna, Alex’s mother’s oldest sister; a traditionally built woman, rather tall at six feet, who had pinkish skin and wore her grayish hair in a bun. Alex’s father was six feet ... but weighed fifty pounds less and had jet-black, kinky-wavy hair. Anna took the newborn baby and had a conniption fit when Alex’s dad would not let her change the baby’s Italian last name to their Irish last name.
“After all, we are adopting her, aren’t we? Wouldn’t it make more sense, be easier on her if she had the same name as her ‘sister and brothers?’” Referring to her kids who were the baby’s cousins of course. But Alex’s dad refused, there would be no “adoption” and the flying sparks were not lost on anyone.
“That man keeps his brains where he doesn’t wear his hat,” was one of Anna’s favorite expressions about Alex’s father. She didn’t like him, never did, and blamed him for her sister’s untimely death.
You could just picture her thinking, it was unholy to say anything like this out loud but it was okay to think it, if he wasn’t such an animal, wanting to do it all the time, getting her pregnant, she’d still be here; Italian men are such animals!
* * *
Alex’s mother came from the large Campbell family. John and Mary Campbell had four children, the oldest was Jack the priest, followed by Aunt Anna. Alex’s mother came next, then the youngest, Veronica, she was called Aunt Ronnie.
There was also Aunt Hannah, Grandma Campbell’s sister, and she and her husband Pete lived above Bohack’s Butcher Shop on Fulton Street. They took in Dolores while Alex’s younger sister Maria went to live with Aunt Ronnie in Patchogue, a little village three quarters of the way out on Long Island.
As a result of this splitting up, Alex and his sisters didn’t all get to see each other very often. Most weekends his dad would pick him and Dolores up, but it was too long a distance to get Maria out there on Long Island, so they only saw her about once a month. Visiting the newborn was a different story. Alex’s dad hesitated to go to the Doyle house. Besides, every weekend was too much for Aunt Anna to handle; it interfered with her and her family’s activities to have to wait around for that “dago” and his kids.
Maria was too young to remember much about this time in her life but she cried a lot. Dolores, on the other hand, being eleven when her mother died, still has all the details firmly imprinted on her mind. To this day she can remember what it was like on certain rare occasions when the three kids got together with their dad. Alex, on the other hand, remembers nothing, everything has been stolen from his memory.
Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bart, when they took Alex in, lived on Autumn Avenue, just three quarters of a block down from where he lived before his mother died and where his dad still lived; a few blocks from Dolores at Aunt Hannah’s flat, and not many more from Grandma Campbell.
A grandmother, and especially an Irish one, is special to everyone.
“Mommy,” Aunt Anna would say into the telephone when she called Grandma Campbell religiously every morning; this particular Friday asking, “what were you planning on serving this Sunday because I have a nice new recipe we can try out? And are you inviting Frank’s kids as usual? Maybe we can skip them this weekend, have a smaller group if you want to try out this recipe I found?”
“Sure,” answered Grandma Campbell who was called Mommy by everyone, but tell me what is in it and of course we cannot skip Frank’s kids, they are my grandchildren and I will not hear of it. Ever again!”
Hers was the invitation the family could not refuse.
She lived in a brick house on Hemlock Street and would frequently pick a specific Sunday, then command that all her children along with their Fazio charges come to her house for dinner; she wanted all her grandchildren there. Aunt Margaret or Bart Junior would walk Alex to Blessed Sacrament Church where he would meet up with his aunts, uncles, cousins and his sisters.
Grandmother Campbell made it a point to have everyone meet for eleven o’clock mass at Blessed Sacrament, then walk together the few blocks back to her house for the afternoon meal.
Her house was fairly large and, as I mentioned, built of brick, so obviously grandma wasn’t hurting. Who knows what happened to Grandpa John; he died a long time ago and was out of the picture soon after Alex’s mother married Frank. The only outward appearance, besides the brick house, of whatever wealth he left Grandma Campbell was some flats in the black ghetto of Brooklyn.
Ancient Aunt Alice, Grandma Campbell’s aunt, not only lived in the brick house but was like the maid. She wasn’t treated that way; it was just that she took it upon herself to act like one and seemed quite content with the arrangement. She was referred to in private conversation as “the old maid aunt,” and was probably a little “slow” because she didn’t say much, although she had a grin on her face all the time.
These Sundays were about the only recollections Alex had of this time in his life other than going with his dad to Brooklyn to collect the rents from the black people. It was fun to sit in the blue Oldsmobile and listen to the radio or get out if the iceman with his horse drawn wagon happened to be there at the same time. He’d watch as the great big iceman used the large iron tongs to carry a huge block of ice up the long, outside stairs to his customer’s house.
If it was the house his father was in, collecting rent, Alex liked following the iceman in to watch him put it into the wooden icebox with the chrome handles. There was usually a payback here; he’d get ooh’s and ahh’s from the black folks; they’d say what a fine boy he was, and perhaps he’d get a cookie, a piece of pie, always something to eat. He always felt so good because he could see that these people liked his dad so much. It made him so proud.
Later on, photographs filled in the blanks so that his memory was like an old-time film; scenes that jerked in and out of view.
3
It must have been difficult for Alex’s father. You lose your wife; you’ve got three kids to look after plus a newborn. It wasn’t like today where perhaps you’d get a nanny or a live-in housekeeper. This is Brooklyn remember, and except for grandmother in her “brick” house, everyone was just making it. Alex’s dad worked two jobs as it was; accounting clerk at Republic Steel during the day and a soda jerk at Nedick’s Orange Juice Bar several nights a week. But the kids were too young to realize the implications of his working so many hours.
Alex was the luckiest because he didn’t remember anything, and Dolores was stoic, acting grown-up by not saying too much. Maria just cried a lot. But the relatives couldn’t keep the kids forever, could they? Except for the baby, that is, who might as well have been adopted ... but not legally.
Six months was as long as it would work. Alex became a nuisance to Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bart’s household; too many boys; and Vickie, the only girl, for some reason looked at Alex as her plaything. She stood up for him no matter what he did, which caused a great deal of envy among her brothers, and as a result, fights became more frequent and more rough.
Aunt Hannah and Uncle Pete’s place above Bohack’s was tiny and getting tinier. Dolores had to go. Besides, they were older, much too old to have an eleven year old to watch. They figured that five lived in their apartment: Hannah, Pete, Dolores and two canaries. They never had children and treated the canaries like their offspring; even the canaries were old and Hannah made a point of telling her friends that she was worried, they were acting strange.
“I think they are jealous.”
Yes, it was time. Dolores would have to go.
Aunt Ronnie, it was bad enough that she lived way out on the Island, far from her family, was getting fed-up with Maria’s constant crying. Ronnie was skinny and nervous to begin with and Paul her husband was no consolation. Besides, she had four kids and was beginning to feel the extra expense with a fifth who “wasn’t even my own.”
She and Aunt Anna had many a conversation about asking Alex’s dad to pay a fixed amount for room and board; the occasional groceries he bought, or dollars he left on the cupboard, apparently were not enough.
“He hardly ever comes to pick her up, take her out, blow the stink off her, give me a break from that constant crying,” said Ronnie. “You’d think we beat her all the time; it’s embarrassing. My neighbors are wondering; beginning to not believe me when I tell them she cries for no reason. Do you blame them?”
“It’s all his fault,” Aunt Anna would commiserate. “He needs to put them in a home or something. Father John,” --the two sisters often referred to their older brother as ‘Father’ in his absence-- “and I have been checking with Catholic Charities and there is a place in New Hyde Park that is just the place. Run by nuns, and they take in little orphans.”
“But his kids aren’t orphans,” Ronnie countered, “would they take the little dagos anyway?”
“Well, Father John says it is quite nice, and him being a priest and all, he should know, shouldn’t he, whether they will take them? He says he’ll take care of everything; he knows the pastor, but I need to figure out a way to bring it up to that Frank. I don’t want it to look like you and Aunt Hannah don’t want to take care of them anymore. I’ll keep the baby. Besides, she is too young to go with the others. I don’t know about Alex, living with the other dagos, but I hear he too’s becoming difficult.”
She paused to take a breath and continued, “I had him and Dolores over for the weekend last week and he put up holy hell that he had to sleep up in the attic with my Georgie. Said he was afraid, wanted to stay up until my son got home. What? What did he expect me to tell Georgie…he’s a teenager for crying out loud…‘you can’t go out,’ or ‘you have to be home early so little Alex isn’t afraid?’ Of course not.”
“I know,” Ronnie added. “He was at my house and the same thing. He’s a sassy boy, won’t do like I tell him and constantly picks fights with my kids; says they tease him, call him a dago. I don’t look forward to him coming anymore. He’s becoming that father of his.”
“I’ll talk to Mommy. The father listens to her and she has a way of putting difficult things nicely, don’t you think?”
“Yes, but do it soon. My diabetes is kicking up and every time I take that damn needle it makes me irritable.”
4
What is it like to be almost nine years old, having no memory of anything that happened to you before that terrible day when your mother was taken; driving up to a dark-red, brick building, with heavy wooden doors; a huge tower over the entrance, and a concrete-block fence surrounding what would now be your new home? It must have been terrifying.
He closed his eyes for a tiny second; then wiped each one in turn with his sleeve. He didn’t cry though, but deep inside his nose, he had that strange, itching feeling that comes when you are trying to hold it all in. Even at that young age he figured, what’s the use? He had no options and perhaps that was the worst feeling of allresigned to this forbidding place forever.
Kids can’t process the future, that eventually he’d be released from this foreboding place. Even if he could visualize a long time off, what would happen then, where would he go, who would take care of him? Resignation was the only option, horrible, heartbreaking resignation. His mind couldn’t fathom what was happening to him. He was beyond sad; he just gazed out the car window at Holy Ghost Convent; he could see the name of the place chiseled over the doorway. He didn’t move a muscle except to close his eyes for a second and give a barely visible shiver.
“We’re here,” his dad said, trying to cheer things up. “I think you are going to like it. From everything I’ve heard from Uncle John, there is a lot to do; you’ll make friends…” but he started to cry. The three kids in the back seat sat there and just looked at him, not knowing what to do. Keeping terribly still as their father, both hands on the steering wheel, cried.
“Everything’s okay, I’m just going to miss you a lot,” through the tears, “that’s all. But we’ll be together on weekends, won’t we? I can’t promise every weekend because I have to go to Cleveland some of the time, but maybe not too often. If I can’t be here your Aunt Catherine will come and take you to her place. You always like going there, don’t you? And she looks forward to seeing you too ...she told me. Yes, she told me, ‘you make sure I get to see those children of yours ...often. I like when they stay with me, they are such nice kids, fun to be around, and so well behaved.’ ”
He turned around and looked at each of them with eyes that little Alex never forgot; hollow eyes, glazed over, like there was nothing behind them, a torn-apart man, but oh how Alex loved him in that second; but now his dad was being taken away too, wasn’t he? He stole a glance at each of his sisters and realized that he would have to take care of them, protect them. Neither of them had a mother or, for that matter, a father any more; Alex would have to be both. He raised his chin ever so slightly and said, “Don’t worry Dad, we’ll be all right. I’ll take care of Dolores and Maria.”
* * *
This is the place where it all happened. This night should not have been much different than any of the previous nights during the almost four years the Fazio kids had been boarded at the convent.
Maria, now ten, had been told by Robert to meet him and her brother in front of the church. Robert was a bully. Again tonight, he knew he would get pleasure in making the two younger kids watch as he took his pack of cigarettes from the hiding place behind the church and light one. He would make Maria watch as he forced Alex to take a few puffs. It made him superior.
This night he was going to do more, he told them so. Robert and Alex were altar boys, and being the two oldest boys, they served at Wednesday evening devotions. Maria and a few other convent kids usually went along so they would get brownie points for going to evening church services. This night, when the service was over, she would do exactly as Robert had told her. She’d tell the others to go on ahead without her; she’d tell them she was going to wait for her brother.
“Go on, you’d better start heading back to the convent, and if Sr. Kostich asks where I am, tell her I’m waiting for my brother.”
She didn’t like waiting for her brother only because it meant going through misery with Robert. She was scared of him, especially tonight, scared for Alex but figured that just being there would offer some little bit of protection for both of them; she could scream, or run, but she was still really scared.
They had already been through this ordeal with the cigarettes a few times before and it frightened Maria and she knew what would happen to her brother if she told anyone. Earlier in the day Robert told her she’d better be there and to be ready because he was going to pull down his pants and show her something.
“You are going to like it,” he told her. “You are going to like it a lot.” She was petrified.
“And you are not going to tell anyone, are you?” he added. “I told you what will happen if you say a word, didn’t I?” Maria could only nod her head up and down.
Now she was waiting for them to come out of the church. The old church building was situated on the corner of the two streets, with a wall starting three quarters of the way up the right side of the church, where it then made a left turn and continued along the rear.
Tonight as they’d done before, they would sneak along the sidewall, and then they’d go through another narrow space to the left side of where the sacristy of the church--which was curved and contained the altar--butted up against the rear brick wall.
On the outside, during the time the wall was being built, the original doors leading to the outside quadrants on both the right and left sides of the sacristy were bricked up; but inside they were plastered over so the only evidence of their former function was a lintel over the place where each door had been. Outside, once you squeezed through the space between the side of the church and the wall facing the street, you’d end up in the tiny right quadrant. Then, being careful to step over the narrow doorstep that remained, from there another squeeze got you to the left quadrant.
On the left side and under the other doorstep, was an opening quite hidden because the rear wall butted so closely against the curve of the sacristy, and was very narrow. The dirt by the step had been dug out long ago, and the overhang from the church roof prevented any rain from getting in.
Robert was sure no one knew there was a hole under the step. For some unexplainable reason, no one ever went behind the church; the town kids didn’t hang anywhere around, it was too close to where the orphans were! They played in the parking lot, a block over from the convent, while the convent kids were confined to their walled-in playground.
Robert’s cigarettes were safe. He could easily crawl into the small, hidden opening under the step and stash his treasure; and once inside--the space under the altar was quite large--you could sit cross-legged, and since the dirt was hard-packed you didn’t even get any on your trousers that couldn’t be slapped off with your hand.
Several months ago he had shown the secret hiding place to Alex and Maria, warning them of the consequences if they as much as breathed a word to anyone about it.
“You can’t go in though,” he told them. “Only I can go inside. If I find out you went in I’ll kill you and hide your body in there. No one will ever find you; no one except me knows about this opening. That old janitor showed it to me. Sometimes we still come back here and I let him fool around with me--for money and cigarettes, but he got fired from his job here, didn’t he? See what I made happen to him? I can do the same to you, if you tell anyone.”
Now she saw them as they came out of the church door. Robert darted his eyes at her, the signal to not let anyone suspect they weren’t going directly across the street to the convent. The look scared her. Robert always scared her. He was big, tough and scary. She trembled a little, almost more afraid for her brother than for herself.
They stood around, Robert stalling until everyone dispersed.
“You did a good job Alex, the priest didn’t have to remind you of anything; neither did I. You did everything right,” he was saying all this so anyone nearby would think they were just having a normal, after the service conversation about altar boy stuff.
But anyone who really looked would see Alex and Maria were scared stiff; their eyes wide open and their mouths tiny slits.
“Let’s go,” Robert said as soon as there was no one in sight any longer, “follow me and don’t be looking all around.”
They slipped back along the side of the church and squeezed through the wall towards the rear. There was all kinds of stuff that had been thrown over the wall and into the right quadrant: pieces of lumber, pipes, part of an old broken pew; you had to step carefully over and around everything. You could not see this spot from the front of the church, so it made a great place to throw things that someone unrealistically thought might be useful one day.
Robert continued on, through to the left quadrant, then Maria; Alex took up the rear.
“Come on, and be careful you don’t trip or fall down, I don’t want anyone to hear anything or you’ll be sorry,” Robert whispered.
“Now Maria, you stand there, out of the way, Alex and I want to smoke a cigarette before I fuck you, isn’t that right Alex? That’s what they call it, fucking. I’m going to pull down your pants and fuck you. Then I’m going to fuck your brother, in his ass, and no one is ever going to know, are they? If you ever tell anyone I’ll beat you up so bad no one will recognize you. And if you make a sound I’ll beat you up right here. You understand don’t you, not a word.”
Maria was too terrified to do anything. She couldn’t even look at her brother, but knew he was just standing there, perfectly still.
Alex had time to contemplate exactly what was going to happen. Robert was the oldest boy in the orphanage, the most developed, and at night, when Sr. Kostich thought all the kids were asleep, Robert would call some of the older boys over to his bed. He’d make them watch as he masturbated. Last night he smeared the stuff over Alex’s face, laughing.
“Want more? I’m going to give you what that old janitor gave me; it will hurt at first then you’ll like it, you’ll beg me to do it, won’t you?”
This was directed especially at Alex who was too terrified to answer. “Answer me,” Robert said, “you’ll like it, won’t you, and no one will ever know, will they?” Alex shook his head up and down.
Alex had no idea what Robert was talking about but knew whatever it was he was not going to like it. He hated Robert. Why wasn’t Robert nice to him? He never did anything to Robert. His cousins back at Aunt Margaret’s house were sometimes mean to him, but never like this. What can I do? If I tell anyone how scared I am, Robert will kill me; or worse, he’ll hurt Maria, he said so. Besides, who will believe me? And the rest of the kids, they aren’t going to say anything; they’ll do whatever Robert says.
“Okay, get back to your beds, the show is over, get going,” Robert whispered as he slipped his underpants on again, then to Alex, “Tomorrow night, after church, I’m going to do it again, to you, and your sister, be ready.”
5
Now, more than twenty years later, it is difficult to know what actually happened behind the church that night. Alex remembers little. Maria never ever uttered a word and by some implicit means they agreed to never discuss it among themselves--and kept their unspoken promise to each other.
What is known, and mostly forgotten, was that after that night Robert was never seen again. Not that anyone cared. The Steeters--Robert and his sister Maureen--were true orphans along with Nancy and Joan Norbert and also Albert Venden. The others were being boarded for various reasons.
As we’ve seen, Alex, Maria, and Dolores Fazio lost their mother; the Costella’s parents just didn’t want their kids Samuel and Estelle any longer and figured it was better to have someone else to take care of them. Kathleen Sprague was slow and awkward, so probably an embarrassment and a burden to her folks, seeing as how they never came to see her. Ryan Goodwin and Arlene Stern each had no father because their parents were divorced. Elizabeth St Ann and Peter Christian were abandoned on the church steps as newborns, and given names by the nuns who found them. In some ways they were the most fortunate of the miserable lot; the convent was the only life they had ever known.
Robert Steeter, being the oldest of all of them and already shaving his substantial moustache, was getting close to being kicked out. He was difficult to begin with and the nuns were becoming fearful with the idea of having a fourteen-year-old teenager under their roof who was maturing too quickly, so since that night he was never missed. Everyone thought he had run away ... and good riddance!
The police were notified but they too figured he had merely run off; he was an orphan anyway so who was left to care? The officer doing the investigating however, thought it strange that he didn’t take any of his meager supply of clothing; the nuns thought it even more strange that he didn’t clean out his locker. They knew, since the kids had very little they could call their own, that a few of the things he left behind were among his prized possessions; especially his “Ruby Falls” pocketknife, but the policeman didn’t know that and no one thought to volunteer the fact.
His sister Maureen, from outward appearances, did not seem to care very much; she seemed to take it in stride. She left the convent a few months later; taken in by a family from Brooklyn--after a while she too mostly disappeared from most people’s consciousness.
No questions were asked of any of the other kids other than did Robert say anything about running away? Most kids figured “good riddance” as well, but were polite to the nuns, priests and police who were putting on a show of concern even though each inwardly believed he “just ran away.”
Case closed.
Because the adults asking the probing questions figured they already had the answers, there was no reason to suspect that Alex and Maria had any knowledge that they weren’t sharing, or more importantly, any idea as to what actually happened.
The only person who took more of an interest than the others, enough to prolong the investigation, was Father Mike Monahan. He called Alex into his office the next morning.
“So Alex, tell me exactly what happened last night. You and Robert often served Wednesday Devotions, didn’t you? Did you both arrive at the sacristy at the same time?
“No Father, Robert was already there when I came in.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He didn’t say anything Father.”
“He didn’t say anything, not even hello?”
“No Father, he didn’t say anything.”
“Were you late, on time, early; what time did you get there?”
“It was ten to seven; I looked at the clock to make sure I wasn’t late Father. Robert would yell at me if I was late.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Yes Father, I started the incense pot and put on my cassock Father, that’s all.”
“What did Robert do?”
“He got your cassock out of the closet, put it on the bench and went out to light the altar candles Father.”
“And all this while you never said anything to Robert and he didn’t say anything to you?”
“No Father; I mean yes Father.”
“Did anything unusual occur during the Benediction, during the service, that I don’t know about; perhaps I didn’t see?”
“No Father, I did everything right otherwise Robert would have yelled at me.”
“Then what happened? Begin when we all left the altar after Benediction was over, what did you do?”
“Nothing Father, I went into the sacristy with you and Robert. Robert helped you off with your cassock, you left and he gave it to me to hang up in the closet.”
“What did Robert do while you were hanging up the cassock?”
“Yes Father, he folded the alter cloth and put everything else away; on the shelf Father.”
“And neither of you said anything ... nothing ... during all the time you were together in the sacristy, neither of you said anything?”
“Yes Father.”
“That’s hard to believe. Robert talks nonstop, he’s always talking. If I hadn’t been in a hurry to leave immediately after the service was over he’d still be talking to me. And you don’t remember anything he said from the time you got to church until the time you left the church?”
“Yes Father.”
“You told Sr. Kostich that you and Robert left the church at different times, don’t the convent altar boys always walk back together?”
“Yes Father, I left first because my sister was waiting outside for me.”
“Why was she waiting for you, doesn’t she usually go across the street with the other girls?”
“Yes Father.”
“Then what was different about Wednesday night?”
“Nothing Father.”
“I don’t understand, if she waited for you instead of walking across with the other girls, why was she waiting for you? And what was Robert doing; why did he stay in the sacristy after you did; don’t you always finish up together and leave together, lock the door together ... not only you and Robert but any of the altar boys?”
“Yes Father.”
“I still don’t understand something. If you left before Robert to meet your sister, what was Robert doing? What do you think he was doing; was he waiting for someone and didn’t want you to see them?”
“I don’t know Father.”
“Are you sure you are telling me everything, something does not sound right and I think you know something you are not telling me?”
“No Father.”
“Was there anything unusual you saw; did Robert act strangely before, during or after the Benediction Service?”
“No Father.”
“But you just told me that Robert didn’t say one word from the time you arrived until the time you left the church, isn’t that unusual?”
“Yes Father. I don’t know Father.”
“One of the girls said you and your sister didn’t arrive back at the convent until almost eight thirty, yet the service was over a little before eight; what were you doing all that time?”
“Nothing Father, we were just walking slowly and stuff.”
“Where did you walk for a half hour, and what did you talk about?”
“Yes Father. We just walked slowly Father, besides it wasn’t a half hour; I had to put the vestments away; clean out the incense pot and stuff; put everything away, so it wasn’t a half hour Father.”
“Okay, run along but if you remember anything… anything…you come tell me right away, okay?”
“Yes Father.”
6
In all, Alex and his sisters Dolores and Maria lived at the convent for a few months short of four years. The first year or so was spent getting used to the surroundings and routines. Because nuns ran it, everything was simple, with simple routines to keep it that way; you got up on time, ate meals on time, prayed on time and went to bed on time. There were times and places where you could make noise and times and places where you had to keep quiet.
It was a period of time when nuns and priests commanded respect: there were no threats, no punishments; it was the way it was. Oh, there was an occasional rap on the knuckles with a wooden spoon, made to stand in a corner for a half-hour or so, no piece of hard candy after the cod liver oil or, feared the most, a special trip to the confessional where you would have to tell the priest you disobeyed and he’d dispense your penance--three Hail Marys or, for more serious offences, the rosary--simple, but it worked.
On the other hand there were not many rules, only routines. And these were strictly followed; pretty much the same routines that the nuns kept. The kids, like the nuns, arose at the same time early in the morning, seven days a week. You knelt at your bed and said morning prayers; you washed your face and brushed your teeth; you filed into the chapel for mass; filed down to the dining room for breakfast, and either went to school or played in the great room; or if the weather wasn’t miserable, went outside.
In the evening the routine was reversed, except for going to mass. Otherwise, play was mostly unsupervised and in order not to incur the wrath of the nuns, arguments, fights, brawls, in that order, and all other fooling around was adjudicated by the older and/or bigger kids--and all to the tune of “shush…sist-r’s coming.”
The convent building itself was rather old; smelled old--like old ladies--and creaked when you walked so that the kids spent an inordinate amount of effort figuring out and passing along to each other secret ways to sneak around unheard, and it was, on the whole, quite dark inside.
The main entrance, where Alex first noticed the name of the place, Holy Ghost Convent chiseled in the stone above the door, faced west and was in the center of the building, with the left side of the building, the actual convent, containing a small chapel for the nuns, their dining room, a common area for reading and relaxing and a few rooms where they could say their daily prayers in private. Upstairs each nun had her own room with three nuns sharing one of the bathrooms. There were also two more prayer rooms. The convent kids rarely went over to the nun’s side; there was no reason to.
On the ground floor, as you walked through the main entry, there was a small, sparsely furnished room on the left, a waiting room, where parents or anyone making a call on the convent could wait. Directly across on the right side of the hall was another room, a reception room, this one had a few comfortable chairs and a small table in the center of the room. All too often, after spending fifteen minutes or a half hour in this room, many a kid’s visitors, if they only came because they felt it was their duty, or to allay their sense of guilt, could pour out their excuse as to why they had to leave right away.
Under normal circumstances it is difficult enough for adults to have a conversation with kids, and when they don’t see each other very often the topics become quite limited. After you ask: how is school, what games do you play, how are the other kids treating you, what did you have for breakfast? both sides are anxious to get the torture over with.
If no one was using either of the reception rooms then kids expecting visitors were sometimes allowed to wait in one of them; otherwise they waited in the great room until called by Sr. Barbara--they were her rooms!
It was amazing how quickly those kids who had to put up with infrequent and or short visits became used to it. Visits to some of them, especially the two Costellos, who knew their parents didn’t want to come anyway and when they did come the parents unashamedly showed it, was something Samuel and Estelle did not especially look forward to at all.
The Fazios were different. Alex, who doesn’t remember much before his mother died, vividly remembers the times he was in that waiting room, nose against the glass, quietly thinking this was going to be that time he always dreaded: this time his dad would not come. Dolores would sit on one of the chairs reading a book and Maria, sitting close to her sister, quiet as well, would do her usual staring into space.
Out in the hall the main stairway was on the left side and went to the upper floor of the nun’s quarters. If you walked down the hallway past these stairs, past the telephone table tucked under the stairs, and through the double doors you continued into the great room where the kids got to their upper floor via the staircase along the far wall. The great room was the largest room in the convent and was used by the kids for playtime, general horsing around and occasional studying.
The wall under the rear stairs was completely covered with cabinets that looked like gym lockers with no locks, except that they were made of cheap wood and painted dark brown. Each kid had his own; the lower section was used to store your winter coat, gloves, boots and so forth, and had a shelf on top referred to as your “cubbie.”
It was the only space you could call your own. There was an unwritten rule, religiously followed, that no one would disturb another’s cubbie. Oh, one might go into the lower portion of the locker to borrow a coat, or boots; but the top, the “cubbie” was sacredly one’s own.
With few exceptions, each was set up as a scene or stage. One of the boys had his set up as a ranch. He had received a little horse figurine; he glued toothpicks together to make a fence in which to corral the horse; and drew a pasture of trees and mountains that covered the back wall.
Another had an altar set up: a few pieces of construction paper folded and glued into a rectangle was the altar itself; an ornate lace altar cloth was drawn on white paper, the lace carefully cut out with a scissor, and which hung down both sides of the altar; candle sticks and a crucifix carefully drawn on another piece of paper taped to the back wall served as the backdrop. Her prized religious medals were hung with straight-pins on the sidewalls.
Hours were spent kneeling on the floor in front of the cubbie carefully re-arranging the inside; each iteration of drawing and cut-and-paste designed to improve the scene. Apparently, it did not dawn on these children that their cubbie was their fantasy of being anyplace but where they actually were, or acting out someone they weren’t.
It would be interesting to have been there during this time to interview the nuns who certainly knew about the various cubbies--the boys and girls were proud to show theirs off--and ask them if they ever gave thought to what was missing in reality, so that their charges spent so much time creating and caring for their fantasy. Since there were no organized activities to fill the days ... who knows!
Robert’s cubbie was essentially bare, yet orderly ... perhaps so he could easily tell if someone disturbed anything. In it he kept his special leather gloves, an empty notebook, his “Ruby Falls” pocketknife, and a small box to keep his money. It had a dollar sign carefully drawn on the top. How much money? Nobody except Robert knew and perhaps nobody really cared. Certainly, nobody would dare to peek to find out. The nuns, of course, were oblivious.
In your cubbie you had to integrate into your scene enough space to store your “valuables.” Guess what these were? Simple things—there was not much opportunity to garner anything of value--certainly your prayer book; a religious medal if you won a spelling bee or had outstanding penmanship in school; a post card or souvenir from a relative; and in Alex’s case--and the focus of his cubbie-- a small bank. It was made in Japan. You could see that it was born as a Campbell Soup can, was about four inches square and about three inches high. If you inserted a coin the amount being deposited showed up in the little window--twenty-five cents, ten cents, five cents or one cent. It was a gift for his birthday from his Aunt Catherine.
Alex had seen it in a toy store window several blocks from the convent, which is another story, and desperately wanted it. He must have mentioned it to Aunt Catherine because she surprised him by purchasing it from the local store, wrapping it up and giving it to him for his birthday. The few coins he also received and kept in this little bank were the beginning of a lifetime of saving things, especially little stuff, and especially little boxes!
Toys were shared. The nuns shared all of their things, so why not expect the same from the children? If a nun was given money for her birthday, for her anniversary, left an inheritance, given a donation by someone whose prayers were answered, it belonged to the convent, to the religious community. In the same manner, if one of the kids received a toy, a game, a piece of sports equipment, a book--with minor exceptions--it belonged to everyone, and all immediately shared it. And to their credit, the meager stash was generally well taken care of.
To the right after you entered the great room, was the dining/study room with its long tables and benches, some nuns called it the library, sed for occasional studying. Occasional because each nun was busy doing her own thing, so monitoring homework periods was not something any of them did with any frequency. As long as the kids kept quiet enough, so they couldn’t be heard on the other side, the nuns’ side, they were left alone.
This was not a prep-boarding school. These kids were orphans, or in other cases not wanted by their parents so why should anyone care if they studied, got good grades, were accomplished in music, art, sports--as long as they didn’t cause the nuns trouble no one cared what went on, from the time they were innocent little children until they matured into inquisitive, precocious adolescents.
Up the stairs were two dormitories: the girls at the top of the stairs and the boys toward the front of the building. Sr. Kostich had a room in the far left corner of the girls’ dorm. Her walls were only three-quarters high, so she could readily hear what was going on--but really only on the girl’s side--and she would occasionally yell out to “stop all that racket,” “get into bed,” “do you want me to come out?” The latter was an empty threat because the kids knew it had to be very serious before Sister would go through the trouble to put on her nun garb in order to cover herself completely before coming out of her room.
A corridor, also with three-quarter high walls, ran between the dorms separating the girls from the boys. Girls’ and boys’ bathrooms were in each of the far corners of the upper floor. Here too, the walls were only three-quarters high so Sr. Kostich, as she occasionally walked around while the kids got ready for bed, could monitor goings on without actually having to go in even though she never hesitated when she thought it was necessary; it never made any difference who was doing what in there when she felt she had to, she just walked in.
Privacy was unheard of. The stalls in the bathroom had no doors, three sinks were lined up against one wall, and the shower room had three faucets placed next to each other. Think about growing up here. Most little children at about the age of four begin to want their privacy. Here the youngest was five and the oldest, Robert--at the time he “ran away”--was fourteen. Only a little imagination is necessary to picture the horsing around that occurred. Quiet and not wasting water were the only constraints.
The dormitories were wide-open spaces with rows of metal beds, and next to each was a small two-foot square, yard-high, three-sided box with a shelf in the middle; used to keep your meager supply of socks and underwear. At the far end of each dorm was a closet for hanging “church clothes”--so called because as far as the nuns were concerned Sunday Mass was the only time you had to “dress up.” The closets were covered by a heavy muslin drape so a good place to play in after Sr. Kostich shut off the ceiling lights and could be heard snoring.
The boys’ dorm, which faced the street, had a little bit of light that came in from a street lamp. The girls’ dorm was totally dark; not helped by the scarcity of windows, two small ones to be exact, and no outside lights at the rear of the building.
During the summer it could get very warm. If it was ninety-five degrees outside, it was probably one hundred on the upper floor of the convent. The kids would lie perfectly still in their beds, believing that the slightest movement would indeed add to their discomfort.
Strange how one remembers certain events--some good, some bad, some ugly. This night was good. Alex quietly got up from his bed and tiptoed to the open window. It was perfectly still outside; it looked like a photograph. The moon was to his back, beyond the building, and with its light showing brightly over the street, and with the city’s glow at the horizon, it was extraordinarily peaceful.
Alex does not remember how long he stood at the window: elbows on the sill, his hands cupping his chin, every so often shifting his weight from one leg to the other, and occasionally standing on both at the same time, careful not to upset the quiet. His bare feet on the cool floor felt soothing.
It was an epiphanic event; perhaps merely Alex’s first foray into an entering, a coming-of-age, a maturation, on to the next plateau of who he was, where he was, and what would become of him.
It went from the little boy who moments ago was fanning air into the dormitory with his cupped hand; believing wholeheartedly that if he coaxed enough cool air in, and did so for a long enough time, he could cool down the kids and Sister Kostich so they would sleep more comfortably; to the next moment beginning to understand that eventually he would be grown up; then daydreaming what it would be like when he was just a few years older--which in his mind was all grown up--and out in the world. He’d be with his dad; they’d do things together.
The week before when his dad visited he asked the three children, “Who wants to go to the park?’ Alex definitely wanted to go; he agreed so quickly and in such a way, that one could easily claim that the girls didn’t have any say in the decision at all; which, truth be known, didn’t matter to them; they all wanted to go someplace, any place. So, they went to a park not far from the convent. They parked and the four of them just walked around, having a wonderful time, feeling good. Except ...when they came back, his dad happened to look under the car and saw something leaking.
Alex was devastated. He immediately concluded that it was gas and he felt wretched. His poor dad, what was he going to do? Losing gas was wasting money that he had to work so hard to earn.
The little boy in him felt so sorry for his dad and he desperately wanted to hug him. He must have looked like he felt because his dad noticed.
“What’s the matter son, are you worried about the car? It’s okay; there is a little oil on the ground. I don’t want you worrying on such a beautiful day. We are here to enjoy ourselves, aren’t we?”
Sometimes exact words are imprinted on your mind forever, and this was one of those times. He was sure his dad was just saying what he did in order to make him feel better and to stop him from worrying. To Alex of course, it was evident that his dad too, was worried, but he didn’t want Alex to see it; that’s why he said what he did, about it being only oil.
Alex, the sheltered little boy, didn’t know about oil. Gas, though, he equated with money that had to be earned through his dad’s hard work. He blamed himself for being so enthusiastic about a ride to the park. What a selfish thing to do.
It had been little boy thinking. He didn’t have enough experience to fully comprehend a drain plug and what was involved in removing the plug, draining the oil, and then replacing the plug ... which in this case was not tight enough so it leaked, enough to notice but certainly not a costly amount. Besides, the mechanic who changed the oil would replace for nothing what was lost since it was his fault. Losing gas however, which he knew from the times he watched his dad fill the gas-tank, was serious. Aware of how much he had to pay only to have it leak on the ground would waste his dad’s hard earned money.
Perhaps this night, standing at the window, vacillating between being a little boy and entering his coming-of-age, if Alex had thought of that scene in the park, which of course he didn’t, he would now be able to recognize the problem for what it was ... in the entire scheme of things, “no big deal.” It would have been a clue that he was stepping into the world beyond the convent.
What he did think about while standing at that window was being out in the city. He had the strangest vision: he was standing on Fifth Avenue, in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but he was gigantic, in the neighborhood of ten feet tall; his legs apart firmly on the pavement; his arms folded across his chest; a smile on his face--he was no longer in the convent, he was out; he was grown up. He was so happy.
Until he almost fell down.
He began falling asleep just standing there. He tiptoed back to his bed, lay there looking up at the ceiling, realizing that before he knew it his dreams would come true. “I can’t wait,” he whispered to the air that now felt much cooler.
Getting ready for bed was a rackety affair that took about an hour. It was indistinguishable from playtime until Sr. Kostich came upstairs, clicking her little frog-shaped clicker a few times and signaling with “okay, that’s enough, five minutes to prayers so no dilly-dallying.”