Power is not alluring to pure minds. (Thomas Jefferson)

When I was eight I got high for the first time. I didn’t mean to. I made a pot of tea to share with my mother who was in the study reading by the fireplace. I prepared the tray: poured milk, dappled out sugar from the bowl on the table, where my father and Uncle Tony were having their usual Sunday afternoon riot. I brought the tray in and even prepared my mother’s tea for her from the rations on the tray. She doted on me and was enthusiastic about “what a great girl” I was and “how sweet” I was. When the teacups were empty she realized that my sugar was heroin.

She was upset then angry, not angry like when the boys get angry, but angry in her own quiet way. It may have been the maddest I’ve ever seen her. She wiped away her tears and barged into the kitchen where in a firm voice she explained to the boys sternly what had happened. They giggled at the incident. She disappeared from the room and returned with Senior.

“What did you do?” Senior asked ominously.

“Nothing,” Uncle Tony defended with newfound sobriety.

“Penny tells me you two had a hand in getting her and Honey high.”

“Well,” my father started to explain before Senior silenced him with a fierce swipe that wiped the drugs and drug paraphernalia off the kitchen table.

He stormed out and my mother went with him, leaving the boys in silence. I could hear my mother crying in the other end of the house somewhere. I could hear Senior’s rich soothing baritone voice. I didn’t care about anything. I was high. I felt indestructible. I was a hero, no a heroine, and I loved heroin. I didn’t care about losing control. I had never felt more powerful. When my mother wasn’t around, which was rare, I would sit in the kitchen with my father and Uncle Tony. I would do drugs discretely and eventually not so discretely. I would listen to them intently and try to absorb every morsel of information they had to offer. I began to realize the importance of the information I could gain from them because they were the most powerful people I knew. I wanted to know everything there was to know about drugs, everything, and I wanted to know all about their lifestyles. They answered my questions and told me their stories. They didn’t realize it but they were training me to become a gangster.

After I got high that first time my fate was sealed. I always knew I wanted more power but now the plan was formulating as to how I could attain it. My family had the knowledge, history, connections – both good and bad, but I had something they never had: ambition. Ambition would make me and break me.

At age eight, heroin graced my palette and ignited the direction of my tireless thirst for power.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. (Ronald Reagan)

I realized the power of a gun that day and when I considered how many guns were at our house I realized my family must be pretty powerful. I started to look at our life more critically. I started to assess the people in my classes at school. I was suddenly very aware of how different my family was.

I thought I was better than the others. My clothes were nicer and newer. I didn’t have to take the bus. Someone was always waiting to pick me up after school in a car that cost as much as most of the teachers grossed in a year. People treated me with respect. No one ever butted in front of me in the cafeteria line. When I raised my hand in class other people would even take theirs down so I could be picked. They had been warned about me by someone but I wasn’t sure who exactly. Even the teachers seemed to have an element of fear when it came to me. No one dared to cross me. I liked it and I got carried away with the power.

Before I was out of elementary school I was commanding the student body as if it were a dictatorship. I was raised by men with addictive personalities and whether it was inherited physically or mentality, once I got a taste of what it was like to be in a position of power I was addicted. I devoted my life to it. Drugs were the downfall of my father and uncle. I watched them get high and dumb and thought that I would never be like them, not because of any sort of moral implications, I just didn’t like the idea of losing control of my body.

Knowledge is power, so I decided to be as intelligent as possible. My mother adored the library so I would go with her but I would never go to the children’s section. I would find atlases, encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and biographies – I loved biographies. I was grasping at the best of times to understand what I was reading but I understood enough to know that I was learning. My mother thought it curious, but she smiled and encouraged me to read and learn.

My mother was amazing. Everyone in our house had a profound respect for my mother, perhaps just because she put up with their nonsense. She was kind to the maid and helped out around the house more than she had to. She was sweet, much nicer than I ever was or ever will be, but she always looked tired. My father never slept while my mother kept regular hours, but she was the one who always looked tired. Maybe she was tired of living with boys, maybe she was tired of pretending she had no family of her own, maybe she was just physically tired, I never figured that out but I remember seeing her face change. It was perfect and pure and angelically pale but as I got older I watched it get wrinkled and lumpy. She was still beautiful but her face wasn’t as soft and wasn’t as young. She aged faster than she should have. She was becoming an old lady while she was still a young woman. But my father didn’t seem to notice. He looked at her as if she was the only woman in the world. I envied that, not in a malicious way, but I envied the way he admired her because she was the only person – the only woman anyway – I knew who was treated better than I was. She was more respected, more beautiful, more gentle, more compassionate, more knowledgeable, more spiritual, and more loved than I was. I began to realize that all the traits that she excelled in over me all combined to make her more powerful. What was frustrating about this was that she didn’t care about power. She was content to be poor, ignorant, and utterly forgettable as long as she had her family. When I say her family I mean my father and me not the family she knew before us. She gave up even them to be with us. There’s something to be said for sacrifice but I didn’t learn lessons in sacrifice until I was much older.

Every war is different, every war is the same. (Jarhead)

I was born into a world of dreamers and drugs where hope was everything so it only seemed apt that Hope would be my name. Hope was written on my birth certificate, it was my mother’s choice. My father wanted to name me Martha. Uncle Tony wanted to name me Lucy. Senior called me Honey. Eventually Honey replaced Hope.

Don’t be fooled by the charming little name, dripping with sweetness, I was not the conventional Honey. I was raised by men, not just men, but wise guys. My mother was the best, don’t get me wrong, but I was always more interested in what my father and Uncle Tony were up to. I clung to Senior like he was my teddy bear. I was a man’s baby.

My mother and father took me to church sometimes and I sat through Sunday school with all the other kids but they treated me differently and I was always aware of that.

Someone asked me once, when I knew my family was different. I didn’t always know it was strange to live with my grandfather and uncle. I didn’t always know it was strange to have guns lying around the house or a panic room – I actually liked it when we ran to the panic room and got locked in there for an hour or two. It was exciting and fun and everyone focused on my needs and comfort the whole time. The baby, everyone worried about the baby.

I didn’t even realize how far from normal my family was when my mother’s father came and tried to rescue me. He tried to smuggle me out of the house one day when I was home alone with Uncle Tony, which didn’t happen too often, I’m not even sure how it came about then. Uncle Tony caught him and pulled a gun. He threatened the nice old man and for the first time in my life I knew fear. It’s ironic, I guess, that the first time I was afraid was the first time I met anyone from my mother’s honest and innocent family. Meanwhile, the lifestyle of the gangsters I was very much incorporated into from birth, well, that didn’t faze me.

Still, I didn’t realize my family was different until I was six. My mother had a book club meeting. She went once a week. This particular week it was at our house. So my father and Uncle Tommy let me come along with them on a routine distribution run. We stopped at a rundown house and they locked the doors of the car with me sitting wide-eyed in the back seat taking it all in. They approached the house and a man staggered out, he looked confused and harmless. As my father and Uncle Tommy joked with him, he raised a gun in slow motion. Their demeanour instantly changed. They didn’t pull out guns but they tried to talk the guy into putting his away. I didn’t understand what was happening. I could sense the danger but didn’t feel any urgency. Guns were commonplace to me and didn’t hold a grave impact.

The man shot at Uncle Tony.

My father pulled out his gun and shot down the dazed aggressor with two bullets. Uncle Tony had staggered back and fell to the ground though the bullet didn’t hit him. My father picked up Uncle Tony and they ran back to the car and we sped off. They acted like I wasn’t in there as they thrashed through what had happened.

At age six, I witnessed my father kill a man. He had never done that before.

Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about. (The Beatles)

Dear Ricky,

           If someone is reading this I must have gone through with it. I was never a coward but I doubted I had the strength to put off this final job. My last goal has been accomplished and I’m now in the depths of hell rubbing elbows with Judas, Hitler, and you. I don’t know what will become of my soul. I never gave much thought to spiritual matters so I won’t start now.

           I lived my life fast and hard and now it has to end. Even if I didn’t have the courage to end it myself it would be ended for me so why not do it myself while some dignity remains. What’s one more murder added to my tally? There will be more murders to come at my hand even after I’m gone. I hope that both perplexes and impresses you. I always wanted to impress you.

            Ricky, you were the only friend I ever needed and the only person I wanted to impress. You, alone, were my family. When I lost you I lost my purpose, direction, and my family. Your family was kinder than they needed to be but they couldn’t replace you and in the end they removed me, discretely. They snuck me out of their fold to die alone because without you I wasn’t truly one of them. Perhaps even with you I wasn’t truly one of them, but it felt like I was.

Was I just delusional? I wanted so bad to be a part of you in a more prolific way. I wanted to be more than a friend but I couldn’t quite muster familial status. Now I’ll never know what I was to you. You’ll never know what you were to me. No one knows anything.

             I’ve laced a noose and hung it over a pipe. The Beatles told me nothing is real and nothing to get hung about but I don’t believe that now because there will be no strawberry fields forever for me. There were never strawberry fields for me. My life wasn’t good but it wasn’t hard. No one will write any books about a two-bit criminal who didn’t change the world but I don’t care because who is there to impress with my stories now that you’re gone? It all comes back to you and it always will. I’m dying now but I’ve been dying since your death. I’ll be dead soon but what does it matter when I’m dying anyway? And what does it matter to you when you’re already dead?

            When the prison doctor, who could care less if I lived or died, told me I had AIDS I didn’t ask what it was or how I got it. What did it matter? I asked if it would kill me and he said yes. He frowned as he told me as if it was disheartening but he didn’t care and I didn’t care. It gave me a glimmer of hope because maybe, just maybe, our corpses don’t just rot in the grave. Maybe we do have spirits and maybe death could bring my spirit to your spirit. So why wait around? Why not take control of what is left of my life? He asked me if I had shared needles with anyone or slept with any men. I laughed. He looked at me with unnerving seriousness. I said yes. He listed the danger and detriment of my actions. I was dying, what time did I have for lectures? I didn’t have time for lectures when I was living.

            I came here to my little cell and wrote a letter to you. I ripped it up and threw it out. I’ve written this letter over and over again. This letter is my legacy and I don’t need my legacy to extend any further than you.

            Nothing is real. Lie. Nothing to get hung about. Lie. But my scratchy record player will belt out the Beatles’ lies as I die. I hope when the chair tips beneath me the needle skips and as I gulp my last breaths, wriggling like a fish out of water, the record skips again and again and the Beatles repeat: strawberry fields forever. That’s all I want now: forever, forever in hell with you. I would go anywhere for you.

Goodbye, Ricky, I love you. I always have and always will love you.

The difficult years end up being the greatest years of your whole life, if you survive them. (Brittany Murphy)

Vincent had left a note but no one would read it until after his funeral. Aside from a priest and both his estranged parents, our family were the only people present. His father shook Senior’s hand and thanked him for everything he did for Vincent.

I always wondered what could make a man waste his life. How could someone do that to themselves? What could bad enough to make live unliveable? I didn’t know Vincent well when I wondered that.

By the light of the moon the boys returned to Vincent’s snowy grave and built a small fire beside the headstone. They passed around a bottle of scotch. Each time it reached the end of the line they poured a splash onto Vincent’s grave. They talked about all the crazy things he had done and all the reasons they would miss him.

Senior took a flashlight and opened Vincent’s letter. He almost passed it on but neither Tommy nor Rider nor Tony wanted to read it.

So many 25ths of December, just as many 4th of Julys, and we're still holding it together. (Celine Dion)

In September, Rider went and pulled their drug dump out of its emergency grave.

By the end of October, it had all dwindled through the dorms of UCLA, bars on the sunset strip, bums on the Southside of the Venice Boardwalk, pimps in Long Beach, and everywhere in between.

In November, Rider came home for Thanksgiving and brought his girlfriend of the week just so he had enough luggage space to store all the cash. Tommy gave him back a generous portion for his troubles and they put the rest in the panic room.

In December, within one week of each other, Senior and Tony were both released from prison early on account of good behaviour.

On Christmas Day, the family was together, doing what they did best: drugs, drinks, and fights. Now Tony and Rider both had girlfriends. Tony had met his at a local strip club after his post-jail resolution to go out more came into effect. Rider’s was the twin sister of Tony’s girlfriend. The relationship had an expiry date. It would spoil on January 1^st when Rider would return to his new home.

The gifts were opened and everyone was sprawled out: full of turkey and heroin. Then it was time for the best gift: me.

Just before midnight on Christmas Day I came into this world of magic and mischief, greeted by an ex-made man/snitch, a future rocket scientist/current heroin addict, a strung out uncle on patrol and heroin, a pair of matching strippers, a father who hadn’t slept since December 18^th and hadn’t been properly sober since November 18^th, and a mother who loved them all.

In January, the phone rang. Vincent had committed suicide.

Penny cried. Tommy cried. Tony sobbed. Senior sighed. Rider asked why. I did nothing because I was a baby. I had never met Vincent, though I would hear stories about him for the rest of my life.

The road is long and in the end the journey is the destination. (OTH)

She hung up the grimy payphone and they bought two shovels in the tiny town well-off the highway and they kept driving further and further off the map. A very pregnant Penny helped Tommy dig a hole, as deep and as fast as they could. They dumped it and covered it over discretely. They memorized the location and headed home.

They were stopped just north of the Arizona state line. They waited outside as the troopers looked through the beast on wheels. They pulled it apart but Penny didn’t mind. Tommy feigned rage as they tore apart his camper. They laughed about it after as they were traveling free and clear all the way to Philadelphia.

The phone was ringing when they walked into the estate.

“I’ve been calling nonstop,” said Rider.

Tommy was alarmed. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Kiss your wife for me. Shit, she’s brilliant!”

You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can. (Jimmy Carter)

Penny froze. Her skin tingled all over and she was speechless. She may have said she was speechless before but she had never actually been incapable of making words.

“Tommy,” she choked. “We have a problem.”

“Is it the baby?”

Penny shook her head. Tommy didn’t believe her but she didn’t waste time trying to explain. She let him come to terms with it while she formulated a plan.

Penny ordered Tommy off the highway and into a middle-of-nowhere town where she found a payphone and called Rider. Vincent answered Rider’s phone and Penny made sweet small talk with him and assured him everything was fine. She asked if she could speak with Rider, she was sure she had left her book there and she wanted Rider to mail it to her in Philadelphia.

“I don’t see it around.”

“I’m not sure where I left it. It might be in Rider’s car even or on the balcony, I was reading it out there. Actually, I had it in the bathtub last night. It’s probably in there,” she rambled.

“I’ll tell him.”

“Well it’s a really good book I want to tell him he can read it before he sends it to me.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Can I? I know he’s not going to want to read it because he thinks Yeats is pretentious and even if he starts it he’ll get hung up on the subplot and stop reading partway through so I just want to tell him to focus on the– ”

“Rider,” he called, “Penny wants you.”

“Hello,” he greeted her.

“Pretend I’m trying to convince you to read a book I left there that you don’t want to read.”

“I don’t know, Penny, you have a questionable taste in literature.”

“I got the note. Thank you. Have you moved the supply yet? Say subplot for yes, motif for no.”

“What motif? That was just a child’s scribbling. He didn’t intend for that to be any kind of omen – it was an accident at best. He’s so overrated and people just read way too far into everything he writes.”

“We’re turning the tables. Send him out to meet a buyer and report it to the cops.”

“I don’t know, Penny. People say things under duress that can really be detrimental to a writer’s reputation.”

“He won’t rat you out. He won’t know it was you. Think of something to set this up in his mind so when he’s busted he’ll immediately assume it was someone else who called on him. Suspicious neighbours, a disgruntled girlfriend, pretend that you were arrested too. That’s it. Bribe the police. Tell them you want to come clean and you’ll sell out your partner in exchange for immunity. They love that stuff. They can fake arrest you too and he’ll never know they let you go. Not until it’s too late. He’s dangerous. He’s trying to sell us out. We’ve got to break him before he breaks us. We all need to stay out of jail.”

“What about you? What will you read while I have your book?”

“We’re going to bury the stash in the desert, like the absolute middle of nowhere. Then we’re going to go home drug-free and come back for it when things cool down.”

“I’m sceptical, Penny, but I guess I’ll read it. I’ll try anyway. I won’t make any promises.”

“Be careful.”

“You too.”

I’m torn between the compulsion to run and the urge to stand still and hope the danger will pass. (Koren Zailckas)

Vincent arrived as scheduled. Rider met him at the docks with a couple of his friends. They moved the crates into three separate trucks and drove them out of town. Vincent drove with Rider in his borrowed pickup truck. They met at the pre-determined spot on a gravel road off the highway in the dessert.

Two crates were unloaded to the waiting Winnebago. They threw the bags of powder into the back. Penny covered the heaps of product in blankets while Tommy settled with the drivers and talked with Vincent who had at the last moment decided to stay with Rider for a little while and would fly back later.

Rider emerged from a car where he had been sitting alone when Penny hopped out of the Winnebago, ready to leave.

“You look cold,” he told Penny.

“I’m fine,” she said. “It’s the desert.”

“Take my jacket,” Rider insisted.

“No, that’s fine – really.”

Rider forced his jacket over her shoulders and whispered, “Keep it.”

She looked at him curiously but didn’t argue.

Tommy and Penny said goodbye and set sail across the country in their Winnebago. A little further on their journey the heat got to Penny and she took off Rider’s coat. She slung it over her seat and if she hadn’t been so nervous about the load they were transporting she could have easily missed the slip of paper that fell out of Rider’s jacket and landed on the floor.

Penny picked it up and unfolded it carefully. Rider’s scribbled handwriting spread across the sliver of paper. The writing was scrawled but the message was clear:

It’s a setup. Vincent is going to screw you over.

We live in a crazy world, and if you want to get through it with your body and soul even a little bit intact, you might as well be crazy yourself. (Kinky Friedman)

Penny pursed her lips and raised a curious eyebrow.

“Vincent carries two guns, I mean all the time. He sleeps with two guns under his pillow, he locks the bathroom door when he showers and keeps two guns on the counter, right now: wherever he is there are two guns on him.”

“Why two?”

“The second one saves him.”

“I don’t want to know anymore.”

Rider stopped talking but a moment later, Penny pressed, “He’s never killed anyone.”

“I thought you didn’t want to know anymore.”

“I don’t,” she reminded herself. “But he hasn’t.”

Rider didn’t respond.

“What about the others? Have you?” She gasped, “Has Tommy?”

“I haven’t. I’m a coward. I would never have guts to kill someone – at least I don’t think I would.” He paused longer than he needed to, before adding, “Tommy hasn’t either.” Rider didn’t like Penny’s sigh of relief. “He has beaten men blind, crippled men, done a lot of terrible shit, but he hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

“Tony?”

“Not really.”

“Vincent?”

Rider turned his back on the city and leaned against the rail looking to the balcony tile.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Did Ricky?”

Rider pursed his lips.

Penny shivered.

“Senior hasn’t?” she begged.

Rider lifted both eyebrows.

Penny ran both her hands through her hair. Her arms quivered and her eyes watered.

“You had no idea?”

“That I live with murderers? That I married into a family of them? That I’m about to give birth to a baby who will grow up in a house where people carry guns? No, I didn’t know about any of that.”

“But the drugs, heroin isn’t for the faint of heart…”

“Drugs seem okay, I don’t know, I never grew up in this. I let a sheltered life and I had no clue this family was so bad. I guess I just assumed this was what people do when they don’t go to church. They do drugs and its okay, it’s like drinking.”

“No babe, other families aren’t like ours.”

She started to sob. Rider was uncomfortable. He had disillusioned his sister-in-law who stood a foot away from him, full of child, sobbing and sniffing and shaking.

He offered an apprehensive hand to her arm and she collapsed into him in an upset embrace. He held her. It felt nice to hold a woman like this. It felt nice to comfort someone in need.

A life flashed before him: a wife, a baby, another, a home, a real life.

This life he could have lead flashed before him as he dangled from the balcony of his high-rise apartment with his brother’s iron grip around his throat. The soundtrack to his missed life was Penny’s shrill scream. She pulled a gun from Tommy’s belt and held him at gunpoint.

“Let him up,” she squealed. “I’ll shoot.”

He knew she wouldn’t. She knew she wouldn’t. Rider knew she wouldn’t. Tommy pulled Rider back onto the balcony and dusted his brother off.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I’m…”

Penny dropped to the floor of the balcony and sobbed. Tommy rescued the gun from her hand and held her until the sun set. Rider got high.

It’s not like we’re kids anymore. Everybody grows up. It’s not like Peter Pan or something. (The Wonder Years)

Later while Penny was out on the balcony, Rider slipped through the door behind her.

“I thought Tommy didn’t sleep,” he teased, pointing back to Tommy asleep inside on his couch.

“Everybody sleeps sometimes.”

Rider leaned against the rail beside her and they looked out on the sprawling city.

“You look different in the sun,” Penny told him.

He squinted curiously. “Compliment or insult?”

She smirked. “I’m not sure yet.”

“How are things at home?”

Goosebumps formed on her forearms despite the heat.

“Okay.”

“What does ‘okay’ mean?”

“I love Tommy and I love your family.”

“But?”

“But sometimes I miss my own family.”

“What does Tommy tell you to do?”

“We don’t really talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not sure.”

“This is my dream you know, to be with Tommy.”

“Is it all you expected it to be?”

“Sometimes it’s more, sometimes I cry because I’m so lucky. Sometimes it’s less, sometimes I cry because I’m scared and I don’t know what’s going to happen to us.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is dangerous.”

“What is?”

“This life: the jobs, the drugs, Tommy is going to get himself killed in Philadelphia. I love the house and I never want to move but sometimes it’s hard to be so close to my estranged parents. Sometimes I wake up in the night and Tommy is out walking around and I can’t get back to sleep because I’m so afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of anything, of everything. It’s not like your family is without enemies and it’s not like they are overly discreet either. Anything could happen.”

“Don’t think like that.”

“I have to: no one else does. Tommy, Tony, Vincent: they all think they’re invincible and untouchable but they aren’t. We’re just regular people living an extreme life.”

“You don’t have to be afraid.”

“No, that’s what Tommy would tell me but it’s not true. I’ve been living in the dark and I’m just starting to realize how dangerous this life is.”

“But what you haven’t realized is how dangerous the men you live with are.”

They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't. (Marilyn Monroe)

Rider smiled sympathetically as his balcony door slid open and a woman strolled from the balcony into the apartment. “You won’t believe–”

She stopped. Everyone stopped.

“Oh, I forgot you were here. This is my brother, Tommy, and his very pregnant wife, Penny.”

“Thanks for that kind introduction,” Penny said thanklessly.

Rider winked. “I thought you’d like that.”

The woman cleared her throat.

“What’s your name?” Tommy asked.

She looked to Rider waiting for an introduction.

“Do you need something?” he asked

She looked at him incredulously.

He pulled a circle of bills from his pocket. He licked his thumb and flipped a couple off the stack for her.

“What do you think I am? Some kind of hooker you can pay off in the morning and send on her way?”

“It’s money for a cab.”

“I live in this building.

He scratched his head.

“You have really nice hair,” Rider offered.

She threw the bills at him and stormed off, slamming the door behind her.

They all laughed.

Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience. (Victoria Holt)

Tommy and Penny drove the hideous Winnebago across the country. Penny cried when they arrived in California and she saw Rider for the first time in nearly a year. He didn’t take it to heart because in her pregnant state she cried a lot, sometimes she didn’t even notice that she was crying.

“You look like you’re about to explode,” Rider commented.

Penny laughed as she wiped tears from her face. “And I still have another four months left.”

“Penny,” Rider laughed, “you’re going to give birth to a teenager!”

Tommy heated up a sheet of aluminum foil in Rider’s brightly lit bachelor apartment. Don’t be fooled by the bachelor quality; the apartment was impressive.

“How’s school?” asked Penny.

“I hate it. I’m still catching up on sleep and the semester ended months ago. I don’t know how people find time to work and shower and sleep.”

“I don’t sleep,” said Tommy, “and I don’t even go to school.”

“I stay up all night studying not strung out on drugs.”

Tommy looked at him sceptically.

“Heroin helps me stay awake; it’s not why I stay awake.”

Tommy rolled his eyes and dove into the heroin heated in front of him.

“What about you?” Rider asked. “How is school?”

“It’s good,” Penny said half-heartedly.

“But?”

“But I just wish I had finished school before I had got pregnant. It’s going to make it difficult next year.”

“You can do it. Aside from consenting to marry this slump, you seem like a real smart girl.”

“I’m switching into another program. In September I’m transferring to a program to teach English as Second Language. It’s shorter than a regular teaching degree. If I can keep this baby in me until the end of the fall semester and have enough time to study correspondence during the winter, I can graduate in the spring.”

“Wow,” said Rider. He joined Tommy at the foil.

“I don’t know why she’s in such a rush,” Tommy said. “There’s lots of time for school. You don’t need a job. By the time we get back to Philly we’ll be rich again.”

“I know,” she sighed. Tommy didn’t understand why she wanted to study. He didn’t understand how important it was to her or why she felt like she needed a diploma or degree to solidify her efforts.  

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. (Martin Luther King Jr)

“I compromised my family too many times and when I finally decided to step up it was too late.”

“That’s not true.”

Senior smoked.

“I was the reason their mother abandoned them. I was screwed. I was about to be caught.”

“By the police?”

“No, I wouldn’t worry about that. It happens from time to time. A couple years in the joint now and then aren’t too bad. I was respected in jail back then. No, I was about to be caught by the man I was working under. My partner and I had been skimming a little off the top and my partner got offed, I knew I was next and I had nowhere to go. Everyone under me was under him and suddenly I went from second in command to royalty screwed. So I resorted to the enemy.”

“Who’s the enemy?” Penny gasped.

“The law,” he shrugged. “I was put in the witness protection program. They bought me this house. But my wife wouldn’t go. She refused to leave her life and her lifestyle. I told her I had to take the boys. I explained that they were in grave danger, as was she. She let me take them as if we were splitting up property. I told her she would never be able to speak to them because it would compromise our location and she cried but she didn’t come. She’s now married to one of the men I used to work with and lives the same life I led back then.”

“Do you miss her?”

Senior shook his head. “I miss the life but not her. The only thing she gave me was the boys and I have them now. They are my life. Family is life, remember that.”

Penny nodded.

“But I wish I could give them the luxuries they almost knew when they were babies. I burnt too many bridges and now the best I can do is small time shit. The law doesn’t protect me now. The trial is over and the kingpin is gone; murdered in jail by the man he gave up in the eleventh hour. You’ll come to find that people always have a price, a boiling point. Freedom was his price. Family was mine. Once you reach your boiling point you’re done. I can never succeed in this business again. I can never trust anyone again.”

“But you still make money.”

“Pennies.”

“But this is a big.”

“This is Vincent’s project.”

“But you all share your profits as a family.”

Senior looked away from the house and into Penny’s eyes. “We did. Vincent is suggesting a new pay scheme. This isn’t sitting well with me, Penny.”

“What did you say?”

“I agreed. Whenever someone is trying to overthrow the power the best thing to do is to let them think they have control. Let them believe they are gaining ground.”

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Penny repeated from a book she had once read.

Senior smiled.

“Maybe I’m a paranoid old man.”

Penny nodded. “I’ll watch out for him.”

“Vincent or Tommy?”

“Both. Don’t worry while you’re away, I’ll take care of all of them.”

For the first time since her wedding day, Senior embraced her.

“You’re a good kid, Penny, a very good kid.”

He snubbed out his cigar on the fence and tossed the butt into the forest.

They started back to the house together.  

Studies have shown that people convince themselves that they're acting rationally when making major decisions--where to go to college, what to major in, who to kiss or not kiss--when they're really acting on unconscious impulses. (Megan McCafferty)

Senior was only ever involved in small time business now and as Penny started to wrap her mind around their business she began to wonder why he was so respected, feared even, but yet so apprehensive.

One night she went for a walk. She walked the length of the meadow that stretched out in front of their home. She walked to the edge were the looming forest barricaded her path.

A figure moved in the shadows and she took a step back with a frightened hand on her oversized stomach.

“Hello,” said Senior, taking a step forward.

She exhaled and relaxed.

“Did I scare you?”

She just smiled.

“Penny,” he said carefully, “you are a smart girl and I know you love my son.”

“I do,” she nodded.

“I know you’d do anything for him and that may be your undoing.” Senior took a long draw of his cigar and exhaled a stream of musky smoke.

“What do you mean?”

“I never expected to be a man with children. That changes things. That compromises your judgement and gives you something to lose.”

“I think Tommy already has something to lose.”

“You mean you?”

Penny nodded.

“Of course,” Senior nodded. “But about this baby, you need to protect him or her. I’ve trained my boys to care about their work and protect themselves and I’m afraid, I’m afraid Tommy obeys me and compromises this child’s life or he doesn’t and compromises the mission. I know to you it sounds simple: the child, protect the child, but if he compromises a mission he compromises his brothers: my children.” Senior inhaled another drag from his cigar. “Penny, I think it shows real commitment to this family when you stepped up and offered to participate in this job but you have to understand this isn’t going to play out as smoothly as Vincent lays it out. It’s going to be dangerous. Things are going to go wrong. You have to be prepared.”

“I’m not sure what you’re asking me to do.”

“I’m going to be in jail, Tommy’s going to be in jail, Rider is going to stay in California, Tommy is going to be pre-occupied with you and the pending baby, and then there’s Vincent. You have to protect yourself and Tommy needs his head wholeheartedly in this. We’re all at our weakest for this.” Senior hushed his voice, “Vincent has been like a son to me but since the war he’s different. He’s crazier and wilder. You can never trust someone whose next move you can’t predict. Ricky embedded him in this family and without Ricky, he’s just floating here and maybe I’m wrong, hell, I’ve been wrong before but Penny I want you to make sure you are not Tommy’s undoing, just in case.”

“You don’t want me to go?”

“No, I do. You will help. But Vincent wants you there, that worries me and I can’t figure out why. Maybe I’m a crazy old man, paranoid after too many mistakes. Don’t tell any of the boys I told you any of this. I don’t want them to doubt Vincent. They need to trust him, but while I’m away I need one rational person to be conscious of him.”

Penny nodded.

People change, but they do so reluctantly and with the tinest of increments. (NYPD Blue)

“Right,” Vincent scoffed. “That’s quick and secure.”

“Disguise it. Speak in code.”

“What does that even mean?” asked Tony.

“Like write it on a birthday card or something?” asked Tommy.

“Penny will help you write in code,” said Rider. “I’ll understand.”

“Do you think we’re too dumb?” asked Vincent.

“No, I just–”

“Penny will help,” Senior confirmed.

“Just because we didn’t go to school like them doesn’t mean we’re not as smart as them.”

“Drop it, Vince,” said Tommy. “So what’s the big plan?”

“I’m going to hang up now.”

They bid Rider adieu and discussed the mammoth project.

“If this goes as planned it could keep us in the clear for a decade,” said Vincent. “One of my men from my platoon in Vietnam is working on a container ship now. He owes me a personal favour so he is getting me on the ship. I’m going to use a fake identity. I have a fake id ready. I’ll work on the ship like a regular smuck. I have my papers ready to apply for leave from the army.”

“Wait, you still work?” asked Tommy.

“Sometimes,” he shrugged. “Post-traumatic stress, I come and go as I please. Anyway, my contact on the ship promised me there is enough room to sneak at least three extra crates on if they match. I’m going to have them made and waiting at the port. My diplomat friend can get me as much as I can move. He is connected everywhere.”

“Why don’t we work at an embassy?” asked Tommy.

“The dip will get it to Thailand. We’ll pick it up there. Smuggle it on the boat. Smuggle it off in California. Rider will help move it on land. He promised that he can sell a crate there and we’ll truck the other two back here.”

“How?” asked Tommy.

“That’s where you come in. You and Penny can drive it across the country in a camper or a van or a campervan. It shouldn’t be difficult – no border crossings.”

“I don’t want Penny involved.”

“Come on, Tommy. I’m doing the lion’s heart of the work here. Senior and Tony are in jail. Rider is receiving. You just need to the product across the country with your inconspicuous pregnant wife.”

“I’ll ask her.”

Vincent laughed, “Never imagined you’d be the kind of guy who lets his wife call the shots.”

Tommy tackled him out of his chair and they wrestled on the ground until Penny walked in and announced: “I’ll do it.”

You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

One afternoon when Tony and Vincent were shooting up the secret was spilled again.

Vincent was the only one not to pass the secret on. Senior was the only one in the dark. Vincent took the matter into his own hands. One night when Penny’s father brought the garbage to the curb he was met by Vincent dressed in dark clothing. He surprised him with a headlock that blocked his airway and voice. In a deep disguised voice, he warned him not to bother them again. He systematically made three shallow slices along the noble victim’s forearm.

“Make another call,” he threatened. “I dare you.”

Vincent threw the man to the ground and ran away. He jumped in his car at the end of the block and drove home.

Penny was lying on the sofa with her bulging baby belly exposed. Tommy knelt on the floor next to her whispering to the baby. Penny laughed as his lips tickled her stomach.

“Where were you?” Tony asked nonchalantly as Vincent walked in.

“Nowhere,” he replied shortly.

Tony didn’t care. “Let’s light up,” Tony said, getting to his feet and heading to the kitchen where Senior was talking on the phone with Rider.

“I’m coming too,” Tommy said. He followed them out leaving Penny alone in the living room.

“Rider,” called Tony, “how are you, Hollywood?”

“Your brother says hello,” Senior relayed to Rider. “All of them.”

“Can I talk with him?” asked Vincent.

“We’re going to talk together,” Senior said and switched Rider to speakerphone.

“Rider!” they cheered and heckled him about the sun.

“Vincent and I have been talking with some friends in the west,” Senior said seriously. “We have some debts that we need to take care of.”

“Debts?” asked Tommy.

“You think it’s cheap to live like we do?” Vincent asked. “The supply we’re bringing in is barely enough to keep the house running. Forget any profits.”

“We need to be careful right now. Tony and I are going to take a sentence for possession and bribing an official. We’re offering to take it because while we’re away the cops are going to feel safe and take the pressure off the house. No one will be watching. This is an opportunity.”

Vincent swallowed.

“So while we’re away we’re going to make a big move. Once we get out, and we won’t be in long, it needs to be over because we’ll be watched even closer then than we are now.”

“Should I be connected as you make the plans? What if the phone is bugged?”

“You’re too long in the sun, brother,” said Tony. “How would someone get in and do that?”

“Still, I’d rather not listen in. I’m in – whatever happens, I’m in. I need cash and I need real stuff, this west coast shit is killing me. Send me letters.”

Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in, and no one can stop it. (Jerry Seinfeld)

She didn’t know if he was elated or bereaved. Everyone held their breath. The moment was suspended as they watched and waited for Tommy’s reaction.

He took a single step and swept her into the air. He spun her around and around and around then stopped abruptly.

“Does this hurt the baby?”

She laughed and kissed him.

The boys cheered and laughed and poured champagne more generously – now they really had cause for celebration.

“Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it's all right!” he sang holding Penny suspended above the ground. “Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter. Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here.”

This is where things get interesting because this is where I enter the story. My mother was getting fatter everyday and she had stopped talking to her parents. Tommy pried and she confessed that her father had been the one to report the tip to the police. Tommy didn’t know what to do with the information. The novelty of having someone to share a bed with was wearing off and he slept less. One night when he was strung out with Tony he confessed in the wee morning hours that Penny’s father had made the call. Tony didn’t know what to do with the information anymore than Tommy did.

There are two great days in a person's life: the day we are born and the day we discover why. (William Barclay)

Senior was like a surrogate father, Tony was like a brother, when she realized where they were she was upset. She called her parents in tears and instead of compassion or help, her father revealed that he had been the one to summit the tip that they were soliciting drugs on the trip that day.

“Aren’t you suspicious of these road trips Tommy takes?”

“I trust Tommy and until just now I trusted you.” Before she slammed the phone onto the receiver, she announced, “You’re about to become the grandfather of Tommy’s child.”

When Tommy and Vincent returned they were angry but calm enough to rationally store their new supply in the panic room before heading to the station to make bail. Senior hadn’t served time since he pulled five years in his twenties. Tony had never.

They celebrated bail with champagne. Penny declined.

“You love champagne.”

Everyone looked at her.

“Um, this wasn’t how I wanted to tell you but, Tommy–”

“What is it, Baby? What’s wrong?”

“I’m pregnant.”

His glass slipped out of his hand and smashed into a hundred pieces on the floor. His jaw dropped.

It is said that the darkest hour of night comes just before the dawn. (Paul Coelho)

“If he has so much money why doesn’t he buy you a house?” Penny’s father protested.

“He doesn’t have a lot of money. Senior has a lot of money.”

“Well, maybe he shouldn’t be driving around in that Cadillac.”

“His father gave it to him as a present for completing a big project. They share their money: a join house fund. Senior oversees it and delves it out as needed. They don’t hoard their own cash supplies. They get what they need, what they want, and Senior oversees the rest. That’s why they get along so well. Everyone works together. It’s a team and that’s how a family should be.”

“It sounds like communism and I still think Tommy should buy you a house. What kind of boy is fine with living in his father’s house all his life?”

She sighed. “You don’t understand.”

“Frankly, it frightens me that you do.”

When they first got married, Tommy slept. He was relieved to have someone beside him. They would go to bed before the sun set sometimes and his brothers joked but they didn’t mind. He would sleep for ten, twelve hours a night. He made up for all the sleep he lost during his nocturnal summer. Many times Penny would read while he slept if it was too early for her. She would read novels, textbooks, the notes she had taken in class.

In the mornings, Tommy would get up when Penny was ready and drive her to class. He would do heroin all day with his brothers with an occasional trip to Washington to break the routine. He would pick Penny up after her classes were over. In the evenings she studied. They would go out to eat sometimes but most of the times they would stay in. Penny would cook and Tommy would help. The maid would do the dishes. The boys loved Penny’s cooking even more than their favourite takeout and when she didn’t have to study she liked to cook for them. She started to teach Tony how to make some of his favourite recipes but he seemed hopeless. She sent him to her mother’s to pick up some misdirected mail when she had taken off to Vermont with Tommy for a few days. Her mother had been getting ready to make tortellini and Tony had almost begun to drool at the mention of the dish. She invited him in and he helped her make it. He wasn’t received well by Penny’s father so he took his serving to go and tipped her one hundred dollars. She didn’t tell her husband.

Tony visited Penny’s parent’s house from time to time in the afternoon while her husband was away. He learned to make tortellini better than Penny and surprised her with the dish one day. The boys were all impressed but Penny was more uncomfortable than anything. She knew she should be happy about the intertwining of their families but she felt more uncertain than anything.

Tommy was becoming proficient in the kitchen too. Perhaps proficient was too generous a word. On mornings that Penny had an exam Tommy would get up when she did and he would make her breakfast as she hurried around getting ready and cramming crumpets of information into her brain. Tommy’s breakfasts were never extravagant: scrambled eggs that were a little too runny but still somehow burnt, topped off with the occasional crunch of eggshell tidbits. Penny appreciated the gesture though. She was convinced she had the best husband in the world though somehow he still felt like a boyfriend. She felt like they were playing house and that it wasn’t real.

Things got real one day when for no apparent reason, two police officers came to their door.

One presented a search warrant. They both began to overturn the house.

Vincent and Tommy were gone to Washington when they came. Senior tried to stall them with charming words as Tony tore into the kitchen and tried to secure their recreational stash sprawled about the room. The officers heard the scuffle and redirected their search. Maybe if Tony hadn’t been high he could have been stealthier. Maybe if Senior hadn’t tried to bribe them he wouldn’t have been escorted to jail too. Maybe if Penny hadn’t been vomiting upstairs she could have helped, she could have prepared tea for them in the kitchen or at least pretended to, which could have covered Tony’s poor hiding capabilities. Maybe if Vincent and Tommy hadn’t been gone. Maybe if the circumstances had been different Penny wouldn’t have come downstairs to an empty house.