You make me melt like a popsicle on the 4th of July. (Little Rascals)

High school was humbling. There were already well-established rock stars. I didn’t really like it and I tried to gain friends with drugs but that usually got me in trouble. I was an expert at getting in trouble.

My mother cried each time she met me in the principal’s office. Senior was friends with the principal and by the grace of his carefully worded calls alone I eluded stays at a juvenile detention center. I wasn’t old enough for jail yet but everyone was concerned that was where I was headed, everyone except me. I always had faith that my family would protect me.

“She’ll straighten out,” Uncle Tony assured, “you should have seen what I was like at her age.”

“I did,” said Senior.

“And look at me now!”

My father and Senior looked at him sceptically. My mother cried. I didn’t care really, but I heard it anyway as I lay on my bedroom floor, which sat right above the kitchen.

I was, as per usual, high.

“Penny, don’t cry.” My father put his arm around her. My bad behaviour hurt him more than her because he suffered twice: his daughter was becoming a criminal and his wife was upset. The latter was worse to him. Penny was more than just a wife, she was his world and I think he resented me at times for hurting her. I was living in my mother’s shadow. Everyone was. She was an angel among heathens.

“It’s this city,” my father complained. He rustled the newspaper angrily. “Philadelphia is going to the dogs. This used to be the home of brotherly love now it’s the home of violence, drugs and crime.”

Uncle Tony didn’t like it any more than my father when my mother was upset. It made everyone uncomfortable.

“It’ll be okay, Penny,” Uncle Tony offered and grazed his hand over her arm sympathetically.

Uncle Tony was looking for his own Penny. He had a three step screening process. There were girls who stayed over sometimes. That was no surprise. Girls who liked drugs liked Uncle Tony. He didn’t go out to the clubs often, mostly just on business, but he never had trouble meeting them, especially not after Vincent died. With the family dwindling down and his relationship with my father quickly becoming the most significant relationship in his life, Tommy encouraged fostering these relationships.

Step two was breakfast. If Tony snuck them out in a manner he considered discrete or even if he just smuggled something upstairs she had not advanced to step two. The players who successfully landed a spot in the second stage of screening were invited to breakfast with the family. I found it amusing, Senior didn’t play ball, my mother was cordial but uncomfortable, and my father loved it. He would quiz them and kid with them. My father found it all very amusing and he embraced it. Uncle Tony appreciated that but he could get defensive when my father went too far.

Uncle Tony cared about everyone’s opinion and while he drove her home, we would talk over what we would disclose before he returned. Senior hated the process. It was demeaning for the women and threatened the integrity of his house, but when Uncle Tony was gone he would offer something: a “hell no” or an “okay”. We would mould our opinions around his. Senior wouldn’t speak, sometimes he wouldn’t even stay, but Uncle Tony would try to get his opinion every time nonetheless.

Uncle Tony would take away our opinion, couple it with his own opinion, and then said girl would advance to step three, or she wouldn’t.