For all that there were three
Vecchios and a Mountie sitting in the kitchen, there was still dead silence.
Looking around at his mother, sister and friend, Ray was the only one with the
presence of mind at that moment to realize what an unusual state of affairs
that was.
Ma’s glare towards Fraser was
so intense you could almost see her anger shimmering in the air between them.
Fraser cringed under the assault but still did not lower his eyes. He endured
her direct gaze - his well-deserved punishment for disobeying the will of a
mother. Not HIS mother. You are not my son. These were her words of two nights
ago. And what had he done to try to win his place in her affection? Interfered when
she had begged him not to and driven Ray’s older brother to God knows what rash
act of desperation.
Francesca sat crinkling her
brow and narrowing her eyes in what was perhaps an unconscious attempt to exert
pressure on her brain. She couldn’t figure out what was happening. Michael was
playing his usual passive-aggressive games. Nothing strange
there. But Ma was dumping on Fraszh. What the . . .?”
It was Ray that broke the silence.
“Wait a minute? You’re blaming Fraser for this?” He gestured at the note on the
table.
“I asked him not to
interfere,” was all Ma would say.
“Ma! He’s been doing this for years!”
While Fraser knew Ray meant
that Michael had been manipulating the family for years, he couldn’t help
thinking of another meaning for those words. He,
Fraser, had been interfering in people’s lives for years. Always
to the good. He couldn’t remember when his attempts had backfired before
now. Dear Ray. Ray was defending him as a friend would, but Fraser knew himself
to be guilty. Guilty of disobedience. Guilty of failing to save Michael Vecchio.
Ray went on, his anger
rising. “For years he’s been pulling this shit and you keep letting him get
away with it!”
“Don’t curse in the house,”
Ma said, automatically, with no real feeling. It was a reflex.
Ray jumped up from his chair.
“Curse in the house? I’ll tell you what’s a curse in this
house. Him! Him! He hurts Lina, he hurts the kids, damn him, and you
feel sorry for him. He’s messing with your head, Ma! He’s always done it. And
you keep letting him get away with it! Now you pin this all on Benny?” Then Ray
spoke the unspeakable in his rage. “Are you nuts?”
The others, especially Ma
herself, stiffened with shock as he shot these disrespectful words at his
mother.
“I begged him to stay away
from Michael.” But she released Fraser from the grip of her gaze, rose and
turned to the kitchen counter. “We should eat now,” she pronounced, evenly,
signaling that the conversation was finished as far as she was concerned.
“No. We don’t eat. We have
this out. Now! I can’t stand this anymore. No matter what he does, you take his
side. Lina throws him out in the street like he deserves. He comes to this
house. MY DECENT HOUSE! And you let him in and feed him and take care of him.
You take his side. Like he never did anything wrong.”
Fraser wished he could crawl away unnoticed, burrow into a hole and die. Not only
had he failed to connect with Michael Vecchio, this failure had somehow
alienated his best friend from his mother.
“You brother has his own
problems, Raymondo. He’s a sick man.”
Ray waved his arms around
wildly. “Sick? Sick?” Spittle flew from his mouth as he sputtered the words.
“Sick like Pop? Is that it? Is that what somebody has to do for you to love
him? Be sick? Like Pop?”
“Ray,” Francesca cautioned
softly “Maybe you ought to settle down.”
“No, I won’t settle down!”
Ray wheeled about in his place, whipping his arms high into the air as he faced
each person in the kitchen in turn. “What? What? This is MY fault? This is
Fraser’s fault?”
He turned to his mother, took
her by the shoulders and spun her around to face him. He grabbed her two hands
in his own. “Ma,” he pleaded, “Don’t you see it? This is Michael’s own fault.
He does this to himself. Pop did it to himself. They’re not sick. They’re just
no good.”
Ma Vecchio squeezed her son’s
hands. Tears formed in her eyes. “No, Raymondo, I can’t blame them for what
they are. I love my husband. I love my oldest baby. They’re not bad, they’re
sick.” She spoke of her dead husband as though he were still in the house
expecting her to take care of him, defend him.
Ray grunted and sagged as the
air rushed out of him. He let his mother’s hands drop. “Yeah,
sure. Whatever you say.”
What was the point, he asked
himself. She’s not going to change. I’m not going to change. I’m the good boy.
I stay home, I support the family. I never raise a hand to anybody and I never
talk back. This is my house but she rules it. He turned away from them all and
headed out of the kitchen. “Come on, Benny. Let’s go get some air.”
“Dinner,” Ma reminded him.
The word was a lifeline she was throwing out. Take it, Raymondo. Come back and
sit down. Put us all back to normal.
Ray was too crushed with
defeat to be interested in helping her restore normality. “That’s okay, Ma. I’m
not hungry right now.” To the Mountie he repeated, “Let’s go.” He slunk out
without looking back.
Fraser forced himself to look
to the old woman for permission to leave. Curtly, she nodded a brief dismissal.
Fraser got up. As he turned to leave the kitchen he faced Francesca and said
“I’m sorry I caused this trouble, Francesca.”
Francesca had to smile, just
a little. Here was Fraszh saying he was sorry, like he had anything to do with
anything. What a sweet guy. She touched his arm. “Hey, you didn’t DO anything.
This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Fraser licked his lips and
raised his eyes briefly to look at Ma, who was pouring spaghetti from a pot
into colander that was waiting in the kitchen sink. Her back was to them. “I
disobeyed your mother. I meddled where I shouldn’t have. If it hadn’t been for
me . . .”
Francesca interrupted him.
“You’re not the cause of this, Fraser. It’s been going on for a long time and
it’s going to keep on going. Nothing you do makes any difference. Okay?”
She had meant it as a
reassurance but the words “Nothing you do makes any difference” were no
comfort. He sniffed back the tears he didn’t want to shed in this setting and
waited momentarily to see if Ma would react to anything being said between
Francesca and himself. Ma was now rinsing the pasta and giving no indication
that she was even listening. Displacement, Fraser figured. She’s very upset.
Fraser dipped his head in Francesca’s direction in a silent leave-taking before
going out of kitchen.
------------------------------------
Ray wasn’t in the living
room. Fraser went to look for him in Ray’s favourite moping spot – his own
bedroom. Failing to find Ray there, Fraser tried out Ray’s second favourite
moping spot – the front porch. There he found his friend sitting on the
front steps, his elbows resting on his knees and face cupped in his hands.
Ray raised his head and
looked around at the sound of the front door opening behind him. As he turned
towards Fraser, the Mountie could make out, even in the dim porch light, the
tell-tale red of crying around his eyes.
Ray ventured a tiny, sheepish
smile. “Don’t worry about all that. Just the usual night’s
entertainment in the Vecchio house.”
Fraser settled in on the
porch beside his friend. “Your mother’s upset,” he ventured.
“Oh yeah, and I’m calm as
hell. Can’t you tell?” He chuckled but there was no mirth in his eyes as he
returned his chin to his hands.
“I’m sorry about this, Ray.”
Ray straightened up and swung
around to take a good look at Fraser. “You really are. You really are sorry,”
he said with some amusement.
“Shouldn’t I be?” Fraser’s
question was genuine. That he could have interfered and still had no influence
on the subsequent events was a startling idea. He sat for a moment, running the
concept through his mind. He went darting into the various corners of his
brain, trying to find a context in which to understand Ray’s strange comment. It
was a bizarre idea, totally contrary to his upbringing: not being personally responsible
for all the woes of the world. Ray’s next words tugged him out of his own head.
“She keeps hoping he’ll
return like the prodigal son. Oh God, her precious first-born. I’m nothing,
Fraser. I’m the good kid who stays home and doesn’t make any trouble and
doesn’t get noticed. In my own house,” Ray mused.
“Your mother loves you, Ray.”
The response hadn’t required any real thought. It was simply what Ray needed to
hear.
“Yeah, I know. Thing is,
knowing doesn’t help.”
“I don’t understand.” And, in
truth, Fraser didn’t.
“Better for you if you
don’t,” Ray said with finality and reached over to slap his friend’s knee.
“Let’s go in and eat.” He stood up.
Fraser sighed. He couldn’t keep
up with Ray’s emotional flights and plunges. Outwardly it seemed his friend
could leap emotional buildings at a single bound, going from rage to calm and back
again as easily as Fraser himself could jump over a fence. Still it felt like
there was more here than just the blow up of a Mediterranean temperament. His
friend was wounded this time. Somebody had stuck a knife out the window while
he was leaping the building and slashed his belly. Now Ray’s resentment was
spraying out like blood from the wound.
And nothing I do makes any
difference? Can that be true, Fraser wondered as he followed Ray back into the
house.