Death Before Dishonor Page 9

  Terry was their artist; Yuri was their athlete.

  Yuri was also in trouble now.

  He leaped from the armrest onto the end table, readying an assault on Francesca’s cabinet. “Yuri—son!” Pat asserted. “You want to stop acting like a savage and sit down quietly for Daddy? You’re acting like a monkey with a hyperactivity disorder, climbing all over Mommy’s furniture like that. She’ll kill us all if she finds out.”

  Yuri paid Pat no attention—they weren’t even on the same planet. Right this second, Yuri had a fight to win. He coiled like a spring, preparing to leap across the danger-filled chasm that separated Mommy’s couch-fortress and the cabinet-mountain that he desperately needed to climb.

  “Hey, monkey-boy!”

  Yuri returned to earth and looked at his father.

  Pat continued, “You want to give it a rest? We don’t jump on furniture. I was giving you the opportunity to realize that yourself.”

  Yuri didn’t hear the last part; all he heard was the first part: monkey-boy. “Don’t call me that, Daddy!”

  “Call you what, kiddo? I call you a lot of things.”

  “A monkey!”

  “Why? Did I hurt your feelings, princess?”

  Yuri’s nose crinkled. “Don’t call me that, Daddy!”

  “I didn’t call you a monkey this time.”

  “Princess, Daddy! Don’t call me that!”

  Pat neared Yuri and lifted him clear of the table and tossed him back onto the couch. Yuri laughed and began to rise. Pat’s hand shot up. “Sit your behind down on the couch and calm down. I’m not going to say it nicely again, monkey-boy.”

  “Daddy, don’t call me that!”

  “Toughen up, kid. It’s a harsh world out there,” Pat said, changing the TV to something more kid friendly. “How about you watch this?”

  “Okay,” Yuri squeaked as he flopped back onto the cushion and lounged with his feet in the air.

  “So, um ”—Pat returned his attention to Terry—“your mom told me to come have a look at you. You wouldn’t happen to know what she’s talking about, would you?”

  Terry was still scraping his pencil across the paper. “I don’t know.”

  “Terenzio Gianni Ciccone!” Francesca’s voice thundered from the kitchen. Terry’s head popped to attention—when his mother said his whole name, the world was on the brink of destruction. Francesca continued, “You know damn well what Daddy’s talking about!”

  Pat gave Francesca a disapproving look. “Baby, can you give us a moment please?”

  “Pat, he—”

  Pat pumped the palms of his hands at her slowly and repeatedly. “I got this.”

  “But—”

  “Babe, I got this.”

  Francesca growled, recalcitrant.

  Pat returned his attention to Terry again. “Alright, son, I’d really appreciate it if you told me what Mom’s all wound up about before we all end up on punishment.”

  Terry’s drawing hand came to a halt. He inhaled deeply and then exhaled with a sigh. He looked up at Pat, revealing a swollen and bruised eye and a cut lip to match.

  “That’s a nice shiner you got there. I bet I don’t want to look at the other guy.” Pat nodded approvingly. “I had a couple of those in my day. Does it hurt?”

  “Not really.” Terry resumed his artwork.

  “Tough guy—I gotcha, I gotcha. So, uh, how’d you get it?”

  Terry shrugged.

  “You don’t want to tell me? Fair enough.” Pat shrugged too. “Finish your picture. We can always talk later.”

  Suddenly, Yuri launched towards Terry, but Pat caught Yuri in mid-flight with both hands. Yuri squirmed and bucked.

  “Someone’s about to be out back with the dogs in the monsoon if they don’t start listening.” Pat placed him down again. “Now, sit down. Do I make myself clear?” Pat’s face was stern.

  Yuri batted his icy blues. “Yes, Daddy.”

  ***

  Francesca, temper still burning white hot, threw dinner into the oven and slammed the door. She realized that this wasn’t Pat’s fault—or Terry’s for that matter—but she was afraid that Pat would dismiss it as part of growing up. This wasn’t a part of growing up; no child deserved to grow up in a school that refused to provide fairness and justice because the child wasn’t of similar race. Worst of all, she knew what she wanted from Pat but also knew that he was going to oppose it. She needed to find a way to say it…diplomatically, as Pat would say. Fat chance of that. She’d slam something else to vent her frustration instead.

  “Slamming the oven isn’t going to change things, hun,” said Pat sardonically as he reentered the kitchen. “Why don’t you sit down for a moment?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “How are people going to eat if I sit down, Pat?”

  Pat managed to get a hand on her arm and stop her. “You know I’m perfectly capable of cooking. Why don’t you let me take over?”

  “No,” she said, taking her arm back and resuming. “Cooking and grilling are not the same things. You’re not feeding my babies burnt food.”

  Pat shrugged and then aimed himself for the nearest chair and let gravity do its job. He plopped his chin to his hand and watched his wife shuffle from one area of the counter to another without pause. “Babe,” he said, “of all the traits you could have passed to Yuri, why’d it have to be your hyperactivity?”

  “Don’t test my twelve steps today,” she growled. “I’m not in the mood. I’m not hyperactive and never have been.”

  Pat raised a brow. “Not according to Marcella.”

  Francesca grunted. “You believe everything my mother tells you.”

  “Not true,” Pat hummed. “I didn’t believe her when she told me that you were going to be an incredibly angry wife who would crush the souls of non-believers everywhere.” He flashed a grin.

  Her eyes cursed him over her shoulder before she whipped around with a knife in her hand, pointing it at him. “That’s your last one tonight.”

  “C’mon, Fran.” Pat threw his hands in the air. “This situation isn’t bad enough that we can’t share a laugh.”

  “I’m not in the mood to laugh.”

  “Okay—fine.” Pat’s grin crumpled. “We don’t have to do the loving-couple thing today. Just tell me what happened, because Terry doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.”

  At the very least, she could have given him a hug and welcomed him home before dumping the “we got a serious problem” into his lap—she realized that. It was moot now, though. She’d make it up to him later. Right now, she needed to keep her focus on Terry.

  “That’s what’s really bothering me,” she started. “He’s so bottled up. It takes forever for me to get anything out of him. And it’s been getting worse lately. I feel like I’m doing something wrong.”

  “You’re not doing anything wrong. You show that boy more love than he probably needs. That’s just the way he is. For the same reason, we can’t get Yuri to stop climbing the walls. It’s in Terry’s makeup. We just have to keep hammering it home that communication is crucial.”

  “I know. I just…I just…I don’t even know how to feel.”

  “Do you plan on telling me what happened?”

  “Thanks a helluva lot, Mr. Sensitivity!” On second thought, she wasn’t going to make it up to him later. “No, that’s fine. I didn’t need you to care and listen to how I’m feeling!”

  “Whoa, pump your brakes, turbo. I never said I didn’t care how you felt, but I thought we were talking about Terry.”

  Francesca sneered.

  He continued, “You going to tell me what happened?”

  “He got in a fight.”

  Pat blinked. “That much I’ve gathered.”

  “You asked—”

  Pat raised a calming hand in the air. “Let me be more specific with my question: What happened? Who was involved? Where did it occur?”

  Francesca planted her hands o
n her hips. “Supposedly, Terry was in the courtyard after school and was approached by some Japanese kids, and they attacked him.”

  “Did he fight back?”

  “The principal didn’t say.” Francesca pointed into the living room. “He sure as hell doesn’t look like it, though. And you know how passive Terry is, Pat. He doesn’t have much of a killer instinct.”

  “What did the school say they were going to do about it?”

  “They didn’t say they were going to do anything. That’s what’s got me all pissed off. Terry’s suffering, and nobody wants to do anything to help him.”

  “We’ll go to the school tomorrow and interrogate the principal about his plans regarding the fight.”

  “That’s not going to solve anything.”

  Pat rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “How you figure?”

  “Because they don’t care. It’s not going to get any better like that.”

  “Honey, be positive about this. Kids get into fights all the time. It’s part of growing up.” He rolled his eyes. “I can’t count how many I got into it with. We just need to make sure that the school is holding all kids equally accountable.”

  “Well, they’re not. In their minds, he’s just some stupid American kid.”

  Pat’s expression became paternal. “Francesca, positivity, please. Do that for me?”

  All right, she had reached her wits’ end with diplomacy. There was no diplomatic way of saying it. She’d spent this entire time trying to point out that there was no high road out of this situation. So she decided to come right out and ask it. “Why don’t you teach Terry to fight?”

  Pat’s face slacked until gravity turned his mouth into a frown and made furrows of his brow. He returned his face to his hand and stared at her suspiciously.

  “Patrizio?”

  Then he said, “Not going to happen,” finally.

  “Why not?”

  “You already know the answer to that question.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Pat’s voice came down an octave. “We’ve talked about this before. Neither of my sons is going to learn how to fight. I will not encourage them to feed their egos with violence. Nor will I give them an avenue to be exploited by some unscrupulous bastard who sees them as a means to an end that only unfolds to their disadvantage.” He repositioned himself in the chair and sat back defiantly. “Not going to happen.”

  Francesca approached and scooped his face up with both hands. “My love, I didn’t say turn him into a boxer. I said teach him how to fight so he can defend himself.”

  Pat’s mind was instantly drawn back to the past:

  His father Dominic and his Uncle Isaac are tired of Pat being jumped by local street thugs. They teach him the sweet science and encourage him to show no fear, fight back, prove to the street that he can’t be pushed around. Pat fights back for the first time and loses. But he gains self-respect. He fights back again and again and loses. One day, he fights back, and he wins. The rush is incredible. He keeps fighting back, and he keeps winning. There’s a bloodlust that draws him into more fights. He is arrested one night. Dominic and Isaac bail him out. Pat is sternly berated by both men for being caught. They take him to a boxing gym called Cousin Geno’s Slaughter House. Pat trains and fights with amazing talent. The men praise him for it. The rush is incredible. Pat fights and fights and fights. He fights in the gym, in the ring, in the street. He fights. He draws blood. They praise him. They don’t praise his school work. They don’t guide him in his relationship with the girl he’s dating. They don’t guide him in his future. They guide his bloodlust.

  “Defending myself was how I got started,” he replied, pulling his face away. “My answer is still no.”

  “But you can teach Terry control—control you never learned.”

  “Already am. I’m teaching him control by teaching him how to think his way out of situations—not by fighting. There is no such thing as restraint in a fight. To fight, you have to be willing to deal with escalation; you have to be willing to take somebody else’s head off before they take yours. I’m going to teach my sons to be men, not animals.”

  “This isn’t going to get better; it’s only going to get worse. Pretty soon these kids will start using knives and guns, and if no one is stopping them now when they’re pushing and shoving, no one is going to stop them when they bring real weapons. I want our sons to know how to defend themselves.” She offered Pat her hands. “Can we at least teach Terry to defend himself so that we don’t have to bury him early?”

  “My answer is still no.”

  “What good are you?” She threw her hands up and let out a frustrated sigh. “You know what, Pat?” Her hands found her hips.

  “What, Francesca?”

  “All you’ve given me is more problems. I don’t need more problems; I need solutions.”

  Pat rolled his eyes. He said that to her all the time. Now she was using it against him. Clever girl. It wasn’t changing anything, though. “I’m not going to teach him. That’s my final answer.”

  “If you won’t teach him, would you agree to self-defense classes? Like karate or judo or something? I mean, we’re in Japan. Somebody here has got to be a kung fu master.”

  Karate wasn’t out of the question. It wasn’t gladiatorial like boxing was, but it still could be used for fighting. He wasn’t sure if he was opposed to it or not. “I don’t know.”

  “Pat, something has to be done.”

  “I don’t know, Francesca.”

  “Pat, please. For me.”

  Anxiety was starting to collect in his gut, and he clenched his teeth, trying to relieve the feeling. Maybe martial arts is an option, he thought to himself, but the doubt was still winning. “I’ll look into it.”

  ***

  “This is the place,” Pat said as he eased the brake in and brought the van to a halt just past a fire hydrant and a pile of garbage.

  “Charming.” Francesca swiveled her head, examining the congested street. The buildings seemed to have been built right on top of each other without regard practicality or appearance. The street was in disrepair and flooded with sewage from the recent monsoon. “Looks like the street you grew up on.”

  “True—but based on recommendations from one of the locals at the embassy, this place has a great reputation.”

  She gave Pat a sidelong glance. “For what? Racketeering?”

  “Looks like it, huh?”

  “Who exactly is this local?”

  “One of the national officiates. He used to be a local representative here in Tokyo.”

  “Omigod! Is that a chicken?” Francesca screamed, startling everyone—Pat jerked in her direction, Terry bucked, and Yuri squealed. She covered her mouth with her hand and pointed out of the window with the other at an elderly Tokyo native carrying a thrashing bird and butcher knife.

  “Goddamn, Francesca, you almost gave me an aneurysm,” Pat replied.

  “You scared me, Mommy,” Yuri said, giggling.

  “Omigod, Pat”—Francesca gripped Pat’s arm, mortified—“she’s going to kill it on the street!”

  “You have to kill a chicken to eat, baby.”

  “Okay, asshole, thank you! I’m not stupid! I just have never seen anything like that. Who the hell kills chickens on the street?”

  “First time for every—”

  Francesca squeaked when the blade came down and separated the bird’s head from its body, cutting Pat off.

  “Mommy, look!” Yuri yelled with his face pressed against the passenger-side window, mesmerized by the decapitating spectacle.

  “Yuri, stop yelling.” Terry grabbed his younger brother by the back of his shirt and peeled him away from the glass. “Sit down.”

  “Let me go!” Yuri yelled as he struggled beneath Terry’s grip. He lost his balance and fell back into his car seat when Terry overpowered him. Frustrated, Yuri bucked and kicked the back of the seat.

  Pat whipped around. “Hey—hey!” h
e barked. “What the hell is wrong with you two?”

  “Dad, Yuri was standing up in his car seat,” Terry said. “I was—”

  Pat cut him off. “Who calls shots in this family?”

  “But, Dad—”

  “But, Dad nothing. Who calls shots in this family?”

  “You do.”

  “That’s right, I do.” Pat indicated himself with his thumb and then pointed towards Francesca. “If I need help, I have Mommy.”

  “Baby,” Francesca chimed in, watching the woman carry the chicken back to her shop and seemingly oblivious to the interaction between Pat and the boys, “that was so disgusting.” She searched for her husband’s leg with her hand and patted it several times when she found it, never taking her eyes off of the chicken. “Why would she do that on the street?”

  Pat ignored her. “Yuri,” he said, glaring at his son, “you want to explain why you’re out of your seat?”

  Yuri’s eyebrows were as high on his forehead as he could lift them as he pointed out of the window. “I wanted to see the chicken too, Daddy.”

  “How about you do what I tell you to do?”

  “Okay,” Yuri replied plaintively.

  “When are you allowed to get out of your seat?”

  “When Mommy tells me to.”

  Pat squinted his eyes. How had he just been left out of that equation? “Or when Daddy tells you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  That made Pat feel a little better. It was the small things in life sometimes that mattered most—like manners, for example. “Yes, sir?” Pat asserted. If nothing, his sons were going to be polite.

  “Yes, sir,” Yuri repeated obediently with a puffy face belying his hurt feelings.

  Pat signaled each son with a nod. “Both of you better get it together.”

  “Dad, I—” Terry began, mounting a defense, but Pat wasn’t having it.

  He snapped his fingers at Terry. “Shut it,” Pat commanded and then spun back around. Terry’s face crumpled, and he turned to the window, crossing his arms.