American Desperado Read Online Free PDF Page B

about our stepfather, he loved our mother. After she died, he took her ashes to Florence, Italy, and buried her there. That had been her favorite city on their honeymoon, and he showed his devotion by taking her there one last time.
    He treated Jon and me terribly. He gave away her jewelry to my stepsisters. He threw out photographs. He made me buy the piano my mother got for me when I was little. The only item of clothing I kept of my mother’s was her plaid coat. It was red and black and had big buttons down the front. That coat was my mother: bright, bold, full of life. I don’t think Jon knew that woman. She adored Jon, but he didn’t see that. She died before he could figure her out.
    J . R .: My sister was the one fucked up by our mother’s death. She went insane over the piano. It was her only bond with our mother. She dragged that fucking piano from place to place for decades. She was never the same after our mother died.
    As I got older, I stopped holding a grudge against my mother. I saw she made decisions for reasons I didn’t understand as a kid. I don’t hate her anymore. I thank her. She gave me my life. I regret now that I never said, “Hey, Mom, I love you.”
    But that new way of seeing her came years later. When my mother died, it reinforced the way I was. Her death made me stronger. I didn’t give a fuck anymore about anything. My philosophy was, fuck the world.
* The Blue & Gold Tavern is still on East Seventh Street.

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    J . R .: Both my father’s brothers took an interest in me. My uncle Sam, from Brooklyn, was the only person on my father’s side who had any heart. He was younger than my father and looked more American to me. He’d come out to Jersey to visit me, take me for a ride in his car. I’d tell him about the trouble I was making at school and he’d laugh and tell me to knock it off. I used to wish he was my father, but then he’d go away and I wouldn’t see him for six months.
    My uncle Joe, my dad’s older brother, was bald and had a beak nose that made him look like a bird that could eat you. After my mother died, he had a car pick me up and take me to a restaurant in Little Italy. He had bodyguards sitting at the tables around him. He didn’t laugh or smile like Sam. But as different as my uncles were from each other, both told me the same thing: I should stay with my stepfather because it was good to grow up in a rich man’s house.
    My stepfather drank and drank after he lost my mother. He was a wreck. As broken up as he was, and as much as we hated each other, he let me stay in his home. He tried to make rules. He’d say, “It’s a school night. Be home early.”
    My older friends would come over, and we’d set back all the clocks and go out. I’d come home drunk, fucked up on weed, at two in the morning, and my stepfather would stumble out to yell at me. I’d point to the clocks set to the wrong time and say, “Fuck you. I’m home early.”
    My stepdad kicked me out of his house. My grandparents couldn’t handle me. My sister had gotten married and moved out of state. So I was sent to a boys’ home in Hackensack.
    Being in the boys’ home just made me closer to the older kids I’d been running with. The reason Ivor never ratted me out after I shot him on the basketball court was because he was afraid of these guys. * They were the worst kids in Teaneck.
    They called themselves the Outcasts, but they were never a true gang. They were just a group of kids that ran together. They became my brothers. They didn’t make me who I was, but they put a lot of craziness into me. God Almighty, what a crew they were. These guys were maniacs.
    There was Frank Messina. † His father was a typical Mafia thug who weighed four hundred pounds. He owned a driving school. He had one of those cars with two steering wheels, but Mr. Messina was so fat they had to indent the dashboard and push it back so he could fit. His son Frank was a small guy who was so nuts he used to wear a