Chapter Eight
AARON
The tradition ofSunday dinners at Frankie’s parents’ house hadn’t changed, and though Austin had helped redecorate the house, he’d managed to keep the cozy warmth. Instead of the beige shag carpeting from the eighties, dark floors covered with thick rugs in muted rich colors of green and blue opened up the large family room. Comfortable furniture in soft velour had replaced the old sofa and chairs, and I was surprised to see Frankie’s father had given up his beloved, battered recliner—although he looked pretty comfortable in his new leather one.
In some ways, Frankie was like this house: a totally new person to me. Real estate and investing had never been our usual topics of conversation. Then again, we hadn’t talked much. Most of our time together had been in bed.
I sipped my club soda and sat quiet, remaining in the background while the loud and noisy Marone family argued among themselves about what to do with Nana Josephina’s estate. Frankie’s belovednonnahad died while I was in prison and left a three-bedroom house in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.
“Ma. You gotta clean it out, fix it up, and sell it. The market is hot now, and you can get good money for it.” A disgusted sound escaped Frankie, and the soda in the glass he held sloshed precariously near the rim.
“Watch it. You better put that glass down. If you spill that on my new furniture, I’ll get Austin after you,” Frankie’s mom, Jeannie, warned him with a death glare.
Happy to have something to contribute, I took the glass from him and set it on the coffee table.
“Stop changing the subject. I know you don’t wanna get rid of it, but you can’t hold on to it, keep paying taxes, and get nothin’ out of it. Soon it’s gonna be winter, and you’re gonna havta pay for heat. That shit’s expensive.” Turning to his father, Frankie tried to enlist his help. “Don’t you think I’m right, Dad?”
“Keep me outta it,” Carmine, Frankie’s father, said, shaking his head. “I’ve been beating my head against the wall for months now with her. She don’t listen to nobody, especially me.”
“Aaron. You know I’m right, don’tcha?” Frankie appealed to me.
Personally, I’d always been a little afraid of Jeannie. She was a no-nonsense straight shooter who could see right through you with those big brown eyes of hers. And I knew she didn’t like or trust me, so I sure as hell wasn’t going to get further up her shit list by agreeing with Frankie, even when he was right.
“I’m stayin’ outta this. It’s between you guys. I’m here for the lasagna.”
Frankie’s old man snorted. “Smartest thing anyone’s said all night.”
“Ma.” Frankie left me and sat down next to his mother. They were very much alike, with their dark hair and eyes and long, slender bodies that concealed their strength. “I know you miss her. We all do.”
“Selling that house…it’s like the last part of her, you know?” Her mournful gaze traveled to the picture of Josephina they had on the fireplace mantel, the one when she was a young girl in Italy; then she returned to plead with Frankie. “Once the house is gone, all the memories are gone with it. I’m not ready to let her go.”
Frankie told me Jeannie went to the cemetery every weekend to make sure there were fresh flowers on her mother’s grave. I wondered what it would be like to feel such love for a parent and to know they loved you back.
“Okay. I’ll stop pushing on the house. But what I’m not gonna let you do is keep the life insurance she had in a savings account. That’s earning you nothing, and you could be getting lots of money in interest. You should invest it. Buy some tax-free bonds.”
And like the night before, Frankie surprised me with his business savvy. I sat and listened, curious to hear his parents’ reaction.
“What do I know about that?” His father refilled his wineglass. “I run a grocery store. After taxes and all the other shit I gotta pay to stay in business, there ain’t no money left over to invest. I’m lucky I can pay the bills and have a little left aside. We were lucky my parents gave us this house as a wedding present ’cause I’m not sure we coulda ever afforded the mortgage.”
The man had a point, but that didn’t deter Frankie.
“Okay. So how about you let me do it?”
“Do what?” Carmine gestured to Jeannie. “When’s dinner? I’m starving.”
“Soon.” She brushed him off with a wave. “Now lemme hear what Frankie’s got to say. Go ahead. You wanna invest Nana Josephina’s money?”
“Yeah. Not all of it, of course. But you should have it in different places. Some low risk, some a little high yield.” He picked up his glass. “It’s good to diversify and see.”
An admiring glow lit Jeannie’s eyes. “Well, look at you. Under all that makeup and glitter you’re finally showing me what I’ve been waiting to see.”
He frowned. “What’re you talking about?”
“It’s like you try so hard to be the dancer and designer Frankie, you left behind the Frankie who used to do his math homework without a calculator and got As on all his economics tests.”
Why would Frankie keep this part of him a secret? I had a suspicion but kept my mouth shut.
“Do you remember your first paper route? How you figured out that in addition to delivering the papers, you would tell the elderly neighbors to look at the supermarket circulars and offered to shop for them because they couldn’t make it to the store by themselves?”
