Yellow Mama E zine

Breaking The Chains

 

by Armand Rosamilia

 

          My father was a very bad man. Never to his family, mind you. Only to those who crossed him. I was not like my father . . . until I was.

          Growing up in the 60s in New Jersey meant summer trips Down The Shore, where my father would spend most of the time not enjoying the sun and the sand but getting worked up over the New Yorkers who packed I-95 with their bratty kids and stupid accents.

         Bennies go home was a usual refrain from my old man, but he’d pepper every other word with profanity. My mother would ignore him, tending to us kids so we didn’t get sunburnt or go in the ocean right after eating a hot dog.

         My father worked for an organization everyone called “The Family.” Newark-based Italians who kicked up to the bosses in the Five Boroughs . . . until they didn’t.

         Which meant one sunny day in the late eighties a man knocked on our door. It was a Sunday, and my father was actually home, about to sit down to watch the Yankees game with a heaping bowl of my mother’s meatballs and spaghetti.

          I was upstairs, about to come down, when I saw it all happen.

         My father opened the door with his bowl. The man shot my father twice in the chest and then once in the face when he fell to the ground, spaghetti and meatballs everywhere.

         I remember wondering if my mother would have me or one of my siblings clean that up later.

         The man glanced at me, still holding the gun, before he simply turned around and left.

         It was the first time someone had not thought of me as a threat and turned their back.

         My father had some legit businesses, and my mother began to run them. More importantly, she showed her kids what to do and when she died we all got a piece of them, with her doling out who controlled which one.

        I was ‘gifted’ with the toughest one, a chain of shoe stores in North Jersey. I’d worked in the stores growing up, so I knew the business.

        It was at the turn of the century, when everyone was freaking out over Y2K and all of the computers crashing, when I saw the man who’d been at my front door again.

        Business was good and I’d settled into a simple married life with kids of my own. A decent-sized house overlooking a lake.

        The idea was to never look back on the life we’d led, to keep our head down and stay legit. Stay happy and live our lives, right?

        Except there He was. The man who’d killed my father all those years ago. Sitting at the counter at the deli having a BLT like it was nothing. I suppose it was to him.

        I sat down next to him at an open seat and stared. At first, he ignored me but then he put down his sandwich, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and turned at me. “Do I know you?”

        “You should. You killed my father many years ago.”

        He shrugged and picked up his BLT again. “I killed a lot of fathers back in the day. So what? Are you here for revenge? Let me buy you a sandwich and we can both walk away without anyone else getting shot. Sounds good?”

       It should have. The smart move would’ve been to let it go. Life had been good since my father had been murdered. We grew up tougher, but our mother had always been fair.

        No, I had too much pride. Instead of waiting for him to leave to follow, I picked up his fork and jabbed it into the side of his neck, over and over, knowing my life was now over.

       I wondered who was going to have to clean up his BLT as it fell to the floor.

 

 

       Armand Rosamilia is a full-time author of crime fiction and horror who loves coffee, bourbon, and bourbon-flavored coffee.

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       Bernice Holtzman’s paintings and collages have appeared in shows at various venues in Manhattan, including the Back Fence in Greenwich Village, the Producer’s Club, the Black Door Gallery on W. 26th St., and one other place she can’t remember, but it was in a basement, and she was well received. She is the Assistant Art Director for Yellow Mama.