Excerpt from my novel: “Immortal Link"

(Catholine had been raped by one of her older brothers’ friends. Louis wants to keep it secret to protect the mother and Catholine from further trauma, Charlie wants to kill Bastian) Weeks after the attack they have this conversation.

Charlie locked himself into the upstairs bathroom and, using his brother’s razor, sliced up the top of his hands in a wildly criss cross pattern. He didn’t feel the pain. His stomach was churning.

A minute before midnight he swung his long legs over the window ledge and climbed down the branches and trunk of the chestnut tree outside his window with the ease of a jungle cat. He disappeared unnoticed into the night.

The members of the Fight Club named after Tyler Durden in the movie were restless and itching to have their turn. Two guys stepped forward, took their shirts off, and began beating each other. The others cheered. Blood and penned-up energy were spurting out of the fighters until one lay on the ground and stayed there. Then it was someone else’s turn. The point of it was to get in touch with your primal male aggression so guys can be what’s been taken away from them in this world.

He didn’t want to fight tonight, just watch. It was not what he needed; the field and gym and ball park still offered relief. Charlie wasn’t yet numbed enough by a society reduced to shoppers when in truth a man was designed to hunt. In the beginning he thought it would help, but Charlie had to admit he was too young. Not to fight, of course, but to get the full effect of this new therapy. Even picturing Bastian’s face on an opponent only provided Charlie relief until he spit out a piece of tooth that would cost his mother a thousand quid to fix, and he decided it wasn’t worth it. Watching the fights was okay; he couldn’t sleep anyhow. Demons crawled through his mind at night when the world was at its bleakest, and problems just grew too big.

After watching three of four fights, Charlie walked down on Broadway before he cut back to his house. He still didn’t want to go in and planned to sit on the stoop for awhile. Louis was waiting for him. They sat wordlessly next to each other until Louis saw Charlie’s hands.

He gasped, but Charlie told him to stuff it.

“If a woman shows up with a bruised face, it’s automatically assumed that a man did that to her. If she has claw marks across her face, she was in a bitch fight. A man’s bruises are admirable. He got them in an honest testosterone-driven fight and he is a hero.” Charlie leered at him and his words sounded slurry. “But a bruised woman is an abused woman, damaged, you see? She has to keep it a secret, and make up lies about it.”

Louis stared at him blankly. “Have you been drinking?”

Charlie ignored him. “The first rule is, you can’t talk about it. The second rule is,” his voice rose, “you can’t talk about it.” He leaned into Louis’s face. “Fight Club is not the only one who can use this line, you see?”

“Keep your voice down, you’ll wake up the whole neighborhood. What is wrong with you?” Louis asked and tried to hush him.

“What is wrong with me? My hands are tied. By you. I want to kill that piece of shit, you know that. But noooo, big brother Lou says nooo, so little brother Charlie and little sister Mary Ella have to be a good boy and girl and do what they’re told, no matter if it kills them!”

Charlie got up. “We would have blood on our hands.”

“Yeah, better than him having blood on his prick, our sister’s! Lou, her honor. And all you worry about is not getting Mom upset. You promised Maer to take care of her, you haven’t done shit!”

“What can we do, huh? Who would believe us? His father is a big shot, our old man is a now-show, okay. Get that into your head.”

“There are tests to determine…”

“What, and drag her through the gynecologist’s office, everyone gaping between her legs, the cops, the press? What if we end up in foster care, huh, you ever think about that?” Louis’s voice was starting to fail him. “She’s healing, she’s not pregnant, she’ll be okay.”

Charlie looked incredulous. “Are you a total moron? What about her emotional state? Don’t you think this is with her all the time? Look at the way she dresses. She makes herself look ugly on purpose, to cover up her body and her shame. How can you be so stupid?”

“Let’s not imagine things that might not be true, alright. She knows she can talk to us any time she needs to, she doesn’t need a shrink digging around and making her re-living it. It’s the best for all involved right now, you have to trust me on this.”

“Yes, you’re right, it’s definitely the best for Bastian. Lou, listen to me. Let me take care of him, I don’t care if I end up in jail for the rest of my life. I can’t go on living like this. He sneers at us whenever he sees one of us, especially Mom, who has no clue what he has done. He’s making fun of our family.”

“I won’t let you ruin your future.”

“What future? Look at me, I’m going nowhere. I don’t even know if I can last through high school.”

“You’re not dropping out,” Lou hissed.

“Stop telling me what I’m not going to do, you’re not my boss. Step up to the plate and act like a man for once, will you?”

“You fucking jerk. What do you think I’ve been doing all these years since the old man left, huh? Who makes sure the bills get paid with the little money Mom has left over when his checks bounce, or that the car is up and running? I’m the one who fixes stuff around the house so it doesn’t completely fall down on us. How dare you tell me to act like a man?” Louis was crying now. “You have no idea what it feels like to be the oldest, responsible for you all going to school and have decent clothes on your back. Most of my paycheck goes to help Mom out and if it wasn’t for gram, we wouldn’t be eating half the time. How’s that for the truth, Mister-know-it-all, don’t you think I would rather hang out with the guys shooting pool or going to see a flick? Hell, I don’t even have time to cultivate a girlfriend. They think I’m a bore. All this acting responsible’s turned me into a dullard, okay?”

Charlie had tears flowing down his cheeks when he wrapped an arm around his brother and the two cried for a good while, not knowing that their sister knelt by her open window, listening in on their conversation.

The Perfect Girl

     Vasilios sat in the taxi in front of his parent’s house, trying to find the strength to tell them that he wanted to marry an American girl. He knew that his mother had her heart set on a girl from the old country and would give her only son a hard time about marrying a ‘foreigner’. He paid the cabby, sighed, and trudged up to the house.

     “Vasilios, my precious, sit, sit, I made your favorite food,” Alcina urged him as he kissed his mother on both cheeks. “When you called to say you want to talk to us, we were so excited because we have something to tell you, too. We have good news, Vasilios. But please, first, sit down, child, eat, eat.”

     Vasilios sat at the small but lovingly set table as his mother flittered around him, heaping piles of Souvlaki onto his plate and carefully placing a steaming cup of black coffee in front of him. “I already put sugar, just the way you like it,” Alcina said.

     “Three and a half spoons?” Vasilios asked.

     “Oh, I put four. I was thinking round.” Alcina said sorrowful.

     His father sat in a corner and watched the interaction with quiet amusement.

     “Okay, Mama, what are the news? You are bursting with excitement,” Vasilios said and started eating.

     Alcina suddenly looked flustered and wiped her hands on her apron. She moved over to her husband and stood next to him, for extra support. “I talked to my friend in Santorini and her daughter, Syna, agreed to come to America and marry you, can you believe it? She is perfect.”

     “But Mama, … please, we talked about this. You know that I am in love with Amy. I came here today to tell you that I have asked her to marry me,” Vasilios said and put his fork down.

     “Oh, sweet Jesus, Mary and holy St. Joseph!” His mother threw her hands in the air before crossing herself. “What are you saying? No, no, no! We come to America and leave everything, the family, our home, jobs, lives, so you can have a better one, an education, go to college, marry a nice Greek girl and start a family. Anatole, say something, talk sense into your son,” Alcina begged.

     “Well,” Anatole began, measuring his words.” If he is in love with the American girl, it is his life, and we brought him here to this foreign country…”

     “Arrgh, stop this foolishness. What does he know about love? He will love Syna when he meets her, marries her, the babies come, then the love will come also. Here, everything is backwards. Vasili, think about your future, and your poor parents. We gave you everything we had.”

     “Mama, I am twenty-five years old, I did not come to ask for permission. I came to tell you and Papa that the wedding is in three months. Please, be happy for me.”

     Alcina called her son every night and begged him to listen to her and forget about the American girl. Every morning she went to mass and prayed to the saints, asking them to stop her son from making a mistake. She reminded him that he had always listened to his mama until he went off to college, but Vasilios stood his ground.

     A week before the wedding Alcina took a taxi to her son’s apartment. In her purse was a check, the full amount of her and her husband’s retirement savings, paid out and transferred over from Greece. With a smug expression on her face, Alcina rang the doorbell.

     “Mama, what a surprise, come in. I just came back from the realtor with Amy. We found a house; it’s very close to you and Papa. You won’t give me any grief before Saturday, will you?” Vasilios jokingly nudged her with his elbow and followed her into his living room. His mother straightened a pillow on the couch before she sat in a chair with her purse on her knees.

     “Vasilios, darling, you remember when you were a young boy, what was it you wanted most, hm? Do you remember?” Alcina asked with a smile.

     “Oh, you mean the car? That was a crazy wish, Mama, a Cadillac for a poor Greek boy. It was only a dream.”

     “Candy apple red, I know, like the one our neighbor had when we just arrived in America. You wanted it more than anything else in the world. What do you say,” she smiled and reached into her purse, “if you and I go to the car place in the city and pick one out for you?”

     Vasilios blanched when he saw the check and sank back into his chair. “Mama, where does the money come from?”

     “Don’t you worry, my boy. Secret savings, eh. But you know what it means, right? No wedding with the foreign girl. Be a good son and think of your poor mother’s heart…”

     Vasilios was a good son. He traded the love of his young life for a candy apple red Cadillac, just like his neighbor had, and he also was a good son and married Syna, the perfect girl that his mama had chosen for him.

     But when Syna was pregnant she became very homesick and longed so much for her family in Greece that Vasilios had no choice but to sell the car of his dreams so he could ship their belongings and move back home with her.

     And their two sons grew up to be happy and beautiful boys who knew their grandparents in America only through pictures because they lived in a place full of hope and dreams, but far, far away.