Things is Gonna Even Out In the End

Carlo Rovino softly moans to himself when the movers drop the last box containing his mother’s belongings. Sifting through the boxes, Carlo comes across a bundle of yellowing envelopes stamped Return to Sender. His mother, quiet, close-lipped, and diligent, had been better known for filling out police reports than emulating Emily Dickinson. Her most recent letter, written two days before her death, commands his attention.

Curious by nature and sure his mother wouldn’t mind, Carlo opens the well-traveled envelope.

Dear Mario:

I hope you get this letter since I most likely won’t live long enough to write another one. The chemo didn’t work. Sometimes what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Sometimes you just die.

I wanted you to know there’s no hard feelings. You ditched me in enough dive bars for me to figure out what kind of man you were long before we got married. The fact that we stayed together for eight years was surprising in itself; I figured we might make it to five.

The only time you seemed happy was when you went to play softball with the boys at Onatru Field. Some of my best memories are seeing you laugh with the players at barbecues, and watching you play with our little girl, Serafina. Then one of the other player’s wives would wink at you and you’d go off to the bar or to their bedroom, leaving the little girl and a wife who adored you to beg for a ride home. Most of the time you treated Serafina like a toy and me like a maid. You didn’t know how to be a father, and I think you would have preferred shoveling manure with a spoon than being a husband.

And you weren’t a one-woman man. You proved that by running away at full speed when I told you I was pregnant again. I never told Carlo you were his father, he thinks my second husband Burt is his real dad. I often worried Carlo might figure things out because he often complained he didn’t look like Burt.

You weren’t all bad. The man I married could make me laugh. He would take me out to the desert in New Mexico in the afternoon and to a casino in Las Vegas at night. I still laugh at the idea of you being a preacher, given the number of commandments you’ve broken. But wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing, I hope you managed to find yourself and be happy. I did.

Farewell, my love,

Celestina

Serafina looks up from the letter.

“How could you keep this from me?” Carlo asks.

Serafina looks around the cozy confines of her apartment, casually sipping her tea. She’d been preparing for this conversation with Carlo for thirty-five years. “Mama didn’t want you running off to try and find Dad.”

“Which is exactly what I’m going to do,” Carlo quickly responds.

Serafina sighs heavily, adding more sugar to her tea. “I used to be jealous that you didn’t know who he was. I wish didn’t. He wasn’t abusive, just absent. I was seven when he left for good. For a while, he’d send us postcards from L.A., Vegas, or Cape Cod. He wrote them like he was on vacation, instead of running from his responsibilities. I thought he was a wanderer, a waste of flesh. You didn’t hear Mom crying over him at night, wondering where she’d failed. I was relieved she found happiness with Burt and had a great career with the Police Department. But I never understood what she saw in someone who broke her heart and deserted her the way Dad did. Now I realize Dad was a man who couldn’t be tamed. He was an adventurer, a man who liked to test the limits of life, not caring that his selfishness would affect the people around him.”

“I have to meet him.”

“Why? You’re not like him at all. You’re grounded, responsible. The only traits Dad could give you would drag you down to his level.”

“People change, Serafina. You had your wild period when we were kids.”

“Blame it on hip hop. What’s dad’s excuse? So, you’re going to go off on some mythical quest, just like he did. And just like your no-good father, you’re leaving your family behind.”

“Belinda and the kids will understand. And it’s not like I’m disappearing forever. Do you know where Dad is now?”

“No, but I know where you can start.”

Corky Pappalardi, the former owner of Pappalardi’s Pub, groans in despair when Carlo mentions his father’s name.

“He never said he had two kids. He sure lived like he didn’t. Mario was the devil, the meanest, most hot-headed thug in all of Long Island. His eating steroids like breath mints didn’t help. But I needed somebody to keep the bikers and the drug dealers in line. The cure was worse than the disease. I spent four years in court because of your old man.”

Breathing furiously, his muscles bursting out of his leather vest, Mario glares at Chewy Alvarado, clenching his fists.

“What did you say about my wife?”

The wanna-be greasy-haired biker turns to his friends for support. His equally scrawny friends have already scampered out the door.

Chewy is unaware that his innocent comment to a friend, “Life is rough,” was misheard by Mario as “His wife is rough.”

“You wanna be careful what you say about my old lady, Chewbacca.”

“My name’s actually Jesus. But my friends call me Chewy.”

“Do I look like I wanna be your pen pal?”

Mario grabs Chewy by his collar, hoisting him up against the cheap wooden paneling, which quivers in response.

The 6’ 3”, 225-pound bouncer unleashes a series of brutal punches, bloodying Chewy’s features.

Chewy slides to the floor.

“Dude, I don’t even know your wife.”

“Don’t call me dude, Chewbacca.”

“Chewy,” he says, standing up.

Chewy puts up admirable resistance, matching Mario blow for blow until a sledgehammer right cross knocks him to the floor. Mario sits on Chewy’s chest, repeatedly punching him until he’s unconscious.

Mario also punches out the first policeman to reach the scene.

The second on the scene, Sergeant Pepper Decker, points her Taser at Mario. “Stop resisting!”

“Who’s resisting? I’ll fight every jabroni in here!”

Sergeant Decker would later state she couldn’t believe someone could drive away with a Taser and its wires dragging behind them in the road.

Chewy’s injuries included a broken jaw and orbital bone and a shattered nose.

“It wasn’t the first time your dad had done that,” Pappalardi says to Carlo. “But this time there was payback. Chewy was an undercover cop. Pappalardi’s Pub was a dump, but it was mine. Now it’s called Chewy’s.

“I didn’t recognize him at first,” says Craven Lyre, the porky owner of the Tender Trap Gentlemen’s Club. “He was off the juice, so he was smaller, and he’d learned to curb his temper. I gave him the job of watchin’ the door and protectin’ the girls. It was like tellin’ a wolf to guard a hen house. He did his job for a month or two. Then he took an interest in my best girl, Bubble Bud.”

“A name that fits the job.”

“Her real name was Crystal Methven. That wasn’t gonna fly. At first, I didn’t think much about Bubble and Mario bein’ friendly, then she started missin’ shifts. When I asked Bubble about it, she said she was workin’ for Mario. He called himself a talent agent. He got Bubble some modelin’ jobs. He even got her a few gigs singin’ background on a few records that went nowhere. He was still workin’ here, but I noticed business was slidin’, and I was hemmoragin’ money. One day I came in and Bubble was gone, your daddy was gone, and my caddy was gone, along with twenty K of my money.”

“Did you call the police?”

“They’re gonna help me? Bubble came back a few weeks later. That’s all that really mattered, although it took her a while to trust men again. Your dad was an A-1 sleazeball. He stole all the money Bubble had made and left her stranded in some motel. But he did do somethin’ nice once. One of the girls, Summer Breeze, was havin’ custody issues. After Mario had a little talk with the ex-husband, she got full custody. Come to think of it, he helped other girls with kids too, which is odd, ‘cause they were usually stable as a bar stool with three legs.”

“Maybe it was guilt. Do you know where he went?”

“I didn’t really care as long it was away from here. But he sent some money to one of the girls with a note sayin’ he was tryin’ his hand at bein’ an independent trucker.”

Carlo shows Tina Timber the newspaper clipping.

“It’s a pleasure to meet the son of the man who saved my life,” she says, extending her artificial arm to shake his hand. Her hook diverts Carlo’s attention away from her long face, jutting teeth, and elephantine ears.

“What happened?”

“I was blotto. Totally blacked out…”

Mario is driving down south on I-95 in Hopewell, Massachusetts when he sees a car with no lights heading straight for him. The car skids off the road, careening through bushes and trees until it hits a thick pine head-on.

Pulling his rig onto the shoulder, Mario jumps out of his truck, running to the car. Tina is unconscious. He tries to pull Tina free, but quickly realizes her mangled arm is keeping her trapped.

Reaching into his jacket pocket, Mario pulls out the hunting knife he carries for protection.

“The only good thing is you won’t feel this until the drugs wear off,” he says, hacking at Tina’s arm.

“The car blew up seconds after your dad pulled me to safety,” Tina says. “He held my good hand until the paramedics showed up. Told me how pretty I was. He made me forget I was a buck-toothed 240-pound mess everyone called Muley. He drove away because he felt he’d cost me my arm. He never knew the doctor said I was going to lose it anyway. “

“Do you know where he went next?” Carlo asks.

“Last I heard, he went to Texas to try out for a minor league baseball team.”

After looking through volumes of minor league news, Carlo comes across the headline: Rovino Rolls As Socorro Sand Sharks Disarm Pistoleros For Championship.

Carlo travels to Texas to talk to Bones McAllister, a former Sharks player turned manager.

“Rabbit? Yeah, he was a real caution. Wasn’t he, Will?”

Will Bolt, the Sharks’ first base coach, works over a chaw of tobacco. “You know why we called him Rabbit? It wasn’t just because he was quick on the field, which he was, he was fast off it too. Fast with his mouth, fast with the girls, and fast at poker.”

“Your dad started playin’ baseball late in life. I think he was over thirty, but he was the greatest minor leaguer I ever played with,” McAllister says. “One year we played the Villarreal Vaqueros for the championship. Rabbit laid down this perfect suicide squeeze to tie the score. As he was trottin’ to first the pitcher threw the ball to the first baseman. The first basemen went to tag your dad, and you know what he did? He started runnin’ back home! The first baseman threw the ball back to the catcher, so your dad turned around and sprinted past the first baseman. The catcher threw the ball toward first, but nobody was there to catch it. The ball ended up in right field and Rabbit wound up on third. And if that wasn’t enough, he stole home to win the championship! That Rabbit was a real hot dog!”

Bolt spits out a stream of tobacco juice. “Yeah, Rabbit would’ve made it to the big show if he hadn’t screwed up.”

“What happened?”

“Guess it was an accumulation of things. Your daddy liked a good prank, like supergluin’ the manager’s suitcases shut.”

“Or hittin’ him in the face with a shavin’ cream pie in the midst of an interview,” Bolt adds.

“But what got him blackballed was hurtin’ his back,” McAllister continues.

“Tough injury, but it shouldn’t have gotten him thrown out of the league.”

Bolt clears his throat. “He was naked, and he was with the owner’s wife at the time. He was frozen in a compromisin’ position.”

“That was the last time we saw him.”

“His next gig was bein’ a preacher,” Bolt says.

Looking like a seasoned bluesman ready to emote, Enos Allman leans on his cane, smiling in reminiscence.

 “Your daddy was what you call a horndog. Messed with all the women in the congregation. Took half the money out of the collection plate too. We all knew he got his preacher’s degree by mail. But we all said, ‘Things is gonna even out in the end.’ And guess what? They sure did.”

Clearing his throat, Reverend Mario Rovino says, “I think this quote from Romans encapsulates today’s sermon, ‘Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.’”

Mario locks eyes with a teenager sitting in the front pew. He thinks his military garb and Hitler hairstyle are out of place in dusty Hardesty, Oklahoma, population 220.

“John, 4:20, If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

Sporting an off-kilter smile, the teenager stands up, brandishing a gun.

“It’s time for the Order of Screaming Eagles to get rid of Hardesty’s trash!”

Spinning around, he opens fire on the congregation, sending them cowering under the pews.

One of the bullets glances off Enos Allman’s head, blinding him.

A voice says to Mario, “You’re not as bad as you think. Do the right thing.”

It’s not his voice.

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” Mario says, leaping from the pulpit.

Mario tackles the teenager, wrestling the gun away from him.

“Only one person got hurt that day. Me.,” Enos says. “But if your daddy hadn’t acted, it coulda been all seventy of us. I think life stopped being a game for your daddy after that. The experience of seein’ people he didn’t realize he cared about nearly killed changed him. Word got out quick about what had happened. He was worried that the wrong he’d done would cost him his freedom, so he left.”

“Did you hear from him?”

“He called me a few times. Said he was in Fresno, and he’d gotten married again. She had what you’d call an ironic name. Oh yeah, Henrietta Healer.”

“I heard he was a philanderer, a con man, a cheat,” Carlo says.

Mario’s plump, grey-haired, spectacle-wearing second wife seems as warm as the peach cobbler she serves her stepson.

“The only cheating he did was when we played spades. Mario was a hard-working man. He was at the rubber plant for fifteen years, gave money to our church, and volunteered at the soup kitchen. The day I lost him was the saddest day of my life.”

“He’s dead?”

“Four years now. I have his ashes in an urn in the sitting room.”

“But my mother used to write to him.”

“Did he ever write back? That was between them. I have a collection of her letters forwarded from our old address, but they’re eight years old or older. I think Mario was too embarrassed to write to your mother. He didn’t think Celestina would believe he was a changed man. He also thought that no matter how much he apologized, he could never make up for walking out on his family. Your mother thought he was some sort of playboy, a criminal, so he thought it best if she kept on believing it. He did write a letter to you, though. He didn’t mail it. He knew you’d show up someday to collect it. Let me get it.”

Dear Carlo,

I’m sorry I never got to say the words “Pleased to meet you, son,” or that I never got to hold my granddaughters. Nearly all my life I felt like there was electricity instead of blood running through my veins. I once met Mike Tyson and he said to me, “You’re a crazier mother#@*! than I am!” I guess that sums things up.

The reason I stayed out of your life was because I didn’t want to expose you to my recklessness, my quick temper, or my greatest talent – disappointing people.

Even though I’ve never seen you, I have a lasting memory of you I’ll always cherish. One day, when your mother was eight months pregnant with you, our team played softball at Onatru Field. After the game, your mother, Seraphina, and I climbed the hill overlooking the field and had a picnic. At one point your sister bent over her mother and listened to her belly, announcing, “He’s kicking, Daddy!” For that moment, we were a family, and all the bad things I’d done didn’t matter.

I did a lot of selfish things in my life. I’ve tried to make up for them ever since I stopped a sick boy from taking the lives of innocent people simply because they were poor. The most selfish thing I did was sacrifice our relationship out of fear I’d fail yet again. I hope you can forgive me. I think you might have liked the man I finally became.

Dad

Carlo stands on the hill overlooking Onatru Field, holding his father’s urn.

Casting his ashes to the wind, he says, “Welcome home, Dad. I love you.”