And, Jesus Christ, don’t get him started on kids. His daughter was a dried-up old maid schoolteacher who moved from Youngstown to Tucson just to make his life miserable-every night after school she comes by and it’s eat this, don’t eat that, how many cigarettes is that today, Poppa? On and on. And the boy, his namesake? He thought he was better than everybody else. His mother encouraged it, too. Everything came easy for that kid. Married a blonde with tits out to here. Went not just to college but to fucking law school. And that business with the flying? Just another way of showing the world he wasn’t his old man-a hotshot private pilot, see, not some broken-down truck driver. Every breath that ungrateful shit drew was an affront. Even says his name wrong. Ace Geraci. Goddamn. Who’d he think paved his way? Vinnie Forlenza, that’s what he probably thinks. Or those cocksuckers in New York.
When the others started waking up, before they could start bothering him, Fausto got up from his lawn chair and went to the garage. He kept a robe and slippers in there. He’d put them on and work up a sweat doing yard work. On their way to school, Barb and Bev, bless their hearts, would come out and give him a kiss. He wanted to protect those sweet kids from a world that was going to disappoint and then destroy them, but instead he’d just stand there in his robe, holding a hose or a rake, smiling like a happy peasant and waving good-bye.
Then he’d go in and clean himself up and drive across town to Conchita Cruz’s house trailer. She barely spoke English, and he barely spoke, but somehow they’d met in a bar not long after he’d moved here and come to this arrangement. He couldn’t remember how, that’s how relaxed this thing he had with her was. Hair-AH-see, she pronounced his name, which was a fuckload closer than how his own son said it. Sometimes they’d fuck, but more often they’d spend an hour together not asking questions. Just existing. Television’s good for that. Other times there’d be cards, dominos, maybe a foot massage. They’d eat lunch, there or at the diner on the corner, and then he’d kiss her on the forehead. They’d declare no love and make no promises, and she’d go to her second-shift job at the cannery and he’d go for a short drive in the desert. Every day but Sunday, on the same straight stretch of road, he’d stomp on the gas and blow the carbon off his engine-and his heart, too, or so it felt once he buried that speedometer needle in the black space beyond 120. Once he did, he’d ease off the gas, letting his speed and pulse and spirits drop. Then he’d go home, where his sorry-ass namesake and that goddamned Swedish wife would be bickering. When they’d first gotten there, Charlotte had been a model wife, and Nick was humbled by having just fucked up so bad. But a few weeks later, about the time he got that cast off his leg, the bickering started. Even the turning on of the television would touch off some stupid argument. Especially that. Day by day, they behaved more and more like Fausto had with his late wife, another way the boy seemed determined to mock him.
They had nothing to do. Nothing. The amount of time they wasted made Fausto Geraci sick. Charlotte went out and spent Nick’s money on things she didn’t need. Sometimes Nick drove around in a rented car making calls from random pay phones and stopping by this rathole bar and grill he’d muscled into, but most of the time he sat around reading books and talking to the men who came by to give him messages.
One day, Fausto came home and Nick was filling the fucking swimming pool. All it took was a little frown from Fausto, and he went on some long explanation that even though his ma had died in that pool when her cancer-weakened heart gave out, she’d died doing what she loved. She’d never have wanted him to drain the pool. What did that boy know of such things? He wasn’t the one who fished her dead body out of there. Selfish punk. Her wishes, Fausto Geraci’s ass. Nick only wanted to fill the pool so he could use it himself. Sure enough, next day, Fausto came home and not only was the boy floating on an inflatable raft, he was reading some book about Eddie Rickenbacker. More mocking! For weeks he wouldn’t stop with the flying ace stories, the race car driver stories, the lost-at-sea stories, the airline magnate stories. A remarkable man, Fausto Geraci couldn’t deny it: American hero, all that good shit. But you know what? Fuck Eddie Rickenbacker.
Nick treated both his daughters like boys, especially poor Bev, who worshiped her father and would probably grow up to be an old maid gym teacher just like her dried-up shrew of an aunt. He and Charlotte took those kids to everything under the sun: the zoo, the circus, concerts, ball games, movies-like they were trying to make something up to them.
Still and all, those little girls had adapted to their move out here like champs. They’d made friends in the neighborhood, they did good in school, the works. They were happy just being children, but their parents couldn’t see it.
When out of the blue it came time for them to go back to Long Island, it was Charlotte who told him. Apparently his hotshot son couldn’t be bothered with anything having to do with his old man’s feelings. Fausto Geraci snapped. He wasn’t proud of it, but for once he’d spoken his mind. Those girls had transferred schools in the middle of a school year and come here and done just great, and now what? They want those poor kids to transfer back, two months before the school year was even over? What a selfish load of shit! Don’t they know anything about how hard it is for kids to fit in? He wouldn’t stand for it. Let Nick go back. Charlotte, too. God knows, there were more places to blow money in New York than out here. But the girls were staying. Did she think Fausto Geraci, after a life full of taking care of other people’s problems, couldn’t take care of those two little angels for a couple months? Was she really such a stupid cunt that she thought she’d do a better job than he would?
While he was telling her off, he did, yes, break some things, but they were his things. The tears he shed were tears of rage. Now his goddamned kids wanted him to go see a doctor.
That’s what a man gets for speaking the truth. Nothing. Fausto Geraci was a man with nothing good in his life except for his two granddaughters and a Mexican woman who lived in a trailer and barely knew a thing about him. And now the girls were gone. He drove them to the train station himself and saw them off with a big wave and cheerful good-bye. His son and that woman didn’t even look back, and neither did the older girl. But Bev turned around, unhunched her shoulders, and blew him a kiss. What a smile! She should smile more, that Bev.
The trip to the train station had made him miss his lunch with Conchita. He didn’t feel like taking his drive either. He went home to his empty house. He could have been alone anywhere, but he was used to that patio. It was only a matter of time, he thought, before Conchita vanished, too. Fausto Geraci looked out at his pool. One more Chesterfield King, maybe two-three at the most-and then he’d drain that goddamned thing for good.
Historians and biographers have often noted that every bold decision of Michael Corleone’s formative years was made in opposition to his father. Joining the Marines. Marrying a woman like Kay Adams. Joining the family business while Vito Corleone was in a coma and helpless to prevent it. Entering the narcotics trade. Some sources have even suggested that Michael Corleone used his father’s death as an excuse to go to war with the Barzinis and the Tattaglias sooner than Vito Corleone had thought prudent.
The first breach in this pattern may have been Michael’s decision to keep Nick Geraci alive. Whatever one might say about the consequences of that decision, it was exactly what his father would have done, for four reasons.