The Family Hightower (24 page)

Pa was a sucker.
He remembers himself saying that, way back in
1921
.
If he'd had any ambition at all.
Then they could have left Tremont, and Mykhaylo wouldn't have been in the way of that train. It all seemed so obvious to Peter then; he was so fucking full of himself. He thought of his ambition as an engine, purring and powerful, running on his desires, for what he thought were better places, better things. But now he understands that it's an animal, and it's taken him places, all right. But it's hungry, and it's been feasting on him for years. If he waits too much longer, there won't be anything of him left.
Then what was it all for?
he thinks, and it goes off like a bomb in his head. He realizes he's been avoiding that question for almost three decades, but here it is, now, running him down, and he doesn't have an answer.

And there on the shore of the lake, Peter Henry Hightower comes to his own big realization: He wants out, out of the whole thing. The graft, the rackets, the swindles, the deals. All those hustles. The crimes and the transactions. The illegal and the legal. He wants to be done with all of it. There's a way out, he thinks to himself. It took years to put together, to make it grow, but it shouldn't take more than a few months to leave it all behind. Building a tower, that takes time. But walking out of it only takes a minute. It's just a matter of selling things, selling things off, being willing to take some losses. They can still keep the house, still live like they do; he has more than enough for that. His business associates will be shocked, because he's given them no warning, no indication that he isn't as hungry as he was when he was twenty. But it won't take more than a few days for them to get used to the idea, and soon they'll be picking over what he's selling, offering to take his business interests off his hands for a reasonable price. Then it's just a matter of paying people off.
I'm out,
he'll say.
I'm out of this game.
They'd all understand. Everyone except the man he's about to meet. But he has to start somewhere.

Joe Rizzi pulls up in his car. It looks new. “Morning,” he says.

Peter doesn't move.

“You got the money, right?”

“No,” Peter says. He's lying; it's in his jacket pocket. But he's made his decision.

“Price just went up again, then,” Joe says.

“Did it?”

“Sure did.”

“That's a shame for you, Joe. Because I'm not planning on giving you any more.”

“Your friends and neighbors will be very interested to hear about this.”

“So you say. But I don't know my neighbors and they don't know me. And I'm not sure you even know who my friends are.”

“You willing to bet on that?”

“I am. You seemed like you knew what you were doing when we met in the Arena. But now I'm not so sure. So I'm calling your bluff and I'm getting out.”

“I don't think that's a good idea, Pete.”

“I'm calling it, Joe. We're through here. I'm through with all of it.” He turns his back on him, starts walking back to his car.

“You're going to regret this,” Joe says.

Peter keeps walking. Doesn't look over his shoulder. “What I'm doing right now is the only thing I don't
regret about this,” he says.

That feeling lasts for about five weeks. Early December
1947
is still warm, warmer than anyone would have expected, even if it's still late fall. The first Tuesday of the month, Caroline is letting her kids out of the house in hats and jackets, no gloves. It's after school, and Muriel, Sylvie, and Rufus are playing under the trees in front of the house. Caroline can hear their voices from inside, yelping and laughing, settling an argument. There's Muriel's high voice, complaining over some small injustice. Rufus defends himself. Sylvie brokers a deal. More yelps and laughing. Then there's a long stretch of quiet that Caroline doesn't think too much about, not until Rufus knocks on the door, fast and loud.
Mom, Mom. We need you.
We need you, Mom.
Caroline feels a chill ripple across her skin—it's panic, the panic that only a parent can feel, racing toward the ability to do violence—and before she knows what she's doing, she's running to the door, pulling the handle, throwing it wide. There's a stiff breeze and she doesn't have a jacket on, but she doesn't feel it. Rufus is standing on the steps in front of her in his brown coat and green cap, hands at his sides. He looks scared. Sylvie's just a few yards away, down the driveway, her back turned. Caroline can't see her face, but she can see what her daughter's looking at. Muriel is standing up straight in the ivy under the bare trees in her bright blue coat. There's a man in a dark coat standing right behind her, smiling. He's come in past the wall, the wall that was supposed to keep everyone out. He's in the garden and he has her daughter, he has Muriel. He has black leather gloves on. His left hand is gripping Muriel's shoulder. His right hand is covering her throat.

“Who the hell are you?” Caroline says. The words are sharp with fear, but more with anger—more than Joe's ready for, and he loses his smile.
She'd kill me right now if her daughter wasn't in the way,
he thinks, and he's surprised at how frightened he is. But Peter hasn't left him with too many more moves, and he's not quite bright enough to know what else to do.

“Mrs. Hightower? I'm a friend of your father's.”

“You're no friend of his. Muriel, say something, sweetie.” She doesn't know if Joe's choking her. “Please say something.”

“Mom, come and get me,” Muriel says. She starts to cry.

“You're scaring her,” Caroline says. “Let her go.”

It's not a plea; it's a command. There's so much threat in her voice. It isn't how Joe imagined things would go. He pictured them all scared, all crying. But except for the girl in his arms, none of them are. The other two kids aren't saying a word; they're not moving. Just looking at him, hard.
What is this family?
he thinks.

“I'm not going to hurt her,” he says. “Just tell Peter I came. Remind him about the deal we have. He'll know what I mean.”

“Let her go,” Caroline says.

“Remind him about the deal,” Joe says. He loosens his hands on Muriel's shoulder, her throat. “Tell me you'll do it and I'll let her go.”

“I'll do it,” Caroline says.

Joe gives Muriel a push, and she falls into the ivy, scrambles up again, runs tripping and falling again into the driveway. Her bright coat's covered in dirt. Caroline lunges forward and picks Muriel up, crushes her daughter in her arms. Muriel is bawling now, into her shoulder.

“Don't ever come back here,” Caroline says.

Joe is already backing away. “Just remind your husband about our deal, and everything will be fine.”

They stay outside, all four of the Hightowers, to watch him turn and walk down the driveway. At the very end, before he disappears around the corner of the wall, he gives a little wave with his black glove. As soon as he's gone, Caroline grabs all her children,
come inside, come inside,
and that's when Rufus starts to cry. He's been holding it all in, being brave, but now that it's over, he needs to let something out. Inside the house, Jackie is screaming, wondering where everyone went. It takes Caroline a good half hour to calm the three children down, and realizes only then that Sylvie hasn't shed a tear.

Caroline calls Peter at work, but can't reach him. She leaves three messages with his secretary and then gives up. Henry gets home later, just before dinner, and Caroline doesn't say anything to him. But she can hear the other kids telling him all about it upstairs as soon as the table's been cleared. Henry's incredulous—
what happened? what?—
he keeps saying. Caroline can hear him from the kitchen.
He sounds more like his father than ever,
she thinks. It's the rhythm in his voice, the directness. The questions he's asking moving toward a plan, though he's too young still to put one together.

Peter Henry Hightower gets home even later than usual that night. He's expecting everyone to be asleep, is a little surprised to see Caroline waiting up for him. For a second, his thoughts are amorous, until he gets a better look at the expression on her face. She tells him everything, point-blank. The man standing in the ivy. The hand on their daughter's throat. How they cried at the end.

“What are you involved in, Peter?”

“It's business as usual.”

“Nothing like this has ever happened before. Ever.”

“That's because he's stepped outside the lines,” Peter says. “Did you call the police?”

“No,” Caroline says, and realizes all over again how crazy that is. She didn't even think about it. She's gotten so used to this life of hers, even though she's come to hate it.

“Good,” Peter says. “I'll take care of it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“No details,” Peter says, and then uses the line he's been using for decades. “It's better that way.”

“Better for who?” It's the first time she's ever asked, but Peter's ready.

“Everyone except the man who thought it'd be a good idea to threaten our children,” he says.

Caroline's on edge for the next three weeks. She holds her kids tighter when she hugs them, watches them every minute they're at home, worries about them every minute they're at school. Her husband isn't home at all, won't talk when he shows up. He's exhausted. She makes Peter take her and the kids to spend Christmas with her own family in Cleveland Heights. It's cold by then, at last. A little snow in the air, frost on the windows. The Anderson house is decorated as much as a house can be, with branches of holly, strings of lights, a sprig of mistletoe in the kitchen doorway. Peter's there just long enough to not be considered rude. He and William exchange the pleasantries you see between people who've given up on each other, and then Peter's gone again. Caroline spends the evening with a glass of eggnog in her hand that she doesn't drink. She's lost in envy. For her children, who are overcome by the holiday and chasing each other around the house. For the rest of the Andersons, who've slipped into good cheer; today, they don't have a care in the world. She keeps the kids there as late as she can, then calls Peter to pick them up. When they get home, she looks over her shoulder down the driveway, hustles them inside, and not just because it's cold enough to freeze their breath in their noses. The next day, while Peter is out, she calls Stefan.

“Merry Christmas, Caroline,” Stefan says.

“Merry Christmas. I'm sorry we didn't get to see you yesterday.”

“That's all right. We still have plans for New Year's Eve, yes?”

“Yes. Though I'm not sure Peter will be able to join us.”

“That's all right.”

Everything's always all right with Stefan,
Caroline thinks.
I married the wrong brother.
She envies the honesty of his life, his ties to his neighborhood, to his church; he still goes every Sunday and prays for his mother, or to her, because his Christianity is shot through with some of that serious Old World superstition, the one that took the order the merciful God offered and embedded it in a darker, more chaotic universe, where those big concepts of sin and redemption work only inside the village walls, and only at the sufferance of the forces in the ancient woods, who can intercede and disrupt whenever they feel like it. So that, for the people who believe in it, if forbearance doesn't work, there's always hostility; if justice fails, there's always vengeance, and without consequences, if you're clever enough.

“Listen, I have a favor to ask you. It's about the children.”

“Name it.”

“Do you think you could take them for a little while?”

“Of course.”

“Henry can help you with the younger ones.”

“I said of course, Caroline. I will be happy to take them.”

“You're sure.”

“Of course. But I have to ask if you're all right, Caroline.”

“Yes. I think so.”

“You and Peter? You're all right?”

“I think we will be.”

Stefan doesn't ask whether the problem is between them, or with Peter. He used to, when she called and wanted to talk. He used to think that Caroline and Peter had all the usual problems of marriage, the friction you get when two people have to deal with each other for a long time, and that the person Peter had become, the life he had made for himself, was apart from that. He used to think that if only Peter could find a way out, they both would be happier, and their children with them. He hasn't seen that much of his brother, hasn't talked to him in a long time. But he's talked to Caroline a lot, he's heard the way she speaks, about him, his work, their kids. And he sees something Caroline doesn't: that the years have taken everything—Peter's past, his work, his marriage, his family, his crimes—and made it one living thing. But that thing is a monster. When they slaughter it, there will be blood everywhere. It's only a question of how much time they have left, and what the children will do then.

 

 

Chapter 14

It'
s
January
8
,
1948
. Peter comes home early in the afternoon, before the kids are back from school. He almost never does that, and it startles Caroline, who's on the second floor.
Who's there? Who is it?
she calls down.
It's me, Caroline,
Peter says.
Come down, I have something to tell you.
He's standing at the bottom of the stairs, watches her descend. She stops.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I'm out, Caroline.”

“Out of what?”

“The business. All of it. Everything. We still have the money, but's it's all just investments now. Passive. I'm out.”

At first she shakes her head; it's too hard to believe. But then it makes sense, how quiet he's been, how far away. He's always been that way a little, not revealing anything until the work is done. It was like that when he proposed, showing her the house for the first time. It was like that when he broke his business connections with her brother, and when he told her his mother had died. But this is beyond that: It's the dismantling of his own life, and though the past few months have felt a lot longer, when she gets her head around the scope of what he must have done, it seems to her that he must have moved fast, with complete determination. The phone calls, the drinks, the dinners, the cigarettes. Making sure the businessmen never saw him with the criminals, that the criminals never got close to the businessmen, even though Peter's joked that he has trouble telling them apart now.

“And that man who came to the house?” she says.

“We'll never see him again.”

She doesn't say anything after that. Just opens her arms, beckons him upstairs. Leads him into the bedroom. They hurry. They're feeling young, like they're misbehaving, getting away with something. Neither of them knows that they'll never sleep together again.

Because, dear reader, Peter is lying, to himself as much as her. Not about the business; ever since his meeting with Joe on the shore on the lake, he's been extracting himself from the financial kingdom he built. He's been naming successors, setting up managers, creating funds to pay for his transition out.
Shooing away some of the vultures,
he's thought to himself. His business associates are at first jolted by the suddenness of it. They say they need a couple days to think about it, but it always turns out they need less. Within a day, sometimes a couple hours, they're talking about what they'd like to be in charge of.
If that sounds good to you, of course,
they say. A little too deferential for Peter to buy it; he knows that as soon as he relinquishes power, takes his hands off the steering wheel, the real jockeying, the serious squabbling, will start. By then he'll be a silent partner. Showing up for quarterly meetings, if that. Taking a phone call now and again. He's been moving his investments around, too, setting up an array of stocks, bonds, real estate holdings that don't need him to look at them every day to see how they're doing. The money won't perform as well that way, he knows that; he just doesn't want to think about it that much anymore. Most of his money is in this city, his hometown, and maybe he knows it's not the smartest decision, that there are better places to put your assets. But he knows his town so well; knows, too, that so far it has risen and fallen with the fortunes of America.
If Cleveland goes down,
he thinks,
it's because America is going down, too. There'll be no place to hide.
He's not an idiot; he knows that can change. Though in another way, he's right, will always be right—even in the
1960
s, when it's sunny in California and Cleveland is on fire. In
1995
, the people of Cleveland are living in the future. They're still living in it now. Stand on the west side of the Cuyahoga's valley and take a good look around, at the giant machinery, the rusting bridges, the white arcs of new buildings downtown hard against the sooty older ones. Look at the colors in the water below, the unmoving barges, the flocking seagulls. Take a good fucking look. Then turn around and listen to the way people talk. The friendly sarcasm in their voices, the skepticism. They're through pretending they're sure of anything.
Things'll get better,
you might try saying to them.
They always get better here.
By
here
you mean America, but they know better than to think that means anything. See if they don't laugh a little. Not bothering to ask you how you're so sure, because they know you don't know. They know that nobody knows. And in the way they laugh is a message for you:
Things are always getting better, always getting worse. Always something. Get used to it. You might be next.

No, Peter's not lying about the business side. It's the crime he keeps from Caroline. He's not trying to be devious. He lies because he thinks it's just a matter of timing, and he doesn't think he's asking too much. He tells her what he wants to be true, what he hopes will be true in just a matter of months. He thinks, too, that she'll never find out the difference. Which means he underestimates Helene Rizzi. Joe's wife.

It's March
8
,
1948
. Caroline is standing under the overhanging roof of Clark's Colonial Restaurant on Euclid. A few flakes of snow in the air. Her daughter Jackie holding her hand. She's just had lunch with Cecily, a couple plates of scallops and vegetables, a little heated conversation. The outspokenness that Cecily was all about when she was younger has turned into her way of talking to people, by debating them, and Caroline's one of the few people she knows who'll argue back without making it personal. Her father gave up on her years ago; he's never quite accepted her opinions, has despaired that she'll never get married. One evening in May
1940
he stands up at the dining table and accuses her of being a lesbian. Her mother is shocked. Caroline, for the first time in a while, doesn't say anything. Lesbianism is just the beginning of what the last decade or so has been like for her, if they're going to talk about things the family considers immoral, and Cecily doesn't need their condemnation of the things she's done, the people she's done them with. So she likes talking to Caroline. There's never judgment, and Cecily's told her a few times over the years how grateful she is for that.

Which is why Caroline is surprised by what Cecily says now. Before the scallops have arrived, they're arguing about the Supreme Court decision that day—McCollum v. Board of Ed—which is all over the papers. The sisters start with the question of banning religious instruction in public schools, run through the separation of church and state fast—because they agree—and then, because of the spiritual persuasion of the case's plaintiff, they get into atheism. They haul out the usual arguments. Then, when Caroline mentions that she's herself an atheist, Cecily's eyebrows rise.

“Really?” she says.

“Yes,” Caroline says.

“Aren't you concerned about your immortal soul?”

Cecily's teasing her a little; both of them are smart enough to know that if you're an atheist, you're not worried about whether you have a soul, never mind its immortality. But something else sneaks into the statement, a certain concern.
I'm worried about you,
Cecily is saying.
You don't seem okay. Do you need help?

“No,” Caroline says. “And you shouldn't be concerned, either.”

The check comes and Caroline pays. In front of the restaurant, Cecily bends down and gives Jackie a long hug. Then her sister.
It's always so good to see you. Take care.
Then Cecily's off, leaving Caroline there with her daughter in the falling snow. Caroline's about to raise her arm to hail a cab when a woman approaches her wearing a black scarf on her head.

“Mrs. Hightower?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Helene. Helene Rizzi.”

“Pleased to meet you, Helene.”

“I wish I could say the same, Mrs. Hightower, because you seem like a nice woman, and you have a beautiful daughter. But we need to talk. It's about your husband.”

She's serious, and Caroline knows it.

“What do you have to tell me?”

“Not here,” Helene says.

They find a coffee shop without too many people in it, a place where they can sit down. Helene insists on buying Jackie something sweet to eat. Then clasps her hands on the table in front of her, shaking her head. Working up some courage.

“How much do you know about what your husband does?” Helene says.

“It depends on who's asking,” Caroline says.

“Do you recognize my last name? Rizzi?”

“As in, Lou Rizzi?”

“Yes,” Helene says. “Good.” Caroline can see Helene relax, and realizes why she was so nervous; there was a chance, of course, that Caroline knew nothing, that everything would have to be explained to her, and what Helene had to say would be lost in it all. It all would have been too much to get through at once.

“Do you know he had a son, Joe?” Helene says.

“No.”

“Joe Rizzi was my husband.”

The past tense, Caroline notes. The black scarf.

“I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Not as sorry as you're going to be, after what I have to say. Mrs. Hightower, your husband killed mine. Well, he didn't do the killing—had him killed is more like it—but it's the same to me.”

Caroline's skin is buzzing, the hair on her arms standing up. She knows Helene is telling the truth. She has no reason to lie; and Peter has every reason.

“There's no body yet,” Helene says, “and everyone's saying they just sent him away somewhere. But I've seen this before. I know what happened to him. He's down on the bottom of the lake, or he's been thrown into an incinerator, or he's in a drainpipe somewhere. And I'm not saying my husband didn't deserve it, Mrs. Hightower. God love him, but he wasn't too smart and thought he was.”

“Why would Peter have him killed?” Caroline says. She can't get her voice above a whisper; her brain is on fire.

“My husband was the one who came to your house. He broke a few rules by doing that, Mrs. Hightower. It made him fair game. Fair enough, anyway.”

“I see,” Caroline says. She's almost not holding it together.

“He'd been blackmailing your husband for a few months already. Your husband called him on it. Then my husband went too far.”

Caroline is having trouble seeing.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I have something for you,” Helene says. “I know that Joe overstepped. Your husband wasn't wrong to act as he did. But I want to make sure that it ends here, Mrs. Hightower. I have kids that need me, you understand? We both have children. I don't want anything else between us.” She reaches into her purse and takes an envelope. It's pretty obvious what it's filled with. “This should be everything my husband took from your family. If it isn't, my phone number's on the back. Please call me. We can settle this between us. Mother to mother.”

Caroline's crying now, and she can't stop. Helene takes Caroline's hand in hers, pats it.
There, there.
Then looks over at Jackie.

“I'm sorry your daughter was here for this,” she says. “But that's how it gets passed along, doesn't it?”

It's never this easy—marriages more than two decades long don't just come apart in one shot—but if there's a moment when you could say Peter and Caroline's marriage is over, this is it. Because Caroline thinks it:
This is it.
Everything's recast in her mind. The power she thought she had, the partnership she thought she shared. All of it is revealed to her as a delusion. Her husband has been playing her, she thinks, letting her believe a fantasy, that the crimes he committed amounted to cooking some books and evading taxes. She reads the paper; she knows what the mafia does. But she imagined that her husband dodged all that, never got any blood on his own clothes, even as it flowed all around him. She understands all at once how stupid that was to think; and now the entire thing comes apart. The animal is slaughtered. She wonders what else he's lied about. How many other people he's killed. Whether any of their money is theirs, or if it's all borrowed, all leveraged, a complicated farce. How much of that speech he gave her in front of the house all those years ago was true. If she'd never met his family in Tremont, it would all be open to doubt, that he grew up in Cleveland, that he's a South Side boy. That his name is Peter Henry Hightower, or Pete the Uke, or Petro Garko. That he's anyone he's ever said he's been.

Years later, Caroline and Peter will both remember
194
8
and
1949
as a long string of awful fights. At first there are a few rules. They wait until all their children are asleep or out of the house. If it's at night, they try to keep their voices down. But by the end of the second year, they've stopped caring. So in
1949
, family life for the kids is a small boat in a rough storm. They never know when the next big wave'll pitch them over. The waves break at breakfast, in the afternoon, very late at night. They don't hear them coming. There's a tiny comment, a tone of voice. Sometimes just a glance from one parent, and the other says
what. What.
Then the shouting starts. The kids learn to read the pitches of their parents' screams so they know when they're as angry as they can get. Their father's highest note is a holler; his throat opens up and the words pop out, like small bombs going off. Their mother, they find out, can yell so loud that their eardrums cut out the higher frequencies of her voice, so it sounds like they're listening to her underwater. Their father likes to point his finger when he's angry. Their mother shakes all over. In time, the older kids have their own responses worked out. Henry, who's seventeen, goes to his room and shuts his door. Sylvie and Rufus, eleven and nine, head off together to the opposite side of the house, as far away from the fight as they can get. But Muriel's only seven and doesn't know what to do. She just stands there and cries; after ten minutes or so, Jackie, who's four, starts crying, too.