Reply Hazy, Try Again.

Billy Rossi stood in front of the mirror attached to the back of his bedroom door. Every night he practiced his magic moves, and tonight it was one called the French Drop, an ancient but reliable method of making small objects disappear, usually coins.

Between the tips of his left thumb and middle finger, palm up, he held the half-dollar he had just received for his twelfth birthday. His partially open right hand smoothly covered the coin and appeared to take it, his apparently empty left hand falling to his side. He looked at his closed right hand and raised it to shoulder height, blew on it, and opened it finger by finger to reveal his hand was empty.

“Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo!” he said.

The coin had vanished.

Billy had learned the move from his Grandfather Rafaelo who had taught it to him on their occasional Saturday subway trips from Bensonhurst in Brooklyn to Louis Tannen’s Magic Shop on West 34th in Manhattan. Rafaelo had always performed a few tricks at birthday parties and family celebrations, and since Rafaelo’s death, when Billy practiced his magic tricks, he felt closer to the grandfather he dearly missed.

Billy especially liked making things disappear.

Satisfied with his progress, Billy began the next portion of his bedtime ritual. He gathered the pages of his composition, written in ink with no cross-outs, and placed them in his three-ring binder. His sixth grade teacher, the redoubtable Sister Immaculata, had assigned her students a composition on the topic of Great Americans.

Billy had chosen the newly-elected President Eisenhower, but when Sister Immaculata caught Billy vanishing a pencil up his nose — to the raucous delight of his classmates — as punishment she had assigned him to write about her favorite Great American, the anti-communist crusader Cardinal Francis Spellman of the New York Archdiocese.

Her choice turned out to be fortunate for Billy, because Bensonhurst’s Scared Heart Elementary School library had an entire shelf of books written by or about Cardinal Spellman. His research took less than an hour.

Billy slipped the notebook into his book bag and made certain his new Waterman fountain pen was filled and his Venus Velvet No. 2 pencils were sharpened. He took the book bag downstairs, placing it just so, adjacent to the kitchen door.

His mother, Teresa, was in the living room, leafing through the new Saturday Evening Post without much interest. The radio was turned down low, and Tony Bennett was crooning “Cold, Cold Heart.” She looked tired, her dark brown eyes all the more haunted for the circles under them. When she saw her son enter the room, she quickly tugged at her sleeves to hide the bruises on her arms. He pretended he didn’t see her do this.

His mother and his stepfather Paulie had quarrelled loudly the night before. Paulie had said he was leaving for good and slammed the door behind him. He’d been gone all day and had missed dinner.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Billy said and kissed her good night. “It’ll be okay.”

She smiled wanly and held his hand to her cheek. “Maybe,” she sighed. “I hope so.”

There wasn’t much hopefulness in her voice. Since her husband had died three years ago and she’d married his older brother Paulie on the rebound, Paulie had been on a downward slide, which had caused Billy and his mother to grow even closer, much to Paulie’s irritation. She smoothed Billy’s straight black hair back from his forehead and said, “Songi d’oro, caro.” Sweet dreams, dearest.

Upstairs, Billy completed his routine. After putting on his pajamas, washing up, and brushing his teeth, he held his toothbrush in his left hand and tapped it three times on the sink, pausing between the second and third taps. He touched the doorknob twice with his right hand and left the bathroom door ajar the exact width of his palm. Before pulling down the window shade in his bedroom so that its bottom edge aligned exactly with the middle of the casement window, he scanned the street for Paulie’s DeSoto. Billy was relieved to see it wasn’t there.

During the last year, as his stepfather’s angry moods had become louder, more frequent, and more violent, Billy’s nighttime routine had evolved into a kind of magical spell to protect his mother. On quiet nights, the spell seemed to work. On nights when all hell broke loose, Billy figured he’d done the spell wrong or that it needed new components to work properly.

He climbed into bed, plumped up his pillow, and picked up his Magic 8-Ball, which resided on his bedside table. Consulting it had recently been added to Billy’s routine. When the three of them had moved a year ago, he’d found the Magic 8-Ball, still in its box, shoved into a corner of his closet. Whoever had lived there before had left it behind. Since Billy had incorporated the 8-Ball into his routine, he’d formed a curious relationship with it. For the last month, before turning out the light at exactly ten-thirty, he sometimes asked the 8-Ball an important question, but only one. He didn’t want the 8-Ball thinking he was taking advantage of it.

Tonight’s question would be a crucial one.

* * *

When Billy had initially fooled around with the 8-Ball, he’d asked the usual kinds of questions:

“Will it rain tomorrow?” Billy had already looked at the forecast — sixty percent chance of rain.
“Most likely,” said the 8-Ball.

“Will I ever get a puppy?” His stepfather Paulie hated dogs.
“Don’t count on it,” the 8-Ball replied.

“Will I get an A on my spelling test?” Billy always got A’s on his spelling tests.
“Signs point to yes.”

At first, Billy took an attitude of optimistic indifference toward the 8-Ball’s answers, his queries serving as a rare diversion from doing his homework. If the answer confirmed his hopes, he felt a bit more confident. If he didn’t like the answer, he reminded himself it was really only a toy.

But one night that changed. He was seeking reassurance for a long-planned encounter, and he’d confided a question to the 8-Ball of the utmost consequence.

“Will Mary Jo Deitz let me walk her home tomorrow?”

The 8-Ball’s reply: “Bring umbrella.”

Billy stared at the answer. He’d seen all twenty of the 8-Ball’s standard answers and knew this was not one of them. He turned the ball over and asked the same question; the same answer floated into view in the circular glass window.

Even though the next day dawned sunny and cloudless, Billy decided it was only a small inconvenience to carry his mother’s umbrella to school. During his last afternoon class, he’d watched as heavy gray clouds gathered, and when the final bell rang, down came a steady rain.

Billy had spied Mary Jo standing under the eaves and offered the shelter of his umbrella for her walk home. They’d chatted about the events of the week, in particular Ronnie Esposito throwing up during mass and the rumor that Barbie Bajek’s older sister Francesca, who had once played the Virgin Mary in the Christmas Pageant, “had to get married.” When they’d arrived at Mary Jo’s house, Billy invited her for a gelato at Biagio’s on Saturday. She’d accepted and told him it was okay to call her by her nickname, MJ.

Later, when Billy had asked if he were going to get the lead role in the school play, the 8-Ball replied, “Next year.” Sure enough, the part went to the well-groomed Frankie Pistone, who’d once had a speaking part in a TV ad for a local shoe store.

“I can run faster and jump higher in my new PF Flyers!” Frankie had exclaimed. Billy’s disappointment was tempered by the irony that Frankie was the slowest kid on the playground.

After these odd answers, Billy had tested the 8-Ball further: Would the Giants beat the Green Bay Packers next Sunday? The answer was standard and equivocal: “Reply Hazy, Try again.” And so it went with such mundane questions. The 8-Ball was definitely uninterested in sports.

But on the rare occasions when something was weighing heavily on Billy’s twelve-year old heart, the 8-Ball offered practical, sympathetic, specific advice, which gave him a fleeting sense of control over his turbulent home life.

Even though he was unable to account for the mysterious answers, he wasn’t about to crack open the 8-Ball to see what was going on inside. He’d thought it over and decided that somehow he’d awakened real magical powers in his 8-Ball. His connection to it felt as special as making a new friend. He quickly adopted a more respectful attitude toward the 8-Ball and resolved not to bother it with inconsequential questions. He also decided to keep his relationship with the 8-Ball a secret, even from his mother.

* * *

So, tonight, with Paulie having been absent for dinner once again, Billy considered his question carefully and said, “Is Paulie gone for good?”

He gave the 8-Ball time to consider the question and then watched the black window where the answer would swim into view.

“Not yet,” it read. The answer seemed to promise Paulie’s eventual departure but not when it would happen. Billy found little solace in the response and, puzzling over its meaning, had trouble falling asleep.

It was three-thirty when Billy awoke to the sounds of Paulie fumbling with his keys at the kitchen door. Billy sat bolt upright in bed, held his breath, and listened. He’d become so acutely attuned to his Paulie’s moods and behavior he could tell just from the jangling of the keys that Paulie was drunk.

“Teresa!” he shouted. “Where’s my dinner?” Furniture scraped across the kitchen floor and a chair tipped over. He was very drunk. This was bad.

Billy heard the stairs creak as his mother descended to the front hall. She closed the swinging kitchen door to muffle whatever was going to happen next, but Billy’s room was right over the kitchen. He’d hear everything.

“Paulie, I’m coming. Don’t wake Billy.”

She spoke in a hushed, placating tone, but Billy knew it didn’t matter what she said. If Paulie wanted to pick a fight, he’d make something up so he could get angry. Sometimes when he was really drunk, he passed out. Maybe he would tonight.

Billy heard the fridge door open and the clatter of a saucepan onto a burner. Paulie was muttering, slurring his words. Teresa was speaking softly in reply, saying as little as possible as she did on such nights, trying not to stir up any trouble.

Tense and afraid, Billy bit so deeply into his thumbnail that he drew blood. He listened intently for any hint of an impending fight but only heard his mother moving around the kitchen, answering Paulie’s indistinct questions. While he tried to stay alert for a shift in tone or volume in their voices, he breathlessly repeated a short prayer he’d made up for such nights. Soon he almost drifted off to sleep.

He awakened to a crash, sounds of a struggle and hitting, and Teresa wailing. “Paulie, no, don’t!” More scuffling and thumps. Then a moment of silence followed by his mother moaning and crying and Paulie cursing her.

Billy’s heart pounded so hard it shook his whole body. He ran downstairs to the kitchen. Two dinette chairs and the table had been knocked across the room. Spaghetti and red sauce were splattered across the cabinet doors. Teresa was sobbing, lying face down on the cracked linoleum floor. Paulie loomed over her, swaying unsteadily. His shirt was stained, his tie askew, his fists clenched.

“Look what you made me do!” Paulie snarled. “You’re always against me.”

Billy knelt next to Teresa and helped her sit up. He looked up at Paulie and with a quavering voice, said, “Go away!” He’d never confronted Paulie like this before, but for that one blazing moment, Billy stared at Paulie with a fierce, annihilating hatred.

“What’d you say?” Paulie seemed taken aback.

“Vaffanculo!” Fuck off!

Billy had heard this phrase on the playground and had seen a priest beat the hell out of a kid who’d said it. Teresa held out her hand to shield her son.

“I’m all right, Billy; I just fell down.” Her left cheek was red and swelling.

Paulie swatted her hand away and cracked Billy’s face hard with his open hand. He glowered at them, called her a whore and Billy her little bastard, and then stomped upstairs and slammed the bedroom door.

With trembling hands, Billy wrapped some ice cubes in a dishtowel and handed it to Teresa. She held it against her cheek. Her face was pale, her wavy black hair disheveled, her eyes red. Billy picked up pieces of the broken dinner plate, put them in the trash, cleaned up the spaghetti, and righted the chairs. He and his mother sat next to each other at the kitchen table.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do.” Her voice sounded so broken and sad that the tears filling his eyes spilled down his cheeks.

“Paulie gambled away every cent and now he owes so much money to those ladrones, they’ll take everything.”

“Everything” was Paoletti Plumbing, the business Teresa’s father, Rafaelo, had bequeathed to her and which she owned and managed.

Billy knew exactly who “they” were. He went to school with a few of their sons and daughters, such as “Pazzo” Luparelli, Billy’s occasional tormentor, whose father Salvatore made the papers from time to time, usually with the phrase “often indicted, never convicted” attached. It was rumored Sal had killed a man by stabbing him in the eyes with an ice pick and then distributing the man’s remains in trashcans at five Howard Johnson’s rest stops along the New Jersey Turnpike. It was people like Sal who had held Paulie’s markers.

Tonight Paulie had dropped a bombshell. He’d confessed he had debts totaling almost twelve thousand dollars, all of which had been bought up by his longtime Bensonhurst buddy, Rico Scalise. Scalise’s legitimate contracting and developer businesses served as useful adjuncts to his loan sharking, and he’d become a wealthy and politically influential man in Bensonhurst and beyond.

Scalise bought Paulie’s markers as a favor and told Paulie he wouldn’t charge the vigorish. He’d forgive the twelve large in exchange for part ownership in Paoletti Plumbing. Paulie knew what would happen if Teresa refused. Even though Rico didn’t have a reputation as a hard guy, Paulie knew what Rico’s crew could do to apply pressure — underbid on contracts, vandalize a truck or two, beat up her plumbers, threaten suppliers — the usual.

But Paulie couldn’t sell any part of Paoletti Plumbing because the business wasn’t his to sell.

Teresa looked at Billy’s face and handed him the ice pack. “You’re gonna have a shiner tomorrow.” Some of Billy’s tough classmates occasionally came to school with black eyes and even stitches. Everyone thought they looked cool, so he didn’t mind at all.

“If we could get some money and pay off those people,” Billy said, “then we’d be okay, right?”

“You make it sound easy, but yeah, then we’d be okay. For a while anyway.” Teresa managed a laugh. “If you know where to find a buried treasure, caro, now’s the time to use your magic to find it.”

* * *

Proceed to part 2...

Copyright © 2021 by Bill Prindle