a soft smile and a softer shrug. "I've been a police officer for thirty-seven years and I've learned one thing above all else."
"That crime never pays," Joe said, "unless you do it at an institutional level."
Another soft smile and a small tip of the head. "No, Joseph. No. What I've learned is that violence procreates. And the children your violence produces will return to you as savage, mindless things. You won't recognize them as yours, but they'll recognize you. They'll mark you as deserving of their punishment."
Joe had heard variations of this speech over the years. What his father failed to recognize - besides the fact that he was repeating himself - was that general theories need not apply to particular people. Not if the people - or person - in question was determined enough to make his own rules and smart enough to get everyone else to play by them.
Joe was only twenty, but he already knew he was that type of person.
But to humor the old man, if for no other reason, he asked, "And what exactly are these violent offspring punishing me for again?"
"The carelessness of their reproduction." His father leaned forward, elbows on the table, palms pressed together. "Joseph."
"Joe."
"Joseph, violence breeds violence. It's an absolute." He unclasped his hands and looked at his son. "What you put out into the world will always come back for you."
"Yeah, Dad, I read my catechism."
His father tipped his head in recognition as Emma came out of the powder room and crossed to the coat-check room. His eyes tracking her, he said to Joe, "But it never comes back in a way you can predict."
"I'm sure it doesn't."
"You're not sure of anything except your own certainty. Confidence you haven't earned always has the brightest glow." Thomas watched Emma hand her ticket to the coat-check girl. "She's quite easy on the eyes."
Joe said nothing.
"Outside of that, though," his father said, "I fail to grasp what you see in her."
"Because she's from Charlestown?"
"Well, that doesn't help," his father said. "Her father was a pimp back in the old days and her uncle has killed at least two men that we know of. But I could overlook all that, Joseph, if she weren't so . . ."
"What?"
"Dead inside." His father consulted his watch again and barely suppressed the shudder of a yawn. "It's late."
"She's not dead inside," Joe said. "Something in her is just sleeping."
"That something?" his father said as Emma returned with their coats. "It never wakes up again, son."
On the street, walking to his car, Joe said, "You couldn't have been a little more . . . ?"
"What?"
"Engaged in the conversation? Social?"
"All the time we been together," she said, "all you ever talk about is how much you hate that man."
"Is it all the time?"
"Pretty much."
Joe shook his head. "And I've never said I hate my father."
"Then what have you said?"
"That we don't get along. We've never gotten along."
"And why's that?"
"Because we're too fucking alike."
"Or because you hate him."
"I don't hate him," Joe said, knowing it, above all things, to be true.
"Then maybe you should climb under his covers tonight."
"What?"
"He sits there and looks at me like I'm trash? Asks about my family like he knows we're no good all the way back to the Old Country? Calls me fucking dear?" She stood on the sidewalk shaking as the first snowflakes appeared from the black above them. The tears in her voice began to fall from her eyes. "We're not people. We're not respectable. We're just the Goulds from Union Street. Charlestown trash. We tat the lace for your fucking curtains."
Joe held up his hands. "Where is this coming from?" He reached for her and she took a step back.
"Don't touch me."
"Okay."
"It comes from a lifetime, okay, of getting the high hat and the icy mitt from people like your father. People who, who, who . . . who confuse being lucky with being better. We're not less than you. We're not shit."
"I didn't say you were."
"He did."
"No."
"I'm not shit," she whispered, her mouth half open to the night, the snow mingling with the tears streaming down her face.
He put his arms out and stepped in close. "May I?"
She stepped into his embrace but kept her own arms by her sides. He held her to him and she wept into his chest and he told her repeatedly that she was not shit, she was not less than anyone, and he loved her, he loved her.
Later, they lay in his bed while