But I kept my mouth shut and I listened to the old man. He knew what was going on in the world. I learned things from him that I never could have learned in a business school classroom.
I’d cared a lot about the old man. He’d shown me guidance when I felt like I didn’t have anyone to do that. My mother was amazing and did the best that she could, but by the time I was sixteen I was trying to learn how to be the man I was going to be and we didn’t see eye to eye about a lot of things at that time.
I think the main reason I didn’t make that fateful decision to go fully into the Zeffari family business (the offer was clearly there) was because I promised my mother on her deathbed that I would get out of it and go completely straight.
She was diagnosed with stage four cancer out of the blue and four months later my mother was gone. I felt like throwing everything away and just running into the darkness of the night. I was so angry. I wanted someone to blame and I wanted someone to hurt the way I was hurting. I was totally lost.
It was Arnold who held me back. He knew how important a promise was, especially to someone you love as much as I loved her. He ordered me to get out of the family and do great things in the straight world. He knew that I was not destined for a life in crime. The world just had another place for me. It took me a while to accept this. I wanted to cling to everything that I knew about the family and what Arnold had shown me the past two years, but in the end I decided he’d never steered me wrong and I owed it to him to listen.
And I owed it to my mother to keep my promise.
Since then I’d only kept in basic communication with Arnold, or the rest of the family. I knew where to find them and they knew where to find me. I hadn’t spoken to him in almost six months directly though. And now he was gone. I felt empty, as if I’d just lost another parent.
Tears began to flow out of my eyes and I swallowed hard trying to get a strong grip on things. I had to get it out of me though. Crying wasn’t going to be enough.
Ten minutes later I was in my gym with my boxing gloves on, pounding the heavy bag with everything I had in me. I was soaked with sweat, my lungs begging me for oxygen, but I was not done. I was giving the bag everything I had with no end in sight. I had to get the pain out of me. And I had to get rid of the rage. Exercise has always been the best therapy for me. It was easy to turn to violence, or crime, or the bottle to get over hard times in your life, but those things had horrible consequences.
Exercise was free, and it was good for me. So, since I was fourteen it had been my primary vice. Although, I did enjoy a glass of good bourbon every now and then.
I kept seeing all of the wasted opportunities to see Arnold, to thank him for everything he’d done for me. I always thought that as a grown man I would get around to it “one day”. Well, I was one day too late and now I would always feel this guilt and sorrow. I knew it would never leave me. I didn’t want it to. I deserved it. I wanted to be punished by it.
By the time my arms gave out and my body slumped forward against the tough, heavy, punching bag I was bawling. I hadn’t cried since Gina died, but right then I couldn’t have held back the tears no matter what I did.
I’m not sure how long I stood there crying my eyes out, throwing all of my pain to the gym floor beneath me, but when I was finally done I felt like I’d run a couple marathons. I was drained, exhausted, and ready to lay down in my bed to try to dream of a world with less pain.
As I stepped into the hot shower, I thought about the fragility of life. How was it that someone could be walking around one day fine and dandy, and then the next day they could be totally gone? I just didn’t get it. I wanted answers. I wanted to know why my mother had to die when I was just sixteen years old, why my father abandoned us when I was three, and why Arnold Caplinger just dropped dead of a cardiac arrest at the drop of a hat.