Chapter One

Tony the Horse was a hit man, and he wore a size 13 ring. His bride, Frances, was a plain woman-very shy, Italian, just off the boat. When she ordered their wedding rings, the man at the jewelry store said, "Please, lady, what kind of a man are you marrying?" Frances wouldn't go back. When the rings were ready, my mother had to pick them up.

Tony was very gentle, really, very soft-spoken; he started me on my stamp collection. "Every girl should have a collection," he'd say. "Something worth money later on." He was only my father's second cousin, but Frances was barren; Tony thought of me as his own kid. He used to stop by our house two, three times a week, and he'd bring stamps from England, Brazil, Portugal, Switzerland-all over the world. Stamps with princes' faces and houses tucked away into hillsides-not little dirt hills with weeds and billboards and railroad tracks, but mountains==green mountains with mansions, sometimes castles, tucked right into their sides. He used to tell me that he'd take me there-to those houses, to any place I wanted-when I was old enough. He never spoke above a whisper; still, his throat was often sore and he always carried a box of Vicks cough drops.

Tony threw his girlfriend out a window once-but this was years before I met him, years before I was born-and he used to curse, holler, throw things: a big temper; you never knew what he would do. But these were just stories I heard, things my aunt Delia brought up when she fought with my mother: "How could you spend time with that man? Let him near your daughter? He threw his girlfriend right out the window."

"Did you know her?"