Mafia Marriage
CHAPTER 1
WHEN I arrived in Mexico, I was met at the airport by a friend of my husband's who told me he would take me to Bill. The first thing I saw when I entered the restaurant was "Felice Cumpleaños, Rosalia" written on a banner. There were daisies, my favorite flower, in wine bottles placed in the middle of every table. Mexicans playing guitars began a love ballad, and when my husband walked out of the kitchen, took my hand, and led me to one of the tables, he looked different, almost like a stranger. He'd lost maybe thirty pounds, which made him seem even taller than his six feet two inches. He had grown a beard and his eyes were deeper, and darker, more intense. He seemed fragile somehow, beautiful even. I pushed at the glass of wine someone had placed in front of me, moving it a couple of inches away. I reminded myself not to be a fool and get drawn into loving Bill Bonanno again.
The last time I saw him, four months earlier and about half a year after he was released from prison the last time, Bill had called to tell me he wanted to come over for dinner and talk to me and the kids. We were living separately.
Since it was three days before Christmas, I prepareda festive dinner. Afterward he said he had something important to tell us. We left the dinner table and went into the living room. I noticed that he did not look at or mention the desk I'd moved into the living room or the filing cabinet or the appointment slips tacked to a bulletin board, all signs that my career was thriving, something Bill would ordinarily find hard to swallow. He waited until we all settled into chairs, then sipped ice water from a tumbler and said in his lawyerly way (a manner of speaking he'd picked up serving as a paralegal in his and his father's many legal battles), "As you know, my life has been controlled by prisons and courts for the last ten years. Grandma is dead. Grandpa is going to prison. I don't know what to do next. I have emotional and personal problems. Due to some or all of these events in my life, it's necessary for me to go away for a while to get my head together."
It was true. Bill didn't look in the best of health, and he was impossible to talk to or reason with. I wondered if anyone else was after him now: the FBI, some grand jury, or other men from his world.
"I can't tell you where I'm going, or how long I'll be gone because I don't know myself. I won't be in touch with anybody until I get back. I'm not excluding you from anything. This is just the way it is."
I watched the look on my children's faces, knowing that I didn't care and wondering if they did. Chuck and Joe and Tore, all young men now, looked understanding if a little blank. What couldthey ever say to their father anyway? Their only choice was to show respect and remain silent. My daughter, Gigi, my husband's favorite, the youngest of my children at sixteen, looked worried, but not surprised. Nobody said, "Hey, Dad, can't you at least wait till after Christmas?"
After that night he was gone: no phone calls, no word, no news. This was nothing unusual, really. My husband had been missing before. Bill was not your normal, everyday nine-to-five kind of husband, who goes off to a job, returns, eats dinner, watches television, goes to bed. My husband is the son of Joseph Bonanno, who the newspapers and the government say was the head of a Mafia family and that he was his father's consigliere. This, however, is not what my husband says. My husband says Mafia is a figment of the media's imagination. He says mafia is an adjective, not a noun. To be mafioso is to be brave and honorable. He says it means being a man, audacious but never arrogant. My husband says that he and his father are men of honor who do things according to the ethos of a 750-year-old tradition transported to the United States from Sicily. The Sicilian tradition has a system of respect, of kinship, a code of behavior that tells you what is right and what is wrong. According to this code people fight their own battles and have no need to go to outside authorities such as the police. My husband tells the story of a woman whose husband has just been killed. The police say, "But who did this?" And the woman replies, "It does not matter, as long as he knows," nodding tothe baby boy she holds in her arms. That tradition is dying, thanks to the changing times. I have not raised the children to follow in their father's footsteps--to live staunchly within this tradition--as my husband was raised to follow in his father's.
Although my husband tells me my father, Salvatore Profaci, moved in the same world and was as much an adherent of the tradition as my husband--and that surely having been raised by Salvatore I must possess an inherent understanding of that world--the truth is I have a hard time with it. To me it means I can never ask questions, such as: Where are you going? How did you get the money? or How are we going to pay the rent, or the doctor bill, or the water tax? The life-style my husband leads, which I suppose is essential to his position within the Sicilian tradition, as it has been translated into the culture of the United States, means, as far as I can tell, that he does not go to a job, has lots of cash sometimes, and no money others. It means there were times he never left the house unless he was wearing a gun, and there were times when he had at least one guy in front of him and two guys in back wherever he went. Bodyguards is one word, I believe; decoys is another. My husband is constantly engaged physically, mentally, emotionally, and monetarily in court battles (it's said that old gangsters never die, they just become lawyers) and at one time fought in what the media called a gang war. What I knew about this gang war was nothing except that there were FBI men stationed outside my front door, questioning mykids when they left for school; there were floodlights pointed at my house; and there were nights when my husband didn't come home and then one evening would break into his own house--unob--served by the FBI, the police, or whomever else he didn't want to see--blindfold me, and take me off to a motel or an empty house or the backseat of a car to make love. The blindfold was for my own good. "It's for your protection. The less you know, the better off you'll be," are words I have heard often.
Bill's complex personality made him different even within his world. I never knew anyone like him. What the media doesn't know about or finds too boring to tell, are the normal times. The days when we're not dodging subpoenas. When my husband was home, he was home. But, really, even then it wasn't normal; it was more like a situation comedy, where every day is Saturday because Dad's always there. I wanted Bill to get a job, use his many talents. I wanted Bill to be different, to answer the phone or the door, take out the garbage, mow the lawn, or paint the bedroom. We had no checkbook, no savings account, no life, health, or car insurance. In fact, there were no plans. The way people plan for a vacation, put money aside, and make reservations--none of that. But one day my husband might show up after being gone for a couple of weeks--while I was pinching pennies to make whatever money he'd left me last--and say, "Pack a bag. We're going to Haiti," and then guide me through casinos, his hand on the small of myback, people paying us homage like royalty.
I will say one thing: Life with my husband has been anything but boring. Our marriage has been written about. It is part of "Mafia" lore. I am Rosalie Profaci, eldest daughter of Salvatore Profaci, said to be the righthand man, the brains behind the brawn, of his brother Joe Profaci, the head of the Profaci family. When I married Bill it was said to be a marriage of a prince and a princess, the uniting of two powerful families. The problem was that I had no idea what I was getting myself into and Bill had no idea I had no idea. In other words, if I was a princess I didn't know it; and furthermore, even if I was a princess, I've been striving all my life to be a commoner while my husband has been striving to be a prince.
Last Christmas, when my husband left, I felt less than a commoner. I felt a fool. I counted the years we'd been married--almost twenty-five--and the years we'd been separated because my husband was either in jail or just not home--twelve years. I thought how I felt peaceful, in charge of my own life, when he was gone; how I felt almost normal. I'd made a career for myself. I had drive and ambition. I had a budget. I paid the mortgage, the gas, the electric. I had a checking account. I had insurance. I'd painted the fence around our house a dusky blue, and I'd planted trees and bushes. I was planning on owning my house and living in it for the rest of my life. My goal was to give my children stability. Mostly, though, I'd changed the way I looked at things, the way I was inside. I'd alwaysbelieved that God was my partner in life, but now I felt him inside of me instead of up above and separate; I felt like I had more choices; I felt less a victim. I asked myself: What did God mean by "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder?" Did he really mean for me to remain in a marriage that made me unhappy? I came to the conclusion that if God forgives sins, he must forgive mistakes. In God's eyes, I was half-sure, divorce from my husband would not be a sin that would result in my burning in hell.
But the fact remained that my husband, due to his Old World ways, would never allow it. And when the children were little I never would have entertained the idea either, partly because I was a different person then, but most certainly because I'd lose my children. My husband always said, "You leave with what you came with," meaning only myself. My husband is a powerful man. He would have somehow arranged it that there would be no way I could live in this world unless it was as his wife. I could go through all the legal channels, I could even get the divorce papers in my hand, but there is no wall thick enough or high enough, no country strong enough, to keep my husband from me, so certainly no piece of paper was going to do it.
But my husband had seemed different the last few years: sad, calm, a little distracted. His letters from jail had become philosophical and bitter, as though, because of something I'd done, there was no way he could love me anymore. His mother haddied a few months before Christmas. His father had been convicted of an obstruction of justice charge and was facing prison at age seventy-eight; he wasn't well and it was possible that he could die there. My husband's world seemed to be shifting. When my husband had left that evening before Christmas, I'd even felt like embracing him, which was not a feeling I'd had for some time. Family and ritual have always been important to my husband, yet he was not spending Christmas with his family. Maybe, finally, he would let me go. Maybe we could go our separate ways. Maybe I could get a divorce.
So, one brisk March morning I put on my dark green suit, the one I save for important business, and, accompanied by my lawyer, walked into the Santa Clara County Courthouse and filed for divorce.
Three days later I got a phone call to go to the Good Samaritan Hospital and wait for a call at a public phone. It was a routine I'd grown accustomed to over the years because of government intrusions into our private lives. This time the reason my husband had to be careful was because since he'd left he'd been accused of committing grand theft, a charge the government had been working on since 1975. It was now 1981. The specter of yet another court battle looming in the future had made divorce all that more appealing. Also, the realization that my husband might be in hiding strengthened the possibility that I could actually get away with a divorce, because if he returned he'd be arrested.This gave me a false sense of security and autonomy.
When I picked up the phone, my husband did not say hello before he said, "You do not do this behind my back." His voice had that cold menacing commanding tone he used when there would be no discussion allowed. This was an order. "You do this to my face."
"I couldn't," I said, gathering all my courage, "I don't know where you are."
"I'm out of the country," he said. "If you think I won't come back there to stop you, no matter what goddamn court has what charge out against me, you're out of your mind. I've been making plans to come back anyway, and when I do I'll need ties to the community, a residence, to get bail. I don't need you running around up there causing trouble. You don't run out on me when I'm down. I want you to withdraw those papers."
"I can't."
"What do you mean, you can't? Nobody puts me into a corner, especially you. You do not divorce me. Divorce is not a thing you do. When we married, we married for life. Commitments are a promise to God, and to break them has serious consequences both in this life and the next."
He had softened his tone. It was turning my knees to jelly. I had to admit I agreed with him.
He said, "We've made it this long, Rosalie. After all we've been through. We can start over. We can make it work. You can't throw it away now. I need you."
I grew sadder and sadder, and more confused, and that was how I ended up withdrawing the divorce papers, and in Mexico with my husband on my birthday.
"Look at her, mira, mira," he said. "Forty-five years old and doesn't look a day past twenty-five." The Mexicans nodded deeply and smiled. The owner of the restaurant, Saro, another Sicilian, raised his glass and said, "To Rosalia."
Mexico was a bold and wild place. In the beginning, when we were still in a hotel room, screaming birds woke us every morning. We took long rides past craggy cliffs and strangled trees. Past hillsides shouting with color. We walked on the beach. We sat on rocks and stared at the waves, relentlessly approaching, crashing on rocks, spewing white spray as the seagulls jetted toward the sun, their cries splitting the air.
I wanted to like Mexico. But it was so wild: dead dogs and cows left on the side of the road, sidewalks begun and then abandoned when they ran into trees, storms bursting from the sky and shattering a previously peaceful afternoon. Nothing was planned. People lived in the moment. This country was a place where my husband could thrive, but it was not a place for me. I like order. Everything in its place. I like to plan. To know where I am so I know where I'm going. I wanted to leave but it was hard to get away. I had my work waiting. My daughter still in high school. I went home a couple of times to handle some of my customers,to put some things in order, to sell some jewelry so we could live on the money. I wanted to go home another time, but he wouldn't let me.
I said, "But Gigi needs me. I've got to check up on her. I can just imagine what she's eating. Nobody's there to make sure she goes to school every day."
"Gigi can take care of herself," he said. "She's sixteen years old. By that time I'd been on my own for years. She's got a town full of relatives up there. You're making excuses."
I pictured my daughter alone in the house. I imagined her eating peanut butter and jelly, or nothing at all. She'd told me everything was fine, but I still pictured her wandering from room to room, lost. Wondering how her mother could desert her. My son Joseph was taking state board tests for medical school, my son Tore was a freshman at San Diego State. They certainly could get by without me. Chuck, my oldest, worked in his mechanic shop and lived at home, but he probably never came home before midnight. My heart broke thinking of my daughter, so young and already alone in the world. I wondered if Gigi, never a school lover, was doing her homework. I wanted to talk to a counselor at her school. This was not right. A mother should be with her daughter.
I brought up my husband's favorite argument as my argument. "What about tradition? Is it traditional for a mother to leave her daughter?"
"It is traditional for a wife to be with her husband, to trust his decision, not to argue."
The last thing I felt for my husband was trust. Was he clinging to me so needfully now because of his situation: Because if he went back to the States he'd get arrested? Because he was in a foreign land alienated from most everything and everyone he knew? Was he being so attentive because he could feel I wasn't sure I wanted him anymore?
Sex was more sensual, erotic, and spontaneous in Mexico than it had ever been before. Yet it felt almost as though we were animals, as though the lovemaking had nothing to do with love, but with danger and fear and desperation. There were times when I was convinced there was no recovering the warm feelings, no way to rebuild the trust and the love I'd lost over the years, and still there were other times when I thought maybe it was possible to start over, to still love him.
I'd loved Bill since I was little. As children our families would gather during the summers or on Sunday afternoons, eating and drinking and laughing. The adults would grow silent whenever Bill's father spoke, showing Joseph Bonanno more respect than they showed anybody else. Off in the corners my cousins would tease me because everyone knew I was in love with his son Salvatore. Bill was the nickname he'd adopted when his family moved to Arizona for his health because Wild Bill was the rage for children those days. This American name had no doubt added to Bill's allure. That he was handsome, wore Western boots and shirts, and had such good manners might have beenenough, but to top it off he was Sicilian and a friend of the family. I'd die for a chance to sit next to him. If he so much as looked at me I'd blush and picture that look for weeks.
But that tall, skinny boy had grown up and caused me so much pain in my life, emotional and spiritual, I was not even sure I respected him anymore. Especially when, as much as I tried not to, I found myself imagining some of the things he most certainly had done. During the time of the gang war, I'd passed a room in my own house and seen him and his father and their bodyguards and other men, men the newspapers would call his soldiers, holding glasses of brandy in the air, toasting, celebrating something. They were always meeting with each other. This life of his I did not understand, never had understood, and probably never would. Yet my husband has told me over and over that my father, whom I adored and respected more than any other human being, lived according to the same principles, the same code, and that he did what had to be done.
There was no denying that, regardless of all the pain, the disillusionment, the prison terms, the public and private humiliation, the times of neglect and no support--the fear--this man I'd been married to since I was twenty and whom I'd known all of my life was my life.
But still, I had to leave Mexico. I was not thinking of divorce now; I just knew I had to get back, to my home, my children, my life. I could not think straight when I was around Bill. He dominated me.I had to get away from my husband to know what I felt.
I devised a plan of escape. This would not be the first time I'd tried to escape from him. He had taken my purse which had all my money and credit cards, but I had enough for a bus ticket to San Diego, where my son Tore was in college. If I could get that far, then I could borrow his car, or borrow money from someone, and make my way back home to San Jose.
On Sunday morning, when Bill went to buy a paper, I dressed in my bathing suit and took the beach bag in which I'd hidden my money and packed one change of clothing and a pair of shoes. The walk Bill would have to take to get the paper was a good twenty minutes. When he returned and found the house empty but nothing missing but my beach bag, he might think I just went for a swim, which would give me more time before he started to search for me. I walked quickly down the beach for at least a mile, then cut into town and to the bus station. I found out there would be no bus for an hour and a half. I had to change somewhere, and the one place I could think to go was the only hotel in town where Bill and I had never been together. It was a grand hotel where there were a lot of American tourists. My husband, who loves to eat almost as much as he loves for me to cook for him, probably never suggested we go there because someone might recognize him.
I bought a magazine and sat in the lobby. I couldn't concentrate on the words. I recalled thetime I left him in Phoenix, when he was in the middle of his affair with a woman named Erica, when there was still no doubt in my mind that I loved my husband. He'd been living a double life. He had me in a house on the east side of town and Erica in a house on the west. He bought us both the same model and color of car--green Ford Falcons. I had my first two boys, Chuck and Joseph. She also had two sons. Before I'd met Erica I had no positive proof of his affair. Still, I knew in my bones he was in love with another woman. I even knew what she looked like. He gave me hints in his criticisms of me. He'd touch a certain part of my body and say, "You're so fat," or "You're so skinny," or "Why don't you bleach your hair?" or "How come you wear that kind of shoes?" By these hints I knew she was a blonde, with large breasts and narrow hips. I knew what sort of shoes she wore. I did not know how much my husband loved her or how much she loved him, but I guessed.
Finally, I'd had enough of the criticisms and the guessing. I called my mother in Brooklyn and asked her for money without telling her what for. If I had told her it was to leave my husband and go home to her, she would have refused to give it to me. She would have told me, as she had done before, "You do not run away. You tell him, and then if he agrees, and only if he agrees, do you leave." My mother was an old-fashioned woman, a Sicilian woman, of the belief that once you marry, you are your husband's property.
Didn't she know I could never tell my husbandI was leaving? He would not have allowed it. Hadn't she seen the bruise on my arm the last time I'd visited? Didn't she and the rest of my family know about my husband's temper? I could never have come out and said this to her. I was too ashamed.
I didn't tell her why I needed the money. I bought three tickets, one for me and each of my boys. Chuck was five and Joseph was three. We weren't in the sky for five minutes before the plane returned to make an emergency landing. I was sure that my husband had found me out and forced the plane down. By the time we landed, I was so hysterical I couldn't talk and could hardly walk. I was literally crippled with fear and in awe of the power my husband could wield. (Only later would I find out that the plane had had mechanical trouble that had nothing to do with my husband at all.) The stewardess held me by an elbow and led me off. Another stewardess had my boys. They brought us to a room in the airport where I confessed, because I thought they already knew, that my name was Rosalie Bonanno. My husband was Bill. They called him up. He came to the airport and brought me back home. We did not talk about the incident.
But that was long ago. Why was I so frightened now? It had been years since he'd laid a hand on me. I wasn't that scared girl anymore, heartbroken because my husband loved another woman, afraid of what would become of me out in the world without a man to support me. I had supported myself, had a career, made my own decisions. Why did Iturn into such a scared, silent person with the posture of a cowering dog when around my husband? I began to pray to St. Christopher that I would have a safe journey. I prayed to the Sacred Heart to give me courage. I prayed that this time, God willing, I would make it back home. Then I would call Bill and apologize. Then we could reach a compromise. Then maybe he'd see that I couldn't just leave everything that was important to me to be with him.
When enough time had passed I walked back through the lobby and out the door. As I descended the steps, I saw him. He was sitting in the car looking at me. I felt my heart pound in my chest. I took a deep breath because I'd forgotten to breathe. He said, "Get in."
I froze.
He said, "Don't do this to me, Rosalie. Not now. Not when I need you."
I got in.
We did not talk. When he followed me into the cottage, he said, "What're we having for lunch?"
Neither of us spoke about my attempt to leave, and Bill seemed dejected. Certainly sad. In bed that night, I faced away from him and out the window. Perhaps it had been my fear that had drawn him to me. Perhaps I'd expected to be caught and so I was caught. I'd acted guilty when there was nothing to be guilty about. I decided I would not act guilty anymore.
The next morning, he told me we were going fora ride. The sun was sharp and the air cool. He parked the car on a cliff and we climbed down some rocks to the beach. He stroked the back of my head, then put his hand on my neck. I could not stand the feel of his hands on me. I moved a foot away. "I have to leave, Bill," I said. "It's not because I want to leave you. I'll come back. But I have to at least ease my mind that Gigi's okay. Make sure everything's all right." I didn't dare mention my business reasons for returning. I knew how Bill would react to that.
He stared at the ocean and said nothing.
"I could bring warmer clothing, pans, my food mill, make this place more like a home."
"If you'd only learn," he said, shaking his head. "When you accept me and the way things are, there's a loosening of demands. When you fight and combat it, there's trouble. You are not a common person. You can't be a Nancy. You can't be a Beverly." (These were friends of mine with careers. Women who might talk back to their husbands, in public. Women who made their own decisions.)
I picked up a twig and began making roads in the sand.
"You're not accepting the reality of your situation," he said, "both before you married and after you married. You're still in a fantasy world and you're laying your own obstacles down. Nowhere is it written that life is fair."
"You wish I was a different person."
"Yes, I suppose I do."
And I wish you were a different person, I didn't say. Instead I interpreted what he was saying. My interpretation was this: Let it be his idea. Let him believe that I am not making any decisions on my own, and then I can get to do what I want. Sometimes.
When he pulled me into the sand and made love to me, I pretended at first to enjoy it, and then I did enjoy it. When we lay there, side by side, looking up at the sky, I said, "All I want is a little time. I just need to see that Gigi's as fine as she says. Check on the house. Bring some things down here to make the cottage more comfortable."
"Fine," he said. "All you had to do was talk to me."
I wondered.
Two days later, back in San Jose, I suspected Gigi was fairly happy to have me in Mexico. The house was not exactly spotless, but it wasn't a mess either. She'd made hamburger patties and put them in the freezer. There was a leftover roasted chicken in the refrigerator. Chuck had been giving her money for groceries and was home nearly every night for dinner now. She said she'd been baby-sitting and working at the department store. I asked her how she felt about my staying with her father.
She said, "Ma! Fine. I can't believe you. Don't worry. I'm fine. It was when you filed for divorce I wasn't fine. Why did you have children if you couldn't live up to your commitment?" Sometimes I think that of all my children my daughter is the one who most takes after the Bonannos. She hasconfidence and a strong sense of herself, as well as an innate and particular knowledge of what is right and what is wrong.
I knew she was right. I knew in my husband's way he was right too. It was just plain wrong to make a commitment, to make a promise before God, and then to try to break it.
My heart was lighter when I packed up my favorite pans. I bought a wheel of Romano cheese and packed my ceramic jar to keep it in once it was grated. I needed my food mill for the grinding of tomatoes. I took a pie tin, a cake pan, a tea kettle. I brought sheets and towels and rags to clean with. A radio.
It had been planned, just in case I was being followed by the FBI when I left San Jose for Mexico, that I would rent a car, meet my son Tore in San Diego, turn the car in, and then Tore would drive me back to Rosarito.
On the drive down I began to see a way it could work out with Bill. He had made good friends with Saro, who owned the Italian restaurant where we'd had my birthday party. Saro and Bill looked so much alike, people mistook them for brothers. Bill had taught Saro some of my dishes: pasta with broccoli sauce, fettuccine Alfredo, clam sauce, and marinara sauce. He'd taught Saro how to make them and Bill had cooked them himself in the kitchen many nights. Maybe they could be partners. Bill was happy in the restaurant. He was always at his best when he was being a host, surrounded by people, friendly and gregarious. Bill's personalitywould be good for business. He was content when he was busy, and running a restaurant would be a real job. Then I could get a job in San Diego; it was only minutes from the border. I could commute. In Mexico we could even have a bank account, a checkbook. There would be no IRS, no FBI, no criminal record, no publicity, no tapped phones. Our children were grown. They'd visit on holidays. Bill and I could have a new life.
A second chance.
I'd made plans with Tore to meet him at the airport, where I would turn in the rented car. When I arrived he was not at the appointed gate. I waited and waited. Finally, at midnight, I had him paged. His name is Salvatore Bonanno, the same as my husband's.
Tore had been at the west gate instead of the east.
He helped me take all the stuff from my car and load it into his, then we drove to our cottage. In the morning we unloaded the car and Tore drove back because he had to study for midterms.
I felt wonderful. After twenty-five years, Bill finally wanted what I wanted: a normal life. I felt at home for the first time in this strange country. Seeing my stuff all over the kitchen, knowing there was a turkey, imported pasta, and Romano cheese in the refrigerator, was comforting. I was sweaty after traveling, so I undressed to take a shower, and as I stepped under the steaming water, I looked out the window as was my unconscious custom. Only this time, instead of some dogs on the street andsome birds flitting from tree to tree, I saw maybe a half dozen Mexican men in uniform surrounding our house. I shut off the water, tiptoed out of the bathroom, and called to Bill in a loud whisper. "There are men." Just as I said this there was banging on the door and a loud voice calling, "Mexican Judicial Police."
"Tell them you're in the shower. Tell them to wait a minute," Bill said. "I knew it. The goddamn FBI were at the airport."
Had it been my fault because I'd had them page Bill's name?
I said, "I'm showering, can you wait?" then ran into my room to put a bathing suit on under my towel while Bill moved into the hallway, which you could not see from the front room. I went to the door wrapped in the towel with my hair wet. I am not a good liar and never have been, but still I told them as convincingly as I could that my husband was not home.
Meanwhile, some other police had gone around to the back of the house and through a window had spotted Bill standing in the hallway, who in turn had spotted them. "Forget it, Rosalie," he said, walking into the living room.
The Mexican police stormed past me and threw Bill onto the floor. Two men, one on each side of him, held a gun to Bill's head, while another handcuffed his hands behind his back.
I sat on the sofa and covered my eyes.
The last thing I saw was Bill being shoved ontothe floor of a van. The last thing I heard was Bill calling, "Rosalie, I love you."
I must have wept for two days. I didn't know what to do. Was I supposed to stay and wait, or was it all right to leave? I finally got word from Bill's cousin Jack that Bill had been brought to the border and arrested by the FBI. He was being held in Alameda County on a grand-theft charge with a bail of one million dollars. I knew that Bill had had to borrow money to live on for the past months. How would he ever make bail? I was afraid he would ask his aunt to sell the house and borrow the money from her; or even ask her to put the house up for bail! But then, Aunt Marion was a widow and was not well. She had decided to stay on the East Coast near things she knew. Would I lose the house we had made into a home? When his lawyer called one morning and asked if I'd appear at a bail-reduction hearing, I lost it. I began to shout, "I will NEVER sit in another courtroom and answer another question to get my husband out of ANYTHING!"
When I hung up I was shaking. After I calmed down a little, I began to wonder, not for the first time, how Rosalie Profaci, the shy little girl from Brooklyn--the one who was going to have a good life because she never committed any sins, the one who always did what she was told, never asked questions, and never talked back, especially to a man, no less a lawyer, the one who thought she had married a cowboy who would take her away to a new and different life--ever grew up to bowher head before news cameras and to pack picnics for her children, not to eat under the shade of a tree in the country but in the car on the long drive to visit their father in prison.
Copyright © 1990 by Armeda Limited.