Melissa Kelly Life was finally commonplace, as commonplace as heart attacks can be. From the time that he was forty, Johnny’s weak heart had betrayed him time and time again. But beyond his health, little else was out of place. His children had a mother; this was Johnny’s charge. Each of those children will tell you a different story of that man. Ruthie will tell of a cold man, deliberate and disconnected from her, yet so warm to his first son. Charlotte misremembers or misunderstands much of the past, and so her story is her own, though that’s truly not so different from the others. And Joyce will tell of a man changed by loss and misfortune, wrong turns and heartbreak. But none tell a more different story than his two sons. Johnny Jr., eldest son, apple of his father’s eye, tells his story most reverently of all. Johnny Jr. was raised by a father who taught him to be as honorable a man as any. Johnny’s father taught him to work on cars and build houses, to work hard and provide for his family. Johnny’s father taught him the fear of a deceitful mortal coil that might turn on him in any moment. Johnny Jr.’s father was a hero. The baby, Matthew, tells it worst of all. Matthew is still resentful that his father was a man made angry by the medicine that kept his heart pumping, a man with a short fuse, a loose cannon. Matthew’s father was a man not afraid to raise his hand, to scold his wife. Matthew’s father was a tyrant. In the end, Johnny’s heart quit, as it was expected to. He woke up that morning and read the paper in bed, drifted back to sleep and never woke up. At least that’s the story they told his grandchildren. If this wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t know it. The day before Easter, while unseasonable snow dusted the ground, his family buried his ashes beside his first wife. 14
There is a photo of Johnny that hangs in the house with the dented door; in it he is the spitting image of James Dean. His hair is dark and slick and a cigarette hangs nonchalantly out of his mouth. His leather jacket is worn in all the right ways. Though you can’t see it, beneath that jacket is an army tattoo from his time in Korea, a bear that would warp with time into something indistinguishable. But in that photo it is surely fresh and clean as the day it was inked. He leans up against a (now) old muscle truck and his hands are stuffed deep into the pockets of his pants. He looks straight into the camera— dutifully, unflinching.