DiLucchios On the Worldwide Web
Dec. 7th, 2011 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraDiLucchios turn up on Facebook like mushrooms after the storm. We’re all related, we just don’t know how, being as how the history of this particular clutch of Italian immigrants in Depression era Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is one of total social breakdown, complete abandonment of support institutions like church and family. There are also the Italian DiLucchios of course, anxious for the American branch to snag them green cards, Tony Bennett concert tickets and high paying jobs with the Mafia.
An uncle surfaced yesterday, a bona fide half brother of my reprobate Dad. Apparently my grandfather Dan settled down relatively late in life, after walking out on my grandmother Jean DeSantis and I think one or two other wives in between. Managed to find some stability in his declining years, begetting sons who went on to respectable careers, go figure! Daniel, a mere three years older than me, lives near Philadelphia and went on to become a modestly prosperous labor lawyer.
We figured out the connection because Dan remembered the huge fight his parents had when Dan Sr. insisted on going to Jean DeSantis’s funeral.
Why, I wonder, would you bother to go to your first wife’s funeral after ignoring her existence for 50 years? And the son you had with her? Some sort of nostalgia fest for his own lost youth, I suppose.
Ted never got over his father’s abandonment. Somewhere in my voluminous annals, I have – or once had – a photograph of Ted, aged about seven, with his mother. On the whole, we are an extremely good looking family physically but we didn’t get that from the DeSantis’s. In this photo, Jean looks like a human toad, just incredibly ugly and squat, clad entirely in black as befitted a Mediterranean grass widow, turning her covetous eyes towards her amazingly beautiful son in his monkey suit with his woolen leggings. It’s really a classic photo so I hope I didn’t lose it.
Ted went on to become a child molester.
First he married the children he molested. I’m not sure he ever bothered to divorce them after the marriages fell through. My own mother at age 16. A girl before my mother, in Florida, with whom he also had kid. And poor Beverly whose parents threatened to put him in jail for statutory rape, and with whom he produced seven kids: Jeannie, Teddy, Jimmy, Dale, Dane, Denise and Denine. Their names were one of the litanies of my childhood, a formula kind of like the names of the Seven Dwarfs or the Seven Sins.
After Beverly got too old and lost vagina tone, Ted turned his sexual attentions to my half sister Jeannie – who now goes by the name “Jeanna.” I must say as survivors of sexual abuse go, Jeanna is doing very, very well these days – although for a very long time, that was not the case. Her past includes multiple episodes of heroin addiction, suicide attempts and stints in mental hospitals. She’s 30 years past that drama though, although like all of us, she has a basic mistrust of human interaction that gives her a slightly alien affect.
On her deathbed, my mother clutched my hand and said, “Whatever else I didn’t do Patty, at least I got you away from that man.” And you know what? That’s true and I owe her for that.
Anyway, it feels quite extraordinary to run into DiLucchios on Facebook who are not dysfunctional, who appear to be living normal, reasonably content lives.
In other news, RTT has come down with his yearly illness. Once a year, he runs fevers of about 101 degrees for a week or so. Doesn’t seem to be flu since he’s not complaining of body aches. Symptoms, such as they be, are upper respiratory – sore throat, bad cough. I just keep him in bed and dote on him. He likes being taken care of and is uncharacteristically affectionate in response. I make him do schoolwork in between movies. His tastes run to Jurassic Park and The Big Lebowski.
Supposed to snow tonight. Sigh…
An uncle surfaced yesterday, a bona fide half brother of my reprobate Dad. Apparently my grandfather Dan settled down relatively late in life, after walking out on my grandmother Jean DeSantis and I think one or two other wives in between. Managed to find some stability in his declining years, begetting sons who went on to respectable careers, go figure! Daniel, a mere three years older than me, lives near Philadelphia and went on to become a modestly prosperous labor lawyer.
We figured out the connection because Dan remembered the huge fight his parents had when Dan Sr. insisted on going to Jean DeSantis’s funeral.
Why, I wonder, would you bother to go to your first wife’s funeral after ignoring her existence for 50 years? And the son you had with her? Some sort of nostalgia fest for his own lost youth, I suppose.
Ted never got over his father’s abandonment. Somewhere in my voluminous annals, I have – or once had – a photograph of Ted, aged about seven, with his mother. On the whole, we are an extremely good looking family physically but we didn’t get that from the DeSantis’s. In this photo, Jean looks like a human toad, just incredibly ugly and squat, clad entirely in black as befitted a Mediterranean grass widow, turning her covetous eyes towards her amazingly beautiful son in his monkey suit with his woolen leggings. It’s really a classic photo so I hope I didn’t lose it.
Ted went on to become a child molester.
First he married the children he molested. I’m not sure he ever bothered to divorce them after the marriages fell through. My own mother at age 16. A girl before my mother, in Florida, with whom he also had kid. And poor Beverly whose parents threatened to put him in jail for statutory rape, and with whom he produced seven kids: Jeannie, Teddy, Jimmy, Dale, Dane, Denise and Denine. Their names were one of the litanies of my childhood, a formula kind of like the names of the Seven Dwarfs or the Seven Sins.
After Beverly got too old and lost vagina tone, Ted turned his sexual attentions to my half sister Jeannie – who now goes by the name “Jeanna.” I must say as survivors of sexual abuse go, Jeanna is doing very, very well these days – although for a very long time, that was not the case. Her past includes multiple episodes of heroin addiction, suicide attempts and stints in mental hospitals. She’s 30 years past that drama though, although like all of us, she has a basic mistrust of human interaction that gives her a slightly alien affect.
On her deathbed, my mother clutched my hand and said, “Whatever else I didn’t do Patty, at least I got you away from that man.” And you know what? That’s true and I owe her for that.
Anyway, it feels quite extraordinary to run into DiLucchios on Facebook who are not dysfunctional, who appear to be living normal, reasonably content lives.
In other news, RTT has come down with his yearly illness. Once a year, he runs fevers of about 101 degrees for a week or so. Doesn’t seem to be flu since he’s not complaining of body aches. Symptoms, such as they be, are upper respiratory – sore throat, bad cough. I just keep him in bed and dote on him. He likes being taken care of and is uncharacteristically affectionate in response. I make him do schoolwork in between movies. His tastes run to Jurassic Park and The Big Lebowski.
Supposed to snow tonight. Sigh…
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Date: 2011-12-07 01:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-07 04:56 pm (UTC)Sorry about the snow. We're getting "Snow may mix in late," but mostly lots of rain. I'd rather have the snow.
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Date: 2011-12-08 12:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-09 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-09 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-09 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-09 06:29 pm (UTC)