The Servants of Twilight

You've got to get As in school, and even if you don't like math, you've got to just work harder until you're perfect in it, because you need math in this world, and your father, God pity him, was lousy with figures, and I won't have you being like poor weak Vincent; that scares me. I don't want my son being a bum, and I'm afraid I see a bum in you, just like your father, weakness in you. Now, you're also a Giat etti, and don't you forget it. Giavettis always do their best, and their best is always as good as anyone could do, and don't you tell me that you're already spending most of your time studying, and don't tell me about your weekend job at the grocery store. Work is good for you. I got you that job because you show me a teenage boy who doesn't have a part-time job and I'll show you a future bum. Why, even with your job and your studying and the things you do around here, you should still have plenty of free time, too much, way too much. You should maybe even be working a night or two during the week at the market. There's always more time if you want to find it; God made the whole world in six days, and don't tell me you aren't God because if you listened to your catechism lessons you'd know you were made in His image, and remember you're a Giavetti, which means you were made in His image just a little more than some other people I could name, like Vincent Scavello, but I won't. Look at me! I work all day, but I cook good meals for you, too, and with Christine I keep this big house immaculate, absolutely immaculate, God as my witness, and though I may be tired sometimes and feel like I just can't go on, I do go on, for you, for you I go on, and your clothes are always nicely pressed-Aren't they? — and your socks are always mended-Tell me once you ever had to wear a sock with a hole in it! — so if I do all this and not drop dead and not even complain, then you can be the kind of son to make me proud, and by God you're going to be! And as for you, Christine. "

Evelyn never ceased lecturing them. Always, every day, holidays, birthdays-there was no day free of her lectures. Christine and Tony sat captive, not daring to answer back because that brought the most withering scorn and the worst punishment-and encouraged even more lecturing. She pushed them relentlessly, demanded the greatest possible accomplishments in everything they did, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing; it might even have been good for them. However, when they did achieve the best grade possible, win the highest award being given, move up to the first seats in their sections of the school orchestra, when they did all that and more, much more, it never satisfied their mother.

The best wasn't good enough for Evelyn. When they achieved the best, reached the pinnacle, she chastised them for not having gotten there sooner, set new goals for them, and suggested they were trying her patience and running out of time in which to make her proud of them.

When she felt lecturing wasn't sufficient, she used her ultimate weapon-tears. She wept and blamed herself for their failures.

"Both of you are going to come to a bad end, and it'll be my fault, all my fault, because I didn't know how to reach you, how to make you see what was important. I didn't do enough for you, I didn't know how to help you overcome the Scavello blood that's in you, and I should have known, should have done better.

What good am I as a mother? No good, no mother at all."

all those years ago.

But it seemed like yesterday.

Christine couldn't tell Charlie Harrison everything about her mother and that claustrophobic childhood of shadowy rooms and heavy Victorian furniture and heavy Victorian guilt, for she would have needed hours to explain. Besides, she wasn't looking for pity, and she was not by nature the kind of person given to sharing the intimate details of her life with others-not even with friends, let alone strangers like this man, nice as he might be.

She only alluded to her past with a few sentences, but from his expression, she thought he sensed and understood more than she told him; perhaps the pain of it was in her eyes and face, more easily read than she supposed.

"Those years were worse for Tony than for me," she told the detective."

Mainly because, on top of everything else that Eyelyn expected of him, she also wanted him to be a priest. The Giavettis had produced two priests in her generation, and they were the most revered members of the family."

In addition to the Giavettis' tradition of service to the Church, Evelyn was a religious woman, and even without that family history, she would have pushed Tony toward the priesthood. She pushed successfully, too, for he went straight from parochial school into the seminary. He had no choice. By the time he was twelve, Evelyn had him brainwashed, and it was impossible for him to imagine being anything but a priest.