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his shoulder and yanked his arm.
    “You don’t step in front of Vinny.”
    “Sorry.  Look I’m sorry.”
    Vinny slapped my father again.  The snap was loud and my father cringed.
    “Please,” the old man said.
    Scrubby Mike grabbed both shoulders and brought his knee up into the old man’s gut.  Then he tossed him to the ground.  The old man rolled over and Scrubby kicked him as he tried to curl up.
    “Alright!  Take the bike.”
    “It’s my bike,” I said.  I have no idea why.  I knew damn well it wasn’t my bike.
    “Sean,” the old man said firmly, “get off the bike.  Now.”
    I got off the bike, and Scrubby grabbed it and picked it up off the ground, carrying it on his back like a knapsack up a stone staircase to a dark blue van waiting up on the avenue.

Chapter Four
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    There was never a dramatic moment to signal that the old man had left us.  It didn’t happen like that.  There was no knockdown, drag-out fight.  No “Get out of my house and don’t come back, ever!”  There was never a day where my mother packed all his shit and left it out on the front porch.
    That just isn’t how it happened.
    The way it did happen was he started coming home later and later each night.  Sometimes he’d stay away for days at a time.  The trips to the Bronx Zoo stopped happening.  No more Rye Playland.  No more Six Flags.  And eventually, no more old man.
    I guess he just never came home one evening.  I can’t tell you which evening it was.  I’m not sure if my mom even could.  The guy just disappeared.  Never to be heard from again.  At least I never did.  No goodbye.  No so long.
    Keeping the house paid for was no easy job for Mom.  We could have sold the house, moved to a smaller place.  But she didn’t want to leave.  It was all she had and she was gonna do everything she could to hang on to it.
    The day I first really began to appreciate just how hard it was for Mom was one day when I was in sixth or seventh grade.  I guess I was thirteen or so; a boy turning quickly into a young man and experiencing that growth and inevitable awkwardness that accompanies it without a male figure to guide me.  I had to fend for myself a lot.
    I should explain that Mom paid the mortgage on the house by working several jobs.  We rented the apartment to the Griffins, and they were pretty dependable with their share each month.  But there still was a big hole without the old man’s income.  Mom worked for years as seamstress for Bertelli the tailor.  He had a shop on the corner of Tremont Avenue and White Plains Road.  Mr. Bertelli was a fair and decent man and paid my mother a good wage.  But it still didn’t cover all the expenses of the house.
    So she took on other work.  She cleaned houses.  Worked at the dry cleaners, and the local market.  You name it.  Any shitty menial job in the neighborhood, my mother’d give it a shot, and believe me, she did.
    The problem was Mr. Bertelli’s work was seasonal.  Spring Brides.  June Proms.  Summer Formals.  Bertelli did great in the spring and summer, but oftentimes come fall, he just didn’t have work for Mom.  And as nice a guy as he was, Mr. Bertelli wasn’t going to pay my mother to sit around and do nothing.  So she’d go months at a time without steady work.
    It was during one of these awful lulls that she became desperate.  She was a proud woman.  But she was also fiercely independent, and despite her Italian-Catholic upbringing, she was a practical lady.
    She understood that sometimes you just had to do what you had to do in order to survive.
    I was shooting hoops with some of the neighborhood kids and came home well after dark.  I walked inside and all was quiet.  Most of the lights were off.  Just the kitchen light and one hall light lit up in an otherwise dark house.  I didn’t think much of it.  Didn’t announce myself or call out.  I just walked up to my room.
    Several minutes passed, and I became