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“Come in, Tom. What is it?”
Tom looked like someone had dunked him in cold water—not physically, but the emotional state of him was obviously on point. He’d stood behind the half-closed kitchen door for a good fifteen minutes now; normally he was a lively kid, wary around strangers but quite open with his family, and yet he didn’t look like himself as he snuck into the kitchen, where Vito was sitting alone with papers and a pen. It was the hour when he worked on certain things his family wasn’t allowed to pry into, and they only came in to talk to him if something was urgent.
Tom obviously had something urgent on his mind, and he was more tense than Vito had seen him in years. He approached slowly and stood next to the table, chewing his lip, hands deep in trouser pockets. “I’m sorry, I— Am I distracting you?”
“Tommasino, I would’ve told you if I couldn’t spare a minute for you. This can wait.” Vito put down his pen and beckoned him closer. “Is something wrong?”
It could be some trouble at school. Or maybe not. Tom was a very good student, and he’d get really upset at a bad grade—but not to this point, where he couldn’t even look his father in the eye.
Tom shook his head, shoulders still very tense. “You sometimes get people coming to you asking for favours. I know I already owe you but if I can— I’d like to ask for something. On my own this time.”
Vito patted him on the head. “You don’t owe me for simple goodwill. You’re right that sometimes people come to me and I help them solve their problems, but they’re all grown up and they can repay me with something in the future. You were just a kid. You still are—and now you’re my kid, and I love you. In business, you have to budget, but not in the family, and if I can do something for you, I will.”
Tom gulped, only slightly relieved; the pat on the head had made him shiver. “I want to— I want you to believe me about something I want to tell you. If you can.”
Vito frowned, wondering where this was headed. He really hoped this was nothing to do with the new priest in the church, but if he had to— Oh well.
But Tom seemed to be in the mood for a long, heartfelt story instead of simply an emotional breakdown. Vito nodded. “I can believe a lot of things. Now, sit down, take a deep breath and tell me everything. Did someone hurt you?”
Tom shook his head so hard it must have made him dizzy. “No, it’s— It’s just a bit of a story.”
He pulled a chair closer, still with a corner of the table between them, and gulped before he could begin.
“Uh. I— I’m really, really grateful for everything you’ve done for me. I hope it’s worth it—I mean, I’ve been trying to make it worth it, to do what I can. Like, going to school to actually learn something, getting good grades, helping Ma around the house. I know it’s small, and I really want to be useful, to go to college if I can and study something like law so I could—” He shot a quick glance at Vito, and his cheeks turned pink. “I don’t know if I could work for you, I don’t know if I’d be good enough, but I’ll really try if I ever get the chance.”
He opened his mouth for more, but the next words just stuck in his throat.
Vito chuckled. The poor boy obviously hadn’t as much as glimpsed the calculations Vito did every day in this hour. With the Prohibition in full swing, the molasses stream from the south could just as well be pure gold. Most of it went right back into the business, sure, but they were far better off than when they had just taken Tom in; Vito had already been planning to discuss further education with his elder sons, and he was confident that he would be able to pay a reasonable fee for all of them in a few years.
“So you want to go to college?” he tried. “Is that what’s so big and scary?”
Tom couldn’t look at him. “Yes and no. I mean, I do want to. But there’s one thing. I’ve been doing everything I can, it’s just— It’s not up to me.”
Vito tilted his head, studying the boy’s face. The expression on it was miserable.
“I don’t know if you know,” Tom mumbled. “But there’s just something with me. I was— I was born like this. It’s really not a choice.”
“Do you mean to tell me it’s about your—” Vito thought for a bit, choosing the word. “Tastes?”
Of all things, that made Tom snort. “No. I’ve got pretty normal tastes for a guy. It’s just, not everybody would agree I can even say that about myself. I used to be a— My parents used to call me Thea. And all my life, I just wanted to wake up one day and not be—this.” He pinched his skin, like there was something wrong with it. “I want to be a boy, a man for everyone, openly, not just in my head and then some. I have nothing to do with girls. That’s why I’m asking you.” His eyes were big and pleading; this was clearly life and death to him. “Please don’t tell me I’m wrong about this. Please, just— I know this, I really do.”
Vito sat there, thinking about what he’d just heard. He knew he would just send anyone else away, had they come with such a statement. But with a kid of his own—and Tom was indeed of his own after five years—he couldn’t do so, and the fact that the obvious thing didn’t necessarily sound like the right thing to do as a Christian and a father begged for a moment of reflection.
“I seem to remember,” he said slowly, “records of a Hagen girl who was put in a foster family. You said that was your sister.”
“Yeah. I never had one. But that family—they wanted me to dress in frocks! I ran off after two weeks. Even my parents didn’t do that to me—not that they could, pants were easier to find in the trash than dresses anyway.”
Vito shook his head slowly. He and Tom had been orphaned around the same age, and he knew the hardship that came with it. He had to try. “You know, your life can get a lot harder than this turmoil in your poor head. You need to learn to face it and to accept certain truths, not run away from them.”
Tom’s whole face pinched with hurt, like he’d just swallowed a lemon. “I tried, Pop. I tried for years, so hard. You have my word. It just doesn’t work.”
“Why do you think it should work if you tell me?”
Tom was tense all over again, like he was bracing for rejection. “You said we’re going to move to the Bronx. I wanted to ask for this before we do, so I’d be sure what I can tell others at the new place.”
Vito wasn’t sure Tom had meant it his way, but to be on the safe side, he took it as a sign that if he pressed on with this, Tom would end up not talking to him or running off for good.
He had no intention to put the boy right back into the misery of homelessness after he and Carmela had had to nurse him back to health as an eleven-year-old. And whether he wanted to show this or not, the gears in his head had been working.
“I know I have to accept things,” Tom mumbled, out of either unexpected determination or growing despair. “I know there are things I can’t be if I wasn’t born with them. But—you gave me so much instead. I was an orphan and then you took me into a family, and honestly, I wasn’t half this happy with my actual parents. I was this overall-American kid, and now I speak Italian and new kids think I’m the Corleones’ cousin. I told you I’m not sure about my denomination, you said it doesn’t matter, and now I go to church with all of you and no one asks questions. I hoped this wouldn’t be too different.” His voice faded away at the last words, and he looked genuinely scared as he used all of his willpower to look up. “Is it?”
Vito tried to ignore his reasoning and imagine this was a daughter of his sitting beside him instead of a son.
He couldn’t.
Some things certainly made more sense now—how Tom was so thin in the waist and so beardless, and so unwilling to get fully undressed in anyone’s presence. Vito had written the last one off as a sign of Tom’s different initial upbringing, and surely the amount of facial hair on blonds would look different from his own Sicilian stubble. Oh well.
Carmela must have known, he thought with a chuckle. She knew about every bruise and every scratched knee; naturally this wouldn’t escape her attention. She knew and called Tom, Tom; the boys called him brother, and he couldn’t say they never made a difference but it was because of Tom’s hair colour, not his body.
If someone had been able to convince his entire family, maybe he should take the hint.
He was still hesitant, but Tom was looking at him with enormous eyes, clearly absolutely dependent on his decision. Vito wanted his children to be good Christians—but he wasn’t a saint himself, certainly hadn’t been since he’d killed a man with his own hands ten years ago, and he wasn’t going to judge his children if they chose to follow his path. He wanted to see them happy and content with life, and others could be righteous beggars if they so wanted.
The gears still turning in his head, he asked warmly, “Did you train yourself to speak in a lower voice, then?”
Tom blushed, cracking a quarter of a smile. “I’m proud of that one,” he rumbled from his stomach, it seemed. “And I got lucky with the, uh—” He looked down at the unassuming front of his shirt. “There’s nothing and I couldn’t be more grateful. I really don’t know what I’d do with them.”
Vito ruffled his hair again, pulling him closer. “So this is why I couldn’t find a record of a Theo Hagen being born anywhere in the city. Then you said you might be Thomas and you just weren’t sure what your name on the papers was. Clever, very clever.”
“Yeah.” Tom sounded shy but very happy. “I needed something I knew I wouldn’t forget. I mean, I don’t mind Theo, it works fine as a middle name. And it’s in line with what you told me about not forgetting my name. I, uh. I halved them.”
“You did exactly as I said, and at the same time you did what you wanted.” Vito shook his head, trying not to chuckle. “Now, Tom. What is it you want exactly? I can’t perform miracles, I’m afraid.”
Tom inched closer to him. “I know, just— If you just keep calling me Tom, it’s a miracle already. The rest—honestly, I don’t know what else to ask for.”
Vito raised a brow. “You don’t know? Or are you too shy to ask for other things after you got your miracle?”
He knew he hit the nail on the head with that. Tom squirmed in his seat, way too happy to just sit still and think straight. “Honestly, going to college would be great. Well, and on top of that, if I could ever talk to a surgeon and do some—” His two fingers moved in the air like a pair of scissors. “Because this thing is useless except it makes me suffer every month. And in the future I’d probably ask for your blessing to marry a girl who doesn’t mind and then we’d adopt a bunch of kids so I can, you know. Pass on what you’ve done for me.”
He was looking up at Vito with shining eyes now, his short hair full of sunlight from the window and his thin face shy at all the admissions. He was a pretty boy, maybe prettier and more delicate than his peers who had been growing into the adult roughness for some time now, but Vito would have never thought—
The thought he had been looking for finally clicked in place. If Tom had kept this up for years without drawing attention, he could indeed show brilliant results in the business behind the olive oil company front.
There were still a lot of steps before that was going to happen, and Vito knew which one he could take right now. His papers were still there and numerous, but they could wait a few more minutes.
He put an arm around Tom’s shoulders. “Let’s see what we can do, my boy. What was that you said about college? I’ve been meaning to talk to you about one—law, is it?”
Tom Hagen was thirty-five years old, a tall crew-cut man, very slender, very ordinary-looking. He was a lawyer but did not do the actual detailed legal work for the Corleone family business though he had practiced law for three years after passing the bar exam...