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Junior and Barbara watched It’s A Wonderful Life together, the only two people in the house not arguing to some degree.
Barbara covered her eyes when the pharmacist slapped George Bailey’s ear so hard that it started bleeding.
“Jesus.” Junior rubbed her arm, wondering how she was from this family. “You can’t even see the red!”
“Least Janice ain’t here no more,” Johnny mumbled through a cigarette. He opened the door to let Carmela in. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart.” He kissed her on the cheek.
“Merry Christmas. Is Tony around?”
“Gotta be somewhere…” He glanced around. “Anthony!” his volume still made Carmela flinch.
“They’re upstairs!” Livia yelled from the kitchen.
“I’ll go get him. Don’t want youse two getting up to any funny business up there.” Johnny coughed the whole way upstairs. He didn’t knock on Tony’s door because kids deserved no privacy. “Your girlfriend– For chrissakes! Which one of youse did this?”
Both Tonys spoke over each other.
“Christopher, which of these fuckin’ idiots gave you a black eye?”
He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to be a rat. It was Tony B.
“Good kid,” Johnny liked the initiative to keep his mouth shut. “Come on, your girlfriend’s downstairs.” He opened the door for Tony then gestured for the other two to come down too because they were fucking morons. He kicked the back of Tony B’s leg because he knew it was him.
“Oh my god, Tony!” Carmela wasn’t greeting him, she was pissed off that her little cousin had a black eye. “What happened?”
“Couldn’t see past his own beak,” Tony B muttered as he got to the bottom of the stairs.
Christopher heard. “Fuck off!”
Johnny shoved Tony B in the direction of the dining room so they could be separated. “Sit with your father and shut up for once in your life.”
Carmela pulled Christopher towards her and gave Tony a dirty look. “What happened?” She looked annoyed when neither of them said anything.
“Omertà,” Junior explained from the couch. “Code of silence.”
“Ancient tradition.” Tony shrugged.
She shook her head. “Go get some ice for your eye.”
“Don’t go in there!” Junior warned him not to go to the kitchen. “She’ll give you a matching set. Send Anthony instead.”
“Tony will you please get him some ice for his black eye?” Carmela had venom in her tone.
Tony went off and shoved Tony B’s shoulder on the way to the kitchen because he’d made his girlfriend mad at him. “Ma, you got some ice?”
“Just go outside, we live in Jersey.”
“It’s for Chrissy, he got a little hurt.”
“Don’t you see all the snow on the ground out there, Anthony?” She pointed outside with a very sharp knife.
He had a flashback to the fork almost going through his eye and quickly went to get snow.
Tony B watched him go out. “I’m going in the yard with Tony.”
“But you don’t have your coat on,” his mother nagged. “Anthony!” she yelled when he ignored her.
Tony had just picked a snowball up when he saw Tony B come out. He threw it at him with more force than would be playful.
“Fuck was that for?!”
“I’m sick of you and your fuckin’ wisecracks and all your fuckin’ bullshit! You give Chrissy a black eye and now my girlfriend’s mad at me!”
“I hit him by mistake, you saw!” That was actually true but he had been tormenting him. “And where’s all this coming from?”
“You got no idea how fuckin’ annoying you are sometimes!”
Carmela and Christopher sat watching the movie too while they waited.
This house always reeked of cigarettes but Carmela was smelling them closer than that. “Have you been smoking?” she asked Christopher.
“What? No.”
She grabbed his shirt to smell him. “You stink of cigarettes!”
“I always stink of cigarettes! You met my mother?”
“Don’t you hear the way your Uncle Johnny coughs?!”
He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t smoke!”
“I’m telling your mother!”
“Where you think I get the cigarettes?!”
Barbara sighed because even over here had arguments now. “Me and Uncle Junior are tryna watch the movie…”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Christopher!” Carmela smacked his arm. “Sorry, Barbara, we’ll be quiet. Both of us.”
“Good luck with that,” Junior muttered.
Johnny coughed as he went through to the dining room. He saw the Tonys fighting from the window. “Jesus Christ.” He went out and broke them up, making him cough more. “You’re too old for this shit!”
“He started it!”
“This is the typa shit you’re too old for!” Johnny practically coughed out a lung and the Tonys felt so worried that they weren’t mad at each other anymore.
“Dad?!”
“Uncle Johnny?”
“I’m all right, I’m all right,” he spoke through coughing. “Go back inside, give me a minute.”
“But I don’t wanna leave you, you can’t breathe.”
“Anthony, do what I tell you!” He leaned over to catch his wheezy breath.
“Ma!” Tony rushed inside with the other Tony.
“What?”
“Dad can’t breathe!”
“What’s new there?” She thought it was a panic attack.
“He’s coughing his brains out, Aunt Liv!”
She went to the window to talk through it. “Johnny!”
“Yeah?”
“Shut the door, you’re letting a draft in!”
Tony felt like he couldn’t breathe now because of hearing her say something so callous. The room started spinning.
Everyone exclaimed when he dropped to the floor.
“Tony!” Carmela rushed over faster than his own mother.
“Give him some space.” Tony B gestured for her to back up. “He’ll come round in a minute.”
She gave him a look of confusion.
“He does this sometimes.” Tony B shrugged because he didn’t have the words to know what it was. “Just give him a second.”
She still looked very worried.
“Carm, he’s all right,” he spoke to her with a kind tone that he was capable of deep down. “He’s been doing this since we were kids, you got nothing to worry about.”
He woke up and felt embarrassed that everyone was staring at him. Junior and Tony B’s father helped him up.
“Oh, Anthony!” Livia acted like she cared. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, ma.”
“You! Up.” Junior gestured for Christopher to get off the couch. “Anthony needs a seat.”
“I’m all right, Uncle Jun. Really.”
“He’s talking over the movie anyway,” he whispered.
Tony chuckled as he took his seat. “Sorry, Chrissy… I never got you the ice.”
He was looking at Tony with concern. “What happened there, T?”
“I got dizzy.” He scratched his ear sheepishly. “Happens sometimes.”
Junior sat down as Christopher left. “Can finally watch the fuckin’ movie now without that stunad in my ear.”
“How’s my father?”
“What about your father?”
“He was coughing like a–” He looked exasperated. “My mother didn’t tell you?!”
“Tell me what?”
“Go outside, he’s out there!”
Junior muttered to himself as he went out back, even though he’d seen the movie a million times. Johnny was breathing fine by the time he got there.
“Anthony said you were coughing.”
Johnny gestured for him to close the door. “I’m waiting to make sure it don’t start up again, don’t want the kids to see.”
“See you coughing? I think they’ll survive that sight.”
“…I got emphysema.”
“Emphy– And you’re still smoking like a fuckin’ chimney?!”
“I’m tryna cut back.”
“I’m gonna go round every store in this neighbourhood, tell them they can’t sell no cigarettes to–”
“Jun, calm the fuck down! I’m not dying yet.”
“Yet?”
“They said most people who got it like I do get around five years… But these fuckin’ doctors, they don’t know nothing.”
“Five ye…” Junior rubbed his head as he looked at the ground. “Jesus Christ, Johnny. Ercele’s already on his last legs!”
“Don’t tell Li, I’m waiting til after New Years.”
Junior nodded, his brow furrowed as he tried to hold back emotions. “Come inside, your son had one of those spells of yours. Some fuckin’ genes you got.”
“Least I don’t got the gene for baldness.”
“Ay! You might got emphysema but that don’t mean I won’t hit you.”