The Spoiler by Domenic Stansberry Page A

business, too, and my brother and I would sit here, drinking Cokes, while the owner and my father talked.”
    â€œIs your brother still in town?”
    â€œNo, he’s dead. A car accident.”
    Though her face grew serious for a second, she didn’t stop rocking, swinging her feet like a child. Ironically, when Lofton tried to imagine her as a child, he saw her—small, dark-skinned, quiet, standing by her father’s side—as one of those young girls who seemed to carry adult secrets inside without realizing, not yet, what the secrets were, the type of girl grown men, even decent ones, would look at and see in a way different from the way they saw their own daughters. Though her shoe brushed him again, there was nothing in her face betraying she had touched him. It was still the girlish look. Lofton moved away, avoiding the swinging foot. She didn’t talk to him about the arsons, the way she had the first time he talked to her, but instead, she told him about her family. People sometimes did that when you interviewed them, talking about anything but the matter at hand, sometimes because they were nervous and sometimes just because they wanted you to like them. With Amanti, it was hard to see what her reasons were. She told him how her parents had moved to Holyoke at the time of the Korean War. They’d left their old immigrant neighborhood in New Haven, she said, not because they were suddenly prosperous, like some of their neighbors, but because the Italians were moving out and the blacks moving in. So her father opened a restaurant on Locust Street in Holyoke. A small place, as much a tavern as a place to eat. Her brother had been born before the move, but Amanti had been born in Holyoke.
    â€œOn weekends, when I was little, we used to drive over the river to the Liuzzas’ house. They had a big house, modern, that sprawled all around. My mother wanted a house like that, like her sister’s, but my uncle was more clever than my father. You see, Uncle Liuzza was born into a rich family.”
    Amanti told him about the weekends at her uncle’s house and about Tony Liuzza, her cousin. Her mother always doted on Tony Liuzza. The doting went back to the time before she’d been married, when she’d thought she would never have children of her own, but the doting continued after she had found her husband, after she had a son of her own, and after Amanti herself was born. It was always Cousin Tony in her lap, Cousin Tony being blessed with small kisses behind the ear, Cousin Tony whose collar she straightened with long fingers.
    â€œIf you want to know the truth, I think my mother had a thing for my uncle. She never did anything about it, of course, but that’s why my parents moved up this way in the first place, because the Liuzzas were here. My uncle was going to help my father out with the restaurant; they talked all the time about moving it up to the highway, where my father could catch the tourists on the way to the Berkshires. Uncle Liuzza kept promising money, but it never came.”
    â€œHow did the Liuzza family get their money?” Lofton asked.
    â€œMunitions. Cannons for battleships, something like that. They made a fortune during World War II. But after Korea, Uncle Liuzza went into real estate.… He pushed Tony, from the time he was little, to be a lawyer. On weekends, when their house would be full of people, Uncle Liuzza would take Tony and show him around like he was some kind of prize. My brother always hated Tony. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but I didn’t like him much either.”
    It probably wasn’t fair, but Lofton could understand. He could imagine Tony Liuzza as a teenager, standing just outside the adult conversation—a fresh, well-scrubbed boy, gangly despite his good manners. Of course his cousins would hate him. Lofton guessed he could hate Tony Liuzza, too, if he wanted, just for the guy’s advantages. Liuzza’s