Images of Broken Light

By Michael Di Leo

On a cool night in December of 1980, four shots ring out on the Upper West Side of Manhattan—and for millions of people around the world, and three New Yorkers in particular, nothing will ever be the same again.
Angela, a high school senior with a serious boyfriend and serious reservations about their future together, feels increasingly out of step with her classmates and her friends, and she clings tightly to the songs of the Fab Four as she navigates her fast-changing world.
Tommy knows he needs to settle down, get serious about his future, and make more of the life he’s been given, the opportunity his older brother sacrificed in Vietnam. But he’s hesitant. Unsure.
John is a good kid with a detached relationship from his parents, who finds a new means of connection with the music of a generation previous.
The world they all think they know, uncertain though it may be, is about to change...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Di Leo
• Release date: Feb 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9780999757710

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Images of Broken Light

By Michael Di Leo

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2018 by Michael Di Leo

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author. Please direct inquiries to: [e-mail].

For my girls – Elisa, Gianna and Andrea. And for John…

Contents

Text copyright © 2018 by Michael Di Leo

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

Angela

Tommy

John

Angela

Tommy

John

Angela

Tommy

Part Two

John

Angela

Tommy

Angela

Tommy

Angela

Tommy

John

Part Three

Angela

Tommy

John

Angela

Tommy

Angela

John

Tommy

Angela

Tommy

Mr. Watkins

Part Four

Angela

John

Tommy

John

Tommy

Angela

John

Tommy

Angela

John

Tommy

John

Tommy

Angela

Part Five

Tommy

John

Angela

Angela - Tommy - John

Mary

Angela - Tommy - John

Tommy

John

Angela

Part Six

Tommy

John

Angela

December 8, 2010

Angela

Tommy

Angela

Tommy

Angela

Acknowledgments

Contact Michael Di Leo

Prologue

Angela tried to keep her mind on the road. Driving at night in December made her anxious. But Brianna wouldn’t stop changing the stations on the radio. Some hip-hop song, then Taylor Swift, then someone else. Lady Gaga? Angela didn’t know. She shot a look at her daughter, but Brianna ignored it and kept changing stations. Rihanna, then an old Janet Jackson song, then Justin Timberlake. And then she heard it. John Lennon’s Imagine. And her heart skipped a beat like it always did.

Turn it off, Angela said.

Mom, please… said Brianna.

"Switch the station, Brianna!

She didn’t like yelling at her daughter. Even when Brianna was little Angela always had a hard time being tough with her. She was the calm, rational parent who talked to her children instead of yelling at them. Her husband was the disciplinarian. But Imagine set her off. It never failed to take her to a place that she didn’t want to go to.

Mom, will you stop! Brianna protested. He’s like your favorite person of all time and yet we can’t listen to that song. It’s so stupid.

You know I can’t listen to that song! said Angela. Are you just trying to make me upset?

Angela tried to focus on the road, but the silly argument and the continued playing of the song on the radio was making it increasingly difficult.

Why do you have to get so upset? Brianna asked. It’s just a song. A beautiful song.

Angela shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Brianna was sixteen now, and like all sixteen-year-olds she seemed to delight in upsetting her mother.

You know why, said Angela. We don’t have to go over it again.

Well, I’m not changing it, Brianna said.

Defiant as always. Were all teenagers the same?

Fine, Angela said calmly. I’ll change it myself.

She reached over and hit the next button on the stereo. Katy Perry’s California Gurlz.

Oh, that’s much better, Mom, Brianna said in the most sarcastic way that she could. Angela let out a breath. She instantly relaxed and started feeling better. It was crazy she knew, but it was what it was and she had enough to worry about in this world without letting an almost forty-year-old song ruin her night. She had long ago locked that song in a room and thrown away the key.

It has nothing to do with better, Angela said. It has to do with not making your mother upset.

Whatever, Mom.

Thank you.

That ended the conversation, and Angela could finally concentrate on her driving. Or so she thought. Hearing that damn song made her realize again what week this was. God, she hated this week! And now it was going to be thirty years! That was going to make it tougher than usual. She’d have to stay away from the radio, the TV, the computer. She let out a breath. Katy Perry was still singing, but she didn’t hear it. Thirty years, she thought to herself. And it still hurt. And it still made her shiver. Thirty fucking years…

Part One:

Images of Broken Light

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1980

Angela

Angela always got a charge whenever a song by a Beatle came on the radio, but she would also always feel a measure of disappointment as well. She was frustrated that it seemed that Top 40 AM radio didn’t seem to play actual Beatles songs much anymore. She liked Paul McCartney’s Coming Up, and there were certainly worse songs she could be listening to as she finished getting dressed for school, but why couldn’t it have been Let it Be or The Long and Winding Road? Whenever she mentioned something like this to her friend Cindy, she would just roll her eyes. She never understood Angela’s Beatles thing and why her friend was obsessed with some band from the sixties. Angela herself couldn’t really explain it, either. In 1975 she was eleven years old and listening to the Jackson Five and the Carpenters. Then one rainy Saturday she happened upon A Hard Day’s Night on Channel 11. It was followed by the Yellow Submarine. And that was it. She was hooked. Then it was off to Sam Goody’s at the mall and snapping up every Beatles album her allowance could afford. It was the same with TV. She had been obsessed with Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley at one time. Then her mother had her watch All in the Family and M*A*S*H and that was it. She couldn’t watch those other shows anymore. She couldn’t go from Archie Bunker back to Fonzie. She felt the same way about music. How can you listen to ABC or Top of the World once you’ve heard A Day in the Life? Angela sure couldn’t. Her boyfriend, Billy, didn’t get it either. He was a Zeppelin man. It was really the only music he listened to, and he would never give the Beatles a chance, and it made Angela question whether there really was anything to their relationship. The Beatles were and always would be a major part of her life. She knew that. Could she really end up with a guy who couldn’t see their all-encompassing genius like she could? These were the thoughts rolling through her brain as the McCartney song ended.

That’s the number-one song from earlier this year, ‘Coming Up,’ by Paul McCartney. Now we’ll follow that up with the new one from his old partner, riding up the charts quickly, here’s ‘(Just Like) Starting Over,’ from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, said the DJ from her clock radio.

Angela’s spirits were immediately lifted. Two Beatles songs in a row! Well, two songs from guys who were once in the Beatles, anyway. But, hey, what a great way to start the day. She started to lip-synch the lyrics into her brush as she combed her hair. She was running late for school and now the song was going to make her later. She already had the album, but it was still a new and exciting thing for her to hear a new John Lennon song on the radio. He hadn’t released an album of new music since 1974, a year before she became a Beatles freak, so she had never heard new Lennon music on the radio until now. Paul released a new record every year. But new Lennon music? This was a first.

Angela, would you come down? her mother yelled from downstairs.

Angela frowned and continued lip-synching.

Breakfast is getting cold!

After the song, Mom!

You’re going to miss the bus!

In a minute!

In the kitchen Angela sat down next to her thirteen-year-old brother, Matt. As usual, he ignored her. As she did every morning, her mother put a plate of scrambled eggs and toast in front of her.

Eat your breakfast. You’re going to miss your bus.

I had to hear the end of the song.

Her mother wasn’t buying it. You bought the album three weeks ago and you listen to it every day, she said. But you still have to listen to it when it comes on the radio?

It’s his first single in five years, Angela said. I wasn’t even a Beatles fan the last time he had a new record out. It’s exciting. She wondered why everyone else couldn’t see this.

The Beatles blow, Matt said, acknowledging his sister’s presence for the first time in days, or so it seemed.

Matthew! his mother cried.

What, Mom? Matt said. They do.

Angela turned to her mother. How is it possible that he and I have the same DNA?

Her mother shook her head and walked back to the sink. Matt quickly stuck his tongue out in his sister’s direction.

You’re such an idiot, Angela said to him.

That’s enough, you two, said her mother from the sink. Can’t you get through one breakfast without fighting?

Matt laughed. Yeah I’m an idiot, he said. At least I don’t listen to the faggy Beatles.

Right, said Angela. You listen to AC/DC. They’ve made such a great contribution to western civilization.

Whatever, said Matt. At least I like a band that still exists.

And this is the way it went whenever the Beatles came up. It was probably her fault for talking about them all the time. If everyone could just see what she saw, and feel what she felt, then they would all understand. Cindy, Billy, her stupid brother Matt. But what could she do? If they couldn’t or wouldn’t see the magic that was the Beatles, it was their loss, wasn’t it?

Tommy

It always surprised Tommy how the dream was always the same. In it, his brother was grown, with a family, in the present day. And yet physically, he looked exactly like he did when he died—a clean-cut nineteen-year-old, circa 1967. They would talk in the dream, and his brother’s wife and kids would talk to him, too, and on the surface everything seemed normal. Everything seemed the way it was supposed to be. The dream was comforting, and yet it was also terrifying. Because no matter how nice the dream was, at some point, while still ensconced in sleep, Tommy would realize that it was just a dream, and the fact that his brother never married, never had kids, and never grew out of his teens would hit him like a punch in the gut. He would wake up and come back to reality. And feel alone.

He was having the dream again and reached the fateful point where the truth (or the lie) of the dream awakened him. He reached across the