“You can also have yourself a hefty court fine for underage drinking. Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink?” Brent asked him.
“No, tight-ass,” Donald responded, and his brothers laughed. “I do not think I’ve had too much to drink! In fact, I’m just getting started. This is a party, and I’m just getting started. How do you like that? This is my wedding day, big brother. My wedding day! I’m supposed to get plastered! Who could fault me?”
“Your wife,” Brent said, “the one you were just reminding us how thrilled you were to have, might find a little fault with that.”
“Especially tonight,” Tony added.
But Donald dismissed such caution. He tried to stand erect, but stumbled against his father.
Charles placed a hand around his son’s waist. “Settle down,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Donald said as he stood erect again. Unlike his two older brothers, who took entirely after their father, he, like Robert, was the spitting image of his mother. Like Robert, he too had blonde hair and blue eyes and a look about him that bordered more on pretty than handsome. And he wasn’t just the youngest Sinatra, but was the smallest one too. He was skinny, without an ounce of muscle. The exact opposite, in every way, of his father.
“I’m settled now for sure,” he kept on talking. “I’m married. That automatically makes me settled. I know what I’m doing.”
“Sure you do,” Robert responded.
“Ah, who are you to talk? At least I have a woman! Who do you have, Bobby? Who do you have?”
“Several women,” Robert said with a smile. “Just like Pop. I learned from the best.”
Brent and Tony laughed. But Donald found it disgusting. “Well, you can learn to be a whore all you care to. You can have all the women you want. You can have tons and tons and tons. But I’m not living my life that way. I have one woman, one wife. A brand new wife I love. And I’m going to be an amazing husband to that one woman, and an amazing father to our child. I’m not going to be anything like Pop!”
Donald didn’t realize what he had said, until he said it. Robert, Tony, and Brent were mortified. They all looked at their father.
Charles was hurt, but he wasn’t about to reveal it to them.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Dad,” Donald started saying, but Charles dismissed any slight with the wave of his hand.
“Forget it,” Charles said.
“I’m drunk,” Donald said. “Brent’s right. I’ve had far too much to drink.”
Charles looked angrily at his youngest son. “Don’t you dare create an excuse,” he said. “You said it, you stand by it.”
Donald swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean---”
“The worse kind of man in this world,” Charles continued, “is a man who doesn’t say what he means, and means what he says.”
Donald nodded. “Yes, sir. But I didn’t mean to. . .” But his father continued to give him that hard, chilling gaze. He gave up trying to excuse himself. “Yes, sir,” he said.
But just as he said it, they were interrupted by one of the partygoers. “Bobby!” a man yelled from halfway across the room, and over the loud music and conversation.
Robert looked at him. “Yeah, what do you want?” he responded.
“A man here to see you.”
Robert, and his entire family, immediately looked toward the entrance. An older man in a tight slim suit was standing at the door. Charles looked at his son.
“I’ll catch up with you guys later,” Robert said to his family, and then began walking toward the entrance.
“Any of you know that guy?” Charles asked as he watched his son leave.
“Never seen him before,” Brent said, and Tony and Donald echoed him.
Charles exhaled. “Go and enjoy your reception,” he said to Donald.
“But Dad, about what I said---”
“Go mingle,” Charles insisted. “What are you hanging around me for anyway? Go. All of you. Go have some fun.”
“You sure?” Tony asked him.
“Positive. Go.”
They slowly began to move away, but they also kept looking back at their father. Especially Tony. But he kept it moving too. Charles even saw Tony hit Donald upside his head. “Idiot!” he heard him say. “Now he ran us off!”
They were all grown sons. Donald was the youngest at eighteen, and Brent was the oldest at twenty-two. But in a lot of ways, whenever they were around Charles, he felt as if they were still the little kids he used to take white water rafting and moose hunting.
He moved around the crowd, not mingling much himself, until he found an empty seating area near the floor-to-ceiling windows. He walked over to that area and stood at the window, looking out across the busy highway, and sipped from his dwindling drink. Then he searched out and found the main reason he was at that window at all: his son. Robert stood outside of that ballroom, on the hotel’s patio, talking to the man in the slim suit.