Last Dance, Last Chance

mother looked at me as if my house was filthy,” Shelly said. “She stuck up her nose and wrapped her coat tightly around herself and took a perch on my porch. She said, ‘I do not want to wait in your house!’”

22
    D ebbie was afraid to go out in public. She had come to dread the threat of camera strobe lights flashing and reporters confronting her with questions during Anthony’s court appearances after Sarah Smith’s death. She had seen her own startled image on the television news or in newspaper articles too often, her face a bleak study in stress. The Pignataros were big news in Buffalo, and sometimes it still felt to her as if she were a character in a continuing soap opera saga. She couldn’t remember when she had last had peace in her life. She wondered if she ever would again.
    But Shelly Palombaro wouldn’t let Debbie hide in her house. As soon as Debbie could physically handle it, Shelly bundled her and her wheelchair up, loaded her into a van, and took her to Ralph’s football games. With her arms and legs still as numb as if they were asleep, Debbie felt embarrassed—like an object of curiosity in her rolling chair. And yet, it was wonderful to be able to watch her son out on the field. Whenever Shelly thought Debbie was getting too housebound, she coaxed her into going for a drive and even to Kmart or the grocery store.
    “People recognized me, I know,” Debbie said, “but they were nice. A lot of strangers stopped to say they were pulling for me. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
    Shelly had such an outrageous sense of humor that she could usually get Debbie to laugh. She hadn’t really laughed in years. When she fell down or dropped a forkful of food, they laughed instead of crying, and it felt good.
    There were tears, too. Now that she was back in her own house, Debbie promised Lauren and Ralph that they would be home with her by the holidays. She was sure of it, because she was getting a little bit of feeling back every week. She knew she was too weak to spend a whole day and night at Carmine’s house for Christmas with them. Having her children home for Thanksgiving and Christmas was her first goal, and Debbie truly believed that they would be able to come home as soon as she was stronger. She didn’t know she wouldn’t be able to keep that promise.
    The state wouldn’t let Ralph and Lauren live with Debbie, although they allowed agonizingly brief visits. The visits were over too soon. And then the kids would fight over who got to hug Debbie last.
    “It was awful,” Shelly Palombaro said. “We’d just have to peel the kids off Debbie, and they’d all be crying.”
    After they left their mother’s house, the phone would ring in twenty minutes, and they’d talk and talk for two hours. Ralph and Lauren cried and wanted to come home, and Debbie tried to calm them down so they could sleep. They did little rituals, like “I love you, Mom.” “I love you, too.”
    It made her heart hurt to know that their rooms upstairs were empty.
     
    The holiday season was anything but festive for Debbie Pignataro. A year before, she had been full of hope. Anthony was home from jail, they had gone through a renewal of their wedding vows, and their future seemed bright. But it had all turned ugly so soon. Now, they would soon be divorced.
    Anthony had cashed in his stocks and bonds to pay the legal expenses when he got in trouble over Sarah’s surgery. His portfolio was depleted now, and he turned continually to his mother, who was ready to stand behind him. She hired one of Buffalo’s most outstanding defense attorneys, Joel Daniels. Daniels was touched by the elderly woman who sat in his office and cried. He was a tenacious combatant, but he had a tender spot for white-haired mothers sobbing for their sons. Daniels agreed to defend Anthony in whatever legal travails lay ahead. Brian Welsh joined him as co-counsel.
    The first fight for the Pignataros would be against the Children’s Protective Service. But, oddly, Anthony didn’t seem concerned about losing custody of his children, while Debbie was terrified of what the family court might do. Anthony bent CPS’s charges to suit himself and get back at Debbie.
    Both Debbie and Anthony were listed as defendants in the family court case. But Daniels and Welsh knew that far more serious charges were hovering over Anthony’s head. They were convinced that Erie County District Attorney Frank J. Clark would attempt to indict