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He Became Obsessed
"As rigid as he was, he would buy every child a chocolate bar in the shape of a heart on Valentine's Day. That was my father. Everyone got a heart with chocolate."
Marie
My father was tough. If a customer complained that his coffee was not hot enough, he would take that person's cup and put it on the grill for a few minutes. After the customer got it back, we would hear a scream because someone's lips were burning. When there was a lot of construction going on in the neighborhood, he would get great satisfaction from killing rats in the basement with a huge flashlight. He would come up the stairs and have blood from the rats all over his hands and apron.
Fontaine
After my mother died, we (my husband, Joe, and our children, Christa and Joey) shared the family house in Belmont. My dad would complain that Joey was playing his music too loud in the basement, so he would switch the breakers and shut the power down in the entire house. Then he would complain about the loud noise from the neighbors, but it was coming from the other side of Route 2 at least half a mile away!
Marie
He liked to do things his way. That's the way it was. He was used to working twelve-hour days. We never ate dinner with him at home. He preferred to eat alone. If we needed money for school or to talk to him, we would send notes under his bedroom door because he went to bed so early and would leave hours before the sun would rise in the morning. When he came home and went to sleep, we knew better than to make noise and wake him up.
Fontaine
He was very difficult. It didn't matter if you were family or not, he treated everyone equally tough. He did not want you to talk too much to the customers or be idle even for a moment. Of course, I lived in the same house with him so if I didn't feel well he would come check to make sure that I was really sick. If I weren't dying at the time, he would tell me to get up and get to work. It was difficult. I could never get a day off because he would come and check on me!
Marie
As I remember as a young teen, my recollection of my father was always working. Working was the most important thing in his life. He didn't take many days off and my mother ran the household. And we communicated with my father through my mother.
Fontaine
As rigid as he was, he would buy every child a chocolate bar in the shape of a heart on Valentine's Day. That was my father. Everyone got a heart with chocolate. He loved to dance, especially classic style Greek dancing, and he loved his Metaxa. He would have a shot each day before work at two in the morning and then a shot when he came back home. So, when he died, we put a bottle of Metaxa in his coffin!
Marie
My father's family was originally from Greece. They had gone to Turkey from Greece looking for work. My grandfather worked for the Turkish Army in some type of capacity and my father would tag along and help him. I believe they worked in the food halls feeding the troops. My father was only six or seven and he would help my grandfather by wiping tables and doing dishes. In those years, there was a conflict between the Greeks and the Turks so they had to leave Turkey. My father used to watch the biplanes in the sky during dogfights. He and his friends would collect the brass from the machine gun shells on the ground. When he was in Turkey, he saw Armenians hanging from bridges during the genocide. These images shaped him as a person. He didn't become cold, he just became tough. At the age of nine my father and his family came to Ellis Island. They came here because they had cousins in Worcester (MA) and they ended up living there until they became self-sufficient enough to live on their own. My grandfather found work in restaurants and later went to Boston and worked at the Copley Plaza Hotel and someplace else up in the Longwood area of Brookline.
Fontaine
They came over during the conflict between Greece and Turkey. They tried to get away from the way the Greeks were being terrorized, so they came to the United States. I think my father was nine at the time. His sister was younger. They came over on a boat to Ellis Island and he always used to tell us how they had to wait there to make sure they weren't sick. A whole community came over with them and they all settled together. He would not take any criticism from any customer. He would just tell them to leave if they said anything against his will. And if he got really mad, he would just shut all the lights off and close the restaurant! He wouldn't take any guff from anybody, especially the customers he knew the best. I can remember that one of our customers said something to him like "Did you touch my butter with your hands?" My father answered by saying "What do you want me to use, my feet?" That's the way he would talk to them.
Marie
My mother was born in New York City of Greek parents who were matched through an arranged marriage. She found her way to Boston as a young girl.
Fontaine
He had nothing to do with us at home. We always had to communicate through my mother. He would get home from work and get into bed at about two in the afternoon. We couldn't make any noise in the house and we had two teenagers! He never got along with Joey at all because he was jealous of his youth and promise in the world.
Marie
Yes, he was very tough to work for at the restaurant and tough in general. There was no flexibility. We had to toe the line and do the job. He was very strict but that helped to make sure that the product always came out good. I think he was outgoing. Not as much as we are now, but he would socialize. Everyone knew him, his family, his wife. And, all of the neighborhood knew him.
Fontaine
After my mother died, I was so worried. How was I going to deal with my father by myself? My mother was always the buffer. It was awful. Our relationship improved a little bit, though. I always had to make him meals and he only ate Greek food in the house. Just Greek food. I had to make all the Greek stuff that he liked and he still used to complain about it! He would say "Fontaine made me a bucket of string beans with lamb. Look at those string beans!" He used to complain about it, instead of being thankful. But there were times when he wasn't so tough. When he started to get sick, he would stay home all day alone with my dog, Nico. The dog hated him - for what reasons, we still don't know. My father would call us at the restaurant and tell us that Nico had him pinned down n the kitchen, growling at him, and wouldn't let him move! Nico was a little mutt, too, that's the best part! When we would have parties, he would point at people and say "Is that one of my grandchildren?" I remember one time that it was a boyfriend of Kimberly's, Chris's daughter, so we all got a laugh out of that one.
Marie
I remember another story. Fontaine had dyed her hair red and was sitting in the kitchen having breakfast. My father came downstairs and saw her, then ran back to his room and called the restaurant to say that "There's a crazy woman with fire in her hair in my kitchen!" We had to explain to him that it was Fontaine. He was known so well in Boston because he was such a good cook. He could make the most phenomenal pastries and he started the turkey hash. The food was great because of him. He could really cook. The muffins were amazing - you can't make things like he used to make. He would always wear his chef's hat, you know, the white one. Every morning when I would get here at 5:30 the egg man would come in for the order. He was a little older than my father and they knew each other for forty or fifty years but they would still fight each morning over the price of eggs! Each day my father would say "Oh, that price is too high and you're trying to cheat me!" Forty years. That's the way the day would start, debating the price of eggs. That was Leo, the egg man. He was a character like my father, but they loved one another as brothers. On Leo's ninetieth birthday, his daughter hired a trumpeter from Berklee College of Music to be at our restaurant at six in the morning when we opened. He played "Hail to the Chief" as Leo entered the restaurant. We served birthday cake and it was quite a surprise. Oh, one more thing, I can remember one day when Leo told me that his mother was dying. I couldn't believe it! I was shocked and said, "You have a mother?" He told me that she was 103! He then told me that she worked well into her nineties and that it was all downhill after she retired, so he had no plans to retire himself. Years later, Leo came to get an egg order in the morning but, when his usual delivery time of eight came and went, there was no sign of him. Later in the day we found out that he had gone to his next customer that morning and dropped dead at the age of ninety-four.
Fontaine
Leo and my father were also rivals. It was as if they had this competition to see who was the hardest worker. One day, Leo brought in a bottle of Metaxa for my dad and gave it to him in the kitchen. My dad slammed it down on the counter and...
