by John Domini
With that, Barbara wound up in her first direct exchange with Aurora.
“Why, bravo,” the old playgirl told her. “Ever since I’d heard about our Junior here and that girl, I’ve thought there was no point pretending, simply hiding our heads in the sand and pretending. Of course they were going to try to see each other.”
Barb put her clean hand, the one untouched by olive oil, in Dora’s hair.
“Nothing so inflames love’s sensibility,” Aurora said, “as being forcibly kept apart. Why, it goes back to the myths, Hero and Leander. It goes back to the Kama Sutra. ‘Once the wheel of love has turned,’ you know.”
From where Barbara stood, she had a good view of Aurora’s favorite studio portrait. The merry widow never traveled without it. The photographer had posed her facing a fan, a silk scarf trailing from her silky hair. Aurora Isadora.
JJ and Chris were speaking up already, falling all over each other to make it clear that they had no idea where Romy had gone. “I mean,” said John Junior, “the Kama Sutra? Aurora, get real.” But both boys also insisted that the gypsy couldn’t have had anything to do with the murder.
“Mom,” Chris reminded Barbara, “you don’t think so, either, right? You know that Romy’s like, the least of our troubles.”
John Junior added: “You know the real trouble we’ve had over here, it’s been between you and Pop. I mean, whatever.”
But that had been the old Barbara, the one who’d struggled with “whatever,” setting off all kinds of speculation among the kids. Tonight she worked up a smile and pointed out that, anyway, the next morning Chris and JJ needed to be ready when their father was, if they wanted to go downtown. She reiterated that she’d figure out something for the others as well. She sat and enjoyed her octopus, she arranged a fair distribution of the KP duties off the top of her head, and then she stepped out for a limoncello on the balcony. Only out there was the wife forced to admit again, silently, that she lacked the deep tranquility she wished for when it came to her new commitments. She hadn’t yet wrapped the inner whipsaw in canvas and put it in the shed. To her the sunset appeared to have left a bloodstain out on the Bay, and the smell of diesel recalled the museum loading dock. Here it was five days after Silky’s murder, and Barbara’s clearest impression of his death was that the white-suited rule-breaker had fallen to his knees before Aurora. He’d made his final bloody salaam to the home-wrecking prototype, the Siren who’d been, at just that moment, winging towards him over the dark Atlantic. Yet hadn’t Barb herself been preparing for an even nastier Coming? And how could she be certain that she knew better now? Whatever Romy might threaten, whatever other trouble might be lurking around the city, Barbara had to deal with it from a new wholeness. She had to be like something you might see on the family website, a bad bird-woman who’d morphed into the Phoenix.
By the time she came in off the balcony the kids had settled down to a game of Clue with Aurora. They were into it, laughing; they didn’t notice Mama. She found Jay at the other end of the apartment, in their bedroom, going over his checkbook with an old-fashioned calculator. Right there the wife settled into nuzzling and sweet nothings, with the same bewildering relief such puppy love had afforded her over the last few days. She wouldn’t have thought she’d missed it so much, or that it could feel so good to cuddle. She sank more deeply into the man, and shifted to a more serious kiss. Her husband’s fingers trailed over her breasts, her ribs, the waistband of her underwear.
“Let’s try again,” she murmured. “Let’s please.”
“Right here right now,” he said. “Like two kids.”
Should they have talked about who’d murdered the Lieutenant Major, or what papers he might’ve left behind, instead of stretching out on the bed he’d provided for them? Barbara had the sense that the answers would help a little, just as the stroking Jay gave her as he pulled away her clothes seemed to ease her closer to a genuine peace. Should they have talked about all they were risking, in this search for a fresh, shared self that was hardly half-defined? Yes, no, maybe; the answers might do some good, just as for a while it seemed to be working as Barbara shifted her pelvis into a better angle against Jay’s, as she yielded to the man’s plying. They appeared to be making progress as she gave him back three, four, five kisses. But in time the answers proved not to be here with them, or not enough for Barb at least, and she held back. In the few seconds between one kiss and another their touch cooled. Not that Barbara resisted her man—she would’ve worked out some variety of pleasure if he’d needed it badly enough—but Jay too relented when he understood that his wife was short of real arousal. She wasn’t herself, dry between the legs. There remained something else she needed, and she’d been this way every time since, in front of the entire overseas community, Barbara was forced to recognize how badly she’d misunderstood what she’d thought she’d needed up to that point. Since the meeting at the Consulate, in their moments alone, she and Jay had gone no further than tears and whispers and unfinished business. Tonight, after a cry from down the hall about Mrs. Peacock, Barbara again told her husband that she wanted him inside her, she knew it would help. She left her legs open long after he lost his erection, and she wondered aloud how she might find a decent Naples gynecologist. Also she mentioned the jelly and oil in the nightstand drawer. But the man’s touch turned conventional, he’d rarely been selfish or needy anyway, and settling back against the pillows he whispered, “Soon. Soon.”
Chapter Ten
But Jay’s and Barb’s whispering in their dim bedroom, loving yet ascetic—what did it amount to out in the bright Mezzogiorno? Soon—what? The damages heaped around them remained the same. Barbara might claim that these days constituted a “change of life,” a play on words she used a time or two with her husband or priest. But the big news in her family, once Jay and the boys started spending their days downtown, was that the teenagers were making a documentary.
In order to concentrate on the film, Chris and John Junior more or less bunked up together. Barbara helped them arrange the extension cords necessary for the computer, in there, but she let Chris drag the mattress across the hall by himself. The mother could hardly believe it the first morning she saw the fifteen-year-old stumbling out of his older brother’s bedroom. They hadn’t shared a room since fifth grade. Nonetheless, there in John Junior’s with the family desktop, and with the door shut, the teenagers stayed up so late they risked missing their morning funiculare. Once or twice the boys barely had time to haul the computer tower and monitor back out to the front room.
During these early stages of their “project,” Chris and JJ relied on text, voice, collage, and still photos. Even with all the craziness of the last three weeks, it turned out, the boys hadn’t forgotten about the digital camera. Barbara couldn’t remember taking so much as a single picture herself, in Naples. She could hardly recall anyone snapping a shot, come to think of it, but then the boys hadn’t been wound so tightly, so blindly. They had photos, they had materials off the web, and they worked up text and voiceovers as well. Meanwhile, like everyone else in the apartment, the two oldest did some thinking about Papa’s latest windfall. Chris and JJ knew the very day when their father would receive his first bank transfer, a “reimbursement for transitional expenses.” That night, the two teenagers sat the parents down and asked for video equipment. The brothers needed cameras and up-to-date software. And while they were at it, the family should get some zippy new hardware too.
“It’s not just about JJ and me getting the tools we need,” Chris said. “The tools to like, realize our vision. Also, a laptop, that would benefit the whole family.”
The younger boy claimed that the documentary had been his idea, and the older one sat back and let him say so. After a moment JJ added that, as soon as Chris had brought up the project, it seemed like a good one for him.
“I mean,” said the seventeen-year-old, “he’s been taking all this stuff in, right? So now, this movie, it gives him a way to let it out.”
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Chris grinned. “What can I say? I’ve found my city. Like, my home ground.”
Barb and Jay shared a look.
“And me,” John Junior said, “I’m thinking, hey. Chris’s idea, it means we’re all going to come out of this with something. I mean, a document. Solid.”
“A documentary. About like, my odyssey, but not only mine. We’re all wanderers, the whole family. We’re all returning to home ground.”
Barbara had to smile. It sounded almost noble when the boy put it that way, these weeks of wandering. And it did appear she’d finally gotten somewhere; she’d come to feel comfortable about allowing her two oldest free rein—still more free rein. Barb turned back to Jay with a calm that would’ve been out of reach a week ago. Since her husband seemed to have developed a golden thumb, she told him, a new laptop struck her as a useful way to spend the money. Or part of the money. That little machine down in Roebuck’s office, Barb went on, was enough to make a girl jealous. Then the mother tried out her new serenity on Chris, suggesting a connection between how greedily he’d devoured his Blue Guide and how badly he wanted to make this movie.
“I’m saying, this would be history too. Even The Real World, shows like that, these days they show the early episodes in college classes.”
“Exactly. History, like, it used to be on stone, it used to be on vellum. Now…”
“Oh right,” JJ said, “vellum. “The vorld vide vellum.”
Chris shook his head. “Slipping bro, slipping. A line like that, it could be Talent Night at the Heart of the Poconos.”
If the mother stared hard enough she could almost see the puppet-strings of the younger brother’s thinking, the lines that stretched from head to wrist and made him poke the bridge of his glasses. But the actual puppet-master would be JJ, sure. He was Geppetto to all the children, and without a doubt the one who’d come up with the idea of the documentary. His shadow girlfriend must’ve asked what they could do, how they could meet. Her love-note on the website had managed to slip her barefoot life into his bulging Nikes, yes, a miracle shoehorn. But after that they’d needed something better. If they relied on the website, soon enough Roebuck or one of the carabinieri would spot it. John Junior must’ve come up with the movie.
Not that Chris was lying about his own motives. The way he saw the project, its benefit to his older brother’s love life was secondary. Chris believed in the film, a good parent could see that at once. The boy brought up the Odyssey again, claiming there was a narrative to the Lulucita’s experience in Naples, “a total narrative arc.” That shaping curve gave the documentary its larger purpose, a record of where the family might eventually touch down. “Like, maybe in some scary places, the arc comes down.”
“What?” Barbara asked.
“Mom, it’s like a myth. We’re confronting monsters.”
“Monsters?” The mother’s hand strayed to her husband’s beltline. “Are you saying, this would be about the problems between Jay and me?”
Now Chris and JJ were sharing a look.
“You guys told me in the museum,” she went on, “what you thought was happening. You told me Naples was all about me and Jay.”
“Barb’s right,” Jay put in. “No way I’m paying for a movie that says your parents are monsters.”
Time for JJ Geppetto. The puppet-master reiterated that the way he was thinking about the project, it was for all of them. It gave them something tangible they could look at and talk about for years to come, something they all took away from this experience. “When Chris brought up this project, Pop, he never said it was all about you and Mom.” And the younger son followed suit, saying that the entire metropolitan area had a part in this picture. “Millions of people in motion, day and night.” His mother needed to see the greater arc, in which everyone in the city risked ending up in a scary place.
“It’s a journey,” JJ said. “Hey? A journey, it could go anywhere.”
“It’s a myth, but for all of us. The project has to include Paul, too.”
Barbara had rather liked the business about millions of people in motion, but she hadn’t counted on Mr. Paul getting shuttled around. The Jaybird, likewise unsettled, turned for a look at the middle child. Paul was on his knees, in the front room with Aurora and the other kids. A card game tonight. Meanwhile John Junior made it clear that he’d come to this discussion with all his strings in hand. The big teenager declared, four or five different ways, that his youngest brother would be handled carefully and kept safe. JJ mentioned the new security team, “those guys’re on the ball,” and speculated aloud that there were more where they came from. One phone call to the Consulate and they could have double the police protection. “Plus, speaking of phone calls, we’ve got the extra cell phones now, with the emergency numbers on speed-dial.” They’d seen that the Naples cops could move pretty fast when they had to.
Chris was nodding along, but he preferred to keep the emphasis on the documentary. He pointed out how useless and “touristy” he and his older brother would start to feel if their project was limited to just the two of them. “I mean, at that clinic downtown, what can we do, really? Take out the trash?”
And John Junior assured the parents that they wouldn’t need Paul everyday. Chris had “storyboards,” JJ explained. The boards laid it all out, the whole narrative to date, and Paul would only have to tag along for a couple of “sequences.” Also the oldest was smart enough to bring up, yet again, the change in local attitudes now that the Lulucitas were rid of their former liaison officer. “These days,” JJ said, “hey. Everywhere we go in this city, there’s an angel looking out for us.”
Barbara was trying to see past his sweet-faced Irish blarney. But the Jaybird beside her knew the way she was leaning. The husband heaved a sigh, okay okay, and asked if the boys had a figure, “ballpark,” for what this stuff would cost.
“I know this,” Chris said. “With the situation we’ve got here, the PX discounts, we can forget about the sticker price.”
“Figure back in New York,” JJ said, “the best deal on the street. Then take off another, hmm, twenty percent.”
Jay couldn’t be sure what Roebuck would be willing to do for him. There were a lot of Americans over here…
“Hey,” JJ said. “Aren’t we still Americans?”
“Pop,” Chris said. “Haven’t you heard what I’ve been saying? This project, it’s something for any American. We all want to return to home ground.”
Barbara used to be the one pulling the strings around here. Straightening the front of her dress, she suggested that the boys might not need so much high-tech equipment. Didn’t Chris keep saying this was all a myth? Maybe he would be better off trying to write a novel.…
The younger boy was shaking his head. Had Mom even been listening? What good would it do to write a novel? “In the first place, everybody knows how to write a novel by like, age ten. JJ and me, we need to learn something. Like, to get somewhere.”
“Word,” said John Junior.
And in the second place, the younger brother went on, their project involved real outreach; “it’s big, Mom.” It wasn’t about one person sitting alone writing, and then one other person sitting alone reading.
Again the mother heard the nick of authentic ambition, in the boy. She figured JJ had something similar working at his nervous system, the rough grain of desire for a greater impact from his “on-location footage,” a greater reward than sneaking another kiss or two. Barbara shared a different sort of look with Jay, the okay-look. The husband was perhaps the lone remaining family member who still would wait for her approval. And even after as the Jaybird turned back to the boys, admitting for starters that he’d been thinking they could use a laptop, Barb sat thinking it over.
“One day at a time,” Jay was saying. “This is on a provisional basis.”
The boys weren’t about to quibble. Looking very young all of a sudden, they erupted in a loud high-five. With that the mother sat up formally and made another
stipulation. Barbara insisted that, on the days when Paul joined them on the shoots, Dora and Syl would have to go along too.
“Uhh,” John Junior said.
“You said this was about everybody taking part,” Barbara said.
What else can a mother do, when her children go through the change? What option did she have except another touch of underhandedness, using the boys’ new freedom against them? While her seventeen-year-old had been developing additional clout around the home, he must’ve also been brought up short by the dawning sense of what he owed his brothers and sisters. Dawning complication and guilt—Barbara knew all about it. And these days, if the younger sibs were around, the oldest would rein in whatever else he might be up to. If the sibs were on hand (plus some of the new security team), and if the police too cruised the shoot (the cops would be given the boys’ schedule), that should keep any clandestine make out sessions from going too far (and also put the kibosh on any other illegal activity).
All this had come to mind in the time it took the boys to raise their spread hands and slap them together. Anyway, what else could Barbara do?
Also she handled the call to Roebuck. If the mother was still working the angles, still speaking in codes, she might as well use them on an Alpha. With no more than a well-placed silence or two, the next morning she scored a laptop of the coming generation. Chris and JJ got fifty-hour batteries, beefed-up wireless reach, and well-nigh bottomless storage, plus a couple of scan-disk sticks as a throw-in. The software came straight out of Industrial Light & Magic. On top of that, the boys had the stuff in their hands by lunchtime. It arrived in a fortified Hummer, maybe one of Kahlberg’s old vehicles, and the brothers had the driver wait in the piazza while they whipped through their installations.
