Then I picture the way they see me. Have you seen the eldest? I can hear them ask. She’s a dead loss. Has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She’s so insipid, she’s almost invisible. Her closest friend’s mother didn’t even know who she was.
What about the son? He still sleeps with his sister and he’s ten years old. No wonder Mia’s given up.
I do the deals-with-God thing. Make her better . . . make us all better and I’ll change the world for you.
But God doesn’t talk to me. It’s because every night I lie here with music in my ears and I say my prayers and fall asleep in the middle of them. He only talks to people like Mia. People he thinks are worth it. Because they have passion. They have something. I have nothing. I’m . . . Keep awake, Francesca. Keep awake and start to pray.
I’m a waste of space.
I am . . .
I . . .
My dad does the only thing he knows how to do this morning. He makes us eggs for breakfast.
“We don’t like eggs, Papa,” I finally tell him, because I think deep down I’m a bit pissed-off with him. Why can’t he fix things up? “We never have.”
He looks from Luca to me and then hurls the eggs against the stainless steel.
I watch the design they make as they run down the splashboard, and then he’s crying. My dad is crying and Luca is hugging him from behind, saying, “I’ll eat the eggs, Daddy, I’ll eat the eggs,” and he’s crying too and I can’t bear watching them. All I want to do is scream out “What’s happening?” over and over again because ten days ago my mum didn’t get out of bed. No visible symptoms, no medicine, no doctors. My dad says she’s a bit down and my cousin says it’s a bit of a breakdown. I’ve looked up the word “breakdown” because I am desperate for any clue: “collapse, failure of health or power, analysis of cost.” None of the definitions make sense to me. A breakdown of what, I’m not sure. But she doesn’t eat, that I know.
It has almost become an obsession. Every morning I study the fridge and pantry to see what’s there, and every afternoon I study them again to see if something’s missing. But nothing is. There are no plates in the sink, no food wrappers in the garbage. No evidence of papers being marked or of the phone being answered. Nothing. Nothing makes sense. My mother won’t get out of bed, and it’s not that I don’t know who she is anymore.
It’s that I don’t know who I am.
I stand in front of William Trombal for the fifth time this week. Luca tries to avoid his eyes. I don’t know what we look like to him, but he doesn’t ask our names. He just looks at us and for a moment I see sympathy, and I hate him for it.
No sermons today.
Even the prince of punishment doesn’t think we’re worth talking to.
chapter 7
TODAY THE GRANDMOTHERS step in. Mia’s been in bed for two weeks, and decisions about us are made. Luca goes to Zia Teresa’s and I go to Nonna Anna’s, and Nonna Celia moves into our house. Before I leave, I hear Nonna Celia and my dad talking. Nonna Celia wants to take Mia to her own doctor, but my dad says no. He always goes on about how Nonna Celia’s doctor hands out prescription drugs to avoid dealing with the real issues. My dad tells her that everything’s going to be okay, and it comforts me to hear that reassurance.
Luca sits on my bed as I pack away a few of my things. He looks just like a stereotypical little soccer freak, ball in his hand and the Inter Milan jersey dwarfing his skinny frame.
“What’s happening?” he asks in a voice that doesn’t sound like his anymore.
“Everything’s going to be fine. You always have fun at Zia Teresa’s.”
What I hate about this most is that no one gets how we’re feeling. No one asks us if we want to be separated. They just presume that Luca will want to be with his cousins and I’ll want peace and quiet.
He lies down next to me and we hold on to each other tight. I can’t tell horror brother-and-sister stories about Luca and me. We’re crazy about each other, and our arguments are limited to who gets control of the TV remote between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m.
Life at my grandparents’ is a different story. Nonna Anna and Nonno Salvo are television fanatics, especially the game shows. If it’s not Wheel of Fortune, it’s The New Price Is Right or Sale of the Century. They have absolutely no idea what the questions asked are, but they are excited by the process and the colored lights and the money symbols flashing up at different intervals.
Then there’s the news. The 5:00 p.m. news on Channel Ten (a difficult time for them because it clashes with The New Price Is Right), the 6:00 p.m. news on Channel Nine, the 7:00 p.m. national news, the Italian news on the Italian radio station, and if I stay awake long enough I get to watch the 10:30 p.m. Lateline on Public Broadcasting. It’s a very frustrating process because they get most of it wrong. Nonno Salvo calls out obscenities at the man whose image appears behind the newscaster’s head as she tells us the top story of the night. Nonno explains to me that the bastard pictured is a war criminal who is responsible for the deaths of a village of men in Bosnia. In actual fact, it’s Rupert Murdoch, but I don’t try to explain.
Tonight, we watch a cop show where someone gets shot dead. Nonno Salvo reassures me that the person’s not really dead. It’s just an actor. Then my nonna tells him that of course I know that.
“She has the mouth of a viper,” he tells me, twisting his bottom lip with his finger to further illustrate the point.
Ever since I can remember, my nonno and nonna have had these arguments. This one lasts a whole twenty-two minutes. It has to end because Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is just about to start and no talking is allowed during that. But I suppose they love each other to death. Every year at my nonna’s annual surprise birthday party, where she pretends she has no idea that we’re all huddled inside her kitchen, although the fifteen cars parked outside would be a certain giveaway, we go berserk when photos are taken and Nonno tries to kiss her and she acts coy. When he gets to lock lips for more than ten seconds, we scream with delight. And I always look at my mum and dad, his arms around her from behind, leaning his chin on her head, and it makes me feel very lucky.
Later, Nonna Anna tucks me into bed and smothers my forehead with kisses before she starts putting the clothes I’ve thrown around onto coat hangers. She’s in seventh heaven. Stealing one of Mia’s children away from her is like a dream come true. My dad stopped belonging to her when my mum came along. I think my father tends to forget anyone else is around when Mia enters the room. My grandmother’s disapproval of the way Mia runs the household is very vocal. I shouldn’t walk around naked in front of my brother, for example, and nor should my mother. Once in a while my father will make the trip from the bathroom to his bedroom naked, and I can’t say it’s an attractive picture, but it hasn’t traumatized me. It’s unnatural, my nonna Anna will say. Why can’t we be self-conscious like normal people? she asks.
I’ve never really been embarrassed by much. I just couldn’t be bothered doing things, that’s all, an aspect of me that Mia can’t cope with. Sometimes I think I do it even more just so she won’t win. At this moment, though, I’m willing to give in. To do anything to make her better.
Nonna Anna gives me one more kiss and turns off my bed lamp.
“Tutto a posto,” she says, shutting the closet door. Everything in its place.
But my family is split into three, and no one is in their place.
chapter 8
I LOOK FOR Luca at lunchtime to see how he’s coping at my aunt’s place. He’s looking miserable by the cafeteria, and when he sees me, his little face lights up, which makes me want to cry.
“Are you having fun?” I ask over-cheerfully.
“Mummy’s having a nervous breakdown,” he says, and I can tell he has no idea what it is.
“Have you got your lunch?” I ask, fixing up his tie and socks because the administration around here are Nazis about such things.
“That’s what Anthony says has happened to Mummy.”
“Doesn’t Anthony still believe in Santa Claus? Doesn’t that prove that Anthony doesn’t know much?”
Mr. Brolin walks by and stops beside us. “Seniors’ lunch area is on the roof.”
“Can I just finish speaking to my brother?”
He gets me on an answering-back call and I get another afternoon of detention. I can’t even open my mouth to plead my case. Any attempt is construed as answering back.
Luca looks at me helplessly and I can sense he’s close to tears.
“I’ll ring you,” I say, “and then maybe we can talk to Zia Teresa about Pinocchio staying over.”
“Promise.”
“Cross my heart, hope to die.” My voice cracks as I say that. And he hears that crack, and I know it kills him a bit inside.
The day gets worse. We have drama, and for me, drama class is a four-times-a-week nightmare. Every lesson Mr. Ortley puts on a piece of music and asks us to dance, and every lesson we stare back at him, some of us with disinterest, others with horror. Nobody ever dances. Nobody but him. He dances like a maniac, which is a bit embarrassing because he’s about fifty, and seeing a fifty-year-old dancing to Limp Bizkit is pretty nauseating.
“If you can’t lose your inhibitions, you’ll never be able to convince a crowd of people that you’re someone else. That’s what you have to do as an actor,” he says between breaths.
As usual, no one moves.
“Mr. Mackee? Are you going to grace the dance floor with your moves?”
Thomas Mackee gives a snort, which is kind of like a no.
“And you did drama for what reason?”
“Because I thought it would be an easy pass, sir. And you went to the National Institute of Dramatic Art for what reason?”
Ortley doesn’t care. He seems to like what he does. He tells us that he’s waiting for one of those perfect teaching moments when he can say it’s all worth it and then he’ll quit.
“Miss Spinelli?”
I’d love to do the snort thing, but it would give Thomas Mackee too much satisfaction.
“I’d rather not.”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll make me feel self-conscious,” I lie.
“Why?”
I shrug and look down.
I’ve perfected the art of shyness. I had three years of practice at Stella’s, and it’s brought me great comfort over the years. When I was being my un-shy self, I got a different sort of spotlight. Not the one I wanted. I got detentions, was tested for hyperactivity, ridiculed, hassled, ostracized. By the time my Stella friends came to save me, I was ripe for it. Ready to go into some kind of retirement. Because it gets pretty exhausting being on the perimeter.
Here in drama, I don’t actually care what people think of me, and deep down I’m not really self-conscious. I just don’t have the passion for this or the drive. I would like to go onto autopilot for the whole of Year Eleven drama. It’s not as if we’re going to be able to perform this year.
“Are you scared people will make fun of you?”
This man does not give up. He looks me straight in the eye when he speaks to me. No one in this school has done that all year except William Trombal, and that was to intimidate me.
“Maybe,” I mumble.
“You want to dance.”
“You want me to dance?”
“No. You want to dance. Every time the music comes on, you sway.”
Everyone’s looking at me.
“It’s instinct.”
“Then act on instinct rather than on what other people think,” he says in a flat, hard voice.
He turns away from me dismissively. It’s as if he couldn’t be bothered.
My mother forced me to take drama. “You’ll be in your element,” she said.
“She’s shy,” my dad tried to explain.
“Yes, in her left toe she’s shy. She’s just lazy. That’s her problem. She’s too busy worrying about what her friends—”
“I don’t care what my friends think.”
“You care what they’ll do when they remember that you’re the one with personality.”
“Is it okay if I have a say over what I want?” I asked.
“That’s the problem, Frankie. Once you start hanging out with them, they don’t give you a say.”
“You just want me to be like you,” I shouted.
“You are like me. Get used to it,” she shouted back.
My father would go around and shut all the windows in the kitchen so the neighbors couldn’t hear us shouting, but Mia and I would go at it until I backed down or my dad would say, “Mia, she’s a kid. Couldn’t you just let her win for once?”
But it was never in Mia’s makeup to back down.
“Is that what you want, Frankie? That I let you win?”
Yes, I’d want to scream. Just once, let me win.
We’d go to bed furious with each other, and then she’d wake me in the middle of the night and come and lie on my bed and we’d talk for hours, about nothing and everything, and she’d let me touch the scars on her stomach—the scars from where they cut me out of her.
“My pelvis was too small,” she’d say, “and you were in such a hurry to come out that they had to deliver you by Cesarean, and by the time I woke up from the anesthetic, Nonna Anna and Nonna Celia had already held you, and I felt so cheated and I said to your father, ‘Let’s always take care of her, Robert. No one else is to take care of her but you and I.’ ”
But here I am at my grandparents’ house, knowing that this is killing Mia more than a breakdown. And I need to get myself back home, and Luca too. Because if we don’t, my mother will feel as if we’ve been ripped from her without the anesthetic, and the pain waves will be felt by all of us.
I need to get back. But I don’t know how.
My detention with Mr. Brolin means that I have to come into contact with Jimmy Hailler again. He gives me a wave, as if we’re long-lost friends, and I ignore him. So he turns his attention to some Year Eight kid next to him, who is looking over at Mr. Brolin, frightened of being caught speaking. The kid looks miserable. Not just Brolin miserable or Jimmy Hailler miserable, but it’s there in his eyes and Jimmy Hailler doesn’t make things any better.
Later, I sit under the tree in Hyde Park: it’s one of those fantastic weather days that bring everyone out, and I sit among strangers enjoying the sun and watching the old guys play on the giant chess game. I like this park. It’s full of life. Of greenies selling points of view, of lovers lying on the grass smooching, of Japanese tourists having their photo taken in front of the fountain, of the cathedral looming over us. At this time of the afternoon, there are no Sebastian kids around and I feel a bit at peace.
I see the Year Eight kid from detention walking as fast as possible down the pathway, and sure enough, there’s Jimmy Hailler trailing him. A fury builds up inside of me. I don’t know what comes over me, but I’m up on my feet and walking toward him before I can talk myself out of it.
“You should be ashamed of yourself.”
He looks around, to see if I’m speaking to someone else.
“Are you talking to me?”
“Yes I am, Mr. Taxi Driver, De Niro. You’re a bully and I know you don’t care, but I just thought you should know that I think you’re scum. He’s probably some miserable kid with his own demons and he doesn’t need yours.”
I’m actually shouting, and I feel as if there are tears in my eyes, but I don’t care. I’m just sick of all the misery—my absolute lack of control over everything. For a moment, I catch a glimpse of shock on his face, but I walk away. When I reach the lights on Elizabeth Street, I find that he’s next to me.
“It’s my favorite film, you know.” He’s got a lazy voice that comes across as an annoying drawl.
At first I ignore him.
“Taxi Driver,” he persists.
“Of course it is,” I say, because it’s just too much effort to ignore him. “And I bet I can tell you what your second-favorite film
is.”
He gives me one of those go-ahead-but-you’ll-be-wrong looks, and the lights change and I walk away. But after a moment I turn back, feeling challenged. He’s still standing at the lights.
I reach him, my arms folded, and I know I’m going to be right and I am as smug as he is. “Apocalypse Now.”
No reaction.
“I’m right, aren’t I? I can tell.”
He doesn’t give an inch, so I walk away for the second time.
“So what’s your favorite?” he yells out. “The Sound of Music?”
He catches up to me.
“I’m not as easy to work out as you are,” I tell him as we walk past Market Street.
“It is. I can tell. You love The Sound of Music.”
“No I don’t.”
“You’ve watched it fifteen times. You’ve jumped around a gazebo pretending you’re sixteen going on seventeen. You’ve sung ‘My Favorite Things’ when you’re sad, and every time Captain von Trapp’s voice catches during ‘Edelweiss,’ you bawl your eyes out.”
I stop and look at him, ready to deny it, but then I feel my mouth twitching. “Seems like I’ve watched it one or two times less than you have,” I say.