John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

“Certainly. We’ve got a thousand questions.”

“And as for the girl, Romy. I’m with Barb on her.” The man was still full of beans. He mentioned that DiPio had given the gypsy a clean bill of health.

“Jay,” Barbara said.

“But Silky, I mean. Anybody know anything about his sex life? Something for the autopsy, you ask me.”

He’d even broken into a grin. But when faced his wife, she could see the playfulness drain from him. He fell silent, staring, until the woman across the table repeated what she’d said about a thousand questions.

They had a bigger crew these days, with Jay’s mother. They had more on their hands than ever, really. Not that they didn’t go through another spell of cocooning, sticking close to home throughout most of the first four or five days after Mom and Pop came home from downtown. Immediately after the meeting, Jay and Barbara had themselves a long walk along the waterfront, a long walk and a talk, trailed at a crawl by a black sedan with Consular plates. But after that everyone tended to hole up in thir ten rooms above the Vomero, sorting out new responsibilities and shoving around the heavy furniture. The apartment could feel as if the Lulucitas had moved into the van they used to share with Kahlberg. But with that guy out of the picture, and with Roebuck keeping hands off, they were no longer at a tourist’s distance, staring one day at a four-poster bed draped in silk brocade, the next at a pair of household gods with oversized clay erections. Rather Barbara and the others got their hands dirty, working with more durable ore, creating a presentation with unmistakable message: This Is A Family. Their renewed commitment played a part in every decision, whether it was Jay accepting a new position at DiPio’s downtown clinic or the two girls agreeing to share their room with Grandma.

Aurora would’ve set herself up in a hotel, ordinarily. A suite was more her style. But the new security team argued that their job would be a good deal easier if the old playgirl stayed home with the others. Then too, when it came to getting constructive — to getting rid of the wheelchair and pulling out the hammer — the primary banger was the grandmother. She loomed at the edge of everything, a brassy laugh in the next room or a painted face over somebody’s shoulder. Not that Barbara was talking to her. After the Consulate she gave her mother-in-law a wide berth, or wide as the place allowed. As for the jagged edges inside, Barbara couldn’t do anything about those.

First thing, back from the meeting Tuesday at two, she and Jay went to the kids.

But once she’d handed out their passports, and once she’d let them see her resting her hand on her husband’s knee, how much more could Barbara reveal? What’d happened down in the Museo Nazionale, the last time she’d try to pull out her internal whipsaw? Anyway, the children had already arrived at the same conclusion as Mom and Pop and Attaché Roebuck. They wanted to stay. JJ and Chris were the first to say so, making arguments the parents had heard before. The oldest boy however kept glancing towards the balcony, where his grandmother was waiting, at Jay’s request. Aurora had shut the double-glass door, something else Jay had asked for, and settled into a lounge chair wearing a two-piece with a knotted bra. One look at that and the daughter-in-law understood what her children must’ve imagined about staying on in Naples. The kids saw this city as Adventureland and MTV, their own version of the Italian Romance. Barb understood, and her anger started banging around her ribcage — but what could she say to her nearly-grown boy? What warning could she give any of these kids about the yearnings of the flesh and their more psychotic manifestations, especially around this corner of the urban world? After all, Barbara herself had just given in to romance. Just like that, she was playing the sappiest makeup ballad in the jukebox.

Eventually JJ and Chris finished their say. They looked to Dora and Syl, and the girls looked to Paul. The older boys too, after a moment: it was all on Paul.

But the middle child agreed. He might’ve been the one who’d actually gotten burnt, while the others were still poking a finger or two into the fire, but he preferred to stay in Naples. Though the way he put it did sound awfully spooky: “There’s, there’s so m-much g-g-going on, we, we couldn’t get o-out even if we w-w-wanted to.”

Jay and Barbara also sat down with the doctor, that first afternoon, but the report on their boy with the healing hands was the same as ever. No abnormalities, no signs of serious dissociation, nothing to indicate he wouldn’t benefit from the sort of everyday interaction he seemed to be asking for. The parents found it almost a relief to turn to their new security team, a squad of Italian carabinieri and Interpol detectives. The Jaybird’s primary concern was that these four men and one woman were all getting a bump in salary for the assignment. “We want guys’re on the ball,” he said. “None of those farm-boys Silky used.” Then there was Barbara’s Padre Superiore. The evening after the meeting at the Consulate, Cesare surprised them with a house call. Aurora, wouldn’t you know it, was the one who met the priest at the door, Aurora in full evening makeup and Balinese head-scarf. Yet in the days that followed, too, the old Jesuit Dominican would work his slow and angular way down the Vomero staircases. During two of the priest’s visits, Jay made confession, in a corner of the kitchen. The husband urged Barbara, as well, to unburden herself to Cesare.

“Get it all out,” the husband said. “Get to where you can start over.”

To hear the Jaybird talk, once he and his Owl Girl finished their talk among the tethered fishing boats on the waterfront, a quiet talk but to the point, their marital woes were history. Ancient history — that very evening he started referring to their trouble as “the thing.” No more than that, and the wife agreed. She did agree. Still Barbara found it necessary to pray, daily, intensely, in the privacy of the utilities closet. She prayed that some middle-aged Mother, some Saint of a certain age, might intercede with her God in order to let her know just what the thing had been about. She begged that she might be shown how keep this thing from afflicting her ever again. Over the rosary she at least enjoyed the blood-rush to an alternative muscle-system, alternative and invisible, and in time she felt strong enough to send another e-mail to Nettie. The following morning, dinnertime in Bridgeport, the two women managed a real-time cyber-chat. Barbara got nothing new out of the exchange, really. Her Sam Center mentor reiterated that it would be best for Paul to stay put while he worked through this developmental stage , and she assured the mother that mood swings in the parents were only to be expected. You might look at the work on marital disorders , she advised, in Rudolph or Bloom .

Nothing new, from her bookworm friend, nothing Barbara felt she should copy to her personal files. Nonetheless the electronic conversation left her feeling better. She made sure to delete the chat (Aurora knew how to check the browser History, of course), but she felt bucked up even by Nettie’s mystical sign-off:

Remember , she wrote, it’s always yourself you’re meeting out there, day after day. We’re always meeting ourselves .

The woman sounded a bit like Paul, that time. But these days Barbara was seeing messages a lot more troublesome. There was the pseudo-Cyrillic on the website, Number One, and then there was the conversation she overheard outside the door to the girls’, while she stood holding the sheets for the room’s new, third bed.