John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

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.”

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.”

Chris grinned. “What can I say? I’ve found my city. Like, my home ground.”

Barb and Jay shared a look.