John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

“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.