John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

She allowed the man her word, her prayer. But the visitor who mattered was her middle child Paul.

Today the Consulate had assigned the kids a wide and factory-fresh Audi, a ride that didn’t fit down the last half-block before the palazzo entryway. Paul had to walk from the intersection. And he didn’t go unnoticed, his walk so full of beans, his black-and-white so crisp. By the time Barbara heaved herself off the bench the eleven-year-old was sandwiched between a pair of housewives, each with her net bag of vegetables. When the women fished out their bric-a-brac, the silver flashed in the late-afternoon sun. At this hour the light poked into these man-made canyons at odd angles.

The mother couldn’t help but notice again how the excitement over her miracolino had settled down. The scrawniest clandestino on the street, a young man with a filthy bandanna, gazed at the boy mildly. Around the clinic too, when it came to Paul, DiPio alone remained a true believer. Barbara’s middle child had visited once during her week, and everyone except the old dottore had confined themselves to brisk courtesies. The therapists here were on soft money, like most of the people in quake relief; they couldn’t waste time with a disorder that was beyond diagnosis. As for the patients, they hadn’t been paying much attention to the news.

Paul finished with the housewives. “Hi, h-hi Mom.”

The boy could just show up? Like any other eleven-year-old? (More or less — Barb shouldn’t forget the armed escort and private limo).

“It was, it was b -boring , with Chris and, and JJ,” he went on. “All they do is tell us wh-where, wh-where we have to stand.”

Barbara found herself angry, upset with the security team or the housewives or DiPio or somebody for leaving her child so exposed. There had to be somebody ! Maybe that Doctor L.A., yanking the clinic’s rug out from under her! But Paul was showing Mama a smile with adult overtones, fleshy, almost flirty, and in another moment Barb’s anger had swung round on her. She was swamped by fresh recriminations. How well did she know this boy, any more? How much had she helped him, in fact? She recalled that she’d seen, for instance, inklings of sexual ambiguity, but she’d offered Mr. Paul nothing like an invitation to talk about it. Yes, she knew it might help him to “assert” his “identity” in that way. Nettie herself, still dealing with her own long years in denial, had brought up the idea of such a talk. But since returning Maria Elena to Children’s Services, when it came her pubescent boy, the mother had let the professionals handle any talk about the facts of life.

She hadn’t wanted the other kids bothering Paul about it either. Romy and JJ could kiss all they liked, that was different thing, almost a political transaction. Anyway the eleven-year-old had already seen his brother kissing a girl or two, back in Bridgeport. But just the other evening, Barbara had come down hard on Chris after he’d walked into the kitchen with a fresh printout and announced that Paul had five of the early indicators of homosexuality.

The fifteen-year-old had just walked in and announced it, while Dora and Syl were helping Mama make popovers. She’d ordered the girls out and then read the riot act to her second-oldest.

“Do you want to live your whole life like this?” she’d asked. “An IQ of 150 in the classroom and zero everywhere else?” His sisters were still in elementary school, she’d reminded him, and Mother of God, this was his brother he was talking about.

Chris couldn’t stop touching his glasses. “Mom like, come on, like, what are you? Like, homophobic?”

“Chris, don’t. I’m saying, you leave that alone . Paul is his own man.”

She’d grounded the teenager from a day’s work on the documentary. She’d made him give Dora and Syl a tutorial on the camera and software.

Now her miracle child was asking something, from the other side of the clinic gate. Barbara couldn’t understand, given the traffic. Where was her driver, anyway? To judge from the noise, everyone else was in a car, on a Vespa, or pulling up to a street stall in a three-wheeled truck. The din seemed to rise as uncontrollably as the sulfur smell from under the paving-stones. Then amid that cacophony, with her boy’s pretty mouth shaping unheard words before her and, in her ribcage somewhere, a sore spot lingering from losing her job — in there, Barb got the idea of an interview.

PAUL ( adjusting his belt, squinting away ): It’s like a, a tunnel or, or more like, something making a tunnel. It’s like something h-h-hollows out a tunnel, through the trouble. Like maybe a tentacle pokes its way through the trouble and at, tat, attack… a tentacle attaches. You can just feel it.

BARBARA ( off-screen ): A tentacle?

( PAUL laughs, shakes head .)

BARBARA: Just friends talking, Paulie. No judgments, no bad words.

PAUL: You feel a flow, and it’s a wet flow, like this flowing wet that w-w-worms its way through and then at, tack, attaches. That’s where you can get hold of the trouble.

“Check it out,” the editor said, freezing the image before them. “Check it out , the boy just eats the screen.”

Barbara crossed her arms, seeing Paul as a movie star, the computer’s flat screen making more of his lips and eyelashes. She hadn’t known that this was how the editing would work. She hadn’t understood that she would watch it happening, rewinds and cuts and freeze-frames, all handled with a wireless mouse and biomorphic keyboard and taking shape on a screen perhaps a foot from her face. But then, there was nowhere else to sit. The editing room might’ve been a utility closet. The entire “studio headquarters” (according to DiPio, their films had won awards) fit in a single five-room walkup. The only air-conditioning was a unit in one wall of this same cramped space.

The editor himself seemed to prefer things tight. His striped sleeveless t-shirt hugged his torso so closely that it rode up his midsection, exposing a deeply indented waistline. His hip-hugging sailor’s pants, white, looked more snug still. Yet while he sat grinning up at Paul’s image, he appeared hardly older than Barbara’s middle child.

“That stutter is right on, too,” the editor added. “Total authenticity.”

PAUL ( looking left of camera ): You feel, you feel so much when it at, attaches, like so much a-all at once. I, I mean whatever the trouble is, a-all at wuh-wuh-wuh…all at once you know you can fix it.

BARBARA ( off-screen ): Do you hear anything? Voices or anything?

PAUL ( frowning ): Mo-om. ( hesitates, fingers to cheek ) It’s not, it’s never in words. There m-might be n-n -noises . There might like a single n-noise c-coming on, like a r-rising, a r-rumbling rising that’s a-also lots of, of noises a-at once.

BARBARA: Like traffic noise? Traffic and street noise?

PAUL: Whatever. A-anyway it’s never w-words. Words, you know, they a-add up, they, they line up a-and go somewhere. This, it just comes on, buh-buh, behemoth, you know? It’s shapeless and, and e-everywhere at once. That’s also, it’s a-also how I know this, it can’t, it can’t — this won’t last.

BARBARA ( sharply ): What? This won’t last?

PAUL: It’s, it isn’t, the h-healing, it won’t go on forever.

BARBARA: Are you saying, these episodes—

PAUL: It comes on so aw, aw, awesome, w-with the rumble a-and the flow through the trouble. It’s, it’s such a force when it at, attaches. You just feel it. And, and that’s got to mean, there’s o-only going to be so many. There can only b-be so many.