I start wondering how the rest of the world sees us, and this is what I’m sure of.
They look at us as if we’re guilty. My dad, Luca, and I have become the villains. I know what they’re thinking. How could someone as lively and passionate as Mia feel this way? It’s her family, they whisper in my head. They’ve sucked the life out of her. All three of them. They see my father for who he is out there in the real world and not the person he is in our home. They see him as the guy who rode around on my Malvern Star bike once and broke his arm, or the husband at Mia’s university dinner parties who doesn’t say much. They don’t know the real him. Mia might be responsible for daily discipline, but if she wants to scare us, it’s my dad who’s in charge. That he doesn’t believe in small talk and won’t say much is because he’s bored by people who talk crap. He can make Mia laugh when she’s in the most stressed of moods. He can fix anything that’s broken in our house and can pull apart a car engine and put it back together again and make it work. That’s what people don’t see, and the fact that he doesn’t care what they think calms me down at the worst of times.
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.