Earthquake I.D. (40 page)

“What?” Jay asked. “You sinned against Paul?”

Barb put an arm around her boy, getting set to haul him out of the room.

“The worst I did,” Cesare went on, “was to hurt this consecrated brood.”

“Hey. How many times do I have to say it?”

“Now Cesare, please.” The old woman leaned over velveteen legs, her hands between her knees. “This isn't the man I fell in love with.”

“Just, I mean, speak English. Hey? Plain English.”

“I fell in love,” Aurora said, “with a beautiful Black Irishman who used to say the Holy Spirit dwelt in our desires. ‘Dwelt,' oh my Chez-ah-ray. The only proof of God you could take seriously, you used to say, was the sheer variety of human yearning.”

Jay remained at the man's arm, frowning. For the first time in a while Barbara noticed that her husband was wearing a uniform too: his hospital whites.

“Oh my Cesare,” Aurora repeated, then at a glance from her son fell silent. Her doctored looks hardened.

“You and Mom,” Jay said, “that's your business. But what's this about Paul?”

Cesare had fallen so still that Barb could spot a wet streak along his jaw-line, a mark left by her child. The boy himself was worming in closer, under her arm, and so when the old man began to speak, to murmur, a priest at confession, at first she could only pick out the words in Italian. Or was it Neapolitan, that drawl, those dying final syllables? Even when Cesare said a word she knew well,
clandestini
, Barbara couldn't be sure she'd heard him right till he put it together with another one she recognized:
scippatori
.

She shifted her grip on Paul, blocking his body if they shared a car seat and were skidding towards a collision. “Mother of God,” she said.

Jay let go of the priest and gave her a look. He asked something she didn't catch. Aurora too faced around, pant-legs flopping, looking glad for the distraction. Meanwhile Cesare continued his explanations, the murmur of troubling thoughts, and Barbara began to regret how easily she understood them. She regretted everything she'd learned during this last clue-spattered month. For her there could be no mistaking this old man, her lone Vomero friend, with whom she'd spent hours in a church otherwise deserted—except, that is, for a couple of fugitives in the basement. And those two, there could be no mistaking, had been something more than lost sheep.

“It's the
scippatori
,“ she said at the priest's first decent pause “Our
scippatori
, that's what you're saying. The two you've been hiding are the guys who hit Jay.”

Cesare may have raised his eyes, Barb couldn't be sure. His back was to the balcony doors, and in the shadows, his face was another map of disease. In any case he hardly had a chance to nod before Jay erupted. The wife didn't catch every word, as she studied the new plague-map above her, but she knew what her husband was saying.
Hey, how long, how could you—what
is
this?
The former lineman took hold of Cesare's arm again. He shook the old priest and looked about to do worse before, good Papa, he shot a glance at Paul. Not that this made him any less threatening. The Jaybird went for a height advantage, firing questions with his heels off the ground.

“You had the guys? In your church, you had them? You had both those guys, and I mean. You just sat there.”

You could see kitchen grease under Jay's fingernails. And for all the priest's experience with unhappy wives, he didn't know what to do about a husband. He flinched and responded in single syllables.

“How could you?” Jay asked. “How can a man just sit there?”

Barbara might've seen Cesare on his deathbed, but she'd never seen him so at loose ends, the fractured Jesuit Dominican. He stuttered as he tried to get into details. The two clandestini had showed up at his door the night of the mugging. Scrawny, in cheap jeans and T's, and one of them bruised deeply under his eye, both clandestini nonetheless brimmed with a naive certainty that the Church could wash them clean. At each word they spoke, Cesare had heard the echo of his own emptiness. He'd heard how his soul had become a husk, pitted by years of neglect and baked in the
Mezzogirno
. After that it had taken the priest a couple of days, talking further with these two, before he was convinced that they had in fact…they had, in fact…

“Hey,” Jay said. “Don't stop now, buster. What'd they tell you?”

“Quite,” said Cesare. “They told me, yes, that's it, quite.”

Scowling, Jay once more seized the old man's arm.

“They
told
me,” the priest repeated. “It was confession.”

The Jaybird rocked back, hands at his sides. He and Barbara got it at once, how deeply the sacrament mattered to Cesare, fractured and in need of a splint. Confession must've been the man's primary mode of communication with the two refugees, and now when his faith was still trembling from the effort of resurrection, the sanctity of his priestly rituals meant everything. How could he violate the
clandestini
‘s trust? Cesare bit his tongue, making a show of it, so that even with the shadow you couldn't miss the wet red muscle bulging between his teeth. Barbara didn't see why he had to do that, especially not staring down at Paul the way he was, but she admired the man's backbone. Aurora too grinned a bit, something more than polite.

“Come on.” Jay reined in his tone. “Cesare, all due respect. I mean.”

Then there was the eleven-year-old, all eyes, drawing his knees to his chin as he stared at the priest's tongue.

“Hey, Mr. Paul,” said Jay. “Hey guy. You know. What you did was good.”

The priest startled and turned, dropping his face into his hands.

“Everything else, it's mixed up. It's for grownups, it's mixed up. But Mr. Paul, big guy, what you did—you know. That was good.”

The next breath of out Cesare sounded choked, a sob. At that, Aurora spoke up. “Cesare,” she said, “honestly. You must realize that the only person in this room who was ever interested in your soul, absolutely and truly interested, was myself”

Barbara looked up from Paul, then on second thought let the woman talk.

“Your Aura was the only one who cared,” she went on. “I did, absolutely. ‘To live to err, to fall, to triumph'—that's Stephen Dedalus, as I'm sure you know. And had anyone asked, I'd have said old Stephen was talking about you and me.”

Jay and Paul had turned to the old woman as well.

“Now, honestly, Cesare. In the name of my caring, quite genuine while it lasted, I have to ask whether there isn't something you can do.”

The priest, his fingers slipping beneath his eyes, gave the beginning of a nod.

PAUL had the heightened sympathy levels; he began nodding too, waving a hand at the old man. “He, the priest, he, it w-wasn't so bad, what he, he did. Help, helping those guys, h-hiding them. It wasn't so bad, because if, if h-he, he, if he helped them, he, he knew, then w-we weren't in a-any danger. The family.”

The boy pointed out that the
scippatori
had been ashamed of what they'd done. They'd been frightened “a-about going to Heh, Heh, Heh, to H-Heh—”

“Okay,” Jay put in. “Maybe they weren't such a threat, those two. But at this point, that's all I'll give the guy.”

“See but, see but they a-already got rid of the papers. Like, the pass, passports.”

“Paulie,” Barbara said, “this is very nice of you, but can you see—”

“Hey. Look at it the other way around. Those two took our stuff, they took it and they made some money off it.”

“A-and they, they got h-h-hit, for it. One, one of them w-was banged up.”

“Cesare?” Aurora asked. “Have you come up with something, after all? Some nice piece of Jesuitical logic?”

The black figure at the center of the room had pulled himself together. He extended an arm in blessing for the boy on the sofa, beaming with uncomplicated gratitude for another long moment. But then Cesare asked if anyone had noticed where he'd left his shoes.

“I believe you'll find then beneath one of the dining-room chairs.” Aurora drew her lips into a hard red knob. “Are you going somewhere?”

“I am,” the priest said, “and I hope your son and his wife will come with me, don't you know. I hope they'll accompany me up to the church.”

Jay whipped round, frowning, but Cesare went on unruffled. “I know more than I can say, but I believe I don't have to say it, in order for you to know it.”

As the old man turned towards the dining room, you could see his face better, its color. Barbara looked first to him, then to the Jaybird, and what could she show her husband except the prickly understanding that they had no choice? What, when the priest was prey to such wild moods? They couldn't be sure what Cesare would feel like in another hour, whereas they could be sure about the kids. They'd stay put—for Paul's sake if not for the parents'—and they'd have the grandmother with them. Barb could see at once how it would work, how it had to work, the lesser of two evils. The risk in the teenagers' work with the gypsy was outweighed by the threat from the two outlaws who'd nearly killed the boys' father.

Jay however looked dubious. He returned to Cesare, bent over in one of the head-of-table chairs, on the other side of the open double-doors to the dining area.

“If you've got something at the church, I guess I want to see it.” The husband kept his voice businesslike. “I mean, that's the plan, right? Something at the church?”

The old man nodded without straightening up.

“Okay.” Jay lifted his chin, impressed. “Okay, we look at that, and you've still got your sacrament. Good plan.” The Vice President of Sales. “But after that, it's like I say. Everything's got to be on a new basis.”

The priest's head came up while one foot waggled into its loafer. He declared that parents needed to see what he had for them; they needed to “understand the forces arrayed against them from the start, here.”

Jay frowned again, puzzled, grumbling. Barb wondered about the police. That was the last thing she needed, today, another visit to the precinct station.

“But beyond that,” Cesare said, “I don't see that I'd need to have any more dealings with your family whatsoever.”

Aurora clucked her tongue and put her back to the man. It took her a moment to notice Paul, but when she did, the woman cocked an eyebrow, playfully.

In fact the eleven-year-old seemed the main concern, at the moment. Barbara bent to his ear, whispering a word or two. Best if the boy joined the others without additional rumpus; best if, after the things he'd seen already, he didn't have to deal with either of the evils, lesser or greater, now facing his Mom and Pop. The middle child didn't move, however, until Aurora made him an offer.

“You know, Paulie,” the grandmother said, “we don't usually have all you kids together. We so rarely get an afternoon like this one, with everyone in one place. What do you say if we round up the others and put on a show?”

Just like that, the boy was ordinary again. Ordinary for a Broadway Baby, anyway: “With, with songs?” Paul asked, eyes shining.

“Oh, with songs, certainly.” The way Aurora nodded, she and Paul must've discussed the possibility before. “Songs and dances too, for the fairy-folk.”

“Well, well m-maybe not Chris. Chris, h-he can handle the music. H-he can, h-he can download the music, w-whatever we need.”

At the mention of the computer, the computer and her teens, Barbara tightened her hold on the middle child's arm. Couldn't let him go yet. Aurora didn't fail to notice, and she caught the mother's eye—was it the first time since they'd been yelling at each other? Quietly, so the men wouldn't hear, she told Barb not to worry.

“Really now,” Aurora said, “we're not so different, you and I. The children's safety, and life of decent abundance—honestly, isn't that all we're hoping to achieve?”

“See,” Barbara said, “it's hard to hear someone like you talking about ‘decent abundance.' That's a hard word to take, from a woman in golden velvet.”

“Oh, now.” Aurora was smiling again, but gently. “And this from a woman with five finished rooms in her basement.”

“What? Are you saying my utilities room is finished?”

The grandmother put a hand to throat, chuckling.

“As for Jay's workshop, the kids were getting in there. Once that started, we had to put down carpet.”

“Barbara, indulge me. We're not so utterly different. Let us say, neither one of us has so much in common with an abandoned child from Mexico.”

Barbara dropped her gaze. “I would say, when it comes to abandoned children, there's no one who has a clue.”

Which seemed to take care of their business at home. Barbara let go of Paul, meanwhile telling the mother-in-law what she needed to know regarding Chris and JJ. “Just keep those two from sneaking away with the laptop, okay?” She didn't have to get into the details, though she didn't want to think about how much Aurora knew already. But there was no point doing something drastic either, like taking the machine with her when she left for the church. The boys could hardly erase Romy from their files. Soon enough the mother was running her fingers one last time through Paul's hair, telling him to have fun. She caught a few words between Jay and the priest, and they too were finishing up.
So long as you understand, Father, we can't take long…like I say, some family business here…
.

As Paul picked his way around the coffee table to his grandmother, Barbara saw again how she might coexist peacefully with this woman. Peacefully, usefully—but before Barb could work out something for back in Bridgeport, maybe some help with the Saturday driving (the girls at one soccer field, the boys at another), here in Naples she had to allow the old playgirl one last dig at her momentary boyfriend.