Earthquake I.D. (49 page)

Blood had caked at the corners of Barbara's mouth as well.

“Must've been like this back on Day One,” her husband was saying, or singing. “Owl Girl, I mean, Jesus
God
! This is how it must've been for the rest of you guys, Day One in this city.”

Sitting up straighter, Barbara got a look at herself Not that she wanted to neglect her eleven-year-old, looking so shaken, so weakened, but she needed to know the damage. Round the neck of her dress lay a thick mud-red, more than wine and revealing her unprotected nipple. A fresh and ragged hole gaped in one lapel, and around it the sticky maroon business lay smeared the thickest. Underneath, under fabric and collarbone, a faint buzz radiated. Pins and needles, more painkiller than pain.

Barbara frowned, the last spooky shudder of her dream draining away, and she looped her bra back where it belonged. She doubted the children noticed, and anyway they'd seen their mother half-undressed plenty of times before. Many the weekend morning she'd come to with a couple-three youngsters giggling across the bed, her in a flimsy nightgown and the Jaybird in boxers and a T. The difference today was, they'd been delivered to Mama's bedside by the police.

“Paul.” She reached for the boy. “I know what you did. I
know
what you did, Mother of God. Thank you.”

“My ma-an.” The husband's voice broke again. “My Mr. Paul. I mean, even this he can fix, even one in the
throat
.”

Now Dora and Syl fell on her, they could see Mom could take it, though Barbara kept working her way towards Paul. She budged over the wet gravel of the floor, against the girls' murmurs and nuzzling. Once again, flakes of dried blood drifted down into the twins' puff-blossom hair, and noticing that, the mother also began to take in the damage done by tonight's quake. The tremors didn't appear to have had much impact. At a glance you could see that most of the ceiling and its support remained in place, what with all the light pouring down from the street. Could that be daylight, still? Or was it the combined glare of official vehicles, television crews, and the cars and bikes of gawkers trying to get a look? In any case Barbara figured that the basement had lost only a few more barrels and chunks of ceiling plaster. It didn't take much of a shock—when a man was a bundle of nerves to begin with—to jog him into firing a gun.

But never mind that guy, the clandestino who'd almost killed her. Never mind, once Barbara got hold of her middle child and pulled him into her lap. As the twins made a place for the scrawny next-oldest, the mother felt her teens hugging her too, kneeling into the muck to press their faces against her sopping back. Still she paid the most attention to Paul, taking fresh note of what a slob he'd become all of a sudden. His shirt appeared to have lost its starch, streaked with mud and wine and worse. With that she was racked by a bout of shivers and cottonmouth, and sank deeper into the fold of her children. Embraced by ten hands, she curled up and closed her eyes.

Eventually Paul's breathing calmed and dried. “Mom,” he said.

She couldn't respond. She couldn't shake off one of the twins probing along her mother's collarbone. The girl ran a finger over the center of the healing, the target buzz, and Barbara became aware of a roughness, a scar. Only then did she notice that Jay had squatted beside the group. He'd hooked an arm around them all.

“Never again,” he said. “Going off half-crazy, like we did, I mean. Never again for this family.”

She made some room between one of daughters and one of her teens, finding the Jaybird's face.

“Barb, oh God, I mean, no way, never, forget about it. Next time this family makes some kind of move, we're
whole
, we're together on it. That's the new basis.”

There might've been a reply partway up her throat, a throat full of knuckles, unstable yet from all her children's touches. Jay tried out a smile and she managed a nod. She managed a neck-stretch, bending first towards one shoulder and then the other, and the group hug began to weigh on Barbara. It began to recall the burdensome climb up from the sotterraneo, and the more suffocating heap of laws and paperwork that she and Jay faced next. She, Jay—and at least one other person in this cellar.

Barb sat up, wriggling off Paul and the girls as she extended her legs. The teenagers backed away without needing to be told.

“Listen, Jaybird.” She had decent tone. “What's happened to me, I know, I realize—what's happened to me and you both, here in Naples—it's really something, but it's not the whole story. Where's Fond, I'm saying? Where's his man?”

“That's my Mama,” John Junior said.

The older boys came around one shoulder. “Five minutes after a near-death experience,” JJ went on, “and she's back to being the Good Samaritan.”

“To put it mildly.” Chris pulled off his glasses. “She's going for, like, the Guinness Book of Samaritans.”

She could play catch-up. “Actually,” Barbara said, “I'm just trying to nudge up above Worst Parent of the New Millennium.”

“That's my Mom.”

“Mom, I'm telling you. Like, Pop came out of this place screaming for help—”

“All right, I hear you, my guys, my good big guys.” The rancid stuff on her tongue helped keep her sober. “And I'm saying, we'll talk. Your father's right. Wherever we go next, first we've got to all sit down and talk.”

The teens' solid front remained unnerving. “What?” JJ asked, straight-faced. “Like back at the museum?”

“Bro. Cut her some slack. The museum, that's ancient history.”

Now that was a surprise, Chris choosing not to talk about a museum. Had her bookish boy too moved on to new priorities? In any case the fifteen-year-old gave Barb the chance to get a better look around. At the edge of the wine-puddle in which she sat, amid the flesh-like hunks of plaster, she discovered her purse. Wasn't too far to reach, though it was heavy from the soaking, and as she got the bag, she found the man she was looking for too. Fond was part of a cluster off in the darkest part of the room. He stood against a wall, handcuffed to a cop, while a second officer kept a grip on his opposite arm. But so far as Barb could see, the clandestino rebel hardly noticed his keepers. In the nook where they held him, he could stand full height, and his doctored cheekbones caught the light from outside. Once more he looked like a star of the screen. As soon as the mother spotted him, she could tell he was staring her way.

Apres vous, madame
.

Barbara nodded, but she knew that wasn't nearly enough. That was no way to keep a promise. She started to raise a hand, but this felt likewise flimsy.

Dropping her chin, tuning out the latest between Jay and her oldest, the mother again caught sight of her purse. The top was open and something glinted within—maybe a bead, maybe a bullet—but the rosary was just the ticket, wasn't it? The rosary would do it, the sign she needed, allowing her to pass as an honest woman. She found the sculpted coral greasy, but the loop came out of the bag without snagging on the rest of Barbara's swamped clutter. When she got the swaying icon up into the light, she made the figure in custody break into a smile. Fond even hitched his hips, a touch of the rap star. With all he'd been through, the man must've pinned his hopes to far less than a string of beads. He'd never have founded the Shell of the Hermit Crab if he were scared of flying on a wing and prayer.

But the soldier who'd been posted lookout, Barbara discovered, was nowhere to be seen. Fond must've arranged that, too, ordering the guy out of harm's way as she lay dying and Jay rushed outside screaming. Now Fond was the only illegal in the room—and come to think of it, since his healing he'd gotten his papers. He had better I.D. than Barb and Jay did, just now. Otherwise the basement was full of the law, in plainclothes or in uniform. Among them loomed some sort of military doctor, in a Red Cross helmet. There were also a pair of Marine Elites, bulked up in flak jackets. Wedged behind what was left of the wine rack, one leatherneck carried a W-shaped automatic rifle and the other a gleaming boxlike lamp, and they stood looking down the entrance to the slaves' passageway.

None of these people had anything to say. For some time now, since Barbara had hoisted her rosary, the only noise had come from outside, the shouting and traffic.

Jay broke the silence. “Good call. Good one, Owl, that's what Fond needs to see. Plus, you realize, he told his man to get lost while you were—”

She nodded, keeping her beaded hand up by her face.

“Got to give it up for the Refugee Lazarus.” Jay broke into a grin. “He makes sure his guy's safe, did the right thing there, and then he goes down on his knees. I mean, down flat, with his hands out where the cops can see them.”

Barbara looked again at the youngsters clustered around her. The girls were still trembling, holding hands, and Paul remained a mess. Today's quake hadn't amounted to much, an aftershock, and when the Jaybird first came out from under the condemned restaurant, they must've thought for a moment that everything was all right. Then they would've heard him calling for help.

Barbara focused on John Junior. “You know your Mama,” she said. “You know we'll talk.”

His smile was artless, closemouthed. He settled the others with a look.

“There's lots to talk about,” she went on. “There's Silky Kahlberg and your Pop, and there's you and Romy.”

JJ turned to Chris, and she could read the body language; she knew her Irish Michelangelo. She wouldn't have any trouble getting them to hand over their files. There were people in this city who could do a lot more for the gypsy than they could, and there were lawyers and others who could do a lot better by Fond than Barbara could. Also DiPio could arrange for counseling, if the young man from Mali wanted.

Barbara gave a sigh of her own and got her feet beneath her. Standing, she swiped the muck off her backside. Her thighs itched from the sticky residue.

Jay had taken over with the two oldest. “Whatever you guys've been into, the main thing is, it's in the past. Hey?”

She showed the Jaybird a grateful look.

“Way I see it,” Jay said, “we came out ahead, swapping Fond here for that Kahlberg. We're way ahead there. I mean, anyone see any other changes, worth coming all this way and going through all this?”

“I think I can tell you one,” Paul said, evenly. “My eh, eh, episodes are over.”

Their Italian boy, his hands fluttered as he went up on tiptoe in an extended stretch. As his narrow chest filled with air everyone turned to stare. Paul's top was so streaked and speckled it called to mind one of his grandmother's scarves.

“Paulie,” Dora said. “Look at you.”

“Look at
you
,” said Sylvia.

“I, I mean it,” said the middle child. “The healing, the eh, the episodes…”

“Laying-on of hands,” Chris said.

“Whatever.” Rarely had Paul sounded so ordinary. “I, I just feel it. I, I know it. With, with Mom just now, that was the eh, the end of it.”

His sisters and brothers went on staring, his father too. Barbara however brushed herself off and pulled her clothing straight, preparing herself the best she could to face the cops and the media. She could handle that kind of thing, she and Jay. Her youngest boy, on the other hand, had endured enough Q-&-A for a while. Hadn't Barb spent the better part of the morning giving him the third degree, in close-up and in freeze-frame? Now this evening, if you asked her, he was right that the healings had ended; in so far as his most recent case had any sort of feeling about it, she felt the same. The boy had worked the process, she felt—through a rare quirk of recovery from trauma, a coping mechanism to help him deal with a terrifying round of Monopoly. But if that machinery had finished its cycle, then the last thing Paul needed tonight was to talk his way back through the wheels within wheels. He'd have time enough later; they'd all have time enough.

Barbara finished with her clothes, also working her tongue in her mouth, trying to clean. Enough with the kiss of disease. Around her the stipples of reflection across the wine had to be streetlamps and headlights, night traffic.

“Mr. Paul,” Jay said. “You had two today. Knock anyone for a loop.”

“But that's just what I'm, I'm saying.” The boy turned over a limp wrist.

“Hey, big guy. Nothing to be ashamed of. I can't tell you how often your Mom and your Pop have been knocked for a loop.”

“But, but, o-ordinarily I could never've done this second wuh, this second one. That's what I'm saying. I couldn't've, I couldn't've done this one if, if, if…I couldn't've done it if it wasn't the last.”

On either side of the family, now, the Marines stood waiting. Nobody was going after any hostiles until the civilians were secure, and Barbara figured she'd find their CO. first, the ranking officer on the scene. Also the police bided their time, though she could hear the click of the cuffs as one of them shifted his grip on Fond.

“It's not,” the
ex-miracolino
was saying, “it never happens i-in words. If Romy were here, she'd uh, she'd understand. It doesn't a-add up to like, words and a story.”

“I hear you,” Jay was saying. “If today, these healings, if they were ordinary, hey, two of them, there's no way. I hear that.”

“I could do it because this, this with Mom, it was the last.”

Barbara noticed the boy's gesture, effeminate again. He stood hipshot, pouting, looking more and more like a younger Aurora.

John Junior broke in. “Hey! Hey my man, the P-man!” He raised a long finger. “I
got
it, the laws of the universe. I got how this worked.”

The big teen whipped his finger around the oval of family faces. “Check it out, you completed a circle. Check it out, the first was Pop, the last was Mom. A circle, my little big man, that's how it worked.”