Dumbfounded, she simply stood there for a
second, until the young woman, her hair done in a kind of elaborate
ponytail, smiled and said, “Mrs. Pagano?”
Sabina didn’t know how to respond to that.
She wasn’t Mrs. Pagano. Not yet. Not for a while. “May I help
you?”
“Hi. I’m Louisa.”
The name didn’t help Sabina identify her.
She cocked her head.
“Carlo hired me? I’m a nurse.”
“Oh! Oh, apologies. Please, come in. I am
Sabina.”
When she turned and made way for Louisa to
enter, Sabina saw Carmen standing at the end of the hall, near the
staircase. Their eyes met, and Carmen rolled hers and then walked
toward the kitchen.
Sabina knew what Carmen was thinking; she
herself was thinking it, too. If this lovely, young blonde was
Joey’s nurse—Joey, who had his hands in a different girl’s clothes
five days of seven—then…
That thought died abruptly in Sabina’s head.
Joey wasn’t the same as he’d been. She turned her attention to
Louisa. “Joey isn’t home yet. He’ll be discharged the day past
tomorrow.”
Louisa smiled. “That’s fine. I told Carlo
I’d like to see how things are set up before he gets here.” She
examined the hallways critically. “Will he be using a wheelchair?
These hallways are really narrow for that.”
“No. He’s able to walk. Not for far. He
has…a tank? Oxygen tank? On wheels. And, I think, a walking
stick—just for steadiness. His legs are not hurt.”
“Right. He’s aphasia and lung
restriction.”
The way she’d phrased that sentence bothered
Sabina. “No. He is Joey. He
has
aphasia and restrictive lung
disease.”
Louisa smiled. “Yes, I’m sorry. Sometimes,
when I’ve been studying a medical record, I get caught up in the
terms. Of course. May I see his room?”
Sabina took her on a tour of the first floor
of the house and then the back yard. Carmen made herself scarce as
Sabina brought Louisa into the kitchen; she wasn’t one to chat with
strangers unless she felt it absolutely necessary. She shared that
trait with her older brother.
Louisa made some suggestions for groceries,
fruits and high-protein foods to have in the house, and then,
saying she’d be back about half an hour before Joey was due to be
home, she left.
As Sabina closed the door, Carmen
materialized from some unknown point in the house. “I wonder how
much of Carlo’s decision to hire her was based on the fact that old
Joey would be diving straight into her little nurse pants.”
“Wouldn’t that be cruel, though?”
“Not cruel. Motivating.”
Sabina didn’t think she agreed. She’d spent
some time with Joey in the hospital, and he was very much changed.
The cocky boy she’d met in May had been replaced by a hesitant,
lost young man. He seemed often bewildered. It wasn’t that he
couldn’t think as well as before—he was as sharp as ever. It was
more like he couldn’t quite make sense of how his life had become
what it now was. It made Sabina sad to see.
She didn’t think a pretty blonde with a
perky bottom and blue eyes would be motivating for Joey. She feared
it would be the opposite. She hoped Carlo had not made this hiring
decision on such flawed logic.
But she had great hope that
Trey
would be motivating for Joey. Trey, as exuberantly young as he was,
was an old soul. He healed, as if by magic. By his very presence he
seemed to make sense of the world. He’d even healed himself.
~oOo~
It was past dark before Joey made it home on
the day he was released. Paperwork snafus and assorted
incompetencies kept everyone waiting until the evening. Louisa had
come and gone and called three times, but she was there when he
arrived.
He came in using the walking stick that
Carlo Sr. had bought him—a tall, burled stick with a dragon carved
into the head—and with Luca holding his other arm and dragging the
oxygen tank behind him. Sabina knew he hated that thing fiercely.
It made him feel like ‘some stupid old guy in saggy shorts and a
humpback.’
Carlo and their father came up behind,
carrying Joey’s things. Carmen and John had been at the house,
waiting with Sabina and Trey. Rosa, again, had elected not to join
in the welcome. Again, her excuse had been school. She had only
come home for a visit one time in the weeks that Joey had been in
the hospital, and she’d only stopped in for a fifteen-minute visit
when she had.
Rosa’s behavior was a frequent topic of
family conversation, but every discussion ended with what amounted
to a group shrug.
That’s Rosa for you
, they all said. Sabina
was growing irritated and impatient. Yes, Rosa had been neglected,
in a strange, loving way, when Teresa died. And yes, Sabina thought
she could see how it might have formed her into the young woman she
was now. But this—what they were all doing now—was exactly the
problem. No one held her accountable, and as a result, she was on
the outside. The whole family had gathered, and where was Rosa? In
her dorm at Brown. Family experiences were being had, and she was
absent from them, just as she was all but absent from the hall of
family memories.
It was the same thing that Joey had
experienced, though he had never left the fold. This love without
support. This expectation without consequence. It had finally
broken Joey, a little, at least. Sabina found it vexing. But she
had said nothing so far. She wasn’t sure it was her place. And she
was quite sure if she said anything directly to Rosa herself, it
would be taken amiss.
But Joey was home at last. The ride seemed
to have tired him. He was pale, with a shine of perspiration over
his forehead. Luca led him straight to the guestroom.
Louisa was standing at the intersection of
the front hall with the side hall. She smiled and said, “Hi, Joey.
I’m Louisa. I’m going to help you out for a while.”
Joey stopped and stared. After a couple of
seconds, he said, “W-what?”
From behind him, Carlo said, “She’s a nurse.
Joe. I told you. I hired a nurse—just part-time, until you’re
stronger.”
“Y-y-you hired…
that
? …F-fuck…no!” He
jerked his arm free of Luca and walked the rest of the way on his
own, right past Louisa, not stopping when he bounced off the wall
near the door to the room that was now his.
Sabina bit back the urge to tell Carlo she’d
told him so. She’d mentioned her concern the night after she’d met
Louisa. Carlo had said that he’d simply hired the most qualified
person, someone Natalie had recommended highly. She believed him.
But he’d discounted her concern that Joey would be self-conscious
in his weakness around such an attractive woman.
Louisa, however, seemed unmoved. She
followed right behind him. He told her to get out. She told him
that he wasn’t her boss, and she needed him to sit and be quiet so
she could get his vitals. He told her to get fucked. She told him
that her plans later were none of his business.
The whole family—except Rosa—was standing in
the hallway. Carlo and his father still had Joey’s bags in their
arms.
Luca, at the front of the group, turned back
and grinned. “Oh, this is gonna be fun. I might move in, too. Just
for the show.”
“Oh, no, you won’t,” Carlo Sr. groused.
“Okay, people. Break it up. Where’s Trey?”
Sabina answered that. “I put a movie on in
the cellar for Elsa and him. I thought it would be better if he
weren’t under foot—until Joey is ready, that is?”
“Good thinking. Okay. Come on, let’s break
up the traffic jam. The boy doesn’t need an audience.”
~oOo~
That night, Sabina put Trey to bed while
Carlo helped Joey get set up for the night. As they performed the
nightly chore of picking up his toys and putting them away, Trey
peppered her with questions.
“What’s on his finger? It glows like
Rudolph’s nose!”
“That’s a machine that tells if Uncle Joey’s
breath is getting all through his body.” She wasn’t sure how else
to explain the ‘pulse-ox’ machine. But he was satisfied with all
her answers.
“Why is he sleeping downstairs? That’s not
his room. He sleeps with Uncle John when he lives here.”
“I think it makes him too tired right now to
go up the stairs. The bedroom downstairs is easier.”
“Mommy made a loud boom with a cowboy gun
and Uncle Joey fell down and went to sleep. Do the stairs make him
tired like that?”
Her stomach clenched. She took his hand and
pulled him to sit with her on his bed. “No, Trey. Not so tired as
that.”
“But she made him really tired.”
“She did, yes. But he’s better. He’ll keep
getting better.”
“He wouldn’t read me a story. Is he too
tired for stories?” He had wanted Joey to read his bedtime story,
and he’d brought his book of shark facts downstairs in anticipation
of it. But Joey, self-conscious of his struggles for speech, had
told him no and sent him away.
Perhaps Sabina had been wrong about Trey’s
healing abilities. But it was still early.
“I think today, yes, he was too tired for
stories. But maybe not always. I would like to read you a story
tonight. May I?”
“Okay. Daddy and me stopped at G for Goblin
Shark.” Trey sat up sideways on his bed and opened his big book of
sharks at the place marked with a piece of folded blue construction
paper. They got all the way to the Japanese Wobbegong before Trey’s
eyes started to droop and Sabina closed the book.
She got him tucked in and turned on his
undersea projector. Then she kissed his forehead. “Goodnight, Trey.
I love you.”
“Love you, Misby.” His voice was faint,
following him into sleep.
Sabina blinked. Every time he called her
that, her heart filled a little bit more. He’d said once that she
was his. She felt that, too, that he was hers. She stood in the
doorway and watched him settle totally, his room awash with fish
swimming in blue light.
Carlo was sitting in bed, working, when she
went into their bedroom. It was their bedroom now; she thought of
it only in that way. The only reason now that she had not given up
her little attic was that they hadn’t had a chance to pack her
things and move her out of it.
He was wearing black boxer briefs and his
glasses, and he had his laptop and papers, some of them large
building plans, strewn across the comforter. He looked up as she
began to change into a nightgown.
“He go down okay?”
“Of course. He had many questions about
Joey, though. I hoped I answered them well.”
She got into bed, and he closed his laptop,
set it aside, and dropped his glasses on top of it. Then he leaned
over and kissed her, slow and sweet. “I’m sure you did. You’re so
good with him, Bina.”
He started to push his hand under her
nightgown, but she circled his wrist with her hand and stopped him.
“May we talk first?”
With a crease down the middle of his
forehead, he sat back a little. “Sure. Everything okay?”
“Yes. But something’s in my mind, and I’d
like to talk about it. I worry that you’ll be angry, though. That
maybe I would step over.”
“I can’t imagine you overstepping anything.
What is it?”
She was anxious despite his assurance.
“Shouldn’t Rosa be home more for Joey?”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s hardly seen him since he was hurt.
She wasn’t here today. Only she was missing. Is it right?”
“Rosa…she’s young. She and Joey have never
gotten along very well, and her priorities are…”
“Wrong,” Sabina finished for him. He cocked
his head, and she could tell by the subtle change in his posture
that she had, in fact, made him angry.
“Not wrong. Young. Maybe you’re right, Bina.
Maybe this isn’t a place for you to have an opinion.” He turned and
sat back against the headboard, pulling his laptop back onto his
legs and sliding his glasses on, as if the conversation were
over.
It was not.
“Am I not family, then?”
He turned his head back toward her. “Yes. Of
course you are. But you don’t know—”
She cut him off. “I would like to finish my
thought. Because maybe I see things a new way. Do you know how many
photos of you are hanging in the hallway downstairs?” When Carlo
didn’t answer, Sabina did. “Twenty-nine. Thirty-one of Carmen.
Twenty-six of Luca and the same of John. Do you know how many
photos are of Joey? Of Rosa? Six of Joey. Five of Rosa. There are
twelve photos of Trey on that wall. More than Rosa and Joey
altogether.”
“You counted?”
“I was curious. I see that your whole life
is…the word is…
chronicled
in this house. The same is with
Carmen, Luca, and John. But Joey and Rosa? No.”
“Our mother died. We have different…” He
stopped, and Sabina thought she knew why.
She filled in the word he’d tripped over.
“Priorities?”
He was getting even angrier. He tossed his
glasses down on the bed. “What’s your point, Sabina?”