Listening for Lucca (14 page)

My fare was a dollar. Little guys like Lucca ride for free. We sat on a wooden seat slatted like a park bench. Lucca hung his hands out the open side when it started up, yelling, “Whooo whooo!” but I grabbed his arms to bring them back inside. The last thing I needed, after I’d convinced Mom this was a good idea, was for Lucca to tumble out. He hardly noticed, though, grinning as he closed his eyes against the warm breeze. I closed my eyes for a minute, too, trying to feel my brother’s happiness. It was better than talking.

There were two boys my age sitting on the bench across from us. One of them smiled at me. I managed to smile back, but then the trolley stopped and I had to pick up our beach bag and help Lucca down from the seat, and by the time we got off the trolley I didn’t see them anymore.

I set up our blanket near families with little kids. Sure enough, after a few minutes Lucca had joined a group splashing around in some shallow, warm pools that had collected when the tide went out. I didn’t let him out of my sight, but I didn’t hover. I just let him play. The other kids didn’t seem to notice or care that he wasn’t talking. He wasn’t actually the only one, because some of the kids were younger and not really saying much, either. He fit right in. He splashed and got muddy in the smooth, gray sand.

Eventually I got up and paced around, an eye on Lucca, but also looking in the sand for anything left behind. I spotted an old chip bag, a crushed juice box, a plastic fork—but those weren’t treasures. I collected them anyway, to throw out when we left.

I found a little bluish crab in a shallow pool and I called Lucca over to see. He loved the crab and tried to reach out to touch. “No, he pinches,” I said. “See?” The crab pinched at the sand and brought his claw to his mouth, over and over. “He’s having lunch.”

Which reminded Lucca that
he
wanted lunch. He showed me by running to our blanket and dragging things out of the picnic bag. I had made us peanut-butter-and-grape-jelly sandwiches. Mom always tells me not to give Lucca peanut butter, in case he has an allergic reaction to it, but she fed me peanut butter all the time when I was little. Why all this care with Lucca and not with me?

Mom used to be more fun. We used to do things like take the train out of town to go hiking or explore other parts of the city. She used to take me to museums and let
me wander around with a sketch pad while she worked. Now she was all worry-worry-worry and order-order-order.

Lucca seemed to love the peanut butter and didn’t have any kind of allergic reaction. He smeared it all over his face. Luckily, I’d brought baby wipes, and I used a couple to clean him up. Then I rubbed more sunscreen on his face.

He ran off to play while I looked for more treasures. Nothing, though once everyone left for the day, the beach would probably be littered with little things.

But I’d promised Mom we’d be home by dinner. When a couple of families started packing up, I gathered our things and texted Mom to say we were coming back. As we headed up the boardwalk, we ran into an ice cream cart. “Let’s spoil your dinner.” Lucca jumped up and down, then picked a disgusting cartoon-character “ice cream” pop on a stick with bubble gum for eyes. He ended up with the neon food coloring running down his hand and his chin, but that was definitely okay by me. On the trolley home he was totally happy.

“You aren’t still mad at me, are you?” I asked as I gently wiped him clean. “I’m sorry I was mean.”

Lucca shook his head, rested it against my shoulder, and stayed like that for the rest of the ride.

I’d been reading, but my eyes kept closing, so I got up to turn off the lights. Then I couldn’t fall asleep. I was drifting, listening to the gentle murmur of my parents’ voices,
until they were no longer speaking gently; their voices had become sharp, sounding through the thin walls of the old house.

Dad said, “
I’m
the one who’s burdening him? Anxiety? You’re the one who’s always worked up. Why can’t you stop pushing, stop nagging? He’ll talk when he wants to. He likes it here. He’s happy.”

“But doesn’t it kill you, that you can’t even get to know your own son?”

“Of course we know Lucca!”

“Then why isn’t he comfortable talking to us? What
happened
?”

“I don’t think anything
happened
! We’ve been talking about this for over a year. Just leave him be.”

“You’re giving up on him. You don’t care.”

“How can you say that?”

“Something’s
wrong
with your little boy and you don’t care.”

“There’s nothing wrong with him!”

I covered my ears.

Oh, God: Lucca.

I flew out of my bed and into his room. He was sitting up, the whites of his eyes shining big and round in the moonlight.

We reached for each other at the same time, and I hugged him. Then I set him down and turned around, throwing my hands behind me to be stirrups. He hopped onto my back, holding on loosely around my neck.

I left his room and went down the stairs, hoping we
wouldn’t be heard. Luckily, the stairs felt as familiar to me as if I’d been running down them my whole life, so my feet never missed a step. At the bottom I opened the front door, carried Lucca off the front porch, and headed across the lawn. Then I set him on his feet and took his hand, and we ran down the steps and out to the beach.

Mom wouldn’t have liked us going to the beach in the middle of the night. But who cared what Mom wanted?

Was it dangerous? The moon was bright, almost full, so we could see well. The tide was pulling back, leaving moist, freezing sand to chill our bare feet.

Lucca started shivering.

“It’s okay,” I said, knowing that the words wouldn’t really make it okay. “Grown-ups fight. About all kinds of stuff. It’s not your fault.”

I sat down in the sand, pulling him into my lap and cuddling him.

“Why, though, buddy? Why don’t you talk to us?”

I listened for his answer. I heard only the response of the waves, crashing and rolling loudly in the night.

“Is it Mom’s fault?”

He shook his head.

“Dad’s?”

He shook it again.

I couldn’t bring myself to ask,
Mine
?

He must have been able to see the tears sliding down my cheeks, because he reached up to touch my face.

“Don’t!” I turned away. “Your hands are sandy.”

Then I pulled him into another hug, rocking him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

After a few moments, I held him back at an arm’s distance. “You
can
talk to us, you know. It would be okay.”

Lucca looked at me, thinking hard. He clamped his lips, opened them, clamped them, opened them, took a deep breath, and said, “I just don’t want to.”

My head ached. I wanted to lie down so badly.

Where was I?

Sitting upright on our porch, leaning against the wall of the house, a beach towel wrapped around my shoulders. Lucca cuddled in my lap, sleeping soundly, his mouth open like when he was a baby.

Noise. The ache in my head became a pulse. What was Mom yelling about now?

She stormed out onto the porch.

“Siena!”

“What?”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to find your children missing in the morning?”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be three years old and listen to your parents fight about you? Leave us alone.”

She stormed off. But I knew she’d be very upset that Lucca had heard them.

There was no way I was going to fall back asleep now,
but I didn’t want to risk waking Lucca, so I stayed right where I was, putting together the hazy memories of what had happened late in the night.

Had
Lucca spoken to me? Had I imagined that? I had listened for, imagined him talking so many times.

Well, if it had happened, I definitely wouldn’t be telling Mom and Dad. I wouldn’t want them to believe that their fighting had made Lucca do it. If it had happened, he was talking to me and not to them.

After a few minutes, the door opened again. Dad sat down next to me.

“You guys heard that? I guess we figured you were both asleep.”

“You were yelling loud enough to wake the dead.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking right into my face. “I mean it, he never should have heard that stuff. I’ll tell him, too, when he wakes up.” Dad rubbed his hands over the stubble growing in on his face. His eyes were red.

“I’m sorry, too.”

“What are you apologizing for?”

I shrugged.

“I like it here, I do, and I do think it will be good for all of us,” Dad said. “I just don’t think that we should be focusing so hard on that one goal. It’ll drive us all crazy when we could all be a lot more positive. And that would probably be the best thing for him anyway.”

“Yeah, I get it,” I said. “Sometimes Mom says just to wait, but then she tries and tries and tries.”

Dad sighed. “I know. I think she’s trying to convince herself it will be okay. Sometimes she feels calm enough to wait, but other times, she feels so much pressure, or guilt, maybe, that she isn’t, that
we
aren’t, doing enough. And then …”

He was quiet for a minute. Then, “It’s because she loves you both so much, you know. She freaked out when she couldn’t find you this morning, but I was thinking, They’re together, and they’re okay.”

Dad rubbed at his face some more. He must have been really tired. “I have to get ready for work. Sure you don’t want to be my assistant today?”

“Lucca,” I said. “I want to be here for him today, you know, in case …”

“Right. Okay. I’m going to go get ready.”

I held Lucca until he opened his eyes. He had a brief look of panicked confusion at being outside, but his eyes found mine and he relaxed.

“It’s nice to wake up outside, isn’t it?” I asked. It did feel good to be in the sunshine, surrounded by green leaves, though my back and neck were aching and I felt like I hadn’t had a proper sleep in a month.

I took the beach towel off my shoulders, spread it on the wooden floor, and plopped Lucca down.

“Stay here, I’ll get a surprise.”

I went inside to the kitchen; in a few minutes I was back.

“Look, a breakfast picnic,” I said, setting down two bowls of sweet but organic cereal.

Lucca dug in.

“Long nights make me hungry, too.”

Dad came outside and held out his arms. Lucca went to him and was scooped up into a hug.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Dad said.

I picked up the empty cereal bowls and went inside. I wouldn’t ask Lucca whether he had really talked to me last night. What I’d thought he’d said was plenty of information.

Mom had calmed down. She snuggled with Lucca and then gave him a bath. I could hear them laughing together. She made us a nice lunch and the three of us sat down at the table to eat together.

After lunch I took a nap. When I got up, I still wanted to be by myself and not think about what happened last night. And there was something I could do—continue Sarah’s story. I still needed to figure out what had happened to her. What could make a kid not want to talk?