Listening for Lucca (22 page)
Read Listening for Lucca Online
Authors: Suzanne LaFleur
When we got back to the house, I found Mom in the kitchen. She was eating strawberry yogurt right out of the big container with a huge spoon.
“You would never know that painting is so, so tiring.” She leaned against the counter. “I’m beat.”
“Too beat to even get a bowl?”
Lucca had followed me into the kitchen. “Go potty,” I told him. He ran off to the bathroom.
Then I looked Mom right in the eyes.
“What?” she asked. “You going to get on my case about the bowl?”
“He said something!” I whispered.
Mom looked at me. She let the spoon fall into the yogurt. “No.”
“He did! At the park! He said ‘Higher,’ for me to push him higher, on the swing. And he said ‘Please.’ ”
Mom continued to stare into my eyes, to see if I was pulling her leg. Then she set the yogurt down and started crying.
“Are you sure?”
Hmm. I have been prone to visions and hallucinations.…
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure.”
“I’ll let your dad know—unless you want to, you’re the one who heard him.”
“You can tell him.”
She squeezed my shoulders and gave me a little shake before she ran out of the room. I hoped she didn’t knock Dad off a ladder or anything.
It was not instant, the change in Lucca. It wasn’t like he would talk all the time. Mom and Dad waited, and I waited, for it to happen again.
Not another peep for about a week. Then one night Lucca seemed to think he was done eating, but he hadn’t
touched his peas at all. Usually he eats his peas. I even think they are one of his favorite things. But he wouldn’t touch them and started to get pouty.
“Eat your peas,” Mom said absentmindedly.
“No,” said Lucca.
We all looked at him.
“No,” Lucca said. “They are too squishy.”
Mom and Dad leapt out of their chairs, jumped up and down, and ran to hug him.
Lucca looked embarrassed. He caught my eye as if to ask,
What’s all the fuss about?
The next afternoon, Lucca and I waited for Sam on the porch. When he appeared in the yard and came up the steps, he said, “Hey, Siena. Hey, Lucca.”
I waited, smiling. Maybe Lucca would say something. It had been really, really hard to keep Lucca’s talking a big secret from Sam. But I wanted Lucca to tell him himself, when he was ready.
“Hey, Sam!” Lucca shouted.
Sam looked stunned. But he collected himself, as if this wasn’t a big deal at all—a totally different response from everyone in my family, and one Lucca needed, I bet. He said, “Hey, pal. Let’s go get out that train set.”
And Lucca ran off into the house.
Sam and I smiled at each other for a minute. I reached up and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“No problem,” he said. “See you after train time?”
I decided that—for once—I felt like brushing my hair and my teeth before dinner. And I checked that my clothes were clean and that they didn’t look stretched out from wearing them all day. I tried on the lip gloss again. Then, when playtime was ending, I bounded down the stairs. Perfect: Sam was just setting all the “crashed” trains back on the tracks.
“There’s time to go outside before dinner,” I said.
“Okay. Look, we did a sock swap.” Sam held out his foot. There was a tiny green-striped sock that barely squeezed onto his toes. I looked at Lucca, who had a much-too-big black sock bunched around his ankle.
“We traded socks!” Lucca explained.
“That’s great,” I laughed.
“See ya later, bud,” Sam said to Lucca, who waved goodbye.
After we got off the porch, I said, “You can give me his sock back. I’ll sneak it into the wash and he won’t know.”
“Nah, a promise is a promise. I’ll just keep it in my pocket for now.”
The little green sock disappeared into his pocket. A warm feeling rose in my chest.
Thank you, Sam. Thank you for caring so much about my brother
.
That night, I went to my room, unbelievably happy.
My thoughts went to Sarah. I hadn’t tried to enter her story with the pen since I’d gone inside her without it. But I needed to see, to know, how it worked out for her. For one last time, I got out the pen.
I sat in the living room, flipping through one of Mama’s magazines. There were a lot of neat craft projects I wanted to try. Maybe Mama would do them with me. She’d had time to spend with me lately
.
She seemed to be doing a lot better. We all were
.
I was still looking at the magazine when Jezzie arrived
.
“Hello, Jezzie.” I hadn’t looked up, but I knew she’d jumped about a mile. I hadn’t spoken to her in more than a year
.
“Did I scare you?” I tossed the magazine onto the sofa as I stood up
.
“No,” she said, a little shaky. “How—how is Joshua today?”
“Not that you
really
care. You should go home. And not come back.”
I walked her to the door
.
“But—but—”
I gave her a look. “I mean it. Never come back here.”
“But what about when my parents are coming … like at Christmas?”
“You’ll have a cold. A really awful cold. And a stomachache.”
“You want me to pretend to be sick any time my family is going to come here?”
“Oh, you won’t pretend. When you think about coming here, your stomach will get all churny and your head will get all hot. Just because I say so. Just like you decided I wouldn’t talk because you didn’t want me to.”
Jezzie looked angry. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere I’m not welcome.” She looked back at me from the bottom porch step. “How
did
you come to talk again?”
“Joshua asked me to.”
I shut the door and went back to my magazine
.
Joshua joined me on the couch. He moved slowly these days; we learned that he had been very sick with a high fever that made strange things happen in his brain. It took him a long time to even recognize us, to remember
our life together. But he made sure to spend time with me every day; sometimes we talked and sometimes we just played checkers
.
“What are you looking at?” he asked
.
“Mama’s sewing magazine. Do you like these?” I showed him a picture. “Little sachets with potpourri in them. You put them in your bureau to make your clothes smell nice.”
“You can make them for everyone at Christmas. Then everyone will smell good.”
He had a book to read. “What’s that?” I asked
.
“A book about medicine. I think I might want to study that, medicine.”
“To be a doctor?”
“Sure. To help people.”
“Won’t you have to go away again? I don’t want you to go away again.”
“Not the same way. I would just go to a university. Nearby.”
I considered. “That might be all right.”
“And not for a while. My own doctors won’t let me go anywhere until I’m strong enough.”
“Good.” I leaned against him as he started to read. “I’m glad you came back.”
I slept very late and woke to find a beautiful morning: sky clear and blue, leaves bright and green, water sparkling.
I thought about going to Mrs. Lang’s, to ask her again what her friend had said about the people who lived in my house. Would she have something different to say now?
Then I realized: I had something myself—I had Sarah’s report card!
I got it from the shelves with my collection. I turned it over to look at the teacher’s comments.
The writing had changed!
Most of it was just about her academics now, but the very first sentence stood out:
Sarah is a lively member of our class, and she makes friends easily
. None of the sections mentioned her not speaking at all!
It had been real, my intervention, as real as what this report card had shown before. I had changed something. Something that mattered.
I went downstairs for breakfast to find Mom and Dad at the table surrounded by flyers and pamphlets.
“What are these?” I asked.
“Preschools.”
Aw! It was finally time for Lucca to go to school!
I picked up a pamphlet. Cheerful toddlers using bright, primary-color paint. I figured they were staged, because when little kids paint, the colors don’t stay separate for very long.
“His sentence structure is well beyond his age,” Mom
said. “Maybe we should be looking into full-time school rather than a couple days a week. He’ll be four before school starts.”
“Maybe,” Dad agreed. “We could have him tested again, see how it goes now that he talks.”
“No!” I burst out.
Both of my parents stared at me.
“I …” I couldn’t think of exactly how to explain. “Just let him be four.”
They kept staring at me for a minute. Mom looked like she was about to be outraged, but Dad exchanged a calming look with her and kicked out a chair for me.
“Come help us look,” he invited. “What you think is important, too.”
I looked through the pamphlets with them. “This one sounds good.” I held up a flyer. About twenty kids and held in a church basement; every day they had story time and music and, outside, playground time and nature walks. I could picture Lucca there, with other little kids, having fun. In fact, I saw it so clearly, I would say it was the first time I saw the future. “This one sounds right.”