Listening for Lucca

by Suzanne LaFleur

  She would, maybe.

  So while I was itching to get outside and go to the beach again, I ended up stuck sorting my old toys and dolls. I wasn’t really sure where they belonged in my new room. I hadn’t played with them in years, but I couldn’t get rid of them. I left them in their box on the floor of my closet.

  The top of the closet had a shelf. If I put the rest of my boxes up there, it would look like I’d finished unpacking. I wouldn’t need all my winter clothes out now, anyway. I got a chair from downstairs so I could reach.

  When I slid the first cardboard box back, I heard the sound of something metal clattering along the wooden shelf. I shoved the box sideways so I could see what had made the noise. A thin silver cylinder lay along the side wall of the closet.

  I pulled it out. It looked like a pen. How long had it been there? The clip of the pen had been engraved to say SEA. That was a weird word to put on a pen. Someone’s initials?

  I took the pen over to the windowsill where I’d left my notebook, found a fresh page, and tried to write. It didn’t work … the ink must have dried up.

  Mom appeared in my doorway. “Well, there’s some degree of order around here. Your room looks good. And I found all the cooking utensils, so I can make us a real dinner. How about we all go to the beach together?”

  “Sure,” I said, setting down the pen. Mom lingered. I walked over to shut the door. “So I can change.”

  I put on my bathing suit and found Lucca waiting in his at the top of the stairway. I covered him in a thick layer of sunscreen and put a little on myself, too. Mom came out of her room in her bathing suit, carrying our big striped beach towels.

  Outside, we headed down the wooden stairway. We walked past the grassy dunes along the sidewalk and came out onto the beach.

  “HAAAA!” Lucca screamed, throwing his hands up, and ran across the sand toward the water. He yelled again as he splashed his feet in. A look of shock crossed his face. He retreated and paused, thinking, then let out another yell and went tumbling back in, laughing.

  I followed and dipped my toes in.

  “It’s freezing!” I called to Mom.

  “Maine water is very cold.” She spread her towel on the sand. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Why is no one else here?”

  “There’s public beach parking about a mile and a half away. Probably most people go there. We get a nice stretch to ourselves, isn’t that wonderful?”

  I set up my towel next to hers. “I’m going to have to sit here and get hot before I can go in. I wonder if those kids will be back today.”

  “What kids?”

  “The kids. The ones who were swimming yesterday.”

  “I don’t remember any kids.”

  “They were really noisy. You could probably hear them all the way up at our house.”

  Mom was just looking at me, puzzled.

  I felt even colder.

  I had seen them, hadn’t I? I mean, they’d really been there, hadn’t they? I tried to remember what they’d been wearing, if their bathing suits were old-fashioned, but I didn’t think so. The girl’s had had a skirt, but lots of bathing suits for little girls had skirts.

  My heart started thudding so hard my brain hurt. I closed my eyes and rested my head on my knees. I’d only seen things before, never heard them.

  Just ’cause Mom hadn’t noticed them didn’t mean they hadn’t been there—maybe she’d been inside when I’d seen them. She’d been very busy yesterday. Phew. That was it, no need to panic. My heartbeat steadied and I took a couple of deep breaths.

  “Will you help with my sunscreen?” Mom asked, seeming not to notice my brief panic attack. I took the bottle and poured some sunscreen into my hands. As I rubbed the lotion onto her back, we watched Lucca. The waves were gentle and small this afternoon, breaking around his ankles. He seemed so free and happy, running and splashing.

  “This seems good for him, doesn’t it?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I finished with the sunscreen and handed the bottle back. I stretched out and leaned back on my elbows. It was nice here. A lot nicer than summer in Brooklyn.

  Suddenly Lucca came running over, crying.

  “What’s the matter?” Mom asked.

  Lucca held out his toes and made a pouty noise.

  “Maybe he stepped on something,” Mom said.

  “Maybe a crab got him.”

  “Let Mommy look.” Mom rinsed some of the sand off his foot with water from a water bottle and inspected it. “Seems okay to me.” She patted his back as he stopped crying. “Why don’t you get back out there?”

  Within minutes, Lucca was playing and splashing again.

  “The cold salt water probably helps,” Mom said. “If he has a cut, he’s not going to be able to feel it too much. But maybe he just stubbed his toe on a rock or something.”

  When Mom was pregnant with Lucca, I was so excited about having a little brother or sister. And when he came, I loved him. It was fun to watch him discover certain things, but it seemed like he grew very fast, and sometimes I wished he would stay a baby a little longer.

  But the way he did stay a baby was one of the most frustrating things about him: he could never tell us what was wrong. He could cry. If you said, “Tell me where it hurts,” maybe he would point to a place; if he was thirsty he would go get a plastic cup or open the fridge and point to the juice boxes. But he could never explain his feelings. In that way, we were shut off from each other. I knew loads of things he liked; I loved the feel of his small hand in mine when we walked somewhere; I’d helped him learn to brush his teeth and put on his pajamas … but even still, there was something about Lucca that was unknowable.

  Soon it would be even worse. He was growing, and his problem would stand out even more. Would he be able to make friends? Would his teachers think he wasn’t smart? Would he be able to tell us what his day at school had been like?

  “I can’t help but wonder …,” Mom started.

  The usual conversation. She always started it that way.

  Mom seems to think there’s some key to why Lucca is the way he is that’s her fault. Maybe it was something she ate while she was pregnant with him. Maybe it was something she didn’t eat. Maybe it was something she fed him or didn’t feed him. Maybe she didn’t talk to him enough when he was growing inside her. Maybe she talked to him too much. Maybe she didn’t read him the right books when he was a baby. Maybe, maybe, maybe …

  “If there was something you did, the doctor would have told you,” I reminded her for the millionth time. “He would have been able to say, ‘Ah yes, women who eat hamburgers with cheddar cheese while they are pregnant get little boys who won’t talk.’ ”

  “Mozzarella.”

  “What?”

  “With my burgers. I like mozzarella cheese.”

  “Well, whatever, you’re not going to guess what happened. It’s not your fault.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I talk. Wouldn’t you have accidentally made the same mistake with me?”

  “No. That’s the thing about accidents.”

  Hmm. That was true. That was what made them accidents. They were random. Maybe one day choosing mozzarella over cheddar would matter; in a million cases, it wouldn’t.

  Even though some of her worries seem far-fetched, I think I get Mom the most when we talk like this. Lucca is the one thing that makes her see what I see, about the world being unpredictable and inside out. Things that seem just fine can suddenly change. Like I can’t control the things I saw, and I can’t fix whatever’s wrong with Lucca.

  Mom’s wrong when she thinks it was her fault, though. It was more likely my fault, for being a bad big sister.

  I scrunched my toes in the sand.

  The doctors told us that a kid might have selective mutism and be uncomfortable talking in certain situations, like at school. That’s not Lucca’s problem, because he doesn’t talk at home. But they also said that sometimes
a kid could be bright, busy observing, and not talk much while he was waiting for his speech abilities to catch up with his big thoughts. In either case, the kid would start talking eventually. Because of this possibility, Dad seems to be a lot less caught up in the whys and whens than Mom and I are.

  “I want you to have some more time to be Siena on her own,” Mom said after a while. “Not worry about Lucca. Get out, explore the town. Make some friends.”

  Lucca was rolling in the sand.

  “That’s going to be a fun shampoo job,” Mom said. Then she turned back to me.

  I got up. “I’m going to look around.” I didn’t want to sit and listen to her telling me I just had to get out there, that making friends would be a piece of cake if I let it happen. How could I explain that the more people knew about me, the less they wanted to know?

  I got up and went for a walk, listening for the kids I’d seen and scanning the ground for left-behind things.

  When I got back to the part of the beach near our house, Mom and Lucca had gone. I went up to the house and saw that the car was back. I rinsed off in the shower and put on fresh clothes and went to look for Dad.

  I found him in his room hanging up pictures.

  “Are you busy?” I asked.

  “Not at all.” Maybe he was being sarcastic, because he seemed to be gently biting his tongue as he concentrated on checking the level, or maybe he didn’t even think before he answered me.

  “ ’Cause I need some things,” I said.

  “Oh?” he asked, lowering one of the frames slightly to the left.

  “Yeah … Dad.”

  He turned as if just then seeing me. “Sorry, honey. What do you need?” His full attention: that was better.

  “I want to put up the shelves in my room so I can finish unpacking. And I want some ink for this.” I held up the silver SEA pen.

  Dad came over, took the pen from me, and studied it. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Found it in my closet. But it doesn’t write.”

  Dad disassembled the pen. “It looks like a standard cartridge. Let’s head down to the office.”

  “We have an office?”

  “Well, sort of.” I followed Dad downstairs to the bigger living room, the one to the left of the front door, to see that the back half of the room was set up with a large desk and some bookshelves stuffed with boxes of supplies. Dad pulled down a box and handed it to me. “This one is full of pens and ink refills. You should be able to find something that fits in there. I’ll go take care of those shelves.”

  He paused in the doorway.

  “Did you guys have fun at the beach?”

  “Yeah,” I answered, a bit surprised by how serious he seemed.

  “Did … Lucca have fun at the beach?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It seemed good for him?”

  “Yeah, Dad, it did.”

  “Maybe I’ll go … ask him … about it.”

  Lucca marched into the room then, freshly scrubbed and in his pajamas already, even though we hadn’t had dinner yet.

  “Hey, buddy,” Dad said. “How was the beach?”

  Lucca looked thoughtful. He reached up his hands and Dad lifted him. Lucca snuggled against him.

  “Come on, you can help me take care of these shelves,” Dad told him, carrying him out of the room.

  I rummaged through the box, then took the ink cartridge out of the pen and compared it to cartridges until I found one that matched. I loaded the pen.

  There was a notepad on the desk, so I scratched out the pen on it, forming big, loopy circles of blue ink. Then I started to write My name is S.

  Except when I got to the S, I didn’t write out my own name. I wrote My name is Sarah Elizabeth Alberdine.

  SEA! I turned the pen in my hand, studying it. What had made me pick these names for these initials? Maybe Sarah and Elizabeth were the first S and E names I could think of, and they were pretty to write out, but where was Alberdine from? It wasn’t something I remembered hearing before.

  The funny thing was, I hadn’t spent time thinking about any of those names. I’d just moved the pen and that was what had come out, as if something other than my own brain was leading my hand. Or as if it hadn’t been my hand.

  I took a closer look at the letters on the page. It didn’t even look like my handwriting.

  The pen fell to the desk with a clunk. I held my hand up and flexed my fingers. There was the little mole, in its usual spot on my ring finger; there was the faint scar across the back from a dog bite when I was three. My hand, definitely.

  What was going on?

  I shivered, probably from my wet ponytail dripping down my back. I jumped up, pocketed the pen, and went to join Mom in the kitchen, where it was warm and bright.

  5

  I’m in a boat, but I’m not dressed as a sailor. Dressed for land, I have a heavy pack on my shoulders and a helmet in my hand, ready to go at a moment’s notice. The water is choppy and my stomach jolts with each crest. My knees knock together and I wonder, Am I allowed to feel afraid?

  I can’t tell if the men around me—some of them my friends—are nervous. They must be, but some are still talking and laughing as if we aren’t in this strange little boat. Some of them have been with me all the way from home—like William crouching next to me, my best friend, in my class since the second grade. We used to go camping. He’d shown me tricks of outdoor survival. It had been a game.

  Suddenly we are yelled at to GO, to jump out of the boat and run through the choppy water. As I struggle to keep my boots from sinking into the mud, I realize that the water isn’t choppy on its own. Men are being hit, falling, around me.

  And then it’s William hit beside me, William who’s disappeared into the reddening water. I turn frantically but am pushed forward.

  MOVE! MOVE!

  My legs disconnect from the mind inside me, from the heart inside me, and they move, move!

  When I woke suddenly, heart pounding, it took me a minute to realize where I was. Lucca was curled up with me again, but I was in my own room—it was just my new room, in Maine.

  I rubbed my face, trying to get rid of the aftertaste of the dream, and still had my hands over my face when I got down to the kitchen.

  “What, up late partying?” Dad joked. He’s been teasing me about teenage behavior since the day I turned thirteen. So far I didn’t think I acted like a typical teenager at all.

  “Uhh …,” I moaned, sitting down in one of our new, high island chairs. “Weird dream.”

  “Strangely weird?”

  “Yeah, I was at war, I think.”

  “Want to tell me?”

  I thought hard, then shook my head. “Nah, it’s too fuzzy.” I pressed my palms over my eyes. I’d lied: it was vivid, but I didn’t want to relive the details.

  “You’ll forget it soon, then. Here.” Dad slid me a plate. “Cheesy eggs.”

  “These were your cheesy eggs,” I pointed out as he handed me a clean fork.

  Dad shrugged. “I’ll make more. What are you up to this morning?”

  I scooped up a big bite. Mmm, cheddar and something else. “More exploring.”

  “Good idea. Just check in at lunch so you can show your mom there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Deal.”

  “We’re going out to look for a used car for Mom. We’ll keep Lucca so you don’t have to babysit. But we’ll stop in for lunch.”

  “Where’s Mom now?”

  “Working.”

  Mom does writing and editing for journals and books. She’s an expert at a very specific thing: the sciences of paint chemistry and art preservation, restoration, and dating. She’s definitely more of a scientist, because she has to know a lot about chemical reactions, though she also knows a lot about art history. She does most of her work at home but likes to have alone time to do it.

  She came into the kitchen, already dressed and with an empty coffee cup, so she must have been up for a while.
/>   “Morning,” she said, running her hand down my ponytail. “Sleep well?”

  “Yeah,” I said, catching Dad’s eye to tell him not to worry her with the dream. He turned back to the frying pan and started pushing new eggs toward the center.

  “Did you tell her about school?” Mom asked Dad.

  He shook his head as I asked, “School? Already?” She certainly was down to business this morning.

  “Calm down,” Dad said. “I only stopped by to get you enrolled. That’s all. You have two months.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  “We can go see how you like it, though,” Dad suggested. “Take a tour, get you familiar with the place.”

  “No thanks.”

  “ ‘No thanks,’ Siena?” Mom asked incredulously.

  I lowered my eyes to my lap, and Dad spoke up quickly, lightly. “That’s all right, there’s plenty of time.”

  “Oh, but here, we might as well send it back before the choices are gone.” Mom handed me a blue piece of paper. “Eighth-grade electives for first semester. You need to pick one and we’ll send the form back to get you signed up.”

  I scanned the list: Advanced Art, Photography, Newspaper, Beginning French, Drama, and Philosophy.

  “I think you should take French,” Mom said. “You’d get a great head start for your language next year.”

  I was actually kind of interested in all those things, but I immediately decided not to take French. “Philosophy.” Dad had said my problems were philosophical. Maybe the class would have the answers.

  Mom sighed. “Do whatever you want. I guess the elective really doesn’t matter that much.”

  Dad winked at me from behind Mom’s back. He was congratulating me on my choice, though Mom didn’t need to know about it.

  I finished up my eggs.

  After breakfast, I headed out to the beach by myself.

  A few scattered houses perched above the rocks. Were they for year-round people like we were going to be, or just for summer people? Maybe it was the steep cliffs that kept this stretch of beach from being filled up with houses.

  I found plenty of shells and sand dollars. Left behind by the ocean? Then I found a little shell that a creature had surely lived in recently. That was definitely abandoned. I pocketed it.