What the Family Needed

by Steven Amsterdam

  “Hello-oo?” the girl called from the hall.

  Uncle Peter lurched from the kitchen. “We’re in here.” Giordana missed her opportunity to snag an Oreo, only managing to scurry out of the way as the girl strode past her into the kitchen—so close that Giordana copped a blast of Calvin Klein’s Obsession. Like she owned the place, the girl pulled the swinging door shut after her and lectured about conserving electricity.

  Giordana couldn’t pass through the door, but she could hear Natalie’s introductions.

  “Janelle, this is my sister Ruth. She’s visiting with her kids for a while. Janelle usually babysits for the boys, but she’s working at a children’s camp this summer.”

  Her mother had been introduced as the sister. No mention of separation, divorce, abandonment.

  Uncle Peter said, “You must be about Giordana’s age.”

  “I’m sixteen,” Janelle said.

  Ruth helpfully pointed out, “Giordana’s fifteen.”

  Camp counselor, whatever that meant. A bit more interesting than scooping ice cream. Probably more money too. And though she was the babysitter, she had come over to visit Peter and Natalie as if they were friends.

  “Coffee?” Peter asked her.

  “Sure, Peter. Thanks.”

  Sure, Peter. Coffee. Giordana was outraged on so many different levels that she didn’t know where to start. Were they going to jazz it up with a shot of whiskey like her father did?

  Her mother volunteered that since Janelle was busy with camp, Giordana would be free for babysitting while they were staying.

  Peter said, “We’ll pay the going rate.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” her mother said, as if money didn’t matter at all. She pushed the kitchen door open, practically into Giordana’s forehead, and shouted, “Giordana, come down!”

  Right, she was still upstairs.

  Giordana went to the hall bathroom so she could supervise her reappearance in the mirror. There she was again. Her face wasn’t bad—nothing canine, but not exactly feline either. One long moment was allowed to pass so a smile could rise before she had to make her entrance—the way Thea had advised her to adjust herself before answering the phone. It made her voice friendlier, she said. Thea’s mother had a subscription to Cosmopolitan.

  Having seen and smelled Janelle already, Giordana entered the kitchen with something she didn’t like to think of as an upper hand, but which was, at best, a minor upper hand.

  Introductions were done. The girls gave each other warm hellos, but those were cheap.

  No one offered Giordana coffee.

  Janelle was holding court in the middle of the room, talking about the kids in her camp and turning her cup around on the counter.

  Peter leaned against the sink, and—Giordana was certain—paid close attention to Janelle’s movements. It was a little obvious, sleeping with the babysitter. Surely Natalie would have noticed. But maybe marriage numbs things. Giordana thought of her mother. Maybe it made you switch off a little so you could get on with your own life. Or maybe it made you switch off everything.

  Janelle volunteered the use of a spare bike while Giordana was visiting. And, since Janelle had the next two days free, she could show her around the neighborhood. Giordana, who had nothing to offer in return, said okay and admitted to herself that she would be glad of the company. Besides, if Janelle was screwing Uncle Peter, this would be the way to obtain proof. Giordana wasn’t sure if she was more disgusted with Peter for being weak or Janelle for being evil. Or was it the other way around?

  Ben came into the kitchen, with Alek and Sasha right behind him, all of them demanding cookies. Ben gave Janelle a noncommittal “hey.” Alek gave her a high five, timed with a man-sized burp.

  “Alek,” Peter said.

  Alek replied with the same impatience. “Dad.”

  Janelle didn’t distract easily, and continued talking to Giordana. “Is eight-thirty too early? I’m still stuck on my school wake-up time.”

  Giordana, who had thought she would be spending the next few weeks alone on her aunt’s veranda reading, said, “Cool,” before she could even remember how much she hated the word.

  “There are definite, long-term details that you know about people, that you’ve always known about people in your life from very early on. You keep them in separate drawers from the daily-use details.” Her mother was trying to explain away their departure while developing a system for the bags of clothing spread out on the floor. Giordana took her time to make up the sofa bed, so that she wouldn’t be asked to do more than that.

  Her mother continued. “You block them out because you can’t even imagine that they’re important or you don’t think a time will ever come when you have to face them.” She was working hard on this one. “You expect that the problems in the bottom drawer or in the back of the closet or wherever you’ve hidden them will stay there forever. That they won’t ever apply to you.”

  “Like our winter coats that we left with Dad?”

  “Like Dad,” her mother said.

  “That’s lame. Dad’s not a detail.”

  “You’re right,” she said, and gave Giordana a pat on the head. She started to refold the contents of one bag so that it would at least prop up neatly on the floor. Giordana watched her, irritated. They hadn’t packed, they had evacuated. None of this was necessary. If Giordana had been given some warning, she could have planned, could have said good-bye to her friends.

  In school they had talked about displaced populations and she wondered if this was, on an infinitesimal scale, what that felt like—being washed out of one home and forced to find a new one. Misplaced was different. That was when you were lifted entirely out of the picture, lost. She was displaced. Dad was misplaced.

  With a noisy sigh, her mother got to her knees to sort the boots and belts that didn’t fit into sensible piles. “I know you’re at a vulnerable age, darling, but I swear to you, as soon as we get settled someplace, we’ll get you therapy.”

  Giordana didn’t want therapy. She wanted a home. This wasn’t it; their last apartment (where her father was probably drinking himself to sleep) wasn’t it. Giordana looked at her fingers as she shoved the pillows into their cases. A sentence came to her that could have been in an old ad: Knobby knuckles, not so nice. She already knew she would never be a hand model, or any kind of model, really. If Natalie had been her mother, her hands would be beautiful and she and Janelle would have been friends for fifteen years.

  Her mother wasn’t looking at her. This would be a good time for a dry run. Giordana tried to space out on nothingness, clearing her body of visible particles. She looked around. She was still there, hands and all. Again, she tried. Again, nothing happened.

  It had all been mental. A shock response to leaving so suddenly. People’s hair turned white sometimes in times of crisis.

  Extreme disappointment, not to mention the so very pathetic reality of sharing a bed with her mother, circled in. Her brain had given her a flashy hallucination and then taken it away. It disappeared—how ironic. Still, it was better that she found out the whole thing was a fantasy this way than if she had idiotically started bragging to Janelle, Look what I can do!

  Practice and more concentration were needed. Dutifully, she went back to the bathroom to try one more time. She stood in front of the mirror and slowly considered herself entirely there but entirely gone. She was relieved to see she was still able to think herself away. Holding on to the thought like a too-full bowl of soup, she walked back to the living room. Her mother had pushed their belongings between the metal legs of the sofa bed. There they wouldn’t disturb the clean lines of Aunt Natalie’s happy home.

  “Um?” Giordana said.

  “Yes?” Ruth said, not turning around.

  “I’ve got a question,” waiting for her mother’s gaze.

  “And your question is . . . ?”

  Giordana stayed silent. As Ruth sat back on the floor to face her daughter with full attention, Giorda
na felt herself become visible. It was like inflating.

  “What?” her mother asked.

  That was the secret: it was the wish to be looked at that had undone her concentration. Next time she was sure she would know what to do differently.

  “You had a question?”

  “Yes.” Giordana paused.

  “Why am I not surprised? You always have a question.”

  “What’s an old soul?”

  Her mother had been a nurse for twelve years, and that meant not much caught her off guard. She didn’t look the least bit disturbed to hear her words come back at her. She talked so much that she didn’t always know whom she said what to anyway.

  “You don’t let the crappy bits of life sandbag you.”

  “The bottom drawer details?”

  Her mother looked at her as if for the first time that day. “Bottom drawer, top drawer. All drawers. My hope is that when I grow up I’m as cool and beautiful as you are right now.” Her mother had once defined cool as Aunt Natalie, who, she said, could make perfect sandwiches in the middle of a battlefield. This was what was expected. No one had ever bothered to define beautiful.

  “Thank you,” Giordana said, though she wasn’t sure what for.

  “All right, at least you can choose which side of the bed you want.”

  The alarm went off. Her mother was already in the bathroom.

  Giordana reached across the sad excuse for a mattress and over the edge of the metal bed frame to press buttons on the clock till it shut up.

  A minute later, her mother was closing the front door, off to look for a job. They really were here to stay.

  Another minute later and Alek and Sasha were bouncing on the bed, demanding attention. It was nearly eight o’clock. She burrowed her face into the ancient foam pillow. Alek fluffed her sheet up in the air, making a tent around him and her. He squatted close, bringing his face in front of hers. “I see you!”

  She looked at him, his gap-toothed smile and his eyes off center like a Picasso. A Picasso drawing of a lemur. He had given her the choice—flying or invisibility. Giordana had a vision of them decades in the future—their parents’ age—still knowing each other, still connected in a vital way. What if she’d said she wanted to fly?

  In a voice that could only be heard under the sheets, she asked him, “Did you know?”

  “About what?” He looked confused, genuine. He wanted to play.

  “Nothing,” Giordana said.

  This was entirely hers. She was sure she could have disappeared in front of them, but she didn’t want anyone to freak out and tell.

  “Boys, come,” Peter called from the hall.

  Alek asked her, “You’ll be here when we get home from camp?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  She scattered them by shaking the sheet and they ran for the door.

  It would be Ben and her in the house. Natalie had already left for school. She taught third grade. A nurse or a teacher, her mother had always said. Those were the choices. These days you have a hundred different careers to explore. What would Giordana be when she grew up? Invisible.

  Mimicking her mother’s efficiency, she flattened the sheets and folded the bed into itself. She further minimized their neat stacks and got dressed. Denim shorts and a red T-shirt made her look, she was sure, like a matching but distant version of Thea, Dee, and Emily, who were probably, at that exact minute, on their way to the swimming pool. They would lie on towels on the concrete steps till lunchtime. If one of them got super ambitious, they could sit in the shallow end, kicking their legs like old ladies. Then they would split off for their jobs. They would go through the first day assuming Giordana was sick. There could be a call that night—Thea had her own phone in her room—to see if she was okay. Dad, drunk beyond comprehension, would tell whoever called his side of the story. Giordana should have asked Aunt Natalie if she could make the long-distance call to Thea today to tell her exactly what was up. Tomorrow. There would be time.

  Giordana noticed an ink stain on the pocket of her shorts. Staring at it, she concentrated her thoughts to zap it away. No luck. She didn’t want to change her clothes. Putting on something different for a girl like Janelle would represent an extreme failure, a defeat for average girls everywhere. Besides, pretense with new people was profoundly false. The fact was that they had run away from home and she had a spot on her shorts. Trying to make it seem otherwise was a lie. She stared at the stain again without any effect and then put on a different pair of shorts for Janelle.

  From the veranda, she could see that the street was still. A few cars sat in driveways and not even a breeze through the evenly spaced trees. Giordana went back inside to make a quick round of the house without the house knowing. She lessened herself. Looked down: no legs, no arms. Ace. She trusted her senses to know she was not just a floating head. Proprioception, the feeling of your body in space. What was it called when your body was there but not there? She took the stairs with her hands up, as if it was all a balancing act.

  Peter and Natalie’s bedroom door was closed. A scan through their bathroom cabinets and dresser drawers might have been illuminating, but turning the knob was more of a breach than she could justify. Mental note: Learn how to pass through doors. The boys’ room, available though it was, would have held no secrets. The study door was ajar. Ben’s clothes had exploded everywhere and his belongings weren’t much of a mystery either. Before leaving, her mother had told Giordana to make sure he tidied up today. If he was able to score his own room, he shouldn’t need to be told to make his bed. Giordana kicked his backpack across the floor, further scattering his mess. Like he would notice.

  Ben was in the kitchen, eating cereal and humming like an idiot. Because he was older, he had probably been told about the plan to leave. He was injustice itself.

  Right in the middle of the kitchen, she became visible.

  He glanced up in her direction. “Hey.”

  He had missed her entrance. That was it. She would never show him again. He wasn’t worth it.

  “So, what are you going to do today?” she asked.

  “Let’s check my schedule.” He stared into space. “After this, I’ll see what our evil corporate rulers have put on television. Then around lunchtime I’ll make a sandwich. Big day.”

  “We need to get to know the neighborhood. Figure out what’s close by. We’ll have to get jobs too, if we’re going to be here awhile.”

  “Yeah. I’m concerned,” Ben said, pretending to read Uncle Peter’s newspaper.

  “You think we’ll be here for a while?”

  “Don’t know, Mary Joe. We’re here now.”

  She was done. “I’m going out with Janelle.”

  “Isn’t that a bit fast for you? Have you even had your first date yet?” He went back to humming.

  He was so easy to ignore. “I’m going to learn the neighborhood. There must be stuff to get into around here.”

  “Good luck.”

  He continued to gaze at the paper. Such an asshole.

  “Clean up when you’re done,” Giordana said, closing the container of milk and putting it back in the fridge.

  The doorbell rang. She turned and left without waiting for him to roll his eyes.

  Giordana was lucky it was the girl with the hyperconscious looks who was taking her around. After all, it could have been the local geek providing the tour and that would weigh down whatever hope of a future Giordana might have here.

  Fate was decided by other people and by accidents like this. Giordana was living with her aunt and uncle because a long time ago her mother had fallen in love with her father. Why? What random event made that happen?

  Janelle showed off her house as they passed by. It was smaller than Aunt Natalie’s. She led Giordana on a dozen shortcuts between yards that they could bike across without getting yelled at or barked at. None of the kids they passed did more than glance in their direction when they biked through. Still, Janelle knew wh
at was going on inside every bedroom. Who was getting divorced, who was strapped to an oxygen tank, who had crashed their car into a tree on purpose.

  “That’s sad,” Giordana said, as she was presented with each new tragedy.

  “Why?” Janelle finally asked. “Did it happen to you?”

  They walked the bikes through a park. There was a lung-shaped lake at the center of it with trails on either side that meandered up to open lawns with picnic tables. Ducks, for Christ’s sake, she thought, channeling her father. There was a quiet nook between some trees where, Janelle told her, older kids went to drink and smoke and screw.

  Some were there, playing Frisbee on one of the lawns. A boy and girl—the serious romantics of their crowd, no doubt—were lying nearby on a big red blanket. The boy was tickling the girl’s chin with pieces of grass. It looked like they were trying to see how long she could go without cracking up.

  Giordana asked, “Are they the best-looking ones of their friends and that’s why they’re together, or am I imagining that because they’re in love?”

  “Don’t be weird,” Janelle said, which Giordana took as Don’t be pitiful. It was practically a demand to change the subject, but it made Giordana want to go deeper.

  “Sorry, I’ve never had a boyfriend and it looks—impossible,” she said, further underlining her inequality with Janelle. She was surprised how little she cared about the impression she was making. If Janelle didn’t like it, Giordana could always vanish. She could watch this couple tease each other for hours.

  “Have you had one?” Giordana finally asked.

  “For three months. Last year. We didn’t flaunt it like those two, I can promise you that.”

  So Janelle didn’t see herself like those two either. It was pleasing to think she and Janelle would handle love the same way.