Saving Francesca (6 page)

“You Italian?” they ask.

I nod.

They pat the space next to them and I make myself comfortable.

“Portuguese,” I’m told by the guy who called me over. His name is Javier, pronounced “Havier,” and every time one of the teachers pronounces his name with a
J
in class, there’s a booing sound.

“She’s Italian,” Javier tells one of the guys who joins them from the canteen.

“Third in the World Cup ranking,” the guy says.

“Behind Brazil,” another pipes up

“What’s your team?” Javier asks.

It’s a soccer thing. I think of Luca’s bedroom. “Inter Milan.”

Approval. Good choice.

The others are Diego, Tiago, and Travis, who they call a wannabe wog.

“You shy, Francesca?” Javier asks me later on.

I shake my head. “Not really.” I’m just sad, I want to say. And I’m lonely.

When Javier speaks, he uses his middle fingers to point down, as if he’s singing some hip-hop song. It’s like the spirit of some rap singer has taken over his body.

“I like you, Francesca. I like the way you treat your brother. Like he’s your friend, and that’s why I’m telling you this. Guys don’t like chicks who are down all the time.”

I thank him for the advice. I’ll make a point of telling my mum that tonight. I’ll say, “Mum, guys don’t go for sad chicks and you’re making me incredibly sad and because of that you’re curtailing my social life, so could you please get out of bed.”

And then she’ll get out of bed and we’ll live happily ever after.

They call out to a guy on the basketball courts. I recognize him from my biology class. He’s got a massive smile with big white teeth.

“Shaheen, what’s happening?” Javier asks him.

“Did you see that shot? Did ya? Huh?” Shaheen asks.

“You’re a legend, Shaheen.”

“Lebs rule!”

Shaheen says that about five times a day.

“Where, mate? Where do the Lebs rule? How are they doing in soccer? Did they rule in the Olympics? How about tennis? Where’s the Davis Cup team from Lebanon, Shaheen? Lobbing a few balls in Beirut?”

The bantering is good-natured.

“What do you reckon, Francesca?” Javier asks me. “Do Lebs rule?”

I look at Shaheen, who’s grinning. I can’t help grinning back. “My school captain last year was a Leb. So I guess she ruled.”

Shaheen shakes my hand.

Suddenly I’m a girl with attitude.

Attitude is everything with these guys. I have no chance of being their goddess because Eva Rodriguez is. She’s upbeat and positive. But somehow I’m allowed to be part of them, based purely on the fact that my grandparents and theirs belong to a minority. I’m back in complacency land and I’m loving it.

They give me advice. Keep away from the SAS, they tell me. They’re the guys who sit on the quadrangle stairs who have an obsession with the military. On non-uniform days they come to school wearing camouflage.

The bell rings and Shaheen walks me up to class and we sit together and he gives me a rundown on his hero, Tupac.

“He’s not really dead,” he tells me.

I have no idea who he’s talking about, but I find the whole conspiracy theory surrounding a supposedly dead rapper more intriguing than biology.

And somehow, yet again, I’ve managed to get through another day.

My dad arrives home and goes straight to their room to see how she is. At the moment, my dad can only be Mia’s husband, not Francesca and Luca’s father.

Luca looks at me. “Do you think Mummy speaks to Papa at night?”

I don’t know what to say to him.

“Because it’s okay if she can’t speak to us, but Papa would be so sad if she didn’t speak to him.”

“It’s not as if she doesn’t want to speak to us,” I explain.

“It’s just that Papa likes speaking to Mummy,” he says, almost in tears. “He always wants to speak to her. Sometimes more than he wants to speak to us, so if she doesn’t speak to him . . .”

Being Mia’s husband has always been my dad’s priority, even at the best of times, so now I feel as if we’re orphans.

“Do you want to do your homework on my bed?” I ask.

He nods. I know he’ll fall asleep there and I let him.

Later, I lie down next to him while he sleeps with Pinocchio snug up against him. Squashed up on the end of the bed, I try to think back to the day before my mum didn’t get out of bed. What was the last thing she said to us? What clues did she leave that we didn’t respond to? We own all this, and while we’re owning this ugly sickness that turns off the lights in a person’s head, those around us who think they know us best observe and comment.

I start wondering how the rest of the world sees us, and this is what I’m sure of.

They look at us as if we’re guilty. My dad, Luca, and I have become the villains. I know what they’re thinking. How could someone as lively and passionate as Mia feel this way? It’s her family, they whisper in my head. They’ve sucked the life out of her. All three of them. They see my father for who he is out there in the real world and not the person he is in our home. They see him as the guy who rode around on my Malvern Star bike once and broke his arm, or the husband at Mia’s university dinner parties who doesn’t say much. They don’t know the real him. Mia might be responsible for daily discipline, but if she wants to scare us, it’s my dad who’s in charge. That he doesn’t believe in small talk and won’t say much is because he’s bored by people who talk crap. He can make Mia laugh when she’s in the most stressed of moods. He can fix anything that’s broken in our house and can pull apart a car engine and put it back together again and make it work. That’s what people don’t see, and the fact that he doesn’t care what they think calms me down at the worst of times.

Then I picture the way they see me.
Have you seen the eldest?
I can hear them ask.
She’s a dead loss. Has no idea what she wants to do with
her life. She’s so insipid, she’s almost invisible. Her closest friend’s mother
didn’t even know who she was.

What about the son? He still sleeps with his sister and he’s ten years
old. No wonder Mia’s given up.

I do the deals-with-God thing.
Make her better . . . make us all
better and I’ll change the world for you.

But God doesn’t talk to me. It’s because every night I lie here with music in my ears and I say my prayers and fall asleep in the middle of them. He only talks to people like Mia. People he thinks are worth it. Because they have passion. They have something. I have nothing. I’m . . .
Keep awake, Francesca. Keep awake and start
to pray.

I’m a waste of space.

I am . . .

I . . .

My dad does the only thing he knows how to do this morning. He makes us eggs for breakfast.

“We don’t like eggs, Papa,” I finally tell him, because I think deep down I’m a bit pissed-off with him. Why can’t he fix things up? “We never have.”

He looks from Luca to me and then hurls the eggs against the stainless steel.

I watch the design they make as they run down the splashboard, and then he’s crying. My dad is
crying
and Luca is hugging him from behind, saying, “I’ll eat the eggs, Daddy, I’ll eat the eggs,” and he’s crying too and I can’t bear watching them. All I want to do is scream out “What’s happening?” over and over again because ten days ago my mum didn’t get out of bed. No visible symptoms, no medicine, no doctors. My dad says she’s a
bit down
and my cousin says it’s a
bit of a breakdown
. I’ve looked up the word “breakdown” because I am desperate for any clue: “collapse, failure of health or power, analysis of cost.” None of the definitions make sense to me. A breakdown of what, I’m not sure. But she doesn’t eat, that I know.

It has almost become an obsession. Every morning I study the fridge and pantry to see what’s there, and every afternoon I study them again to see if something’s missing. But nothing is. There are no plates in the sink, no food wrappers in the garbage. No evidence of papers being marked or of the phone being answered. Nothing.
Nothing
makes sense. My mother won’t get out of bed, and it’s not that I don’t know who she is anymore.

It’s that I don’t know who I am.

I stand in front of William Trombal for the fifth time this week. Luca tries to avoid his eyes. I don’t know what we look like to him, but he doesn’t ask our names. He just looks at us and for a moment I see sympathy, and I hate him for it.

No sermons today.

Even the prince of punishment doesn’t think we’re worth talking to.

chapter 7

TODAY THE GRANDMOTHERS
step in. Mia’s been in bed for two weeks, and decisions about us are made. Luca goes to Zia Teresa’s and I go to Nonna Anna’s, and Nonna Celia moves into our house. Before I leave, I hear Nonna Celia and my dad talking. Nonna Celia wants to take Mia to her own doctor, but my dad says no. He always goes on about how Nonna Celia’s doctor hands out prescription drugs to avoid dealing with the real issues. My dad tells her that everything’s going to be okay, and it comforts me to hear that reassurance.

Luca sits on my bed as I pack away a few of my things. He looks just like a stereotypical little soccer freak, ball in his hand and the Inter Milan jersey dwarfing his skinny frame.

“What’s happening?” he asks in a voice that doesn’t sound like his anymore.

“Everything’s going to be fine. You always have fun at Zia Teresa’s.”

What I hate about this most is that no one gets how we’re feeling. No one asks us if we want to be separated. They just presume that Luca will want to be with his cousins and I’ll want peace and quiet.

He lies down next to me and we hold on to each other tight. I can’t tell horror brother-and-sister stories about Luca and me. We’re crazy about each other, and our arguments are limited to who gets control of the TV remote between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m.

Life at my grandparents’ is a different story. Nonna Anna and Nonno Salvo are television fanatics, especially the game shows. If it’s not
Wheel of Fortune,
it’s
The New Price Is Right
or
Sale of the
Century.
They have absolutely no idea what the questions asked are, but they are excited by the process and the colored lights and the money symbols flashing up at different intervals.

Then there’s the news. The 5:00 p.m. news on Channel Ten (a difficult time for them because it clashes with
The New Price Is
Right
), the 6:00 p.m. news on Channel Nine, the 7:00 p.m. national news, the Italian news on the Italian radio station, and if I stay awake long enough I get to watch the 10:30 p.m.
Lateline
on Public Broadcasting. It’s a very frustrating process because they get most of it wrong. Nonno Salvo calls out obscenities at the man whose image appears behind the newscaster’s head as she tells us the top story of the night. Nonno explains to me that the bastard pictured is a war criminal who is responsible for the deaths of a village of men in Bosnia. In actual fact, it’s Rupert Murdoch, but I don’t try to explain.

Tonight, we watch a cop show where someone gets shot dead. Nonno Salvo reassures me that the person’s not really dead. It’s just an actor. Then my nonna tells him that of course I know that.

“She has the mouth of a viper,” he tells me, twisting his bottom lip with his finger to further illustrate the point.

Ever since I can remember, my nonno and nonna have had these arguments. This one lasts a whole twenty-two minutes. It has to end because
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
is just about to start and no talking is allowed during that. But I suppose they love each other to death. Every year at my nonna’s annual surprise birthday party, where she pretends she has no idea that we’re all huddled inside her kitchen, although the fifteen cars parked outside would be a certain giveaway, we go berserk when photos are taken and Nonno tries to kiss her and she acts coy. When he gets to lock lips for more than ten seconds, we scream with delight. And I always look at my mum and dad, his arms around her from behind, leaning his chin on her head, and it makes me feel very lucky.

Later, Nonna Anna tucks me into bed and smothers my forehead with kisses before she starts putting the clothes I’ve thrown around onto coat hangers. She’s in seventh heaven. Stealing one of Mia’s children away from her is like a dream come true. My dad stopped belonging to her when my mum came along. I think my father tends to forget anyone else is around when Mia enters the room. My grandmother’s disapproval of the way Mia runs the household is very vocal. I shouldn’t walk around naked in front of my brother, for example, and nor should my mother. Once in a while my father will make the trip from the bathroom to his bedroom naked, and I can’t say it’s an attractive picture, but it hasn’t traumatized me. It’s unnatural, my nonna Anna will say. Why can’t we be self-conscious like normal people? she asks.

I’ve never really been embarrassed by much. I just couldn’t be bothered doing things, that’s all, an aspect of me that Mia can’t cope with. Sometimes I think I do it even more just so she won’t win. At this moment, though, I’m willing to give in. To do anything to make her better.