Saving Francesca (7 page)

Nonna Anna gives me one more kiss and turns off my bed lamp.

“Tutto a posto,”
she says, shutting the closet door.
Everything in
its place.

But my family is split into three, and no one is in their place.

chapter 8

I LOOK FOR
Luca at lunchtime to see how he’s coping at my aunt’s place. He’s looking miserable by the cafeteria, and when he sees me, his little face lights up, which makes me want to cry.

“Are you having fun?” I ask over-cheerfully.

“Mummy’s having a nervous breakdown,” he says, and I can tell he has no idea what it is.

“Have you got your lunch?” I ask, fixing up his tie and socks because the administration around here are Nazis about such things.

“That’s what Anthony says has happened to Mummy.”

“Doesn’t Anthony still believe in Santa Claus? Doesn’t that prove that Anthony doesn’t know much?”

Mr. Brolin walks by and stops beside us. “Seniors’ lunch area is on the roof.”

“Can I just finish speaking to my brother?”

He gets me on an answering-back call and I get another afternoon of detention. I can’t even open my mouth to plead my case. Any attempt is construed as answering back.

Luca looks at me helplessly and I can sense he’s close to tears.

“I’ll ring you,” I say, “and then maybe we can talk to Zia Teresa about Pinocchio staying over.”

“Promise.”

“Cross my heart, hope to die.” My voice cracks as I say that. And he hears that crack, and I know it kills him a bit inside.

The day gets worse. We have drama, and for me, drama class is a four-times-a-week nightmare. Every lesson Mr. Ortley puts on a piece of music and asks us to dance, and every lesson we stare back at him, some of us with disinterest, others with horror. Nobody ever dances. Nobody but him. He dances like a maniac, which is a bit embarrassing because he’s about fifty, and seeing a fifty-year-old dancing to Limp Bizkit is pretty nauseating.

“If you can’t lose your inhibitions, you’ll never be able to convince a crowd of people that you’re someone else. That’s what you have to do as an actor,” he says between breaths.

As usual, no one moves.

“Mr. Mackee? Are you going to grace the dance floor with your moves?”

Thomas Mackee gives a snort, which is kind of like a no.

“And you did drama for what reason?”

“Because I thought it would be an easy pass, sir. And you went to the National Institute of Dramatic Art for what reason?”

Ortley doesn’t care. He seems to like what he does. He tells us that he’s waiting for one of those perfect teaching moments when he can say it’s all worth it and then he’ll quit.

“Miss Spinelli?”

I’d love to do the snort thing, but it would give Thomas Mackee too much satisfaction.

“I’d rather not.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll make me feel self-conscious,” I lie.

“Why?”

I shrug and look down.

I’ve perfected the art of shyness. I had three years of practice at Stella’s, and it’s brought me great comfort over the years. When I was being my un-shy self, I got a different sort of spotlight. Not the one I wanted. I got detentions, was tested for hyperactivity, ridiculed, hassled, ostracized. By the time my Stella friends came to save me, I was ripe for it. Ready to go into some kind of retirement. Because it gets pretty exhausting being on the perimeter.

Here in drama, I don’t actually care what people think of me, and deep down I’m not really self-conscious. I just don’t have the passion for this or the drive. I would like to go onto autopilot for the whole of Year Eleven drama. It’s not as if we’re going to be able to perform this year.

“Are you scared people will make fun of you?”

This man does not give up. He looks me straight in the eye when he speaks to me. No one in this school has done that all year except William Trombal, and that was to intimidate me.

“Maybe,” I mumble.

“You want to dance.”

“You want me to dance?”

“No.
You
want to dance. Every time the music comes on, you sway.”

Everyone’s looking at me.

“It’s instinct.”

“Then act on instinct rather than on what other people think,” he says in a flat, hard voice.

He turns away from me dismissively. It’s as if he couldn’t be bothered.

My mother forced me to take drama. “You’ll be in your element,” she said.

“She’s shy,” my dad tried to explain.

“Yes, in her left toe she’s shy. She’s just lazy. That’s her problem. She’s too busy worrying about what her friends—”

“I don’t care what my friends think.”

“You care what they’ll do when they remember that you’re the one with personality.”

“Is it okay if I have a say over what
I
want?” I asked.

“That’s the problem, Frankie. Once you start hanging out with them, they don’t give you a say.”

“You just want me to be like you,” I shouted.

“You
are
like me. Get used to it,” she shouted back.

My father would go around and shut all the windows in the kitchen so the neighbors couldn’t hear us shouting, but Mia and I would go at it until I backed down or my dad would say, “Mia, she’s a kid. Couldn’t you just let her win for once?”

But it was never in Mia’s makeup to back down.

“Is that what you want, Frankie? That I let you win?”

Yes,
I’d want to scream.
Just once, let me win
.

We’d go to bed furious with each other, and then she’d wake me in the middle of the night and come and lie on my bed and we’d talk for hours, about nothing and everything, and she’d let me touch the scars on her stomach—the scars from where they cut me out of her.

“My pelvis was too small,” she’d say, “and you were in such a hurry to come out that they had to deliver you by Cesarean, and by the time I woke up from the anesthetic, Nonna Anna and Nonna Celia had already held you, and I felt so cheated and I said to your father, ‘Let’s always take care of her, Robert. No one else is to take care of her but you and I.’ ”

But here I am at my grandparents’ house, knowing that this is killing Mia more than a breakdown. And I need to get myself back home, and Luca too. Because if we don’t, my mother will feel as if we’ve been ripped from her without the anesthetic, and the pain waves will be felt by all of us.

I need to get back. But I don’t know how.

My detention with Mr. Brolin means that I have to come into contact with Jimmy Hailler again. He gives me a wave, as if we’re long-lost friends, and I ignore him. So he turns his attention to some Year Eight kid next to him, who is looking over at Mr. Brolin, frightened of being caught speaking. The kid looks miserable. Not just Brolin miserable or Jimmy Hailler miserable, but it’s there in his eyes and Jimmy Hailler doesn’t make things any better.

Later, I sit under the tree in Hyde Park: it’s one of those fantastic weather days that bring everyone out, and I sit among strangers enjoying the sun and watching the old guys play on the giant chess game. I like this park. It’s full of life. Of greenies selling points of view, of lovers lying on the grass smooching, of Japanese tourists having their photo taken in front of the fountain, of the cathedral looming over us. At this time of the afternoon, there are no Sebastian kids around and I feel a bit at peace.

I see the Year Eight kid from detention walking as fast as possible down the pathway, and sure enough, there’s Jimmy Hailler trailing him. A fury builds up inside of me. I don’t know what comes over me, but I’m up on my feet and walking toward him before I can talk myself out of it.

“You should be ashamed of yourself.”

He looks around, to see if I’m speaking to someone else.

“Are you talking to me?”

“Yes I am, Mr. Taxi Driver, De Niro. You’re a bully and I know you don’t care, but I just thought you should know that I think you’re scum. He’s probably some miserable kid with his own demons and he doesn’t need yours.”

I’m actually shouting, and I feel as if there are tears in my eyes, but I don’t care. I’m just sick of all the misery—my absolute lack of control over everything. For a moment, I catch a glimpse of shock on his face, but I walk away. When I reach the lights on Elizabeth Street, I find that he’s next to me.

“It’s my favorite film, you know.” He’s got a lazy voice that comes across as an annoying drawl.

At first I ignore him.

“Taxi Driver,”
he persists.

“Of course it is,” I say, because it’s just too much effort to ignore him. “And I bet I can tell you what your second-favorite film is.”

He gives me one of those go-ahead-but-you’ll-be-wrong looks, and the lights change and I walk away. But after a moment I turn back, feeling challenged. He’s still standing at the lights.

I reach him, my arms folded, and I know I’m going to be right and I am as smug as he is.
“Apocalypse Now.”

No reaction.

“I’m right, aren’t I? I can tell.”

He doesn’t give an inch, so I walk away for the second time.

“So what’s your favorite?” he yells out.
“The Sound of Music?”

He catches up to me.

“I’m not as easy to work out as you are,” I tell him as we walk past Market Street.

“It is. I can tell. You love
The Sound of Music
.”

“No I don’t.”

“You’ve watched it fifteen times. You’ve jumped around a gazebo pretending you’re sixteen going on seventeen. You’ve sung ‘My Favorite Things’ when you’re sad, and every time Captain von Trapp’s voice catches during ‘Edelweiss,’ you bawl your eyes out.”

I stop and look at him, ready to deny it, but then I feel my mouth twitching. “Seems like I’ve watched it one or two times less than you have,” I say.

“Think about it,” he tells me as we sit in Starbucks, soaking marsh-mallows into our hot chocolates. “
Empire
magazine will interview you one day and you’re going to admit that it’s your favorite movie. At least I’ll come across dark and mysterious.”

“Do you know how many guys would pick
Taxi Driver
and
Apocalypse Now
as their favorite films? You’ll come across as a cliché.”

“I like
The Princess Bride
as well.”

“If you spread that around, you just might get lucky with the girls.”

“What makes you think that I’m not lucky with them now?”

I make a scoffing sound. “Dream on.”

“Bitch.”

“Just honest.”

After a moment he nods as if agreeing.

“So what do you girls talk about?”

“Nothing exciting. You guys most of the time.”

“What’s the Eva Rodriguez chick like?”

“She’s pretty cool,” I say. “What is it about her that makes everyone interested? There are better-looking girls.”

He shrugs. “Good-looking, knows her sports, uncomplicated. Doesn’t have to prove a point a thousand times a day. Like you said, cool. Maybe even Siobhan Sullivan and Anna Nguyen too.” He looks at me almost reprimandingly. “The guys think you need a personality.”

“That’s actually funny, coming from the Personality Kings of the Western World.”

“You do a pretty good act,” he says.

“What?”

“The Miss Mute thing.”

“I just haven’t got anything to say.”

“Yeah you do. You kind of mutter it under your breath when you think people can’t hear.”

“Really.”

“Do you want to hang out? At your place or something?”

Hanging out with Jimmy Hailler will mean that I have to say hello to him every day. I’m not ready to say hello to him every day. Too much commitment. It’s bad enough that I’m sharing chocolate brownies with him. I shake my head.

“Not today.”

“Whenever.”

He’s the foulest-mouthed boy I’ve ever come across and constantly uses the c-word. I tell him it offends me and he calls me a prude. I shrug. So be it. I’m a prude. But he says he’ll hold back when he’s around me. He talks about smoking dope, probably a lot more than he actually smokes it, and just when you think you’ve come up with some theory about him, he’ll make you change your mind. He’s obsessed with fantasy fiction and is incredibly biting about those who get fantasy and sci-fi mixed up. The constant Machiavellian grin on his face is a cover-up for some kind of yearning, which doesn’t excuse him for being rude and obnoxious and cruel, but he’s honest, and I think that deep down he’s as lonely as I am.

On the trip home on the bus, I’m vomiting out words, unable to hold them back no matter how hard I try—talking film and music and books and gossip and DVD commentaries and clothing and teachers and students and pets and brothers and loves and hates and lyrics and God and the universe and our dads.

But not mothers.

“That’s off-limits,” he tells me, and I can’t help feeling relieved and guilty.

But most of all, I feel a little less empty than the day before.