Chapter Ten
But Jay’s and Barb’s whispering in their dim bedroom, loving yet ascetic — what did it amount to out in the bright Mezzogiorno? Soon—what? The damages heaped around them remained the same. Barbara might claim that these days constituted a “change of life,” a play on words she used a time or two with her husband or priest. But the big news in her family, once Jay and the boys started spending their days downtown, was that the teenagers were making a documentary.
In order to concentrate on the film, Chris and John Junior more or less bunked up together. Barbara helped them arrange the extension cords necessary for the computer, in there, but she let Chris drag the mattress across the hall by himself. The mother could hardly believe it the first morning she saw the fifteen-year-old stumbling out of his older brother’s bedroom. They hadn’t shared a room since fifth grade. Nonetheless, there in John Junior’s with the family desktop, and with the door shut, the teenagers stayed up so late they risked missing their morning funiculare. Once or twice the boys barely had time to haul the computer tower and monitor back out to the front room.
During these early stages of their “project,” Chris and JJ relied on text, voice, collage, and still photos. Even with all the craziness of the last three weeks, it turned out, the boys hadn’t forgotten about the digital camera. Barbara couldn’t remember taking so much as a single picture herself, in Naples. She could hardly recall anyone snapping a shot, come to think of it, but then the boys hadn’t been wound so tightly, so blindly. They had photos, they had materials off the web, and they worked up text and voiceovers as well. Meanwhile, like everyone else in the apartment, the two oldest did some thinking about Papa’s latest windfall. Chris and JJ knew the very day when their father would receive his first bank transfer, a “reimbursement for transitional expenses.” That night, the two teenagers sat the parents down and asked for video equipment. The brothers needed cameras and up-to-date software. And while they were at it, the family should get some zippy new hardware too.
“It’s not just about JJ and me getting the tools we need,” Chris said. “The tools to like, realize our vision. Also, a laptop, that would benefit the whole family.”
The younger boy claimed that the documentary had been his idea, and the older one sat back and let him say so. After a moment JJ added that, as soon as Chris had brought up the project, it seemed like a good one for him.
“I mean,” said the seventeen-year-old, “he’s been taking all this stuff in, right? So now, this movie, it gives him a way to let it out.”
Chris grinned. “What can I say? I’ve found my city. Like, my home ground.”
Barb and Jay shared a look.
“And me,” John Junior said, “I’m thinking, hey. Chris’s idea, it means we’re all going to come out of this with something. I mean, a document. Solid.”
“A documentary. About like, my odyssey, but not only mine. We’re all wanderers, the whole family. We’re all returning to home ground.”
Barbara had to smile. It sounded almost noble when the boy put it that way, these weeks of wandering. And it did appear she’d finally gotten somewhere; she’d come to feel comfortable about allowing her two oldest free rein — still more free rein. Barb turned back to Jay with a calm that would’ve been out of reach a week ago. Since her husband seemed to have developed a golden thumb, she told him, a new laptop struck her as a useful way to spend the money. Or part of the money. That little machine down in Roebuck’s office, Barb went on, was enough to make a girl jealous. Then the mother tried out her new serenity on Chris, suggesting a connection between how greedily he’d devoured his Blue Guide and how badly he wanted to make this movie.
“I’m saying, this would be history too. Even The Real World, shows like that, these days they show the early episodes in college classes.”
“Exactly. History, like, it used to be on stone, it used to be on vellum. Now…”
“Oh right,” JJ said, “vellum. “The vorld vide vellum.”
Chris shook his head. “Slipping bro, slipping. A line like that, it could be Talent Night at the Heart of the Poconos.”
If the mother stared hard enough she could almost see the puppet-strings of the younger brother’s thinking, the lines that stretched from head to wrist and made him poke the bridge of his glasses. But the actual puppet-master would be JJ, sure. He was Geppetto to all the children, and without a doubt the one who’d come up with the idea of the documentary. His shadow girlfriend must’ve asked what they could do, how they could meet. Her love-note on the website had managed to slip her barefoot life into his bulging Nikes, yes, a miracle shoehorn. But after that they’d needed something better. If they relied on the website, soon enough Roebuck or one of the carabinieri would spot it. John Junior must’ve come up with the movie.
Not that Chris was lying about his own motives. The way he saw the project, its benefit to his older brother’s love life was secondary. Chris believed in the film, a good parent could see that at once. The boy brought up the Odyssey again, claiming there was a narrative to the Lulucita’s experience in Naples, “a total narrative arc.” That shaping curve gave the documentary its larger purpose, a record of where the family might eventually touch down. “Like, maybe in some scary places, the arc comes down.”
“What?” Barbara asked.
“Mom, it’s like a myth. We’re confronting monsters.”
“Monsters?” The mother’s hand strayed to her husband’s beltline. “Are you saying, this would be about the problems between Jay and me?”
Now Chris and JJ were sharing a look.
“You guys told me in the museum,” she went on, “what you thought was happening. You told me Naples was all about me and Jay.”
“Barb’s right,” Jay put in. “No way I’m paying for a movie that says your parents are monsters.”
Time for JJ Geppetto. The puppet-master reiterated that the way he was thinking about the project, it was for all of them. It gave them something tangible they could look at and talk about for years to come, something they all took away from this experience. “When Chris brought up this project, Pop, he never said it was all about you and Mom.” And the younger son followed suit, saying that the entire metropolitan area had a part in this picture. “Millions of people in motion, day and night.” His mother needed to see the greater arc, in which everyone in the city risked ending up in a scary place.
“It’s a journey,” JJ said. “Hey? A journey, it could go anywhere.”
“It’s a myth, but for all of us. The project has to include Paul, too.”
Barbara had rather liked the business about millions of people in motion, but she hadn’t counted on Mr. Paul getting shuttled around. The Jaybird, likewise unsettled, turned for a look at the middle child. Paul was on his knees, in the front room with Aurora and the other kids. A card game tonight. Meanwhile John Junior made it clear that he’d come to this discussion with all his strings in hand. The big teenager declared, four or five different ways, that his youngest brother would be handled carefully and kept safe. JJ mentioned the new security team, “those guys’re on the ball,” and speculated aloud that there were more where they came from. One phone call to the Consulate and they could have double the police protection. “Plus, speaking of phone calls, we’ve got the extra cell phones now, with the emergency numbers on speed-dial.” They’d seen that the Naples cops could move pretty fast when they had to.