Delusionary, indeed. The guy could’ve taught Barbara something. If she’d spent more time with this “unripened metropolis,” him and his frayed toothbrush of a hairdo, she too might’ve achieved a more profound shakeup and understanding. So she told herself at week’s end, anyway, after one of the ranking psychologists asked her into his cubicle.
This doctor had done two years at UCLA, and she could hear it in his voice, relaxed, beach-y. Nonetheless he was firm with her. The man made it clear that he and the rest of the medical staff could no longer trust the fragile personalities around here to an amateur. No longer, Mrs. Lulucita. She didn’t have so much as a certificate for social work, let alone medical credentials.
After a while — after he saw how calmly she took the news — the psychologist began to sound more Californian. He assured Barbara that everyone in the clinic had nothing but affection for her, personally. She’d brought a fresh perspective to the work, and that was always useful. She was certainly welcome to help in some other capacity, some sort of work like her husband did…
“Like my husband?” Barb tugged at her shirtfront. “What? Take out the trash?”
The doctor ran the entire length of his tie between thumb and forefinger. When he spoke, the edge had returned to his voice. “I realize that you and your husband have powerful friends.”
He realized, too, that dottore DiPio himself was among those friends. But Mrs. Lulucita needed to understand, should she have it in mind to contest the staff’s decision, that DiPio didn’t oppose it. He might be a bit of a maverick, the old man, but he would never go against the consensus of the people he depended on to run his clinic. And (at this the young therapist fingered his tie again) additional funding from the Consulate wouldn’t change anyone’s mind either.
“Ci sono limite,” he concluded, his first sentence in Italian. “There are limits.”
Her driver and bodyguard, the big curly-head, hadn’t expected l’Americana to knock off early. Now as Barbara waited for him, on the bench inside the clinic’s iron gateway, she figured that what she felt was something like her Vomero priest in his church: she was disgusted with herself for all the time she’d spent eavesdropping, her whole working week vicarious. Yet even this afternoon, in Naples she couldn’t remain entirely a sourpuss, not as the downtown emerged from riposo, as it set up a fresh display of the pedestrian baroque. Barbara discovered, or rediscovered, that this must’ve been part of the reason she’d chosen to work down here in the original city. She’d never grown indifferent its stagy mash of hustle and museum effects. There was still the echo, the gesturing, the whole-body Neapolitan shrug. Then too, one or two downtowners recognized the mother of the miracolino; they came close enough to extend a medallion or crucifix through the bars. A man who looked to be at least eighty, his hand like the brown husk of an insect, went into a staggering bow as he held out a silver-plated heart.
She allowed the man her word, her prayer. But the visitor who mattered was her middle child Paul.
Today the Consulate had assigned the kids a wide and factory-fresh Audi, a ride that didn’t fit down the last half-block before the palazzo entryway. Paul had to walk from the intersection. And he didn’t go unnoticed, his walk so full of beans, his black-and-white so crisp. By the time Barbara heaved herself off the bench the eleven-year-old was sandwiched between a pair of housewives, each with her net bag of vegetables. When the women fished out their bric-a-brac, the silver flashed in the late-afternoon sun. At this hour the light poked into these man-made canyons at odd angles.
The mother couldn’t help but notice again how the excitement over her miracolino had settled down. The scrawniest clandestino on the street, a young man with a filthy bandanna, gazed at the boy mildly. Around the clinic too, when it came to Paul, DiPio alone remained a true believer. Barbara’s middle child had visited once during her week, and everyone except the old dottore had confined themselves to brisk courtesies. The therapists here were on soft money, like most of the people in quake relief; they couldn’t waste time with a disorder that was beyond diagnosis. As for the patients, they hadn’t been paying much attention to the news.
Paul finished with the housewives. “Hi, h-hi Mom.”
The boy could just show up? Like any other eleven-year-old? (More or less — Barb shouldn’t forget the armed escort and private limo).
“It was, it was b-boring, with Chris and, and JJ,” he went on. “All they do is tell us wh-where, wh-where we have to stand.”
Barbara found herself angry, upset with the security team or the housewives or DiPio or somebody for leaving her child so exposed. There had to be somebody! Maybe that Doctor L.A., yanking the clinic’s rug out from under her! But Paul was showing Mama a smile with adult overtones, fleshy, almost flirty, and in another moment Barb’s anger had swung round on her. She was swamped by fresh recriminations. How well did she know this boy, any more? How much had she helped him, in fact? She recalled that she’d seen, for instance, inklings of sexual ambiguity, but she’d offered Mr. Paul nothing like an invitation to talk about it. Yes, she knew it might help him to “assert” his “identity” in that way. Nettie herself, still dealing with her own long years in denial, had brought up the idea of such a talk. But since returning Maria Elena to Children’s Services, when it came her pubescent boy, the mother had let the professionals handle any talk about the facts of life.
She hadn’t wanted the other kids bothering Paul about it either. Romy and JJ could kiss all they liked, that was different thing, almost a political transaction. Anyway the eleven-year-old had already seen his brother kissing a girl or two, back in Bridgeport. But just the other evening, Barbara had come down hard on Chris after he’d walked into the kitchen with a fresh printout and announced that Paul had five of the early indicators of homosexuality.
The fifteen-year-old had just walked in and announced it, while Dora and Syl were helping Mama make popovers. She’d ordered the girls out and then read the riot act to her second-oldest.
“Do you want to live your whole life like this?” she’d asked. “An IQ of 150 in the classroom and zero everywhere else?” His sisters were still in elementary school, she’d reminded him, and Mother of God, this was his brother he was talking about.
Chris couldn’t stop touching his glasses. “Mom like, come on, like, what are you? Like, homophobic?”
“Chris, don’t. I’m saying, you leave that alone. Paul is his own man.”
She’d grounded the teenager from a day’s work on the documentary. She’d made him give Dora and Syl a tutorial on the camera and software.
Now her miracle child was asking something, from the other side of the clinic gate. Barbara couldn’t understand, given the traffic. Where was her driver, anyway? To judge from the noise, everyone else was in a car, on a Vespa, or pulling up to a street stall in a three-wheeled truck. The din seemed to rise as uncontrollably as the sulfur smell from under the paving-stones. Then amid that cacophony, with her boy’s pretty mouth shaping unheard words before her and, in her ribcage somewhere, a sore spot lingering from losing her job — in there, Barb got the idea of an interview.