What the Family Needed: A Novel

GiordanaIAt last, they were arriving in the land of normalcy: streetlamps,parked cars, and hedges. And there was Alek, holding a fullglass of milk and spinning circles in the middle of a moonlitlawn.Giordana had to at least be thankful her mother wasn’tchecking them into a motel this time.The blue hatchback swerved into the driveway, messing upthe gravel and ending Alek’s little dream. A pile of clothes andbooks that had divided the backseat between Giordana andher brother Ben finally fell across her lap.She watched Alek run across the grass, up the front steps,call inside, then race to the head of the driveway. Gleeful intheir headlights, he hopped up and down in a welcome dance,miraculously never spilling the milk. He waved the glass overhis head, toasting their arrival.Over the sound of her mother’s last-minute instructionsand her brother’s resolute humming to his headphones, Giordanaheard Alek call out, “Greetings, cousins!” He would makethis bearable. His Superman underpants stuck out from hisjeans. “They’re here!” he shouted at the house.Giordana unpacked herself from the clothing and sheetsand kitchen crap that jammed the car to capacity, and climbedout into the still, chirping, suburban air. When he was goodand ready, Ben got out too. They watched their mother pawthrough the junk to see what she wanted to bring inside first.Giordana collected the facts. One: Her parents had hadan argument. A shocker. Two: Once again, Dad was left in acramped apartment on a street with trucks rolling by in themorning and rats creeping by at night. Three: The plan was thatthe family, minus Dad, was going to camp out at Aunt Natalie’still it all went away. Right. Giordana stayed close to the car.Aunt Natalie’s was the kind of house you would draw witha crayon if you had just learned squares and triangles. It wouldbe home for the next week or two.Ben was yawning as if nothing mattered. Since he’d turnedseventeen and started staying out all night, she knew that ifshe didn’t watch him every minute he could walk off and startliving his life without them. A mere twenty months younger,she wasn’t going to let herself be left behind. But anything waspossible. After all, a woman had written a note to her husbandand driven away with their kids. Tomorrow, Ben might decideit was his turn to make a sudden exit. Their mother might decideshe didn’t want to be a mother anymore. Anyone couldleave anyone. Giordana couldn’t think about it.Aunt Natalie and Uncle Peter finally came out to the frontstep and beckoned them toward the front door.Peter called, “You can unpack later. Come.”Giordana gave Ben’s hair a tug to mobilize him. He said,“Ow,” loudly enough to draw attention to her, but she didn’tcare because she was the one being mature, trying to get himinside. Each of them was loaded up with a duffel bag and apillow and pushed toward the house.The better memories of her father, which seemed to be takingup space in exactly nobody’s mind but hers, would have tobe put on ice for a while. Going up and saying hello was whatthe situation demanded. Giordana dragged Ben along.Giordana’s mother had a successful double in life and itwas Aunt Natalie. She was even more serene tonight than ever,as if she fed off her sister’s disasters. She was all mellowness,wearing tan pants and an unwrinkled olive shirt, like she hadbeen at the piano practicing Bach when they drove up. Besideher on the bench would have been chamomile tea in a floweredcup. Always just so. Natalie stood on the threshold and spreadher arms wide for a hug.“Oh Ruth,” she said, pulling the three of them into the hall.“I am sorry. It’s rotten.”“It is. It really is,” Giordana’s mother said, stroking herchildren with pity that she mainly had for herself.Uncle Peter provided the male version of the same warmhug, patting everyone’s back once or twice. He said, “You knowyou’re free to stay as long as you need, if not longer.”For most of the three-hour runaway drive, Giordana hadbegged her mother to turn back. Now, she was glad they wereall crushed together under the hallway light.Alek squirmed in and asked his mother, “Can I take themon the tour?”Natalie shushed. “This is a difficult time. They don’t feellike playing.”Alek was still bouncing. “Why not? We’re all together.That’s what’s important, right?”“Please wait,” said Natalie, not loosening her hold on thethree of them. The embrace was a treatment and she hadn’tfinished applying it yet. Behind her, a corridor of framed familyphotos held out the promise of stability and happy memoriesin the future. Off in the front room, Giordana saw thewhole TV corner. Picture it: A family sitting around, watchingmovies together. A quiet night with popcorn and no doorsslamming. See what the right father and a little money in thebank could produce?Uncle Peter said, “Your choices are the study next to theboys’ room that has an old chaise longue, or there’s the big pulloutsofa downstairs. Who values privacy more than comfort?”“Me,” said Ben, with firstborn authority. His decision wasratified without debate. So Giordana would cuddle up with hermother. To be expected.Alek wrapped his fingers around his cousins’ wrists to prythem away from the huddle. “Let me take you on the tour now!”Ben told him, “We took the tour last time. Remember?”“Then I’ll change it!”“Sweetheart,” Natalie said.Given the choice, Giordana would have preferred to staywith her mother and hear how she would tell the story of leaving.It would all be said differently if Giordana weren’t in theroom, though. How would Natalie and Peter react? Would hermother see their pity? The responsible thing to do was to goplay with her cousins.Giordana fluttered her hand at her face like it was a royalfan and told Alek, “A tour would be divine!”Alek focused on her. “Okay, tell me which you want: to beable to fly or be invisible?”“Is this part of the tour?”“Which do you want? Whatever pops into your head fi rst.Just say it.”“Can I walk through things or do I have to slip in and outof rooms when the door is open?”Alek thought it over. “No. Okay, yes, you can go throughwalls. But you can’t steal stuff, like from the bank.”“That’s all right. I’ll restrain myself. Invisible.”She gave Ben a glare to make him accompany them. Benbent his elbows up and waved his hands sarcastically at hissides. “In that case, I’ll fl y.”Alek was satisfied. “Good. Follow me.”The tour led directly upstairs to the boys’ bedroom, nosurprise. Sasha was on the upper bunk, reading under a tealblanket.“Sasha’s going through a shy period,” Alek announced.Sasha threw the covers back to shout, “Am not!” and wentback to his book.Having the audience of real teenagers, it was easy for Alekto ignore his older brother. In the middle of the room, Alekstopped the tour to study Giordana’s face.Giordana opened her mouth to ask why, but he silencedher. “I’m pondering,” he said.Inspiration came. From a dozen plastic animals and monstersmarching across a dresser, he retrieved a Godzilla andput it in her hand. “Here.”With that formality out of the way, he got down to the businessof pulling games off a shelf and spilling them onto thecarpet.Giordana followed Ben’s gaze out the window to the streetbelow. A girl around Giordana’s age was biking in bored figureeights in the middle of the intersection. No cars around, sowhy not? At night here, a boy could spin on a front lawn and agirl could bike in the street. This place was that safe.The rug had a rain-forest design on it and Alek spread outover the treetop-and-monkey part. The game boards werealigned so that their corners touched in a triangle. Alek beganspouting made-up rules for a whole new game that no onecould follow.“You’re going to get the pieces all mixed up,” Sasha said,from a crack in his covers.Alek said, “You’re not playing.”If anyone was going to rein Alek in, it would have beenGiordana, but she was distracted by the sound of someone slidinga window open across the street. It was that quiet too. Peopleliked the leafy streets for a reason, she was sure, but thiswasn’t her. This was not the summer she had planned. Untilshe was back with her friends, she would be marked absentfrom life.School had ended three days ago. She had lined up a part-time job scooping ice cream at Sprinkles four times a week.The job was totally lame, but it came with free ice cream wheneverthe manager was out. Furthermore, Thea’s parents hadleft her alone for a week and their apartment was going to be abase of operations for sleepovers where no one would sleep,where the blender would be full of rum and fruit juice, andwhere the mornings would be dominated by fashion extravaganzas,exclusively sponsored by Thea’s mother. These thingswere facts that no longer mattered. Because now, at the sametime that all of her friends were together, Giordana was standingthere in Alek and Sasha’s bedroom. Total weakness.Invisibility would have been a relief. Not having to be seenby anyone as she limped through a dull week or two of suburbansolitude. She could eavesdrop on her mother as she patchedthings up with her father and hear what new short-term fixesthey were putting on their marriage. What was the bare minimumher father would have to say this time? She knew most ofher parents’ secrets because their conversations usually happenedat top volume. But if she were out of sight, she couldlisten to other people too. What did a regular girl say to a regularboy?As she was thinking about walking in a park and overhearingsome dreamy-dippy lovebirds cooing, Ben called her name.He looked around the room—right at her, practically—thenstuck his head into the hallway and called out, “Giordana,where the hell are you?” He looked back into the room, at Alek.“Where’d she go?”Alek glanced up, but then went right on jumping piecesaround the game boards. He didn’t see her either.She looked down at her hand and saw nothing, only thefloor beneath her.What Giordana didn’t say was, “I’m right here.”Instead, in two backward steps, she withdrew from thecenter of the room, staying quiet and close to the wall. Therewas a creak or two, but nobody looked in her direction. Bencalled her name again. Hanging on the far wall, there was awooden boat with a triangle mirror in its sail. Giordana swiveledto look at herself and saw only the wall behind her. Herface flushed, but she couldn’t see it. She was gone.From his bed, Sasha was watching the chaos Alek wasmaking with disapproval. Giordana waved her arm in front ofhim. He didn’t see her either.Ben shouted out into the hall, “Oh great, you drag me uphere and then leave me here with this nut.” When he didn’t geta response, he kneeled down next to Alek, letting him know itwas the biggest favor in the world. “All right, kid, tell me howwe play this game of yours.”Giordana took an alley cat step into the corner of the room,between the bunk bed and the wall. She put the Godzilla modeldown on the dresser. As she let go of it, it became visible. Whenshe picked it up again, it disappeared. She let it go and it appeared.All right then.Steering clear of Ben and Alek and all the game pieces,Giordana left the bedroom. In the hallway, she padded softlyalong the corners of the floorboards to keep them still. Wait: Ifher feet were causing the creaks on the floor, then she musthave body mass. She stopped and tried pressing her foreheadagainst the wall. Her head didn’t proceed through it. A barrier.Stuck in this deadlock with the plaster, she stared at the wallpaper.Rosebushes and gardening tools, a sweet shorthand for ahappy household. The reds were like fire engines. Uncle Peterprobably dusted the walls twice a month. Giordana kept herbreathing steady, concentrating and pushing her head harder.No matter how she focused, she couldn’t advance through. Herfather’s permanent sense of outrage surged inside, demandingshe go back and make Alek tell her exactly how to walk throughwalls. If he gave you this goddamn ability, it had better work twohundred percent. But this wasn’t a toaster you could throw at thewoman at customer service.Besides, it wasn’t Alek’s trick. She had simply never triedbefore. With some practice, she would figure it out.Giordana went into the bathroom. There was enough lightcoming in from the moon. In the mirror over the sink, she sawthe reflection of the shower curtain behind her. No Giordana.Invisible. What if this was forever? Life as she knew it, ended.She thought about her face, how her father had once told hershe smiled with her eyes and should try doing it more often.She tried smiling consciously for the mirror. Her features, herbody came into view. Thank you, whoever you are, she thought.As good as it would have been to disappear from surface lifefor a while, permanent invisibility would have created logisticalproblems. She imagined her own nothingness again andwatched herself dissolve in the mirror. This was incredibly excellent.