It had been a Sunday when Lucy found out about Dad’s arm, or more specifically, that he’d be coming home without one. When they found out, everyone crammed into Papo Angelo’s house, where all the aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends came to make exclamations and hug each other and contemplate how to best heal him using the old Italian ways. There was chanting, the stuffing of garlic into pockets, and Lucy had been festooned with charms to keep off the evil eye, or malocchio, that had so tragically ruined her family.
It was very dramatic.
And Lucy, in typical Lucy fashion, was very still as she watched her family carry on, like wrestlers, only with words. As they all slurped their soup around three folding tables that had been placed end to end and covered in a white tablecloth, the deep-down need to run came over Lucy, which wouldn’t have made sense to anyone else, their own needs being to cling to each other like barnacles or plastic wrap. And needing something that didn’t make any sense to the other people in her family was a sure way to get the attention of the aunts. And anytime the aunts turned their attention toward an ailment, real or imagined, it involved chanting, candles and the possible use of a tomato on your belly button.
So no way was Lucy standing up in the middle of the minestrone soup course to announce that she needed Uncle G to drive her to the tide pools the way her oldest cousin Sheila always announced her sudden and preposterous ideas. Like going to bartending school so she could learn how to make fancy drinks garnished with little umbrellas so Uncle Joe’s pizza parlor could be more “chic.”
But something happens to a person when they don’t say a thing that needs saying. When a whole year’s worth of body count numbers going up and up and up on the television screen, and the worry over whether or not your dad is one of them, suddenly come spilling out of the tight bag it was all tied up in.
It wasn’t pretty.
So even though Lucy managed to wait past the minestrone soup course, the chilled chicken cutlet course and the pears and cheese, she exploded somewhere around the serving and eating of the Sicilian cannoli, not to be mistaken for the Northern cannoli, of course.
“Uncle G, I need you to drive me . . . somewhere!” Lucy said, much louder and more shriekified than the quiet, matter-of-fact way she meant to.
The quiet, matter-of-fact way she did everything.
And for the first time in possibly ever, the whole yammering table of Rossis fell silent. Then the three Joes, sitting side by side by side, giggled.
Before Lucy could see what might come next, she pushed her chair back, walked straight outside and slammed herself into the blasting summer heat of Uncle G’s black Mercury coupe. The vinyl seat scorched the backs of her legs, so she pulled them up to her chest and held tight. Mom came out and stood in the doorway, her blond hair a little sticky around the temples. Because who eats minestrone soup on a hot summer day? Mom wasn’t going to let her go, of course. Mom would have worn Lucy around her keychain if she could have.
But she just stood there looking worried as Uncle G walked past, placing a hand on her shoulder.
Lucy didn’t know at first why she wanted to go to the tide pools specifically. And Uncle G didn’t need to know, either, apparently, because as he slid into the driver’s seat, all he said was, “Book ’em, Danno!” Which he said sometimes when he climbed into the Mercury because it was the same car that Detective Steve McGarrett drove on Hawaii Five-0. Uncle G liked to think he was a tough guy even though they all knew different.
So Lucy and Uncle G left the flat cement sidewalks of San Jose, drove over Highway 92, and stopped by the Half Moon Bay Bakery about an hour later. There they picked up a fresh loaf of milk bread and drove on to Martins Beach, a place Lucy and Uncle G had been many times together over the last year when he fished for smelt.
For a little while, they just sat in the car, tearing off chunks of the still-warm bread even though they’d just eaten lunch, because that’s how it was with a good loaf of bread. They squinted at the sun reflecting off the ocean and watched the fishermen in their spring suits drag their nets full of small squiggling smelt up the beach.
“When a starfish loses a limb,” Lucy said finally, “another will grow in its place.”
“That is a fact,” Uncle G said, scratching his close-cut beard.
“I want to see if we can find one with a grown-back limb.”
Uncle G didn’t chastise Lucy, the way Mom probably would have, about how rushing out in the middle of an important family gathering to see a maimed starfish in a tide pool in Half Moon Bay wasn’t a Stiff Upper Lip thing to do. He just walked alongside, pants cuffed to his hairy knees.
They finally reached the far end of the beach where the flat lava-colored rocks of the tide pools shined in the sun. The froth of the waves settled into the nooks and crannies and then drained out, leaving behind all the best sea creatures. Hermit crabs and mussels, starfish and sand dollars. Shells of every shape and size.
“Look there,” Uncle G said, and Lucy carefully picked her way over the slippery rock to where he was standing. Sure enough, there was an orange starfish clinging to the side of a swirling pool, one arm much smaller than the others.
“It’s growing back,” he said.
Of course it was. But what Lucy hadn’t remembered about starfish was that their grown-back limbs were never the same. The new arm was usually deformed or stunted and looked nothing like the one that had been there before.
“Nature likes to fill the empty spaces,” Uncle G said.
At first Lucy thought maybe she’d wanted to see the starfish because of Dad’s arm. But as they sat in the warm sun and let the sand dry in clumps on their feet, she realized the starfish was more like their family and Dad was the missing arm, and maybe she was nervous for the way he might grow back.
“What happened . . . to his arm?” Lucy asked.
“There was an explosion in the operating room. He’s lucky to be alive.”
Lucky to be alive.
“He won’t be a surgeon anymore,” Lucy said.
“No.”
Lucy was quiet for a few minutes watching the waves crash in and roll out. “If he’s still going to be a doctor, he’ll need to study again. Find a new discipline.”
“I’m sure your dad will figure it out. He always does.”
“We’ll have to move again,” Lucy said. “To whatever hospital will train him.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself, Lucy. Let’s just think about getting him home. Getting him well.”
Lucy nodded, surprised by the pang of extra sadness. She didn’t want to move. Much as her family drove her crazy, she’d grown used to them over the last year. Uncle G especially. But she would do what was expected of her, as she always had.
“Are you ready?” Uncle G said.
Lucy wasn’t sure if he meant ready for Dad or ready to go home.
“Ready,” she said, answering both.
With that, they stood, shook the sand from their clothes and walked back to the car. Lucy took Uncle G’s hand, even though she was much too old.
Because nature liked to fill the empty spaces. And so did Lucy.
When Papo Angelo pulled up to their house from the airport, there was a boy sitting astride a red bicycle behind a tall, thick gardenia bush, one house over. He seemed to be watching them.
Everyone had decided Dad needed a couple of days of fortification before the family swarmed in again like they had at the airport. Great-Aunt Lilliana rode home with the other Belly Button Aunts to give Mom, Dad and Lucy some private time. As soon as Papo stopped in the driveway, Mom sprung out like she was an honest-to-goodness Jack-in-the-box clown. She opened Dad’s door in the front, and Lucy was flooded with about a million memories of Dad doing the same for Mom. It was weird to see it the other way around.
“So this is the new car,” Dad said, taking in the metallic green of the Pontiac.
“Well, new to us, anyway,” Mom said. It had an automatic transmission so Dad could drive.
“I’ll get your bag!” Lucy said.
Lucy looked again toward the boy as she rushed to the trunk. He had moved more deeply behind the bush, but was clearly watching them. She could see a glint of gold, glasses maybe, through the thick branches, and a fluff of corn-colored hair sticking out the sides of a blue cap. She wondered if it was Billy Shoemaker from around the corner or some other equally annoying person from sixth grade looking for a way to embarrass her, to call her Bossy Rossi as they had all year.
Even after all this time, she still missed her friends in Chicago. When the kids you knew at eight were the same kids you knew at eleven, no one seemed to notice each other’s peculiarities anymore. Like Tabitha’s habit of eating her sandwich from left to right, left to right like a typewriter, taking bites so small, she made everyone late to the playground. Or Rubin, who never wore anything but a red shirt. He’d probably told them all why at some point, but Lucy didn’t remember. Trina liked to wear her soccer shin guards, not because she wanted everyone to know she played soccer, but because she had a habit of falling down unexpectedly and was happy for the extra padding. Then there was Lucy herself, who invented Strange Fact Fridays, where everyone had to share something weird they’d learned, such as the fact that a six-hundred-pound octopus could squeeze through a quarter-sized hole.
Lucy didn’t know if it was the difference between fifth and sixth grade, Chicago and San Jose, or Illinois and California, but she just never found the proper footing with any of the kids in her class this year. First off, there was the hair. Lucy didn’t know how it was possible, but it seemed every single girl, and boy for that matter, had beautiful, flowing, straight hair. Plus they all seemed to have something “extra” about them—extra teeth in their wide smiles, extra giggles or extra-long legs—take your pick. And since the Beach Boys went and made a song about California girls, Lucy didn’t think she was imagining things. Stick skinny with electrified hair, she was the runt of the litter everywhere she went. Top that off with meatballs on the first day of school, and there just wasn’t any coming back from that.
Plus there was perfect, straight-haired Linda McCollam, who was famous because she had the same last name as the elementary school. When Lucy had asked who Millard McCollam even was, as his name was nowhere to be found in her Encyclopaedia Britannica, Linda had informed her that he had been a school board member for eighteen years and a famous agronomist, which was, Linda went on to inform her, a scientist who utilized plants for various functions, including sustenance, fuel and fabrics. Lucy found this fascinating, of course, but also found Linda to be slightly unwelcoming and a little full of herself.
Lucy worried that a person could forget how to have friends, the way you can forget a face after too much time away. Now that they’d have to move again, maybe she was simply doomed to friendlessness for the rest of her live-long days.
Mom walked with Dad up the front path, holding his right hand. They stopped and admired the sign.
WELCOME HOME, CAPTAIN ROSSI!
Lucy hefted Dad’s bag out of the trunk with Papo’s help.
“You keep an eye on your pop, Lucy. Tell me if you need anything,” Papo said. “And tell me if the relatives are calling too much, bothering you guys. I’ll give ’em one of these and one of these.” He motioned a karate chop and a poke in the eye with both fingers.
Papo looked up the path as Mom unlocked the door. He used the palm of his hand to rub at his eyes before the tears fell, and this made Lucy’s throat tighten.
“I will, Papo. It’s going to be okay. He’ll go back to school. Learn how to be another kind of doctor. You’ll see.”
But it was slippery, her sense of sureness. Like a fish in her hands.
“Of course,” Papo Angelo said, and put his hand against her cheek.
Lucy stood alone in the driveway and waved as Papo drove off. When she looked again toward the gardenia bush, the boy was gone.