“Signage,” Jay said. “Now everybody’s got an address.”
The light through the blue plastic visor made the mother’s mushroomed head all the stranger. Barb recalled that she’d been a nervous wreck on the day of the shot, still been trying to make a go of it with Maria Elena, their Mexican ward. At least she’d known better than to spring that girl on the folks at the photo studio.
“We-ird,” Sylvia said. “It’s like the stuff Chris shows us on the web.”
“But that’s so we can find it,” Dora said. “Right Papa? If we’re lost, we just look for the weird stuff.”
“Hey, you got it,” Jay said. “Smart girls. You got it.” Then as he gave the photo another look, did Barbara see him shake off a chill?
The way Jay put it was, so long as he had the extra hands, he was going to put them to work. Kitchen duties for the girls, carpentry assignments for the boys. But when Barb asked where she fit in, her husband dropped his eyes. Wherever you like, he said, scrubbing his forehead with a calloused palm. The wife, aware she was under NATO scrutiny, briskly declared she’d make herself useful in the camp chapel.
Good thing, too. Best to look busy when, it turns out, the family’s Public Relations Department has arranged for the media. The reporters joined them after the Lulucitas moved into the community kitchen. Cooking took place in an open-sided tent, where standing fans whirred between the ropes, but even so a patch of heat-fog lay between the broad steel stoves. Jay handed out smocks and gloves, and the girls fitted on each other’s hairnets, refusing Mama’s help. Then the air got closer still. Along one open wall gathered another knot of visitors, white folks.
“Well, meno male,” said Silky. “Meno male.”
Chris was the first to translate: “less bad,” acceptable. Among the new arrivals, a couple of the men were getting out notepads, and the lone woman clicked on her video-camera. Five reporters, altogether, everyone wearing the Southern Italian version of business casual, a lightweight dress shirt. They all knew Silky and seemed comfortable with his Dixiefied Italian. Indeed as the liaison made the introductions, including the names of the newspapers and the TV stations, he might’ve laid on the compone more thickly than usual. Might’ve played to the stereotype, keeping the press comfortable.
Not that the refugees trusted the man, whatever his accent. Barbara, checking around the kitchen, realized that the campers tended to allow Kahlberg the same space as they gave his gunmen. But the poveri at once proved great fans of the press, especially the two with cameras. Several crowded in behind the reporters, and beyond the kitchen’s floor-fans, outside, you saw fresh clusters of naked feet. Inside, the posing quickly turned shameless, the Africans even popping their eyes. The most animated cluster gathered around the woman, a young woman, good-looking. She was new at TV work, if her gloves were any indication. Fingerless thoroughbred leather protected the girl’s hands, and she kept adjusting her grip.
Barb, for her part, hid her face. She fussed with her hairnet. Anyway the NATO liaison was directing the media elsewhere, towards “il famoso Paul.”
Here amid the stainless steel, however, Mr. Paul didn’t appear particularly famous. Jay had made the boy strap on a carpenter’s tool belt, breaking up his stark color scheme, and the work-gloves muted his hands. As he nodded under the cameras, he seemed merely young and clumsy. The belt’s hammer-holster hung to his knee. Barbara gathered herself and stepped in beside him, deflecting the reporters’ attention. The eleven-year-old put a gloved hand on her back.
Then the mother found herself fielding a question from out of left field: “How many years are you married?”
“Twenty years,” she said, working up a smile.
“It will be twenty years this September,” Jay said.
This reporter was a man, his shirt-cuffs folded back from the wrist Italian-style. He looked from wife to husband. “How much time do you stay in Naples?”
“Uh, all right,” Barbara began. “The kids start school again—”
“We’re in it for the long haul,” Jay said. “The long haul, capisce? Today, hey. You’ll see. This is my family.”
The husband kept up the stage business even when he put his back to the reporters. As he gave the children their assignments, he loudly threw in additional tidbits, anything the press might find useful. He reiterated what he’d done with the frames and photos — a thumbnail version, meno male. He mentioned the camp’s specialty meals based on country of origin. Barb had caught the act before, after all she’d married a salesman, but today the pitch wasn’t just Jay. This was Jay morphed, Jay after he’d learned a few things about the “printing facility” from Lieutenant-Major Kahlberg. She couldn’t see a decent way to stop it. When her husband asked if she wanted to say anything about what she might do in the chapel, Barbara only shook her head.
He continued quietly. “Church work, guys. You know. It’s private. My Barbara, she’s always done church work.”
Catching her reflection in a steel stovetop, she tried not to scowl. But in another minute, give the man credit, the Jaybird again diverted the reporters’ attention. He had them taking pictures. First group shots, sentimental as Sears Roebuck, and then the photographers singled out Dora and Sylvia and put them together with the kitchen crew. Peach-fleshed blond schoolgirls with rope-sinewed black laborers.
The Africans spoiled the effect somewhat, saying cheese. Seeing their gap-toothed smiles, one with a fat gold insert, Barbara again wondered at how little fuss these clandestini were making over Paul. When the family had pulled into the parking lot, the refugees had acted the same as they would have for any drop-ins from the white world. They’d come to say hello, they’d given the van a rap or two, but they’d acted like the middle child was just another well-meaning ofay. This when they must’ve heard of the boy. The communications network that began down in the centro storico, the exclusive Neapolitan wireless network, surely had a relay station up in this Centro. Besides, here and there among the tents, you caught the blather of radio or TV But these musclemen in the kitchen would rather pose with the girls, and Barbara began to think that, here under the doctored photos, the faithful prayed to another miracle-man — not the son, but the father. Jay had named the roads, Jay provided the manna. Even to the Catholics in camp, then, the Band-Aid on the capo’s temple might be just one more piece of proof that he was extraordinary. Just, the rich get richer.
Then too, it’d been more than a week since the healing. A week was a long time in a place like this. The aborted kidnap, just day before yesterday, must’ve gotten hashed over a thousand times by now. In camp, no doubt, every morning hatched a fresh crop of rumors. Everyone was so willing to clutch at a wild hair.
Before leaving the girls, Jay looked to Kahlberg. The officer shot a glance at his soldiers, and the blue-shirts slung off their semi-automatics. With the guns at their feet, the troopers settled into the coolest corner of the kitchen they could find. Then the father took Barb and the boys over to the infirmary in the adjacent Big Top, accompanied by the press and fifteen or twenty clandestini still hopeful of getting on the news. These strays thinned out further once the group reached the hospital and everyone went to work. Paul was put on the same detail as John Junior and Chris, fitting together beds and shelving. At that point a couple of the reporters decided they had enough, and a couple others elected to stay with Jay and the boys. When the mother set off to find the chapel, only the woman with the half-gloves followed.