“It’ll come off when we swim.”
Gia smiled. After the boat, swimming was Gia’s favorite. “But what about your mom?” Last time, crazy Aunt Diane had left her TV chair to wallop Lorraine because wearing bathing suits in front of boys was trampy. It had been disturbing, Aunt Diane wading into the canal in her housedress, the web of blue veins around her ankles amplified under the water, furious at something ridiculous.
The brush stiffened ever so slightly before moving again. “I don’t think she knows what’s what today.”
There were always bottles wedged in Aunt Diane’s armchair while Lorraine heated TV dinners. Sometimes, Aunt Diane talked to Uncle Lou’s folded flag on the mantel. She’d been pretty before Uncle Lou had shipped off to become a pilot, skimming close to the ground to drop ammo before being shot down over Korea. The night he’d died, Aunt Diane had dreamed of his plane falling from the sky to the ocean, the moon on the water, gauges failing as the plane filled with smoke. She’d woken up screaming and scared Lorraine so bad she’d crossed the street in her nightgown for Agnes. But even Agnes couldn’t calm Diane down. Two weeks later when uniforms had rung the bell, everybody had known why. Everyone said the real Diane had died with Lou.
“Open.” Lorraine snapped a cap into place, held up a mirror. It was Gia, only with lashes and bigger eyes, sharper cheekbones. She wished she could try this on alone for a little while, break in this new Gia until it felt right, but the makeup was back in the zippered bag. It was time to go downstairs.
“C’mon.” Lorraine held the door. “You look pretty.”
Gia hid behind Lorraine. In the kitchen, Aunt Ida sprinkled paprika on deviled eggs as her mother cleaned a bucket of clams in the sink, sand dotting the counter. So much for just coffee and cake. From behind, Agnes and Ida were definitely sisters: they had matching heights, the same A-line skirts, hair shades of the same mouse brown. It was hard to match these women and Aunt Diane to their stories about sleeping on the roof under a tent of drying sheets on hot nights, sharing clothes from the same dresser.
“The color came through fabulously after one . . .” Aunt Ida, who usually looked at Gia like mouse droppings in the dish rack, stopped midsentence, forgetting about her African violets and the lipstick-stained cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “Well, look at you!”
Gia reddened. With the blush, she must look like Raggedy Ann. Her mother turned from the sink, her face lighting up, genuinely pleased. There was no trace of the usual disappointment. A tiny soap bubble caught in her mother’s short curls, but she didn’t brush it away. She pulled off her rubber gloves and came closer, turning Gia’s face left and right, nodding at Lorraine.
“You look like a doll,” she said. “A perfect doll. Lorraine, whatever you used, we’ll pick some up next week. Beautiful . . .”
Gia didn’t have the heart to protest. No one quite knew what to do with the girl who hunted chemicals and preferred boats to boys. Even Aunt Ida looked impressed.
“Come!” Agnes clapped and handed Gia the tray of deviled eggs to take outside, proving Gia could be ladylike after all.
Gia prayed Agnes wouldn’t make a fuss in front of the men: her brother; her cousins, Ray and Tommy; her father; and Uncle Frank. It was bad enough with Aunt Ida.
“The thing about shucking clams,” Ray was saying, “is breaking the muscle. The fresher it is, the more it fights you, so you slit the muscle that’s holding both halves together like this, twist off the top, then shove the knife under the body to loosen it.”
Clam juice splattered his shirt. Gia stopped cold at the top of the steps. He was ripping a clam from its home. The table was piled with them.
“Wait,” she said. “They’re still alive?”
“Of course it’s alive. You can’t eat the dead ones.” Ray pushed hair back from his face and slurped from the shell, wiping his chin, chewing on something that couldn’t scream.
“Don’t be a sissy, Gia.” Leo fumbled with the shucking knife. Uncle Frank reached for another, drizzled hot sauce and lemon juice, his own shirt dotted with clam juice. Gia’s eyes watered. It would burn that clam like hell. Leo’s knife skipped, and a red line welled up on his hand. He put it to his mouth and held it there.
“Go on,” Agnes urged, her hand on Gia’s back encouraging her forward. The rabbits squirmed in their cage, shaking straw through the chicken wire, but that pile of shells, knives moving in half circles, shells tearing apart, piling on the table like the sparrows had under the tree. She missed the step, fumbling over her feet. The eggs splattered onto the fresh-cut grass. Her dress caught the drainpipe, leaving a gash where the pocket had been.
“You’ll have to excuse her,” Agnes explained as the boys hooted and Lorraine rushed forward. “She read some book, and now it’s chemicals, chemicals, chemicals and what they do to animals . . .”
“What a sin.” Aunt Ida fingered the torn pocket until Gia pulled away. Gia felt like she’d been splashed with lemon juice, her eyes watering as her mother’s disappointment pulsed behind her, and Aunt Ida made eyes at fat Uncle Frank. At least Buster hadn’t been in her pocket. She cut toward the canal, where the water would scrub her clean until she was just Gia again.
Chapter Two
The water was cold around her ankles, warming as it remembered her. The houses on the other side of the canal were empty, cutouts in plywood for windows and doors, crabgrass where newspapers would drop on weekday mornings before the sun came up. The new houses towered over the squatty bungalows, taller than the floodwater to protect the nice things inside. On Gia’s side, there were salt-weathered bungalows with missing shingles, plywood was nailed to a window a street ball had gone through weeks ago, and crazy gray-haired Louann sprinkled cat food from her bicycle basket every evening for strays. The old side.
Gia inched deeper into the water, wondering why she couldn’t be the right version of herself with her family, why everything she felt on the inside didn’t match the things she did on the outside with them. All she’d had to do was put the tray of deviled eggs on the table, and she’d botched it. The torn dress turned a darker shade of seafoam. Getting past her belly was the hardest part, so Gia dunked, washing water over her head, melting away the makeup, hair streaming, dress floating. Under the water, she was nameless. Nothing was afraid of her, nor she of it. If she walked lightly enough, like a daddy longlegs, hermit crabs with fuzzy shells would brush past her ankles, accepting her as she was.
Gia opened her imaginary gills for air, adjusting her dress as she drifted. Being alone was a relief. She shouldn’t feel that way about family but couldn’t help it.
Gravel crunched. Gia pressed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to talk. That pile of clams was too upsetting, especially since she’d swum for sandbars and filled buckets with them, clams spitting from their burrows to keep her away, but they’d been like rocks. Now she knew better. There were a lot of things she was starting to know better about lately, even more than her parents, who’d only done eight years of school.
“You missed it.” Lorraine’s voice was muffled in Gia’s underwater ears as Gia resurfaced.
The sun turned Gia’s eyelids orange, then black, like monarch wings. Poor Lorraine, always looking after broken things. The water rippled as Lorraine floated in, drifted past.