The Italian Teacher(10)
Birdie is a fifteen-year-old with short dirty-blond hair, an elephant-footed gait, pudgy pubescent curves. She’s also Pinch’s half sister, although he never heard her named before. The arrival is a merry occasion for Bear, who lifts his youngest daughter off the ground, swings her around, her saddle shoe hitting the mahogany bureau with a thunk. “Birdie, little buddy!” Alas, her timing is not the greatest, with Bear right in the middle of a sitting. “You’ll be your big sister’s tour guide for a few days,” Bear tells Pinch, who is on summer break. “How about it, kiddo?”
Pinch always longed to meet his relations in America, of whom he’s heard only vague mention. This fogginess allowed him to invent them, concocting a clan of best friends, the kind of pals Pinch reads about but never finds at school. Still, it’s peculiar to have an unknown girl in the apartment who happens to be a blood relation. “I want the grand tour of Rome,” she says, but Pinch has no clue what this involves. So Birdie buys a guidebook and takes her little brother along to interpret.
They stroll around the Forum, forging through weeds, high-stepping over a fallen marble column. “So crazy: a treasure like this, left out in the open, nobody guarding,” she marvels, approximating the view that local males hold of her, they sizing up her shorts, cocking their chins beckoningly. Birdie is pinched on the bus, fondled in churches—there’s a palpitating sexuality in the city that summer. With aplomb, she bats away each hand yet claims to enjoy the attention, which confuses Pinch. Romance is the embarrassing part of every movie, the part that drags on with no purpose. Still, he likes that older boys approach him for information about his sister. He wants Birdie to like them, so that he may be their personal translator.
“Tell him my husband’s about to turn up,” she instructs Pinch, when a fresh contender addresses her in the Pantheon.
“Aren’t you too young to be married, Birdie?”
“Fine, then. Tell him my fiancé is on his way.”
The Italian lothario, a spotty adolescent, gazes down long black eyelashes at Pinch. “Allora? Che t’ha detto?”
“Che è già fidanzata.”
“Ma che m’importa a me? Sarà in America, ’sto fidanzatino. E mica è bello come me, vero?”
Pinch reports to Birdie: “He’s saying, ‘He’s not as beautiful as me, right?’”
“Who isn’t as beautiful as you?”
“Not as beautiful as he is.”
“You lost me, Charlie.”
“Your fiancé isn’t good-looking enough.”
She rears on her suitor in mock outrage. “Don’t dare talk mean about my fiancé who doesn’t exist.”
The adolescent responds in English: “You no ’ave boyfriend?”
“Hey, you’re not allowed to understand. I will not abide a cheater, cute ragazzo.” Off she stomps, little brother hurrying after.
Birdie is equally likely to sass grown-ups. As if measuring her target, she narrows her eyes, lips twitching sardonically. Snarkiness has already landed her in heaps of trouble—it’s why her mother dispatched Birdie here in the first place, unwilling to tolerate a full summer with this hellion. But her boldness is a hit with Pinch. He has developed into a boy who must prep everything he says. By the time he’s ready to speak, conversations have moved on, causing him to blurt. By contrast, Birdie can’t hesitate—just out with it. When Bear returns from his studio late each night, she is often snarky, such as when Dad summons Pinch for a bit of roughhousing, and Birdie calls him back, saying, “You don’t have to go, Charlie, just because the dog barks.” Regarding Pinch’s mother, Birdie is dismissive of the new wife, who busies herself with domestic chores, ironing sheets, making meals. That’s nice and all, Birdie tells her half brother, but when is Dad taking me out? He promised. You heard him.
She and Pinch sleep head-to-toe in his bed, whispering in the dark, she asking about Italian boys and he asking about Chicago, where she resides with her mother and stepdad plus two elder sisters who—scandalously to Birdie—don’t share her fascination with horses. The eldest is marrying next year; the middle won’t ever leave home, she’s such a stick-in-the-mud. But what her brother longs to hear are tales of Dad when he used to live in America, a time that verges on the mythical to Pinch. Birdie loves to dish, claiming privileged knowledge, although her reports are often based on merest rumors.
“Which is when she caught Daddy in bed with that dancer.”
“Why was a dancer in his bed?”
“Do I got to explain everything, Charlie?”
Not necessarily. But Pinch finds ways not to understand—to hear aspersions about Dad feels like betrayal.
“Everything’s always about his art,” Birdie complains. “He doesn’t hardly care about his actual creations.”
“What do you mean?”
“The human ones.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t be an imbecile, Charlie. I mean you, me, Dina, and Kelly. Actually, you know what? Let’s please stop talking about Daddy.”
11
“Ready?” Bear shouts.
Pinch—on the living-room floor, sketching with Birdie—stills his pencil. He turns to his sister, as if to reiterate Dad’s question, which was addressed to her. She remains fixed on her drawing, heel of her hand against chubby blemished cheek, fingers straight upward, blocking her peripheral vision. “I’m still drawing Thunderclap,” she says, referring to her horse.