Invincible Summer(16)

“She’s perfect.”

Gideon’s dancing, and Claudia’s dancing too, which is nice, even though hers is weird and sexualized. They sparkle in the lights of the no-pizza place, and my father is holding my arms, waiting for me to dance too, waiting for me to dance so he can.

And because no one else is willing to play Noah, I drop my voice and I say it, I ask, “Can she hear?” 16th s u m m e r





s e v e n


I can’t believe it’s been a year since we’ve been to the beach. We really need to start doing trips during the off-season, but I didn’t even think to suggest it this year. It would have been too much trouble to travel with the baby. This road trip down to the beach is Lucy’s first long car ride, and it’s brutal for all of us, even though she‘s almost a year old and should be past her bitchiest phase. I’m glad we didn’t try it when she was still colicky.

Because she screams. The entire time. At one point, Claudia says that if she does not get out of this car, she is going to explode all over us, and we will drown in her insides. We’ll die choking on bits of her large intestines. She doesn’t say this bit, but I can picture it.

Noah leans back and gives me a look. “‘There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.’”

“Do you boys have Camus’s entire body of work memo—

rized?” quips my father.

“Just me and Noah,” I say. “Not Gideon.”

Gideon is the only one who isn’t totally fed up with the baby. He’s fascinated by everything about her—her little feet, her smile, her curls. The one thing he doesn’t notice is the thing that never fails to make us smile—the way she looks over when we call her name. We’ve basically been shouting “Lucy” at her for a year now. She hears! She turns her head!

Magic baby. Claudia leans her head against my shoulder.

“Wake me up when we get there.”

Lucy shrieks again, and I close my eyes. “I don’t know if we’re going to live that long.”

“Okay. Wake me up when I’m dead.”

“Just open yourself to the gentle indifference of the world,” Noah advises.

Dad says, “Christ.”

“Now, now.” Mom rubs her childless stomach.

Hungry, Gideon says. I say, “Mom, Gid’s hungry.”

She cranes her neck back and tries to sign to Gideon, but he’s all the way in the back with Lucy, and she can’t catch his eye. “Claudia, tell him I’ll make spaghetti when we get to the house.”

“Spaghetti at the beach?” Noah raises an eyebrow.

Claudia says, “He doesn’t know the signs, Mom.” Around February, Claudia officially refused to stop translating for Gideon—about two months after Gideon officially refused to learn any new signs.

“I sign better than he does,” Claudia had said. “This is ridiculous.”

I turn around and tap his knee. Food soon.

Food me food Lucy food food food Gideon signs and shakes Lucy’s rattle in her face.

Claudia’s watching him with a frown. When I catch her, she looks away and presses her cheek against the window.

“He baby-signs,” she says. “He’s seven.”

“I know,” Noah says.

“It’s not cute anymore.”

“I know,” Mom says.

“We just need to support him,” Dad says. “His tutor thinks he’s making good progress, he just needs full support.”

“He needs a Deaf school,” Mom says. Dad clears his throat. “And we need to be able to afford

Noah’s tuition without paying twice as much for elementary school.”

“Stop it,” Claudia and I say together.

Noah angsts up and plays with his fingernails, the same way he does when anyone talks about college. Even though he liked his freshman year okay, since we heard Melinda dropped out, college is this weird competition. Not only does Noah have to stay past the middle of his sophomore year to beat her, but he also has to be happy. “Unfortunately,” Noah told me once while he was pouring over textbooks, “These things might not coexist.”

“Camus?” I asked.

“McGill. I think I’m learning to be articulate or something.”

Mom thinks Noah doesn’t like college because he’s living at home, so he agreed he’d try living on campus next year. I’m really, really not happy about this. Last summer, I took it for granted that Noah was leaving. When he decided last-minute to keep living at home, I felt a kind of relief that I’m not willing to give up now.

Mom and Dad are still arguing about Deaf school and college and Noah and everything when we get to the house and start unpacking, but it’s hard to care when the day’s this hot. It‘s hard to care about much of anything besides when I’m getting in the ocean. I’m clearly not the only one who feels this way, because when I’m hoisting Lucy’s car seat up the steps, I realize Gid’s totally gone.

“Gideon!”

There he is, sprinting toward the waterline. “Someone grab him!” Dad shouts.

“He’s seven,” Noah says under his breath, but takes off after him before we can all scream about how he’ll get dizzy.