Invincible Summer(38)

He nods and signs something I don’t get. I see school and book but— I turn to Claudia. “What was that?” and I’m acutely aware that Noah picked it up, that Noah is currently signing to Gideon and I can’t. Living with Gideon—even though I never picture them together, since they’re always off at school—must have given him the edge. The odd weekend here and there. The bullshit holidays. Those times must make the difference.

“They got to pick books in school,” she says. “Easy books.

The Stranger is easy.”

“Easy to read, not to understand.” But I don’t care that Gideon is eight, that he’s still learning to read, that he’s probably missing everything important; I care that, for the first time, I have something I can share with both my brothers.

I’m completely smiley and teary and happysad.

“Who’s next?” My mom laughs. “Lucy?”

“No.” Noah smiles across the table. “Claudia.”

Claudia snorts into her pepperoni. “I’m not reading your goddamn Camus. I live in the real world, thanks.”

Noah says, “‘There is but one world, however!’”

She rolls her eyes.

I say, “‘A world that be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world, but, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger.’

Umm . . . ‘ His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost or home or the hope of a promised land.’”

They all sort of stare at me. Claudia gave up trying to translate in the middle, but Gideon’s smiling at me anyway.

“What?” I say. “I like my Camus.” “Boys are f*cking obsessed,” Claudia mumbles.

“Hiding behind an attitude is no better than hiding behind literature,” Noah says patiently.

Gideon finishes his pizza slice and looks at our parents.

They’re talking together, quietly. I watch him decide to dis-turb them, change his mind, and turn to sign more pizza please to me. I stand up and go to grab him a slice, and all their voices swell behind me as Claudia starts a new story and everyone laughs, even Lucy, even Gideon.

Claudia once told me that story about Beethoven. The time he wasn’t facing the audience after a concert and had no idea the people where cheering. And so his clarinet player or something came and turned him around, and he saw it all for the first time.

I turn around now, and see them laughing, but unlike Beethoven, I could already hear them. I always knew they were there. Behind me. Even this whole year, when I didn’t see them, I always knew they were there.

The lack of surprise doesn’t make it any less awesome. Because I get a different revelation now, better than Beethoven’s. I’m in love, not with Melinda or Bella or the girl from my physics class or Joanna from Candy Kitchen, but with my stupid, fallen-apart family.

* Noah doesn’t get home from screwing Melinda until about two, and he immediately goes out to the balcony. I sneak outside.

“Hey.” I hand him a spoon. “Brought ice cream.”

He exhales. “You’re a saint,” he says, and we dig into the carton together, looking far far far where you can still just barely see the edge of the sea. I think this is some kind of soy nonfat ice cream Mom got. I’ve missed this. I’d started to take it for granted that ice cream tastes good.

Still, I can only eat so much before I give up and lean against the railing, strumming my guitar.

“So how’d it go?” I ask.

He licks his spoon. “She cried when I told her I wasn’t spending the night. I hate when she cries.”

“Me too.” But she’s only cried with me once. It was during that weird three-day marathon sex-spree between my birthday last year and the day we left. Or the day before we left, more accurately, since I eventually couldn’t stand to look at her any longer. I’m still trying to forget. I’m still trying not to think about the way she smells.

“And she talked about you,” he says.

“God, she always talks about you when I’m with her.

‘ Noah kisses me softer than that.’”

“‘Chase is so much more passionate.’”

“‘Noah takes his time.’” I play a minor chord. “‘Chase doesn’t hesitate like you do.’” Noah digs an almond out of the ice cream and tosses it off the balcony. “God. Why do we come back to this girl, Chase?”

I lean against the railing. “It’s part of the summer.”

“Yeah, sure. Sno-balls, sand castles, breakers, and Melinda.

Year after year after year after year.” He sighs. “Man. When do you think this will stop?”

“What will? Melinda?”

“Nah, not Melinda. All of it. Defining our lives here, calling it home, even though we spend eleven twelfths of our lives somewhere else.”

“The somewhere else changes, though. You spend most of that away at school. I spend it in a home that isn’t the one I grew up in. This doesn’t change.”

He says, “The dune . . .”

“Fuck the dune. It’s the same beach.”

“Yeah.”

“So maybe as long as we come here, this will be home.”