All Things in Their Place

by Giulia Dell'uomo

  A text. It’s him. Coincidence, hearts that beat together, I think.

  I get lost in your eyes, I die on your lips, I am calm when I hold your hand, when you walk time stands still and each of your movements is in harmony so that I feel like I’m dreaming. You are indescribable. You are the waterfall I love to lose myself in. I adore you. Rob

  He has succeeded in gifting me another smile I think. I am about to respond to him when his number shows up ‘Hello’. ‘Hello moon slice with legs. Look out the window’. And so, incredulous, I open the only portal to the outside world. The warm air of this muggy July day invades the room. I see him below, with a fruit smoothie in his hands. Wearing the green uniform with a packet of cigarettes poking out of the pocket. ‘You fool’ I say to him laughing. ‘What are you doing in this heat cooking in the sun?’ ‘It’s your birthday Saretta, actually go now to the entrance of the ward. I left a little gift for you near the door’. Incredulous I look down at him. It’s a bit like a modern day Romeo and Juliet. A desperate love, tormented like theirs. Before hanging up he calls me by my name ‘Sara’. ‘Yes’. ‘Thank you for being you’.

  My companions come closer to me and some, the most discreet, spy on me from the doors to their rooms. ‘Your boyfriend must really be in love’ says Mari sweetly ‘what a wonderful couple you are!’ I wish we were a couple I think to myself, but today I want to believe that is how it is. And in the end I deserve some tenderness. Waiting for me at the entrance I find a small red suitcase covered with pictures of kittens. A big beauty case for my hospital adventures, but not only that. When I open it I am open-mouthed. My phone rings again. ‘Inside the beauty case you will find my favourite book. You remember that day you asked me which one it was? Now I can respond. It’s by Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet. I also put my favourite film in for you ‘Into the wild’. That way you won’t have to wait another three months when you ask me which one is my favourite. I am giving them to you because they represent a part of my world, which you aren’t familiar with. Then there is a little fan so that you can have some relief from this horrible heat. A pencil with a sea star. Because you like to write and so that you think of the sea of my home city. And finally a green uniform. The same as mine, for surgeons. Because you would have made a great doctor. So that you have something that one day, no matter how this ends, you can remember what brought us together.’ I’m silent, looking at my gifts. I can’t say a word. I can feel his presence through the phone. It’s strong, it penetrates my heart, every cell of my body. ‘Are you there?’ On the other end his voice wakes me from my stupor. ‘I’m here’. And suddenly it’s me thanking him. ‘Thank you for being you’. Yes, because as Alexander Supertramp says, protagonist of his well-loved film, if we admit that humans can be ruled by reason, we don’t allow ourselves to live. Today I let myself be guided by my heart, by emotion. Today was the biggest lesson. While the medicine battles in my body to destroy the sick cells, I surrender to the power of our bond. He is the most marvellous and overwhelming storm that life has ever gifted me. A storm in which it is wonderful to get lost, in spite of the fear and difficulties. ‘

  A text from Roberto. The feeling that only you and I exist is not just a feeling... I think I showed you as much today.

  Tiredness is winning. I am nauseous again. Exhausted I go to bed. I don’t even have the energy to respond to the message. I am eating lemon lollies to get over the radioactive iodine. I can’t taste them. The drugs are so strong my tastebuds don’t work. I collapse again between the sheets. When I wake up there’s a text from Dad. The amazing power of mobile phones. The amazing age we live in, where anything is possible, where distance doesn’t exist, there are no borders, no places out of reach. Technology can.

  Happy birthday princess. On this day twenty two years ago you came into the world. You were wanted, waited for, desired. You are the daughter everybody would like to have... and it is amazing that life has chosen your birthday to see you reborn a second time. Happy birthday darling. Your Dad.

  I am lucky, I am happy. I turn over under the sheets, trying to get some rest. The best present is in my heart.

  ‘If my tears aren’t much compared to yours, know that they are many compared with the amount I have wept in my whole life’.

  ‘Stop yelling, leave me alone. Get lost, leave me, give me the possibility of a life without you’.

  Me and Roberto. Scenarios already lived. Scenarios I know by heart. In the middle of the street, near the Colosseum. With passers-by watching. With that heavy feeling in your stomach you get when a full body x-ray shows bad news. ‘Sara, there are still cells that are receiving iodine. You are still unwell’ the oncologist told me on the ward days ago. With the heavy heart of someone who, when all is said and done, is unable to keep me in his life. I escape, trying to get cover. I run. I would like to tell him that if he cries for me, if he laughs for me, maybe it is worth living for me. But I unable to because I want him to know that without me having to tell him. We are both lacking courage. I am tired. Bag on my shoulder and I turn. It starts to rain, the landscape begins to fill up with coloured umbrellas. Everybody undercover except me. And him. As always everything is like a metaphor of our life. Heavy summer storm, in the humidity of this hot air. I would like to take an umbrella and stab myself in the heart with it. Not suffer anymore. Not bathe in pain but protect myself from salty tears. But Roberto comes back, he comes back every time. He comes back when I run away, when I turn away, when I walk off without him. He comes back when I beg him to let me go, when I yell at him in anger. He comes back when in the bed I turn away and he sweetly moves so that he can still see me. He comes back when I shut down and stop talking and he repeats to me whispering a million times ‘you’re in my heart, stomach and head’, and that makes me say that he too is in my heart, stomach and head. And even this time, in the rain, he’s come back. He followed me. He takes my arm and kisses me. Heart, stomach and head still in motion... Every time the end between us is a new beginning. I shun him and he pulls me close. This time he can’t heal me. He can’t heal me. My heart is broken. There is no medication that works. He broke the most important organ in thousands of bits, now who will glue it back? I am not able. I hate him. I love him. I hate him. I love him. ‘Sara I beg you, give me more time. I will tell her, I want to be with you. I can’t stop thinking about you’. I bite my lip, not responding. I don’t want to look at him. ‘How can you ask me to leave?’ His tone is pressing. No this is too much. I start yelling, my hair’s wet and I’m shivering with cold. ‘And how can you ask me to be in your life? What am I doing here? What do you want from me? How many more tears do you want me to cry?’ He comes closer to me, I move away and sit on a low wall. ‘Tell me it will all work out’. He takes my arm again, I try to free myself but he hugs me tighter. ‘Do you have any idea how much you are making me suffer?’ He stands there staring at me, holding my hand in his, as if to stop me from leaving. His eyes are glued to mine, looking for answers, that’s why he won’t choose. I keep talking to silence. He lets go of his hold. ‘Oh no my dear, that’s not how it goes!’ I get up, while he moves away to leave. I follow him and yell. ‘You can’t go now!’ I keep yelling at him. He turns suddenly, looking at me. ‘What should I do Sara? What?’ He bursts into tears and they mark my face too. Again. Always stronger. ‘Choose Roberto. Choose. Do you know what that means? It means taking sides, making a choice. Deciding whether to take a leap into the unknown with me, if you have the courage’. ‘But do you know how much I respect you?’. ‘You call this respect? Making me cry for months is respect? I have cancer. You should be healing me, not making me more sick!’ Yelling, yelling, yelling. People look at me. Some may even pity me. ‘Yes I call that respect Sara. We haven’t even slept together yet because I respect you too much’. ‘Yes thanks a lot. What a great act of charity, thank you’. ‘I haven’t slept with you Sara and do you want to know why?’ ‘Why? Maybe because you would be even more disgusted with yourself than you are now?’ I want to hurt him.
I hate him. ‘Because with you it wouldn’t be having sex. Because with you I would be making love!’ A shiver goes up my spine. ‘Fuck you’. I have nothing else to say to him. Enough, now it’s really over. I am going home and I never want to see him again. I curse the day I got sick and he landed in my life. He ruined it for me.

  I go home in a bad way. My mascara has run. Black eyes, tired face, wet hair. I immediately dial Francy’s number ‘Sara what’s happened?’ She understands straight away, I don’t know how she does it. ‘I’m a wreck’ And I start crying again, with a trembling a voice. ‘I’m on my way over now, I’ll call the others too ok?’ ‘Ok...’ I lie down on the bed and look at the room. I lengthen my arms out by my side and touch the sheets on which he slept more than once. On the chair, in total confusion and mess, I left his scarf. A short time later the buzzer rings with my girlfriends. I open the door and am like a zombie. ‘My God Sara, what has he done to you?’ Eleonora looks at me worried and straight away tries to remove the mascara lines from my face. ‘Nothing, the usual stuff. I can’t take it anymore’. Bea lights a cigarette. ‘If I run into him I’ll kill him’. ‘The truth – says Eleonora – is that if he really wanted you, he’d have you. He’d run off with you and tell the world it’s you he wants’. I don’t want to hear the end of that sentence. ‘Instead he doesn’t do that Sara. You need to get your head around that’. Right. Understand that, how can you? How can I forget my life intertwined with his? In the Disney fairy tales it didn’t finish like this. The Prince stayed and kissed his Princess.

  Everybody has the right to start over. Life almost always gives you another chance. Sometimes we don’t want to see that. The calendar every year lets us turn the page. Every January we get excited about all the new resolutions. ‘I’m starting a diet, I’m quitting smoking, I’m joining the gym’. Throwing away the past, in a sense, is the most popular resolution. From the darkness you can create light, artificially. Or else, let natural light into your life and put all things in their place. Christmas has passed. The colours, the celebrations, family, affection, gifts, smiles. A Christmas full of love, full of people. And yet I was alone, amongst many people. Roberto has this power. He who wasn’t there, he who spent the most important holiday of the year with his woman, with his family. He who sees me maybe as a release, someone who listens, someone to share the weight of his thoughts with. Someone who probably was just an accident along the way. I love his life in my life, I love knowing that we have passed each other in the deepest way, because the unexpected things are the best. But then New Years went too. I was again at a party, amongst many people, rivers of music in the background, conga lines, dancing, disco. And he wasn’t there. At midnight I popped the champagne with my girlfriends. ‘To us!’ yelled Eleonora. ‘To our happiness!’ added Francy. It was my turn. They all looked at me, waiting for my wish. ‘To tomorrow, may it be more beautiful than all our yesterdays’. I know, it seems poetic and philosophical. Melancholic. But at the bottom of that glass I looked amongst the bubbles for the strength to face the New Year in the best way possible. With or without him. He who didn’t call, he who had disappeared. He who needed to be forgotten. But how do you forget, start again, as though nothing ever happened?

  Now that a new year had begun I needed to think about myself. In January I had exams. Today’s class seems even more boring than usual. The teacher is talking, talking, talking. Direct marketing, indirect marketing. How to get to the client’s heart. I don’t know how to get to people’s hearts, let alone the client’s. The last lesson before the exam. Revision. ‘Who knows the four P’s?’ The usual nerd, dark curly-hair, in the front row raises her arm. ‘Me: Product, price, promotion and place’. ‘Well done’. How boring I think. Ok we get it. She’ll get full marks for sure. Each time it’s like this, she always answers. I would like to tell her not to worry because by now even the walls know her. She’s done everything to make herself known. I grab my books, put them in my leather bag and leave, slamming the door. Who cares if it is the height of rudeness. I’m bored and I’m sad. I’ll study at home and get full marks too. I leave university and find a sea of students chatting, as usual, when classes finish. ‘Hi Sara!’ It’s Manuela, a horrible blonde girl from first year. She’s chatting to a group from her course, they’re organising a party. ‘Can I introduce you to Giacomo?’ I find myself in front of a tall, dark guy with a goatee. ‘Sure, Hi I’m Sara pleasure to meet you’. ‘The pleasure’s mine’ and he shakes my hand. ‘Sara are you coming?’ He smiles at me and tries to be kind. But today I hate everything. ‘I think so, why not’. I force myself to be sociable and easy going but I can’t. ‘Guys I have to run for the bus!’ I get away quickly, I would like to escape from everyone and everything. I get out of the way of the crowd in the courtyard of the university when I see him. Leaning on his green car. He sees me from afar and I stand as still as stone. He puts his hands at the nape of the neck. ‘Hello moon slice’. His voice is soft and tender. I get closer, I want to look at him better, rediscover him. My legs tremble. ‘Hi’. My tone is angry and annoyed. ‘What are you doing here?’ I move forward, restarting the war. ‘Are you taking your medicine?’ ‘Did you come all this way to adjust the dose?’ ‘Are you doing the tests?’ ‘Are you minding your business?’ He brings out the anger with ease. Roberto and I have nothing to say to each other. We stand one in front of the other, tit for tat. ‘Did you make love to your girlfriend on New Years?’ I don’t know how that comes out of my mouth and I instantly regret it. I can’t be this rude. ‘I’m not here to talk about that’. ‘Oh no? And what did you want to talk to me about? You want to know if I’ve been taking my pills? No, I haven’t. I decided to die.’ ‘Are you stupid?’ ‘Mind your own business, leave me alone.’ I move away and call Francy. ‘Roberto is here. Can you come and get me?’ ‘I’ll be right there’. He’s following me ‘what are you doing? Calling your friends to save you?’ ‘I think that’s the only way don’t you? Seeing as you don’t understand that you should leave me alone...’ I keep walking and decide to get on the first bus that comes, without knowing where it will take me. ‘Who was that you were talking to outside uni?’ He’s shooting questions at me, close behind me. ‘What, are you jealous?’ He doesn’t answer. ‘Sure, whatever you do, don’t answer. Always ask for answers and when I ask for the same as if you ever give them! Get lost!’ ‘Yes I’m jealous ok? I’m jealous of the way he looked at you and smiled. I’m jealous at the thought that someone else could kiss you and touch you’. ‘Well, get over it, because it’s happened’. ‘Who are you with? You have a boyfriend?’ His eyes are popping out of his head. I don’t answer and keep walking. Faster steps. ‘Sara, what the hell, have you slept with someone?’ ‘Get lost!’ He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get that it hurts me. It doesn’t matter to him. He’s an egotist. He keeps following me and starts to beg. ‘Sara, please, stop.’ Ok, I take a breath because I wasn’t going to be able to keep up that pace. I seize the moment and stop on the footpath suddenly. ‘I miss you’. His eyes meet mine for 10 seconds. I want to read inside them. He’s not lying. How does he make all my barriers fall down? Why do I give him this power? This is a sickness, not love. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you. I think about you all the time. I think about what you are doing, who you are talking to, who you are with. If you are smiling at others like you smile at me. I think about how I want to kiss you, touch your hair, have you fall asleep in my arms. I think I’m going crazy without you’. ‘Where were you when I needed you? When I was crying on Christmas day? Where were you? Tell me!’ I’m yelling. I yell hoping that finally he will hear me. For the first time he has the courage to admit it. ‘With her. I know I’m making a mistake. Sara I beg you forgive me for what I am doing to you’. ‘I can’t forgive you’. ‘The hate you have for me is destroying me’. ‘You wanted it this way’. ‘Let’s go for dinner, we can talk’. ‘And then what changes?’ ‘Maybe something will change’. ‘Stop lying to me’. ‘I have never lied to you’. I text Francy. Before I thin
k about it, I’ve already decided.

  Don’t come. I’m going to dinner with him, I’ll explain later. She responds straight away. Don’t get sucked in again...

  We find ourselves at dinner again together. We share another table, a pizza and some fries. I look at him and am attracted to him as always, if not more so. We share our thoughts. I let him back into my head and my heart. And then I look at him again and try to find a trace of her on his face. I look at his lips and imagine how many kisses they gave to someone who wasn’t me. ‘You know what?’ ‘What?’ he answers with his mouth full. ‘I hate myself’ ‘For fuck’s sake Sara, that’s the worst thing you could have said to me’. Maybe he was expecting me to say the classic, given line, I hate you. Instead I’m more subtle. I don’t hate him anymore. I hate myself. ‘Why?’ The waiter arrives and asks if we want dessert. As if that could be enough now. ‘Because if I think about her I feel like the dirtiest person on the planet. If I think of myself I feel like the most unhappy person and if I think about you I feel like the most angry person.’ Guilt. Pain. Anger. All negative feelings. Is this love? Is this how it works? Maybe the world turns the other way. ‘Let’s go Sara, it’s late’. He cuts off the discussion as usual. He talks like a surgeon. He lives like a surgeon. He cuts and sews feelings. He cuts out conversations. He takes me home. In his green car he takes my hand and holds it under his, on the gearstick to maintain contact. When I get out he leans over to kiss me, I move away and decide not to give him one. I open the door and get out. I pull away and escape. He gets out too and I let myself get caught. ‘Can I come in?’ He embraces me and softly leans me on the doorway. He touches me, he hugs me. Back to the wall, in every sense. ‘Come in’ I say. I give up again. It makes no sense to leave him outside, when he is already inside my most intimate part. My heart.