by Fabio Volo
After a little while, I fell madly in love with her. It was strange that the same person I had known for so long could cause such a beautiful emotion in me. One night I almost ruined the engine because as I was driving, I was holding her hand. It was so beautiful that I didn’t want to let go to shift gears and so I drove the whole way in second gear.
When I found out she was cheating on me, I fled from reality the way I did when I was little, and found refuge in writing. I wanted to create, imagine a different world, where the protagonist did only good deeds. He was special, he helped everyone, and made everyone happy. I would write and write and write. I tried to keep out of sight, hidden from everyone and everything, focusing on myself and my writing, turning my back to the world. As if the world was the past, as if writing was a little silent ship, my own time machine that traveled toward a perfect world, filled with kindness and tranquility. I wrote in an attempt to fix the world, making it more accessible to me. The pages of the notebook were covered in so many words that when I would leaf through it the paper would crackle. I remember that when I was a kid, after writing so many stories in which the protagonist—that is, me—had superpowers, I began to think I actually had them. One afternoon, on TV, I saw someone capable of bending a spoon with his thoughts. I spent an hour staring at one, trying to bend it. In the end, I thought that I managed to bend it a bit. But in reality, I was the one who was bending—from fatigue.
Writing saved my life. Reading, too. Sometimes I happen to experience periods of literary bulimia in which I read more than one book at a time. In those periods one is not enough; as I’m reading a book, I begin another because I crave something new. I’ve even gone as far as to read three books at once.
After that night I didn’t want to see Andrea either. We’ve run into each other a few times, but I’ve always avoided him.
I didn’t think I would have reacted that way. Silently, passively. Without even asking for an explanation. After all these years they are still together, and now what does she want from me? Even though so much time has passed and I’ve moved on, her message really shook me and ruined my day. It took me at least four hours to find the courage to call her. Then I did it. When I heard her voice, I felt my legs get hot, a fire that spread upwards, all the way to my face. She immediately told me not to worry and to stay calm, it wasn’t anything serious, and she asked me if we could meet, because she had something to tell me. We set a time to meet for a drink after work.
I thought she must have had regrets, that after so many years she finally realized she was still in love with me. She wanted to rekindle the flame.
“Maybe she wants a good fuck, like old times,” I even told myself.
If it were a matter of sex, I thought I was going to say yes, just to spite him more than anything else. Andrea, that piece of shit. Camilla had always been a good fuck, a question of chemistry, beyond our individual merits. At least at first. Camilla was one of those women the French call femme fontaine, that is one of those women who, when they reach orgasm, squirt like a little fountain.
I told Andrea everything. I even thought it was my fault, that my confidences had led him to do what he did. A few months before I caught them something had changed. That is why I became suspicious. She never felt like doing it, and the few times we did, she acted strangely and would often cry. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it sooner: whenever Camilla was going through a crisis she would bake cakes. She would lock herself in the house and bake as if she was a pastry chef. At that time she made a lot of cakes for me. As well as making me a cuckold. I was an overweight and distracted man.
I got to the café before she did. As I was waiting, I noticed that nobody orders coffee the way they used to. It used to be that you walked into the café and asked for “a coffee.” Or perhaps “a macchiato.” As I sat there, in the span of a few minutes, I heard, “decaf, americano, latte, ceramic cup, paper cup, foam, no foam, soy, non-fat.” I didn’t order anything; I was waiting for Camilla. In the meantime, I wrote down a list of excuses to use on Dante in case I inadvertently answered one of his calls. Just to be safe.
1. I am taking Pilates in the evenings.
2. I became a Jehovah’s Witness. We meet at night… By the way, if you’re interested we can meet early Sunday morning to talk about it. (Then, I crossed out the second part because maybe he’s so lonely he’ll say, “Okay, let’s meet very early Sunday morning.”)
3. The truth is I love you, damn it… Ever since high school. It’s better if we keep our distance, it hurts me to see you. I thought I was over you. Goodbye, kitten.
When Camilla arrived, for the first ten minutes my hands were sweaty, my voice shaky, and my mouth dry. I had lost my strength, like Superman with kryptonite. I couldn’t control my emotions. Instead of writing excuses for Dante, I should have written what I wanted to say to Camilla. I would have liked to tell her, “Hi Camilla, although I ‘ex’-love you, I am still quite embarrassed at the moment.” As soon as I laid eyes on her I thought, “Yeah, I’d still hit that.”
After the initial “How are you? Everything good? And work?” she dropped two things that really shook me. The first, that she and Andrea were getting married.
For me, Camilla was water under the bridge, an old flame. And yet, when she told me she was getting married I was sad. Clearly it wasn’t an invitation, she didn’t bring it up for that reason, but rather because she wanted to clear the air beforehand. She felt something was unresolved between us and wanted to talk about it.
Camilla was in front of me. So much time had gone by, but I couldn’t resist the urge to ask her why she did it and if she regretted it.
“Well, I was wrong, I shouldn’t have done it, and you have no idea how much I hate it. However, if I did what I did it was because you led me to it with your jealousy. If you hadn’t become so obsessive I would have stayed with you. I really liked you and was in love with you. I tried to make you understand it anyway I could, but then I realized it wasn’t me. You weren’t jealous because of the way I carried myself, in fact, at the time, I lived like a nun in order to quell your paranoia, fear, and obsessions. In the end, you turned into the amplifier of my loneliness. Having you next to me made me feel even lonelier. I’m not making any excuses, I know what I did was wrong, but do you remember how many hours we spent not talking to one another because you were mad at me? When you found out about Andrea and I, it was only the second time I had gone out with him. We hadn’t even slept together yet, only a few kisses. But I felt guilty about it. I was trying, with all my strength, to leave you, but I was afraid I had waited too long. By then I was completely out of my mind. Every time we made love, it was as if I was cheating on you. Every time we were together, it was yet another betrayal. I had already ruined everything. There was no need to find out about it. You only sped things up and you put me in the position of being the only responsible one, the only guilty one.”
I knew she was right. But I didn’t tell her. I used my silence as a little payback.
“Giacomo, I have to tell you something that will probably hurt you. I know, I’m selfish, but I have to tell you.”
“You want to make love to me one last time before you get married?”
“Come on, this is serious…”
I didn’t know whether I really wanted to hear it, whatever it was. What I just discovered about our relationship was already enough.
She sat there in silence for a moment, then she said, “You know, when we were together, before I decided to do what I did, to get involved with another man, there was one thing that made me understand why I didn’t want to be with you anymore. Something important that I never told you but that has marked my whole life.”
She stopped talking. Her eyes began to tear up and a few seconds later she started crying. I didn’t know what to do. My instinct told me to hug her but I didn’t know if I could, if it was the right thing to do, if…
I didn’t know where the physical line between us was anymore.
&
nbsp; In the end, I put my hand on hers. “What is it, Camilla?”
Between sighs, she stopped, cleared her throat, and told me, “Giacomo, three months before we broke up I… had an abortion!”
I was stunned. I couldn’t tell if the news had shaken me or if, instead, it had left me completely indifferent. Deep down I wasn’t feeling any violent emotions; it was only a mental, rational thing. The news remained on the surface; it hadn’t penetrated my defenses. At that moment, the news didn’t affect me. Perhaps I was bothered by the fact she didn’t tell me about it earlier, that she kept it to herself. I was confused.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know, I was scared. I didn’t want to involve you, I didn’t want you to know so the decision would be mine. I was afraid you might have wanted to keep it and I didn’t love you anymore. To be honest, although I liked you, I didn’t want you to be the father of my children. It was a hard thing to do. You don’t know how many times, thinking back on it, I cried over the last year. At first, any comment about my appearance would make me sick. I felt dirty, and anytime someone paid me a compliment I wanted to tell them they said it only because they didn’t know who I really was. Even with Andrea: I suffered in silence without him understanding why.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No. Only you and Federica know about it. It was hard to forgive myself, but I was young, I made a mistake, and now it’s time to move on. When I ran into you the other day at the bookstore I was thinking about you and how I wanted to tell you about this and when you appeared in front of me, I thought it must have been a sign. Sorry.”
We stayed at the café a bit longer. We changed the subject. Her eyes were still red. Seeing her in front of me, after her confession, made me realize how much she had suffered, how much that secret had weighed on her. I discovered I was still attracted to that woman, but in a different way. I was sure that after leaving the café, I would never see her again but that she would forever remain inside me. For better or worse, she was one of the most important emotions in my life and I wanted to tell her that pathetic sentence that usually comes from the heart and that’s hard to hold back. “No matter what happens, Camilla, I’ll always be there for you.” I didn’t say it. I whispered it to myself. Having pronounced it that way, quietly, made it a more sincere promise.
On the way home I thought I probably wouldn’t have wanted a child at that time, and that knowing about it now didn’t even make me feel guilty. It was a horrible thought—typical of males. I even made a quick calculation: my child would be about ten months old now. That night it took me a little longer to fall asleep.
I wasn’t upset, I’m sorry to say. It was more a strange emotional discomfort. It was similar to the feeling you have when you wear flip-flops all day in summer and then go to bed without washing your feet. Like a slight tingle deep down.
6
Women and Trouble
It was snowing. It was about three in the afternoon. It was strange seeing snow at the end of March. The flakes were so light that some of them floated upward. I couldn’t see them at that moment because I was on the shower floor. The water poured down on me but didn’t wash away the blood pouring from my lips and nose.
I had fallen down.
As I was soaping up, the curtain had opened and then: darkness. I didn’t even see the first punch coming. My head banged against the wall, then there were five or six more blows, and as I lay on the floor, there were even a few kicks. As he beat me, he cursed at me. Then Monica’s voice said, “Enough!Enough, stop it, you’re killing him!”
They left. At one point, the phrase my grandma had told me the night before popped into my head, the one she had said as I was leaving, after helping her with the groceries, “Paolo, don’t forget the dog, or grandpa will get mad.” In spite of the pain, I started to laugh. She got my name wrong; grandpa died a long time ago, even the dog isn’t with us anymore. The tragically ridiculous side of Alzheimer’s.
After a few minutes I got up and went to the mirror. Swollen lips, swollen eye, bloody nose. “My jaw must be broken,” I thought. I was breathing as if I had just finished running as fast as I could. I had the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.
I opened the window. It was still snowing. The whole yard was covered in white and on that Saturday afternoon, with all that snow, it was even quieter than usual. I was naked and dripping, with the window open, but I wasn’t cold. I could only feel my face throbbing. I wanted to go outside, lie in the snow, and let that calm embrace me.
I closed the window and called Silvia.
“Is Margherita still at her grandparents’?”
“Yes, yes, why?”
“Emergency, I’ll wait for you at my place.”
Silvia rushed over and when she saw me she got scared. Judging from my face, in her opinion, I should have gone to the ER.
“What happened?”
“Today’s Saturday and who do I usually see on Saturday afternoons?”
“Monica.”
“Exactly. I was waiting for her and I wanted to take a shower; but I was afraid she’d ring the buzzer while I was in the bathroom, so I waited for her. When the buzzer rang, I opened without asking who it was and ran into the shower, leaving the front door ajar. She wasn’t alone, she was with her boyfriend, who beat me up.”
“He must have forced her to tell him who she was going out with.”
“I don’t know, I didn’t have a chance to ask what he was doing here. I would have liked to ask him for an explanation, I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t how it looked, but I had his fist in my mouth.”
“Well, we knew that something like this was bound to happen sooner or later.”
This is why I chose her as my best friend, because she never judges me, she never says “I told you so,” even though she usually does tell me so. And she understands. She understands that I’m an asshole, although, even I know that by now.
“I’ll take you to the ER.”
“First I have to stop by my grandma’s, her caregiver has to leave and my mother can’t look after her. She’s having some furniture delivered to her house.”
“I’ll go with you and then we’ll go to the ER, okay?”
“Okay.”
We left together. I was limping. While she went to get the car, which she had parked far away, I walked around the snowy yard that nobody had touched yet. I really like the sound snow makes when you step on it. Crunch, crunch: it’s one of my favorite sounds. I did what I used to do as a kid when it snowed. I looked up with my eyes closed to feel the snowflakes on my face then I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue as if to catch them.
I grabbed a handful of snow and put it where it hurt. I lay down with my arms spread out the way I dreamt about earlier while looking out the window, the way I used to do when I was little, when I would make snow angels with my friends. We would fall backwards into the snow, arms stretched out to make the wings; but to do it right you need another person to help you get up without ruining the shape.
Silvia drove up and at first she thought I had passed out. She started running toward me, but I stopped her in time.
“Don’t get too close or you’ll ruin the angel.”
“What?”
“Come over here slowly, but don’t get too close, just enough to grab my hand and help me up.”
“Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”
She helped me up. I turned around and looked at the shape. My angel had been imprinted on the snow. Perfect.
We went to my grandmother’s, my mother’s mother. She was ill. That is, sometimes she was normal, although at others her brain would switch off and she would start blabbering nonsense. She would often call me Alberto, who was actually my grandfather. The day she called me Paolo she made me laugh because it was the first time she called me that and I had no idea who she was confusing me with. Recently, she had gotten worse. In fact, that day, although it was late in the afternoon, she was sleeping. Si
lvia and I made coffee and then, while she was on the phone with Carlo, I went to my grandma’s room and sat next to her. I sat there looking at her. A lot of things came back into my mind. I had so many great afternoon snacks at her place: bread and nutella, pudding, toast with butter and jam, sponge cake, fruit punch. She would bring a little bag filled with snacks and juice even when we went to the movies in the afternoon. To her it was important to know what I wanted to eat. Until a few years ago, when she was still healthy, if I went to spend time with her during the week, after dinner she would ask me what I wanted to eat the next week.
“Grandma, we just ate, plus that’s next week, how am I supposed to know?”
“I’ll make you some pasta then, and maybe some meatballs.”
When I was little, my grandma would watch me after lunch while my mother worked. I remember doing my homework at the table while my grandma washed the dishes or cleaned around the house, and then she would sit on the couch and take a little nap. When she woke up she would always make the same joke. She would open her eyes, release a little yelp, and say, “Ahhhhhhh, what did I do!”
And I’d say, “What did you do?”
“I tripped and fell… asleep.”
Thinking back on it, it’s not that funny, but when I was little I would always laugh. That corny joke made me laugh. Just like those old knock-knock jokes. I don’t know why I thought they were funny.
“Knock, knock… Who’s there? Boo… Boo who… Now, now, don’t cry.”
What the hell?
I really liked it when she asked me to thread the needle, because she couldn’t see too well. I liked it because when you’re little it’s very rare to have adults ask you for help. If I saw her put the end of the thread in her mouth, I’d use the other end because it grossed me out. Sometimes the thread was frayed, which made things difficult. But I usually got it after a couple of tries. I especially liked watching her mend socks, because she would slip a wooden egg in them.