by Fabio Volo
The cab stopped. I tried to hold her. We kissed on the mouth, pressing our lips hard. It was a crushed kiss. When we parted she looked straight into my eyes, she caressed my face, and she got in the cab. I kept looking at that yellow stain that was taking Michela away from me. Forever. As the cab pulled away I could see her head through the back window above the seat. Then she leaned forward and I couldn’t see her anymore. I kept crying. When I got to the hotel my eyes were red and swollen. What had happened to me over the last week? Was I that man who was crying like a baby on the streets of Manhattan?
I packed my bag, I paid my hotel bill, and I called a cab. Then, since things never happen by chance, as I was waiting for my cab I heard Alfred telling a couple, “No joke… for you just the truth. You have made a supernova. Believe me.” And here I thought it was something magical, said by a wise man, so wise that he is homeless. That was his standard line for couples; what a dumbass.
When I left it was raining. It was raining in spite of the fact that outside the cab it was sunny. That rain was only a feeling. When I got on the plane a gentleman sitting next to me swallowed a pill saying it would put him to sleep the whole flight. I asked him for one and I took it. I remember that, before falling asleep, all those emotions I had inside me at that moment had brought back old memories, those love stories you experience as a teenager during the summer. With Michela, at age thirty-five, I relived one of those summer loves. I didn’t think it would have ever happened again. Usually everything at our age becomes more complicated. Sometimes you go out for dinner with a girl and you feel like you’re filling in a questionnaire to see if you’re the right one. With her, I relived the lightness and freshness of those summer encounters. We were two teenagers. Perhaps we were immature, but it felt good and, in the end, that was the only thing that mattered.
That game had made me better. I had made huge progress in learning how to express my emotions. The fact that I was suffering meant that I had taken a giant leap.
Michela had been a precious encounter.
As I was falling asleep on the plane, I remembered Laura. The first time I made love I was about fourteen, and it happened when I was on summer vacation with her. I had known her for three years. I would see her only during the summers because we lived in two different cities. In fact, for me, she had the exotic and erotic charm of a foreigner. At that age, a different city was like a whole other world. The previous year we had become boyfriend and girlfriend, but we hadn’t made love. “I don’t feel ready,” she told me. We didn’t make love, but we kissed for hours. And we did some heavy petting too. It was mostly me who touched her. If we couldn’t stay at my place or at her place, we would go to a small pine grove behind some houses. On those occasions sex would smell like pine. To this very day, when I smell the forest air I think of Laura.
I would spend the entire school year thinking about her. I would tell all my friends that I had a girlfriend even though we didn’t stay in touch over the winter. I never talked to her, not even on the phone, during the school year. It was normal to see each other only in the summer, and to pick things up where we left off. With the exception of the first few days, when we were a little embarrassed.
The following year we made love. In your face, all you who didn’t believe I had a summer girlfriend. It was in the afternoon, all of my friends were at the beach and I had gone over to her place. I remember how nervous I was on the way there, because we more or less knew that it would happen that summer and when she told me, “Come over this afternoon, my parents won’t be home…” I had a strong suspicion. I still remember how to get to her place. From the beach you would have to take a little sandy path full of small bushes, some with thorns. It was hot, the sun was beating down, it was quiet, I turned back to look at the sea. It was calm. Some of the umbrellas were open but most of the people had gone back home for lunch and were now taking a nap. When I got to her place she was lying down on the porch swing, waiting for me. I sat next to her placing her head on my lap, in silence, almost incapable of finding the strength to speak, and since we were still too young, I couldn’t appreciate that quiet. Naturally, it was only an apparent quiet, since I was thinking only about making love to her. We caressed each other a bit, but then we moved to her bedroom with the excuse that it was too hot outside.
The blinds were almost completely drawn. I remember the silence; I could only hear the sound of cicadas. The smell of the sea, that room with a small breath of light, I remember our hot bodies, sweaty, the sheets that stuck to our skin from the humidity. Her skin, her look that said she was a little afraid as I was trying to enter her. The kisses. The desire to promise eternal love. I truly thought I would stay with Laura forever, that she would be the woman of my life. I didn’t think it was possible to desire another. At that time, I was monogamous in the true sense of the word. Only later did I become emotionally monogamous but not physically. Meaning that I am not a sexually monogamous man, but rather an emotionally monogamous man. I can make love to more than one woman, but I can only love one at a time.
With Laura, the idea of other girls was unthinkable. Who knows what happened after, what made me change.
That day at the sea, when I was with her, I was overwhelmed by such beauty and by the power of life. Another drop of happiness and I would have exploded. When that summer ended I thought I was going to die without her. We cried the last day and promised that we would write everyday. There were no cell phones at the time. Not even emails. In the end, we didn’t write at all. Life outside of summer vacation is very different. It distracted us, even from our love. I was a little afraid that during the school year she would find another boyfriend and that’s exactly what happened: she became the girlfriend of another guy who spent his vacations in the same area we did but also lived in the same city. He had been courting her for a while but she always preferred me, except that year. I don’t think I have ever suffered more for a woman. When they arrived at our summer vacation spot, the place where I was usually her boyfriend, she didn’t even have the courage to tell me the truth. She told me she didn’t want to be with me anymore, that it was over between us, and that she didn’t love me anymore. At that point, since I had already suspected she was with that other guy, I gave her my first, “I already know all about it.”
As the years went by I become a master of “I already know all about it.” It’s a technique to make the other confess something you’re suspicious about, by telling them it’s something you already know. Over the years I have refined it, adding the name of someone who provided me the information. Although I’m an expert and a great user of “I already know all about it,” I’ve always been bad at dealing with the consequences of the answer. Using “I already know all about it” is a risk, it’s a bluff, and as such, it requires a good poker face. You must listen to the confirmation of your suspicions with poise and an inscrutable expression. As if you were bluffing at cards. Like when you play “stone face,” a game you do when you are grown man. You and your friends sit down around a table without wearing your pants. Then a girl goes under the table and chooses someone to perform oral sex on. The lucky guy has to wear a “stone face,” meaning that he can’t let the other know it’s happening to him. If he’s discovered, he’s eliminated.
Anyway, that’s how I found out about Laura, with the “I already know all about it.” It felt like somebody had stabbed me. Resigned to the fact that I would never make love to her again and in order to get a little revenge, I got together with a friend of hers, who I knew had been in love with me for a while. Laura got mad when she saw us together and we stopped talking for a while. Then one day we decided we had to talk. We scheduled a meeting, making our respective partners very nervous. She told me that if I left my girlfriend she would leave her boyfriend and we would get back together. I didn’t accept.
What wonderful stories at that age. Like the one with Eva. When I was seventeen I dated a girl named Eva. She didn’t make love with me because she didn’t want to cheat
on her boyfriend, but she would give me great blowjobs. She would say that it wasn’t cheating, and that way she wouldn’t feel guilty. I would spend entire afternoons sitting on her couch with her kneeling in front of me.
I was returning to my usual life. I had been enriched by an experience I had never lived before. Everything had been different with Michela.
The pill threw me into a deep sleep, like a child after a long cry.
I woke up as the plane was landing. I waited for my bag. I couldn’t speak. Because of everything, but I think because of the pill as well. A smile was waiting for me outside the airport. Silvia.
24
Grandma
I went straight to the hospital from the airport. I found my grandma in bed; my mother was sitting next to her in a chair.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
“How is she?”
“She fell asleep a few hours ago. She was up all night. Sometimes it looks like nothing is wrong with her, at others she just babbles and complains about the pain. Anyway, there’s no reason for us to be here now. I’m going home and then I’ll come for the night.”
I looked at my grandma sleeping. “Damn you!” I thought with affection. I kissed her forehead and then I went home. Leaving the hospital I walked my mother to her car.
“How did it go in New York?”
“It went okay.”
“How are you?”
“Fine, fine. Listen, mom, if you want I can spend the night with grandma, I won’t have any trouble staying awake with my jet lag. Then tomorrow you can come and stay with her.”
“Don’t worry about it. I have a lot of things to do, but I should be able to come anyway.”
“Seriously, it doesn’t make sense for both of us to spend the night here.”
“Alright. Be here around eight.”
“Okay. Bye.”
Right on time, at eight, I was at the hospital. My grandma greeted me using the right name. I gave her the present I had bought in New York. The bracelet. “You are a good boy,” she told me. It was something she always said when I did something nice for her.
We stayed up all night. Actually, she would take little naps and then she would wake up. Where did the woman I knew as a child go, that mountain of a woman? The person in front of me at that moment wasn’t her anymore. She looked like her. My grandma had always been a strong woman, a point of reference. She became a widow early in her life, she raised two children on her own, working her entire life and taking care of everything.
“How are you, grandma?”
She looked at me, but it didn’t seem like she heard the question.
“Do you remember what you used to tell me when you took a nap?”
“When?”
“When I was little you would say that you had tripped and fell asleep.”
She didn’t answer. Then she told me, “Tomorrow, when you come here, bring my earrings, the ones with the pearls. They are in the small box in the dresser, on the bottom underneath the underwear.”
“What do you need your earrings for, grandma?”
“Because yesterday grandpa Alberto told me he was going to be here early.”
Whenever she told me about grandpa, I always felt a little bit like crying.
“When did he tell you?”
“Yesterday, he came to visit.”
Sometimes in the past, whenever she said stuff like that, I would try to explain that it was impossible. I would try to make her understand, thinking that if I explained it she would snap out of that spell. Then I learned to encourage her instead and to let her speak freely.
“Were you happy to see him?”
“Of course I was.He told me I was beautiful and if he says so, I believe it. Grandpa is not the type of man who is easy to please. He’s the one who told me to wear my earrings. He said that whenever he sees me wearing them he remembers the day he gave them to me.”
“What else did he say?”
“Nothing. He stayed a little while. He was standing there, next to the chair you’re sitting in, but then your mother was sitting there. They were looking at me. He was caressing her head. Then your mother started to cry and so he left. But he said he’s coming back and that he’ll bring me some ice cream.
Then she stared at me as if she had to tell me the most important thing in the world.
“What’s up, grandma?”
“I would really like some ice cream. I mean now, not when your grandpa comes back. Do you have any?”
“Where do you want me to get ice cream at this hour, grandma? I can’t. I’ll bring you some tomorrow, before grandpa shows up.”
Then I thought that maybe they have one of those vending machines that sell ice cream. I asked one of the nurses and she told me there was one on the first floor by the entrance.
“Wait for me, grandma, I’m going to get you some ice cream.”
I went downstairs to get it and as I was walking I thought that grandma didn’t look too bad after all, especially if she wanted some ice cream, she looked better than the other times. I got her ice cream and I went back to her room. When I got there she was sleeping. What should I do, should I let her sleep? I asked myself.
I woke her.
“Grandma, ice cream.”
“Thank you, Alberto. Sorry, I still don’t have my earrings.”
I had become grandpa once again.
“Grandma, it’s Giacomo, your grandson.”
“I know, I’m not crazy.”
She ate her ice cream. It was one of those with a wooden stick in the middle. As usual, she didn’t unwrap the whole thing, but she peeled it as if it was a banana. The stick remained in the wrapper so she didn’t get her hands dirty I think. Even that night she wouldn’t give up her style. As she was eating her ice cream, I told her about Michela.
“You know, grandma, over the last few days I’ve played a lot, like you always told me to do.”
“Good, you have to keep on playing. After, promise you’ll go back and play more, okay… But don’t play with the Chinese.”
“I promise. But what do you have against Chinese people?”
“They are vicious, I can tell… And are you happy?”
“Right now I’m not doing too well, because the friend I was playing with is not here and I miss her, but I am happy I got to play with her.”
I was talking to her and she was looking at her ice cream, as if deciding where to bite next. She was really enjoying it, as if she was a little girl.
Then she said, “Do you remember, Alberto, when I would put on your wool underwear?”
Was she speaking to herself or was my grandpa really there? I kind of believe in that stuff, and I was getting goose bumps. She had told me the story about the wool underwear a bunch of times. Every Saturday my grandma would wear my grandpa’s wool undershirt and long johns to stretch them out a bit, make them softer, and most importantly, to make them itch less. That’s because my grandma was bigger than my grandpa. That way, during cold winters, he could wear warm, itch-free wool underwear. It was “old school” fabric softener.
I looked at her and to break the silence I said something people usually say in those circumstances, “If you go on like this, they’ll let you out in a few days.”
She kept on looking at her ice cream as if it was the first time she saw one. After a moment of silence she said, “But I have to die. Don’t you know that I have to die?”
Those words had caught me off guard.
“What are you talking about?”
“Yes, yes, I’ll finish this ice cream and then I’ll die. I know it.”
“Stop talking nonsense.”
She kept looking at her ice cream and then she shrugged her shoulders as if she was a little girl and she meant to say “whatever.” I was used to her strange behavior, but that scared me. I thought about all the weird things that happened to people before they die. Her words had frightened me.
Then, in the same childish tone, she said, “You fee
l pain and you’re happy, but I can’t feel pain anymore. I can’t feel anything. In life, when you don’t feel anything, not even pain, you’re waiting to die… I’ll eat this ice cream and then I’ll die.”
“Grandma, stop it.”
“Come on, Giacomo, be a good boy. Help me die in peace, don’t be like that.”
“If you keep this up, I’ll leave.”
She shrugged her shoulders again. I was tearing up.
Anyway, rather than just acting like a little girl, she was turning into one. In that white night gown, with pink lace and that small ribbon in the middle. She had become so small and fragile that when I helped her sit up in bed, I was afraid she would break.
She finished her ice cream and put the stick on the nightstand. I was afraid, I was watching her movements as if I expected her to fall down at any moment. A few minutes after finishing her ice cream, she hadn’t died yet.
She hadn’t died. “Goddamnit, grandma, you scared me.”
I stayed up all night. Grandma would talk a bit, look silently outside the window, and take small naps. Then, early the next morning the hospital woke up, lights turned on, nurses came to change her bed, in other words, the usual commotion before the doctors’ rounds. At seven, grandma was awake. When they served breakfast, I left. I gave her a kiss.
“I’ll see you tonight. I’ll bring your earrings.”
“Bye, Giacomo.”
At eight, I was in my bed. I collapsed. I even woke up after a few hours and it took me a while to understand where I was. The red light on the television gave me a clue as to where I was.
When I woke up in the afternoon, I learned from my mother that grandma had died at ten.
25
Mom
My grandma was one of the most important people in my life, but what surprised me in the days following her death was the fact that I was ready to accept her passing. It was a profoundly melancholic kind of sadness, but a serene one. I could feel her love inside me. An eternal love, made of many small gestures that had always made our relationship special. My grandma had been a balm throughout my life.