by Fabio Volo
Perhaps I needed more time. It’s like when you stare at the sun for a few seconds. After, wherever you look, there will be a black spot. That’s what happened with her. Everything I experienced reminded me of her image. Michela was everywhere, in the crushed breadcrumbs on the table after dinner, in the slow turning of the bicycle wheel as I carried it up the stairs, Michela was an erotic thought as I was drinking coffee.
I tried waking up in the morning next to a woman, but felt a sense of uneasiness. Sometimes I would collapse, exhausted, after fucking, and find myself without the strength to get up and make her understand it was time to leave. Those are the nights when you fall asleep naked and in the morning you find your dick stuck to the sheets. Mornings of discomfort. Sometimes it was enough to find a hair or smell a stranger on the pillow. It’s not nice when I force myself to live like that. And by the way, I’ve always had a strange relationship with women’s hair. When it’s on her head it’s one of my favorite things, something truly fascinating, but when it’s detached it disgusts me.
Waking up next to a woman you care nothing about is truly squalid and uncomfortable. Especially on Sunday, when you are overcome by the panic of having to spend the whole day with her. Once I pretended I had to go to work. I got dressed, walked downstairs with her, said goodbye on the street, walked around the block, and went back to bed. These kinds of stories are useless… When I was younger, one girl caught me going through her wallet as she woke up. She left screaming that I was going to steal her money. I didn’t get a chance to explain that I was looking for her driver’s license because I couldn’t remember her name. Other times I would wake up next to women who, before leaving, wanted to give me their number, so I pretended I didn’t know how to save it in my phone. “Why don’t you put it in my phone?” I would ask them. And then, after they left, I would scroll through my contacts to see what their names were.
One morning I looked outside my bathroom window and saw that the courtyard, where months earlier I created my snow angel, was now full of flowers. My angel imprisoned in the snow wasn’t there anymore. At that very moment I received a message from Monica. I'd started seeing her again. Thinking back on the many categories I had devised with Michela, I should have included her as “top number of break-ups.” I must have ended it at least a thousand times, but it was always after we made love. I believed it every time. But our goodbyes always ended up being see-you-laters. It was enough to send a message like, “What’s up?” and half an hour later we would be all over each other again. But lately not even Monica made me feel like she used to.
I read her text, “Can we meet later? I want you.”
For the first time I answered, “No.”
The hate-filled messages that followed over the next few days didn’t surprise me much. “It’s better than getting beat up by her boyfriend,” I thought.
Two months had passed since my trip to New York, since I left Michela, and I still couldn’t find peace. One day I thought that my sudden departure from New York had robbed me of one more day with Michela and inside me I felt the desire to go back to her and redeem that day. Perhaps that was exactly what I was missing: one more day.
I had already thought about going back to Michela many times before. I didn’t tell anyone, not even Silvia. The first time I thought about it was when I went through my grandma’s things with my mother. As I was opening drawers, boxes, and trunks I remember how she used to tell us kids that when she was little her father had given her a magic bag, but that she couldn’t remember where she put it. Any image or photograph you put in the bag would be returned to you the following day… as the real thing. So my cousins and I would spend days in search of this bag, cutting out images of the things we wanted from magazines. Even if it was something bigger than a bag. Once my cousin asked grandma if the bag could have given him a tank. We had a folder filled with magazine clippings: bicycles, spaceships, trains, horses. Once I cut out a little baby because I wanted a brother.
As I was going through my grandma’s things I thought I might find that bag, and I wondered what I would have put in it. I didn’t want any material things. No new cars, money, or houses. If I could have chosen only one thing, or perhaps three, like with Aladdin’s lamp, I wouldn’t have asked for anything but: moments, situations, instants.
That day at my grandma’s I discovered that what I wanted most were the things I had lost. I started to think I would have liked to have back those Sundays I spent with my dad. And the times he picked me up in his arms. To relive that afternoon with Laura, our first time. The way grandma caressed my head, her lasagne and the sound of her voice. I wanted to go back to the day I smashed Andrea’s car and stop myself from doing it. The mornings on the tram with Michela’s mystery. My dog that died and that I had missed as if it was a person. When he died it was as if a member of my family had died. Once I even had a fight with someone who told me, “Oh well, of course you’re sad, but it’s just a dog, it’s not like it was a person.” I suffered as if a person had died. Maybe because he seemed to be the only one who really understood and loved me. The day he died, I was the one who took him to the vet to be put down. There had been three injections. The first to calm him down, the second to make him fall asleep, and the third was the lethal one. I’ll never forget his eyes when I took him to die. I had the impression he knew where we were going and, as they gave him the last injection, I knew he understood everything.
If I had found that bag, I wouldn’t have wanted new things. I would have liked my old ones back. But maybe my real desire was to relive everything I had experienced with Michela.
Another time I seriously thought about going back to New Yorkwas after spending an evening with Silvia. At that time I would often go with her to look at apartments. The real-estate agency belonged to a friend of ours. One day she found a place she really liked and asked me if I could go with her one evening after dinner to see how it looked at that time of night. We ended up spending the whole evening together, sitting on the floor of the empty house. Two pizzas and a couple of beers. The place was beautiful, just like the description in the ad. I have always had a great imagination, and so whenever I read an ad for a house all it took was a couple of details and I could fill in the rest and make the place beautiful. Depending on the description, I imagined them with bright windows, painted in the colors I like. Then, when I’d finally see them, everything would fall apart.
In the end Silvia decided to rent that house. We’d had a very nice evening and maybe she chose it for that reason. It had a good energy, it was a good place to chat, it was quiet and it had beautiful windows that opened onto a courtyard.
That evening, as Silvia spoke about her situation with Carlo, she made me realize many things about Michela and me. She helped me indirectly.
“All my life I’ve always tried to solve the problems of the people I love. I saw them suffering and I would have done anything for them. I always put other people’s happiness before my own. I always thought that I'd always land on my feet, that I would always pick myself up. But now I’m asking for more attention. Looks like I'm the spoiled one. You know that, Carlo, you know how I am. Sorry, I called you Carlo.”
“Be careful. I didn’t mind that grandma called me Alberto, but I can’t be called Carlo. Please… Do you remember when grandma called me Alberto?”
“Of course I remember.”
“The other day I was thinking that after having spent my entire childhood trying to act like my dad for my mother’s benefit, I ended up filling in as my grandpa for my grandma. I was the man of the house.”
“We have been kicked outside of ourselves and we can’t blame anyone other than ourselves.”
“Can we still go back inside ourselves? Get back on the trajectory we lost? Our way of feeling?”
“I think so, we have to take the risk.”
“I’ll take the risk and I’ll eat your pizza, too, since you don’t want it anymore.”
“Take it… Do you want to know what I
realized, Giacomo?—See? I used the right name this time—I realized that it’s beautiful to be with somebody when that relationship helps you rise to your own height.”
“What do you mean ‘rise to your own height?’”
“When I’m with Carlo, I’m less than what I could have been in my life. But he didn’t even realize it. He didn’t care whether or not I made my dreams come true, I didn’t even think he knew I had dreams, either way it was all the same to him. What I did or who I was in my life wasn’t important, the only thing that mattered was who I was to him. I was perfect for his idea of life, perfectly suited to it. He was the one doing stuff and I would follow him. He has always seen me that way. My actions were sterile; that’s why I didn’t feel alive in that relationship. In fact, he never noticed my little changes and my crisis. He didn’t take them seriously. It’s my fault, too. His love wasn’t enough, because his wasn’t the kind of love I wanted. It wasn’t the love of a man, but that of a child. And that explains how he reacted to the situation between us: with moral blackmail, like children do. His love was a craving for attention, and that’s all.”
“I always thought he knew how important it was for you to follow your dreams and I thought he only pretended he didn’t because he was afraid that if you realized them, he would have to make room for your needs, too. By making your dreams come true, you would have grown apart, you would have gone to a place where he couldn’t have followed you.”
“I want a relationship where both are free to walk down their own path, knowing that the other can join them when needed. I am the one to blame, because I didn’t want to find out who I aspire to be, out of fear of discovering what I ‘could’ have been. I want to rise to my height, whatever that may be. Even though I don’t know what will happen in the next few days. It’s a mess, but I feel free again, and it’s great.”
That evening I understood why I liked being with Michela. As I was going home, the radio played Poles Apart by Pink Floyd, the album that was playing when Michela and I made love the first time. My life was full of signs. Every day. Those notes convinced me to go back and repeat that piece of interrupted life. If I couldn’t give her up the first time around, after talking to her for only ten minutes at a café, how could I do it after I got to know her better, after I smelled her, experienced her? After I’d seen how she was and how much I liked being with her? She was the door I had the courage to open and that now I couldn’t shut. And even if it was only a day I was entitled to, I would have gone there to take it back. It was only one day, I knew that, but it was a day with Michela. A day at my own height.
27
At My Height
This time, however, I checked to make sure she was there before leaving. I didn’t want to risk getting to New York and not finding her there. I called her office and I made an appointment, pretending I was a client. On her daily planner, for Friday at five, she had an appointment with me, without knowing it was me. I arrived in Manhattan on that Friday at two. I scheduled the flight back for the following Tuesday. It was crazy, but I was used to it by now. I had left fearing she wouldn’t want to see me again, or that perhaps she was already with someone else, perhaps another mini-engagement, or that she might be annoyed with me.
I got to her office at five. When she came to the door and saw me she stopped breathing. It’s impossible to describe her expression. She immediately closed the door and kissed me, hugging me as if I had been away at war. I had never experienced a happiness like that, not in my entire life. To this day I still think that what I felt at that moment gave meaning to everything I had done.
I took her face in my hands.They were wet from her tears. After kisses, hugs, silences, interrupted words, we left. I was her last appointment for the day. We went downstairs to the Doma Café, where I waited for her the first time.
“I’m here for the day I’m entitled to.”
“I waited for you for so long. I hoped you’d come back again.”
“Our story, since we first saw each other, has been filled with waiting.”
“How long are you staying?”
“I’m leaving on Tuesday. I can’t stay longer. Plus, I didn’t know how you would react. I hope I can stay with you longer than I did the day I left.”
“But I have to leave Sunday night, I have to be in Boston and I can’t postpone the trip.”
“Well, that’s one day more than what I had counted on, and one day less than I had hoped for.”
From Friday night to Sunday evening we spent every minute together. I canceled my hotel reservation and stayed at her place. Seeing that house again, that bed, that bathroom, was a constant source of pleasure. We were happy to be together once again. The CDs I bought were in the kitchen next to the stereo, including the one from our wedding. Michela and I realized that explaining the magic of our encounter would have been foolish. This famous quote applied, “Life is not what happens, but what you do about what happens.”
The most absurd thing about our whole encounter, however, had yet to happen. Michela’s ultimate game.
The first evening we made love for a long time; after, during a moment of silence, Michela asked me, “Would you have a baby with me?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
I thought that was the first time she showed her weakness since I had met her.
“I’ve been thinking about it over the past two months. I even talked about it with Silvia, more than once. Let’s say that you’re the only woman with whom I’d consider doing it. But I don’t know if I want that to happen now.” After a few moments of silence, I added, “I told you what happened to Silvia and Carlo. If it wasn’t for Margherita she would have left a long time ago. Maybe that’s what frightens me. I wouldn’t want to turn a child into a lock.”
“Your friend’s problem is not Margherita, but her husband. She’s going through a crisis without having the support of a mature partner. It’s exactly what I was trying to tell you that day in the bathtub. Remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
“It’s a question of courage. Clearly, Carlo is a coward and immature, and he doesn’t know how to handle his responsibilities. Like most men. He is not courageous. He is not a man and like non-men, he pretends he can’t see. Would you like to know what the easiest solution would be?”
“What?”
“His telling her to leave, because he cannot stand living with a woman who doesn’t want to be with him. The best thing would be for him to act as if he truly loved her, instead of saying I love you and behaving otherwise.”
“But maybe he hasn’t even completely understood that she doesn’t love him anymore, even though Silvia’s told him many times.”
“I think it’s possible for somebody to love you without noticing it. But when somebody that used to love you stops feeling that way it’s impossible not to notice. People avoid talking about it because of other reasons, such as the difficulty of breaking up, the fear of being abandoned, the feeling of failure, the desire to save face with family and friends, because of pride. And then there’s the selfishness. This situation is very similar to the one experienced by a coworker of mine when I was in Italy. The only difference is that, rather than leaving her husband, she started going out with one of our colleagues. You know, when the man you’re with makes you feel less desirable than an old shoe, it’s enough for someone else to look at you in a certain way or to say a couple of nice things for you to explode. In the end she got caught, and thus she went from neglected wife to whore in a matter of minutes, whereas he, the husband, poor thing, works the whole day. Classic.”
As Michela was talking, while we were lying on the bed, I began to understand what she meant that day in the bathtub.
Ever since I told her that I would have had a child with her, but didn’t know when, something changed in her. She was disappointed. But she never said anything; maybe it was just my imagination.
Saturday night, before going to dinner, I gave her the presen
t I bought for her. In a little box I put a power adaptor and the small iron thing you put on the stove so the percolator fits. To me, those were the two objects that represented our story, two inventions that are necessary for two different standards to meet. That’s what she had done, her game had brought us together. Then we went to BBQ on the corner of 23rdStreet and 8th Avenue, and we ordered ribs. Baby pork ribs. A super greasy place where they serve these pork chops covered in sauce with a baked potato wrapped in foil and a slice of cornbread. In other words, something rather hard to digest: in fact, we fell asleep late. We got to know each other eating burgers and we wanted to say goodbye in the same style. We laughed a lot looking at the people around us. A surreal situation. Entire families celebrating who knows what with huge glasses of margaritas of all different colors. It was while we were eating those delicacies that I asked Michela what was going to happen after my departure. We were back to the same place we were that day, as we sat facing the ocean.
“I don’t want to suffer again, like I have over the past two months. In order to stay together and move forward, I think that our story needs a deeper change. If we lived as we have until today, we would only make matters worse. You know that, that’s something we’ve always agreed on. That’s why I think it’s best if we don’t see each other anymore.”
“Can I call you if I happen to be in New York?” I couldn’t have said anything dumber than that. It was exactly the opposite of what she had just said. Given the way our story had started and the way we lived it, we needed to do something more courageous.
Answering that stupid question she rightly said, “It’s better you don’t.”
From that moment on, I started to blank. I got lost and started saying one stupid thing after the other.
“Are you serious?”
“A bit.”
“I find it hard to leave you. I can’t even be with other women. Don’t you like me anymore? Are you seeing someone else?”