Everything’s ready for my second wedding. The only thing missing is the bride’s consent.
Oscar extends his arm, ready to walk her once again to the altar.
“Shall we go, sweetheart?”
Paola hesitates, blinded by emotion. She never suspected a thing.
I smile down at Paola from the altar.
“Don’t leave me standing here like an idiot,” I think to myself. For an instant, I feel a surge of terror that she’s about to turn on her heel and leave. But everyone here is rooting for me. My friends all go on clapping and cheering. The organ goes on playing the wedding march at full volume. My heart is racing at two hundred beats a minute. It hardly matters because my heart has plenty of energy stored up—I’ll be turning it in still fully charged.
Paola stands motionless.
The seconds tick past endlessly.
I know, I know, I didn’t play fair, but I needed the help of all the people I love best to win her back. After all, it was the one truly important thing I absolutely had to achieve in these hundred days.
When Paola extends her arm to her father so he can walk her to the altar, the applause turns into a standing ovation. And my heart is transformed into a Roman candle.
* * *
It’s called a renewal-of-vows ceremony, and it’s the best ceremony that’s been invented yet. Marriage is a gift box full of hope, and renewing those vows means that you opened that gift box and you liked what you got.
* * *
“Do you, Paola De Nardis, once again take as your lawfully wedded husband this man, Lucio Battistini?”
She smiles at me. She hasn’t stopped weeping once throughout the ceremony.
“Yes, of course I do.”
“And do you, Lucio Battistini, once again take as your lawfully wedded bride this woman, Paola De Nardis?”
Paola is beautiful. Even in a simple yellow shift with a coral scarf, which, however elegant it looks on her, is no substitute for a white wedding dress, she’s still the same excited young girl she was twelve years ago.
“I do.”
Don Walter smiles.
“Then I hereby declare you, once again, man and wife!”
A burst of applause starts up unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. I kiss Paola like I’ve never kissed her before. A kiss I wish would never end.
* * *
We leave the church in a hail of rice, laughter, and applause. We have the kids in our arms. We get caught up tossing handfuls of basmati rice at Aramis, who has already hooked up with Paola’s cutest colleague. Everything’s perfect. We set Lorenzo and Eva down and start the most demanding part of the day: saying good-bye and kissing everyone.
The longest hug is with Umberto. Everything I have is wrapped up in that hug. What an extraordinary friend.
I slip an envelope into his pocket.
“Read it afterward . . .”
“After what?” he asks, and I have to say, he’s never been the sharpest tool in the shed.
“Afterward.”
A half smile appears on his face.
“Ah, got it . . .”
When he opens it, there won’t be much to read. Just a few words. I hope he understands them.
Go right ahead, and don’t think twice, old friend. I don’t mind a bit.
I’ve always known that he’s in love with Paola, and that he’s bottled it up, out of loyalty and friendship. I know it from the way he looks at her, the way he smiles at her. Feelings don’t need words. I just know it, and that’s enough. And I also know that he’ll stand by her in any kind of trouble, that he’ll never abandon her. I hope that he also finds a way of making her fall in love with him, and that he can become a substitute father for my children. If there’s a right man, he’s the one. After all, it’s nothing more than a promotion, from uncle to Papà. I couldn’t wish for anything better.
I’m then swept up by Oscar in an affectionate embrace. This time, he’s the one with something for me.
“Keep this. It’s for tomorrow.”
He hands me a paper sack. I don’t need to open it to know what’s inside. There’s a smudge of grease at the bottom.
* * *
The afternoon passes by happily. Umberto organized the reception in the agritourism bed-and-breakfast nearby, where there’s also a pool. I swim with Lorenzo, who, now that he’s comfortable in water, can’t seem to stop doing cannonballs. We look like any happy group of friends on vacation.
We dance to old sixties hits on a jerry-rigged dance floor by the pool: Oscar and Martina have gone wild—they look like overweight versions of John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. When the first slow dance finally starts, I grab my dance partner and squeeze her close. Who knows why slow dances have gone out of fashion? If you haven’t ever experienced a slow dance, you don’t know what you’re missing. I hope my daughter never forgets these four minutes spent in her father’s arms, a foot and a half above the floor, under the smiling eyes of her mother, who’s dancing with Lorenzo just a short distance away.
* * *
At six o’clock, just before the triumphant arrival of the aperitifs, my cell phone rings—it’s my assistant coach, Giacomo.
“Lucio . . . we won the semifinals! 9 to 8! Their goalie fumbled at the last minute.”
I rejoice like a young boy. Now, this is definitely a perfect day.
An almost perfect day.
* * *
Absolute perfection is attained a few hours later. Everyone’s left the bed-and-breakfast; Umberto reserved rooms for the rest of the guests at a hotel in town. For us, instead, two magnificent stone-lined suites, with a communicating door and a view of the mountains. A perfect vacation spot.
Once the children are asleep, I watch Paola undressing for bed. It was a wonderful day, full of excitement and feelings, though it was a tiring one. But the adrenaline still works for me. If they were ever to do a drug test on me, I’d be disqualified for life.
I draw her close. I brush her naked shoulder with my fingers. She lets me.
We haven’t made love in almost five months.
I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. But just to help you fill in the blanks, I’ll give you these hints: we did it three times (something that hadn’t happened in eight years); we laughed like a couple of idiots; I bruised one of her hips against a bed knob; I banged my knee against a corner of the nightstand; and luckily we didn’t wake the children.
We fell asleep, arms wrapped around each other, at four-thirty in the morning.
Now I can say that it’s been an absolutely perfect day.
−1
Last night, we forgot to close the shutters securely and the sun strides rudely into our room. I half open my sleep-dusty eyes. Paola’s still asleep, and even the children, in the next room with the communicating door, are unusually quiet. I get out of bed with some effort; an intermittent stab of pain is torturing my hip. If I stop breathing, I feel practically okay. Aside from a tingling sensation spreading over my whole body. It’s like an annoying internal itch that I can’t scratch, as if I’d swallowed a beehive and now the bees were all trying to get out at once.
I drag myself into the bathroom. I put in my contact lenses with some difficulty, and I take a longer shower than usual. Hot, cold, I try all the settings to put a stop to this intolerable prickly itch. But there’s nothing the water can do to help. I take three ibuprofen tablets, and they give me a few hours of illusory peace.
When I return to the room in my bathrobe, Paola’s already woken up the kids. We go downstairs for breakfast and I play a game with Lorenzo and Eva we decide to call Mister Muffin—we make a fat chocolate plumcake argue with a smaller blueberry muffin, which we’ve decided is his wife. They can’t make up their minds whether to vacation at the beach or in the mountains this year. Before they can agree on where to go for th
eir summer holidays, we merrily scarf them down.
Paola is the only one who can’t seem to smile today. I’ve done pretty well over the past few weeks. All through the journey, I’ve managed to conceal my pain and anxiety from the kids—I want them to remember a smiling father, funny and in good shape.
After lunch, we get going. I’m driving. I turn on the air-conditioning because the temperature today is close to a hundred. The vents immediately spew out a delightful cool breeze that keeps us alive.
* * *
I turn onto the highway. Heading north.
I turn on the car radio, with no idea of who invented it, and slip in my cubs’ favorite CD. We sing along at the top of our lungs, off-key, and laughing as we sing.
“There were two chameleons and a parakeet, two little iguanas, and a pink flamingo, the cat, the mouse, and the rhinoceros, were already lined up. The only ones missing were the two green dragons!”
We’re almost at the Swiss border when the kids’ choir in the backseat drops off to sleep. I take advantage of the opportunity to put on something else.
Elvis.
“Always on My Mind.”
Our song.
Paola recognizes it after the first chord.
Elvis’s velvety voice cuts in after seven unmistakable seconds.
Paola clutches my hand and squeezes hard, unable to look me in the eye. The car seems to understand the moment—it switches over to cruise control and autopilot and continues along the highway. We look at the landscape sliding past and we listen. When Elvis recorded this song, the singer had just broken up with Priscilla, and his regret is interpreted to perfection.
When the song ends, just like in the movies, the sign appears, as if by magic: SWISS BORDER, 1 KM. We’re here.
It’s almost lunchtime. We stop to eat something in a little family-run restaurant. I pick at a bowl of pasta with a lackluster appetite. Real hunger vanished long ago. I watch my children, trying to memorize every moment of that lunch. We don’t talk much, as if it were an ordinary lunch on any given Saturday.
* * *
The final good-bye takes place at a bus stop, where a long-distance coach is waiting that will take me to Lugano. I load my small light suitcase into the luggage receptacle in the belly of the bus, then kiss the kids and hug Paola. An embrace that never seems to end. We told the children that Papà has to travel for work. A very long job. I’m going to work in a gym in Switzerland, a place where everyone needs to lose weight, on account of all the chocolate. Someday I know that Paola will find the courage to tell them the truth. But today is not that day.
The time has come to give Paola a very special gift.
“This is for you.”
I hand her a gift-wrapped package. She looks at me.
“It’s not her birthday!” Eva objects.
“I know, but for her last birthday I got her present all wrong. So I got her a new one.”
Paola tears open the wrapping paper. Inside is an oversized school notebook, the kind you have in junior high school. It looks used. She doesn’t understand.
She opens to the first page and her breath catches in her throat.
Inside, I’ve copied out by hand all of The Little Prince, without skipping a single word and doing my best to make my handwriting legible. I worked on it in secret for most of a month.
“This is an edition you don’t have. There’s only one copy.”
Paola bursts into tears and throws her arms around me. This time, I outdid myself.
To tell the truth, it wasn’t my idea. Roberto suggested it. He was disappointed when I brought back the original first edition of Le petit prince.
This hug with Paola seems to go on forever. When she pulls away, her face is streaked with tears. They’re tears of joy. I haven’t made her weep with joy in I don’t know how long.
It’s time to go, but I don’t seem capable of boarding the bus. A kiss, another kiss, yet another kiss. It’s hard to decide which kiss will be the last. I’m stalling here. I say stupid things, just to make the kids laugh. I’m so good at saying stupid things. I hug Lorenzo, then Eva. But I can’t overdo it. They can’t guess that this is anything but so long, see you again soon. Arrivederci.
“Do you want us to drive you there?” Paola insists.
“No, really, thanks.”
Elephants take their last journey alone. She has many hours of driving ahead of her. I’d give anything to go back with them. But I have nothing to offer in exchange.
I give Paola one last sweet kiss, and a horn blares. The bus driver has run out of patience. I break away and head for the door. Only then do I hear the phrase that I’ve been hoping for for almost the past hundred days.
“Ciao, amore mio.”
My heart kindles with flames of joy. I smile at Paola and board the bus.
All I remember of the next minute is a steady stream of tears and a bus slowly pulling out.
My face is glued to the window as I watch the little trio of my heart dwindling into the distance. I send a telepathic “I love you” to Paola. She waves good-bye from far away. She must have received it, loud and clear.
Then she stands there, on the scorching hot asphalt, holding a child’s hand in each of hers, until the bus becomes a dot in the blazing sun.
I imagine her regaining her composure, smiling at the kids, and getting back in the car. She’s always been a great actress.
* * *
Seen from outside, the clinic I’ve chosen might just as easily be a seaside hotel in Rimini.
I’m greeted by a physician, Dr. Patrick Zurbriggen, with whom I’ve exchanged a few e-mails. He speaks Italian with a highly comical German accent and has an over-vigorous handshake.
He explains the various phases of what is going to be a very short stay with them. He never mentions the words assisted suicide. But that’s what we’re talking about. It won’t be a doctor who takes my life. I’ll do that myself. Swiss law allows that, but it requires that the person who wishes to take advantage of the “service” (I love the fact that they refer to it as a service) must be fully informed of the alternatives and capable of making a rational decision.
* * *
My new home.
Single room.
I have a reservation for just one night. Like in a motel.
And, in fact, my room looks a lot like the Bates Motel.
A Swiss Bates Motel.
Two hundred square feet. At least it’s spacious.
The walls are an anxious celery green.
A wooden dresser.
A metal bed with white sheets.
A framed picture on the wall, with a reproduction of a watercolor of Lake Lugano. Or maybe some other lake.
Gauzy white curtains, fluttering in the breeze, straight out of a horror flick.
A pair of French doors leading out onto the tiny balcony, six feet by three.
All around are the grounds. No horizon line. Just the greenery of nature and blue sky. A natural prison.
Also, a large, immaculate bathroom, the kind you can enter even in a wheelchair.
A clean little motel that costs as much as a five-star hotel. Actually, as much as a week’s stay in a five-star hotel.
Anyway, no one’s going to complain afterward.
Here, the word afterward doesn’t exist.
* * *
A male nurse sticks his head in the door. He’s a dead ringer for Ralph Malph from Happy Days, and he asks me in a workable Italian if everything’s okay.
I lie and tell him yes.
He informs me that he’ll be back around seven for dinner. I ask him what’s on the menu. A rhetorical question, really. All I expect is standard hospital fare, a grilled chicken breast, instant mashed potatoes, and a discount-chain fruit salad.
Instead, the answer is surprising: rigatoni with
ragù, chicken breasts with roast potatoes, and a slice of Sacher torte with whipped cream. Maybe they’re planning to kill me with a hyperglycemic collapse.
Ralph Malph leaves after flashing me a big smile.
My executioner is very likable. Well, that’s something.
* * *
I move my chair out onto the balcony. I sit down. I take a deep breath.
I remove my disposable contact lenses, and the world goes blurry and out of focus. The trees and the sky are no longer distinct.
Those are my last pair of contact lenses. I don’t have a pair for tomorrow. That doesn’t matter.
I grab the paper sack that Oscar gave me. It’s very greasy by now, and the contents are perfectly familiar. A doughnut.
Oscar is special. He isn’t a father-in-law.
I look at my sugary new friend.
Sweet smelling. Inviting. Almost sexy.
None of those bad things they say about her are true. Or if they are, I don’t care.
The first bite is a pure orgasm.
I chew patiently. Slowly, without haste, savoring every instant.
I sense the sugar granules dissolving on my tongue.
It’s almost two days old, but to me it tastes like the nectar of the gods.
Another bite.
I don’t think about a thing.
It’s just me and my doughnut.
I close my eyes.
I can even hear the sea, like when you put a shell up to your ear.
A rustle of air distracts me.
I turn.
I open my eyes.
On the railing to my right a little bird has just landed.
At least I think it’s a little bird. I no longer have my contact lenses.
I bring my face closer to see it better.
It’s a sparrow.
100 Days of Happiness Page 28