by Anna Chillon
He clutched my fingers and put them on his enlarged penis. It was hot, pushing against the fabric, even making me doubt that he was made of stone.
“Does that feel like the cock of a man who doesn’t want you?”
“But you don’t care,” I whirled. “You’ve decided not to fuck me and you won’t.”
“Stop crying.”
“I can’t !” I sobbed Louder.
“Damn it, Giada. You don’t cry if I seriously hurt you and you cry for this?” His grip tightened on the steering wheel. “I can’t believe it.”
He shook his head and the car turned sharply. Vincent drove into a large square in the industrial area and parked next to a hedge.
With dry gestures he locked the doors and removed the keys from the ignition. He undid both the seat belts. “Come here,” he said, patting his knees with his hands.
My hair must’ve been ridiculous and my face streamed with mascara. I cleaned my cheeks vigorously, and obeyed like a hopeless puppy by mounting him. He opened his belt in a hurry, pulled his penis out of his pants and put a condom on from the glove compartment.
“Come on, little woman,” he moved the flaps of his dark jacket out of the way, guiding me down on to him.
I let him in a little and I stopped; it was still a surprise for me to feel how he invaded me so fully, I had to force myself to let it in further.
“Come on, be brave, you can do better,” he urged.
He slid warm and extraordinarily, stretching my interior gradually, I could just about bear it.
I threw myself against his chest with a satisfied sigh and he embraced me.
“Better?”
A magnificent feeling. I wanted to spend the rest of my life like this, feeling Vincent hard inside me and all wrapped around me. It wasn’t just lust, it was something more complete and complex.
“I want to stay like this forever. Can we?”
“No, baby, but we can tonight, if you want.” He rubbed my arms. “You're trembling.”
It wasn’t because I was cold; he was right, it had been a trying afternoon. “I don’t think I can do it for too long. Maybe just for a while.”
Clutching at him like a monkey, he rocked me gently, my head leaning on his shoulder. We stayed almost still in silence.
“Vince, what was in the cigarette?” I asked in a faint voice.
He whistled between his teeth, realizing that I was referring to the cigarette he had been passed by Niccolò. “When you want to get something, you wrap me like a spoilt puppy, and when I lower my guard I realize you’re too alert,” he said, smoothing my hair.
“What was it?” I plucked.
Another caress. “Only tobacco inside. Coke on the outside.”
“On the outside?”
“You dampen it a bit and roll it in the coke before smoking it.”
“You smoke coke?”
“I don’t go looking for it, but I don’t refuse it if it turns up when I’m in the mood.”
“Does Dad know?”
“Yes sure.”
“Does he know all the worst parts of you?”
“Not all the worst.”
It was strange to be able to talk to him while he was still inside me: it filled every word with deep intimacy.
“And you of him?”
“Yes, I certainly know the worst of Aron. It's not a long list: your father’s sorted his head out over the years, he's a good person.”
My lips brushed his neck, I slipped my tongue out and licked his skin, tasting the bitter aftershave. “Can I try it next time?”
I felt him pulsing, unable to stay still in his shelter. “Only when you're forty-three.”
“What you said is very hypocritical.”
“Hypocritical, presumptuous... anything you want. Now, though, move, baby.”
He held my waist and moved me, but it wasn’t enough. With a nervous impulse he blocked me against the steering wheel and moved under me.
“Two houses and four beds at our disposal, and you force me to fuck you in your car like a whore.”
“Gently...” I whispered. “You’re hurting me!”
“Don’t complain, you wanted it didn’t you? Now take it, baby. Take it all!”
He arched and pointed his feet and pressed me greedily onto his penis a few times, crashing into me and slamming my head into the roof. At the height of pleasure, he gave a rabid outburst covered only by my shrieks. Then he gradually relaxed onto the seat, his fingers stiff from the deep grip on my hips.
Peace invaded my pussy taking away the violence of longing, but leaving a trace of bitterness.
Vincent threw his head back with a sigh, his wrinkles deep on his forehead.
“My list is a little longer than your father's,” he said, staring at the roof.
I got back on the passenger seat, arranging my skirt over wet thighs. He didn’t move a finger to help me or keep me there, he actually turned his eyes to the window. Since he was obstinately looking out of his side, I looked out of mine wondering which of the past and future ghosts we were surrounded by was watching us.
I knew that he wasn’t a saint, and that sometimes he struggled to control himself. I’d learned that from our first night together. If he thought of me as a helpless fragile girl, a completely ignorant victim of the complicated man she had in front of him, he was grossly wrong.
“I'm not as naïve as you think and I know more than you imagine.” I held my tummy with both hands, it had had more than enough that day. “For example I know about your father.”
He shook his head and hit his knuckles against the window, causing condensation to slide down the glass. “Adele?”
“Yes, Mum told me after lunch with the Costa’s. I asked her about him.”
He turned and put his hand on the gearshift. His eyes seemed darker. “What for? Weren’t you concentrating on Simon after lunch?”
That’s what I’d thought. “Apparently not.”
“What did Adele tell you?”
“Forget it.”
“No, I want to know. Maybe if I fill in the gaps you’ll stop bringing my Dad up.” He was sharp, but it wasn’t because of me, or at least that’s what I wanted to believe.
I confessed what I’d learnt from the beginning. “She said that your father had acquitted a rapist: as soon as he came out the criminal went to look for him, but found your mother in his place. They must have quarrelled, he attacked and killed her. “It disgusted me that I was able to expose a drama of that gravity in a few words, but it was the only way I could get to the bottom of it. “Mum said you’d begged your father to stop defending people like him,” I added.
“I did.” He removed the condom and did his trousers up to deal with the thorny subject. “What else did she tell you?”
“That your Dad started drinking and died shortly afterwards.”
He stretched, placing an elbow on the steering wheel and one on the back of the seat, inflating his chest with a serious expression.
“How?”
“How did he die? I don’t know.” I shrugged. “From regret, I suppose.”
He was silent for a long time.
“He hanged himself, Giada,” he said, looking me coldly in the eye. “It was my eighteenth birthday, I went home from school and found him hanging on the lounge wall that I knocked down. There was a letter for me on the table, telling me that I was right, followed by a list of all those he’d wrongfully acquitted. Thank you so much for your birthday wishes, old man.” His fist clenched, but his voice was cold. “Your father and I pulled him down, both of us vomiting: you have no idea of the horrific way a hung body ends up. Aron had to do the majority because I’d broken my arm trying to protect my mother.”
I didn’t comment, but I must have been looking at him questioningly, because he replied: “Yes, on that fucking day, when that son of a bitch attacked my mother, I was there too. I arrived as he hit her on the head. In the end I managed to knock him out, but it was too late for her, I can’t
even say that she died in my arms because my arm was broken. And although I know logically that it’s not my fault, I never managed to forgive myself for stopping to get a fucking ice cream that day instead of going straight home. Could I have saved her by going straight home? I’ve asked myself so many times it hurts my brain.
“He breathed in, his lungs seemed too small for all the oxygen he needed, but he continued anyway. “I was in a lot of pain after my mother's death, but after the death of my father, and in the way it happened... believe me, anger soon overwhelmed the initial pain. My father, the man who, like a fool, I admired more than anyone else, deprived me of both my parents and my youth.” Seeing me picking up the scarf to cover my shoulders, he mistakenly thought I was cold. He put the keys in the ignition, turned on the engine and put the heating on. “I was so out of my head that I broke every single object that belonged to him, my house became a mound of rubble just like the Roman Forum.” He put a hand in front of the vent to see if hot air was coming out. “It was Aron, your father, that pulled me out of there and told his parents that I would move in with them. He didn’t care about what they or I thought, he’d decided and that was that. We shared the same room for some time, then I left for my military service and once I came back I found a job and started a new life.” He leaned back against the seat. “And that’s everything.”
Silence.
Mum had left out several things from her account. All that information affected me deeply, devastating even just to hear. “How... did you do it?”
“Make a new life? I Stopped listening to my mind.” His fist reopened, letting go of the past.
“What do you need at this precise moment?”
To know you're OK. To hug you. To pass the maturity exam. To tell Zoe the truth. To be understood by my parents. To understand what to do about my future... about you.
“I need a lot of things.”
“Wrong. Everything that’s going through your mind is wrong, at this particular moment all you need to do is breathe. That’s how I found my way back. When the clutter in your head is too much and the pain is so unbearable it suffocates you, the only thing to do is to abandon it and concentrate on what you really need. The sense of guilt for not getting home in time, the pain of loss, the resentment and the fear of the future, were what was going through my mind, thoughts that fed themselves in a vicious and destructive cycle. I didn’t need to eat, to breathe, or take possession of my life; then I realized that it wasn’t about fighting a battle, but just to free myself of it. I just let it drown me, I accepted it and then I stopped giving it all my attention. No past, no future, only now.”
“It’s impossible to do that.” It seemed unachievable to strive for thoughts so far out of my reach.
“I didn’t say it was easy, but I just know it works.” He seemed relieved, as he’d been swimming in mud and come out rinsing the weed off. “Anyway, this was a short version of what happened: if you have to know, at least you know the truth.”
Little by little, following his words I’d gone white. But in the end, however disconcerting I found his past, I realized that his story had no effect at all on the opinion I had of him. I didn’t feel sorry for him, or compassionate, I was surprised by his ability to re-emerge from such a nightmare. It was nothing more than what I already expected of him, so I said what I was thinking.
“If there’s anyone who could survive all that, it’s you. Even though he helped you, I don’t think Dad would have come out the other side sane. Nor Mum, even less me. Let’s not even mention Aunt Frida. Only you could do it.”
He smiled from the corner of his mouth. “Sane, you say? It's nice to have a Di Gregorio think that.”
I took my sandals off with my heel and crossed my legs on the seat. “Doesn’t Dad think so?”
“Emotionally deformed. That’s the expression he uses to define me.”
According to Aron, Vincent reacted to feelings in only two ways: crushing them to the bone or rejecting them. A kind of bulimia.
I nestled closer, stretching my fingers toward the hot air nozzle, and pressed my hand against it. “I thought Dad adored you.”
Vincent took off his jacket and covered me. “In fact, he loves me. That's why he’ll go mad.”
Chapter 10
Other than Vincent everything was so trivial; the weekdays were slow frustrating drudgery, my friends were no longer such stimulating company, and concentrating on my studies had become almost impossible, even though the end of the school year was approaching.
My house had taken on a new look; the couch was no longer simply ‘the couch,’ but it was ‘the couch he had taken me on for an entire afternoon,’ the bed had become ‘the bed where he took me with my hands tied,’ the shower was ‘the Shower where he’d seen me naked for the first time,’ and so on, every corner reminded me of him.
Every song reminded me of him... and me. I sang. I put the earphones in and turned my secrets into the notes of old melodic songs without anyone being able to understand.
My parents noticed, but they didn’t do anything about it, they were absorbed with their great plans for the new farmhouse and by the first doubts about the disadvantages that such a step would have caused. They were realizing that the price to make their dream a reality was high, but they didn’t let it discourage them.
Not being very technologically minded, they’d invaded the house with rolls of paper with an architect’s drawings of the new aesthetics of the complex. They wanted me to tell them that they were beautiful and I did, I smiled and complimented, but the idea of moving to that place still gave me indigestion.
I started thinking that maybe I could find a way to stay in Rome. Not with Vincent, I wasn’t so stupid as to expect I might be able to live with him, but I was sure I could attend some kind of course and share an apartment with other students. It would be difficult to convince Dad; he still thought of me as a twelve-year-old, with the same autonomy and needs as a young girl. Soon, willing or un-willingly, he would realize that it was no longer the case.
My family was going to undergo major changes, but for the moment it all seemed like the same old routine. Work, school, home, friends... and as usual, Vincent came to visit Aron on weekday evenings.
He caught Mum and I in the kitchen while I was helping her with a pyramid of profiteroles that she didn’t have time to prepare in the lab.
At first I tried hard not to look at him, feeling an annoying sense of detachment. Then I made some furtive glances, and noticed that the beard growing back to blend with the goatee, giving him an even more mature and distant appearance. God, it seemed so absurd that this man wanted me and that I’d really had sex with him!
I just had to not think about it, I had to pretend that nothing had ever happened and remember how things were before between us.
Vincent was trying to do the same, taking over the kitchen island with Dad and focusing exclusively on what he was saying.
He pointed to an unrolled drawing. “It's this one?”
“This is the nicest room, it has a balcony overlooking the valley.” Aron held down the drawing to stop it from rolling itself up. Vincent tapped the drawing with his index finger. “Then it's mine. That's the promise you made me when I came to see you.”
“I'm afraid it’s actually going to be Giada's.” A good attempt at a bribe.
I licked my cream covered finger and walked over to the drawing. I pointed to the smallest room, a cupboard. “This is yours.”
He turned around looking me in the eye and losing all his mental faculties for a moment. “I'll come like a ghost in the night to haunt you.”
There you are. I didn’t doubt it.
“Haunt who? Her? She wouldn’t wake up if a cannon was fired,” grunted Daddy, not knowing that my sleep had become much lighter lately. And knowing that I was no longer a little girl, the ghost would have arrived at night in that room and wouldn’t have stopped at frightening me.
“Lalla, I’m almost finished, hurry up with th
ose profiteroles,” she urged, stirring the icing on the hob.
“Almost there.” Another couple of layers and my pyramid of delights would be complete; with a teacher like Adele it was easy to learn the tricks of the craft.
When he took a beer from the fridge, Vincent tried to pinch a profiterole from the top of the composition, but before he could do it, I grabbed the plate out of his way and put it on the sink sticking my tongue out at him.
“Ah, it’s like that is it?” he put the bottle down and took my shoulders as he did when I was a little girl, tickling me everywhere; on the belly, on the hips, next to the breasts. Only now feeling his hands on me held another dimension, so with the laughter I started to have palpitations.
Terrified by my inability to pretend, we immediately detached ourselves to opposite sides, me against the sink, he against the island, both breathing hard with our eyes popping out.
Fortunately, Dad had his eyes on another one of his drawings. “Giada, let Vincent eat and give me one too,” he said, distracted by something else.
How could he be so blind? He had literally no idea that Vincent could see me differently than how he saw me, that is, not like a daughter. Let alone imagine that I could see his friend as a lover.
Mum stopped mixing the icing to get a profiterole. She covered it in chocolate and lovingly popped it into Aron’s mouth. Many years together and still little gestures of affection. My parents were a social anomaly, one of those perfect happy couples that can only be envied. A perfect advert that would make those who live normal family drama nauseous. Sometimes I felt it and, who knows, maybe even Vincent.
“Vincent I’m not too keen on how you’ve been treating my daughter,” she said suddenly, wiping her fingers on her apron.
My arms covered with goosebumps. Vincent stiffened.
She carried on stirring, careful not to burn the icing. “You're spoiling her with all those gifts. Did you need to give her so many bracelets? One would’ve been enough!” She tapped the spoon on the pan, reiterating the concept. I had to tell her that the chest full of joy came from him: a gift for behaving well while they were in Tuscany.