by Anna Chillon
“I would have chosen the painting,” I admitted. The painting already contained what I wanted to save in my memory. It would’ve been a hassle to show such a picture to my parents, they might have sent me to a psychiatrist, as my Mum had already suggested, but they wouldn’t have been able to get rid of it, unless they stole it.
“I know,” he said. “In fact, I wouldn’t have bet with you.”
Shame.
I almost forgot. Before I left I opened my bag and pulled out the handkerchief he’d leant me, washed and ironed. “Thanks, I brought it back for you.”
He folded my fingers around it. “Keep it, chicken. If my intuition doesn’t deceive me, you’ll be needing it again soon.”
Chapter 15
Niccolò was right about something: I had to find a way to make peace in my heart. His words, however, only managed to fuel the fire of the uncertainty that devoured me. If Vincent had quietly turned the page I couldn’t manage to, and damn it, it wasn’t right.
Realizing my state of mind, my parents wanted to send me to stay with Aunt Frida for a while, thinking that a bit of distance and some wild shopping could be good for me. On the same day, on a bus with Zoe, I mulled over the opposite idea. I had to talk to Vincent at all costs and look into his eyes to hear that I wasn’t as important to him as he’d made me believe. I had to know what was wrong with me: my age, my parents, myself or even just the idea of a stable relationship. I needed to be sure there was nothing left to save. At least he owed me that.
So once I’d said goodbye to Zoe, I didn’t hesitate to jump on another bus, heading to his studio. Last time, my surprise visit wasn’t great; maybe today would be better and we’d be able to clarify without having to argue.
As I took a short cut across the park, suddenly I thought my one track mind was hallucinating. But it was real: Vincent was sitting alone at a kiosk table. I immediately recognized his silhouette even though he had his back to me. Fragments of the sun’s rays cut through the branches hitting his dark hair and white linen shirt. He held his back straight, his head bowed slightly reading the newspaper.
My heart beat in my chest, my mouth was instantly dry. Even with his forearms covered by long sleeves to the wrist, he emanated security, authority, and masculinity. It would’ve been difficult to find the right words, but I wouldn’t have had a better opportunity than that.
He pushed aside an empty dish that probably contained what had been his lunch. A sandwich, I imagined.
I walked like a horse wearing blinkers, seeing nothing but my destination, wondering why I’d waited so long to do it. Because I was hurt, that's why.
Vincent, I have to talk to you...
Vincent, don’t be angry, just listen to me...
Vincent, I know you basically think that I'm just a little girl...
I was about to catch him by surprise. I took my plaits out, tried to fix a smile on my face and then I saw him raise his head. He stood up.
I thought about running to catch him before he left, but then I realized that he wasn’t going. He was looking at someone who was walking, more confidently than me, in his direction. Someone he was waiting for and I could clearly see her face: it was the girl with the blue ring.
He didn’t hesitate to pick her up in his arms and hold her tight for a long time, leaning against her possessively, then he moved the chair and they both sat down, laughing happily.
Happy.
He stole the baseball cap that she was wearing, releasing her crown of chestnut hair and putting it on his head. She screamed, and playfully fought him while he tried to stop her from getting it back. He grabbed her wrist, I distinctly saw the five fingers close over it. So I squeezed my left, recalling when he’d imprisoned both, making me feel as if he wasn’t willing to let me go for any reason. If the two of us together caused the same effect that seeing them together did, I could understand why no one had accepted it.
He’d said he’d never touched her in the way he touched me, but he was and it wasn’t hard to imagine what else they were doing... in bed.
How stupid I felt; I really was just the deluded little girl that everyone thought I was. Vincent had stopped seeing me, but not her, nothing had stopped him from leaving me to run to her, even when we were together. She was pretty, she wasn’t his dearest friend’s daughter and she had everything that I had. We even looked alike and that said a lot about the kind of girl he preferred, but it seemed to me that I lacked something that she had. A little bit of shrewdness.
To say that I was angry didn’t even touch it. A deep and muddy outrage stuck to me, went down clogging my throat, which made swallowing painful. For the first time it seemed that I really had been raped and only just realized it.
I was about to leave, run away as fast as possible, getting away from that humiliation.
You can’t just turn on your heels and leave whenever something doesn’t go to plan, he’d told me in what felt like aeons ago. In the end, though, it had been him to turn on his heels and leave, pretending it was for my own good.
Well, he couldn’t think he’d duped me that much.
I started walking again, my heart struggling to keep the rhythm of my brain going nuts. I aimed decisively at their table, walked around them, grabbed a chair, and quickly sat down because I didn’t know how long my trembling knees would hold me.
I enjoyed seeing their faces. They were both surprised, she had a smiling, curious expression. His face overshadowed, giving me one of his indicative looks that generally meant I was in trouble.
It worked, I felt intimidated, but he couldn’t make me give in. I forced my mouth into a smile and greeted them with a squeaky voice. “Hello.”
“Hello,” he said dryly, and I'm sure that, despite being in a relaxed position, he was eager to roll his sleeves up to his elbows. “What do you want?” He asked.
I want you to love me, stupid! I’d answered him once before.
He still had the same effect on me, but I couldn’t allow him to stop me from reasoning as he’d always done in the past. All the anger and insults that I would’ve liked to pour on him were useful for that reason.
“You know her?” The girl asked, leaning forward. She had a pronounced mouth, innocent eyes, and large silver rings in her ears that emerged from beneath her layered hair. Virtually a nymph.
“Of course he knows me,” I did my best to be as casual as possible. “He know things about me that... nah!” I waved my hand in the air, looking at the sky dramatically. “So, Vince? I see you’re keeping well.”
“Could be better,” he said sluggishly.
“Oh, maybe I interrupted you. I'm sorry.” I pulled my arms up and placed my elbows on the table with an invasive boldness. “You're his friend, aren’t you? I've heard about you.”
The first shot went to the heart and she accused him losing her smile. “I'm certainly much more than a friend.”
Vincent's hand shot out in front of her, as if trying to stop her. “Leave it. You don’t have to give any explanation.”
“But who is she?” she asked, annoyed.
An idiot, I repeated. Finding myself in front of him, instead of beside him, filled me with loneliness. My grandmother said, “Trust the person standing next to you, not in front of you. Do you know what that means, Giada?” Now I understood, it meant trusting someone supportive, not challenging.
“I'm nobody important. I'm just ‘the weekend girl’ I laughed madly. “But what am I saying? I was the weekend girl. But my parents gave up the farmhouse, so... no more weekend.” I shrugged my shoulders lightly.
I don’t think he’d followed what I’d said; he was looking at me as if he hadn’t seen me for centuries and wanted to make sure that I hadn’t missed a meal.
The waiter intruded into the increasingly tense atmosphere by giving me a menu. I refused and asked for a coffee because I wouldn’t have been capable of swallowing anything.
In the meantime my opponent was able to evaluate my words. She put the clues together a
nd her face whitened more than mine, as if she’d seen a ghost. “Are you... Giada?”
“If you were my friend, which would be impossible, you could also call me Gìa.” I patted one hand over the other, open on the table. “Also known as the only idiot who knew nothing about this man, even though I’ve known him for eighteen years.” Revealing my dark secrets was giving me some sense of liberation. “But I learn in a hurry.”
My coffee was put in front of me. I thanked him, taking two sugar sachets, emptying it all in, looking at Vincent challengingly. I stirred.
“It doesn’t seem to me that you've learned anything,” he said.
I put the teaspoon down. I wouldn’t drink it, I’d only done it to get a reaction from him, which before would have meant prolonged moments of intense heart beats.
“Seriously? I have learned perfectly well and at my expense how much of an arrogant, lying, selfish bastard you are. You only care about yourself,” I exhaled in a breath, pushing the saucer away.
The girlfriend got angry and jumped to his defense. She even stood up as if I’d pronounced a unthinkable blasphemy. “I will not let you talk to him like that after everything he did for your family!”
“I didn’t do anything,” he pulled her to sit back down. “Stop it both of you, for heaven’s sake.”
We’d attracted the waiter's attention and it seemed that he had nothing better to do than spend his time eavesdropping on us.
She pushed Vincent’s hand rudely off her arm. As angry as he was, he kept the appearance of a weaned kitten. He could even pull out her nails, but someone like Vincent would have calmed her down in two seconds if he really wanted to. “I don’t understand why she’s cross with you when all she should be is grateful.”
I raised my chin and eyebrows. “For leaving me in the middle of the night without hearing from him at all? Very grateful,” I put my fingers on the metal table and closed them into claws. My nails tapped in contact with the surface and I admitted that maybe I had the same harmless effect as the kitten. But I was alone, she had Vincent on her side.
“Don’t dare tell me it was for my own good,” I murmured. “You can’t just treat me as an adult when it suits your perverted convenience.”
“Oh, my God...” the girl clung to the arms of the chair, speaking in a choke. She put together another piece of the puzzle, which I thought seemed to be straightforward. “Did you have sex with her?”
I liked it when he called it ‘making love,’ but I didn’t say it. I leant back in the chair, feeling sorry for her which didn’t make me any less hostile. “Did you think you were the only one?”
She opened her mouth. “You can’t have gone to bed with her! And why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you would’ve been upset as you are now. It wasn’t planned, it just happened.” He grabbed the Tennent's bottle by the neck, to squeeze something that wasn’t my neck. “Say what you need to, Giada, and let's finish this, it's becoming pathetic and inappropriate.”
This shot, with the coldness that seemed scorching, was specially for me. The absurd thing was that in principle I hadn’t asked him anything, he could have justified that first night as heat of the moment, I just wanted the truth. Instead, he wanted to carry on, said he loved me. It had been dishonest and it had hurt me because I’d believed him. “I’d imagined that you would never have risked your friendship with my father for something so unimportant. But I was wrong, you had no problem giving up both me and him. There's nothing sacred for you,” I said sadly. “I felt so small compared to you, but you’re no more adult than me. And if being an adult means that you don’t give a damn about anyone, then I don’t want to become one.”
I thought I wouldn’t have been able to clearly express the worst of what I was thinking, but I’d thought about them over and over for so long that they came out without any difficulty.
“As usual you’ve let your mind run away with you, limiting your thoughts to your own little world, and you’ve come to your own conclusions. Or did Simon put them in your head? I suppose he celebrated my leaving.” I would’ve almost been happy about the jealousy that leapt from his words, but now I knew that he was just greedy because he just loved to take and be the only one to do it. That's all.
“You have no right to criticize Simon. He’s always been honest with me.”
It was absurd: I looked at him with his legs slightly apart, the untamed goatee, the pattern of wrinkles deepening around the frowned eyes, and I just wanted to jump on top. To have him inside me as quickly as possible. This was not the hate I wanted to feel.
He tensed his jaw, leaned forward in the chair, and for a moment I really thought he would catch me as he had done other times and that he’d close my mouth with kisses. But then he seemed to be defeated by an inner struggle, his muscles relaxed and his eyes became melancholic.
“That’s right. You’re free to be with whoever is more suitable than me now.”
His girlfriend was staring more and more flabbergasted, she was sitting on the edge of the chair in silence because the shock was too big. In her place I would’ve gone mad, but she was paralyzed, just her thumb pressed the blue ring, digging on the scratched stone.
“That’s it?” I asked Vincent. “Don’t you have anything better to say?”
I was giving him a second chance to explain himself and we both knew it would be the last one.
“If the time spent together has given you this idea of me, I have no means of denying it and certainly can’t assume there could still be something between us. You're right, Giada: I'm the monster you thought I was, what else do you want me to say?”
Defend yourself. Tell me I'm wrong. Fight for us.
How could I have wanted such a thing, when she was there, with her shocked face, to divide us more than any word that he said or didn’t say? In that scene I was the intruder.
I gathered my hands in my lap with an urgent need to protect myself. We looked into each other’s eyes, he kept his hard glare until all my tears flocked to the lashes deforming, destroying the image I had of him. “Is this how it ends? You don’t have anything more to say?” I asked with a thread of a voice.
Nothing happened, I crumbled piece by piece and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I just went along with it.
“Goodbye,” he said flatly, then slowly closed his eyelids, and kept them closed: erecting a wall between us, banging me crudely in the face. There was just emptiness, broken only by the rushing of blood in my ears.
I stood up and dug holes with the chair in the gravely ground. I wasn’t breathing, and the little I had left I used to get away quickly, almost running, unable to see anything for the tears.
It was over. This time for real.
I had my whole life in front of me and it was as if the most beautiful and worthy part was over, with that simple goodbye.
Goodbye to his wolf eyes.
Goodbye to his tenacious embrace.
Goodbye to true love.
Even in my inexperience, I already knew that I would never love with the same intensity again. Yet I didn’t blame him anymore, all my grudges had gone by magic. Knowing that there was nothing left to fight for, the thought that sprang from my heart, flying toward him, while my feet went in the opposite direction, was one.
I hope you are happy, my love.
It was a pure and sincere thought for its complete selflessness. And maybe it was the first I’d ever had as an adult.
In my chaotic escape, I hit someone with my shoulder. I groaned an excuse and slowed my pace until I stopped. I tried to breathe and calm myself, then I remembered that I hadn’t paid for my coffee and instinctively turned around.
I was far away, but I could still distinguish Vincent's silhouette. She was half-covered by a bush; I saw part of her bust and face, her anxious gesticulating. They were arguing animatedly.
He stood up, pointing his palm to the sky and shaking his head, she also got up, and when she turned her back on him, he held on to her
by her arm. He didn’t do that with me.
There was nothing left for me, I knew it now.
I looked in my handbag for the big white handkerchief, I dried my face and resumed my walk steadily. Rome seemed different to me, impregnated with melancholy, in my eyes it had become the story of all the loves lost through cheating and rejection. Even the sky was clouding over.
Before it started to rain, I decided to go to the bus stop and find shelter. It was an elementary need, instinct, or habit, like those that Vincent said I would have to trust when thoughts were too painful.
I sat under the shelter of the nearest bus stop with sunglasses on to hide my condition, evident none the less in red, wet lips and cheeks. Occasional sobs continued to betray me.
After only five minutes my bus stopped in front. I was getting on when I heard my name being screamed out. “Giadaaa!”
From the first step, I lifted my glasses on to my head and took a couple of steps back to see. The girl with the blue ring was running to try to reach me before I left.
“Getting on?” The driver asked.
“Giada!” She insisted, leaping and waving her cap.
I didn’t hate that girl because she was as infatuated with Vincent as I happened to be, but it was inevitable that I at least envied her. Even if I’d given her something to think about, she’d eventually won and I’d lost. I’d been humiliated enough at the park, but as I was curious, and didn’t like to leave anything un finished, I shook my head to the driver. The bus left, leaving me at the stop, looking at the road.
I hope she had a damned good reason to interfere.
She arrived all dishevelled and out of breath, her cheap little dress crumpled. On her feet she wore old summer boots, from which fine and polished calves emerged.
“Thanks for waiting for me,” she gasped as she put the cap advertising a local restaurant back on.
I didn’t even look at her, I kept staring at the road, holding Niccolò's handkerchief in my hand.
“Anyway, my name is Ambra.”