Love You Two

by Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli

  You look your usual attractive self, with the usual work-weariness of a Friday night, the jeans and sweater with flecks of paint and grass from Friday afternoon activities with your precious students, your eyes nervous. But you’re so beautiful. You look at Pina and Leo with curiosity and yet a broad smile spreads over your face. You’ve missed them, you say. We begin to talk and chuckle about the children, who waste no time scampering about on the lawn after the seagulls, yet staying close to the lamplights and lit boardwalk like giant moths. Now and again they return to take sips of Coke and scoff mouthfuls of fries.

  The conversation is so easy. I relax but have to force myself to look unflinchingly into your eyes for I fear the tears, the sadness, the longing, will announce themselves in mine.

  Twice friends come by and we exchange a few words. I answer the usual questions with the usual evasiveness. The Greek café owner, Salvador Dali moustache as stiff as ever, greets us effusively as if we’ve been gone a year. He blatantly asks where we’ve been as he gives us an extra large complimentary bowl of kalamata olives and some Turkish delight for the children. He asks you if you’ve moved and where to? ‘I haven’t been out much in the last month,’ you reply.

  It’s so good to sit and talk and laugh, while Leo and Pina interrupt us now and again with their usual squabble over who’s had more fries and why can’t they have more Coke. I feel so blessed that you’ve given me this time. I want to thank you for this hope that we’ll be friends.

  We talk about Kosta. This slowly steers the conversation to us. What would Kosta think of us? Kosta sees us as a couple in love, although I have children from another relationship. We’ve never corrected him, for what he sees is some of the truth. Now we wonder what we think of us.

  We lay the cards on the table. I cry and have to hide it from the children. I let you know that all I want is for you to be happy; that I understand; that I’m sorry. I tell you that you need to have love, publicly celebrated, socially acceptable, respectable love.

  But you look at me wearily, shake your head with resignation. ‘I had all that before you and it wasn’t strong enough to last. I could’ve had that several times since. I came close a couple of times, you know that, but I would’ve been emotionally cheating on them because of how I feel about you. Being in a relationship with you is the best thing I’ve ever had. It’s the strongest, most authentic love I’ve had and will ever have – I have come to terms with that. It’s the love-of-my-life kind of love. But sometimes all the pressure from out there, the way you treat us as if we’re social pariahs or like I don’t exist, tears me apart and I feel like I can’t fight the system any more.’

  It’s getting very dark. The seagulls have gone. A damp chilly breeze is coming in from the sea. The children are hovering closer to us in the circle of the café’s light. Leo’s tired and crawls onto my lap, snuggling in. Pina begins a repeated tug of my skirt and watches our eyes. We can no longer talk. We stand up, we hug. And if that’s all there’ll be, then that’s enough to assure me that you know how I feel about you and about us. But you also realise that I’m a coward and can’t lose what I’d have to lose for you to have what you want. So there it is; I am in the middle, and either path I take or shut the gate to means I’m going to hurt and not be all I am. So how would you love that me, when it is this me you love?

  I walk back to my car, Leo a sleepy weight in my arms, Pina clinging to me and dragging her feet. Their warmth and weight remind me why I’m walking away.

  You go down the street towards your apartment. I turn once at the car door and see you walking away.

  The drive back through the city to Little Italy has a stillness I haven’t felt all month. The children are asleep. The car seems to glide along the roads, exterior noises muffled. At home, I put the children to bed. Then I take myself to bed to cry and to phone Ren. He listens and loves. Yes, he says, it will be so much easier to have me all to himself. But who will he really have?

  I remember that evening for its ordinariness. Just adults at a café table. Short, smiling Kosta with the weird moustache that my mum reckons is famous because of some artist who had one just like it. She’d even shown me the artist’s work in a book and I’d laughed at all the melted clocks. She’d shown me his paintings of his wife, and explained that she was a lot older than him, and had left another man for him after trying to love them both.

  Yes, it’s just like every other time we’ve been at this café at Henley Beach Square, squabbling over fries, getting sugar fixes on Coke, and taking it out on the seagulls. Yep, good fun. Now and again, we run too close to the roar of an invisible ocean, so we glance back to make sure we can still see Mum in the orange light of the café lanterns. That circle of light acts as a beacon from which we can do thrilling dares like run into the darkness, toe around black monster shapes that turn out to be benches, rocks and rubbish bins. Mum and Nathan are just two adults talking boringly quietly like adults do. Sharing a little cry like adults do, over a sick friend or a death, or some other adult thing. When I go up and ask what’s wrong with her eyes, Leo running after me because he’s too scared to be left alone, she smiles and says sand had blown into them. The next time she says the garlic and chilli in the food were too strong.

  The next morning, Saturday, Dad came home with a funky bracelet for me, a fluffy teddy bear for Leo, and purple irises for Mum. I remember a weekend of eating pizza, watching videos, playing backyard soccer with Leo and Dad while Mum umpired from her chair on the verandah. I remember earnest gentle conversations between the two of them over Dad’s strong espresso coffee and Mum’s chocolate biscuits, broken up instantly by cheery smiles when Leo or I approached. I remember Mum getting a call from Nathan late Sunday afternoon, and coming outside to tell us she was going out that night. Dad held one of her hands while her other hand shielded her eyes from the piercing glow of the setting sun, her face shadowed.

  Mum and Nathan must’ve got back together that Sunday evening.

  We will carve a space, the three of us. We will love despite it all, despite the Xmases and the Easters, the famiglia and the doveres. You, Ren and I will continue despite being told this is impossible, wrong, improbable.

  If this is to end, I want it to end because we, one of us three, wants it to end; because our relationship has reached its use-by date, or the 101 other ordinary reasons why people are splitting up all around us. But not because they out there, steeped within their own so-called normal relationships drying and ending, want us not to have this possibility.

  I had one child, Giuseppina, then I had another, Leonardo. Did the love I feel for Leo take away from the love I felt for Pina? Was my relationship with Pina lessened in any way by the relationship with Leo? No, and no. If we can feel this way for our children, maybe some of us can feel this way for the adults in our lives.

  We are just family, loving and sharing our days, arguing and making up, managing the daily trivia and creating the bigger picture. Instead of a family foundation of two, we have a foundation of three – by geometric definition, says Ren, a much stronger base.

  My biggest regret, my biggest pain, is not telling Pina and Leo. I want to save them from becoming deceptive editors in their worlds of school and peers, where, as you know and live it Nat, these realities exist but are never spoken. They will know one day. Then I hope they’ll still love me – not necessarily agree with their parents’ choices or want to do as we did – but know we loved them and loved each other. We were given the gift of real love, something so many in this world yearn for, and for some reason I may never understand, it came in this particular form.

  7

  Sinking back to the surface

  I SHUT THE WRITING BOOK. I don’t want to know any more about Gianna. I don’t want to read her story any more, because I’m reading her love story. It’s a love story that I’ve never read or seen anywhere before, and it’s my mother’s – an Italian-Australian suburban wife, mother and nurse.

  It hurts to know of her hurt.


  It hurts to know I never knew.

  It hurts to know it now.

  It hurts because I don’t know that love with Scott.

  It hurts to think I may never have the love my mother has, not even from one man.

  And it hurts to feel my hatred for her melting like candle wax, dripping into sores of sadness. At least hatred makes you feel tough and angry. Hurt makes you feel like mush. It was so easy being the brash know-it-all, skimming the surface with cardboard cut-out parents who provided a comfy shelter for me to crash my way through my life.

  I remember the day Leo and I got no after-school treats and not the usual after-school Mum. I was there the evening she met up with Nathan at the beach. While Leo and I chased seagulls and skirted the darkness, she and Nathan chased a love that threatened to fly away after managing to nest in this world for seven years. It came back, stronger than ever, for another five years. But it looks like this is going to be the one Christmas too many and love will finally fly away.

  Tears are streaming down my cheeks; angry, sad tears for her, for me and for the silence between us.

  Knocking startles me.

  I stagger up and tiptoe to the front door. I hear familiar mumbles, the sharp voice of Rosie and the softer nervous lilt of Lisa. I don’t want to see them but they know I’m here. Indeed, they’re so sure I’m here Rosie begins to yell out: ‘Hey bitch, let us in! We know you’re there. We wanna know what happened. We saw Scott at the mall with his loser mates and he’s wanking on with some story.’

  I freeze. Do I really want Rosie foghorning my life to the neighbourhood? But do I want to know Scott’s story?

  I open the front door. Rosie and Lisa stare at me, trying to read my crumpled nightshirt and swollen eyes. ‘Your mobile’s switched off a lot lately,’ Rosie comments. Then they slowly walk past me; surveying the house, sniffing for smells, listening for echoes of what’s been.

  Rosie looks harshly perfect as usual, lips perfectly lined, hair perfectly straightened, hipster jeans with no hips overflowing the seams, bellybutton diamanté glinting.

  Lisa teeters behind after flicking her cigarette butt into a flowerbed. She’s shrinking, her body small and sensitive, her heels tapping sharply. Those stiletto heels are meant to give her sassy height but only make her appear much shorter and more unsteady as she steps into Rosie’s footprints. She’s wearing some of Rosie’s gear and it looks good – but it doesn’t look like her.

  They head towards my room as they usually do. I follow them as if not knowing where to go. When I get to the bedroom door, they’re looking at the telltale sheet crumpled on the floor, then their eyes do an ‘X marks the spot’ focus on the bed. They turn to me and I walk slowly past them. I sit on the bed, feeling like I’m visiting some historical site where a girl died and was born at the same time.

  Rosie sits on my chair, tentatively shifting some clothing as if frightened to uncover gross forensic evidence. Lisa’s trying to decide what to do. She does a little pirouette to scan the possibilities, and eventually leans against my dresser, making my perfume bottles tremble like her fingers.

  They’re watching me, waiting. I’m waiting too. I still don’t know if I want to know, if I can handle knowing, what Scott’s been saying about me.

  Rosie points at my hands. ‘What’s that?’ I look down at my hands. Are they stained? Are they scratched? I’m still clutching my mother’s writing book. ‘A book.’

  ‘Duh, you Giuza.’ Rosie’s pencilled eyebrows do their dance of dubiousness. But then she decides to let it go and moves on. ‘You look like crap, Pee. What happened?’

  I shrug. I even manage this kind of sick smile. ‘I think it’s what they call forgettable sex, and I’m waiting to forget it.’

  ‘Well, the first time’s not the best for a chick,’ she says brusquely, but there’s her French acrylic nails picking at the stitching on her jeans. ‘First time hurts, babe. A lot of later times you feel nothing much, but you just need to learn. You’re doing it to keep your boyfriend sweet on you anyway.’

  ‘You feel nothing with Vic?’ I ask. I don’t think that’s how it should be and yet, if it is, then at least I’m normal: what happened today was normal.

  Rosie’s body does these jerks like an insect whose camouflage won’t turn the right shade: bristling, twisting, darting. ‘I feel plenty! He’s good. But you gotta relax, let him do it, move for him.’

  ‘You hurt inside?’ Now what do I mean? Inside as in my body? Inside as in my heart?

  ‘Not any more. I’ve learned to go with it, you know?’ Now what ‘inside’ is she talking about?

  ‘Go with what, Ro?’ What are girls supposed to go with? What if they think there’s another direction?

  ‘Jesus, you’re out of it! With what they want and then you get what you want from that.’ The camouflage is mottling red over her throat.

  ‘What do you want?’ What’s a girl supposed to settle for? And why am I doing this interrogation? I’ve usually been happy just to skim the surface with Rosie when it comes to sex.

  She crosses and uncrosses her legs and flicks her hair away. She scrapes those fake nails over her throat, leaving even redder streaks. ‘Quit this questioning, okay? This isn’t about me. It’s not Vic badmouthing me out there.’ She points a taloned finger towards my door.

  There’s the silence again, heavy, sweating out of the walls’ pores. My room’s swimming in stagnant air.

  ‘It doesn’t mean we believe him,’ Lisa blurts out. ‘We’re your friends, we know better.’

  Silence booms loud in my head. I feel my fingers loosening around Mum’s book. I grip tighter. Funny how the hidden world in that book is starting to feel safer and more real.

  I look up at Lisa. ‘Have you done it with a guy?’

  Lisa jump-starts off the dresser and hesitates before settling again on the bed next to me. ‘No way! My father would shoot me! “Puttana! Puttana!” I can just hear him between bullets whizzing past!’ She’s grinning and shuddering. Then she goes all quiet and serious and she puts an arm gently through mine.

  ‘I keep telling you to sneak it, babe,’ Rosie says to her. ‘Get it over and done with. Or they’ll be calling you a frigid dyke too.’

  ‘Frigid dyke … too?’ I grip Mum’s book and dive into the murky silence. ‘Is that what Scott’s saying about me?’

  ‘He’s saying you were – oh Jesus, do you really wanna know, Pina? Tell us what happened so we can go defend you or something against that bastard and his man-whore wannabes.’

  Lisa giggles. ‘Rosie, you already did that.’ She turns to me. ‘You shoulda seen her, Pina. She kneed him in the balls.’

  ‘He deserved it, the skippy kangaroo idiot,’ Rosie says, standing and flexing her tight-jeaned knee. It’s a wonder she was able to get it to his crotch. I can’t help but smile. ‘Thinking he can do it with my wog-chick-sista and then trash her. I told him if I hear any more crap from him, I’ll get Vic and his Mafia Marios onto him. You shoulda seen him go even whiter than his usual sickly skippy pale. Scared of the wog boys for sure!’ Rosie laughs, waves a fist in the air and gyrates her hips, her bellybutton jewellery gleaming.

  Yeah, Rosie comes through for you, I think. I meet her eyes. She stares at me, sighs and says dryly, ‘Yeah, so I threatened him. But I wanna know whether it was worth it. What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know what happened. But I don’t want it to happen ever again.’

  Lisa’s fingers are cold and clammy on my wrist. ‘Pina, did he rape you?’ Her voice is just above a whisper, her eyes round as if she’s just figured out something worse than she was ready for.

  ‘No … I didn’t say no. I did it – I mean – I started it ’cos I thought it would be one thing, but it became something else, something I didn’t like and I didn’t want.’ I feel the tears spill over onto the surface of my skin, the book hot and sweaty-wet in my hands.

  ‘Did you go with it? You can’t lie there like a dead fish. You either gotta go with him or you
gotta say no.’ Rosie’s put on her black-and-white camouflage again, making everything seem manageable and conclusive. ‘Come on, girlfriend, we wanna help you here. We’re your best buds, Pina. We want to get him good if he did you over. Even tell the cops for you if we have to. Maybe he’s the one who can’t do it, but blames you, the feeble moron.’

  The tears fall onto my mum’s book. Lisa’s hand strokes my arm. I rush my words out, afraid they might not escape. ‘He asked me and I let him. He was on me. Then I wanted to say no but couldn’t get the words out. I felt dead. There was no love.’

  ‘But maybe he’s bad at sex. You can enjoy sex without love, Pina,’ Rosie says, somewhat softened by my tears.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, but that’s just it. I didn’t enjoy it, and I wanted it to be love.’

  Rosie laughs and in her fake African-American accent, complete with hands on jutting hips and a twist of the head, she says, ‘As if! Now how many guys you know make lurve? Get real, girl. It may never be love, but what are your options? Anyway, look what happens to lurve in the olds.’ Here comes that bitterness again, peering out from behind the curtain.

  ‘Don’t you love Vic?’

  She shakes her head slowly, her nails pulling at the stitching again, an uncomfortable smile lurking around her wry mouth. ‘As if. But he serves his purpose. He’s a boyf. He’s like an investment, you know? He keeps my market value up with the other Rambo wannabes. And people know I’m not a dyke-deviant.’

  ‘Yeah, Ro, but you might get a baby out of him or diseases if you don’t use a condom,’ Lisa admonishes gently.

  ‘He doesn’t like condoms, doesn’t feel what a guy wants to feel. Anyway, I’m going to get myself on the pill soon. Just gotta get to a doctor on another side of town, maybe in Pommy Elizabeth or Parafield where there aren’t wogs ready to dob to my mother. Not that I care what she thinks. She’s in no position, the loser-freak, to tell me how to make my life suck-sex-ful.’