Mom hangs up and puts the phone back in her purse. “All settled. Happy now?”
I’m not sure I understand what just happened. As a matter of fact I don’t understand it one bit. But given the tone of her voice and the groan she makes right after, I decide to tell her I am.
Mom finishes her cigarette and uses the end bit to light up another. Then she lies down on her shirt again.
And I go lie down next to her, like we do in bed at night, since there are only two rooms at home and one is Luca’s and she and I sleep together in the other one.
“Zot, why don’t you lie down for a while?” Mom asks.
“No thank you, I’m still eating.”
“I told you, you don’t have to finish it. You can throw it away.”
“No, really, I like it . . . besides, I can’t digest properly if I lie down on a full stomach. Once, when I was at the orphanage—”
“No, please, I can’t take another story about the orphanage.”
“But it’s not a sad story, it’s—”
“No, no, I don’t care. I’m positive it’s heartbreaking.”
Zot tells her it’s not, and maybe they drag on like that or maybe they change the subject or stop talking alltogether. I don’t know because I fall asleep. Words cease to exist. They bleed into the sound of the sea coming and going, coming and going, and everything is one long swishing sound, then that swishing sound becomes a clear, quivering light, before that, too, disappears, and me along with it.
RETIREES DO AS THEY PLEASE
The morning mushroom hunt is taking longer than expected. It’s almost ten p.m. and they’re still on the road back. Outside the car it’s too dark to see anything, especially the end of this narrow windy road that rises and falls as it cuts through the thicket of trees, like something out of a horror movie Sandro saw when he was six years old and will never forget: a guy is driving his car through the middle of the countryside, heading somewhere, maybe for work, but he ends up pulling into a remote little village where everyone is kind and hospitable until it turns out they eat people. In fact, they try to eat him. But he manages to escape. He hops in his car and for a minute the car won’t start, but when it does, he takes off full throttle down those mountain roads. And he keeps turning and turning but he doesn’t know where he’s going, and as a consequence of all that turning, he finds himself back in the same little village where the cannibals have been biding their time and they lunge forward and eat him.
So what if you’ve never heard talk of cannibals in the Apuan Alps? There are towns up here where, in the cemeteries, you’ll find at most three different family names on the gravestones, and when you’re forced to marry your cousin who knows what tricks your mind’ll play on you. To be safe, it’s better to go during the daytime and return home before dark. But they were in the woods till late. For hours they went around in circles looking for one another and now they’re fried.
No sooner had he found the King of Porcini than Sandro shouted into his walkie-talkie, “This thing is unreal! It’s humongous!” Shortly after which he heard Rambo’s voice and a little later Marino’s. They told him to hurry over so they could take a look. He said it’d be better if they came to him, since he wasn’t exactly sure where he was. But neither did they. All of them were lost.
For a while the only sound Sandro heard was the crackling of the walkie-talkie, and when they began talking again they all started in at once, blaming each other. They wandered the woods haphazardly, firing off fuck-yous, fighting, trying to remember whose genius idea it was to buy walkie-talkies, which may be useful if one person gets lost, but if all three of them get lost then this plastic piece of shit is only good for insulting one another while roaming through the woods in the direction of some wild beast just waiting for sundown to skin them alive.
But in the end no one died and by dinnertime they were all standing around the car. Rambo told them he’d gotten his bearings when the stars came out. Marino had crossed paths with two retirees, mushroom-picking pros, who had escorted him to the car and practically saved his life. The last to arrive was Sandro, who had found his way back to the road by following the music coming from a karaoke bar: for the first time in his life he’d been happy to hear a track by the Pooh.
And when the two retirees saw him carrying the King of Porcini in his arms, they couldn’t believe their eyes. Not even these guys had seen anything like it. It was mind-blowing, a giant, the kind of trophy that turns you into a legend overnight.
Sandro nodded and tried to act bored, as though for him plunder of that caliber were the norm, while Rambo hugged him and Marino squeezed them both and kept repeating, “All for one and one for all, brothers. We’re saved. Nature’s made us stronger. No problems, no fear, no women.” Meanwhile the two retirees sized up the mega mushroom, shared a look, and didn’t even ask Sandro if he wanted to sell it or how much he was asking. Nope. They just fetched out a hundred-euro bill, a hundred, and reached for the King with their liver-spotted hands.
Sandro hugged it closer to his chest and took a step back. He’d busted his ass to find that mushroom, risked his life in more ways than one, and all he wanted was to go home and show off this bad boy to his dad, who the night before had poked fun of him for a whole half hour: “Where do you think you’re going all of a sudden? Do you know the right spots? Do you have a permit? Boots? A basket? Just where do you think you’re going?” For his dad, as for dads the world over, any endeavor, from flying to the moon to fixing a bookshelf, is a job that requires eons of preparation, empire-building organization, and every tool in the toolbox.
But real life isn’t like that. Oftentimes the important thing in life is to believe in yourself so badly that things can’t help but conform to your will and fall into place. Without too much preparation and precaution. All one needs is a kick in the pants to take the air out of all these should-and-shouldn’t diatribes and spur one to action. Yeah, that’s it, and today Sandro had proved it by finding the King of Porcini. No maps, no boots, nothing whatsoever. And now he was heading home to rub this mind-blowing trophy in his dad’s face.
Only the retirees had seen it and decided they had to have it, and when it comes to retirees, the game’s rigged. They’ve worked for years, back when, for kicks, people used to toss money in the air instead of confetti, and even now, when they’ve stopped working, the checks keep rolling in each month. Retirees are an economic power, and they wander among young people like westerners vacationing in the Third World, laughing at the cost of stuff and frittering away money just to empty their pockets of loose change. If they want something, retirees won’t take no for an answer. In fact, after a brief show of resistance, Sandro caved, pocketed the hundred euros, and handed over the King of Porcini.
Then he jumped in the car and told Rambo to step on it.
He didn’t want to spend another minute with those two old billionaires who had already placed the King on the ground, sprinkled a little grass on top to make the scene look more convincing, and with the latest iPhone were snapping thousands of photos of themselves in poses of astonishment and triumph. Photos that in the next five minutes would circulate among their friends and acquaintances, and because these two retirees were technophiles, in no time the photos would wind up on forums for mushroom hunters—Sandro’s never seen them but he’s positive they exist—to officially break the news worldwide: it wasn’t him who found the King of Porcini but these two geezers swimming in cash.
Sandro is mulling it over now, at ten at night, curled uncomfortably in the passenger seat of Rambo’s army jeep, while they continue to search for the road home.
He looks out the window at the thicket of trees that light up as the car passes then fade back into the single dark wall on either side. He feels tired. Sure, all day he trekked up and down the mountains, but it’s not that, it’s a different kind of tiredness. It’s the tiredness of another day lost to getting lost, this
time in the mountains. But if it’s not the mountains then it’s the pine grove where they steal pinecones, or the parking lot at the mall, or the streets that all look the same where they deliver phonebooks and flyers announcing store sales and menus for the next county fair, the pointless roundabouts built in no man’s land that send you every which way but lead nowhere. How can you get lost all the time if you don’t even know where you’re going?
Sandro doesn’t know. He doesn’t even want to think about it. He closes his eyes, leans his head against the dewy window, and prays the motion of the car will put him to sleep. Like when he was young and the car trip home took no time. He’d wake up in his mom’s arms in the driveway and everything would be over, all would be well. One time he slept five hours straight, from Madonna di Campiglio to Tuscany, in 1985, that banner year his parents were convinced they were rich. Or at least not at the bottom of the ladder. Or, even if they were at the bottom, then it meant that the whole ladder was pointing to better places, and even a gardener’s family could afford a ski trip.
“What the hell,” his father had said, “I’ve worked hard all my life and this is one reward I want to reap.” Him and Mom in his aunt and uncle’s ski suits. They’d even sprung for a new one for Sandro along with a pair of red Moon Boots, whereas two years prior, when a little snow had, incredibly, fallen in Forte dei Marmi, his mom had sent him outside with his shoes wrapped in plastic bags cinched round his ankles with rubber bands.
None of them knew how to ski. His mom spent the whole time keeping toasty in the motel. His dad rented a sled and went up and down a hill in a parking lot. But for Sandro they’d purchased lessons. “You’ve got years of skiing ahead of you, consider it an investment,” said his father, who by then had morphed into an entrepreneur, the kind of guy who saw far into the future, in an era where everything seemed possible and you could climb the social pyramid like it were the sweet snowcapped mountains of Madonna di Campiglio.
On the trip back from that miraculous week, Sandro slept soundly, deep in a dream he still remembers clearly. He was super rich and lived in a mansion on a mountaintop, where people were always asking him for help and his money was the solution to everyone’s problems. But too many people came begging and he couldn’t get a moment’s peace, so Sandro hopped on his private helicopter and fled to the North Pole, and while he was dreaming of that arctic flight he could really feel the propeller blades above him, they shook him and shook him, until finally the blades turned into the hands of his father in the car, shaking him awake now that they’d made it home. A five-hour drive blew by in a dream.
But here on the hard seat in Rambo’s derelict army jeep he can’t sleep a wink. He thinks back to Madonna di Campiglio, how they never went back after that year, how they never put on another pair of skis again, never scaled another mountain let alone the social pyramid. 1985 remained a mind-blowing one-in-a-million year, a thing of the past, gone forever, just like the King of Porcini, the greatest source of satisfaction he’d had in these dark times, and he’d just sold it for a hundred euros.
But even if he didn’t have these thoughts knocking around in his head, it would be hard to sleep with Rambo beside him raining down insults on Marino.
“Are you retarded? The law establishes limits, and those limits are clear and should be respected. And if the law says the limit is eighteen, that means if you meet a girl who’s eighteen you’re well within your rights to fuck her.”
“When was the last time we hung out with an eighteen-year-old?”
“Whatever, I’m speaking hypothetically, obviously!”
Indeed, any time they spoke of women it was pure fantasy: neither Rambo nor Marino had ever succeeded in getting his hands on one, not ever. As for Sandro, who had dated a girl from Calabria for two months in college, and another girl for three months, and who one time at the beach had been taken practically by force by a tourist from Switzerland, well, next to them he looked like an international playboy.
“Besides, that isn’t the point,” says Rambo. “The point is, now that our friend Sandro is making the rounds of the schools, he’s got a serious opportunity. He’s surrounded by those fresh, lively young girls, who are of age, I might add, and if he plays his cards right, I bet he can tap a couple. The law’s on his side.”
“I know, Rambo.” From the backseat, Marino’s reedy voice is nearly swallowed up by the noise of the car. “But, it’s just, I’d feel weird doing it with a girl who’s eighteen.”
“Here we go again. And why’s that?”
“Because they’re too young. Or we’re too old. Heck, we’re more than twice their age. Eighteen’s too young.”
“And how young is old enough?”
“I don’t know. Twenty-three? It’s still pretty young, but twenty-three’s better.”
“Twenty-three? You retard! Italian law says eighteen, where do you get twenty-three from? When you’re driving in your car and the sign says—”
“He doesn’t drive,” says Sandro flatly, without lifting his head off the window, without opening his eyes. “Marino doesn’t have a license.”
“Oh right, I’d tried to erase that fact from my memory. How pathetic. Anyways, license or no license, you can still get me. So, say you’re on the road, and the sign says the speed limit’s thirty miles an hour. What do you do? Go ten because thirty feels too fast?”
“What does that have to do with anything? That’s different.”
“No, no. No way is that different. It’s the law. And the law’s the same for everybody. For you the driver going thirty an hour, and for Sandro, who, if he capitalizes on this opportunity, gets to fuck an eighteen-year-old. We’re all good, law-abiding people. And they say no one grows up in Italy. Well, obviously. If they treat you like a baby when you’re eighteen, what’re you supposed to do? Besides, Marino my friend, these eighteen-year-olds today would make your head spin. Just ask Sandro here. He’s snowed under every day. Right, Sandro? Sandro? Yo, Sandro!”
Rambo reaches his hand out and slams him on the back—two, three, fifty times—but Sandro doesn’t answer. He keeps looking out at the dark road, so narrow that branches scrape the windows.
“Yo, Sandro, go on, tell him, would you? What are the girls like at school? Sluts, right? What are they like, huh, what are they like? Go on, tell him, go on . . . ”
“I don’t know,” he says after a while, “more than the girls, there are some knockout moms.”
He answers robotically, with no intonation, just to make Rambo shut up. Rambo, on the other hand, yells louder and tells him to go fuck himself, that moms are everywhere, you can find them in the supermarket, at the doctor’s—who gives a shit about moms when you’re at school? And then Marino says if a woman is a mom, it probably means she’s also married, and therefore it’s not right to do her either. To which Rambo yells, “Marino, you don’t like moms and you don’t like daughters. In my opinion, you don’t like pussy period!”
And Marino, on cue, swears he does, and Rambo says he doesn’t. Do too, do not, do too . . . But Sandro’s stopped listening. He’s already drifted off: talk of pretty mothers was enough to send him back to that glorious afternoon last week during parent-teacher conferences. A beautiful moment, a sliver of life so luminous that, to think back on it, it doesn’t even feel like part of his private collection. And yet it is, and simply remembering it, he feels something warm in his throat, in his chest, even his head resting against the dewy window.
As if to warm himself by that roaring fire, Sandro inches forward and leaps into the flames of life and emotion and, yes, why not, the flames of love.
And he begins to remember everything exactly as it happened.
EINSTEIN COULDN’T TIE HIS SHOES
On top of it all, Sandro hadn’t even wanted to go to school that afternoon. He’d presented his case to the principal: he’d just started working, the kids hardly knew who he was, what was the point
of talking to their parents? And the principal replied, “Don’t be afraid. Just say what you can. Don’t overdo it. Err on the side of vagueness and you shouldn’t run into any problems.”
But the problem is that Sandro can’t stand vagueness. Even worse is seeing the disappointed looks on these mothers’ faces, nearly all of them well groomed and decked out for the occasion, anticipating an afternoon unlike all the others, a special moment in their monotonous lives of set schedules and disenchantment round every bend, and instead one by one they yawn in your face while you tender the most meaningless statements in the world: Your son’s not doing badly but neither is he doing great. Your daughter makes an effort but could make more of an effort . . .
Sandro talks while they listen with one ear, watch the clock, and finally walk away, their eyes bloodshot with boredom thanks to this bland, inept teacher who in five minutes will fade from their memory.
And Sandro won’t accept that. He doesn’t want to fade. He wants these moms to like him. He wants to bypass their heads and reach their hearts and from there enter their bloodstream and spread to their entire body. He wants them to return home eager to tell their husbands about this fabulous young teacher who in just two weeks has understood these kids better than their parents. He wants some hidden corner of their minds to burn bright with the thought that a teacher this perceptive might understand them too—their doubts, their needs, everything that the rest of the world has never known how to see. And, who knows, were they not married, were he not their kid’s teacher . . .
The Breaking of a Wave Page 7