That’s it, like that, just like that, thinks Sandro. But he knows he won’t do it, that it’s just some phony notion risen up from the depths of whatever male pride he has left, like some last-ditch effort to make himself forget the reality of this pathetic situation: a man all alone, a world of opportunity spread out before him, peeping on a deserted street and praying that sooner or later she’ll turn up. Not that he’ll ever go out to meet her or fling himself at her. He’ll just spy on her from a distance for a few seconds, a total loser, a sleaze for the record books, worthy of being crowned Biggest Failure with the Ladies, an honor Sandro had hitherto bestowed on the poet of poets Dante Alighieri.
Dante’s love for Beatrice drove him berserk, but instead of telling her, “Look, Beatrice, I’m getting good vibes from you, let me take you out one night and show you what’s what,” Dante stood back and admired her from afar, in churches, squares, on the street. He pined away, dedicated a thousand poems to her soul yet said nothing to her in person. Actually, even worse: in order not to raise any suspicions and put her in an uncomfortable position in town, Dante invented some bullshit “screen lady.” He picked a chick he didn’t give a crap about and pretended to love her so as to further shield Beatrice from humiliating rumors. And what did Dante do with those killer words of love, words with which he could have slept with all of Florence and Tuscany? He committed them to paper, and afterward they became masterpieces of world literature, but in his own day they lured exactly nobody to bed. And by the time Dante became the poet of poets he was already dead and buried, his ever-new dick reduced to a moldy pile of dust.
Total loser, thought Sandro when he’d studied his life. But Sandro was in high school then and could never have suspected that one day he would find himself in the same situation. Or worse. At least Dante had chosen a real woman to be his screen lady. Sandro’s screen is a laurel hedge.
It would be so easy to wait on the street and stop her when she comes. Sandro knows as much. But he also knows that the last time at the hospital Serena nearly put him in the ER. At the cemetery she’s likely to dig him a grave.
Besides, beyond the kicks and punches he might have to endure, Sandro is scared of something else: he doesn’t know what to do or say, and every word, every wrong move could alienate this wonderful woman, who may be the last hope for his life to have meaning. Therefore it would be wise to think hard before meeting her, it would be wise to stand on this side of the hedge and do the one thing Sandro does best: take his time and do nothing.
“Forty! Hey, Sandro! Forty!” shouts Rambo from the pool, one arm pumping the air and the other leaning against the white marble edge. “Forty laps! It’s a record! A record!”
Sandro turns around and gives him a thumbs-up before signaling with his whole hand not to shout. Better yet, to keep his mouth shut. Serena could arrive at any minute.
“Come on, man, take a dip yourself! What are you doing over there? Take a dip! Live a little for Christ’s sake! They’re going to drain this thing soon, jump in while there’s still time!”
“I don’t have a bathing suit,” says Sandro in a muffled, distorted voice, trying to keep the volume down yet still reach Rambo.
“What?”
“I don’t have a bathing suit.”
“Who cares? Go in your undies!”
“Oh right, then I can go to the hospital in wet undies.”
“What?”
“I’ll get my undies wet.”
“I didn’t catch that. Speak up. What’s the matter?”
“And get my undies wet!” shouts Sandro, this time real loud and bristling with anger. Anger at this gigantic lawn where you need to shout to be understood; at Rambo, who can’t hear because his ears are clogged with water; at his back, which aches from crouching behind the hedge and waiting for a woman who despises him and has yet to show her face. “My undies wet! My undies wet!” he shouts as loud as he can.
Then everything goes silent. Even the birds stop singing. The wind stops rustling the leaves, and making that sound like a thousand small clusters of applause in the air.
Sandro turns back to the hedge, braced to see the same little street again, the same wall topped with dingy grass. But before he can adjust his focus, Sandro realizes he’ll not see them again, because between the view and viewer stand two legs, a bust, a face with two amazing eyes staring back at him. Of course. It had to happen now, at the absolute worst time it could have happened, Serena had to pass by. She had been walking quietly alone on her way to the cemetery to see her son when she heard a voice shouting behind the hedge, “My undies wet! My undies wet!”
Puny as a plastic bag in the rain, Sandro tries to smile but only succeeds in lifting one side of his mouth, as if he’d had a stroke. Then he raises his hand. Not high, about shoulder height. He opens it, waves it around three or four times. But Serena doesn’t wave back. She stands there staring at him from the other side and in her warm lyrical voice says: “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Serena! Hi—I—nothing. Just relaxing in this here yard.”
“And getting your undies wet.”
“No, no, not a chance. We were just goufing around. They’re totally dry.”
“Is this your house?”
“Yes—no—I mean it belongs to friends. I was here by the pool and . . . and if you’d like to take a dip, hey, be my guest. Even now, or whenever you feel like it, but a dip now would be good.” Sandro keeps talking, unaware of what he’s saying, merely listening, like Serena, to the words coming out of his mouth. Actually, scratch that, Serena isn’t listening. “Do whatever you want,” she interrupts, then backs away from the hedge and starts to leave.
“No! Serena, wait!”
And perhaps because he can’t let her go like this, perhaps because he can’t reach the other side of the hedge with his hands and has to try to stop her with his voice, Sandro opens his mouth and expels everything he can think of: “Serena, listen to me, give me a second. There’s something I have to tell you. I have to tell you that I’m just an idiot.”
“I already knew that.”
“Yeah, right, but the important thing is that I’m just an idiot. I’m not an asshole, not some presumptuous teacher who thinks he knows everything in life and makes the kids do his bidding. I don’t pretend to know everything in life. Actually, I don’t know shit. I’m not even a real teacher. If I told Luca to leave this place, it’s only because I never did and I regretted it. It’s only because I wanted to make an impression on him. And on you. Because I’m an idiot, Serena. I’m just stupid, real stupid. That’s all.”
Sandro leaves his mouth open, hoping to go. But just as he hadn’t elected to talk, neither had he elected to quit talking. The words came of their own accord, from first to last, and now they’d left him quiet and drained, praying Serena wouldn’t leave.
And she doesn’t. She actually walks back over to the edge, bends over, and glares at him through the leaves, so hard she might burn them, the hedge might actually catch fire and someone need to call the firemen.
“Look, teacher. Or catechist. Or whatever you are. I don’t think you’re an asshole. I don’t even blame you for—I don’t blame you for anything. If only. If only I could blame you, at least then you’d serve a purpose. But no. I’m the one who sent him. I’d wanted to say no to him, I should have said no, like any good mother in the world would have. But who could say no to Luca? It was impossible. Luca was always in the right. Always. Except that one time. I was right that time. And in fact I should have said no. All Luca needed was a mother who’d have said no. I actually felt it. I felt it in my bones. But instead I let him go. I listened to you tell me the same things that I’d already been thinking. ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘what’s the big deal? Go ahead.’ And now Luca’s gone. I know you’re not mean or cruel. You’re not anything at all. Like you said, you’re just an idiot. But that’s even worse, because it makes me
realize just how stupid I was to listen to an idiot like you. The stupider you are, the more I’m to blame. Is this getting through to you?”
Sandro doesn’t answer. He just stands there, crouching behind the hedge. What would be the point? Serena has already stopped talking, turned, and gone, and now he’s faced with the view of a deserted street and a little wall, and the uncomfortable sensation of having really wet his underwear.
While from the far end of the yard, Rambo comes back to life. “Fifty! Fifty laps! Can you believe it? Can you believe it, Sandro?”
AT THE TEMPLE OF THE GODDESS LUNA
Honestly, I pictured it more crowded,” says Zot as we step off the bus and into the parking lot, a stretch of cement with several spaces for cars. But aside from us, there’s no one here.
Today we’ve come on a field trip to Luni, an ancient city in Liguria, just above Tuscany, and I’m happy even if I sat for the entire ride next to Zot, who kept trying to talk to me, and I didn’t want to because I knew exactly what he wanted to talk about.
“Those pans on the beach were a sign, Luna, a message.”
“Leave me alone, Zot. They meant nothing.”
“How can you say they meant nothing? After that handle broke, come on, we absolutely have to believe.”
No, actually, I didn’t have to believe. If I did they’d put me in a straitjacket and lock me up in an insane asylum for real. Just when Mom is getting better and we have a house, sort of. No, I don’t want to.
It’s true that there were tons of pans on the beach. But it could be a ship carrying kitchen supplies had sunk and maybe in a couple of days we’d come across silverware, glasses, and trays as well. It was a coincidence, like the whalebone ending up in my hair. Whales live in the sea, where else would their bones be? Had I found a whalebone in my hair after hiking in the mountains, well, that would be weird. This wasn’t.
I’m sick of weird stuff. I want normal things, lots of normal things that happen to people who are normal—the way I want to be. And I don’t want to believe in that stuff anymore. I want it all to be nonsense. I want to laugh and think that we’d have to be total fools to believe something like that. Fools like Zot, who was born in an orphanage and might find himself at home in an insane asylum. But not me. I only believe what I see. And now I see the entrance to Luni and I’m happy to be visiting someplace ancient, where they’ll tell us dates and numbers, there’ll be stones and bits of stuff from long ago, stuff that’s real and practical, like stuff should be.
But the entrance to the site isn’t exactly a stunner. It’s a kind of small run-down building with three poles on the roof: one with a tattered Italian flag, another with a faded and dirty European flag, and the third with nothing at all. The entrance is at the top of a set of steps, the first of which is broken. The Pheasant skips over it and climbs all the way up to the door, but it’s locked and no one is there.
The Pheasant is our Italian and history sub and she’s the one responsible for organizing the trip. She’s young and I like her a lot. Her real name is Miss Binelli but we call her the Pheasant because on the first day of class she wore a really long dress with dozens of pheasants drawn on it: pheasants walking, pheasants flying, pheasants sitting still and staring at you. Even the custodian calls her that. One time she came into the class and said, “The principal is making an announcement, Miss Pheasant.” Everyone laughed. The teacher told her that her name wasn’t Miss Pheasant, that she shouldn’t call her that. “I apologize, my mistake” said the custodian, then as she was leaving she looked at us and flapped her arms and made a call that sounded more like a crow than a pheasant. We laughed anyway.
Everyone’s laughing now, too, because Settembrini has found a used condom on the ground, picked it up with a stick, and is dangling it near Zot’s face.
“Check it out, Chernobyl, a yummy snack for you. Open wide!”
Zot shoots up the stairs and in a girly voice screams, “Settembrini, are you crazy? We’re in AIDS territory here. We’re in sexually transmitted disease territory.”
Our gym teacher Mr. Venturi does nothing to stop Settembrini. Actually he joins in the laughter. Only the Pheasant shouts at Settembrini to quit it but no one listens to her.
The door suddenly swings open and this really large woman goes, “Hey! What’s all the commotion? This is a museum for freak’s sake.”
“I apologize, Miss,” says the Pheasant. “Good morning. We’re here on the field trip.”
“How many are you?” she asks, mop in hand.
“Two classes. Sixty kids,” says the Pheasant. “Wait, make that sixty-two.”
“Did you at least call ahead?”
“Yes, naturally, last week we sent an email.”
“E-mail? I don’t know nothing about that. Anyway, in you come, the dig’s that way.”
“Great, thank you. Is the guide already out there?”
“Guide? There’s no guide here.”
“What do you mean? Your website says ‘Guided tours.’”
“Website?”
In the back, Mr. Venturi laughs and shakes his head.
“Your website,” says the Pheasant. “It says ‘Guided tours Monday through Friday, for groups and . . . ’ Look, I’ll show you.” She takes her phone out of her purse.
“Don’t bother. You can show me all you want but it’s still just me here. The place is open, go on in. Happy hunting.” The woman throws a rag on the ground, drags it across the floor, and disappears inside.
“Excuse me, Miss, but do you at least have a pamphlet or, I don’t know, an introduction or, I don’t know, a catalogue or, I don’t know, a brochure,” asks the Pheasant. Her confidence wanes a little after every “I don’t know”. By the time she gets to the bit about the brochure, she says it under her breath and almost fails to get the whole thing out. The woman continues mopping and doesn’t answer. Mr. Venturi lets out another laugh before leading the kids inside.
Me, I stick by our teacher and smile at her, cause I’m sorry that the trip is going badly. I want to tell her the others may be fools but I’m happy we’ve come to this place that almost has the same name as me. But I get embarrassed and keep my mouth shut.
Out by the site the sun is beating down. I can’t see anything for a bit and have to stop. “Luna, please put your sunscreen on,” says the teacher. Says Zot too. He’d said the same thing outside of school before hopping on the minibus. And Mom said it this morning. I nod, take out the little tube, and spread it over my face and arms, even if I put some on five minutes ago. That’s how things go: everyone always tells me what to do, and if I say I did it already, I’ll never hear the end of it. It’s easier to lather it on and amen.
But we have to get a move on, Venturi and the others have already reached the start of the site, screened by blockades and topped with sheet iron. If you ask me, we don’t really have to catch up with them. After all, we’re two separate, remote groups totally different—On one hand there’s Venturi with everyone else; they hardly glance at the first dig and stop in a clearing, where, by the noise they’re making my guess is they’ve already fished out the soccer ball. Then there’s my group, with the Pheasant, Zot, and two kids the teachers call “special.” One is Allegria. He’s cross-eyed and always staring at the sky. He laughs constantly and drools, as if someone were performing an endless stand-up routine in his head. The other is a girl with really long red hair. I always see her during recess crouching in the corner of the hallway or kneeling in the courtyard with her eyes on the ground. She never talks, is always super serious, and I swear while we were climbing onto the bus I heard her mom whisper to the Pheasant, “Please don’t let her eat too many ants.” I swear I heard her say that.
And, well, I know we’re not supposed to judge people, especially by their appearance, but look, if this is special-people group, being special doesn’t seem so hot. I’d rather be normal, totally normal.
“How exciting, Miss Binelli,” says Zot, “if I’m not mistaken, this first dig is the ancient forum of Luni.”
At the word “forum” Allegria bursts out laughing. Then he goes back to regular laughing. The Pheasant looks down at the square of dirt and stones lined up behind the blockades, trying to read what the sign says, but it’s way down there, all washed-out, so old the ancient Romans themselves may have put it there when they built the forum walls. Were it a forum.
“Actually, Zot,” says the Pheasant, “this is the famous House of Mosaics differently.”
Zot studies the row of stones and says, “Sorry, Miss, but are you sure? Honestly, I had picture the House of Mosaics differently.”
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know, a mosaic or two?”
“Oh, they were there once upon a time. Magnificent mosaics. They were probably there, and down at the far end, all around that area. But, let’s get one thing straight, kids. If you want to see things here, you have to use your imagination. Otherwise you won’t see anything.” The Pheasant smiles. And I smile back at her, because I do that all the time, I see what I can see and then go with imagination.
“And yes, Zot, I am sure. I know a thing or two about Luni. I would remind you I’m the History teacher and I have a degree in Archaeology.”
“You do?” I say. “Then why aren’t you an archaeologist?”
“Easier said than done. I tried, but I had to find another job.”
“Is that when you began teaching?”
“No. For a while I worked at Decathlon, the sporting goods store. Then the school came calling.”
“Teaching is better, right?”
“Not exactly. I earned more at Decathlon.”
“Sure,” says Zot, “but it must be so satisfying to be called ‘teacher’!”
“Oh, Zot, I’m not sure I’d call it satisfying. Besides, so far all anyone calls me is the Pheasant.”
The Breaking of a Wave Page 26