Behind the eyes we meet

by Mélissa Verreault

  Like a Fire to Warm Us

  serena slams the door on her way out. I sit alone in Emmanuelle’s living room, waiting for her to come out. She can’t stay in there forever. And eventually she appears, five hours later, the imprint of her pillow on her right cheek. She walks into the kitchen without as much as a glance in my direction and sets about banging pans and cooking utensils together. She takes out half the ingredients in the pantry and puts them on the counter. Flour and eggshells everywhere, grated cheese in her hair.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m cooking, isn’t that obvious?”

  “You’re right, it is. Why aren’t you talking to me?”

  “I’m angry. I think that’s pretty clear.”

  “OK. Well can you at least give me a chance to explain?”

  “I doubt there’s much to explain. You and Serena felt like getting it on, so you went ahead and started without taking into account that you were in my apartment, that Serena is supposedly my best friend, and that I’m in love with you!”

  “…”

  “And I can see it isn’t mutual.”

  “…”

  “Thank you for clearing that up. I think you can get out now.”

  “No, that’s not true. Everything’s gotten so messed up. Listen to me, please.”

  “You’ve got two minutes, then you better get lost.”

  Two minutes to explain everything. Why I came here. Why I left there. What I was looking for, what I’ll never find. Her. Manue. Why she makes me want to believe that things really can change. Why I’d like to be with her more often. All the time, actually. Why I want her to come to Italy with me next time. Not for a funeral, but to enjoy good wine, the sea, and Tuscany. My grandfather. Losing him, and how that’s affected me more than I would have thought. The box. My fear of finding unhappy truths inside. My mistakes. How badly I treated Sandra. Everything. In two minutes. When it’s taken me my whole lifetime to begin to get to know myself.

  •

  “I doubt you’ll believe me, but I swear it’s the truth. Serena came onto me. I said no, but she kept trying to seduce me. She insisted on giving me a massage. She got undressed and pulled down my pants. And then you walked in.”

  “You’re right. That’s easy to say.”

  “I’m telling you, I’m not at all attracted to her.”

  “Then why did you let her do it?”

  “I was caught off-guard and didn’t know how to react.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Maybe I’m overstepping the mark, but I was wondering why you and Serena are friends.”

  “Funny, I was wondering the same thing.”

  “Then you believe me?”

  “I haven’t heard Serena’s version of the story, but I’m inclined to think yours is closer to the truth.”

  •

  The truth. As I see it. As it happened according to Serena. As Manue experienced it. One moment, three truths. And nobody is right. It isn’t a question of who is telling the truth, but rather who isn’t lying. Who is telling the story without changing it too much. Now I’m not so sure my version is how things really happened. In the right order, the appropriate tone, with accurate details. History is a reconstruction of the stories we tell ourselves.

  All I know for sure is that Manue, le voglio tanto bene61. And I’d like to tell her in Italian. Because it comes from deep inside me. From my heart. Maybe a place that’s even more hidden.

  •

  I’m glad Manue has forgiven me, at least partly. But I wish she’d speak to me. She hasn’t said a word since we began eating. She made ham, cheese, and asparagus crepes. The crepes are a bit mushy and the asparagus is overcooked, but I’ll finish off my plate. I’m not picky. I need Manue to forgive me completely.

  •

  My grandfather was mysterious and very shy, a man of few words. It was hard to know what he really thought. He preferred to keep his opinions to himself so that he wouldn’t hurt anyone. He was always extremely considerate of others—not charging customers for deliveries, bringing fresh eggs over to the neighbour, buying a coffee for any acquaintance he happened to run into at the local bar next to his shop. My mother always resented him for it. Until he died, of course. The day he left us, he was elevated to the most perfect individual she’d ever known.

  Before he died, my mother would reproach Sergio for being kinder to everyone else than he was to his own family. In her eyes, he spent more time helping partners from his bridge club or downright strangers than he did taking care of his wife and children. She called him insensitive, but I think it was easier for him to be generous with people he wasn’t close to. It had nothing to do with love and everything to do with self-sacrifice. Absolute surrender. He didn’t want to leave himself exposed by investing in a relationship only to see it not work out.

  Maybe that’s why I wished Manue could have met my grandfather: because in a way, they were a lot alike.

  •

  My eyes are fixed on my empty plate. I can feel Manue staring at me. Her reproachful gaze on my pitiful neck. I don’t dare look up. She’s probably waiting for me to say something clever. Or maybe she’s hoping if she keeps staring I’ll eventually disappear. Those laser eyes of hers.

  “I brought you back something from Italy. But if I give it to you now, I’m worried you’ll think it’s just to make up for before.”

  “What is it?”

  “Here, open it.”

  “…”

  “…”

  “A necklace. It’s beautiful.”

  “I know it’s not Hector, but I thought the fish was pretty.”

  “Thank you. You didn’t have to.”

  “After the funeral, my grandmother gave me a box that had belonged to my grandfather. I don’t know what’s in it. Do you want to open it together?”

  Her eyes light up. I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist the idea of digging up secrets with me. Manue the riddle hunter.

  “We’ll need alcohol.”

  “I brought back a bottle of chianti.”

  “What colour is chianti?”

  “Red. Why?”

  “I don’t know anything about wine. I only drink rosé. It tastes like strawberries.”

  “This chianti tastes like cherries. And vanilla. With hints of leather.”

  “Leather?”

  “Yes. Want to try it?”

  “OK, but don’t hate me if I spit it out.”

  It would take a lot more than that for me to hate you, Manue.

  •

  Wine uncorked, candles lit—Manue believes in the sacred, in reverence, in memories. Cushions in place, we are sitting cross-legged on the hardwood floor of the living room, the box in between, like a fire to warm us.

  “Go ahead, open it. It’s yours, you do it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why? What are you afraid of finding?”

  “Things I’d rather not know.”

  “Like what?”

  “That I’m adopted, that my grandfather had so many debts there’s nothing left for us, that he was gay…”

  “Oh come on!”

  “What! Every family has secrets.”

  “You’re telling me. The only way to know if your grandfather was into men is to open the box. Let’s go!”

  The shoebox is so old that the cardboard falls apart in my hands when I start to lift the lid. The miniature treasure chest smells like damp wood. Paper. Hundreds of sheets of paper, crinkled from water passing under the bridge, yellowed by light that has taken years to reach me. Letters. I recognize my grandfather’s uncertain penmanship, my grandmother’s nervous handwriting.

  I hear the screech of a train rolling over rusted rails. A wave of heat rises in my chest. I feel dizzy, as if I’m about to fall from one of the craggy cli
ffs of Cinque Terre. My eyes lock on the date of the first letter: July 10, 1946. A flashback from a life I’ve never been told about.

  * * *

  61.I really like her.

  The Age of Birth

  manue is quiet. She looks at the letters strewn across the living-room floor and takes a sip of wine to help herself think. She doesn’t mind the chianti, in the end. I don’t know what to think of the letters. They make me want to go back in time and hug my grandfather. I knew he’d had tuberculosis, but I didn’t know he’d spent so long in a sanatorium. Sergio had rarely spoken of the past. He’d acted as if this were the way life had always been, as if what he’d been through hadn’t affected the man he was. As if he’d been born at twenty-five, just back from the war.

  I couldn’t say my age of birth for sure, or if it’s even happened yet. Am I still waiting to be born?

  •

  “Can you read this one again?”

  Manue wants me to reread the letter where my grandmother writes that she’s cut her hair short.

  “My translation could be off. A lot of it’s in dialect. I don’t speak it very well.”

  “That’s OK, it doesn’t matter. So your grandmother was a feminist before her time.”

  “Yeah, I guess. You’re right—1946 was pretty early for that kind of talk.”

  “Here in Quebec, women didn’t get the right to vote until barely six years before that.”

  “It was 1945 in Italy!”

  “Your grandmother really was ahead of her time.”

  •

  Of our time. Whoever really, fully is? We’re always either nostalgic for a bygone era or longing to jump fifty years ahead, just to see what the world will look like then. We assume everything will be so much easier by that point.

  My grandmother, a feminist. I never thought of her that way before. Luisa worked a lot, rarely cooked, and hated darning socks. She spent six days a week in her store and always found an excuse to leave the house on Sundays. She wasn’t the type to bake treats for her grandchildren. I always loved her, since she was my grandmother and that’s the way things should be. Now that she’s starting to lose it, my affection is turning to pity. I should have gotten to know her better, while there was still time. Asked her about her childhood, her marriage, about life before I was born. But I was too shy. Too much like my grandfather.

  That’s probably why she gave the letters to me.

  •

  I hadn’t opened the box in Italy because I was afraid that whatever was inside would compel me to stay. I chucked it under my arm and hightailed it out of there so that the box wouldn’t force me to make decisions I didn’t want to make. I’ve got enough regrets. Small ones, large ones, nothing too dramatic. Just enough to tie my stomach in knots if I think about it too much.

  •

  When I think back to one of those gloomy times when I feel like I’ve failed, all the rest resurface and form an unbreakable chain of shameful disappointments. I feel it squeezing my throat, enveloping me, choking me violently. Struggling to breathe, spent with sadness.

  The time I

  lied to my mother and told her it wasn’t me who had taken the ten thousand lira note she’d left on the counter to pay for the water delivery when I’d gone to buy mountains of candy with it

  accused Giuseppe of punching me in the schoolyard to explain the bruise that swelled up around my eye, while in truth I’d fallen off skateboarding, something I’d been strictly forbidden to do

  told Signora Giuliari at the beginning of the school year that I was a Jehovah’s Witness so I could skip religion class; I spent six months outside in the hallway playing Game Boy and drawing through catechism until my father caught on and enrolled me in Saturday morning classes to make up for lost time

  missed a final exam in university because I’d partied too hard the night before; six years at the University of Bologna and I left without a degree

  gave Marica a ridiculous teddy bear for Christmas because I’d been too lazy to put any thought into it, while she’d spent hundreds of euros on surprises of all kinds for me

  introduced my friend Marco to Lisa Santinello, who was crazy about me and who I stupidly wanted nothing to do with, even though she was pretty, funny, and smart; today they have three kids and I’m still wondering what to do with my life.

  If I could only apologize to everyone I’ve upset and ask if they’ve forgiven me. The problem is that in most cases I only ended up hurting myself. Forgiving yourself is even harder than asking others to.

  •

  The letters Luisa and Sergio exchanged over the years make me realize how little patience I have. Like every only child, I never wanted to wait for anything: instant gratification. If I couldn’t get my hands on something right away, I would turn to the next thing.

  My grandparents met, held each other tight without ever kissing, dreamed of a future together, and then illness tore them apart.

  They waited three years before they could be together. Seven before they could open their store, where they invested all the money they had saved up over a decade. Credit did not exist; neither did cheap love.

  They had never slept together before they were separated. They didn’t need their bodies to tell them they were in love. Like most boys of my generation, I never took more than two weeks to sleep with una delle mie nuove ragazze62. But being shy, I was never the kind to rack up conquests. I’ve probably only slept with five or six different girls. That isn’t too many. At one point this number gave me a complex. I never noticed it was five or six more than the number of girls my father or grandfather had slept with.

  •

  To feel accomplished today, it’s important to

  have bedded dozens of women

  worked twenty different jobs

  master most software programs

  speak five languages

  own not one, but two cars

  have a city house

  a country house

  and a seaside cottage

  have visited half of the one hundred and ninety-seven countries recognized by the United Nations

  have 1.69 children in perfect health

  register your child and a half for eight different activities:

  soccer, piano, tennis, karate, guitar lessons, singing, painting, fencing

  run 13.4 kilometres three times a week at five-minute pace

  think of training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in the not-so-distant-future

  have at least 500 Facebook friends and 100 contacts in your phone

  go to the theatre more than twice a year

  read a book a week

  see all the movies listed in the “Arts” section of the paper

  take an interest in hockey, international politics, and food science

  contribute generously to cancer research, children in third world countries, and Greenpeace

  make it a life goal to set up a foundation for Ugandan refugees

  save for retirement and

  above all

  always stay Zen.

  •

  I’m thirty-three. I’ve got a crappy job and no kids, no house, no car, no degree, no money to travel and even less to give to others or dump into a separate account for the winter of my life. I’m not in very good shape, I smoked for twelve years, I don’t have any money to spend on culture, and I’m very, very stressed.

  * * *

  62.One of my new girlfriends

  A Light in Their Eyes

  when I was seven or eight, up until I became too cool to hang out with my own family, I used to spend every weekend at the pigeon club with my grandfather. We called it “going pigeoning.” He would make a giant thermos of coffee for the guys and it was my job to carry it around and fill mugs for whoever needed to warm up.

 
At first I helped him clean the birdcages and bring them over to the pigeon club. Then I was given greater responsibilities: I had to tie a numbered band around each pigeon’s foot that would identify it during the race. Every bird had a number, and it was my job to copy it onto the foot band and compile all the information once I learned how to use a pencil properly.

  The club regulars thought I was cute. Il piccolo Santini, è così bravo.63 Everyone knew that I was Sergio’s grandson. This alone was a virtue: I was told my grandfather was honest, helpful, and upstanding and that if I’d inherited even an ounce of those qualities, I’d grow up to be a good man. I would go on to do great things.

  I’m worried they were wrong. That I’ve missed out on becoming that great man. I hope Sergio isn’t disappointed in me.

  •

  Sergio kept his pigeons in the attic of a friend’s old country house. It was immense, a run-down place with peeling pink paint and cracked walls. The upstairs was filled with old furniture, sofas, mattresses, bedside lamps, and a stove, all covered with dust and steeped in the stale smell of years gone by. I loved playing hide-and-seek there. There was nobody to count to one hundred and come look for me. I hid only for the thrill of disappearing.

  The neighbourhood cats all sought refuge in the semi-abandoned building. I fed them pork fat and vegetable peels stolen from my grandparents’ kitchen. My grandfather had put me in charge of making sure the cats didn’t go up the stairs to the dovecote. So I kept watch over the cats while he took care of his birds. This seemed right and proper. I had a job, a purpose.

  That’s what I miss most about childhood: feeling useful simply because an adult has entrusted you with a task, however insignificant, and doing this job thoroughly and confidently, as if your life depended on it.

  •

  I never knew why Sergio devoted himself so entirely to pigeons. I should have asked. As kids we bombard adults with questions, but we don’t always ask the right ones.

  We always want to know

  why the sky is blue

  what makes cars go

  why the sun sets

  why a fire burns

  why flowers smell good