“Ok,” I say quickly. Anyway he won’t win.
I can’t help but smile. I smile as we near the foosball table, one on one side, one on the other; I smile as I prepare the balls and wind back the score markers on the sides; I smile as I unbutton my cardigan. For this game I want to be at my best and I want to be comfortable.
Andrea is huffing, pushing up the sleeves of his sweater almost to the elbows, moving around carelessly on the other side of the foosball table. He’s glancing at me every so often, but when I unbutton my cardigan he straightens up and stops everything, until he’s totally immobile. He stares at my hands which slowly free the small buttons, and from time to time lifts his eyes to observe my face. They’re the only thing that moves – his eyes – and if you hadn’t seen this small sign of life, you’d have a hard time believing he was breathing.
“Ready?” And I really do try hard to contain the happiness in my voice.
Andrea stirs himself and lowers his head over the foosball. I launch the little ball and we begin. In less than a minute I’ve made two goals.
“Yeah, but at least make an effort, otherwise there isn’t even any satisfaction…” I reproach him.
“Yeah Andre, at least make an effort…” I hear Nic chime in, having shown up in that precise moment.
I look up and see Andrea glare at Nic, who is watching the foosball. “A practice match that stands alone?”
“Yes, and we’ve bet on it so don’t distract me…” Says Andrea letting the ball go.
I notice quickly that he’s trying harder and it takes me a while to make another four goals. In the meantime, he’s managed to get two on me as well. It’s at this point that Nic, who’s following and commenting the game from my side of the foosball table, says, “It looks like I’ll have to distract her a little if you want to have some chance!”
“Don’t you dare!” I warn him without taking my eyes off the game. Initially he doesn’t do anything and I forget about his presence again. After a little, though, I feel a tickle on my neck and I start to tap myself with my hand as I play. I hear a giggle and turn around, finding Nic’s face two centimeters away, chuckling while he blows softly to trip me up.
“Quit it right now!”
He laughs and moves away. I turn back to the game, but almost immediately feel light fingers on my neck again. “Nic I’ll rip your fingers off with my teeth, I’m warning you!”
With each of my comments Andrea jerks his head up and looks at Nic. In one of these instances I make another goal. “That isn’t valid!” Says Andrea with a black look.
“It certainly is valid,” I counter, putting my hands on my hips. “It’s your fault if you get distracted while the game is going on.”
Andrea grinds his teeth, takes another ball and throws it down violently – I make a goal almost immediately. We’re at seven to three and I still feel calm enough. Nic, however, keeps bugging me, always on my neck without really touching me. I manage to play more or less, even if with difficulty, and to make another goal. Andrea makes another goal just after mine, and for a few minutes there is silence while we both concentrate. All of a sudden I feel something under my arms. I jerk back my left arm and Andrea makes a goal. I hear Nic laugh and I turn towards him.
“You’re ticklish!” He exclaims with an idiotic face.
I turn towards Andrea. “This isn’t fair!”
He looks at me with a smirk. “It’s your fault if you get distracted while the game is going on!”
“You’re a baby!” I yell in his face in a very adult way while I take a ball and throw it forcefully into the field.
Nothing will distract me now, nothing. I must absolutely win.
Nic blows, sighs, whispers in my ear. He doesn’t stay still for an instant, and he touches me. Everything very innocent to be clear - he puts his hands on my hips, my shoulders, etc. The only problem is that I hate to be touched. I hate it. But I want to win and the only thing I do is occasionally make mild death threats, without taking my hands off the foosball table. I’ve made another goal and am now at nine. I only have to make one more and I’ll win.
Andrea concentrates, but looks up from time to time. He mostly looks at Nic, and while the latter laughs more or less continually, he is dead serious. He actually has a look that you’d say was almost angry. Andrea is like that. He takes every little challenge seriously.
Suddenly I feel Nic’s hands brush my stomach. I twist to get them off of me while I continue to play, but he doesn’t take them away, instead he begins to move them slowly up until he stops just under my breasts. I yell a desperate, “Nic!”, at the top of my lungs, before becoming aware that he would never do something like that. This is enough for Andrea to look up, take in the scene in front of him and jerk up, opening his mouth. I make a goal. The tenth. I straighten up with a jump too and yell, this time for joy, “I won!”
Nic is beside me now, not behind me anymore. Andrea stares at us again with his mouth open and I begin to jump up and down in place and yell, “I won! I won!” And to laugh. Finally I can get even! The happiness and satisfaction I feel in this moment… indescribable!
Linda and Marco join us to see what’s happening, while Nic turns me around and hugs me. I embrace him jumping. “I won!” Then I break away, move back and tell him, “If I’d lost, you’d be dead.”
Andrea doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even complain about the last goal I made in his moment of total distraction. He’s gripping the handles of the foosball until his knuckles turn white.
I laugh in his face. “It’s hard to lose, eh!”
I grab my cardigan and slip it on. “So, which week shall we do? Starting tomorrow?”
“No, not this week,” he answers, rigid.
“No, right. I want some time to plan it well too. I’ll let you know which week we’ll do.”
“What’s happening?” Asks Linda, now to my right.
“If you come with me to the bathroom I’ll summarize it for you.” And before leaving the room I turn to Andrea again with a triumphant smile.
In the bathroom I go over what’s just happened for Linda. She remains quiet, her arms resting on the door while I’m peeing. “What is it?”
She shakes her head. “Have you seen how he looks at you?”
“Who?”
“Andrea.”
“How does he look at me? Like his lab experiment?” I ask, laughing, still giddy over my victory.
Linda shakes her head. “I don’t think that someone would have that look on his face if someone else hugged his lab experiment…”
“What are you saying?”
“When you and Nic hugged…” Says Linda with a thoughtful look, “for a second I was really afraid he’d throw over the foosball table with one hand to come and pull you apart…”
I look at her for a moment in silence, mouth open, and then burst out laughing hard. “Oh, Linda!” I say between laughs, “What does Marco have you smoking?”
“Hmm,” is Linda’s comment.
Shortly after our return to the room I leave. Linda stays over at the twins’ house to sleep and Andrea is still lying on the couch when I exit the game room. He has barely spoken since his defeat, while I’m happier than I’ve been for a long time.
12.
I’m proud of what I’ve planned. This week I’m going to have lots of fun.
It’s the third week of June and Andrea and I have made a mutual agreement to make this my “Week of Power”. I chose it because Saturday evening there will be the traditional summer party at the cafè and I already have something special in mind. Moreover, he didn’t have anything in particular to do and would be free. At my complete disposal. Just thinking these words makes me smile.
The Week of Power starts at midnight on Saturday and will end at midnight the following Saturday. Today is Sunday, the first day, and I’m waiting for him to arrive. I’ve prepared a marathon of romantic movies with lots of popcorn and iced-tea. The marathon starts after lunch at one-thirty, and
will last until late at night. The films I’ve chosen are Dirty Dancing, Pretty Woman, P.S. I Love You, Romeo + Juliet, The Diary of Bridget Jones, Disney’s Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast, and Legends of the Fall to finish up.
Since it’s Sunday, my mother is around and seeing me prepare everything asked me earlier, “Is Linda coming over?”
“No, a boy I know is coming over.”
“And since when do you have male friends?”
Sooner or later I’ll go to live by myself. “Now I have one.”
“The single twin?”
“No.”
“Figures…” I hear her mutter.
My mother has softened, seeing me get slimmer. Now, when I go out, she even compliments me sometimes and I see a happiness in her eyes that makes me more irritated than her pathetic comments from before. I get the urge to immediately regain a couple of kilos, like that, just to wipe that smile off her face. I can understand that guys don’t like whales, that appearance counts too, that attraction is influenced by appearance, etc. etc. I can accept that and see the point. But she’s my mother… My mother… Her love should be unconditional. Always.
When the doorbell rings, she’s so disinterested that she doesn’t even feel like opening the door. Better.
I run on bare feet towards the door and open it with a thirty-two tooth smile. Andrea stops on the doorstep with his hands in his pockets. He has on a pair of light-colored jeans, a little ripped on the upper-thigh, and a white T-shirt which enhances that touch of tan he already has, even though summer has just started. He hasn’t shaved and his hair is all uncombed and a little wet. He’s probably just had a shower after those four or five hours of running Sunday morning. He has a good smell, something fresh and mint. He absolutely takes your breath away.
“Are you ready?”
“No, but it’s the same,” he answers smiling. “May I?” He says taking a step in the house.
“Over here,” I gesture him towards the living room, passing the kitchen without entering.
My mother is cleaning up and I haven’t got any desire to introduce them. Just the same, hearing the deep voice, she must be curious anyway, because she looks out the door with a rag in her hand as we pass. Luckily I’m in front, so Andrea’s bulk doesn’t prevent me from seeing her face when she sets eyes on him for the first time. I feel like laughing - she has her mouth gaping and she can’t seem to close it, her eyes are wide open and her hands frozen to the rag, which after a couple of seconds falls soundlessly to the floor.
I giggle. This week is off to a fantastic start.
Andrea passes me and introduces himself. “Good morning ma’am. Pleased to meet you, I’m Andrea.”
My mother automatically takes his offered hand, lifts her head up as high as practically everyone has to with him, and for the first time I can remember, stutters, “P-pleased to meet you.”
She even forgets to say her name. Another giggle pops out spontaneously and she turns to me with an odd look. It almost looks like… respect. I’m not completely sure, because I’ve never seen it before. I no longer feel like laughing. “Let’s go Andrea, there’s no time to lose, we have a bunch of movies to see,” I say icily.
It’s not that I, in a certain sense, didn’t enjoy seeing her so surprised and without words for once, but she’s my mother… Am I asking too much to want her to admire me and respect me and love me in spite of how much I weigh or how beautiful the guy I bring home is?
“Why are you mad all of a sudden?” He asks me in a low voice once he sits on the sofa.
“Forget it…” And when I see his chin stiffen in an expression that by now I know all too well, I roll my eyes and huff, but say, “Let’s say that there’s bad blood between me and my mother. Please,” I look in his eyes and join my hands as though in prayer. “Please, please… let’s not talk about painful things. This is my Week of Power and you’re here to watch romantic movies all day… Humor me, and most of all, respect our agreement.”
He instantly relaxes and turns to look at the pile of DVDs on the coffee table in front of the TV. “They’re all romantic movies?” He asks lifting an eyebrow.
I laugh, calm again. “Uh-huh.”
I see him go pale. Seriously. He’s lost a little color. “Oh my God…” He actually whispers.
I laugh because if there’s something that makes me happy it’s annoying him, really annoying him. And to make him pay for all the work he made me do, both on the training field and – most of all – forcing me to tell him certain things.
I put on the first movie, Dirty Dancing. And to worsen the situation, I say every line a second before the actors do. By the third film he’s semi-reclining with his long legs touching the coffee table and a hand on his forehead.
“If you fall asleep, we’ll start the film from the beginning,” I warn him and he jerks around with his eyes wide open. I, sitting up with my legs crossed on the sofa, smile sadistically.
During P.S. I Love You I weep desperately, as I always do when I watch this movie, and I hear him complain every time he passes me a Kleenex to dry my nose and eyes.
He astonishes me instead, when Mark Darcy appears for the first time on the screen while Bridget Jones is playing, saying, “Darcy? Darcy as in Austen’s Mr. Darcy?”
I spin around. “Yes, it’s actually a homage to him… What do you know about Austen’s Darcy?”
He shrugs. “Nothing.”
I pause the film. “Andrea…” He doesn’t look at me. “Have you read Pride and Prejudice?”
He reddens.
I burst out laughing. “I can’t believe it! When? Why didn’t you tell me anything?”
“I don’t know why you like that book… For me Elizabeth is something of an opportunist, she only likes Darcy because he’s rich…”
I stare at him with my mouth open in an exaggerated way for two full minutes and I laugh, even harder, while he turns even redder. I stretch out on the sofa and move my feet as though I were swimming in the air.
“Olly?” I continue with my act. “Quit it Olly,” he warns me, but I don’t listen to him. “If you don’t knock it off right now I’m leaving.” Nothing doing. So he stands up and I stop, kneeling on the sofa and grabbing onto one of his arms. “Don’t you dare!”
“Then quit it and we’ll continue. Already it’s bad enough, at least don’t make it worse…”
I don’t say anything, but as soon as he lies on the sofa again I start the movie. “Too bad though… I would have really liked to analyze Austen with you…” I whisper.
While Bridget Jones is still on, by now evening, my mother reappears for the first time all afternoon. She has stayed in her bedroom, or at least upstairs, without ever showing herself. I really have no idea what she was doing, but it was like being in the house alone.
She comes nearer with a smile, still wearing her house tracksuit, with a pony tail and without makeup. “Guys, would you like something to eat?”
I pause the film and say nothing. I observe her without answering, but feel Andrea move. “Olly, what do you want to eat?” He asks me after a few seconds.
I turn to him. “Dunno. Pizza?” I ask looking at him. “We have to eat something practical and without knives and forks because we have to eat here, on the sofa. We can’t stop, otherwise we’ll really finish too late…”
Andrea shrugs his shoulders.
“If you want I’ll prepare you something,” my mother intervenes, and her voice carries my gaze back to her. “If you don’t feel like pizza, I can make you some sandwiches. The kind you can eat on the sofa.”
I look at her through narrowed eyes. Who is this woman? Where is the harpy that is my mother? I suddenly shake myself and turn towards Andrea. “You choose.”
He shrugs. “It’s the same to me.”
I roll my eyes skyward and then, without really meeting my mother’s eyes, a little tersely decree, “Well, I prefer pizza.”
She stays standing beside the sofa in silence for a little, then
she says, “Ok.”
I hear her move and go to busy herself in the kitchen, probably to prepare her dinner. I go and get the house telephone in the corridor, and before returning to the sofa, I don’t even know why, I look in the kitchen door. With a little embarrassment I ask, “Would you like pizza too?”
She has her back to me. She’s taking the clean dishes out of the dishwasher. I see her shake her head before hearing her say, “No, no thank you.”
She doesn’t turn around and I wait for just a second before going back in front of the TV.
“What kind of pizza do you want?” I ask with false cheer.
“Tuna and onion,” Andrea replies quickly, looking at me intensely.
He stares at me the entire time of the brief phone call, and also stares at me when it’s finished and he should be directing his attention to the screen.
“What is it?” I ask him, exasperated by his scrutiny.
He shakes his head and then turns towards the TV sighing, “Nothing.”
I wait another moment, while he watches Bridget Jones’s face stopped. I continue to look at him without restarting the movie until he turns towards me again. When his eyes meet mine, I ask him in a low voice, “What?”
He looks at me, lowers his eyes and then lifts them. Slowly he begins, “Your mother…”
I jerk my head up involuntarily, preparing myself for anything that might come.
He notes my reaction, but doesn’t comment. “Your mother,” he begins again in a low voice so he won’t be heard from the nearby kitchen, “was being nice.”
I shrug.
“She offered to make us something, it was nice of her.”
“And so?”
“And so… nothing. You could have answered her in a better way.”
As soon as he finishes the sentence I straighten up, suddenly furious. I get a little closer and when I answer, my voice is a whisper, “Don’t you dare tell me how I have to answer my mother.”
He looks at me in silence.
“You don’t know anything, not anything!” I see him swallow. “The fact that I told you a couple of episodes from my life doesn’t mean that you know everything about my past, about what I feel and, most of all, it doesn’t give you the right to pass judgement on how I behave or what I say to my mother.” I pause. “And when I confessed some of the ugly facts about my life at the lake, it seemed as though you understood my feelings… almost as though you shared them.”
Training in Love Page 14