The Gulf Between

by Maxine Alterio

  My hand rests alongside Matteo’s on the bedcover, the closest I have come to touching him.

  She glances down. ‘His fingers are long and thin like yours.’

  ‘When he was small he wouldn’t let anyone except me cut his nails. He believed they had magic powers.’

  ‘I’ll bring you a pair of scissors,’ the nurse says. She leaves the blood-pressure machine on the trolley and zips out.

  The scissors lie flat in my hand when the neurosurgeon arrives at 8 p.m. He exhibits the same thoughtful manner I have come to appreciate. We talk about the foul weather we’re having, a sell-out rugby game at Carisbrook, our sons. His had followed in his father’s footsteps.

  ‘What does Matteo do for a living?’ he asks.

  Rather than admit I don’t know, I say, ‘He played school football and scouts picked him for a regional team.’

  The neurosurgeon takes off his spectacles, flattens the frame and runs it down his shirtfront. He’s marking time. I hunt for another source of motherly pride. Just as I’m about to divulge that Matteo was called the Moretti Magician, he lifts his eyes. I drop mine. The scrutiny feels too personal, too intense. If he carries on asking this type of question, I might reveal more than I want. So I say, ‘How is Matteo faring?’

  He shifts his attention from me to his patient, raising Mattie’s eyelids in turn, shining the narrow beam of light into the left pupil and then the right. His chin tightens. ‘No change,’ he says, ‘I’ll be in again tomorrow. Do try and get a decent night’s sleep, Mrs Moretti.’

  Advice I would have taken if a second wind had not come upon me, an apt expression given the nature and composition of energy. In this light, the university clock tower, which I can see through a window, resembles an ancient moa rising from the marshes. Reflections of lights from houses on the hills across the harbour shimmer on the surface of the dark water, appearing in my mind as the bones of white settlers. History and imagination interact in mysterious ways.

  On the stroke of midnight, I take my son’s fingers one at a time and trim his fingernails. The cuttings drop onto the bedcover. I scoop them into a tissue which I place in a side-pocket of my handbag. ‘Please don’t die, Matteo,’ I say, and I slide my hand, palm side up, under his, until our lifelines intersect.

  31

  Italy, 1962

  Halfway through cleaning Ben’s and my bedroom I found another note, this one poked into the toe of a shoe from a pair Ben had bought to lift my spirits after the miscarriage. I wanted to soften the leather so I slipped them on to wear as I dusted. The left shoe was a tight fit. Initially I thought I had neglected to trim a toenail. Then I realised something was stuffed inside. I thrust in a finger, dislodged a paper ball and smoothed it out. In Matteo’s handwriting: Someone is getting extra sweets.

  Who was he referring to? Why hide the note? It might have languished for weeks in the shoebox in the wardrobe. As a youngster, he had left his messages in visible places. This new-found secrecy made no sense. I needed the advice of another adult. Because Alessia was asleep, I settled for Rosa.

  I went downstairs as she came into the kitchen smelling of liniment. ‘My Carlo, he hurt his hip digging the garden,’ she said. ‘I rub him hard.’

  She rolled her knuckles across the table to demonstrate. Perspiration dotted her brow. The forest of black hairs on her forearms was slick with sweat.

  ‘I’m sure he appreciated it, Rosa.’

  She grunted. ‘I bring in the washing.’

  I looked about for a job I could do. A strip of flypaper, the final resting place for insects, dangling from a hook on the ceiling, caught my attention. I climbed on a chair, removed the blackened mess and disposed of it in a bin at the back door. When Rosa staggered in with the laundry basket I was washing my hands. She dumped it on the table for me to sort the children’s clothes, filled a bucket of water and, on her hands and knees, started to scrub the floor.

  While I considered how best to frame my question I became distracted as I hunted through the clothes I was folding. Just before she died, Muz had given Francesca a dress that had come with matching frilly knickers. The dress was in the pile, but what the little minx had done with the knickers was a mystery. I’d be upset if she had destroyed them, as they were a cheerful reminder of Muz.

  One thing at a time, I told myself. First Matteo’s note. ‘Rosa,’ I said, ‘I need a second opinion about something.’

  She sat back on her haunches and looked up at me. ‘Yes, Signora.’

  ‘Someone is giving Francesca too many sweets.’

  Rosa put down her scrubbing brush and heaved herself upright. ‘That girl, she must watch what goes into her mouth otherwise she will never get a husband. After she goes up the aisle she can eat whatever she likes.’

  ‘We’re talking about a nine-year-old child.’

  ‘Even a girl her age she must watch her weight.’

  While brushing Alessia’s hair before taking her into dinner, I noticed fresh bruises on her upper arms. Seeing me stare at them she said, ‘Get a move on. I’m starving.’ Positive I never gripped her too firmly when I lifted her on and off the commode, I blamed the thinness of her skin for the discolorations as I eased her into her mauve dress.

  She leaned on her stick and, with me supporting her left side, we shambled across the hall into the drawing room. Her breathing sounded like coarse growls as I lowered her into a chair.

  Francesca ate her dinner and asked for seconds, not the conduct of a child pigging out on secret treats. Her healthy appetite convinced me that Matteo’s note was nothing more than a brother’s mischief-making. Alessia’s behaviour worried me, though. She winced each time she speared her fork into the gnocchi with basil pesto and raised a portion to her mouth. ‘Are you in pain?’ I asked.

  She jiggled her thumb. ‘I need to move. This seat is too hard.’

  I helped her up and steered her over to a comfy chair. She sank into the plush velvet upholstery with an appreciative mumble. I offered to put her plate on a tray, but she said she had lost her appetite.

  The rest of us finished eating, and after I’d cleared the table Francesca hauled out a board game and Ben put ‘Love Me Tender’, an Elvis record Oliver had given us, on the radiogram. The lyrics depressed me. My dreams hadn’t come true. Ben no longer made my life complete. If we were to remain married until the end of time a great deal had to change. My hands shook as Ernesto topped up my wine glass. I spilled a little on my dress. Everything’s such a mess, I thought, as I went upstairs to change.

  On Saturday Rosa and Carlo went to visit relatives and Ernesto left in the Fiat without revealing where he was headed or how long he expected to be gone. In their absence, Ben took the children for a walk, which gave me an opportunity to sneak into Ernesto’s room and see what I could learn about him. I took a feather duster in case I needed an alibi.

  Black-and-white photographs of children hung on the walls. A blood-red mat covered the floor beside his bed: the last thing he stepped onto at night, the first in the morning. Face-down on a cabinet was a sketchpad. I picked it up and flicked through the pages, thinking I might discover clues about his love life. Instead I found detailed sketches of Francesca: face-on, left and right profiles, the line of her neck, an accurate depiction of her legs, arms, hands and feet. The cheek of him! How dare he draw her without my permission? I hurried downstairs to the kitchen, where I scrubbed my hands in a sink of hot water.

  I stayed clear of Alessia until she rang the bell I’d bought her at a flea market. For a week or longer it had taken more energy than she had to call for Rosa or me, whereas she could usually manage a tinkle. She was lying on her stomach, bile dribbling from her mouth onto the pillowcase. I wiped her face with a flannel. ‘Can I give you a full wash?’ She didn’t object, so I fetched a basin of warm water. Starting with her face, I worked my way down, rolling up her nightgown as I went. A bedsore had developed on her left buttock. It looked painful. She didn’t complain as I gently dabbed the area.


  ‘Why the grim face?’ Alessia asked as I rolled her over.

  I pretended to be upset about her emaciated body. ‘You’re frightfully thin.’

  Ernesto’s return coincided with Alessia’s doctor making a house call. I waylaid him on the steps and asked if he would look at the sore after he’d completed his regular checks. He went straight to Alessia’s room. I stayed in the hallway with Ernesto, struggling to be civil to him until he mumbled, ‘I can’t lose her. She’s all I have.’

  Our fears undo us, I thought. Out loud I said, ‘She doesn’t want to leave you.’ His chest quavered like that of a scared child’s. He turned away to hide his distress. On impulse, I placed my hand on his back, gave a couple of comforting pats. He didn’t shrug them off. Mercifully, the doctor emerged before I acted on a rising urge to turn the pats into walloping thumps.

  ‘You were right to be concerned about the lesion,’ he said. ‘Hips and ankles are also vulnerable spots.’ He scribbled out a prescription. ‘Pick up this ointment from the pharmacy. Smear it on daily and cover the area with a clean dressing. Any change in her condition, phone me. You’re looking peaky yourself.’

  Within days a flu struck with vengeance, laying me low for a fortnight. We postponed Matteo’s twelfth birthday celebration. Rosa took over Alessia’s care and Ben roped Matteo into entertaining Francesca. She moaned about him taking her to soccer talks, preparation for the new season. I was too exhausted to care, though I overhead Ernesto promising to entertain her.

  Unseasonal rain lashed the coastline as I dipped lower. ‘Stay in bed until the colour it returns to your cheeks,’ Rosa said, pressing into my hand a mug of hot water and lemon juice. Her kindness as well as the enforced bed-rest gave me the space to consider my own well-being. I realised I needed to take better care of myself. I realised I rarely retired before midnight and never sober. I realised Ernesto constantly replenished my glass, making it difficult for me to keep tabs on the amount of wine I was consuming.

  32

  To mark my thirty-fifth session with Ilaria — noted because I recorded the amount of money I had taken from Ben’s wallet for these lessons, intending to pay him back someday — I bought a bottle of fresh lemonade from a vendor near her flat. There was a hint of basil in the mix and more lemons than I preferred, but the tang enlivened me after a gruelling effort to learn a string of colloquial sentences left me reeling. Reverting to Italian, I said, ‘Ilaria, I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of it.’

  ‘Few foreigners crack the code,’ she said. ‘It’s like a linguistic birthmark.’ She turned up the corners of her mouth. ‘There’s a lot more to it than building a vocabulary. You have to gauge when and how to interrupt, what to disregard, whether it’s worth shouting down the loudmouths or letting them dominate.’

  ‘Everyone speaks super-fast. I miss more than I catch.’

  ‘It is a tough language to master,’ she said, clonking her forehead with a clenched fist. ‘When we started I didn’t think you’d stick at it.’

  ‘To be honest, I prefer learning about the history and literature.’

  ‘Me, too,’ she said, breaking into an expansive smile.

  We moved on to the benefits for women who formed close bonds, in literature and in real life, and afterwards we bashed on about friendships that went belly-up. Ilaria said, ‘The author of a book I dip into thinks she knows the reason.’ She fetched the text from a shelf and flicked through the pages. ‘Listen to this. “Relationships based on mutual affection and respect are what sustain us while those cultivated for egocentric purposes have the potential to cause damage.”’

  I stared at the tinted orbs in my sunglasses on the table, wings folded in, thinking that this was Ernesto’s downfall. ‘My brother-in-law has a mercenary streak.’

  Ilaria said, ‘Does he know we meet?’

  ‘I’ve told Ben I see you at work, not that we get together at the bookshop or here. He’s unlikely to confide in Ernesto.’

  She rested her hands on her hips.

  ‘Has something happened?’

  She patted my wrist. ‘A Moretti associate is asking questions.’

  ‘Who? Why?’ I poured extra lemonade into my glass and took a long drink.

  ‘He bailed up a workmate’s mother outside the butcher’s shop. She thinks you’re too attractive to be friends with me. She told him you’re after my books.’

  I lowered my voice. ‘Is this person watching us? Noting where we go?’

  She flexed her long neck. ‘I’m not sure. It’s possible.’

  ‘Why bother? We’re not hurting anyone.’

  ‘Others might not share this view.’

  Who exactly: Ernesto, the Camorra? Were they one and the same? Not wanting her to suggest we stop seeing each other, I said, ‘I’ll be on the lookout.’

  ‘Monday week, drop Francesca at school and vary your route to me here. Duck through the back alleyway and I’ll watch from my bedroom window. If anyone’s following, I’ll put a statue on the sill. Don’t stop if it’s there. Veer towards the waterfront as if you plan to take in the sea air.’

  The last chap to show an interest in me was on a funicular. When he became a nuisance, I tapped my wedding ring. He waggled his thumbs as if it were irrelevant. ‘Ilaria, can you tell the difference between a harmless flirt and someone with dubious motives?’

  She fluttered her eyelashes. ‘I was born with an internal radar.’

  I managed a feeble laugh.

  ‘Seriously, if you think someone’s on your tail, pause in front of a shop and catch his reflection in the window.’ She pushed her empty glass to the middle of the table. ‘My workmate said the man asking about you smokes a pipe and wears a blue straw fedora with a tan band.’

  My stomach dropped as if I were in a lift that had come to a sudden stop. These details made him seem real, not a figment of a woman’s imagination.

  Ilaria raised a shoulder. ‘Probably nothing to worry about, but best to be on our guard all the same.’

  I headed off, deep in thought. Not far from her flat, a cat sprang from a wall onto the pavement beside me. My half-strangled scream startled a girl with a basket of shopping. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘The cat gave me a fright.’ She looked at me as though I was mad. If I’d had any spare money on me, I’d have bought a sunhat with a floppy brim and a pair of enormous sunglasses.

  Walking alone to the shops two days later, I spotted on a corner a middle-aged man sucking on a pipe and reading a newspaper. I fled around the block to see if he followed me. He didn’t budge. Another man with a blue hat crossed the road behind me, marking him as a threat, too, until a woman ran up and scolded him for wandering off in his nightshirt. I hadn’t noticed his attire from the neck down.

  Ben and I were listening to jazz the Saturday evening Francesca disappeared. There was a great kerfuffle until we found her outside in a downpour, opening and shutting Carlo’s gardening shears. Matteo called to her from the shelter of the terrace. ‘What are you doing, Frannie?’

  ‘I’m pruning the rain.’

  We broke into gales of laughter. She scrunched up her face and stomped towards us. ‘If the earth floods, my animals will drown.’

  ‘Build an ark like Noah’s,’ Matteo said.

  ‘Jolly good idea.’ Francesca flung the shears on the ground. ‘I’ll ask Carlo for the wood.’

  ‘You can draw up a plan tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Come inside and dry off.’

  In the kitchen, I grabbed a towel I had unpegged earlier from the line and flung over a chair. Upstairs in the bathroom, I asked Francesca to strip and dry herself and get into her pyjamas. When I tried to help she turned away from me as if she were shy of her body now that she was nine. She curled up beside Mattie on the big bed Ben and I slept in. The three of us took turns at making up madcap stories about the animals that had gone up the plank in pairs and into the Ark. Francesca was asking Matteo if he thought her pets were descendants of this tribe when Ben came in. ‘Time to go to your own beds, kids. Papa’
s bushed.’ There were no complaints. Just as well, because I could feel a headache coming on.

  I went downstairs for an aspirin. Ernesto was in the kitchen drinking. ‘Nightcap, Julia?’ He picked up a jug of wine from the table.

  ‘No, not tonight, thank you.’

  He lowered his voice. ‘Do as I say or no more visits to your lady friend’s flat.’ He filled a glass and forced it into my hand.

  Heart in my throat, head pounding, I raced up to Ben, spilling wine on the floor as I careered into our room. ‘Tell your brother to leave me alone.’

  ‘It’s easier to go along with him,’ Ben said, and reached for me.

  I pushed him aside. ‘He’s sick!’ I spat out the words as if they were bitter pips.

  Ben sighed. ‘Ernesto can wind up the air. Ignore him.’

  ‘Like you do?’

  ‘Julia, I’m not discussing anything about him. We have better things to do.’

  ‘Not until Ernesto stops bullying me.’ I jabbed Ben in the rib cage. He poked me back. We kept this up well into the night.

  Waking to the pre-dawn crow of the rooster, I drilled the tip of my finger into the tissue around his hipbone to ensure I’d had the final poke. He stirred but didn’t wake. Cushioned in the feather mattress, I felt vindicated. But from then on the happiest of events were spiked with resentment, doubt or fear.

  33

  An image comes to mind as if it were a scene in a film. Ben in his swimsuit, diving off a cliff, arms outspread until he nears the water and brings his hands together, taut as an arrowhead. Waiting for him to pierce the surface always unnerved me. Sometimes he stayed under longer than necessary, the tease. As I wavered between concern and amusement, his ebony head and sleek torso would rise godlike from the sea. Droplets of water falling from his skin took on purple tints of a late afternoon sky, pink hues of the heat-scorched coastline, citrus tones of the underbellies of birds in flight. And I would fall in love with him all over again.