Page 93 of Two Chances With You

I woke up at noon, and I enjoyed a fantastic breakfast, nothing but panettone and cappuccino! Lots of people say that the Christmas holidays are depressing, but personally, I love them. The tree with the strings of lights, the manger scene, everyone together for the big Christmas dinner, and all the good food. Sure, I might put on a few pounds, but what’s so sad about that? You can always shed those pounds again. And with Step, you get plenty of exercise. You can shed all the pounds you want. How are you going to get fat? That’s like a bad joke! Let’s just hope nobody ever finds this diary. And if by some chance, you are the one who stole it, and you’re reading it now…you’re making a terrible mistake! You understand, you damned thief and/or busybody! Anyway, I don’t want to think about it.

Last night was fabulous! At half-past midnight, we were all at Step’s brother’s house. Except Paolo wasn’t there. He’d gone to celebrate at his girlfriend’s house, a woman called Fabiola. So we were on our own.

Marcantonio brought a wonderful CD. It was a CaféDel Mar complication (or something like that), and he put it on. A perfect atmosphere, sentimental without overdoing it. And I was daring, very daring! Rum, brandy, and champagne, I tried it all. I took two sips of Step’s rum, and I was already drunk!

We played spin the bottle to see who would be the first to go off by themselves. It came to rest on Marcantonio so it was those two who left theroom. Only Marcantonio took advantage of the spin the bottle game and, “reminiscent,” as he said, “of the good old days” when it was only thanks to that bottle that we were able to overcome our shyness…he lunged at Ele. I mean, he wrapped himself around her like an octopus. He kissed her, slathering her with saliva, and Ele laughed and laughed. The two of them are great together! I’m happy for Ele.

Nice gifts, all around, really cute. Ele, who always overdoes it, gave him a very special graphics program sent all the way from America at enormous cost. (That’s what Step told me because he’d used it when he was living down there.) When Marcantonio saw it, he literally lost his mind. He threw his arms around her and started shouting, “You’re the woman of my dreams. I’ve finally found you!”

I ripped open the gift that Step gave me. “No! I can’t believe it. I’m speechless.”

“What’s wrong, didn’t you like it?” Step asked.

I looked at him, and I smiled. “Open yours.”

Step started to open his gift but the whole time he’s saying, “Listen, we can return it if it’s too small for you, okay? Or is the color you don’t like?”

“Get busy, open your package,” I told him.

“No!” Step cried. “I can’t believe it!” He said the exact same words I said, but that wasn’t the only thing that he copied. We gave each other two identical navy-blue Napapijri jackets. Mamma mia, I was speechless. But I laughed and laughed!

A beautiful end to the evening. Music, nougat torroncini, chatting idly for a while, and then Marcantonio and Ele left. I take off my boots, I stretch out on the sofa, I snuggle up against Step, put my feet under acushion, nice and warm. A totally dreamy position. We talk and talk and talk. Or maybe I should say,Italk and talk and talk. I told him about the earrings my folks gave me, my gifts from Uncle Ardisio, my aunts, my grandmother, and so on and so forth.

Then, when I ask him how his Christmas went, I felt him tense up. I persist and, in the end, with great effort, I manage to drag out of him the information that he and Paolo had dinner with his father and his father’s new girlfriend. Step tells me that he got a pair of very nice black shoes from his brother and a green sweater from his father, the only color he can’t stand, as he informed me (Good to know!). Step really emphasizes the fact that his father had his new girlfriend sign the card on the gift he gave him. I try to justify it as understandable, but Step has no doubt about it. Would you want a present from someone you don’t even know? Looking at it from that point of view, he’s not entirely wrong. Then, the most absurd thing of all, he told me (after I pestered him for a long time) that he had also received a gift from his mother, but that he hadn’t opened it. And when I kiddingly told him, “Well, you do know your mother, don’t you?” I realized I really put my foot in it. “I thought I knew her.” Oh my God. I’ve ruined his Christmas. Luckily, I’m able to recover. Sweetly, calmly, passionately, over time. But he still refused to open his mother’s Christmas present.

Chapter 33

Iarrive home from work, enter the apartment, and set down my bag. I take off my jacket, and as I do, I hear Paolo in the other room, chattering away. Is he with someone or is that the television?

Paolo comes in, smiling at me. “Ciao. There’s a surprise.” It’s not the television. Someone’s here. Then, all of a sudden, she appears. Framed by the jamb of the living room door, with a glow of light from the window backlighting her, making her outline just a little more blurry and out of focus to my eyes, like some delicate vision. It’s my mother.

“I made something to eat if you’re hungry, Step,” says Paolo, taking his heavy jacket out of the armoire and putting it on. “It’s all there on the table, if you’re hungry,” he goes on, clearly concerned about that situation. I don’t know if he’s more concerned about the idea that I might not be hungry or that he might have served me a dish I didn’t happen to want just now. Namely, encountering Mamma.

Maybe he hadn’t planned for it to happen, maybe he’d thought it through and maybe he hadn’t. But it’s over in a flash. Paolo has exited the apartment, leaving us alone together. Alone the way we’ve always been ever sincethatday.

Or at least that’s how I’ve been. Alone and without her. Without the mother that I had sketched for myself, drawing a picture of her based on all the stories she’d told me, from the fairy tales she’d read me when I was small and all the stories that she’d told me, sitting next to my bed where I lay with a mild fever, delighting in cuddling in that warmth, the warmth of the blankets and the warmth of my mother. Knowing that she was there, beside me, reading to me, holding my hand, pressing her hand against my forehead to feel my temperature, bringing me a glass of water. How many times, just to bring her close for another second, right on the verge of falling asleep, had I asked her for that final favor, just so I could see her return to my bedroom one last time, appearing in the frame of another door, another apartment, another piece of history.

And that whole beautiful tapestry, created by none other than her, filled with love, fairy tales, dreams, enchantment, light, and sunshine, puff, gone up in smoke in the blink of an eye. To have discovered her there, in bed with another man.

“Ciao, Mamma.” Any guy, a stranger, a man other than my father, in bed with my own mother, and since that day: darkness. Utter darkness.

I feel ill. I sit down at the table, where the dishes have already been laid out. I don’t even look at the food that’s been prepared, but at the mere idea of eating, I feel like throwing up. But it’s my only escape route. Keep calm, Step. This will pass. It all will pass.

No, not everything. With her, the pain and grief and sorrow still hasn’t passed. Calm down, Step. You’re a big boy now. I drink a glass of water.

“So, I hear that you have a job. Are you happy?” Happy? Coming from her lips, that word makes me feel like laughing. But I don’t laugh. I manage to get out an answer, as I then do with all her other questions. “How did you like living in America? Did you have any problems? Are there lots of other Italians? Are you thinking of going back?”

I answer. I answer everything, reasonably well, I believe, doing my best to smile, to be kind and courteous. The way she taught me. With good manners.

“Look, I brought you these.” And she pulls something out of a bag, not the one I gave her that time for Christmas or for her birthday—exactly when it was I can’t recall. But I do remember that I found that bag on the armchair in that apartment. In the living room where in the bedroom another man was offering comfort to her, my mother. That’s enough, Step. Stop it, just stop it.

“Do you recognize them? These are the morselletti you used to like so much.”

Yes. I did used to love them. I loved everything about you, Mamma. And now, for the first time, after looking at her so many times, I see her again. My mother. She smiles with this little plastic bag in her hands. She sets it down lightly on the table and smiles at me again, tilting her head to one side. My mother. Her hair is lighter now. Even her skin seems fairer. She, delicate as always, seems even more fragile. She’s lost weight. That’s right, she seems thinner, and her skin seems faintly ruffled, as if by a light breeze. And her eyes. Her eyes seem a little hazed over, as if they were emanating a little less light. It’s as if someone, who had it in for me, had decided to turn down the switch a little, casting our love into the shadows. My love.

I take another drink of water. “Yes, I remember them. I used to love them.”

And I use the past tense without meaning to, without knowing, with the fear that even those simple cookies might have lost the flavor that I once loved so utterly.

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