Alone

by Michelle Parise

  It’s a funny thing, actually. Before the breakup, every moment of my life was taken up by Birdie or The Husband, or my mother, or my job, or … well you know. I know you know. There was no time to think, no time to rest, no time to take care of myself. I’d dream of having an hour to myself, an afternoon. And now, here I am with so much time I don’t know what to do with it.

  You can only drink so much. You can only sleep with so many men. And that only fills the time between 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been an incredibly liberating experience, this new phase of my life I never wanted. For the most part, the guys are good-looking and oh so young, with hard bodies and lovely faces. They have energy. They’re generous. They haven’t had a chance to be bitter yet. I never give them the chance. My bed smells wonderful for a day or two after they leave. I inhale the pillows like a schoolgirl wearing a boy’s sweater for the first time. The smell of a man is something I miss a lot, so I appreciate the lingering of it for as long as I can. Thanks to The Husband, I’m young again, rah rah.

  And so I tell the stories with relish, as if I need to prove to my married friends that I’m constantly turning lemons into lemonade. Sometimes I am, don’t get me wrong, but here with this familiar crowd, I feel like even the best of my new experiences are still just more lemons. It feels like there’s nothing sweet about the life I’ve constructed in the fallout of my marriage, not compared to their lives. All I feel here is partner-less and glaringly alone.

  YOUNGER STILL

  “I don’t think we’ll ever run out of things to say to each other,” says The Man with the White Shirt. He says it, softly, like a fact. And wistfully, like a fact he’s already resigned himself to. It’s early May 2014. The sun is coming up over the city, and we’re watching it burn through the sky. We didn’t wake up to watch the sunrise, it’s just that we haven’t gone to sleep yet. We’ve spent all night like this, lying in his bed, talking — about music and our childhoods, about this funny story and that. There will always be this much to say, he’s right, because we’re on the same wave, we have the same enthusiasm, the same curiosity, and it feels like we even share the same past, though we’ve only known each other for nine months.

  “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he says, so many times I lose count.

  As he makes us coffee and eggs, I walk around and look at things. His things, things I love and that make me feel more connected to him, even in this cramped and untidy space. The way he’s turned a vintage briefcase into a nightstand and how that mirrors the little retro suitcase in my apartment that I use as a tool box. The massive art deco Absinthe poster he has on the wall, similar to the one in my apartment, except I spent a lot of money to have mine framed and his is held in place by big peeling chunks of packing tape. And look at all his tiny trinkets and keepsakes, arranged just so.

  Some of my things are in his bathroom now. Just a few, in a drawer, no big deal. I know I’m not the only one in his life, but I don’t find evidence of anyone else here. There is only my toothbrush, my comb, my hand cream. Not even his other not-girlfriend, Rockabilly Redhead, seems to leave her stuff here. I wonder if she knows about me, if she cares. What does she think about him seeing both of us at the same time and maybe some others in between? I wonder what she wants, is hoping for. I know what I want. I want to be able to think about him and not have it hurt. Over time I get bolder, leaving more and more of my personal things in the bathroom and other parts of his apartment, too. Marking my territory, even though it isn’t mine to mark.

  Later, I wash all the dishes as he naps. I love doing this. I mean, I can’t really explain it, why it feels so good to be washing his dishes while he sleeps or why I am here at all, accepting his half-love in return for my full. But there’s an electrifying comfort in this moment, this normal I feel in the most abnormal of situations. When I’m here, in White Shirt’s apartment, I have to be honest, I really do feel young again. Here there are no responsibilities or demands. There aren’t even any clocks! Here I don’t think about mortgage renewals and ex-husbands and missing my Birdie so much it hurts. I don’t think about car payments and insurance expiration dates or what to make for dinner or office politics or my parents.

  His apartment is a cozy cocoon of just the two of us and no sense of time. A stark contrast from my real life out there. In here, I can be twenty again. We can fall asleep when the sun comes up. We can talk all day and smoke weed and drink coffee and never put clothes on. We can pick up guitars and sing songs together. We can get creative ideas and both have to dash to grab our notebooks and furiously scribble things down in them. We can laugh and lounge around and have sex four times in as many hours.

  In here, I am relaxed. In here, with him, I feel the most like me.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FORZA

  WHAT ARE YOU FIGHTING FOR?

  One after another, people start telling me how they found out their fathers cheated on their mothers. One woman was fourteen when she found out. She wishes her mom would have waited until she was older and mature enough to handle it. At that age, she felt like she didn’t have the tools to process it properly. She says that it fucked her up about men and trust and love. Another cool young woman I know tells me that she knew about her father’s affair since the second it happened, when she was five years old. She’s relaxed about it. Sure it made her think differently about her dad, but she loves him and they’ve always had a good relationship.

  And then there’s my friend with her mom’s name tattooed on her arm. It’s Canada Day, four months since The Husband dropped The Bomb on me, and we’re sitting out under the stars at her parents’ cottage. We’re drinking and talking. Fireworks in the distance. The hot night air. The mosquitoes. The gaping hole in my chest. I drink more alcohol so I can reach the point where the hole doesn’t hurt so much. Where is he? Why isn’t he here with me? Over and over in my head.

  I tell my friend that a week ago, The Husband came to my place late at night unannounced. He asked me if I wanted to go see a marriage counsellor for what he called a “possible reconciliation.” Possible reconciliation. This is how he talks sometimes, like a law textbook more than a living, breathing human. Still, I tell my friend, “I’m willing to try. I’m willing to believe him when he says he’s still in love with me, that he’s remorseful. I’m willing to try to reconcile, to do whatever it will take to save my marriage.”

  And she says, “You’re fighting so hard for him. But even if he were to turn around tomorrow and come back to you one hundred percent, would he be able to give you all that you need? Would he really love you enough, the way you need to be loved?”

  I’m quiet. This is a real fucking question I haven’t considered. But I’m considering it now, here, Wasaga Beach, first of July. “No. He wouldn’t.”

  “So then what are you fighting for?” she says, and I see it in her face. The pain of growing up knowing her dad had cheated on her mom. The pain that her mom had decided to stay. She tells me the reason her mom’s name is tattooed on her arm is as a reminder. “The strongest woman I know, and the stupidest,” she says, matter of fact.

  I’m not sure how I feel about this. That her mother was stupid for staying. I think there’s something admirable about trying to rebuild a marriage after an affair. But I can’t help but wonder, What am I fighting for? A man who only sometimes loves me? A man who treated me with less respect than anyone in my life? No matter how much I love him, I want to be loved the way I love — open and huge and real and without limits. That’s a marriage worth fighting for. I’m done fighting for us.

  After this night, I never once think about getting back together with him. There will be no “possible reconciliation.” From now on, I know that will never happen, and I don’t want it to.

  ACROSS THE SEA

  I have to go to Italy. I can’t explain it, I just know it’s a fact. I need to go to Italy. I need to see my childhood friend, to be with her and her family, to feel the warm air of the seaside and the
cool air of the mountains. I need to drink wine under a pergola as the sun sets while we laugh and cry together over the shit-show my life has suddenly become. I’ve been cut loose, adrift. In Italy I will feel grounded again, I just know it.

  I need to bring Birdie with me, since no one in Italy has ever met her. I need to bring my sister’s daughter, too. I want to. She’s thirteen now, and she’s travelled with me before — The Husband and I used to take her everywhere with us. I often feel like she’s my other daughter. I want them both to come with me to our homeland. To feel the sand and the warm Tyrrhenian Sea one day, and walk among two-thousand-year-old ruins the next. So I book three tickets for the beginning of July.

  Everyone thinks I’m crazy. It’s only been a few months since The Bomb and even fewer since we moved out on our own. “You’ve had the worst six months of your life!” my friends say. “Why would you take two kids to Italy with you after everything you’ve just been through?” But I just know this is what I have to do.

  And so we go, three girls across the Atlantic. My tornado of a five-year-old daughter. My thirteen-year-old niece, who packed nothing but identical pairs of extremely short cut-off shorts. And me, a functioning pile of pain. I’m already in withdrawal from booze and cigarettes, since I won’t smoke or drink while I’m with the kids.

  Right from the start, the three of us have the best time.

  LA TAVOLA

  Here I am, staring out at the Tyrrhenian Sea. It’s a blinding blue with white flashes, and the sun is as hot as it gets, and the sand burns your bare feet in seconds. Birdie is along the water’s edge, scooping sand into piles that get washed away faster than she can make them. My niece is nearby, idly placing shells on the piles and allowing Birdie to order her around. Neither of them has siblings and so they are like sisters, which is why I couldn’t imagine coming here with one and not the other.

  My childhood friend is beside me. We’ve known each other our entire lives. We met in our mothers’ tummies! we always say, even though we’ve never done the math to bother to see if it’s true. I’ve travelled all the way across the Atlantic to be with her, specifically, because she is the anchor my unmoored life needs. Italy is the anchor.

  The sea before us is unbelievably flat. It looks like a painting, the edge a perfect line, not even a ripple as far as the eye can see. I’ve never seen anything like it. “La tavola,” my friend says, like she can read my mind. “We call it la tavola — the table — whenever the sea is as flat as it is today.” We sit quietly and look at it.

  I’ve spent the past five months in rubble, a shaky, confused mess. We will talk about it all, in every detail over the days to come, whenever the kids aren’t around. But for now at least, just being here with her has calmed me. Without the drinking and smoking, my head is clearer. And with the warm sun on my face and The Husband an ocean away, I feel like I can breathe.

  TREADING WATER

  The trip to Italy is only ten days long. I’ve planned out six days in and around Rome, with my childhood friend and her family, and the final four in my dad’s hometown in the south. Ten days. The Husband and I have never been apart for more than three days, not in the entire twelve years we’ve been together. And in that time, we have never, ever, gone even one full day without contact, even since the separation. We are the least separated separated couple ever. This will certainly be a test.

  As each day passes, the pain of what’s happened diminishes. I feel less like a trauma survivor and more like a regular person again. I take the girls into Rome and we spend the day sightseeing, getting on and off subways, walking up steep hills and tiny, crowded streets. We go into little shops, eat tons of pistachio ice cream, and marvel at everything around us. The Colosseum blows my niece’s mind, just like it did the first time I saw it when I was fifteen. Just as I remember it affecting The Husband when I brought him to see it. Standing inside something so big, so majestic, so ancient, so barbaric. It’s like looking at the inside of love itself.

  We alternate between days in the city and days at the seaside. In the evenings we stay in my friend’s town, south of Rome, having dinner with her husband, her teenage son, and her parents, who’ve known me my whole life. Whenever the kids aren’t around, my friend and I do nothing but talk talk talk. We talk about love and heartbreak, faith and duty, right and wrong, choice and independence.

  I wish we didn’t have to live on different continents, that the years between visits weren’t always so silent between us. But I love how as soon as we’re together again we’re connected at the hip, and it’s like no one else is there. That’s the thing about girlfriends sometimes: our bonds can be lifelong and intense. It’s no wonder men are always disappointing us.

  Her father and I talk a lot, too. One night on their balcony, after everyone else has gone to bed, I sit with him and stare out into the night sky. He talks about how heartbroken he is about the separation, how shocked. He, like everyone else in our lives, thought the world of The Husband and can’t reconcile the man he thought he knew with the man that ripped my heart out. There are tears in his eyes as he talks, this big man with a voice like gravel, who was like another father to me when I was a kid, and a friend to my own father.

  As his wife clears the dishes away, he lights a cigarette and makes an observation about The Husband that is so astute, it will remain with me for a long time.

  He says, “Your husband’s life before you was like a leaky, unstable boat. He didn’t know how he could get off it, this stupid boat that everyone around him was going crazy bailing out the water all the time. Bail, bail, bail. Until he saw an island — you — and he knew that was it, that was where he could finally stand. So he jumped off and he swam to you. And it felt good to stand there, so he did. But after a while, he got restless. He kept seeing boats go by and he forgot how much he hated it out there.

  “He only knew he didn’t want to be standing anymore, so he jumped back in. He swam and swam, and that’s where he is now. Treading water sometimes, swimming sometimes. Then treading treading treading. But he never lets his island out of sight. He’ll always keep you in his sight, but he just feels like he can never come up on the shore again.”

  The sound of an engine kick-starting on the street below punctuates the end of the story. I cry and he says, “Hey, Mich, it’s okay because at least you still have you. You are always going to be you, which is the beeesssstt, okay?”

  CALABRIA

  After six days, the girls and I say goodbye to my friend and her family and get on a train headed south to Calabria. My dad has been touring Italy with his lovely girlfriend, and we’ve arranged to meet up with them in his hometown. They’re there at the train station when we arrive, along with his cousin, the one with the exact same name as my dad. I love this man, this cousin with my dad’s exact name. I burst into tears the moment I see him. We hug on the platform for a long, long time. It’s so cool, so strange how you can have these inexplicable ties with some people, a magical, indefinable connection. He is one of those people for me.

  The town is small, and high in the mountains. It’s more rugged here compared to Rome, more pastoral. The air is fresher, the people a little rougher around the edges at first, and the food is out of this world. My dad is overjoyed to have his two granddaughters here in the place he was born. He makes us do all the things you have to do when you’re with my dad in Calabria — go to the cemetery, pass by the church my grandparents were married in, sit on the bench outside his aunt’s home and listen to her and the other old ladies from the town talk and talk while drinking the world’s strongest caffè.

  Here’s the house he was born in, and look, in the sitting room there’s a trap door that leads to the cellar where the goat and the chicken would go each night so they wouldn’t get stolen or eaten by dogs. Here’s the five-hundred-year-old chestnut tree where young lovers like to meet. And here’s “the world’s best water!” at St. Angelo, my dad’s favourite spring high in the mountains above his already-high-in-the-mountains t
own. It tastes just like water, but he thinks it’s the best. And now we have our feet in the sea. “Isn’t this the best?” he says, over and over.

  Everything is the best to my dad, which makes this part of the trip all the more awesome. I’m so happy to be here with him again, to have the girls be part of it. He wasn’t always this way. There were years after my parents’ divorce that things were not the best at all. My mother left him, and in the depths of his heartbreak he made a lot of mistakes, and his relationship with my siblings and me suffered. For almost ten years, we kept our distance.

  Many years later, my dad returned to us a completely different man. My sister and I called him The New Dad because he was so much less judgemental and hard, so much more involved in our lives and in our children’s lives. It’s such a gift to have him back. To have The New Dad shouting, “Isn’t this the best?”

  We go to our family’s farm, a place that is actually, to me, the best in every way possible. It’s one of my favourite places on earth, and the girls fall in love with it, too. We pick figs and yellow plums off trees. We pluck flowers off zucchinis, gathering them in our skirts for me to fry up later for a snack. I imagine all the generations of women in our family doing this exact thing in this exact spot.

  And it is here that I’m finally able to think of things other than my husband’s betrayal and the splintering of my heart. Here I am able to enjoy how my daughter, a city kid through and through, is expertly picking figs by twisting them at the base before pulling. Or how my niece in her too-short shorts is carrying a basket of vegetables on her head as she traverses the steep countryside, as if it could be fifty years ago, or even a hundred. At the farm I feel like there is a purpose to all this, like there is a reason to love even if it means loss.