One More Day

by Fabio Volo

  I became an adult very early on. I was forced to become the person who was needed rather than the person I could have become.

  I always had a very strong sense of responsibility; I understood early on that I needed to ask for very little so as not bother people and that I had to learn how to manage things on my own. Even when my grandmother picked me up to put the mail in the mailbox, for me it was a big deal. It was a test I had to pass. I was afraid of getting it wrong: LOCAL MAIL, ALL OTHER DESTINATIONS. Although I still remember how fascinated I was by that phrase: ALL OTHER DESTINATIONS. I would imagine far away lands. “When I grow up, I’ll go there. To all other destinations,” I would tell myself. When I was doing everything perfectly without disappointing anyone, my mother stopped crying and suffocating me at night. More than a year had passed since my dad had left. One night, as I was sleeping in bed with her, I woke up because I heard her talking on the phone with someone. I didn’t understand what she was saying, I only know that a few minutes after hanging up she picked me up and carried me to my room, leaving the door ajar. I immediately pretended to fall back asleep. After a bit I heard her talking to somebody. It was a man. I got up and peeked to see who it was. I caught a glimpse of him as they were walking into the bedroom. A man with a mustache. That night I was afraid. I don’t know why. I remember being very afraid and feeling very lonely. Extremely lonely. My mother had become another person. Distant. Separated from me.

  Once, around Christmas, my mother took me to the office where she worked: there was a party and that man was there. He was her boss. They live together now.

  I don’t know if it was because my dad abandoned me, but the fact is that I’ve never trusted people, and women even less.

  I’m thirty-four. My dad died when I was twenty-five. I don’t speak to my mother much. My parents: one abandoned me, and the other never understood me.

  When I heard my dad had died, something happened inside me. I wasn’t angry or sad. At the time I was nervous. Strange: he had already left me, but when someone is gone for good it’s harder to accept.

  A little while after he died, I moved out of the house. And the gentleman with the mustache moved in with my mother.

  She has always been obsessed with order and cleanliness. Many times I would eat alone at the table because, as I was eating, she would already be doing the dishes and cleaning the stove. At home the floor and furniture were as clean as a whistle. Everything sparkled. Anyone who entered the house would invariably hear the same sentence from my mother: Please excuse the mess. Then I would look around: everything was perfect. From an early age I have always cleaned up after myself.

  As I grew up, especially during my adolescence, sometimes I tried to carve out a little space for myself, but she would make me feel guilty, so much so that sometimes I felt guilty, even before she made any comment. Her excessive attention suffocated me. She babied me, took care of my every need, and she kept reminding me of all the things she did for me.

  I was trapped.

  I always felt I owed my mother something. Only when I grew up did I understand that it was her sick way of keeping me bound to her, out of fear that I too would leave her.

  Between life and myself there has always been my mother. Anything I did was accompanied by one of her comments. Even drinking a glass of water: Rinse the glass when you’re done. Take your shoes off. Clean up that mess. Don’t stand on the bed. Turn off the lights. When I would take a bath: Watch out, don’t get water everywhere. Although, given my bouts of constipation, the thing she told most often was: The intestines must be kept clean.

  I could hear those phrases even when she wasn’t there.

  My mother kept track of how many times I went to the bathroom. The evening I learned my dad had died I took a bath. I didn’t turn off the faucet and, at a certain point, the water started to overflow and I didn’t do anything about it. I just watched it run down the side of the tub. When I got out, I spent half an hour drying the bathroom. It was therapeutic: one of the first acts of courage in my entire life. A few days after my father’s death, I had to go to a notary to hear his last will. The phone call had surprised and shaken me. I didn’t know what to do. I was tempted not to show up at all, but in the end I went. It was my father’s companion and their daughter, my half-sister, and I. In that room, aside from the notary reading, there was a silence I’ll never forget. My father had left me a small apartment, a studio. I immediately thought they must hate me. I was ashamed but I didn’t say anything. In the end, as we left, I said a quick goodbye and ran away. My father’s companion called me back as I was on the stairs. She approached me and asked me if I wanted to have coffee with them.

  “Sorry, I’m in a rush.”

  “Too bad… Bye then.”

  “Never mind, I’ll have that coffee. I’ll make time.”

  A surreal situation: my half-sister, Elena, her mother, Renata, and I sitting at the table in a café. All three of us embarrassed. I immediately discovered they didn’t hate me after all. They even knew he had left me the apartment; they had discussed it with my father.

  Elena even wanted to exchange numbers. We did it, but I already knew I didn’t want to see them ever again. I couldn’t handle it. On top of everything, I even liked her.

  We were at the café for less than half an hour. When Renata told me, “Your father loved you very much.” I got up, said goodbye, and left.

  I never wanted to live in that apartment. I rented it out for a few years, then I sold it, and I used the money to buy into Alessandro’s business. It had also been an issue with my mother. She didn’t want me to accept it.

  When my father left, my mother didn’t want anything from him. She wouldn’t take any money. I know this because she told me. More than once. I also thought that my mother had suffered more from her pride than from the love she lost. I believe that a healthy way of expressing love is to rid it of all selfishness. My mother couldn’t do it, so much so that she always exercised a practical form of altruism by paying constant and obsessive attention to my eating habits, my clothes, etc. She always repeated that she did everything for me. Her love wasn’t without selfishness, and it even had a hint of competitive pride. Not toward me, but toward her own life.

  She saw the fact I had accepted the studio as a betrayal. For me, it wasn’t, and it wasn’t even something that could have made me love my father more. I saw it as the smallest of drops in the sea of everything I had been denied. Why refuse that drop, too? Out of pride?

  “He gave it to you to clear his conscience,” she told me as we fought about it.

  “What conscience? He’s dead. What conscience is there to clear? Why do I always have to give up everything? I’m entitled to the whole world and you want to make me feel guilty for taking that fucking hole in the wall.”

  “What do you mean, haven’t I always provided for you?”

  I left that never-ending discussion, knowing that later I would have felt bad about how I talked to her.

  After a few months, I moved out of the home where I grew up.

  But perhaps it’s better to say I escaped from it.

  5

  Exes

  (Sometimes they come back.)

  Sometimes, as I’m taking a walk, I feel like popping in a bookstore. It relaxes me: going in, spending time inside, and picking up a book from time to time. It makes me feel good. It always makes me feel a little smarter and more interesting than I actually am. Whenever I lock eyes with a woman, I always give them a delicate and polite smile. In a bookstore I feel like a charming man. I hardly ever speak of or let myself be seen holding popular titles. Although, even if I’m surrounded by people, I always feel alone when I’m there. That’s because the relationship is not between people, but rather between each individual and the books. When you’re at the bookstore, your back is always turned to other people.

  One afternoon, as I was reading the introduction to an essay, I heard a voice calling my name, “Giacomo.” I looked up and standing in fro
nt of me was Camilla. My ex. The only one I think of as such, even though we were only together two years. More or less. Before her, I had very few girlfriends, and my mother didn’t like any of them.

  Since we broke up, actually since I broke up with her, we haven’t spoken. We had seen each other a few times, but only briefly, and we always carefully avoided each other. I remember seeing her late one evening going home on her bike. It was an unexpected encounter. I hid behind a car to look at her without being seen. She was beautiful, as she had always been in my eyes. She looked happy. As she rode away, I stood in the dark, paralyzed. For a little while. That night I didn’t sleep well, I was tossing and turning, and I don’t know if she had anything to do with it, but in the morning, when I woke up, I had a fever.

  That day at the bookstore, after all that time, not only was she standing in front of me, but she was also speaking to me.

  “Hi Camilla. What are you doing here?”

  I quickly realized I’d asked a stupid question.

  “I’m looking for a book. I don’t think you’d believe it but… Never mind, it doesn’t matter… How are you?”

  “I’m good.” My mouth was dry. Who knows what my face looked like. We were both clearly embarrassed.

  After a few seconds of silence, she said, “I have to go now, can I have your number? I lost it. I’m not going to bother you…”

  I gave her my number. She put down the book she was holding and left. I stood there watching her leave. That day I thought about her a lot. The following day as well. When I woke up, I turned on my phone and found a message from her. I like turning on the phone in the morning and hearing the ring of incoming messages. I like it so much that, at night, I sometimes send a few of them and then turn off the phone, so I receive the answers when I wake up. If I want to be sure to get a response, I send messages with a question mark at the end. I send questions out into the world.

  That morning there were three messages. Besides one from Silvia, there was one from redunDant-e and one from Camilla. None of them was a response. All of them had been sent voluntarily. Dante’s was brief, “Beers tonight?”

  Silvia’s was an email address.

  I called her immediately.

  “What’s this about?”

  “It’s Michela’s email.”

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “I had a little free time. I surfed the web using the address you gave me and I found the company she works for and then her personal email. Now you can write her, if you want.”

  “I hate you.”

  “If you don’t send her an email, I’ll hate you, too.”

  I must have sounded really different when I talked about Michela, because she never did anything like this with the other women. Perhaps it was female intuition. In fact, there is something strange, paranormal, about women. For instance, their ability to know who to be jealous of is indisputable. They come see you at work, where there are ten women. You only like one of them. At home, that night, they’ll ask questions only about that one. At first you’ll think you’re too predictable. There’s no way around it; they rarely get it wrong. At a certain point they’ll ask you directly whether you like her. And you start lying, saying she’s not your type, “Yeah, she’s cute, I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t, but I don’t like her.” All in an effort to keep her calm, yet perhaps while you’re making love with one you’re thinking of the other. And perhaps while you’re enjoying oral sex from your girlfriend you imagine that under that mountain of hair, it’s your colleague.

  If they get it wrong and you hadn’t even noticed the woman they’re jealous of, you’ll see that in a different light and begin to like her. They’re one step ahead of you even when it comes to your own taste.

  “Silvia, this morning I received three messages: yours, one from Dante, and guess who sent the third one? Camilla.”

  “Great, go ahead, waste your time on that one. If you get stuck with her again, I’ll run you over with my car.”

  “No. Don’t worry.”

  Camilla’s message was, “It’s Camilla, can you call me when you get this message?”

  “What does she want?”

  I thought about it. Camilla and I broke up, actually I broke up with her, because I found out she was cheating on me. I remember it as if it were yesterday, the night I found out. I remember the faces, the expressions, her voice that said, “Let me explain.” She told me she was going out with a girlfriend, and her voice sounded strange. Not knowing where they were going, I waited for her outside the house, following my instinct. I remember I felt a little stupid sitting there in the car, without even knowing whether she had already come back or not. Anyway, like in the American cop movies, I staked the place out. She showed up around one thirty accompanied by someone. It wasn’t her girlfriend. In fact, she was with my friend, Andrea. My buddy since the time of I’m rubber you’re glue, what bounces off me, sticks to you; do your ears hang low? do they wobble to and fro; beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot. And many other memories and anecdotes from a life spent together. Andrea stopped the car and after a long kiss she got out. I got out too. He probably saw me and quickly drove away, thinking I didn’t recognize him. She turned around and, with a face I’ll never forget, she said, “Hi… What are you doing here?”

  I always thought that if I had caught someone cheating on me, it would have been a slaughter. I would have beat them both up. But that evening, standing in front of her on her doorstep, I couldn’t say anything, other than a series of, “Why? Why? Why?”

  Then I cried and left, ignoring Camilla’s attempts to explain herself. I never wanted to see her again. I followed the little rules one must adhere to when breaking up with someone who lives in the same city. Like in the famous song by Battisti, I tried to avoid all the places you go, the ones you know. We must steer clear of each other, so as not to hurt each other. I got rid of all her things, because every time I would see them it felt like someone was stabbing me; I wouldn’t even listen to those songs we heard for the first time together. Sweaters, scarves, hats: I threw everything out. I couldn’t even wear the same cologne because I had bought it when I first met her and I used to wear it every time we went out. The only rule I didn’t manage to follow was that of “fighting fire with fire.” At least at first.

  She called checkmate. I couldn’t have her anymore and I didn’t want to be with anyone else. That’s because in my head Camilla was the right woman. The one I thought I knew better than anybody else. It’s true I knew her very well, but perhaps I only knew her routines, and not her true nature. I definitely knew all her quirks. I don’t know if she has changed since then, but she used to always sleep on the right side of the bed. Any bed. The one at her house, at my house, or at the hotel on vacation. She would always walk on the right side of people. I don’t remember ever taking a walk when I was on her right. In the morning, for breakfast, she would only eat an even number of cookies. On the train she would always sit facing forward and if there weren’t any of those seats available she preferred to stand.

  Camilla was the first woman to teach me that the concept of nudity is very different between men and women. For instance, if one decides to get naked before going to bed, a man will strip down completely, a woman will keep her panties on. Sometimes even her bra. Naked is naked: it’s not naked if your panties are still on.

  I remember that she liked to pop my pimples and my blackheads. Not only the ones on my face, but especially those on my back. Sometimes she did it without telling me, “Oooouuuccchhh! What are you doing?!”

  “I know, sorry, it was a big one, I couldn’t help myself.”

  In the beginning I didn’t think it was going to be a serious relationship. She had been coming out with our group of friends forever. Then one day we kissed without saying anything to the others. At first, our story was clandestine. One night, after spending the afternoon together, we planned to go out for pizza with everyone else. At the table, we would lo
ok at each other and start laughing. At one point I slipped her a note that read, smack. The kiss I couldn’t give her in front of the others.

  Even though I liked her, the fact that I had known her forever made me think that it was going to be just a fling, so much so that about a month later I went on a date with someone else. Then a few things happened that made me realize I really liked Camilla. One night, while in the car with my friends, who didn’t know about us, they began to list the thousand ways in which they would have fucked her. I found that it bothered me. A different night we were all together and she was there too; Luciano asked me how things were with the other girl. I denied everything but everyone started to laugh. What Camilla did later was what convinced me that our relationship was very important. That night, she didn’t say anything; she lowered her eyes, and let the others distract her. The following day however, she called the other girl and told her, “If you are in love with him do as you please, but if you’re not leave him to me. Bye.” Then she hung up. I liked that. I don’t know why. After that incident, we got engaged. Officially.