Imperfect Delight

by Andrea de Carlo

  The fact is that when you dedicate yourself to a joint project with the person you love, especially a project that isn’t wholly accepted socially and is even illegal in some countries, you end up adopting the submariner’s perspective, to use an expression of her father’s that until a short time ago she never quite understood. But now it strikes her as an accurate representation of what can happen between two people who amass a shell of intentions, convictions, and expectations to the point of finding themselves trapped inside it, convinced they can’t leave without being crushed by the pressure just outside. So here they are inside the submarine of their maternity plan; the very thought of trying to get out of it makes her feel like a traitor. But what’s she supposed to do, go forward out of blind loyalty? Because she’s made a commitment? To make Viviane happy? Is it pure chance that yesterday she wrote that quote on one of the messages attached to the Brits’ gelato, about how life is too short to spend it making other people’s dreams come true? Shouldn’t this dream be hers as well?

  If she’s totally honest with herself: no. It isn’t. If she’s totally honest, she’s not at all convinced she wants to jump into having a daughter or a son, let alone in such an unspontaneous and unnatural way. It seems absurd, and even anachronistic, to find herself back in the condition of the egg-bearing hen whose future has been decided. Burdened with all the physical and moral responsibility that comes with it, the pressure of the person she loves, of other people, of society. If she thinks about it, there isn’t a single one of her previous relationships in which the guy she was with didn’t sooner or later make her feel the full weight of her role as breeder: either because he was terrified of her getting pregnant, or, to the contrary, because he considered it to be the end goal of their relationship. Looking at the question with a minimum of detachment and a sense of humor, it’s unacceptable. Maybe it was different in prehistoric times, when the lives of human beings were determined by a struggle between intentions and circumstances in which the latter almost always prevailed. Or in the millenniums to follow, when women didn’t have a choice, unless they wanted to become universally pitied old maids, or witches, or lunatics. But today?

  There’s a blowout: the car jolts, skids, heads for the opposite lane with a terrible rasping noise, just as a truck is coming straight for them.

  “Heeey!” She screams and digs her feet in, stares in terror at the radiator grille coming toward her, increasingly large and close.

  “Shit!” Viviane yanks the wheel to the right as much as she can, leans on it with all her weight, makes the wheels shriek, succeeds in getting back on the right side of the road, just in time.

  The truck blares its horn furiously, rushes past in a clangor of rattling iron; the displacement of air by its enormous broadside makes the Peugeot sway.

  Viviane keeps hold of the wheel to avoid losing control, brakes, pulls over, stops.

  Milena Migliari’s heart is racing, her blood full of adrenaline. “What happened?”

  “Flat tire.” Viviane adjusts the glasses on her nose, inhales deeply, counts with her fingers: one, two, three. Pretty calm, considering she just avoided a frontal collision in which both of them would have been flattened like pancakes. She puts it in first, slowly scrapes and hiccups along for a few dozen yards, stops in a dirt roadside turnoff. They both get out: there’s a gash in the back right tire, it’s completely flat.

  “What now?” Milena Migliari feels the strangest alternation of terror and relief, for the incredibly close call they just had, and because she knows that visits to the Centre Plamondon follow a tight schedule, and that arriving even a few minutes late means seeing your appointment postponed until who knows when. She wonders whether the blowout is a sign of destiny, to abandon this whole fertilization business. Or is the sign of destiny their not having smashed into the truck? How should what just happened be interpreted? And does it make sense to try to read into these things instead of coming to a rational choice, with no need for external nudging?

  “Now we change it, for crying out loud.” Viviane goes to open the trunk: she takes out the spare tire, rolls it along the side of the car. She goes back to get the jack and the tool bag, sets it all on the ground.

  Milena Migliari certainly doesn’t consider herself incapable of dealing with practical difficulties: she regularly takes care of the equipment at the gelateria, she even managed to adjust the batch freezer by herself when one of the blades got stuck. But changing a car tire has always seemed beyond her capabilities: between the heavy lifting, the bulkiness, the resistance, the call for strength, if she had to think of one task that’s better left to men, this is it. “Shouldn’t we call a tow truck?”

  “A tow truck? Come on. It would take half an hour just to get here.” Viviane doesn’t seem the least bit worried about changing the tire, just very impatient at the possible cancellation of the appointment. She takes the lug wrench or whatever the heck you call it out of the bag, positions it over one of the wheel nuts, presses down on the handle with all her strength, to no avail.

  “Don’t hurt yourself!” Milena Migliari realizes she’s saying this partly out of sincere concern, partly because deep down she hopes that changing the tire turns out to be much more complicated than Viviane thought.

  “They screw them on too tight with those damn pneumatic wrenches at the auto shops! Lazy bums!” Viviane leans against the roof of the car, brings her foot down hard on the wrench handle, literally jumps on it, succeeds in loosening the nut. She gives it a couple of turns, then repeats the operation with the next one: positions the wrench, jumps on the handle, loosens, turns.

  Milena Migliari stands there watching her, half amazed, half dismayed by how fast she’s managed to find the most effective method, by the angry fervor with which she’s applying it.

  Viviane plows forward, not stopping for a second: she loosens all the lug nuts, then places the jack underneath the car, winds the handle around quickly like a crank; the car begins to lift up.

  Milena Migliari is torn between the instinct to offer assistance and the hope that some hitch might still make things take significantly longer. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing.” Viviane shakes her head; she’s already removing the tire, already putting the spare in its place, already tightening the lug nuts, already lowering the jack, already jumping one more time on the wrench handle just to be sure.

  Milena Migliari strains to pick up the flat tire, to make at least some contribution. She goes to put it in the trunk, struggling with the weight and the sense of guilt that makes her desire to be stranded at this turnoff waiting for a tow truck that doesn’t come, until not only has their scheduled appointment at the Centre Plamondon definitively come and gone, but so too has the very idea of needing one.

  Viviane removes the jack from under the car, folds the jack back up, sticks the wrench in its bag, goes to put everything back in the trunk, cleans her hands off with a rag. “Let’s go.”

  “You were lightning fast.” Milena Migliari regrets that her dismay is getting the better of her admiration, but that’s the way it is, she can’t help it.

  Viviane stops to look at her with a hand on her hip, like she wants to rebuke her for something; instead she smiles, leans over to give her a kiss.

  Milena Migliari is so taken aback, and so full of contrasting emotions, that her eyes fill with tears. She uses the rag to wipe her hands, too, slightly dirty from putting away the tire. “If we don’t get a move on, it’s good-bye appointment.”

  In an instant they’re back on the road, accelerating as if nothing happened. Ten minutes might have passed since they got the flat, fifteen at the most.

  “We’ll make it, we’ll make it.” Viviane drives in that aggressive way of hers, shifting gears decisively; she seems in control of the situation, as always.

  “You were incredible with that tire.” Milena Migliari really thinks so, even if it feels like she’s back on the road to catastrophe. But this is the side of Viviane she found so reassurin
g in the beginning: her ability to take on and solve problems with the same energetic efficiency she employs in her postural massages. No uncertainties, no hesitations, no doubts. That’s how she was able to get the loan for the house in Seillans, despite the qualms of the bank; that’s how she convinced her to give the gelato venture a shot, despite Milena’s fears.

  Viviane flashes a couple of looks at her, smiles, adjusts the glasses on her nose.

  Milena Migliari smiles too, as she flounders between her affection for such a familiar face and the apprehension that’s twisting all her internal organs. She thinks that when they started seeing each other one of the things she liked most about being with a woman rather than a man was the idea of not having to worry anymore about the children question. She was convinced she’d finally gotten free of it for good: finally brought an end to the waltz of expectations, explanations, justifications to give to herself and others, forecasts, hypotheses saturated with implications. And yet after a certain point the question has reemerged and gained ground with more insistence and determination than ever happened in her heterosexual relationships. She doesn’t understand how she failed to realize it in time, was unable to explain her position honestly, instead of coming off as undecided but, all things considered, open to any eventuality. As if the priority were avoiding arguments and disappointments, and that the matter could remain suspended indefinitely, or better yet dissolve into nothing. Is this her way of being immature? Her inability to take on any responsibility greater than making delicious gelato from one day to the next? The fact remains that one moment she and Viviane were two free women happy to be together, determined to live the life they wanted without being conditioned by anyone and certainly not by each other, and the next they were trapped inside their submarine of seemingly shared intentions, with this absurd mission-like spirit. How is it possible that tender and loving sentiments have turned into an idée fixe, the idée fixe into a plan, the plan into an increasingly well-defined schedule, and that now the two of them are rushing toward its realization without any more discussion of its reasons or sense? Without being able to talk about it anymore, period?

  “What are you thinking about?” Viviane looks at her quickly, shifts down a gear, accelerates with a jerk.

  “Nothing.” Milena Migliari tries once more to smile, but now it’s asking too much of her. She looks at the tattoo on the inside of her left wrist, the two inverted As formed by a little snake that rises and falls in a circle and that stand for Arte and Amore. She had it done when she was twenty, as a declaration of intent together with her friend Luca, who died three years later in a motorcycle accident in Spain. (They weren’t an item, but they were so similar, so close.) Viviane has never liked it, because she says that tattoos are an attempt to show character by those who have none, and it really annoys her to give postural massages to someone who has them. Consequently the tattoo seems like a part of herself that needs defending, just like the others.

  “Are you having doubts?” Viviane turns her head again but keeps an eye on the road, continuing to drive fast.

  “Why do you ask?” Milena Migliari tries to find the words to answer that yes, she is having doubts; she can’t.

  “Because it seems clear to me that you are.” Viviane’s gray eyes flash briefly behind her lenses.

  “Of course not.” Milena Migliari watches the houses grow ever denser behind the gates and hedges on the side of the road.

  “If you want we can go back.” Viviane slows down, as if she really is ready to stop the car and turn around. “I’ll call and say we’ve changed our mind, that we don’t want to do it anymore.”

  “No-o.” Milena Migliari tries to put more conviction in her voice, shakes her head; she feels terribly not sincere, not honest with herself and with the rest of the world.

  FOURTEEN

  WHEN NICK CRUICKSHANK returns to Les Vieux Oliviers there are cars and vans of every color and shape parked at the back of the house, on the east side, on the front lawn. Among the cars parked under the shelter there’s even the turquoise Bentley Continental belonging to Rodney Ainsworth, slotted in diagonally to occupy two spaces instead of one.

  Nick Cruickshank tries to slip inside the house without being noticed, but Tricia intercepts him just past the entrance, flushed as if she’s racing in from the front line of some combat zone. “Aileen has been looking for you for hours!”

  “I was up in the air, all right?” Nick Cruickshank makes a slightly tired gesture; he’s permeated by a sense of distance, as if a part of him is still fifty feet off the ground, still suspended between life and death.

  “Yes, but Aileen needs you!” Tricia appears to be referring not simply to a specific need but to a more general one, linked to Aileen’s emotional stability, perhaps to her very survival.

  “And where is Aileen?” From the living room come voices and laughter, of which stand out Wally’s rasping lilt and Rodney’s metallic braying.

  “On the front lawn!” Tricia clearly views the task she’s been assigned of dragging him in for debriefing as a mission of the utmost importance.

  “Can I maybe say hello to my friends first, who’ve come thousands of miles to be here?” Nick Cruickshank points to the living room, but he’s hardly sure he really wants to greet them.

  Tricia nods, albeit with an extremely vexed expression.

  In the living room Rodney, his wife, Sadie; Todd and his wife, Cynthia; and Wally and Kimberly are stationed around the mobile bar, glasses in hand; they turn toward him as if seeing him is both the most wonderful and the most awful surprise in the world, and no real surprise at all.

  Nick Cruickshank goes to hug Rodney first, with the false-casual enthusiasm of several thousand of their previous embraces.

  Rodney grabs the back of his neck in that classic grip of his, hard enough to cause pain in his cervical vertebrae. He breaks away almost immediately; studies him, in their usual close-up reciprocal evaluation. Rodney’s hair is mysteriously thicker than last time in London, before the summer; and unlike Wally, his hairline is more or less unchanged from when the Bebonkers started out. For the hard-core fan watching him from a few dozen yards in front of the stage, or even up on the big screen, he probably looks exactly the same as when they recorded their first album, a lifetime ago.

  Sadie too comes to get her hug, pressing up against him with excessive eagerness: face stretched smooth as an apple, dressed in her classic sadomasochistic pantheress style, perfumed beyond belief, as though it might help her control her husband’s inclination for infidelity. Rodney’s two previous wives were practically identical to her, which if nothing else demonstrates a consistency in his taste, and maybe helps her identify possible rivals before it’s too late.

  Next up, the hug with Todd: contact between chests and shoulders, two, three decisive slaps in the scapular region.

  Todd smiles in his peaceful way, never too involved. “How goes it?”

  “How goes it with you?” Nick Cruickshank is happy to see him, though he’s aware he doesn’t have much to say to him. The fact is that for years the relations among the band members have been limited to exchanges of information over the phone about times and places of recording sessions or concerts, or to playing in a studio or on a stage; the rest they leave to their agents and lawyers.

  “Pretty well.” Todd is fundamentally a mild-mannered guy, he’s never let himself get too carried away with the idea of being a rock star. He’s the only Bebonker who has nearly always managed to keep his feet on the ground, even when the others were whizzing around the stratosphere, out of their minds with worldwide success.

  “Glad to hear it.” Nick Cruickshank gives him an additional slap on the back. Yes, he loves Todd: who knows how many Bebonkers concerts would have come unstitched in a chaos of noise without the potent and ever-balanced beat of his drums, how many stupid arguments would have degenerated into savage brawls without his good sense.

  Cynthia comes to hug him as well, with the slight rigidity that d
istinguishes her; she’s the lone survivor of the Bebonkers’ first wives, and inevitably doesn’t enjoy a great relationship with the second or third spouses of the others, a fact that the generation gap only exacerbates.

  Of course Wally can’t pass up a chance to throw himself into the mix: he goads on the males left and right, slaps the women on the rear end. Then he makes space for himself with his elbows, raises his arms to the ceiling, and launches into his maniacal Celtic warrior cry. “Be-bo-be-bo-be-bonk! Bebonkers forever!” At concerts he invariably succeeds in transforming it into a pulsating choral crescendo that draws in thousands of people, convinced they’re part of some glorious tribe, but it’s clear that here no one even thinks for a second about joining in.