Sleepless Nights and Kisses for Breakfast

by Matteo Bussola

  “No. We don’t get paid vacation either.”

  “What if you get sick?”

  “I stick it out.”

  “Severance?”

  “A handshake, if things end well.”

  “A handshake? All right, listen. Just come by, I’m sure we can find the right solution. In fact, if you give me your account number, I’ll check right away and you’ll be sure to be approved.”

  “The number is xxxxxxxxxxxx.”

  “Okay, there we go.”

  “You see my account history?”

  “Oh.”

  “What do you say, then? Should I come by?”

  “Mr. Bussola?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you make a withdrawal of twenty euros this morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “You made a cash withdrawal of twenty euros?”

  “Why, is that not allowed? I had to get the latest Ken Parker and some olive oil.”

  “Are you aware that your current account balance is two euros and fifty cents?”

  “Really? I thought it was less. I’ll come by tomorrow then, yeah? What time would work?”

  “Have a nice day.”

  “Hello?”

  And they say I’m negative.

  The Man in the Car

  I slept one hour last night.

  Melania had a high fever and slept in bed with us, first huddled up against her mom, kicking at me, then draped over my chest and coughing in my face. Around two in the morning I threw in the towel, built a wall of pillows around her for her to kick, and got up. I went to the kitchen to make myself a coffee, but a weak one; I didn’t want to give up all hope for sleep. I went to the office for a while and started penciling a new page. I didn’t notice the time go by and suddenly it was eight. I went upstairs, made another coffee, and went to check on things in the bedroom. Paola and Melania were still sleeping, immersed in the unnatural silence of the house due to the absence of the older girls, who were in the mountains with their grandparents for the weekend. Looking in at them from the doorway, I saw them illuminated in the dark from the hallway light, and they looked like they were fused, just one body, as if they were joined again. At some point Paola realized I was there and asked me to heat up some milk. When I went back, Melania was awake, Paola gave her the bottle, and I remembered I needed to go out to buy envelopes.

  In the car, going down the hill, I noticed the bright blue sky and a brilliant light, which seemed intensified by the winter air. Once I got to the tree-lined boulevard, I saw a green Fiat Punto stopped in the middle of the road. My first thought was an accident, or breakdown, or overly adventurous parking attempt. But when I came up alongside the car, sitting in the driver’s seat was an elderly man with a brown cap. Completely still, with the car off and his chin resting on the steering wheel. “Maybe there’s something wrong,” I thought. It occurred to me that maybe he was sick. I was about to get out and check, when I noticed that the man was looking at something. His face was lit up, he was looking toward the sky with his eyes half closed and crying and smiling at the same time.

  He was staring at the sun, or at least so it seemed, sitting in his car right where you could see the sun rising above the hill, moving along the road like the spotlight at a concert.

  “I wonder what he’s thinking,” I said to myself. The look on his face was beautiful. Then a car honked and sped around. Then another. A line of cars had formed behind us, which I hadn’t noticed because of the hazy traces of sleep.

  I shifted into first and sped off, but the man stayed put.

  When I left the stationery store, I decided that since I was already out, I might as well stop at the grocery store. I got some milk, celery to make broth, and some oranges on sale.

  On the way home, I stopped under the trees on the boulevard to eat an orange in the car.

  The man wasn’t there anymore. Now it was me.

  Four

  Ginevra turns four today.

  I just dropped her off at nursery school, but for her special day, we’re going to pick her up early. That way she can have a little lunchtime celebration with her grandparents, and then after four, a real party at home with her friends.

  When we were by the cubbies, she asked, “Daddy, am I grown up now that I’m four?”

  I didn’t know how to respond, because I wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear. I ventured, “Yes,” but she went on immediately, saying: “I don’t want to grow up, I want to stay little.”

  At which I, after every reassurance about how great growing up is, decided to forget the didactic clichés and fatherly inanities like: “That’s just the way it is.” I sat down on the bench, put her on my knee, and as if I were about to tell her a secret, said: “You know what, Ginevra? No matter how big a person gets, if she wants to, she can stay little anyway. Even as an adult.”

  “How?”

  “You just have to keep doing the things you like best.”

  She looked me right in the eye and didn’t say anything, but I knew she had understood. I took her to class, and when I was about to leave, she turned to me and said, “Daddy, when I get home today, can I paint cherries?”

  And I told her, “Sure you can, Ginevra.”

  Then I went out, went around the building, and stood in front of the window for our goodbye leap. She laughed at me through the glass and I just thought, “Please, stay like this forever,” because what I like most in the world is taking her to nursery school and seeing her through that window jump up and smile with those tiny teeth, as if that sight were really the only thing that could save me from becoming a sad, hopeless grown-up.

  The Case

  Virginia made a case for her camera.

  She took a cardboard box, like a shoebox but narrower, filled it with balled-up paper, then placed the camera inside and put the lid on top. Then she wrapped it with some colored paper, taping the edges just like a Christmas present. When she came and showed it to me, all proud, I pointed out that perhaps it wasn’t very practical as a case, since she would have to take off the tape and the wrap, open the lid, and dig through the balled-up paper every time she wanted to use the camera. Virginia looked at me as if I were an idiot and said: “So what? It’ll take longer to open, but at least it’s pretty!”

  In the moment, I admit, I wanted to laugh. Then I thought about it a little more and came to the conclusion, as in now I’ve seen the light, that without realizing it my daughter had reminded me of an essential lesson: Beauty is never easy. And if you don’t choose it just because it might take longer to open, or to achieve, all the time you save avoiding it will never be a triumph, but the most clamorous of defeats.

  Why Does Mom . . . ?

  “Papa, why does Mom always go to Milan for work?”

  “She doesn’t always go, Ginevra. She goes like once a month.”

  “And why are you always here?”

  “Well, because I work from home and send my drawings to my editor; I don’t need to go all the way to Milan for work stuff. And then that way I can stay with you, right?”

  She looks at me pointedly.

  “They don’t want to talk to you, do they, Daddy?”

  “Nope.”

  “Can we get pizza tonight?”

  “All right, Ginevra. I’ll call in a little bit.”

  “I hope they answer you.”

  The Crooked Tree

  In our garden, there’s a crooked tree.

  The tree is very tall and leaning dangerously toward the house. When there’s a strong wind, it sways ominously.

  I called a specialized company this summer. The original idea was to get to the root of the problem by cutting down the tree. But Paola wasn’t happy. She kept grumbling that, well, killing a fir tree, a living healthy plant, just to reduce a risk that may never present itself just wasn’t right. So I got two estimates: on
e to cut it down, and another to prune it. It so happened that pruning it cost less and we decided to take it as a sign.

  They came on a sunny day in July. They climbed up, trimmed the tree more or less completely of all its excess foliage and overly heavy or prominent branches. They reduced the wind effect. They rebalanced it, giving us specific guarantees as to its stability and promising us that nothing would happen. “Even if, of course, there are no guarantees when it comes to nature.”

  In reality, from July to December the tree just got more and more crooked. Now that it’s almost all trunk, it’s even more obvious. If you look at the tree from ten yards away, you see that it’s leaning over and curved like a bow. When the wind picks up, it sways even more ominously than before.

  Yesterday afternoon, before going to pick up the girls, I called Paola into the yard. “Come look at this,” I said. I took her to the spot with the clearest view and pointed to the tree, my finger tracing the curve of the trunk in the air.

  “Come on, let it go! That’s just how the tree is, okay?” she said. “Has anyone ever made you feel bad about being crooked? And we keep you around anyway.”

  I looked at her, smiling. Not so much because I completely agreed, but because in life, the moments when you really remember the reasons why you’re with someone, the times when you really feel it, are four or five max, if you’re lucky.

  When Paola and I first met, we were two crooked trees. We decided to get together, but it immediately became clear that neither would be able to straighten out the other, that our two crooked trees together wouldn’t make one straight one.

  But, with each supporting the other, we made a tree house. The tree house lives on and gets bigger every day. Sometimes it sways when the wind gets strong.

  So far, no one has been able to fell it.

  Beer

  Paola is going to the store. I ask her to get me some beer.

  Last time, I told her to “get the kind in the yellow cans” because Paola doesn’t drink and doesn’t know brands, and she came back with a silver can that makes Peroni seem like a craft Weiss made with malted barley handpicked by flaxen-haired maidens on dewy nights under the full moon. So this time I give her more specific instructions.

  I tell her, “Get any beer except the one in the silver can, please. In particular, if you want to be safe, get the one in the blue and gray can. Or the yellow one.”

  Tonight I open the fridge and get a beer. The can is black as death with a blue stripe in the middle. On the front there’s a giant 12, which she must have mistaken for the jersey number of a soccer player from Inter. However, it indicates that the beer in question is a twelve-proof triple malt. Basically, a can of wine. I’d had this kind three or four times before, and that was during the period when I kept randomly writing cheesy status updates on Facebook between seven and eight in the evening. Then I think I got hepatitis.

  I dig through the fridge hopelessly, looking for I don’t know what exactly. At some point, pushing aside the anchovies and the pickles, my hand meets another can. I take a closer look. It’s almost all red but it’s not Coke. Thank the Lord, maybe in a rush of exuberance and affection Paola bought me a second beer!

  I read the brand. Never heard of it. I look at the alcohol percentage to avoid any surprises.

  It’s nonalcoholic.

  Sentimental Alphabet

  My life is always organized according to the same schedule.

  The schedule revolves mostly around the girls.

  The morning is devoted to getting them ready for school and carting them around. Virginia has volleyball on Thursdays, trips to her grandparents on Saturdays, and every afternoon, homework and a snack. Every night, games in Mom and Dad’s bed, and stories and songs. At lunch and dinner, striving step-by-step to introduce new foods, battling on the slippery ground that is taste.

  On Tuesday afternoons, Paola takes Virginia and Ginevra to the pool. I stay at home with Melania.

  When we’re by ourselves, Melania takes over. She’s like a beaver used to swimming between log dams that suddenly gets thrown into the open sea. First she wants to draw, then she wants to run, then she asks for cookies, then she’s thirsty, then she wants to write on the television, then she wants to be held but she also wants to be put down. She wants everything and nothing, she’s energy in its pure state, elemental joy, perpetual motion powered by a dynamo of crumbs.

  I adore her beyond all measure and limit. Because I have the total—on some days almost painful—awareness that she will be our last little girl. After this, it’s just the flatlands of adolescence: slammed doors, stupid dolls, and friendship bracelets. I like Simone, no I mean Mattia; shut up, Dad; I don’t want any salad; and the rest of the repertoire.

  Whereas now I can still enjoy Melania completely and she can enjoy me completely. She knows I’m the weak link—she had that figured out the first time I picked her up in the hospital and changed her with one hand while she peed on the other, before the amused eyes of the obstetrician.

  Things change, children grow up, just like how all good things must come to an end, two heads are better than one, and there’s no time like the present. And right now it’s Tuesday afternoon.

  So tonight I’ll work, but right now I’ll enjoy the moments that will stave off future regrets. I say my sentimental alphabet as I build towers of Legos.

  All the letters in sentimental alphabets end with an exclamation point.

  The first letter is A! and it makes a round sound.

  Feet and Music

  “Daddy, why is Saint Lucia blind?”

  “Eh, Ginevra, because a bad person hurt her eyes to make her do something she didn’t want to do.”

  “And did she do it?”

  “No.”

  “But if she’s blind, how can she read the notes on the presents kids give her?”

  “Oh, well, I think her assistant reads them to her, the coachman who leads her mule.”

  “And what’s his name?”

  “The assistant? Castaldo.”

  “Does she love him?”

  “Who?”

  “Saint Lucia, does she love him?”

  “Oh, geez, Ginevra, I don’t know. . . . I’ve never thought about it. I’m sure she’s fond of him, of course, but I don’t know if they’re a couple or anything.”

  “But if she’s blind, how can she love him?”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “If she can’t see him. Maybe he’s ugly.”

  “Listen, peanut. Do you love Daddy?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Different question. Do you love Mommy?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you close your eyes, do you still love her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, well it’s the same thing with grown-up love, Ginevra. It’s not just about what you see, but how you feel even with things you can’t see, like when you listen to your songs with your earphones.”

  I observe her as she contemplates my words.

  “So love is like music, Daddy?”

  “Sort of, yes. But you can’t feel it through your ears.”

  “Well, how then?”

  “Well, through everything. Even your nose. Your hands. Your feet.”

  “No way! How can you feel it with your feet?”

  “I’ll give you an example. You know what girlfriends do to their boyfriends, to test whether they really love them? Your mom always did it to me.”

  “What?”

  “At the beginning, when I used to go to her house, or she would come to mine, and she slept over, your mom would always put her freezing feet on my back or my legs.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I left them there and warmed them.”

  “But didn’t they make you really cold?”

  “A little, sure.”


  “So when Mommy put her feet on you, you heard music, Daddy?”

  “Always.”

  On Comics and Fathers and Sons

  “What do you mean, comics?” the father says.

  “Comics,” says the son.

  “Like the comics in the papers?” the father says.

  “Yeah, like those,” the son says.

  “Okay, but what do you mean you want to make them?” the father says.

  “I want to make them. Draw them. Invent them. I want to make my living by coming up with stories and putting them on paper. And I’d like to draw Tex one day too,” the son says.

  “Tex?” the father says.

  “Tex, the cowboy. The one with the . . .”

  “I know who Tex is,” the father says.

  “Well then,” the son says.

  “Well then, did you know,” the father says, “that comics artists have terrible lives?”

  “That’s not true,” the son says.

  “Yes it is!” the father says. “Professional cartoonists spend their whole lives sitting hunched over a desk. They never go out, they even draw at night, they become antisocial. Nerds. They end up convinced that that’s their whole world, all in their pages, and that’s it.”

  “You mean like you and the poems you write in your notebooks?” the son says.

  “What does poetry have to do with it?” the father says. “Poetry is poetry. I hope you don’t mean to compare cartoons to poetry, for God’s sake! I need those poems. They’ve been my way of enduring this disgusting world and a job I didn’t choose these past forty years,” the father says.

  “Exactly,” the son says.

  “Exactly what?” the father says.

  “I’m choosing. That’s what I’m telling you now, you get it?”

  “What?”

  “My job! I’m choosing it. I’m telling you. And I’m also choosing my way of enduring. I’ll do both things at the same time. My work will be my way of enduring!” the son shouts.