Sleepless Nights and Kisses for Breakfast

by Matteo Bussola

  The real answer is three hundred and forty-seven, or in other words, love.

  Ears

  In the car, on the way to nursery school:

  “Daddy, why do we have ears?”

  “To hear with, Ginevra.”

  “No, but why do we have ears?”

  “Because that way we can listen to words.”

  “No, but why do we have ea—”

  “Because that way, when babies cry, mommies and daddies can hear them.”

  I look at her in the rearview mirror. She’s gazing out the window, her expression serious.

  “Daddy.”

  “Yes?”

  “Mommies and daddies can hear when they laugh too, though.”

  I smile, thinking how much better her version is than mine.

  “Yes, especially that.”

  When we’re in the car and my daughter explains life to me, I always understand things better.

  That’s the reason I have ears, I’m sure.

  Children’s Dreams

  I go out to buy a large envelope in order to mail a drawing.

  The stationery store is closed, so I go to the one down the street. At the counter, the clerk is talking to a lady who looks like Virna Lisi in Time for Loving.

  “Bah, that’s how they are at that age,” the clerk says.

  “Yeah, but at least have some real ambitions, come on,” Virna Lisi says.

  “Excuse me, do you by any chance have one of those big envelopes—the yellow padded ones?” I interrupt.

  “Back there, go ahead and choose the size,” says the clerk.

  I go and start digging through the envelopes.

  “Because,” Virna Lisi says, “he thinks he’s going to become Milo Manara one day. Do you know how many people in that line of work live hand to mouth?”

  “Ah, mine’s the same. When he was eleven he wanted to be an actor. After that he started a rock band and was a singer. Later I bugged him to get over it, he was convinced, and now that he has a little bub of his own, he works here with me.”

  “Exactly,” Virna Lisi says. “These days you need to have your feet on the ground, at least a little, come on. Thank goodness my husband laid down the law and now he’s decided to go to a science high school—that’s a step in the right direction.”

  Hearing “science high school” I’m hit with déjà vu. I’m back in 1985, in my family’s living room, Righeira is singing “L’estate sta finendo” and my father has just explained to me why I’m not going to art high school. I find the envelope I need and go to pay. Virna Lisi moves out of the way and pulls a sea green smartphone from her purse.

  “So, how’s it going?” the clerk asks me.

  “Good, thank you,” I answer, taken by surprise.

  “Hey, you would know,” she says. “Could you ask your bosses why the traffic light out here always quits working?”

  “Well, ma’am, I haven’t worked in public administration for a long time.”

  “Sure, I heard that,” she says. “But you must still know everyone.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I say, cutting her short.

  “So what are you up to now?” she says, shoving the envelope into a bag that’s too small.

  “What do you mean?” I say.

  “For work,” she says.

  I think for a second before answering. I look over at Virna Lisi punching the buttons on her smartphone.

  “I’m an actor in musicals,” I say.

  “You don’t say,” the clerk says. “Seriously?”

  Virna Lisi looks up from her smartphone.

  “Where do you act?” the clerk asks.

  “Ah, wherever they hire me,” I say. “Mostly at people’s homes.”

  “People’s homes?” she says.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Come on now,” Virna Lisi says. “How do you act in people’s homes? Going door to door? What do you do? I mean, what shows do you do?”

  “Well,” I say, “to be completely precise, I tell people to fuck off.”

  “To . . . what?” she says.

  “To fuck off,” I say. “But in their own home, eh! That’s the hard part.”

  “But, what . . . ?” Virna Lisi says.

  “Basically,” I say, “I’m contacted by people who maybe have a problem with someone, or harbor an old grudge. They give me the recipient’s address and I show up dressed as John Wayne, or Superman, or Rapunzel, sometimes even in regular clothes. Then I put a stereo on a little stand, and sing to them to go fuck themselves.”

  “Come on,” Virna says, laughing. “That can’t be real. What kind of job is that? Are there seriously people who hire you for that?”

  “If only you knew,” I say. “Rejected girlfriends. Ex-husbands. Political opponents. People who lost their job. But the ones who request me the most are children of overbearing parents, most of the time when they’re already adults.”

  “Children?” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “By the way, do you happen to have a stereo here?”

  “Uh, no,” says the clerk.

  “Never mind,” I say. “I can sing a cappella.”

  Why the World Exists

  Virginia and I are in the kitchen having breakfast.

  “Daddy, why does the world exist?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why was space created?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Couldn’t it all have just been blank with a great big cockroach wandering around?”

  “Egads, Virginia. I don’t know. Truth is, maybe it would have been better that way.”

  “How come?”

  “Because we’ve done so many bad things to our world. Cockroaches, however, haven’t done anything.”

  “So then is the world mad at us?”

  “Maybe not mad mad, but it’s definitely not too happy with us.”

  “Can’t we tell it we’re sorry?”

  “Every so often some people try, but there are never enough of them. And most people don’t know how.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because to say sorry you have to admit you did something wrong, Virginia. And also because people tend to forget the most important part when they apologize. There was once a man named Randy Pausch who said that good apologies have three parts: I’m sorry, it was my fault, and how do I make it right. Well, almost everyone forgets the third part.”

  “Even with the world?”

  “Especially with the world.”

  We put on our coats and I walk her out to catch the school bus. She looks thoughtful, vaguely sad.

  “Daddy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I lost my technology binder.”

  “Oh, Virginia. You’re telling me this now? Did you need it today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, listen. The first thing you should do when you get to class is tell the teacher. This morning you can do your technology assignments on a piece of paper, and then we’ll put it in a new binder.”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. It’s my fault.”

  “And what else?”

  “And I can’t find my pencil sharpener either.”

  Lucca Comics

  Early tomorrow morning—so we say (we hope to leave early every time, but then can’t manage to get away before eleven)—Paola and I are going to start making our way to the Lucca Comics convention.

  I say “start” because the trip includes various stops. Aside from waking, dressing, feeding, shaving, locking the windows, throwing our luggage in the car, changing Melania’s diaper again, turning off the gas, waiting for the guy from the dog hotel, “do I bring the book or not,” “can’t find my glasses,” “who the hell opened the crackers that were for the trip,” “lost my toothbrush,” etc., we hav
e to make the following stops:

  Stop one at our oldest daughter’s school to pick up the books that Virginia carelessly left on her desk but needs for her homework while we’re there.

  Stop two at the gas station to check tires/water/oil, “Look how cute those tropical mango air fresheners are,” “Daddy I have to go pee-pee.”

  Stop three at Grandma and Grandpa Bussola’s to drop off Ginevra. You live through your mother’s coffee and your father’s “How’s work going?” as well as your middle daughter’s elaborate, heartbreaking goodbye.

  Stop four at Grandma and Grandpa Barbato’s lake house to drop off the screaming baby and the oldest daughter, who is supposed to act as a deterrent to her younger sister’s screams. You live through Paola’s father’s coffee, Virginia’s hugs that on these occasions always remind you of the little match girl with her last match fighting the wind on Christmas night, peel Melania off your legs, and leave a valley of tears behind you. Turn back because “Oh no, we left their hats in the car.”

  Stop five at Paola’s favorite roadside stop. We always miss it because every time it’s “the next one,” and then we can never figure out why we end up eating the same soggy sandwich at that café/shack in the middle of the A15.

  Stop six on the A15, where invariably, right after our sandwiches, I say, “All right then, the worst is over, the rest will be a breeze.” But at the B in “breeze,” we catch sight of the dozens of miles of traffic backed up between us and Viareggio.

  Stop seven in La Spezia because “I told you to turn left.”

  We reach Lucca at around six p.m., if all goes well. I arrange my suits elegantly in the closet; Paola unpacks her suitcase, making the usual pile of stuff right in the middle of the bed. We get the first phone call from Grandma and Grandpa Barbato who pretend everything is fine. Shortly afterward comes the second, during which it becomes clear that they’re in a state of panic.

  At that point, two paths appear before us, one of which is, “What do you say, it’s almost seven, should we go check out the convention for a bit?”

  But I choose the less traveled: delivery pizza out of the box in the hotel room, reruns of Embarrassing Bodies or Rocky on YouTube, and bed at ten, because these are the only and I mean the only three nights in the entire year when I’ll be able to sleep uninterrupted until eight in the morning without daughters waking me up or dogs barking at boars or people calling at 7:05 because my number is just like the pediatrician’s office’s except for the last digit.

  At 10:15 my mother usually calls to ask if we got there all right.

  New Shoes

  For two weeks she’s been asking what I want for my birthday.

  For two weeks I’ve been putting off the answer, trying to drag it out.

  How can I tell her that, well, I need a new computer, but we can’t afford it, so really it isn’t even necessary; that I’d like these Japanese pens I saw on a Web site but I always color with the first thing I grab anyway and I have fun that way; that if we could, I’d like to get a cleaning lady to come once a week; or that maybe I’d like a tablet that allows me to click on a link and open it before the fifth try and that doesn’t crash whenever I hit send?

  That a crate of craft beer would be nice, or a Neal Adams drawing, or maybe just a few pairs of socks without holes in them. Even a pair of new shoes, maybe. Or maybe a more robust constitution, though maybe I’d better ask Santa Claus for that.

  Basically, how can I tell her that I’d like a bunch of things but don’t really need anything? Because everything I need, everything that gives my life meaning, every motivation, she’s already given me—to the point that the best birthday gift I can even imagine would be a long, passionate kiss by the window while it’s raining outside and I have her head in my hands?

  Maybe I’ll just not tell her and hope.

  Although, some new shoes . . .

  To keep walking together down this long road, I’ll need them.

  Boy Hair

  In the car, on the way to nursery school:

  “Daddy, why did you get a haircut?”

  “Because it was getting too long, Ginevra. And I promised Grandma.”

  “Ugh.”

  “What, you don’t like it?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, no, why not?”

  “Because before you just looked like a dad, but now you look like a boy!”

  Taking Care

  I went to the newsstand early this morning.

  Rinaldo had set aside a comic for me, and since it was a clear day and the air was good and I had parked far away, on my way back to the car I decided to sit in the playground for a few minutes and leaf through my new purchase.

  There were only three of us at the playground. Maybe because it wasn’t even nine yet and a little chilly out. Across from my bench there was a sleepy-looking man in his forties pushing a little girl on the swings, probably his daughter. The little girl seemed around four, had long messy hair, and was wearing a purple jacket and a scarf that were both too big for her. I thought of Ginevra, of how I used to push her on the swings, and of how now she does it all by herself and tells me not to touch her. Of Virginia, who’s no longer interested in swings and just wants to climb trees. Of Melania, who has just discovered them and every time she sees one can’t be made to get off; she even wants to go on the big-kid ones and has just figured out how to swing back and forth with her legs, which if you see her try, you can’t help but laugh.

  At a certain point, the man pushed a bit too hard and the girl fell forward into the grass. He got her right away, before she could even get scared, almost before she even realized she’d fallen. Before she started to cry. He pulled her up and crouched down in the grass, and the little girl hugged him; and they stayed like that for a while, his hand on her head, her head buried in his chest. Completely still. I watched them and I knew well the guilt that was visible on the man’s face, the fear of not being there even for one crucial moment—I feel it every day. But I also knew that for the girl, being held tight in her father’s arms after the fall was much more important than never having fallen at all.

  One of the things you learn when you become a father—a sort of realization that starts on the first day and becomes clearer over the years—is that it’s not true that you reap what you sow. Sowing is pointless if you don’t also set up an irrigation system, keep pests away, pull the weeds, put in stakes until the plants are strong enough to stand on their own. Sowing is pointless if you’re not there to pick them up when the wind bends them to the ground.

  This holds true for any type of love, but I really only came to understand it this way.

  You don’t just reap what you sow—that’s not true at all. You only reap what you take care of, always.

  You Always Laugh

  Melania has a cough. We were up half the night together—her resting on my chest, me leaning against the headboard a little so her head would be elevated and she would sleep better.

  I was awake the whole time listening to her breathe, lost in gloomy thoughts that, as I stroked her hair in the dark, I felt burst like soap bubbles when they get too big. When her breath became slow and regular, I gently freed myself and made a hollow for her between the pillows and Mama, who had taken the first shift that night. I nestled her in, making a little barrier of rolled-up covers on the edge of the bed and went into the kitchen. I made myself a coffee and went down to the studio, since I wasn’t going to get any more sleep anyway.

  It was 2:14. The computer had been left on and the mailbox notification showed five new messages. I drank my coffee while reading the first three, then Cordelia came into the studio, her nose nodding to the right, the sign that she wanted to go out. I opened the door, we went into the yard, and she ran off. Outside, it seemed like September. I sat down on the wall under the big fir and took a deep breath. The woods were silent, the air was cool but not co
ld, a dog was barking in the distance. When Cordelia came back, I stood up and went back inside, but passing under the bedroom window, I could hear Melania coughing again. I went upstairs and found her on the bed with her feet where her head should be. I picked her up and pulled her on top of me again, slowly lifted the comforter and covered my feet and her back. We stayed like that for a while.

  I had almost fallen back asleep when Ginevra called out. I laid Melania down softly in the hollow and went to check.

  “Will you tuck me in?” Ginevra said.

  “Of course,” I said. “Lie back down.”

  “Do you know what I dreamed, Daddy?” she said, resting her head on the pillow.

  “What?”