My Mother-in-Law Drinks

by Diego De Silva

  “Papà?” says Alf.

  “Tell that neurasthenic of a sister of yours that she’s an uncouth oaf,” I promptly reply.

  “Sure, okay, I’ll tell her. But what’s all this about Grandma?”

  “What can I tell you, Alfre’. She won’t go in for the chemo. She doesn’t feel up to it.”

  “But she’ll die.”

  “Yeah, I know that.”

  God, it’s so frustrating.

  “Did you try reasoning with her?”

  I say nothing.

  “Papà? Hello?”

  I take a deep breath and prepare myself for the line of bullshit I’m about to hand him.

  “Sure, I tried,” I say, stroking my forehead in shame, “but you know your grandmother, she doesn’t talk, she issues decrees.”

  He heaves a helpless sigh.

  “Now how are we going to break the news to Mamma?”

  I have nothing to say, so he goes on, as if talking to himself.

  “Plus, in this whole thing, Grandma keeps refusing to see her. And she’s pretty remote with us too. What is she thinking? Not only do we have to fight Grandma’s cancer, we actually have to fight Grandma who’s decided to stop fighting cancer. Why are we all so twisted, Papà? Why do we always make everything more complicated? Why can’t we just deal with our problems the way normal families do?”

  I don’t feel I have much to add on this topic either.

  “Papà?”

  “Eh.”

  “Holy Christ, why don’t you say anything?!”

  “I was just listening to you, Alfre’.”

  “Well, okay,” he says, fuming, “but at least emit a sound, moan, just so I know that we’re still connected, for Christ’s sake! I feel like I’m sitting here talking to myself!”

  “You see?” I hear that jerk of a sister of his say in the near background.

  I’m mortified.

  “Come on, Alf, don’t be that way. The first session is in a week. She still might change her mind.”

  “So in the meantime you’re not planning to do anything?”

  For a moment everything around me goes blurry.

  “Could you repeat that, please?”

  My lips are quivering.

  “Listen, Papà, we need to . . .” he says, trying to backpedal, sensing the storm bearing down on him, but I don’t let him finish.

  “No, you listen to me, young man: who the hell do you think I am, your man in Havana?”

  He tries to reply but I’m all over him.

  “It’s not my fault if your grandma decides not to seek medical care, you understand? Just as it’s not my fault if she doesn’t want to see her daughter.”

  I stop for a second and look around, because I’ve just realized I’m shouting.

  Alf doesn’t dare to answer me.

  Which just winds me up for the rest of my rant.

  “Instead of calling me on the phone and delivering these indignant and insolent lectures, why don’t you get your asses in gear and go see your grandma and give her one of these lovely self-righteous speeches?”

  “Papà, wait just a se . . .”

  “You know what’s changed? What’s changed is that I’m sick and tired of being your scapegoat. I have problems of my own, and I certainly don’t come around and weigh you down with them, neither you nor your sister, much less your mother, get it? Why don’t the three of you learn to do the same, and leave me in peace!”

  And with that, I hang up.

  In the instant that follows, I realize that I’ve applied Ass’s lesson, exactly as imparted. Which not only offers me a chance to experience the liberating sensation that she had described to me, it makes me feel closer to her than ever before. If I weren’t already setting up the phone in camera mode so I could take home with me the flier advertising German shepherds with excellent pedicures, I’d call her and tell her just how right she was.

  I get to the bus stop and take the first one that pulls up. If I felt like it, I could check the routes shown on the map posted on the pole, but I don’t feel like it. I’d rather leave it to fate and maybe ask later along the way whether I’m heading in the right direction or not.

  It’s crazy, and I know it. But that’s how I’ve always used public transportation. As long as a bus isn’t actually going in the opposite direction I just get on board and then figure out how to get where I have to go.

  There must be a reason that I tend to be a repeat offender when it comes to intentionally getting lost this way, but I don’t have the slightest idea what it could be.

  I take a seat, giving myself up to vague, listless thoughts made up for the most part of regrets already equipped with justifications, and by the time we’re well outside city limits (those stretches where, almost from one moment to the next, the landscape slips into a depression, and all you see are shuttered restaurants, gas stations, car repair shops, and half-built apartment buildings), I walk up to the driver and ask him if this bus goes to the hospital.

  He turns around as if he suspects I’m trying to make a fool of him, but then he looks me in the face and asks me despairingly why I didn’t ask in the first place.

  So he explains to me more or less where we are (I nod and pretend I understand), then he pulls over and lets me out (even though, he specifies, it’s not a stop on his route) and recommends I take another bus, but on the opposite side of the road.

  I thank him and cross the road, without even slightly understanding where the hell I am, then I wait for almost forty minutes, buffeted by an inexplicably cold wind, until in the distance I see a bus appear, marked with the number that the driver told me to look for, and at that moment I feel so euphoric that I actually consider the possibility that it might be a mirage.

  When I finally arrive at the hospital, I do some quick addition and realize that it took me exactly an hour and twenty-five minutes to get there.

  I walk into the ward and speak with the chief nurse. She tells me that she saw me on TV and compliments me lavishly before telling me that Engineer Romolo Sesti Orfeo is in stable condition, and that in any case she can’t let me go in because right now the chief physician is making his rounds, but that if I’m willing to wait, I can get more information from him.

  So I head over to the waiting room.

  It’s awkward to find yourself in the same room as a very pretty girl, especially if you don’t know her and above all if the room in question is empty except for you and her. Because you immediately begin to act as if you’d done something wrong. It’s as if she knew something compromising about you and could tell everyone who cared to know anytime she chose. You act indifferent, but you are in fact acting, and it shows. Among other things, the unnatural effort you’re being forced to make puts you on edge in a way that comes very close to crossing the line into downright rudeness, so that if it happens that the girl asks you what time it is (which she does, with the utmost nonchalance and without any ulterior motives) you’re likely to bite her head off in response.

  All of this, whether we like it or not, derives from the fact that beauty is a form of truth, and it doesn’t like having liars around it.

  Personally I try to avoid this kind of embarrassment (because in the presence of great beauty I become terribly provincial: I blush, I stammer, I stand up and sit back down, I fan myself with my bare hands, and so on), but the problem is that when I wind up in a situation of this sort, I don’t know how to get myself out of it (even though right now, for instance, I could simply pretend that I need to make a phone call and take refuge in the hallway, or perhaps go straight home, since I don’t really even know what I came here for), and I behave in a variety of very odd ways.

  In fact, when out of the corner of my eye I notice that the girl (who by the way looks a little like Cameron Diaz in There’s Something About Mary, and is emanating a wonderful s
cent that is vaguely reminiscent of caramel) has looked at me once, and then again, and then a third time, and I begin to fear that before long she’s going to try to start a conversation with me (though why she would want to do so, of course, I can’t figure out to save my life, unless perhaps she’s seen me on television), which is in fact exactly what happens, because she gets up and comes trippingly over to me and says, “Excuse me?” dominating me from above with her ineffable beauty, not only do I remain in hiding behind the pages of an issue of Marie Claire from, I think, six months ago that I picked up from a chair on my way in, but I don’t even answer her.

  “Excuse me,” There’s Something About Mary repeats at this point, speaking a little louder and tilting her head to try to look into my face, understandably confused by my indifference.

  So I’m forced to emerge from behind my Marie Claire shoji screen, like a tortoise from its shell.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I was just focused.”

  She shoots a baffled glance at the magazine, then decides to ignore my answer.

  “I apologize if I’m intruding. I’ve been hoping to meet you. I’m . . . or, rather, I was Massimiliano Sesti’s girlfriend.”

  As she says this, she looks me right in the eye, without any uncertainty, like a person who has no fear of being taken the wrong way.

  Her face remains smooth: she hasn’t granted me a ceremonious smile, or blinked hesitantly, or shown even a hint of awkwardness. This paragon of dignity, so compactly homogeneous, immediately extinguishes my shyness. I close my copy of Marie Claire and stand up, extending my hand.

  “It’s a pleasure. Vincenzo.”

  “Irene,” she replies.

  She seems so tired. I’m very tempted to ask if she got any sleep last night.

  “I remembered your last name, but not your first,” she adds, and at last she smiles.

  Jesus, it’s as if the sun had just come into the room.

  “I believe that,” I say. “It’s the only thing about me that people tend not to forget easily.”

  The smile spreads until it narrows her eyes. I couldn’t say just what color they are, by the way (I don’t really know how to tell what color eyes are; but I do know how to drown helplessly in them).

  “For what it’s worth, I wanted to tell you that I really appreciated what you did.”

  “Believe me, I didn’t do anything,” I reply, and I say it with sincerity. “I don’t even remember exactly what I said. I was just feeling my way, hoping the mayhem would come to an end as soon as possible. I don’t even know whether I should feel guilty or not for what happened to the engineer. Maybe that’s why I came here today.”

  “There’s no reason for you to feel guilty.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because he would have done it no matter what.”

  I look into her eyes in search of some kind of sign that confirms the confidence with which she makes this statement, but once again she offers me nothing.

  And so I go on.

  “I was the one who distracted him so that the carabiniere could take him by surprise.”

  She shakes her head. Once, decisively.

  “That doesn’t count. In fact, I don’t think it’s an accident that he allowed himself to be distracted.”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  “Because I know how he felt.”

  I say nothing.

  We study each other, reciprocally.

  “Would you tell me something?” I ask, adopting an indiscreet tone of voice.

  “Sure.”

  “How long has it been since you got any sleep?”

  She seems happy that I asked, judging from the way she looks at me.

  THE FUTURE IS A REPRESSED PAST

  If only I’d gotten it right in my flash forward: my return home is much worse than I expected. Forget about the killer smoke from Lost, forget about “Diario” by Equipe ’84: the loneliness grabs me by the throat before I even get my key into the lock. And when I close the door behind me, the way I miss Alessandra Persiano becomes a quality of the air, an impoverishment of the meaning of things, the wear and tear of the walls, a crumpling of the apartment’s floor plan.

  From the front door to the bedroom is all uphill.

  Miming (without even consciously meaning to) a sequence of absolutely filmic gestures, I take off my jacket, I toss it toward the Foppapedretti valet stand (the only piece of non-Ikea furniture I possess, a Christmas gift from Alagia and Alf), miss it entirely, then stand with my back to the bed (the old Ikea Hemnes, but with a new Sultan Finnvik polyurethane memory-foam mattress selected by Alessandra Persiano along with the Gosa Klätt pillows specially designed for side-sleepers like us), throw out my arms, and let myself fall back onto the Astrakhan bedcover, which puffs gently as I land.

  And as I perform a series of exercises in self-pity while contemplating the ceiling in this Christlike position, I think (speaking of the cinematic nature of this moment) how nice it would be if I could just make time dissolve, skip the present entirely, and go directly to the after, to when I’ll be over this moment of pain. If my image could shimmer out and then reappear in another scene, e.g., an Exterior Day, and superimposed at the bottom of the shot there could be a caption reading “Six months later,” and there I’d be, I don’t know, strolling past a café, ideally in Paris, waiting for a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Emmanuelle Béart in Claude Chabrol’s L’Enfer, or even better, not someone who looks like her, but her, and she’d show up a little later, late and out of breath, and after kissing me sweetly on the lips she’d ask me (in French, which of course I’d have learned to speak fluently in the last six months) whether I’ve been waiting long; then we’d walk off arm in arm down the Boulevard Saint-Germain as the credits begin to roll.

  If there’s one thing that drives me crazy in movies, it’s the therapy of grief. The suppression of unhappiness. The censorship of the long hard slog out. Life resumes only when it becomes tolerable. What I wouldn’t give to be able to put up a sign saying “Six months later” in my own non-cinematic life.

  Oh, I know what you’re thinking. I can already hear the objection: “Sure, okay, but even that time between is part of your life: if you skip it, it’s as if you died in the meanwhile.”

  Then try this one on for size: “Better to add life to your days than days to your life.”

  Nice, eh?

  And do you want to know who said it?

  Rita. Levi. Montalcini.

  That’s who.

  So to hell with the two-bit rhetoric of life being worth living even when it involves suffering. If I possibly can, I avoid suffering.

  And in any case, in the interest of covering all our bases, let it be said that in literature too it’s possible to pull a “Six months later”: e.g., by closing one chapter of a novel with a separation or a death, without telling what happened next and then moving on to the next chapter; but the reader, who is alone with the book and therefore has to do everything for himself (without the assistance of lights, locations, bodies, voices, and music playing in the background), will internalize that unnarrated interval and drag it with him into the next chapter in the form of pure melancholy; while film, which possesses an array of tools of mystification and above all enjoys the privilege of light, doesn’t give the viewer time to self-flagellate, assaulting him with all the biting intensity of its toolkit, centrifuging his emotions and hurling him bodily into a possible future, to fill him with a new hope.

  An illusion, no question. But isn’t it a great one?

  I’m so astounded by the sheer intelligence of these thoughts that I don’t hear my cell phone until the third ring. I jump to my feet in the grip of anxiety. I know it’s her calling me, I just know it.

  I gather my jacket up from the floor but I can’t find my cell phone; it must have fallen out of the pocket when I threw
the jacket on the Foppapedretti valet (or perhaps I should say, toward the valet).

  I get down on my knees and scan the floor.

  When I finally spot the phone, on like the twelfth ring or so, perfectly camouflaged between one leg of the bed and a leg of the Hemnes nightstand, it’s too late.

  With my heart in my throat I look at the caller ID for the missed call.

  I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

  I immediately call back, praying that it won’t go the way I’m afraid it will.

  No such luck: it goes straight to the “can’t be reached” message.

  I grip my phone tight, I lift my arm, and I hurl it straight forward, aiming at the wall and practically dislocating my shoulder (I don’t release, obviously, I only pretend to throw it; the last thing I need to do right now is break my cell phone just so I can feel like I’m in a movie).

  I try calling back: same as previously.

  Of course; it went straight to the “can’t be reached” message just a moment ago.

  I ought to have figured it out by now, right? Nope, I press CALL for the third time (thereby giving the witch a gift of three consecutive records of my clinging psycho-affective dependency), and for the third time the prerecorded female voice informs me that the number I’ve dialed cannot be reached for the moment, in a peremptory tone that I’d swear has just a hint of annoyance lurking beneath the surface.

  I listen to it in English too, as long as I’m at it.

  Once I hit the bottom of my helplessness, and the bedroom begins to take on a murkiness that seems to foreshadow the grayish-yellowish hue that will tinge all my returns home from this moment forward, I start pacing back and forth in the apartment, trying to convince myself that a person would have to be terribly cynical to call for the sole purpose of making an incomplete attempt, to prefabricate an alibi as vulgar as it is threadbare.