100 Days of Happiness (31 page)

L
ast night, we forgot to close the shutters securely and the sun strides rudely into our room. I half open my sleep-dusty eyes. Paola's still asleep, and even the children, in the next room with the communicating door, are unusually quiet. I get out of bed with some effort; an intermittent stab of pain is torturing my hip. If I stop breathing, I feel practically okay. Aside from a tingling sensation spreading over my whole body. It's like an annoying internal itch that I can't scratch, as if I'd swallowed a beehive and now the bees were all trying to get out at once.

I drag myself into the bathroom. I put in my contact lenses with some difficulty, and I take a longer shower than usual. Hot, cold, I try all the settings to put a stop to this intolerable prickly itch. But there's nothing the water can do to help. I take three ibuprofen tablets, and they give me a few hours of illusory peace.

When I return to the room in my bathrobe, Paola's already woken up the kids. We go downstairs for breakfast and I play a game with Lorenzo and Eva we decide to call Mister Muffin—we make a fat chocolate plumcake argue with a smaller blueberry muffin, which we've decided is his wife. They can't make up their minds whether to vacation at the beach or in the mountains this year. Before they can agree on where to go for their summer holidays, we merrily scarf them down.

Paola is the only one who can't seem to smile today. I've done pretty well over the past few weeks. All through the journey, I've
managed to conceal my pain and anxiety from the kids—I want them to remember a smiling father, funny and in good shape.

After lunch, we get going. I'm driving. I turn on the air-conditioning because the temperature today is close to a hundred. The vents immediately spew out a delightful cool breeze that keeps us alive.

 * * * 

I turn onto the highway. Heading north.

I turn on the car radio, with no idea of who invented it, and slip in my cubs' favorite CD. We sing along at the top of our lungs, off-key, and laughing as we sing.

“There were two chameleons and a parakeet, two little iguanas, and a pink flamingo, the cat, the mouse, and the rhinoceros, were already lined up. The only ones missing were the two green dragons!”

We're almost at the Swiss border when the kids' choir in the backseat drops off to sleep. I take advantage of the opportunity to put on something else.

Elvis.

“Always on My Mind.”

Our song.

Paola recognizes it after the first chord.

Elvis's velvety voice cuts in after seven unmistakable seconds.

Paola clutches my hand and squeezes hard, unable to look me in the eye. The car seems to understand the moment—it switches over to cruise control and autopilot and continues along the highway. We look at the landscape sliding past and we listen. When Elvis recorded this song, the singer had just broken up with Priscilla, and his regret is interpreted to perfection.

When the song ends, just like in the movies, the sign appears, as if by magic:
SWISS BORDER, 1 KM
. We're here.

It's almost lunchtime. We stop to eat something in a little family-
run restaurant. I pick at a bowl of pasta with a lackluster appetite. Real hunger vanished long ago. I watch my children, trying to memorize every moment of that lunch. We don't talk much, as if it were an ordinary lunch on any given Saturday.

 * * * 

The final good-bye takes place at a bus stop, where a long-distance coach is waiting that will take me to Lugano. I load my small light suitcase into the luggage receptacle in the belly of the bus, then kiss the kids and hug Paola. An embrace that never seems to end. We told the children that Papà has to travel for work. A very long job. I'm going to work in a gym in Switzerland, a place where everyone needs to lose weight, on account of all the chocolate. Someday I know that Paola will find the courage to tell them the truth. But today is not that day.

The time has come to give Paola a very special gift.

“This is for you.”

I hand her a gift-wrapped package. She looks at me.

“It's not her birthday!” Eva objects.

“I know, but for her last birthday I got her present all wrong. So I got her a new one.”

Paola tears open the wrapping paper. Inside is an oversized school notebook, the kind you have in junior high school. It looks used. She doesn't understand.

She opens to the first page and her breath catches in her throat.

Inside, I've copied out by hand all of
The Little Prince,
without skipping a single word and doing my best to make my handwriting legible. I worked on it in secret for most of a month.

“This is an edition you don't have. There's only one copy.”

Paola bursts into tears and throws her arms around me. This time, I outdid myself.

To tell the truth, it wasn't my idea. Roberto suggested it. He was
disappointed when I brought back the original first edition of
Le petit prince
.

This hug with Paola seems to go on forever. When she pulls away, her face is streaked with tears. They're tears of joy. I haven't made her weep with joy in I don't know how long.

It's time to go, but I don't seem capable of boarding the bus. A kiss, another kiss, yet another kiss. It's hard to decide which kiss will be the last. I'm stalling here. I say stupid things, just to make the kids laugh. I'm so good at saying stupid things. I hug Lorenzo, then Eva. But I can't overdo it. They can't guess that this is anything but so long, see you again soon. Arrivederci
.

“Do you want us to drive you there?” Paola insists.

“No, really, thanks.”

Elephants take their last journey alone. She has many hours of driving ahead of her. I'd give anything to go back with them. But I have nothing to offer in exchange.

I give Paola one last sweet kiss, and a horn blares. The bus driver has run out of patience. I break away and head for the door. Only then do I hear the phrase that I've been hoping for for almost the past hundred days.

“Ciao,
amore mio
.”

My heart kindles with flames of joy. I smile at Paola and board the bus.

All I remember of the next minute is a steady stream of tears and a bus slowly pulling out.

My face is glued to the window as I watch the little trio of my heart dwindling into the distance. I send a telepathic “I love you” to Paola. She waves good-bye from far away. She must have received it, loud and clear.

Then she stands there, on the scorching hot asphalt, holding a child's hand in each of hers, until the bus becomes a dot in the blazing sun.

I imagine her regaining her composure, smiling at the kids, and getting back in the car. She's always been a great actress.

 * * * 

Seen from outside, the clinic I've chosen might just as easily be a seaside hotel in Rimini.

I'm greeted by a physician, Dr. Patrick Zurbriggen, with whom I've exchanged a few e-mails. He speaks Italian with a highly comical German accent and has an over-vigorous handshake.

He explains the various phases of what is going to be a very short stay with them. He never mentions the words
assisted suicide
. But that's what we're talking about. It won't be a doctor who takes my life. I'll do that myself. Swiss law allows that, but it requires that the person who wishes to take advantage of the “service” (I love the fact that they refer to it as a service) must be fully informed of the alternatives and capable of making a rational decision.

 * * * 

My new home.

Single room.

I have a reservation for just one night. Like in a motel.

And, in fact, my room looks a lot like the Bates Motel.

A Swiss Bates Motel.

Two hundred square feet. At least it's spacious.

The walls are an anxious celery green.

A wooden dresser.

A metal bed with white sheets.

A framed picture on the wall, with a reproduction of a watercolor of Lake Lugano. Or maybe some other lake.

Gauzy white curtains, fluttering in the breeze, straight out of a horror flick.

A pair of French doors leading out onto the tiny balcony, six feet by three.

All around are the grounds. No horizon line. Just the greenery of nature and blue sky. A natural prison.

Also, a large, immaculate bathroom, the kind you can enter even in a wheelchair.

A clean little motel that costs as much as a five-star hotel. Actually, as much as a week's stay in a five-star hotel.

Anyway, no one's going to complain afterward.

Here, the word
afterward
doesn't exist.

 * * * 

A male nurse sticks his head in the door. He's a dead ringer for Ralph Malph from
Happy Days,
and he asks me in a workable Italian if everything's okay.

I lie and tell him yes.

He informs me that he'll be back around seven for dinner. I ask him what's on the menu. A rhetorical question, really. All I expect is standard hospital fare, a grilled chicken breast, instant mashed potatoes, and a discount-chain fruit salad.

Instead, the answer is surprising: rigatoni with
ragù
, chicken breasts with roast potatoes, and a slice of Sacher torte with whipped cream. Maybe they're planning to kill me with a hyperglycemic collapse.

Ralph Malph leaves after flashing me a big smile.

My executioner is very likable. Well, that's something.

 * * * 

I move my chair out onto the balcony. I sit down. I take a deep breath.

I remove my disposable contact lenses, and the world goes blurry and out of focus. The trees and the sky are no longer distinct.

Those are my last pair of contact lenses. I don't have a pair for tomorrow. That doesn't matter.

I grab the paper sack that Oscar gave me. It's very greasy by now, and the contents are perfectly familiar. A doughnut.

Oscar is special. He isn't a father-in-law.

I look at my sugary new friend.

Sweet smelling. Inviting. Almost sexy.

None of those bad things they say about her are true. Or if they are, I don't care.

The first bite is a pure orgasm.

I chew patiently. Slowly, without haste, savoring every instant.

I sense the sugar granules dissolving on my tongue.

It's almost two days old, but to me it tastes like the nectar of the gods.

Another bite.

I don't think about a thing.

It's just me and my doughnut.

I close my eyes.

I can even hear the sea, like when you put a shell up to your ear.

A rustle of air distracts me.

I turn.

I open my eyes.

On the railing to my right a little bird has just landed.

At least I think it's a little bird. I no longer have my contact lenses.

I bring my face closer to see it better.

It's a sparrow.

It eyes me, inquisitive and impertinent.

I look at it carefully, narrowing my eyes to focus better. Would you believe that . . . no. This isn't my usual breakfast companion. This is another bird, similar but definitely glossier and in better shape. A cocky little native sparrow.

I crumble up a bit of doughnut. I extend my hand, palm up, and the sparrow lands on my thumb. It pecks hungrily away at the fragments of fried dough.

Then it stops, stiff and erect, as if to demand: “Is that all, friend?”

I don't let him chip away at my emotions.

The rest of this doughnut belongs to me, my good Swiss sparrow.

My new fellow diner understands instantly that I'm a tough customer and flies off without so much as a thank-you. I watch as he glides over the trees at the edge of the grounds and vanishes from sight. I wish I could follow him: I'd take to my wings and depart the Lilliputian launch pad on which I'm sitting.

I stand up and look down.

From a second-floor balcony it's not even attempted suicide. It's just pure idiocy.

I stand there, leaning against the railing, and finish my doughnut.

Then I lick the sugar off my lips. And I'm in heaven for one brief, delicious instant.

 * * * 

I return to the room and stretch out on the bed. I pull out of my pocket the last Polaroid I took. The four of us, happy together.

I set it down, pick up my phone, and select “Home.”

Could they be back by now?

I don't call them.

I call Umberto.

“Ciao, Lucione!” he answers, with a completely put-on cheeriness. “I just talked to them. They're home and they're fine. How are you?”

The very question I hoped he wouldn't ask.

I tell him to try another question. I'm not going to answer that last one.

“How's the weather in Lugano?” he asks.

That one's no good either. I demand a third question.

At last he comes up with something original.

“I opened the letter. I couldn't resist. Can you forgive me?”

I knew it.

I answer with a cracking voice: “Sí.” I can forgive him. Then neither of us says anything for a couple of minutes. It's a deafening silence that contains all the words we've ever failed to say to each other. A silence game for grown-ups. He loses.

“Don't worry about a thing . . . I'll look after them, old friend.”

That's something else I knew. All I manage to get out is a murmured “
Grazie
.”

Then, before the phone call can get too complicated, I ask him one last thing: “Give my love to Aramis . . .”

And I hang up. I stand there with the cell phone in my hand.

I know that Umberto is doing the same thing.

 * * * 

At seven o'clock that evening, I push away the dinner that had promised to be so delicious: the pasta is overcooked, the chicken is dry, the potatoes are rubbery. But I happily accept a savory injection of painkiller. I ask for a double dose of morphine. I want to sleep through the night, have plenty of dreams, and wake up in top form.