Silence Is Golden (25 page)

Making love under these conditions is no easy feat, but we manage. I feel like all the emotions I’ve felt in the last few months are finally untangling. For the first time, I clearly feel the baby’s presence. I realize that I was hiding my love for him because of the pain I felt at missing his father. Now that his father’s here, I can live for them both. I cry with joy. I look at Aris, who, as usual, is already looking at me.

“I want to name him Tommaso,” I tell him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It’s early evening. The light streaming through the window is from the sunset, but we’re still in bed. Aris asks to look at my body, so different from the one he knew before. I’m hesitant. I’ve heard that some women feel more beautiful during pregnancy, but that’s certainly not the case with me. To be perfectly honest, I can’t wait for my pregnancy to be over. I’ve been avoiding mirrors for months now. These heavy breasts, this swollen stomach that obscures my feet, this round face
. . .
How can these things be mine? Where is the Emilia that I’m used to? I’m not sure I want Aris to gaze upon this body that I don’t even recognize. I don’t respond to his request. He simply holds me tighter and turns off the bedside lamp.

When I wake up again, it’s nighttime, and I’m alone in bed. The apartment is silent. For a moment, I worry that maybe everything that happened today was really a dream. The thought makes me shudder. I get up, taking the blanket with me, and go into the living room. Aris is sitting at the bay window, his sketchbook on his knees and a pencil in his hand. I slowly exhale. He sees me and immediately comes over, adjusting the blanket around me.

“Are you hungry?” he asks.

“Not right now,” I say.

I take his hand and lead him back into the bedroom. I turn on the bedside lamp and lie down on the bed. I let the blanket fall away so he can see my naked, pregnant body. I close my eyes, because there’s a limit to my courage. He’s silent for a while, and I know that he’s staring at me. These have to be the five most embarrassing minutes of my life. I feel his fingers slowly start to explore my body, and any tension I was feeling suddenly evaporates. This is Aris; what was I afraid of? His palms are now resting on my stomach. I open my eyes and see that his are closed. I kiss his cheeks, which are glistening with tears, and his mouth, from which a sob has just escaped.

We eat dinner together, watching each other and laughing at nothing. After we’ve finished, Aris cleans up and I rest on the sofa and prop my feet up. I’m enjoying his company, and I think that tonight, we’ve finally reconciled our past with the present. I’m still troubled by how long all this will last, but I don’t want to think about that right now. By the time he’s done cleaning up, the kitchen is practically shining. He sits next to me and takes my hand.

“There are some things I’d like to tell you tomorrow. Do you feel up to going somewhere?” he asks.

“Nowhere too far away,” I say. “This little one is constantly growing. I don’t think he’s going to be as thin as you.” I laugh.

Aris smiles at me.

“Will you stay, Aris?”

“I could easily say yes. I could make you a thousand promises, and I know that I would keep all of them. But would you believe me?”

“Please stop feeling guilty. If we really want to start over, we have to start with a clean slate. I don’t want you to stay with me because you feel bad that you hurt me. I don’t want to be a part of your personal penitence, like your father and Dora were.”

Aris buries his face in the crook of my neck. I hear him sigh, perhaps with relief, and he lifts his head. “To answer your question, I will stay as long as you want me to.”

“You’re the father of this child. You have rights.”

“No, I have duties. I only have what rights you’ll give me.”

I take a moment to think about what he’s said. “Do you want this baby, Aris?” I ask, running my hand through his hair. “I know we didn’t plan this, and I made the decision to keep him.”

“I wanted him from the moment I saw you pregnant in the bookstore. But really I want you, above all else.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow, Emi, things I’ve never told you before, and things I didn’t know until recently. You’ll understand everything, I promise.”

“Why can’t you tell me now?”

“Because now I want to get undressed, climb into bed, stare at your naked body, and sleep,” he says, smiling. “I probably missed sleeping next to you most of all.”

“Me too.”

Today is a beautiful, sunny day. Aris and I both slept well, which neither of us had done in a long time. When I wake up, I feel great. My back doesn’t hurt, so we decide to take the subway to Simplon Park.

“When I was little, my father would bring me to the park every year on my birthday,” Aris tells me as we wait for the train. “I never cared for this city, but I’ll never forget that park. There was a pond with some ducks, there’s the Sforza Castle in the background, there’s a bridge, and greenery everywhere. It was beautiful.”

“When was the last time you were there?”

“The year before he married Dora. I was twelve. I can’t wait to see it with you.”

“Hey, you know what? I just realized that I don’t know your birthday.”

“October twenty-first. When’s yours?”

“May twenty-first,” I exclaim. What a coincidence.

“Spring and fall, my two favorite seasons,” Aris replies.

We get on the train and find two seats next to each other.

“Tommaso is due October fifteenth,” I say, caressing my belly.

“Are you really sure that’s what you want to name him?”

“What, don’t you like it? It’s a beautiful name.”

“It’s my father’s name. Maybe we could—”

“Name him after
my
father? Are you joking? His name was the only nice thing about him,” I spit.

“And his red hair, I bet,” Aris replies, tousling my hair.

“Yeah, how did you know?”

He shrugs, smiling. “I’m amazing, didn’t you know that?”

I haven’t had much time to sightsee since I moved to Milan. When I got here a few months ago, I had plenty of other things to worry about besides playing tourist, and I started working right away. I’ve spent my Sundays at home, resting and sleeping, trying not to drown in self-pity. So taking a walk with Aris in this beautiful city is a luxury. We stroll hand in hand, and maybe if I didn’t have this gigantic belly weighing me down, we could visit the cathedral or walk along the canals, like tourists do. But even just going to Simplon Park, we feel as giddy as children on the day of the county fair. All the beauty around me infuses me with energy. We walk through the park and throw breadcrumbs at the ducks and geese. When I finally feel the need to sit down, we find a perfect spot on a bench in the sun. I lie on the bench, with my head on Aris’s lap, close my eyes, and turn my face toward the sun. He plays with my hair.

“The day before my father died, the day of that awful fight I told you about, a letter came to the house. We almost never got any mail, and I happened to be standing near Dora when the mailman knocked on our door. He cheerfully informed her that a letter for my father had arrived from France. She practically ripped it out of his hands and slammed the door closed without even thanking him. She slipped it in her apron pocket and went back into the kitchen. I wondered if the person who sent that letter might have been Adele, the woman who gave that book to my father, the one I gave to you.”

“I still have it,” I tell him. “I didn’t want to bring it with me when I moved, but I finally realized I couldn’t leave everything of yours behind.”

He laughs. “You’ve definitely brought something of mine along.”

I open my eyes and see him looking at my stomach. I laugh too.

“I never knew who my mother was, but people talked. One of my classmates used to call me a ‘son of a French bitch.’ Anyway, that letter was from France, and at thirteen, it wasn’t difficult for me to put two and two together. So I went into the kitchen and asked Dora if she wanted me to give the letter to my father. She was so pissed. At that point, she couldn’t keep pretending that it never came. So she pulled it out of her pocket and told me to take it to my father in the shop.”

“But you—”

“I ran to my room and read it. I was mentioned in the first few lines of the letter. She begged to hear from me. She knew that I was being raised in Italy and that my father named me Aris. But in the letter, my mother refers to me as Daniel.”

“Why did your father name you Aris? I’ve often wondered about it. I’ve never heard your name before.”

“Neither have I,” he replies, laughing. “It was actually the name of one of my father’s military buddies. My father had always liked the name, and he told himself that if he ever had a son, he’d name him Aris.”

“It’s lovely. It suits you.”

“Well, I had to put up with a lot of teasing at school about my name. I would have much rather had a normal name like all the other kids.”

“Even Daniel would have been strange for a boy growing up in Italy. But it’s also really nice. And if . . .”

“What?”

“No, go ahead. I’ll tell you later.”

“She went on to write how much she regretted giving me up, and how much she wanted to see me and take me to meet my grandparents in France. She mentioned the many other letters she had sent over the years, asking my father to forgive her and to let her be in my life.”

“But if she had your address, why didn’t she come visit?”

“Apparently she had asked my father about that before, and he’d forbidden her from coming.”

“I don’t believe it. Everyone in Bren speaks so highly of your father.”

“He was a good man. But he was deeply hurt, and he had to raise a child all by himself.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“So I took the letter to my father in the shop. I was crying and yelling, accusing him of keeping me away from my mother. I told him that he couldn’t decide that I couldn’t know my mother, that he was being selfish.”

“You told me about the fight, but never about your mother or the letter. Now I understand why you were so angry.”

I raise a hand to caress his face. His blue eyes are a bit hazy, but he takes a deep breath and continues.

“That day, he told me that he’d loved Adele, that when she first brought me to him, he asked her to marry him, and she refused. He had never been able to forgive her for that. He thought that I should grow up without a mother rather than one who was so flighty and irresponsible. Don’t you see, Emi? My mother felt guilty. She had me at age seventeen. After I was born, she told my father that she realized she loved him and that she wanted us to all be together as a family. But at that point, after she had turned down his marriage proposal just after my birth, he was too proud and he rejected her, making the choice for me too. That’s why I told you before that I want you above all else. A child should grow up happy, and he can only do that if his parents love each other.”

“That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?” I ask. “Emma raised Giorgia all by herself, and she’s as happy as can be.”

“Do you really think you and I would know if she wasn’t?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not. Anyway, go ahead please.”

“So when I was discharged from the hospital, Benedetto brought me back to my house. I thanked him and reassured him that I would be fine and that he didn’t have to worry about me anymore.”

Aris pauses, his brow furrowed.

“When I heard his car leave, I realized that I hated every single thing in that house. I had lived there for twenty-two years, and I hated it, especially after Dora came. If I hadn’t met you, I would simply have stayed there, alone, until I died. I was so furious. I just started punching things. I did a lot of damage, but I didn’t care. I went into Dora’s room, the room I hated most, and I shattered all of her porcelain knickknacks. Then I felt so tired, and so stupid, and sat on the bed. I don’t know why, but I opened the nightstand drawer, and I saw a bunch of letters tied up with a rubber band. They were all from my mother, addressed to me.”

“Were they the letters she mentioned in the letter you read?”

“Here’s where it gets interesting. They were all dated after my father died. They kept coming for years, and I even found one from a couple months ago.”

“Are you saying that Dora intercepted all of those letters?” I ask him, sitting up.

“Exactly. I spent most of my time in the shop, and the mailman would bring the letters to the house. She opened every single one of them and then kept them under lock and key.”

“What did they say?”

“Pretty much always the same thing. That she wants to see me again. That she misses me. As the years passed, she started to include her address. She must have thought that when I got old enough, maybe I could go visit her myself.”

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. But I realized that it doesn’t make sense to keep feeling guilty about Dora’s death when she didn’t think twice about hurting me by hiding my mother’s letters. Especially since she knew that I would never consider her my mother. I was giving you up for a woman who had no qualms about destroying my life. She prevented me from having a relationship with my real mother and did everything in her power to keep me from being with the woman I love. So that same day, I called a guy who I know has been interested in the house for a while. I offered to sell it to him. He came the next day, and we signed a contract. I closed up the shop, and I left.”

“You didn’t think about going to see your mom?”

Aris looks at me, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Well, now that you know where she lives, why waste any more time?”

The baby shifts inside me. Aris glances away and presses his lips together. He stands up and takes a few steps around the bench.

“I guess I deserve that,” he finally says.

“What?”

“Your lack of confidence in my feelings for you.”

I don’t respond, but I know he’s right.

“As soon as I was absolved of my guilt for Dora, the only thing I could think about was finding you. I wanted to ask for your forgiveness, and I wanted to be with you again.”

“I think you’re going to have to be a bit patient,” I admit.

He nods and extends his hand. “Are you tired? Should we go home?”

“Yeah.”

Pain shoots up my back as I stand, and I grimace.

“Nothing underground then. Can you make it to the curb?”

“We can’t take a taxi again.”

“We can do whatever we want,” he says, smiling.