The Lost Daughter (8 page)

I walked indifferently among the venders of all sorts of goods, and meanwhile I pictured her the way I had occasionally seen her in those days, watching from behind as with slow, precise movements she spread lotion on her young legs, her arms, her shoulders, and finally her back, tensely twisting around as far as she could get, so that I had had the desire to get up and say here, I’ll do it, let me help you, as, when I was a girl, I had thought of doing with my mother, or as I had done often with my daughters. Suddenly I realized that, day after day, without intending to, I had involved her, from a distance, with alternating and often conflicting feelings, in something that I couldn’t decipher, but that was intensely my own. For this reason, too, perhaps, I was now furious. I had instinctively used against Rosaria an obscure moment of my life and had done it to astonish her, even in a certain sense to frighten her; she was a woman who seemed to me disagreeable, treacherous. But in reality I would have liked to speak of these very things with Nina alone, on a different occasion—cautiously, in order to be understood.

Soon it started raining again and I had to take shelter in the building that housed the market, amid sharp odors of fish, basil, oregano, peppers. There, jostled by adults and children who arrived hurrying, laughing, wet from the rain, I began to feel sick. The odors of the market nauseated me, the place seemed increasingly close, I was blazing hot, sweating, and the breeze that came in waves from the outside chilled the sweat, causing moments of vertigo. I gained a spot at the entrance, hemmed in by people watching the water cascade down and children screaming, joyfully frightened by the lightning and the thunder that followed. I settled myself almost on the threshold, so that I would feel only the cool air, and tried to get my nerves under control.

What had I done that was so terrible, in the end. Years earlier, I had been a girl who felt lost, this was true. All the hopes of youth seemed to have been destroyed, I seemed to be falling backward toward my mother, my grandmother, the chain of mute or angry women I came from. Missed opportunities. Ambition was still burning, fed by a young body, by an imagination full of plans, but I felt that my creative passion was cut off more and more thoroughly by the reality of dealings with the universities and the need to exploit opportunities for a possible career. I seemed to be imprisoned in my own head, without the chance to test myself, and I was frustrated.

There had been small alarming episodes, not normal impulses of depression, not a destructiveness expressed symbolically, but something more. Now these events have no before and after, they return to my mind in an order that is always different. One winter afternoon, for example, I was studying in the kitchen; I had been working for months on an essay that, although short, I couldn’t manage to finish. Nothing fit together, hypotheses were multiplying in my head, I was afraid that the professor who had encouraged me to write it wouldn’t help me publish it, would reject it.

Marta was playing under the table, at my feet. Bianca was sitting next to me, pretending to read and write, imitating my gestures, my frowns. I don’t know what happened. Maybe she had said something to me and I hadn’t responded; maybe she only wanted to start one of her games, which were always a little rough; suddenly, while I was distracted by a search for words that never seemed logical enough, or apt, I felt a slap on the ear.

It wasn’t a hard blow, Bianca was five, she couldn’t really hurt me. But I was startled, I felt a burning pain, it was as if a sharp black line had, with a clean stroke, cut off thoughts that were already hard to maintain—that were very distant from the kitchen where we were sitting, from the sauce for dinner that was bubbling on the stove, from the clock that was advancing, consuming the narrow space of time that I had to devote to my desire for research, invention, approval, position, money of my own to spend. I hit the child without thinking about it, in a flash, not hard, my fingertips barely touching her cheek. 

Don’t do that, I said in a pseudo pedantic tone, and she, smiling, tried to hit me again, certain that at last a game had begun. But I was first and hit her, a little harder, don’t you dare ever again, Bianca, and she laughed, hoarsely this time, with a faint bewilderment in her eyes, and I hit her again, still with the tips of my outstretched fingers, again and again, you don’t hit Mama, you must never do that, and when, finally, she realized that I wasn’t playing, she began to cry desperately.

I feel the child’s tears under my fingertips, I’m still hitting her. I do it gently, the gesture is under my control but decisive, and the intervals are getting smaller: not a possibly educational act but real violence, contained but real. Out, I tell her without raising my voice, out, Mama has to work, and I take her solidly by the arm, drag her into the hall, she cries, screams, tries again to hit me, and I leave her there and close the door behind me with a firm shove, I don’t want to see you anymore.

The door had a big pane of frosted glass. I don’t know what happened, maybe I pushed it with too much force: it banged shut and the glass shattered. Bianca appeared, wide-eyed, small, beyond the empty rectangle, no longer screaming. I looked at her in terror, how far could I go, I frightened myself. She was motionless, unharmed, the tears continued to flow but silently. I try never to think of that moment, of Marta who was pulling me by the skirt, of the child in the hall staring at me amid the broken glass: thinking of it gives me a cold sweat, takes my breath away. I’m sweating here, too, at the entrance of the market, I’m suffocating, and I can’t control the pounding of my heart.

As soon as the rain slackened, I rushed out, covering my head with my purse. I didn’t know where to go, certainly I didn’t want to go home. A vacation at the beach, what does it amount to, in the rain: asphalt and puddles, clothes that are too light, wet feet in shoes that give no protection. In the end it was a gentle rain. I was about to cross the street but I stopped. On the sidewalk opposite I saw Rosaria, Corrado, Nina with the child in her arms covered by a thin scarf. They had just left the toy store and were walking quickly. Rosaria was holding by the waist, like a bundle, a new doll that looked like a real child. They didn’t see me or pretended not to. I followed Nina with my eyes, hoping she would turn.

The sun began to filter through small blue rents in the clouds. I reached my car, started the engine, drove toward the sea. Faces flashed through my mind, and actions: no words. They appeared, disappeared, there wasn’t time to fix anything into a thought. I pressed my fingers against my chest to slow the rapid beating of my heart, and as if to slow the car down as well. I seemed to be going too fast, though in reality I wasn’t even going forty. One never knows where the velocity of bad feeling comes from, how it advances. We were at the beach: Gianni, my husband, a colleague of his named Matteo, and Lucilla, his wife, a very cultured woman. I no longer remember what she did in life, I know only that she often caused trouble for me with the children. In general she was kind, understanding, she didn’t criticize me, she wasn’t mean. But she couldn’t resist the desire to seduce my daughters, to make herself loved by them in an exclusive way, to prove that she had a pure and innocent heart—so she said—that beat in unison with theirs.

Like Rosaria. Differences in culture, in class count for little in these things. Whenever Matteo and Lucilla came to our house, or we took a trip outside the city or—as happened in that case—we went on a vacation together, I lived in a state of anxiety, my unhappiness increased. The two men talked about their work or about soccer or I don’t know what, but Lucilla never spoke to me, I didn’t interest her. She played with the children instead, monopolizing their attention, inventing games just for them, and joining in as if she were their age.

I saw that she was completely intent on the goal of winning them over. She stopped devoting herself to them only when they had given in completely, eager to spend not an hour or two but their whole life with her. She acted like a child in a way that irritated me. I had brought up my daughters not to use babyish voices or coy manners, whereas Lucilla had many affectations; she was, for example, one of those women who purposely speak in the voice that adults attribute to children. She spoke in artificial tones and induced them to do likewise, drawing them into a form of regression first verbal and then, slowly, in all their behavior. Habits of autonomy, which had been imposed by me with difficulty and were necessary to carve out a little time for myself, on her arrival were swept away in a few moments. She showed up and immediately began to play the sensitive, imaginative, always cheerful, always available mother: the good mother. Damn her. I drove without avoiding the puddles, in fact I hit them on purpose, raising long wings of water.

All the rage of that time was returning to my breast. Easy, I thought. For an hour or two—taking a walk, on a vacation, on a visit—it was simple and pleasant to entertain the children. Lucilla never worried about afterward. She swept away my discipline and then, once the territory that belonged to me was devastated, retreated into hers, devoting herself to her husband, hurrying off to her work, to her successes, of which, among other things, she did nothing but boast in a tone of apparent modesty. In the end I was alone, in permanent service, the bad mother. I remained to tidy up the messy house, to reimpose on the children behavior that they now found intolerable. Aunt Lucilla said, Aunt Lucilla let us do. Damn her, damn her.

Sometimes, but seldom and just barely, I had a small, fleeting taste of revenge. It might happen, for example, that Lucilla arrived at the wrong moment, when the two little sisters were involved in their game, so involved that Aunt Lucilla’s games either had to be openly put off until later or, if imposed, bored them. She put a good face on a bad situation, but inside she was bitter. I felt that she was wounded, as if she really were a companion of theirs who had been excluded, and I have to admit that I was pleased, but I didn’t know how to take advantage of it, I’ve never been able to use an advantage. I immediately softened, maybe deep down I was afraid that her affection for the children would diminish and I was sorry. So, sooner or later, I ended up by saying in a sort of apology: it’s that they’re used to playing with each other, they have their habits, maybe they’re a little too self-sufficient. Then she would recover, say yes, and gradually begin to speak ill of my daughters, to pick out flaws and failings. Bianca was too egotistical, Marta too fragile, one had little imagination, the other too much, the older was dangerously closed in on herself, the younger capricious and spoiled. I listened, my small vindication was already changing tune. I felt that Lucilla was compensating for the children’s rejection by looking for a way to humiliate me, as if I were their accomplice. I began to suffer again.

The harm she did me in that period was enormous. Whether she was celebrating herself in the games, or becoming bitter when she was excluded from them, she led me to believe that I had done everything wrong, that I was too full of myself, that I wasn’t made to be a mother. Damn, damn, damn her. Certainly I must have felt that when, one time, we were at the beach. It was a morning in July, Lucilla had appropriated Bianca, leaving out Marta. Maybe it was because she was younger, maybe because she considered her stupid, maybe because she got less satisfaction from her, I don’t know. She must have said something that made her cry and wounded me. I left the little girl whining near Gianni and Matteo, who were sitting under the umbrella, engrossed in conversation, and I took my towel, spread it out a few steps from the sea, and lay down, exasperated, in the sun. But Marta came over to me, she was two and a half, three, she trotted over to play and lay down, all sandy, on my stomach. I hate getting covered with sand, I hate my things getting dirty. I called to my husband to come and get the child. He hurried over, aware that my nerves were on edge; he feared my scenes because he perceived them as uncontrollable. For a while I had made no distinctions between public areas and private ones, I didn’t care if people heard me and judged me, I felt a strong desire to act out my rage as if in the theater. Take her, I cried, I can’t bear her any longer. I don’t know why I was so annoyed with Marta, poor little thing—if Lucilla had been mean to her I should have protected her, but it was as if I believed that woman’s reproaches, they made me angry and yet I believed them: as if the child really were stupid, and always whining—I couldn’t take it anymore.

Gianni picked her up, giving me a look that meant calm down. I turned my back on him angrily, dived into the water to get rid of the sand and the heat. When I came out, I saw that he was playing with Bianca and Marta, together with Lucilla. He was laughing, Matteo, too, was approaching; Lucilla had changed her mind, she had decided that now Marta could play, she had decided to show me that it could be done.

The child, I saw, was smiling: she was sniffling, but she was really happy, a moment, two. I felt that I harbored in my belly a destructive energy, and by chance I touched my ear. I discovered that the earring was missing. It wasn’t of great value, I liked the earrings but wasn’t attached to them. Still, I became agitated, I shouted to my husband that I’d lost an earring; I looked on the towel, it wasn’t there, and I shouted louder, I’ve lost an earring; erupting like a fury into their game, I said to Marta: you see, you’ve made me lose an earring, I said it to her with hatred, as if she were responsible for something that was extremely serious for me, for my life, and then I turned back, I dug in the sand with my feet, with my hands, my husband came over, Matteo came, they began searching. Only Lucilla continued her game with the children, she kept herself out of it, and kept them out of my discomposure.

Later, at home, I yelled at my husband, in front of Bianca and Marta, saying that I didn’t want to see her anymore, that bitch, never, and my husband said all right, in order to live in peace. When I left him he and Lucilla had an affair. Maybe he hoped that she would leave her husband, that she would take care of the children. But she did neither of those things. She loved him, yes, of course, but she remained married and paid no more attention to Bianca and Marta. I don’t know how her life went, if she still lives with her husband, if she separated and remarried, if she had children of her own. I no longer know anything about her. We were girls then, who knows what’s become of her, what she thinks, what she does.