Training in Love (30 page)

“Yes,
I was jealous.”

“Why…”
I continue without looking at him, because I’ve discovered that if I don’t look
at him I have more courage. “Why didn’t you stay with me, why didn’t you come
back?”

He
sighs. “Because it seemed wrong. I came to the party with her and… she found me
almost kissing someone else. I felt guilty and I wanted to fix things before
coming back to you.”

“But
when I went back upstairs you weren’t there anymore.”

He
sighs again. “Yes. She wanted me to take her home immediately and it took me a
lot more time to set things right than I thought it would. I had to leave early
that morning.”

I
don’t speak immediately. I have to gather the courage inside to ask what I’m
about to ask. “And did you… did you…” I stop, sighing with frustration over my
inability to go through with it.

“No,
Olly, I didn’t do anything, if that’s what you want to know.”

Yes,
that’s exactly what I want to know…

“Differently
from you, who got right down to work.” I detect a touch of acidity.

“Andrea,”
I continue, ignoring him, “Before that evening… with Tiziana… did you ever…”

“No,
never. Not before that evening or afterwards,” he answers immediately.

I
sigh, this time with relief, before asking, “But why did she make that face
when you introduced her as your friend? It seemed like you were together and
that you were treating her badly by not acknowledging her status as your
girlfriend.”

“Because…
I don’t know. She had asked me lots of times to go out before that evening. Maybe
when I finally gave her what she wanted she thought that it was automatically a
sign of me being open to having more of a relationship than just as friends.”

I
don’t say anymore, even if I’d like to ask, “Why did you have to bring her? Why
did you have to go out? Aren’t you capable of going to a party alone?”

After
a little he breaks the silence. “Ask me Olly. Ask me what you want to know.”

“Why
did you come with her in the first place?”

He
doesn’t answer right away. I feel his hand in my hair - a light and sweet
massage. “Maybe… Maybe I wanted her as a sort of shield… even if it doesn’t
speak well about me.”

“Shield?”

“Yes.
Against what I might have found at the party if… you had found someone else… to…
not let on…” He leaves the sentence hanging, ending with an “on” which means
nothing.

Since
he’s answering all my questions so diligently, I’d like to ask him about all
the girls I’ve seen: the model-pharmacist, the girl who he was laughing with
when I was sick and also about the ones that I didn’t see. But I don’t know if
it’s wise to let me be seen obsessing about his women… And besides, as I ponder
on “to ask or not to ask” he suddenly breaks the silence. “When I arrived, that
evening, and I saw you…” He moves slowly, pulling himself up, pushing me with
my back on the bed. “With that dress…” He moves slowly, cautiously, until he’s
on me again, until my face is between his hands. “That dress…” He murmurs, kissing
my lips lightly, caressing them with his thumb, pushing his hardest part
towards my softest part. “You have to wear it again,” he passes his tongue over
my lips. “Just for me.” And then he is quiet and for an indefinite time the
room is filled only with the sound of our cries.

***

After
having done it the second time, we ate naked on the bed because we were hungry.
Andrea went down to the kitchen to get something, saying that he absolutely
didn’t want me to leave the room or get dressed until he said so.

I
nosed around in his cube shelves. We took a shower together in the upstairs
bathroom and we talked about a lot of things, pausing often to kiss and touch
each other. We joked and laughed and played and then we did it once again. If
Paradise exists, I believe it’s like this, just like this. I have never been so
happy. I’ve never had my heart so full and light at the same time.

I
am lying across him, with my head resting on his belly while I leaf aimlessly
through a copy of
Pride and Prejudice
. I am re-reading here and there,
just the parts I prefer, when I realize that the light in the room is
noticeably dimmer. I jump up, leaving the book on the bed. I go to the window,
drawing back the curtain a little. The sky has darkened and maybe now it’s time
I looked at the clock…

When
I turn, I find Andrea’s eyes open and looking at me when I thought he was
sleeping. “You’re awake!”

“And
you are beautiful,” he says, all seriousness.

I
smile for the millionth time today. And, as though it were the most natural
thing in the world, I go back to him and kiss him tenderly for the millionth
time today. “So are you.”

Then
I get up and start to get dressed hurriedly. He straightens up immediately and
sits on the bed. “What are you doing?”

“Getting
dressed.”

“I
can see that, but why?” He has a confused and worried countenance – too
adorable.

“Because
it’s late and I have to go.”

“No.”
He gets up and tries to take off my T-shirt again.

Laughing
I bat his hands away. “Quit it!”

“Why?
You don’t need to… I told you that my parents are on vacation until next week. Sleep
here!”

I
instinctively hug him, then I look in his eyes and tell him, reasoning, “You
know, I can’t do that… I live with another person – unfortunately – but I live
with another person and I can’t disappear without letting her know… Besides, my
telephone is in my car, near the lake.” I look around the room, to see if
there’s a clock somewhere. “I need to know what time it is. I need my phone and
I need to go home.”

Huffing,
he moves towards a black bag sitting beside the wardrobe and moves around
something inside it and then says, getting up, “It’s nine-thirty.”

“See,
it’s late. My mother will be back from work and asking herself where I am. Also
because when I leave before she gets back I usually leave a note in the
kitchen.”

He
puts his hands on his hips, looking at me frowning and completely unaware of
his nakedness. “Let’s do this: I’ll take you to get the car. You go home and
tell your mother that you’re coming back here. Immediately.”

I
smile with my heart bursting with happiness. “Of course. If that’s what you
want.”

“That’s
what I want,” he says, beginning to soften and getting dressed at light speed. “You
be quick.”

23.

When I
get home I find my mother sitting on the couch. The back of it is to the door,
so she doesn’t see me, thank heavens, because she doesn’t turn to look at me
when she asks, “How come you’re so late? Where have you been?”

“Around,”
I answer vaguely. Then I run up the stairs before she thinks of giving me a
closer look. Upstairs, in my room, I decide to improvise, taking another shower
and washing my hair and rubbing fruit scented cream over my whole body. With
the towel on my head and another around my body, I stand for some time in front
of the wardrobe, undecided what to put on. I thought for a minute to choose the
black dress. In the end I decide to leave it for another surprise occasion and
I choose a pair of black leggings and a tank top. Something easy to take off.

I
rub my hair, humming to myself in a low voice while I reflect intensely on an
existential dilemma – to wear makeup or not to wear makeup?

Finally,
I decide not to. After all, it’s almost nighttime. We’ll be closed up in the
splendid white room for hours and I’m afraid I’d seem overly anxious to please
him if I make myself up to stay the night in a bedroom…

I
leave my hair wet, get my purse and slip a tooth-brush in it. When I run down
the stairs again - I don’t know how much time has passed - my mother is still
on the couch.

“Olivia?”
She turns and sees me with my purse on my arm. She raises her eyebrows. “Are
you going out again?”

“Yes.”

She
instinctively looks at her wrist-watch. “It’s eleven-thirty…”

I
believe that despite all my efforts, a veil of pink is coloring my cheeks. “Mom…”
She makes no sign of speaking, so I’m forced to finish the sentence, “I’m
sleeping out tonight.”

She
stands up, surprised. “At Linda’s?” She asks already knowing the answer,
knowing that it’s not the thought of spending the night at Linda’s that is
making me blush.

“No,”
I answer in a low voice, because I find it useless to tell a lie at this point.

She
is silent for a second, maybe she’s too surprised. “And where? If I may ask?”

“At
Andrea’s.”

She
doesn’t speak. Then she lets go with her breath that I didn’t realize she was
holding and puts a hand on her eyes, sitting down again on the couch, letting
herself flop down. “Olly…” She whispers. She almost seems unhappy.

I
don’t say anything. I already sense that I won’t like it – whatever she’s
thinking of saying to me, I won’t like it.

When
she realizes that I don’t intend to ask her anything, she lifts her gaze, a sad
gaze, almost compassionate. “Olly, men like Andrea…” She shakes her head,
taking a breath while she pauses, as though what she had to say was too hard.

I
straighten my shoulders, perhaps involuntarily. I stiffen. “Go ahead, Mom.
Don’t stop at the best part.”

She
stares at me, still with the same sad look, the same look full of compassion.
“Do as you want, but… don’t count on him too much.”

“Oh.”

“Sit
down for a second,” she says, patting the couch beside her.

“No
thanks, I’m fine standing.”

She
sighs. “Don’t look at me as though I was the wicked witch… I’m only saying it
for your good, so you’ll be prepared… I’m just afraid that he’ll really hurt
you. No mother wants to see her daughter suffer.”

“Oh
really?” I ask sarcastically. “It’s really interesting that you’re saying these
things, because Andrea, since I’ve met him, hasn’t been anything but good to
me. In all ways. The one who has hurt me more than anyone, contrarily, the one
who has made me suffer innumerable times, has been you.”

She
looks at me as though I had slapped her. “What are you saying?” She asks in a
little, thin voice.

Something
in me snaps, definitively. I take a step towards her without dropping my purse,
which I clutch as though it were a life jacket in the middle of a stormy sea. “Do
you think that all your comments, all your contempt in the last few years
didn’t do anything to me? That they didn’t hurt me? All the times that you put
me down, only because I wasn’t physically how you wanted me to be? And now that
I’ve lost a few kilos? A few crappy kilos? You’re all sweet and play the mother
who worries about my wellbeing? Who worries if I get hurt? Just think about how
much you have hurt me, with your words, with your looks, for years, before
accusing someone else!”

“But
Olivia…” She answers, shocked, “I only did it for your own good, to encourage
you…”

“To
encourage me?” I ask, incredulous. “Encourage me? What? That was your
encouragement?” I laugh bitterly.

“Of
course.” Her tone is calm, reasonable. “This is a superficial world, one based
on image, on appearance… I can honestly state that no-one knows this better
than I. People judge you on the basis of your appearance. And it’s cruel and
they don’t care at all how many good qualities you have inside. They don’t care
at all…” She repeats, shaking her head unhappily.

She
has a voice and look that leave me speechless.

“My
love…” She whispers, and I have to swing around so she doesn’t see the tears
which have suddenly welled up in my eyes.

I
hear a movement behind me and then a hand that touches me. “Olly… what did you
think? That I didn’t love you? That I didn’t see how wonderful you are?”

A
sob escapes from my mouth and I drop the purse to stop myself before another
one can come out.

“Honey,
I just wanted to protect you.”

“You
were horrible at it…” I say between the sobs I can’t seem to stop anymore. “You
were horrible…”

She
slowly turns me around and embraces me. “Forgive me.”

We
stay like that until I calm down and pull away, noticing that she was crying
too. “I thought that… you didn’t love me because of… my appearance.”

She
shakes her head and hugs me again. “Impossible. I only wanted you to lose
weight for your own good, for health… and social… reasons.” She sighs. “I
didn’t know what to do and it seemed to me… at times I thought that is was
impossible to get to you. It didn’t matter what I said, you remained impassive
and nothing changed. I didn’t know how to reach you and maybe, over time, I
overdid it without realizing.”

I
think for a second, reflecting about all these years before the evening of revelation.
“No, you managed to get to me, it’s just that… you didn’t manage to reach me. Because
maybe I didn’t want to be reached,” I conclude frowning.

She
strokes my hair, my cheeks, drying the last streaks of tears. “It doesn’t
matter. That’s all past. Now you’re splendid and I can’t hide that I’m happy,
but not because…”

I
laugh softly, in a low voice, “Yes Mom, I understand.”

She
sits down suddenly. “Sit down for a second.”

I
waver because Andrea’s waiting for me.

“Just
five minutes…” It almost seems like a plea.

I
sit and she takes me and brings me close to her with my face on her shoulder.
Five minutes won’t make any difference…

For
a bit, no-one speaks, we stay like that, on the couch, looking straight ahead.
After a few minutes, while she caresses my hair, my mother says in a low voice.
“Your father was a trauma for me. I know it seems exaggerated to say that, but
he was.”

I
hold my breath because she has never spoken spontaneously about him and even
when she was provoked to say something, she never told me anything.

“Oh,”
she sighs before continuing, “you don’t know the promises that we made to each
other, that he made to me… I believed him.” She concludes with a sad tone,
without raising her voice at all.

I’d
like her to continue speaking, but I don’t want to press her… Fortunately, she
begins again after a while. “He told me there was no-one else like me, that I
was the love of his life, that we would be together forever. Sometimes I
imagined our life as old people, when we would be retired, with lots of
grandchildren from you and your brothers and sisters.”

“Brothers
and sisters?” I murmur.

“Yes.
That was the original plan… When you were five and I began to ask him to give
you a little brother or sister, he constructed one excuse after another, ‘next
year’, ‘it’s not the moment’, ‘too many expenses’… I didn’t know then that he
had already started an affair with Lea.”

I
jump up and look her in the face. “What?”

She
nods forlornly. “Yes, sweetheart. I never wanted to tell you…” Her look is so
sad… but a part of me understands that, in this moment, she’s more sad for me,
learning the truth only now, than for what happened.

“How
is that possible?” I ask in a faint voice.

She
shrugs, with that resigned look still on her face. “His affair wasn’t a fling,
sweetheart. You don’t marry a fling…” She shakes her head, lost amid memories
and thoughts. “He was very romantic with me, he really made me believe I was
special, made me believe he loved me as I was. Me. Do you understand?” When she
asks me if I understand, she raises her eyes to mine and I nod immediately
because it’s how Andrea made me feel this afternoon. Exactly.

“And
then I saw Lea,” she continues with a touch of bitterness in her voice, looking
away. “Oh Olly, when I saw her…” She sighs, shaking her head, looking down
towards her legs folded on the couch. “Young, beautiful, thin… When I saw Lea,
something snapped in my brain. Something irreversible. I realized that
everything I had heard from his lips, everything that I believed blindly for
years was a load of bullshit. Excuse my bluntness.” Her eyes search for mine
again and I just nod, with a lump in my throat. I never knew these things.
Never.

“A
while back you asked me how come I’m so cynical. I’ve thought about it a lot
since you asked me, you know? And I believe that I’m partly the cause of this
experience. Yes, I don’t want to say that the blame was entirely your father’s,
I have my part of the responsibility too, but my life was changed from that
day. I convinced myself that the only thing that counted, for men, but also in
general, was appearance. And I… consequently… didn’t want you to be so far out
of society’s standards because… because I didn’t want you to suffer.”

“Oh
Mom…” I whisper without being able to say anything else.

“I
just didn’t want you to have to suffer like… like I suffered…” She bursts out
crying again and I stretch out to embrace her, swallowing several times. “If
you had been perfect, thin and beautiful, no-one… no-one would hurt you… What
an idiot! You can’t escape from suffering!” She concludes with a sob, stronger
than the others and then begins to really weep. I squeeze her, murmuring “sshh”
from time to time, as though she were a little girl. The truth is that I’m
shocked. Completely. And I feel pity and tenderness towards her. That’s right,
I feel tenderness towards my mother. This is a day to mark on the calendar.

We
stay like that, embracing and rocking, until she calms down. “And now this
Andrea…” She sighs. I can’t see her face, because I have her head between my
chin and my shoulder, but her tone is almost heart wrenching. “What does he
want from my baby? If he doesn’t treat you well, if he makes you suffer…”

“Mom,”
I interrupt her, “I’m scared too, believe me, but it’s a risk I want to take.”
I swallow.

I
feel her nod on my neck and sniff and I smile.

“What
time is it?” I ask after a while, letting her go.

She
quickly glances at her watch. “Twelve-thirty.”

God…
only an hour? This has been, absolutely, the most intense hour of my life!

We
look at each other for a few seconds. Finally I smile. “I’d better go. He’ll be
asking what happened to me.”

She
smiles too, nodding, and I hug her on impulse, again. “We should have done this
a long time ago.”

“You’re
right,” she answers, stroking my back.

When
I go out of the house, I feel twenty kilos lighter. Getting into my car I check
my phone expecting to see a message or a call from Andrea, but the screen is
empty.

***

When I
get to Andrea’s house, I stop behind a car parked in front of his house. I turn
off the the engine and look at the vehicle in front of me. It wasn’t there
before and it’s not Andrea’s. A feeling of unease takes hold of my stomach and
my heart suddenly beats faster.

The
front door is ajar. I hear indistinct voices arguing and I enter silently.

The
scene I encounter stops me in my tracks, one step into the house. Andrea is
standing
 bare-chested in the kitchen,
with his hair wet, while Tiziana is on the other side of the island in a skimpy
red dress, a pair of enormously high heels and her hair, loose, smooth and
long, caressing her back invitingly.

As
quiet as I was, both turn towards me immediately.

“I
can’t believe it!” Tiziana exclaims with her red mouth, which matches her
dress, open in an expression of astonishment. She turns to Andrea. “You’re
dumping me for this one here?” She laughs, but it isn’t an amused laugh. “This
is really rich…”