Stephanie's next door neighbor stopped playing
the piano a week ago. I knocked on his door, a pretty girl in a soccer
jersey and hipster panties opened, her ebony hair a velvet skyfall.
These are the sort of things that strengthen my sense of abandonment.
Her
father is nothing like mine. Some days are better than others but it's
not true what they say, that it gets easier with time. The sudden rushes
of pain are exactly alike, just not as predictable as they used to be.
Little things keep reminding me: a newspaper headline, black cotton
socks, the smell of smoke and cinnamon.
They used to tell me
that as long as I remembered him he would never be gone, until they
didn't. I grew up faster than I had to and the stories quickly changed.
Every illusion I ever had was shattered along the way, except for one.
It's the air that keeps me breathing, the reason why I still force
myself to go on.
I remember him as if from a film, Stephanie's
father with his sculpted marble face and navy pinstriped Canali suits.
He lives at the Hassler but comes to us every morning with sweet
chocolate biscuits and spiked coffee. They speak to each other in
Italian, she interrupts him when he starts talking about me: "babbo, she understands your creepy Sicilian accent."
LA
is just two years ago. Two years and a lifetime. Images from then are
out of focus, things I recall might never actually have happened. I can
see their house and the garden stretched out in front of me but I can't
remember the smell of the magnolias. I can picture her mother lying
motionless on a wooden recliner by the pool, but not the color of her
wrinkled skin.
Her father looks at me with a crooked smile, then
turns to her and puts his heavy hand on hers. "Amore" he says, "sono
sempre stato un gentiluomo. È l'unica certezza che ho."
The morning after and a single sentence text
message from Henry: "I feel so close to you when we're apart". I can't
remember calling him, maybe in a dream or a fantasy.
Later on the
train we watch Rome pass us by in torn shades of yellow, orange and
red. First the churches, then the post-war suburbs and the poverty.
Stephanie leaning silently against my shoulder, her soft chestnut hair
smells of early spring and cigarettes. "Do you ever miss LA?" she asks
and I'm lying when I tell her that I don't.
The ocean looks like a
painting in Mediterranean blue, the afternoon haze makes it hard to
tell where it ends and the sky begins. I've always felt calmer by the
sea, as if nothing and no one is holding me back. For the longest time I
thought it would end that way.
I don't know why the Friday wine tastes better than all others but it does, and I don't even work on weekdays.
Stephanie
comes back from whatever it is she does, I'm three glasses ahead of her
and wearing my most seductive shade of Chanel Rouge Allure lipstick (98
Coromandel). Her father is coming on Tuesday, it's all she talks about.
Tomorrow
we're going to the ocean. I haven't seen it since Miramar last summer
and it could just as well have been a lifetime. I often dream of late
nights and early mornings on Venice Beach, long after sunset, our bare
feet in the cold sand, waves crashing in like thunder. Hearts racing
from the alcohol and the opium, a small crowd of friends and him beside
me like a whirlwind in the grayish dark.
Rome on lazy Sundays reminds me of mother. The
languid elegance, slowly melting over multiple layers of times gone by.
I haven't spoken to her in months, sometimes I think I've forgotten
what she looks like.
And my sweet, innocent Stephanie. It took
her 15 years to realize that her family wasn't like most others. Us
watching The Godfather in her room, drinking Anisette in our black
bikinis when suddenly she stops in a cat-like movement. "My sister had a
wedding just like that" she says. "They live in Sicily now, her husband
owns a shipping company".
She loves her father but never asks
about mine. "He's coming to visit soon" she says, "will you stay?" I
remember the first time I met him, his pinstripe suit and subtle Armani
cologne. He asked me to look after his daughter because she had chosen
me to be her friend and I promised him that I always would.
I can't be alone in that apartment, in my bed.
All I do is wait for his fingertips to touch down on the keys of his
piano like autumn leaves. I'm pacing impatiently, cheeks already warm
from the morning Pastis, frantically clenching the silk of my (adorable)
little Moschino nightgown. Every sound an explosion, every sudden
movement a shot to the heart.
I get dressed to go out, the
sunlight by the river is blinding me and I wear too much black for the
season. I started reading Flaubert again, just to see if it still gets
to me like it did that sultry summer in another life.
Outside, my
focus keeps shifting as strange men come up to me at bars and
restaurants, offering their company in different languages and melodies.
I always tell them I'm waiting for someone. Eventually it's going to
sound like a truth.
