I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) (16 page)

“Jesus, you're having an attack of some kind. I have to say I didn't expect this. Or actually, maybe I did.”

She's fiddling with the balls of bread gum from the dinner roll that she's gutted while we were talking.

“Are you sure?” I ask, just to have something to say.

“
Vincenzo.
”

“Do you think he'll get over it?”

Jesus, I can't believe I said what I just said.

“It's not a disease, you know.”

Standard answer for blinkered morons. Like me.

“Well, what I meant is do you think it's something permanent?”

Holy Mary, why can't I stop myself?

“I told you that I don't think so. When I was his age, I had a thing for a while with a girlfriend of mine, and then I fell in love with Francesco and that was the end of that. And anyway, even if it did turn out to be something permanent, I hardly think it's something we should turn into a tragedy.”

“Who did you have thing with when you were his age?”

“Oh, enough is enough, Vincè,” she squirms in her chair. “I can't believe this is you.”

I touch my hair, overwhelmed at the thought that with all the people sitting in this cafeteria, I should be the one who feels worst.

“But listen, there's something else I'm worried about,” Alagia says, changing the subject with chilling nonchalance.

“Ah, something else,” I say, under partial anaesthesia.

“This thing he does where he goes around getting beaten up,” she says, as if pursuing a line of thought that she'd already been pondering in her head.

“Well?” I ask, fully expecting her response.

“I hope it's not something he enjoys.”

I hear synchronized bells, I see blinking colored lights, and I recognize the sound of a score counter running way faster than normal. My internal alarm has gone off, a manifestation of my terror. When I was a kid, that was part of the experience of playing pinball. Once you reached a certain score, the machine would go into a trance for a few seconds, putting on a celebratory show for you with its entire spectacular arsenal before spitting out another ball.

“I'm not following you,” I lie.

She doesn't look at me, still lost in her wandering thoughts. The ensuing silence triggers an irresistible need to defuse the tension.

“No, no, of course not,” I resume, as insincere as a flight attendant reassuring the passengers as the airplane plunges to earth. “You know how deeply he cares about this stuff. He has a cultural interest in these things, a normal cultural interest. Even your mother says that . . . ”

Oh God, the horror.

Alagia looks up at me, still half distracted, and fails to focus.

I need to sleep. I want my bed. Sheets and blankets. A dark room.

“You're right, Vincenzo,” Alagia comes to, all confident and upbeat. “What are we worried about? After all, what's happened? Nothing's happened.”

I take a breath.

“Yeah, in fact, that's what I say.”

“That's right, come on. Let's behave like adults.”

“Right, let's behave.”

 

Exactly forty minutes later, I charge into Nives's office like an avenging fury. The minute her secretary Marianna sees me coming she knows this is no time to intervene. She doesn't even make an effort to intercept me, the way secretaries do in movies when someone busts into the boss's private office, and the secretary comes running up right behind the intruder just as they open the door and calls out: “I'm so sorry, Mr. Thus-and-Such, I told him he couldn't go in but he refused to take no for an answer.”

But what does happen behind me is that a guy who was sitting in the waiting room jumps up and yells: “Hey, where the hell is he going?” to which Marianna replies: “He's the doctor's husband,” and he says: “Ah.”

I throw open the door and interrupt the session so vehemently that Nives and her patient—a woman I know, by the way—practically jump into one another's arms in their startlement.

The time that it takes for Nives's expression to swerve from surprise to indignation is the exact same amount of time it takes for a child to progress from the astonishing realization of the boo-boo to the explosion of tears.

Nives's patient hides her face in her hands, as if I'd caught her necking with my wife or something like that. In effect, I would never have guessed that an oafish social-climber like Felicia Parisi was in analysis. She's the kind of person who, when they do condescend to speak to you, seem to be saying nothing but: “Problems, me? Oh, good Lord, the very idea.”

“How dare you?” Nives raises her voice, red in the face. She's so angry that her lips are trembling.

At that point I realize what a complete fuck-up I've just committed, but I stay cool. Fuck-ups don't legally entail proactive restitution. Which is why in a process of criminal escalation, like when somebody goes out to commit a robbery and then commits murder, e.g., the murder is preceded by other actions that are of lesser criminal importance. A murder committed by a hooligan is always a dirty, vulgar, wasteful murder, awkward and bloody, committed with a violence that squanders and spoils. That's why, in contrast, a murder committed by a professional is described as “clean” or “perfect.” Profes­sionals don't leave a mess.

In other words, in view of the aspects of criminal law that I've just explained, I stand in the door and begin clapping my hands.

“Well, well, my compliments, eh; nice job,” I say.

She registers my incomprehensible sarcasm with a mixture of curiosity and indignation that, among other things, makes her particularly attractive. She throws the notebook that she was holding until just a second ago onto the floor and strides toward me, all ligaments, as if she were walking in a suit of armor.

“What the fuck are you talking about? What are you saying? What right do you have to interrupt one of my sessions? You could be arrested for this, did you know that?”

Eh, you could have the police confiscate all my Ikea furniture, I say to her in my mind.

“Of all the masterpieces you've put your signature to in your career, this beats them all, no question,” I say.

Nives's nostrils flare, practically emitting smoke.

“Get out of here immediately,” she commands.

“Nives, what's happening here is very serious, I hope you realize that,” Felicia Parisi puts in her two cents.

“Who asked you anything, mind your own fucking business if you can manage it,” I say to her, slapping the back of my hand in her general direction.

She turns red as an Apache.

Nives looks at her and immediately afterward turns to look at me, as if she can't believe what she just heard.

“why how dare y—”

I level my index finger straight at her.

“Do you want to know why I'm here? Eh?! You want to know?”

She clenches her jaw, frustrated by my interruption, but she's dying of curiosity. Felicia Parisi too has retracted her neck like a bulldog. I don't have the slightest idea of what I'm about to say.

“Listen closely. Probably up till now I haven't been as good a father as I ought to have been, but from today forward, everything's going to change, understood? The mother's exclusive on this story has expired. I want to have a say in raising my kids, I want to stop you once and for all from doing exactly as you please and prefer, knowing full well that Idiot Boy here isn't going to contradict a thing you say. Have I conveyed the idea? So brace yourself: a new era is about to begin!”

I fall silent and just breathe, waiting for my heartbeat to stop racing. In the meanwhile, I do my best to remember what the hell I just said.

Now Nives is looking at me uneasily.

“Vincenzo, do you feel all right?”

I let fly.

“Oh, go fuck yourself. Now I have to hear it from you? Since this morning all I've heard from anyone is that same fucking question! Enough!”

At that point Her Highness Lady Felicia grabs her purse and her cell phone and prepares to leave the office in disgust.

“Goodbye, Nives,” she says, walking past her and taking up a point on the wall-to-wall carpeting exactly midway between the two of us.

“Hold on, Felicia,” Nives says. “This is just an unexpected disruption. Don't leave, we can still finish the session.”

“No, it's lasted long enough for me,” Felicia says, tartly.

God, how I feel like slapping her in the face.

“Then this is our last session,” Nives declares unexpectedly, as sharp and spare as a scalpel.

“What?” the turd cries.

“You heard me,” my ex-wife snaps decisively.

Hey, I can't believe my ears.

“You're telling me not to come back? Did I undertand you correctly, Nives?” Felicia demands in outrage.

Exactly, I reply mentally. In fact, she just told you to go get fucked by a choir of gospel singers. Didn't you hear her? Because that's precisely what she just said.

“If you can't handle this kind of situation, Felicia,” Nives points out dryly, “it means that you're refusing to do your part in this therapy. In which case there is no reason for us to go on meeting.”

You can't even imagine the look on that turd's face now. She just stands there, like a TV antenna, incapable of deciding what to do next. Boys, that is some woman I married.

“Your husband is a boorish oaf,” says the turd. And glares at me.

I plaster a Walter Matthau smile across my lips.

“I'm not the one who asked him to break into our session,” Nives replies. “I'm not responsible for what he does. I don't even know what he's talking about.”

Nives's logic proceeds like a seeing-eye dog. It accompanies the turd's thoughts, preventing them from walking into the sides of buildings, signaling contradictions and incongruities.

“I want you to do something,” the poor thing finally croaks.

“I just told him to leave. And I just asked you to stay. So what are you going to do? Are you going to stay?”

At that point something truly incredible happens: Felicia Parisi—Felicia Parisi!—tucks her head back down into her shoulders and goes back to her place, like an embarrassed little schoolgirl.

Nives levels her eyes straight into mine, with a look of reproof that is completely devoid of vindictive anger. She leans over the carpeting, picks up her notebook, walks over to Felicia, puts a hand on her shoulder, and then comes back to me.

Behind me, at a safe distance, is Marianna, slack-jawed. I see her out of the corner of my eye.

“Now please leave,” Nives tells me, brooking no contradiction. “Whatever this is about, we can discuss it later.”

I nod, turn on my heel, and finally leave the office, as she gently closes the door behind me.

 

I return home with a feeling of serenity that I don't know where it even comes from, but it's there. Get this: I find a parking place not far from the front door of my apartment building, which is, how to put this, something verging on the miraculous, as these things go. Once I've parked my car, in fact, I stop for a second and just look back to admire it, as if I'd achieved something. I don't know if you ever catch yourself doing things of the sort.

Sometimes I think that when you straighten your back, and you start knocking on doors and demanding things, instead of submitting to everything by exerting the basic hack minimum level of resistance (which, let's face it, is the way that I live), the world takes notice. Just develop a little bit of respect for yourself and life makes things easier for you. Which is why all of a sudden you find a parking place right outside your own front door, or a woman gives you a lingering glance, or someone offers you a job. Like when you get into a relationship, and all of a sudden four or five different women suddenly call you up on the same day (including a couple of your exes that you haven't seen in years), and you wonder: “Hey, but where the fuck were you all until the day before yesterday?”

Here's the way it is: reality makes inquiries about individuals. When life offers you these special bonus discounts, it's basically opening a line of credit. It's telling you: okay, here you go, but don't be a loser, don't turn around and squander it all so that you're penniless again tomorrow morning. You didn't find this on the sidewalk: I gave it to you, to you and nobody else. So give me some evidence that I wasn't wrong about you. Keep up the good work: change.

The problem, at least as far as I'm concerned, is that I can't seem to get anyone to change their mind about me for more than a day or so—maybe a day and a half.

So I stick with the bonus discounts.

 

As I stick my house key into my front door lock, all the thinking, rethinking, and sense of guilt that I've been wallowing in up till now about Alfredo lose a significant percentage of their burdensome weight. That's the way it always is with me, where problems are concerned. From a distance, they always prompt a bunch of complicated considerations. Then, once we're face to face, we always find a way of coming to terms.

Just now, fr'instance, the kind of awkwardness I feel at the idea of seeing Alf for the first time after getting the news is the same as when you have to explain to your children the process that leads to birth. Maybe it's that too many things have already happened today, who can say? One thing I can rely on is that by now, that chucklehead of a sister of his has certainly already told him the expression that appeared on my face in the cafeteria.

I walk in, toss my keys onto the hardwood Monga bench that was actually originally a piece of bathroom furniture but who really cares, and I call out Alfredo's name, followed by an entirely rhetorical question mark.

No answer.

“Hey, let's not try to be funny, no one's in the mood,” I say, a little louder.

More silence.

“Alfre'? Come on, don't be an idiot.”