My Mother-in-Law Drinks (17 page)

Me: What about your dad?

Ale: Same thing! Mamma says that he got all awkward and funny and clumsy; he'd ask if he could walk with her, if she had any other plans for the day; if he had plans of his own, errands or appointments, he'd immediately cancel them . . . in other words, he became heartbreakingly solicitous and loving, like a young man courting and afraid he'll be told no.

Me: Hey, your eyes are starting to glisten.

Ale: It's just that it strikes me as so . . . rare. Like a blessing reserved for the two of them alone.

Me: That's true. But did they run into each other by chance all that often?

Ale: Well, I don't know about often. It happened occasionally, I guess. But it was something completely spontaneous, you know what I mean? Not only did they fall in love, they acted as if they'd just fallen in love for the first time.

Me: So what you're telling me is that you and I just made a remake of the way your parents used to fall in love in the street.

Ale: Well, yes. More or less. But I only realized it just now, when I saw you on the street before I wasn't thinking about it at all. And . . . and there's something about it that I like. It's like a bridge between me and my folks. That is, I meant to say, between my folks and us.

Me: Eh, I'm pretty sure that if my father had run into my mother in the middle of the day, the most he would have said to her would have been: “Are you sure that Vincenzo went to school today?”

 

It was at that exact instant, just as Alessandra Persiano—after the moment of astonishment that always comes over her after I've spouted one of my more memorable pieces of bullshit—was about to burst out laughing, that the sound of another text message coming through on my cell phone greeted our ears.

Uh-oh, I thought.

I lay there frozen, stretched out on that fucking 190-euro-a-night bed, mentally kicking myself for having forgotten once again to turn off or silence that miserable fucking spy of a phone, while Alessandra Persiano's profile took on the suspicious angularity of solid evidence.

“Message for you,” she said, definitely hostile. “Another one.”

“Eh?”

“What's wrong, didn't you hear the chime?”

“Ah, my cell phone, you mean? Sure.”

“Well, why don't you check and see who's writing you?”

“I don't feel like getting up.”

Wrong answer: because immediately, as if I'd spoon-fed her the answer she'd been waiting for, she started to get up herself.

“Okay, I'll get it for you.”

I promptly grabbed her arm.

Another obvious screw-up.

She dropped her gaze to my offending hand, then looked up at my face and stared at me, glassy-eyed.

“Come on, who gives a damn about that,” I said, trying to pull her toward me, but I must have seemed absolutely ridiculous in that attempt to sidetrack her. “It's so nice to just lie here together.”

She pulled away, with a studied slowness, even.

“Do you not want me to know who's texting you?”

I faked a weak, ambiguous laugh, then answered like a certified moron.

“What are you talking about?”

Silence.

Then I tried stroking her hair.

She jerked her head to one side.

There are various types of disdain. But the kind that sneaks into lovers' arguments I consider to be the most detestable of all.

“Hey,” I said, with a pathetic smile. “I didn't know you were so suspicious.”

She went on staring at me, chilly and inquisitorial, kneeling on the bed, wonderfully indifferent to the nakedness of her magnificent breasts which were now facing me like two no-entry signs.

At this point I had no option but to bluff.

So I bluffed.

“Okay, Detective Persiano: would you mind getting my cell phone out of my jacket, and while you're at it, could you also read me the text message that just came in, just to save me the trouble?”

You know when you put a DVD into your DVD player to watch a certain scene and you hit fast-forward and click through to 32x to zip straight to the point in the movie you want?

Well, that's the exact speed at which my whole life passed in front of my eyes as Alessandra Persiano pondered whether to take the high road (the option I was hoping for) or to put me to the test.

“You're such a child,” I shamefully stammered when, a second later, she went for the second option.

I came close to begging her not to do it, as she stood up and grabbed my jacket.

She pulled my cell phone out of my jacket pocket.

She flipped it open.

Stretched out on that bed, I was already a dead man.

So I couldn't believe what I was seeing when she narrowed her eyes, opened them wide, went momentarily apneic in disbelief, and then exploded in laughter so hard that she practically folded over in half.

“What's gotten into you?” I asked, sitting up straight.

But she couldn't stop. She went on reading and laughing as if the cell phone were showing a comedy. She'd entered into the usual endless loop of interactive hypnosis for the sake of ha-has in which the more you look at the subject of the ridiculous situation, the harder you laugh, as if you somehow couldn't wrap your mind around the fact of its existence, and so you go on staring at it to fix it in your memory before it vanishes.

I almost had to shout to make myself heard.

“Who the fuck is it from, if you don't mind my asking?”

She replied by sort of spitting and grabbing her belly with one hand.

“I don't . . . know . . . pffh . . . it's a number without a name . . . hee, hee, hee!”

With tears streaming down her face coming dangerously close to falling with every step, she came over to me and held the phone scant inches from my face.

 

Don't ask me why, Filippo, but I need to see you tonight. Please, come by whenever you're free. No matter what time it is.

 

It was as if someone had turned the air conditioner up as high as it would go.

Probably the biggest piece of dumb luck of my whole life.

I could hardly believe it.

I blessed my innate laziness for not having put that idiot woman's name in my directory.

I looked around.

No sign of the angel.

“
Filippo?
” I said, playing the part (I suspect badly, partly because I threw in a little fake-baffled smile; but Alessandra Persiano was too red in the face from laughing to catch me).

Even I felt like laughing at the thought that that idiot had been so simpleminded in her attempt to make me jealous that she'd actually included the name of her imaginary (or perhaps real: fat lot I cared) lover, thus unintentionally rescuing me.

Taking big gulps of air between the hiccups that were finally subsiding, Alessandra Persiano got back up on the bed and dragged herself on her knees to my side, wiping away her tears with her pinkies.

“Hey, Filippo, how's it going?” she said, intending to milk a while longer the effects of what she thought was a misunderstanding.

“Ha, ha, funny you,” I replied, with a barefaced nerve that on its own deserved a Nobel Prize.

“What are you doing tonight, hee, hee, hee, are you going to come by?”

“Sure, sure, go ahead and joke about it,” I added, in a hypocritical crescendo that makes me shiver just to think about it. “But what if I'd really just gotten a text message from my lover instead of an obvious wrong number? Eh? Then what would I have told you? Ah?”

“What an idiot you are, Vince'.”

“No, what an idiot
you
are, to think another woman was texting me.”

At that point, the angel appeared. Right there, between the curtains and the TV. Arms crossed and right foot tapping on the hardwood floor.

“Jesus God, you really are a filthy pig,” he said.

“Nice hotel, eh?” I replied telepathically.

“Well, if you want to know the truth, it seemed like you were acting a little defensive, earlier,” Alessandra Persiano admitted.

“Just because I wanted to stay cuddled up with you in bed? You're so dishonest, you women.”

The busybody angel slapped a hand to his forehead and shook his head in disgust.

“Oh. But wait,” Alessandra Persiano said at a certain point, suddenly very serious.

“But wait what?”

“Nothing, it's just that . . . I was thinking about that Filippo. I wonder what kind of stallion he must be for her to be begging him like that.”

“What?”

She didn't answer. She was smiling, as if she'd just had a clever idea.

“Hey, Persiano,” I scolded her in feigned horror, “I don't even know who you are anymore.”

“You know what we should do? We should call up the girl right now; that is, I'll call her, which works better, and I'll say: Listen, I just got this text message, would you mind giving me the right number for Filippo? No, you see, it's just that you texted my boyfriend by accident, and he's the opposite of Filippo, as far as those things go he's not exactly a . . . Get it? Hee, hee, hee.”

It took me a few moments for it to sink in that I'd actually heard her right.

“Get what? Fuck you!”

“Come on,” and she tried to grab my cell phone (which at that point I wouldn't have surrendered even under armed threat), “can't you imagine how funny it would be?”

Ooooh, we'd die laughing, I thought.

“Just forget about this brilliant idea, okay?”

“But why? Come
on
!”

“Because number one, it's a prank only an asshole would pull; two, it's in bad taste; three, I don't see why you have to call from
my
phone, if you don't mind.”

During the pause that followed, I realized I'd just put my foot in it.

“You're right. I'll call from mine. Come on, give me the number!”

And she stood up to get her purse.

Jesus, what an idiot I am.

I'm absolutely positive that just then my temperature must have been 103 degrees.

“Listen, just drop it, okay?”

“But why do you want to spoil my fun?”

“You want to know why?”

“Right. Why?”

I didn't have the slightest idea what the fuck to say, but suddenly, in the midst of complete darkness, I glimpsed a shaft of light (later I understood why: the angel, nauseated by my lackluster performance, had left the room).

“Because . . . Sorry, what makes you think the text was necessarily sent by a woman?”

Her expression suddenly changed.

“Oh. I hadn't thought of that.”

Then she went into a trance.

At that point I realized I'd gotten off scot-free. The mere thought of hearing a male voice answer the call, of intruding on a form of intimacy she knew nothing about, was enough to dissuade her from her planned prank.

Like many other members of the female sex, Alessandra Persiano tends to be very considerate of gay people. She's horrified at the idea of seeming indelicate.

And so, problem solved.

 

Later I decided to go by and see my mother-in-law (as long as Alagia had roped me into becoming her home caregiver, I might as well start right away).

We were in the kitchen, me, her, and Miorita (her caregiver), when another text message came in.

Text messages are always suspicious if you fail to read them right away. In fact Assunta and Miorita exchanged sidelong glances. Whereupon I let out a pro-forma sigh of annoyance and pulled out my phone (though I'd have gladly ignored it, considering all the cell phone trouble I'd had to deal with over the course of that day).

I read it.

I probably betrayed a slight sense of panic, but the text was far too demented not to prompt at least some minimal facial twitches.

Instead of putting the cell phone back in my jacket pocket, I laid it down on the table, facedown.

Then I sat there for a little while, waiting to decide what to do next.

“Your problem,” Ass said, catching me off-guard (which is something I've always hated because, no matter how you look at it, it's not fair play to catch someone off-guard like that), “is that you're still trying to have a sex life.”

“Eh?” I asked, with the astonishment of someone caught red-handed.

“Just think of it as a routine, a grind,” she argued, completely nonchalant, taking it for granted that I knew what she was talking about. “After all, that's the movement in question. You'll see how much easier it comes to you.”

“I don't see what you're basing this fine piece of advice on,” I retorted while mentally treading water. “Leaving aside the fact that sex and life are two very different concepts.”

She smiled.

“You need to use the bathroom, don't you?”

“What?” I replied, truly caught off-guard now.

“Well, don't you?”

“Umm . . . actually, yes, but how did you know that?”

“Because you have a burning need to write back to whatever young woman just wrote to you.”

I blushed.

“Who are you, my jealous girlfriend?”

“Oh, don't be ridiculous. It's just that I can't stand seeing people make fools of themselves.”

“It's not what you think.”

“Then let me read it.”

“Sorry?”

“I'm not your girlfriend, right? So you have no reason to make up stories.”

“All right.”

I grabbed my cell phone, opened my text messages, and handed it over to her, like a robot.

Even now I can't believe I did it.

She read the text.

No expression whatsover.

She handed me back my cell phone.

I reread the text, as if I couldn't remember it.

 

Well? You're not going to say anything about the “wrong number” message I sent you on purpose?

 

We sat in silence for something like a couple of minutes.