The things well never ha.., p.13
The Things We'll Never Have, page 13
In the many versions of what I have imagined life to be like if Bernardo had lived, he always forgets what happened—or did not happen—between Gualtiero and me. He falls in love with the idea of becoming a father. He welcomes the task like he has always known Vittorio would set to be the brightest light of his life. We might even have a second child by now, a sibling for our boy. A girl, just like Bernardo and his sister, only our little girl would see.
Yet Bernardo is not here.
I don’t need anybody to break their silence and speak directly to me to know the impact Bernardo’s death has had on people. Not that I have been first in line to watch. Once my belly confirmed the rumors that I was expecting a child, I was let go from the postal office, and it became harder to hear or see all that was happening.
This would have been very bad if it hadn’t been for the shoe factory that came to my assistance. They didn’t mind the scandal as long as twice a week they could drop off supplies and pick up shoes sewn. At first, life was precarious and food was scarce until the job became more familiar and I could manage more. Eventually, it gave me a decent enough wage, if you could call just enough to survive a wage.
Carlo has been a saving grace, delivering food, avoiding words other than the most vital ones, supporting me more through his actions than words, but he has never told his wife that he is helping me as the town had once helped the German.
His wife, Bernardo and Olivia’s mother, is wound too tight. Once in a while, she snaps. Completely understandably when her son died, though what she did after could hardly be called understandable. It was back when they were still looking for his body. She cooked pans and pans of minestra, ladled it into little blue bowls, and set the bowls along the edge of the street, like beacons of home-cooked aroma to guide him home.
The bowls would get left out till late in the night, when, people presumed, Carlo would slip out after she had fallen asleep and collect them up. Nobody else dared to touch them. Not because they did not want to help—they did. It was because nobody wanted to see her go through that kind of anguish, but nobody dared make her anguish worse by touching a single bowl. They would not even intervene if a dog came along to enjoy an extra dinner. The dogs did not care about her mental status, only their bellies.
She snapped in the war, too. That is what they say, anyway, after she had given her precious duce everything she owned, and he still wanted more. At that point, most people would have admitted he had let them all down. Instead, she had tried to come up with more to give him—more, even though there would be nothing left.
She planted vegetables in the piazza—right there on the cobbles. She wanted to feed the German because that way she was pleasing her duce.
Because of how she loses her mind, everyone tries to appease her—they hide things from her. Nobody would deliberately cause her pain.
Everleigh
The shops are shut. My attempt at finding a place to watch for Gualtiero has led me to spend money unwisely and unproductively. My next foray will be to find the house where the man claiming to be Gualtiero lives with his family, who happen to share names with the family I’d meant to become part of and who so lovingly kicked me out of their home.
I thought I was getting the hang of the town but, it would appear, things aren’t where I think them to be. I end up taking a very long and very quiet walking tour of the town, mostly residential streets. When I step onto a road of warehouses, I turn around. Not to have too vivid an imagination, but a foreign girl could get taken and never seen again.
I’m just about to give up and try to find my way back to the hotel when a side street looks vaguely familiar. One more turn and bingo! I’ve found the right place. The large gate entrance where I’d sat and cried, the balcony of flowers where I’d first seen my non-mother-in-law. The right place, but what, exactly, I could do about it—well, I hadn’t thought that through. I didn’t dare knock or call—there was no reason in the world for them to open the door to a foreigner they’d removed from their home two days before. I can’t just stand here, either, so I walk by, just willing my Gualtiero to appear magically in the street.
He doesn’t, so I circle the block. On the way around, I pass a café that is open. I’m truly starved, and it’s clearly lunchtime because I hear the sounds of knives and forks clattering on plates, dishes being washed, but I don’t know how to order food in a café. Is it like the hotel where they just bring me whatever they think I should eat? I’m not sure. I carry on walking past, and hopeless as it sounds, I walk around three times before I decide that yes, I can stand in the street and watch the gate and balcony. And maybe, just maybe, my Gualtiero will show his face.
Marta
When Vittorio falls asleep, I close the door. The kitchen and workroom are as empty as always, my loneliness so deep I could lie on the stone floor and weep. But mood, emotion, longing do not change the way things are. Only actions can do that.
I pick the camera up from its shelf for the second time this week. Its energy is calling me even more clearly now. I don’t know what it wants to tell me, but this time I am at least willing to listen.
It’s an inanimate object. It did not command my and Bernardo’s joy of being together; it did not engineer a false betrayal—those things were done by people. For the first time since Carlo brought it here, I open the lid. If I had imagined something nefarious or benevolent would happen, I would have been wrong. It just opens and stays there, waiting for me to look through its right-angle lens.
If Bernardo were here, how would he use it? What would he take photographs of? For sure, he would take plenty of Vittorio. I don’t have any of Vittorio. I am the only family Vittorio has—that acknowledges him, anyway. From out of nowhere, I am grieving. How could I have done this—had a camera all these years and never once put the past behind me to use it?
All the solitude, all the backs turned, the opportunities destroyed, none of which would have happened if Bernardo had not died. His death has caused me every grief, every grief I have suffered because of his death. He chose to jump. I hate him for doing it. I hate him for choosing to leave me. I berate myself for all the times I have imagined him still alive, sitting across from me, and how silly I have been because if that dream could come true, if we could change the dial on the clock, if he were here to walk back through my door, I would not have a single photograph of Vittorio to show him.
Olivia
“You must know the weather,” Armando says when I arrive for my morning cappuccino. “You must feel how humid the day will be, and you adjust how you grind the coffee. Sometimes the grinds need to be finer, sometimes coarser.”
It does not matter that I drink cappuccino in the morning; I can still taste if he has made a good cup of coffee. It also does not matter that he has told me this a thousand times before.
“I made a flower in the froth for you.” He guides my fingers to the cup and leaves his hand on mine for a moment, a friendly gesture.
“Oh, it’s beautiful, thank you!”
“You humor me. I made a really poor job of it. I bet you could not even taste it was a flower.”
“Who knows what you will slip into my drink when I am not paying attention. But go—you are neglecting your other customers. You had better take care of them before you lose your job.”
“The boss hasn’t got sick of me yet. What are your plans today?” His tone stiffens. I hear disapproval. What, does he think my time would be better spent painting, or a bit of embroidery perhaps?
“A bit of this and that,” I say in a playful tone. I want him to go back to having fun.
“Is that what you call it?” It is a whisper, an utterance under his breath, but I hear it anyway.
“What do you call what?” He can’t know what I do all day, stuck as he is in the bar with his old men and TV until evening.
“Let me get Marco to run the business for the day,” he says. “We will go to the river, for old time’s sake. Talk about Bernardo and the good old days.”
I did not expect him to say that. For a moment, I am transported back to when the pack lived daily adventures. I would give anything to go back to those days, but without Bernardo, it will never happen. “How about you stay and carry on making that splendid coffee of yours? Not even Marco can make a coffee like you can. You’d go out of business. Talking of going out of business, has Papà been by to pay my bill lately?”
“Yes, yes, yes. He comes all the time. Don’t you worry.”
“I am grown up. One of these days, I should start paying my own bill.”
“You’d be bankrupt in a week, everything you drink here. Your poor Papà has to sell a lot of apples for you. Here, have this brioche. On the house, a favorite-customer bonus.”
Armando gets his brioche from the same bakery we do, and yet it tastes better.
The sweet flavor of it and the brioche follow me to Ricci’s. I have not seen him since that little disagreement. I hope he has forgotten because I need his comfort—surely he won’t be difficult again, not twice in one week.
He takes his time opening the door. It is a lingering kind of day, I suppose. His waves are smooth, not frantic, quite like the lap of waves after a boat has passed.
I don’t want to linger; people probably already talk. As if that should intimidate me, considering everything I know about everyone in this town. Everyone has something they think they can hide.
He puts his hand upon my arm. “Come.” That’s all he has to say. Dismal, like someone has been taken sick, he’s been robbed, his mother has died.
The clatter of a chain and metal against glass tell me he has turned the door sign to Closed. He guides me but not to the stairs. From the turns he pushes me around, I know he has rearranged the clothing racks and mannequins.
When I think we are far enough in from the window not to be seen, I say, “Did you lose your job, too?” He doesn’t laugh at my joke. I agree it is not funny, and I know he cannot know I have just teased Armando about the same thing, but he could oblige me. Armando did.
“Olivia, you know how much I care about you.”
He is leaving me. Why have I not seen this coming? Am I that full of myself, blind to the situation? But I feel his touch, the way he cannot help himself when he is with me. He has to say something; I refuse.
“Amore, I implore you. I beg you. Marry me.” He takes my face in his hands, tugs me toward him. The urgency. The ground shifts beneath my feet, air evaporates, shocked as I am, refusing to enter my lungs.
Twice in one week.
I try to shake my head, but he holds it too tight. I back away, but he draws me to him. His tongue forces my lips apart. Urgent. See? He can’t give me up. I don’t have to say yes.
I cup my hands at his waist, push my chest against his, kiss him back. I need him to take me upstairs. I push in that direction, but my actions break whatever spell he is under.
“I know you love me.” His words are frantic and true. “If Bernardo was alive, would you marry me?”
“That’s not fair.” I pull back.
“Olivia? Would you? If he had not died?”
“How can you expect me to live a happy, jolly life if he cannot live at all?”
His breathing is heavy, but it does not sound like it is from passion. More like defeat.
“You cannot live your life and deprive my life for a ghost.” He is angry. “Either marry me or we are over.”
There are daggers in my heart. I am suffocating. The clothing racks are closing in on me. Everything is dark. Not just through my eyes but through my heart, too. He tries not to let me pass him, but I push harder. He can’t stop me any more than he can make me marry him.
I break free from him and walk toward the door, but I crash into a mannequin. It falls—the metal slide of hangers on a rail, the padded crash of the clothing rack collapsing. Another step, I trip on the debris of the carnage I have created, fall into something and bang my head. Merda, it hurts. Before another step, I thrash my hands out to find a path, jar my finger against the same thing (a shelf?) that I bashed my head on—lucky I did not hit my glasses.
Ricci’s hands are on my waist. Will he pull me back? No, he guides me to the door. I walk through it in too much of a hurry and bump into someone. They are eating a gelato. It lands on my foot. “Scusate, non volevo.” I kick the ice cream off and walk away, right into someone else. Confusion follows, voices. I reach out to make sure I have the buildings to my left. Why is it so hard to get through?
I know I have to walk cautiously, but I cannot. My foot kicks another person’s leg, probably the same person whose back I bumped into, urgent voices—I cannot make out what they are saying, quick footsteps, more shuffling and confusion. I still do not slow down, but by some fortune, the way appears clear now.
Only when I am almost at the door to my family’s shop do I sense someone has walked ahead of me, clearing the way, but I do not know who would do that, and I do not have the mind to find out.
Everleigh
Despite how long it took me to find Gualtiero’s family’s home and then find my way back to the hotel after, where I could barely stand to wait for Tangerine Shoes to serve my dinner, I find Marta’s house, making only two wrong turns.
Yesterday was a full day of getting nowhere. There is no doubt I need her help.
The chickens announce my arrival, but Marta obviously doesn’t hear because she doesn’t answer the door. I knock again. The house isn’t huge, so anyone home should be able to hear me. I listen as I wait. Hearing nothing from the house but that rushing water again, much louder than I would have expected for the stream—ditch, actually.
Nobody is home. I look in the window, my hand flat above my forehead like a sailor looking for shore. I see less than I could through a keyhole; a lace curtain stifles my view.
I decide, instead, to investigate the source of the rushing water. No harm in taking a look, even though the chickens clearly disapprove and screech at my decision. Tough luck, my feathered friends, I’m going to get the hang of exploring new places.
I get almost to the bridge when Marta calls from her door, which is now wide open.
But she hadn’t been there. Oh, but if she had, she saw me look in her window! I’m none too pleased at being found out, but I shrug it off. I’d insist it’s a British thing, but how does one go about saying that?
“I didn’t think you were home.”
“Come. I make coffee.”
Perhaps she didn’t see me snooping then. But if she didn’t, Vittorio surely did, because she waves at someone behind me—he is across the yard building some kind of fort with rocks and sticks.
The sky is bright, but it is a chilly day, and she has a nice fire in the stove. The kitchen smells of wood smoke and leather. Her workbench is piled high on one end with leather cutouts, stitched pieces on the other end.
She puts water in the bottom of a Moka pot just like the one Gualtiero uses and spoons the coffee grounds into the filter. I hover near her shelves, looking for the pink camera that is no longer there.
“What else do you know about this man of yours?” That’s a good sign. She seems as eager as I to get to the bottom of this mystery.
“He didn’t talk that much about his family. I mostly learned what I know from the letters.”
Marta shuffles the items on her counter as she clearly ponders her next move. Then, with a kind tone, a kindness that contrasts with her dubious welcome and delay in opening the door, “I help you.”
She waves a hand at the table for me to sit. She wipes something off the counter, dries her hands, then sits across from me.
“You show me the other letters.”
“I’ve been trying to get them in order. I don’t want to mix them up again.”
“You said you know things from the letters. If you want me to know, I need to read them, too.” She is irritated, and she is also right, yet I hesitate to pull them out. She waits a few moments for me to offer up the letters, then says, “You start with telling me all about you and your man.”
“How will that help?”
“I don’t know yet. You talk; we find a plan.”
Where do you begin telling a stranger about your relationship? Which bits do you keep in, and which do you leave out?
“Like I said, we met on the merry-go-round. Rather random, really. Mum and I spent the day together at the Battersea Funfair, and we happened to be on the same ride. He was quite audacious, gawking at me.”
“When?”
“Early afternoon.”
“No, I mean which year, month?”
“It was 1962. September.” This is promising. She is asking astute questions.
“September? 1962, huh?” She shakes her head as though that means nothing to her.
“Somehow we got talking—”
“Where had he been before he met you?”
“I’m not sure, to visit a friend, I think.”
“No, I mean months, years, weeks—how long had he been in England?”
“A few years, I suppose. I don’t know much about that time. When he reminisced, it more often was about Italy.”
The Moka pot bubbles, and she pours the coffee into miniature espresso cups. I dredge for things I am willing to share that might in some way jog Marta into coming up with a plan. If nothing else, it prompts her to ask a lot of questions. In the hope that we are making progress, I find myself able to talk about Gualtiero without having to look like my heart is broken, which lifts a weight I haven’t realized I carried.
Marta
London is on my mind. So is the camera—it is such a symbol of everything that fell apart, and yet I yearn to use it. When Everleigh shows up at my home, I have already decided I must buy film to record Vittorio’s first day at school.
I should be working, but it is an opportunity perhaps to learn about her life in London. I think often of returning there. It was a bad life when the war started, but I have good memories before that. And there is a chance that people will accept us. They would never need to know I was not married.
