100 Days of Happiness (13 page)

“L
ucio, I've fallen in love.”

That, of course, is Oscar talking. His audience, aside from me, is the Sinhalese sous chef who listens as he deftly assembles rows of mini tiramisus.

“That's certainly a piece of good news.”

“Yes, it is, but there's also a piece of bad news to go with it.”

“What's the bad news?”

“She has a boyfriend.”

The word “boyfriend” used in relation to Martina/Miss Marple makes me smile.

“What do you mean ‘She has a boyfriend'? Didn't you say she was a widow?”

“She's a widow with a boyfriend. He's a retired engineer who lives in Milan. They see each other once a month.”

“So?”

“So last night we kissed, but then she ran away. This morning she texted me. She said that she really likes me, but she's confused.”

The plot thickens. It sounds like a puppy-love story between a pair of fifteen-year-olds.

“That's a classic. What did you text back?”

“I might have been a little direct. I wrote her: ‘I love you. Dump the guy from Milan.'”

“Nice, that's the way you do it—manly and decisive. Did she reply?”

“No, but it was because she'd used up the credit on her phone card, but then she called me back on her grandson's cell phone.”

Oscar's ability to build up suspense in the stories he tells is well known.

“Oscar, get to the point.”

“Well, so now I'm on probation. This is a runoff election with the engineer.”

“A runoff election?”

“That's right, she says that she's undecided, that she doesn't know me, that she's not sure she's ready to leave a man she's been seeing for two years for what might be a flash in the pan. And that she doesn't even know if there's sexual chemistry between us.”

“The lady really talk like that?” asks the Sinhalese, his interest piqued only by the spicier aspects of the conversation.

“You mind your own business and get back to work,” Oscar chastises him. “She said that she'd really like to go to bed with me, but that she's not sure she's ready to cheat on the Milanese.”

“I've heard the same excuse ever since I entered puberty. But after a while, if you court them a little, their objections give way.”

“You think I don't know that? On Saturday night I'm taking her out to the movies. And we'll see what happens. You haven't said anything to Paola, have you?”

“Not a word.”

“Let's see how things go before worrying her. I don't know how she'd react if I started seeing another woman.”

“I think she'd just be happy for you.”

“I certainly hope so, Lucio
mio
. How are you doing?”

“I'm surviving,” I reply with a forced smile.

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I'm afraid not.”

We stand there looking at each other for a moment.

“It's not right, Lucio. This should be happening to me. I've lived my life, done what I wanted to, I'm seventy and some change. It should be my turn to die. I swear, if I could do it, I'd take your place.”

I sense that he's speaking the truth. We hug. I've never hugged my father-in-law. I sink into him. And I feel right at home.

M
y heart recently beat for the billionth and a half time. An important occasion given the fact that, statistically speaking, our most important organ beats three billion times before starting to sputter and die. The heart has a specific sell-by date, just like an alkaline battery, and that's why athletes often die earlier: they raise the number of heartbeats per minute and therefore consume more vital energy. My heart has already pumped along for forty years, which is to say, 14,540 days (including leap years), which is very respectable mileage.

In these past forty years I've slept 116,320 hours, watched 31,410 hours of television, eaten 4,945 pounds of bread, 9,452 bananas, and, unfortunately, 11,234 doughnuts.

I've owned four cars, six bikes, and seven mopeds.

I own 342 books, a thousand or so comic books, 58 vinyl records, and 153 CDs.

I've made roughly twenty-five thousand phone calls.

I've gotten 327 haircuts (one time I had it all shaved off).

I've watched 2,316 movies and been to see 288 plays and shows.

I've gotten drunk only four times: once was in Paris.

I've lusted after my neighbor's wife every single day of my life.

I've been to bed with 43 different women. I've made love with Paola roughly six hundred times, and she beats them all as the absolute unrivaled winner.

I've attended nine funerals of close relatives and friends, and thirty-one weddings.

Doing all these calculations cost me an entire afternoon.

Why I bothered to do them I couldn't say. I started out thinking “Now I'm going to add up the numbers of my life,” then I got sucked into this childish game. And I discovered that my life, reckoned in cold data, makes me feel kind of sad.

It's seventy-seven days to the end, and all I did today was waste time. Right now, the only number that matters is seventy-seven. The diet I'm on is making me lose weight visibly and I feel like a lion. A wounded lion, but a lion nonetheless.

“L
ucio! I won the race!” Oscar shouts into the phone. “Martina has decided to break up with the guy from Milan and let me court her.”

“Didn't she want to see if there was sexual chemistry first?” I ask, my curiosity aroused.

“We checked it out last night. And don't worry, we've got it,” my enthusiastic father-in-law replies.

I smile. I'm truly happy for him.

“Listen,” he continues, “what do you say I come over for dinner with Martina tonight? At midnight we could drink a toast to Paola's birthday and then you both could meet her.”

Tomorrow is my wife's birthday. I've always arranged something for her. But this time I don't know what to do.

“Very gladly. What should I tell Paola?”

“That I'm bringing a friend. Just say it's a woman I know. Keep it vague.”

“Does she have any dietary requirements I should know about?”

“Thank God she's an omnivore.”

“Excellent. We'll see you at nine.”

I hang up and talk to Paola about it. I keep it vague but she figures it out instantly and the questions come with rapid fire.

“Just who is this Martina? What does she do? Do you like her? Do you know her?”

She seems like a mother worried about her son much more than a daughter concerned about her elderly father. The good thing is that
she seems to be okay with the idea that Oscar is seeing another woman. That wasn't a given, in spite of the fact that it's been ten years since her mother died.

 * * * 

At nine o'clock, we're anxiously awaiting the two lovebirds. We've put out the good silver and the cloth napkins. I've cooked a chicken curry worthy of
MasterChef
and a side dish of wok-fried tender green vegetables. A light dinner to keep me feeling good and, especially, to keep my father-in-law from falling asleep over dessert. The children—who, unfortunately for them, never met their real grandmother—are excited. The new arrival has been announced to them as “grandpa's girlfriend,” and without ever having met her, they've already adopted her as their own. Eva asks whether she likes animals and Lorenzo wants to know if an adopted grandmother gives Christmas presents.

When the doorbell rings, they look like a well-trained team, ready to swarm onto the field and put on an excellent show. I have to stifle my laughter as I open the door to the sight of Oscar in jacket and tie and Martina made up and wearing far too much perfume, stinking up the landing.

We have a great time at dinner. We learn that Martina is a former high school art history teacher, and, as she'd told me, she sometimes fills in for her granddaughter Claudia, who is a part-time tour guide. She has two children and four grandchildren, and she's the widow of a general in the Guardia di Finanza, Italy's financial police.

“Among other things, I found out that her husband audited me in 1991 because I wasn't giving my customers receipts. That is, most of my customers. I found the documentation, with his signature.”

This coincidence makes Oscar laugh and laugh and it embarrasses Martina slightly; she is also unmistakably pained by the memory of her late husband. I change the subject and the evening sails merrily along for a couple of hours. Lorenzo and Eva show the lady
their room and Eva overwhelms her with a river of words until Paola finally comes to her rescue.

“What do you think of her?” Oscar asks me the minute we're alone.

“She seems nice.”

“She doesn't seem nice, she
is
nice. And you have no idea what she's like in bed. A panther.”

I look down the hall at Miss Marple and have a hard time picturing her in fishnet stockings with a riding crop.

“She's already told me,” my father-in-law goes on, “that we can't get married; otherwise she'll lose the benefits from her husband's pension. Which is fine with me.”

I love it when he mixes topics and summarizes them.

The evening continues with a game of charades, each team captained by one of the two kids, males against females. My team loses because Lorenzo and Oscar fail to guess
Saving Private Ryan
in spite of my particularly brilliant performance as a mime.

At midnight, Paola blows out the candles on a cake filled with exotic fruit that Oscar brought. The children applaud, I film it with my iPhone. In short, we are happy. The shadow hovering over our family has left us in peace tonight.

When the two overgrown lovebirds say good night, as Paola puts our two out-of-control heirs to bed, I stay behind and clean up the kitchen. I nibble at some leftover cake, in clear violation of my restricted diet. Then I sit down. I breathe deeply. My lungs are on fire. I can't seem to choke back the tears. It was a great night. And that only makes me suffer more. This is how all my moments of sadness will be from now on: good and sad.

A little later I join Paola, who's already in bed. I slip between the sheets and smell her. I'm so in love with the scent of her. She smells like apples. I don't touch her. I know it's not time yet. Tomorrow will be the time. For her birthday I've planned a special evening. This time I won't fail.

M
y romantic plans have already been dashed halfway through breakfast, when Paola announces that she's made plans to go out for dinner with her best friends. The women will celebrate her birthday together. My feelings are hurt and I try to think of a way to reverse the outcome, though it's clear that I've been defeated. I come up with an idea, a gift that will astound her when she comes home tonight.

I go out and head straight for the hobbyist-novelist Roberto's bookshop.

“Do you have a copy of
The Little Prince
?”

“Of course!”

“I don't mean an ordinary copy. I want an old one, a special one. A collector's item, is what I'm trying to say.”

“I have exactly what you need.”

I never doubted it for a minute.

He ducks into a cubbyhole piled high with books, which exudes that particular smell of paper and glue I love so much. He reemerges a few minutes later with a copy in his hand, yellowed with age and slightly curved.

“This is the French first edition, from 1943. It came out just a few days after the English translation. But because the author was French, if you ask me, this is the first edition. It's a gift.”

I insist on paying but he won't listen. He understands it's for an important occasion. And he's right, it is.

I agree to accept the gift, but only if he'll let me buy him breakfast at least once. I leave him five euros along with the twenty euros for the purchase of the new novel he's just finished. It's titled
Unchained Love
and it is the sad story of an affair between a black slave and the young daughter of the family that owns him. Once again, a plot that smacks of déjà vu, but all the same, I'm glad to buy the book.

 * * * 

I sit up waiting for Paola to come home. I gift-wrapped the book with a red bow and laid it on her pillow.

When she comes into the bedroom, she's dead tired and for ten minutes she doesn't even notice the gift. She only notices it when she's about to slip between the sheets.

“So what's this?”

“It's for you. Happy birthday,
amore mio
.”

She doesn't blink an eye. She opens it. She looks at it.

I feel sure her heart is swelling with emotion.

I expect her to say: “Darling, what a magnificent gift! Where on earth did you find it?”

Instead, she says: “I already have this book. And my copy's in better shape. You need to return it; did you hold on to the receipt?”

Then she settles in for the night with a simple “Good night.”

That's what's called a woman with personality.

After all, that's part of why I married her.

I
don't seem able to work up a sufficient state of sadness. I try hard to be sadder than I am.

I feel apathetic, but not sad. As if this miserable turn of events had nothing to do with me personally.

Today I went upstairs to the roof deck of the apartment building and I set up a sun bed. I turned off my cell phone. I stretched out in shorts and a T-shirt. My eyes are glued to the clouds embracing in the sky, shifting into gleaming white Rorschach blots and then dissolving.

I stayed there for a good four or five hours.

Motionless as a castaway.

I'd have stayed there forever.

I'm officially depressed.

T
onight Lorenzo and Eva are going over to their grandfather's to have dinner and sleep over; Paola's going to the movie theater with two old girlfriends of hers to see an independent film; and I'm staying home alone. It's not something that happens often.

I phone Umberto and Corrado and I organize a super spaghetti fest, just like in the old days. A kilo of carbonara between the three of us. Yes, I know, it's full of white flour, eggs, and plenty of other toxins. But we can't do without it. Pasta alla carbonara is like an old lover, and it's comforting to see it again—every now and then. It's enjoyable before, during, and after, because the complex digestion of that funky blend of flavors works to stun and blur the mind in the way a good strong joint does. We chat, stretched out on the sofas the way we used to do in high school, with a little jazz on the stereo and my coughing in the background.

“Why don't they let you use your cell phone during flight? Does it really interfere with the instruments?” Umberto asks our favorite airline pilot.

“If it really was dangerous, we certainly wouldn't rely on the common sense of the passengers to make sure they were turned off; we'd simply confiscate them during boarding,” Corrado replies. “The real issue is that the speed of the plane would shift the calls from one cell tower to another and result in a series of missed calls and a jammed phone network. In the future, who knows. There are already airlines that offer wi-fi on board so you can use Skype to call people.”

I say nothing, utterly indifferent to the future of the telephone industry. I cough again.

“How's the pain?” Umberto asks me.

“It's there. I've done some new tests. The condition of my lungs is deteriorating by the week. I've decided to cut out the diet. Or at least not to follow such a drastic one.”

“That's the right thing to do,” Corrado agrees. “From what I understand, it had become a palliative.”

We've agreed to talk in unvarnished terms about my disease, without metaphors or euphemisms.

“I'm a dead man anyway. It's only a matter of time. I might as well eat whatever I like. Ah, there's one more thing you ought to know.”

“What's that?” asks my personal veterinarian.

“I'm depressed. I've never been depressed in my life, but I'm pretty sure I've spotted the symptoms.”

“When my mother was depressed, after my father died,” Corrado tells me, “I tried to give her plenty of things to do, so she'd fill up her day. That's the only thing you can do in these cases.”

“I have plenty of things to do—it's just that I don't feel like doing them.”

“Can I offer a suggestion?” Umberto breaks in.

“Certainly.”

“Go talk to my psychologist. Dr. Santoro—he's a genius.”

“What for? So he can con me out of two hundred euros a session?”

“Aside from the fact that he charges a hundred thirty and he gives you a receipt too, so you can deduct it as a medical expense, he's a person who actually helps you. Or at least it works for me.”

“Excuse me, but how many years have you been going to see him?” I ask him, skeptically.

“Almost ten years,” he replies, proudly.

“Just think what shape you'd be in if you'd never gone!” Corrado
says with a hint of sarcasm, beating me to the punch by a fraction of a second.

I remind Umberto that I've always considered psychologists to be people without any true calling, more or less like politicians.

“Do as you please,” he retorts; “I think that it might do you good to talk to him.”

Just then, Paola comes home from her night out with her girlfriends. She's kind of giddy and excited.

“Talk to whom?”

“Umberto recommended I go talk to his psychologist.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” says my wife, smiling at Umberto, who smiles back.

She tells everyone, as if I weren't there, how apathetic I've become since I found out about my cancer and stopped working.

I sit there, lost in thought. A psychologist. Huh.