100 Days of Happiness (28 page)

W
e're driving along the Via Aurelia at moderate speed, with the windows rolled down. I feel like Vittorio Gassman as Bruno Cortona in Dino Risi's masterpiece,
Il sorpasso
, the archetype of all road movies. I drive doing my best to ignore the stabbing pain in my ribs that leaves me breathless. Paola is by my side dozing off while we leave Tuscany behind and triumphantly enter Liguria. Eva's asleep too, slumped against Lorenzo, who sits alertly watching the road and the signage.

“Don't speed, Papà, they have speed cameras here.”

“Thanks.”

Just then we see a car coming toward us in the opposite direction. It flashes its brights.

“What did that man want?”

“He was just warning us that there's a speed trap farther on, a highway patrol squad car. You slow down because you see the speed camera, then you speed up right afterward. And the highway patrol is waiting to give you a ticket.”

“But why did that guy warn you? Do you know him?”

“It's an old Italian tradition. Everyone united against the police and the Carabinieri.”

“But why?”

“Good question. Because we're Italian. And we all have something to hide. Breaking the law really is the only thing we all have in common.”

“Do you break the law too, Papà?”

As usual, I've wandered heedlessly into a minefield. Even if it may prove to be less than edifying, I decide to tell the truth as we sail past a checkpoint where the police ignore us.

“Sometimes. But I try not to.”

“What crimes do you commit?”

“Crimes may be overstating it. Let's just say transgressions. There are all kinds of transgressions; for instance, this morning when the proprietor of the hotel asked me if I wanted an official receipt and I said no. He gave us a discount.”

“But a discount is a good thing, isn't it?”

“Sure, but that means he was trying to avoid paying taxes, and I was his accomplice.”

“That doesn't seem like a very serious crime.”

“That's the problem with Italy, Lorenzo. Crimes that don't seem serious. For example, bootleg movies. How many of those do you download?”

“Lots. Just cartoons, though. Why, is that a crime?”

“A very serious one. It's called theft. It's as if you were shoplifting at the supermarket.”

“If I shoplift at the supermarket, the alarm will go off when I try to leave. But at home no one can see me.”

“Correct answer. That's why everyone downloads movies and very few people steal from the supermarket. Because no one can see you. Do you know how you can tell the difference between an honest man and a criminal? By how they act when no one can see them. Don't forget that.”

I'm proud of my impromptu civics lesson. Only now do I notice that Paola is awake and heard the whole thing. She can't wait for a chance to put in a little lesson of her own.

“For example, when no one's looking, Papà sneaks into the kitchen and eats some Parmesan cheese.”

“That might have happened once,” I defend myself.

“And when you were little, he also used to steal your baby food.”

“It was good . . .”

“And your teething biscuits.”

“Delicious. Even though it wasn't technically stealing because I paid for them in the first place.”

“But you bought them for me,” Lorenzo points out.

“I was just tasting them to make sure they were good—I'm a protective father.”

“You tasted them because you're a gluttonous piggy,” says my wife.

“What are you talking about? At the very most I might have eaten one or two.”

“One or two? You had a secret box all your own hidden in your sock drawer.”

“You knew about that?”

“Who did you think was washing your socks? The Holy Ghost?”

I wish this conversation could go on forever. One of the finest things in life is a family argument. The kind that drips intimacy and love. The Via Aurelia continues to slide past beneath us like a conveyor belt, and I'm one happy driver.

I
watch Paola and the kids walking ahead of me through the narrow lanes, or
caruggi,
of Genoa. There is a special, untouchable bond linking the three of them together. It's been clear to me for years that I'm strictly on the sidelines, accepted, maybe even beloved, but excluded from that magical umbilical cord that never breaks between mother and children. By now all the tests on child psychology, widely published in summer editions of popular magazines, make it clear that during a pregnancy, a mother nourishes the fetus not only from the culinary point of view but also spiritually, creating an eternal and affectionate elective affinity. Their souls share nine months of life, their hearts synchronized to their joys and sorrows. Two human beings living together, exchanging feelings, memories, and dreams. But also, maybe I didn't try hard enough.

How can a papà who shows up after nine months of this continual imprinting hope to compete? The English word for this prenatal relationship is
bonding
and doctors urge mothers to nourish the little candidate for birth with fresh air, classical music, plenty of art, and pleasant emotions.

I go on watching the trio from a distance. Paola stops at a stall that sells focaccia from Recco, possibly the world's finest cheese focaccia, though my naturopath considers it the world's most lethal. Paola gestures to me from afar, asking if I'd like some. I nod yes. Lorenzo is saying something to Eva, who in turn laughs. Suddenly it strikes me that what I'm looking at is, quite simply, the future. I've just caught a glimpse for a few minutes of my family without me.

My family without me.

It sounds like the title of a terrible song.

I head over to the focaccia stall, doing a natural zoom on my wife's face as she offers me a piece of hot focaccia. I bite into it and savor the taste. The melted cheese drips down my chin and T-shirt. This snack gives me time to think things over and size up the situation.

Is there anything I want to do in the ten days that remain of this journey?

I don't know. The kids are having fun but I still have no idea of how I'm going to win back Paola.

Paola says something to me but I can't hear her. So she says it again.

“Everything okay?”

I reply promptly: “Of course,
amore mio
. Shall we go to the aquarium?”

Eva's shouts of joy make it clear that the decision has been made.

“T
oday we're going to complete the ‘maritime explorer' phase of the journey and visit the cetacean sanctuary.”

“What's that? A church for whales?” Eva asks, looking up at me as we walk along, hand in hand. She's still excited after our visit to the aquarium yesterday. She has a point—it's a confusing name.

“No, it's an area of the Ligurian Sea populated by dolphins, whales, and turtles.”

“I want a turtle at home! Like the one we saw yesterday.”

“We can't take it away from its natural habitat. It's a sea turtle.”

“They've already taken it away. It's in an aquarium!”

Again, that's a solid point. We're out on a mission, to buy morning pastries—
cornetti
—for the rest of the family. They aren't as good as the ones my father-in-law makes, but they'll do. Yesterday's hotel breakfast was so depressing that today we're hunting for something yummy in the area.

 * * * 

Two hours later we, and thirty others, board a small vessel for a whale-watching tour.

Lorenzo is more passionately interested in the workings of the boat than in our impending encounter with the Mediterranean Sea's largest cetaceans. Paola is unusually relaxed. These days, I feel like a tour operator eager to amuse his customers with novel and original
treats. Today, everyone understands, the excursion is designed to appeal to Eva's love of nature and animals.

 * * * 

The first ones to come and call on us are the dolphins. They pirouette in the water, chasing after our boat like performers in Cirque du Soleil who've been practicing their routine for years. It's all so beautiful that it hardly seems real.

The sun and salt air are baking me, but today I don't find it quite so tiring. I make an effort to breathe in slowly, while my daughter squeals with joy as she runs along the ship's railing. I inhale and exhale, and repeat. I listen to the ragged breath that's like a giant spray filling my damaged lungs.

I turn around and I'm greeted by a simply incredible spectacle: an enormous whale is swimming alongside the ship, spouting seawater like a geyser. I'm all alone on this side of the vessel; everyone else has hurried over to watch the highly entertaining dolphins on the far side. I feel the urge to pull my Polaroid out of my backpack, but I seem to have fallen into a trance. The huge mammal watches me. Its mastodonic eye stares at me with determination. I smile at it but it doesn't understand. It seems to want to tell me something. We study each other with care, to the background sound of chattering acrobatic dolphins. It bobs along next to the boat with no apparent effort. I can clearly hear it breathing. It's a moment of infinite peace.

For a few minutes I consider the idea of leaping into the water beside him and vanishing forever. It might be a more elegant way to go. Eva then comes running, the second passenger to spot our fellow traveler. She shouts: “A whale! Over here!”

Everyone rushes to the other side of the boat, making it roll dangerously. So long, infinite peace.

The timid cetacean promptly submerges, putting an end to the
show. We encounter no other denizens of the deep for the rest of the morning. By the time we get back to port, it's long past lunchtime. Eva's happy: she's counted twelve dolphins, four seagulls, and a whale. I feel calmer, as if the giant cetacean had transmitted some of its Zen serenity to me.

B
reakfast by the water. Paola is doing a crossword puzzle, I'm reading reports on an upcoming soccer championship season I'll never live to see, while Eva and Lorenzo have undertaken the construction of an outsized, overambitious sand castle that is unlikely to be there when the sun comes up tomorrow. We could be taken for any ordinary vacationing family. All we lack is an inflatable dinghy or a rubber mattress in the shape of a crocodile. Today is my birthday. We've decided to celebrate it with lunch at the best restaurant in the area. I never expected my fortieth birthday to be like this. I stand up from my beach chair and drop the newspaper.

“Lorenzo! Eva! Shall we play a game together?”

I don't have to ask twice.

A marble race.

First we build the track. Eva sits on the ground and Lorenzo and I drag her by the legs to shape the sand, making a track of parabolic curves, tunnels, ditches, and booby traps.

“Let me explain the rules to you. There are three qualification laps in which we count how many times you have to flick the marble to get around the course. The one with the fewest finger flicks wins the privilege of starting. Then we do five race laps, one flick per turn.”

I pull out a bag of marbles. I've guarded them jealously over the years, the same ones I've always had, scratched and worn. I'm a champion at this game, as I am at all games requiring a precise finger flick, but I reel myself in to give the kids a chance to compete. In the end,
Lorenzo wins, Eva comes in second, and I'm third. When we go eat in a seaside trattoria, we're sweaty and excited. I ask for a rematch soon, and my kids agree.

At the end of the meal a cake is brought to the table with two candles in the shape of numbers on top: a 4 and a 0. I hurry to blow them out and I pretend to be delighted while the rest of the family applauds and sings a chorus of “Happy Birthday to You.”

When we get back to the room, while Paola's taking a shower, I rummage through her suitcase in search of a phone charger because mine seems to have disappeared.

Under a pile of blouses and a pair of high heels in a carry bag, what I find isn't the phone charger. What I find is a letter. A yellowed piece of paper with a few moisture spots, torn out of a lined notebook. A letter I wrote to Paola. Twelve years ago. Possibly the last letter I wrote before getting sucked into the arid and obscene dictatorship of e-mail.

I step out onto the balcony and reread it. I can barely remember what I wrote.

Caro amore mio,

Well, the day is almost upon us. Tomorrow we're getting married. Don't be late—I'm always sorry for those husbands-to-be who have to wait outside the church and have to put up with the unfailing razzing of their so-so-funny friends: “If you ask me, she's changed her mind!” I'm sure to be emotional, possibly tired, and I won't be able to tell you everything I'd like to, so I'm going to write it to you instead. To know you and (I hope) marry you is the greatest gift that life has given me. The other day a very likable gentleman called me from the office of Fate and filled me in on a few fragments of our future life together: we're going to have four children (I know, I told him that was a lot, but Fate does as it pleases); every year we're going to
spend fifteen days in Fregene with your father and mother (I bargained for a week, tops); someday our oldest daughter will tell us that she's pregnant by the man she loves and we'll all weep tears of joy; when we're sixty years old and our children have left home, we'll sell everything and go live on a sailboat, to finally sail around the world as we'd always said we would but never got around to; then we'll retire and live in a house on the beach, which everybody talks about, but we'll actually do it; and we'll grow old side by side, contemplating the sun as it sets over the sea and our lives together (that's not original, I copied it, but I can't remember from whom); then one day we'll fall asleep arm in arm and never wake up again. I've always loved you, I love you, and I'll love you always.

Yours, Lucio

I fold the letter up. I'm crying.

It's funny . . . almost all my predictions were wrong. None of what I hoped for is going to come true.

Only now do I realize that Paola is standing behind me. She's crying too.

“Did you remember it?” she asks me with a half smile.

“Yes, of course . . . ,” I say, even if it isn't true. Like all men, I forget fundamental things.

Paola comes over to me. She wraps her arms around me.

I nuzzle her neck. Her appley scent envelops me. She smells like home.

An endless embrace. If that's not forgiveness, it's close enough.

 * * * 

Two hours later, I phone Umberto. While I was nuzzling Paola, I had an idea that strikes me as hard to implement but absolutely wonderful.

“Hey, friend. Happy birthday! I texted you.”

“Thanks, I read it.”

“How's everything?”

“It's all good, we're at the beach . . .”

“How's the weather? Is it sunny?”

“What do you care? Shut up for a minute, I have a big favor to ask you . . . I swear it'll be the last.”

I entrust him with a practically impossible mission and he has less than a week's time to accomplish it. But I know my old Athos well. I know he'll pull it off.