“Have you seen today’s Il Messaggero?”
“Yes, I have the photo of Step right in front of me.”
“Have you read the article?”
“I read it.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, there’s not that much to think. I think that, sooner or later, this is going to go in a bad direction.”
“Yes, I think the same thing. What can we do?”
“There isn’t much to be done, if you ask me.”
“When you get home, would you speak to your brother, please?”
“Yes, I’ll speak to him. For all the good it will do. But if it makes you happy, I promise I’ll do it.”
“Thanks, Paolo.” His father hung up the telephone. Happy. What’s supposed to make me happy? Certainly not an article like this one about one of my sons. He picked up the newspaper in both hands. He looked at the photo. God, how handsome he is. He takes after his mother completely.
And a faint smile appeared on his weary face, incapable of erasing that age-old stab of pain. And for a moment, he told himself the truth. He finally realized what could have made him happy.
* * *
Pallina pulled a pack of Camel Lights out of her purse. She took one out and stuck it in her mouth. She looked inside the cigarette pack. It would take three more before she got to the one turned upside down, the last cigarette, the one you could make a wish on. Almost always for the man of your dreams.
Then she started rummaging around in the purse. Finally, she found her lighter and lit her cigarette.
Babi watched her. “Hey, didn’t you say that you were going to quit smoking?”
“Yes, I said I was. I’ll quit on Monday.”
“But wasn’t it supposed to be last Monday?”
“That’s right. I quit on Monday but then I started again yesterday.”
Babi shook her head and walked down the last few steps. Then she looked around, and she saw her mother’s car parked on the other side of the street. “What are you doing, Pallina? Are you riding with us?”
“No, I’m waiting for Pollo. He said that he’d come by and pick me up. He might be coming with Step. Why don’t you stay here and wait with me? Come on, tell your mother that you’re coming over to my house for dinner.”
Babi stood in silence for a moment. She hadn’t thought about Step since that morning. Too many things had happened. She thought about how they’d said good night yesterday. How he’d said that she was full of contradictions. Just crazy. She wasn’t inconsistent, and she didn’t want to be.
“Thanks, Pallina, but I’m going home. Plus, like I’ve already told you, I don’t have any real desire to see Step. So don’t keep on with that refrain, or you and I really will have to fight about it.”
“As you wish. All right then. See you at five o’clock at Parnaso—” Babi tried to answer back, but Pallina was too fast for her. “Yes, with my Vespa.”
Babi smiled at her.
Pallina watched her walk away. Who knows why she was playing so hard to get. That was her business. Maybe it was a plan, she thought. Well, in any case, she liked Babi just the way she was.
Plus, she liked anyone who could put Signora Giacci in her place like that. She decided that it was time to start spreading the word a little. She walked over to a group of younger girls who were in ninth grade. “Did you hear about what a fool Signora Giacci made of herself?”
“No, what happened?”
“She was about to flunk Silvia Festa, a girl in my class. She’d gotten confused and given another girl’s grade to Festa.”
“Do you swear it’s true?”
“I do, but luckily Babi noticed.”
“Wait, which Babi? You mean Babi Gervasi?”
“The very same.”
A girl with Il Messaggero in her hands glanced over at the other girls with a curious look on her face. Some of them nodded at her. The girl worked up her nerve. “Listen, Pallina, but isn’t this her?”
Pallina tore the newspaper out of her hands. She read the article rapidly. The other girl, still intimidated, went on. “We’d heard that the two of you went to the races, but we didn’t believe it. But instead, it turns out it’s true.”
Oh, it’s true, and then some, Pallina thought to herself, as true as this article. She folded up the newspaper and glanced toward Babi. By now, she’d almost reached her mother’s car. Pallina shouted at the top of her lungs but the traffic noise drowned out her voice. By this point, there was nothing more to be done.
Babi stuck her head in the car, pushing the seat forward to get in back. “Ciao, Mamma.” She leaned forward to give her mother a kiss. An open hand slapped her right in the face. “Ouch!” Babi fell back, flat on her butt, onto the rear seat. She rubbed her stinging cheek, and as a red patch appeared on it, a sullen scowl spread over her face.
Daniela got in the car. “Hey, have you seen this cool thing? Babi’s in the newspaper…”
She looked around. The heavy silence. Raffaella’s expression. Babi’s hand massaging her stinging cheek. It was all clear in a flash.
“Let’s forget I ever mentioned it,” Daniela said.
They waited, arguing, for Daniela’s friend Giovanna to arrive, and as usual, she was late. In the meantime, Raffaella was shouting like a madwoman. At last, Babi understood the whole story, and she tried to explain. Daniela testified in her favor but Raffaella got even more upset and angry. Pallina became the lead defendant. Even though she was found guilty out of hand, she could not face prosecution because she wasn’t there. Daniela, who was within reach and available to have her face slapped, decided it would be wise to say nothing.
Babi was grounded. But not before she got a glimpse of Il Messaggero. When she saw the photo, she smiled because she really looked good in that shot. However, she decided to keep her opinion to herself.
At last, Giovanna arrived with her usual “Sorry I’m late” and got in back. Daniela pushed the front seat back in place and got in, and the car pulled away. The rest of the trip unfolded in utter silence. Giovanna decided that this situation was too tense. That said, the sisters had really overdone it this time.
In the end, Giovanna managed to work up the nerve to speak. “Well, at least today I wasn’t very late, was I?”
Daniela burst out laughing. Babi controlled herself for a minute or two, and then she let loose too. Even Raffaella smiled.
Chapter 11
The old black leather purse was clamped tight under Signora Giacci’s arm. A cloth jacket, mustard yellow. Short, drab hair that looked as weary as her gait. The dark brown opaque stockings made her look a few years older than she actually was, and the worn loafers with low heels and beat-up toes were making her feet ache. But that hurt was nothing like what she felt inside. Her heart must have been wearing shoes two sizes too tight.
Signora Giacci opened the glass door of her apartment building. The hinges squealed but that didn’t surprise her. She stopped in front of the elevator and pushed the button. A red light lit up faintly. Signora Giacci looked at the glass fronts of the letter boxes built into the wall. Some of them were unmarked. One of the little doors didn’t even have a glass pane and hung off-kilter, missing one of the two screws, imparting a sense of chaos and disorder and neglect, as did the apartment of Nicolodi, the owner. Is it people’s possessions that grow to resemble their owners, or is it the owners who grow to resemble their property?