Chapter 15 Michael
Michael
I spend the night wavering between “What the hell does Elisa expect from me?” and “Maybe she has a slight point.”
I just have to lay it out for her as rationally as possible, given that her open resistance could put this entire operation at risk.
I shower, and as I’m pulling on a gray T-shirt and a pair of jeans I bought yesterday at the only clothing shop in Belvedere, Renato perches on my windowsill.
“You and I have a beef,” I threaten, pointing my finger at him.
“Kill me, Levante! Kill me if you love me!” he replies.
“Oh, shut your beak,” I mutter as I leave the room.
When I arrive at the annex to talk to Elisa, I find the door open with no one there, and no one answers when I shout.
I decide to proceed upstairs, even though there doesn’t seem to be a soul there either.
As I follow the corridor punctuated with doors, a fireball stops me short, nearly hitting my left temple. I bend down to pick up the unidentified flying object: a blue-and-yellow cardboard box.
I turn it over in my hands and . . . Tampax? Did I almost get killed by a box of Tampax?!
A “Fuck you!” precedes the launch of a second box, the same as the first, which I dodge by ducking.
The flamethrower in question is Linda.
I approach the bathroom door and stick my arm inside. “I believe these are yours.”
“Keep them,” she growls angrily.
“I appreciate the thought, but I can’t use them,” I reply.
“Aaargh,” is all she manages to utter.
“Everything okay?” I ask more out of politeness than anything else.
“No,” she snorts.
“Um, okay . . . I’ll . . . I’ll just put them here,” I say, squinting my eyes closed and placing them on the vanity.
“Now get out of here,” she orders.
Given the current situation, I don’t think twice about removing the object of her disgust. As I’m walking toward the stairs, however, Linda stops me again. “Actually, no. Come here.”
Oh God.
“What do you need?” I ask from outside.
“You can come in; I’m dressed.”
I open the door and find her sitting on the edge of the tub, sulking, her arms crossed. “Maybe this isn’t the best time.”
“This is the perfect time,” she replies. She looks down at the tiles, huffing. “I got my period. For the first time.”
This was decidedly not the best time. “Ah, well, shall I go find Giada or Elisa? Or would you like to phone your mother?”
“For goodness’ sake, no!” she stops me, rolling her eyes.
“Perhaps a female point of view would be more useful.”
“I don’t need anyone’s point of view, least of all my mother’s. She’d insist on giving me the famous ‘talk.’”
“The talk?” I ask, dazed.
“You know, all the things I need to know now that I’m a woman. How babies are made. Mortifying.”
“I agree.” We men have no similar rite of passage, fortunately.
“As if I even need it!”
“Ah,” I say, taken aback, as I sit next to her. “So you already know how babies are made?”
“Obviously. By having sex,” she replies naturally. “The man’s penis penetrates the vagina and ejaculates seminal fluid, then the spermatozoa fertilize the egg as it descends the fallopian tube.”
Described like this, the act rather loses its appeal, coming in second only to a cricket match in the rankings of tedium. “And do you know what all these things mean?”
“Of course, I read the anatomy book in the library. My mother still sees me as a seven-year-old girl, she’d just recite the story about the birds and the bees. She doesn’t realize I’ve grown up.”
“And don’t you think that telling her that you’ve got your . . . er . . . menstruation . . . would be a way to make her understand that you’re growing up?”
“No way! She’d just get paranoid and keep me miles away from any male animal or plant being. I’m not allowed to go out with boys until I’m eighteen.”
“Might you be exaggerating just a little?”
“Look, Michael, what’s the appropriate age to have sex?” she asks me point-blank.
Am I the only one who hears the fallout sirens? What do I say now? Linda looks at me with the same serenity with which she might have asked me the difference between a hedge fund and an investment fund.
“I don’t know if there is a right age,” I venture. “I can speak for myself: My first time was when I was nineteen. Even though I was considered ‘late’ compared to my peers.”
“Why did you wait so long?”
“I was in love with a girl who didn’t love me back, and I needed time to forget her,” I admit. “It took me years.”
“But if she had loved you back, you would have had sex with her much sooner, right?”
What torture. “I don’t know, but I certainly would have enjoyed it much more than I did with the girl with whom I actually lost my virginity.”
“You didn’t like her?”
“She was nice, but we didn’t have any chemistry.
And without chemistry, the first time is a mess.
It’s like speaking two different languages: slobbering, toothy kisses; bras that don’t come off and the embarrassment of not being able to ask for help; nails that scratch in places that should never be scratched; tension when putting on the condom that slips all over the place, falls, unrolls; you take another one, then that one breaks; and then you panic because you only have one left.
Your hands shake; you’re both kind of embarrassed .
. . Looking back on it now, it’s almost comical, but in the moment it was terrifying. ”
“Go on,” she urges. “This is all very interesting.”
“What I’m trying to say is that your first time should be with someone you’re comfortable with, because you need to feel like you’re ‘together,’ not like two strangers who happened to be in the same room by chance.”
“Maybe your experience was so bad because you hadn’t completely forgotten the girl you were in love with and in your subconscious you were thinking about how much you would have preferred to be doing it with her.”
“Okay, Freud, that’s enough. As for your, er, situation, I don’t think I can be terribly helpful to you.”
“But you can be!” she exclaims. “I need normal pads, and there are only tampons here. Can you buy some pads for me?”
“Me!” I exclaim, terrified. “Couldn’t Mariana or Donatella do it?”
Linda arches an eyebrow. “I’d like to keep this to myself for as long as possible.”
“I can accompany you. You go into the supermarket, get what you need, and I’ll bring you home,” I propose, just to avoid the painful task.
“On a Saturday?! It’s the wives’ big shopping day.
If they see me in that aisle, the entire village will know I’ve got my period before dinner.
” She looks at me with pleading eyes. “Please, Michael, it’ll only take a minute.
Have mercy on me. I’m sitting here with balled-up toilet paper in my underwear .
. . don’t make me walk around like that. ”
“This is moral blackmail,” I reproach her.
“Is it working?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” I say, standing up. Now look what I’ve gotten myself into.
When I see the packed supermarket, I turn around and opt for the pharmacy, which has a more reserved and discreet air.
I enter the small, immaculate shop and queue up behind an elderly lady who wants a tube of denture paste.
How do I know? Because the pharmacist recites the lady’s request out loud. So much for discretion.
I face my turn by hesitating. Perhaps I can try to make myself understood without openly declaring what I need.
“Next,” calls the pharmacist.
“I’m next,” I say.
“Good, good. A new face . . . Which happens to be one of the Englishmen staying at Le Giuggiole? The friend of the count’s nephew?”
He got me. “Yes, but that’s not important.”
“What do you need?”
“I need a box of those things that you put . . . down there . . .” I say, pointing to the crotch of my trousers.
“Suppositories?” he asks, in a tone six octaves higher than mine. “What kind? Mucolytic? Analgesic? Laxatives? My mother-in-law uses this kind with glycerol and chamomile.”
“No, no.” I stop him immediately. “It’s not a medicine I need. It’s not for the back, but for the front, those things that are only needed at special times.”
“Understood! So Viagra then.” At his announcement, all the other customers in the pharmacy look me up and down.
“Viagra? No, this isn’t for me.”
“That’s what they all say: ‘It’s not for me.
’ Look, you shouldn’t be ashamed, you know?
You’re not the first. Do you see that gentleman over there?
” he asks me, pointing to a man in his seventies who is having his blood pressure tested.
“He is Belvedere’s official tester of erectile dysfunction drugs: Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, Spedra .
. . nothing scares him! Oh, Beato!” he calls him. “Did you take Viagra last night?”
“Good lord!” he replies. “I lasted three hours!”
“Good for you, Beato! You’re not a man. You’re a power tool!” replies the pharmacist, who then turns to me again. “He’s our local impotence influencer.”
“I have no impotence to speak of!” I exclaim, this time careful to make myself heard by those present. “Look, it’s really very simple. I need a pack of pads, okay?”
“Oh, well why didn’t you say so?” he blurts out. “What kind?”
“What do you mean?”
“What kind of pads?”
Wait a minute, no one told me there were different types of pads.
That is, of course I know how they’re made, I’ve seen the adverts on TV with women who claim to go skydiving, save cats from rooftops, and defuse bombs thanks to whatever miraculous pad they’re wearing, but I’ve never paid particular attention to the object itself. “I have no idea. What types are there?”
“I can give you these for medium flow,” he says, placing a package on the counter. “These are for heavy flow, and these others are for lighter flows.”
Flows? What do I know? “What is the difference between flow and leakage?”
“Plus,” continues the pharmacist, “we have a contoured variety, with simple wings, or night wings, lady wings, thin with wings, cotton with wings.”
I am overwhelmed by the wings. “I, here . . .”
“The cotton ones are the best,” interjects a lady who, if I recall, is among those who came to the estate the day after my arrival.
“I prefer the contoured,” says another, placing herself to my right.
“You should get the heavy ones. You never know,” advises a third.
In short, the supreme court of mothers gathers around me, and instead of clarifying things, they confuse me even more, inundating me with questions.
“Who are they for?” “What do you need them for?” “Are they for a period or for incontinence?”
“They’re for . . . for . . .” Oh, to hell with it. “They’re for me!” I exclaim.
“For you?” the pharmacist asks me, amazed.
“Yes, they’re for me, because I wear them .
. .” Where do I put them? What am I saying?
“I . . . I . . . I put them under my armpits to stop sweat stains, that’s it!
” I declare. I’m not even sure if that makes sense.
I take advantage of the moment of general perplexity to take a box at random and slap it in the pharmacist’s hand. “These’ll work great,” I say.
I have no idea which ones I chose, but I have to get out of this hell immediately.
Just as I’ve left the pharmacy, the elderly lady who bought the denture paste intercepts me. She pulls me by the hem of my T-shirt, motioning for me to bend over and listen to her.
I don’t know if I have the patience to tolerate the intrusion of yet another meddler.
She holds out a vial of capsules to me. “Lady’s mantle and chaste tree,” she says. “It’s a natural but very effective remedy,” she adds with a wink.
“Look,” I snort, “you’re very kind, but I’m not helpless. I don’t need chemical or natural remedies. I’m functioning wonderfully, thank you.”
“They’re not for you. They’re for Linda.”
At the sound of Linda’s name I freeze in the doorway. “Linda?”
“To counteract the typical PMS symptoms, lower-back pain, headaches, cramps. It’s just a supplement, but it makes a big difference. Trust me.”
“I’m sorry . . . but how do you know Linda got her period?” It turns out these village housewives really do have antennae.
“You are Michael D’Arcy, are you not? They haven’t stopped going on about you in this village since you arrived.
I’m Giovanna Tersilli; nice to meet you.
I was Linda’s pediatrician. I retired when she was five, but since they can’t find another doctor for the clinic here in Belvedere—you know, there are so few of us, it’s hardly a desirable position—I continued to treat quite a few patients privately, especially for minor annoyances, so they wouldn’t be forced to go to Greve or Radda.
Her mother brought her to see me earlier this year because Linda was feeling tension and pain in her chest. Her breasts had begun to develop: A period will usually arrive in the following six to ten months, so that’s how I know.
Linda is very reserved. I’m not surprised she sent someone to get pads for her. ”
Reserved? Are we talking about the same person?
“So you’re telling me that the last time Linda saw her mother was in January, and she’s been abroad this whole time?!” I exclaim. No wonder she has such a difficult relationship with her if she never sees her.
“What do you mean, abroad? Elisa never left.”
Hold it. “What do you mean, Elisa?”
“Elisa, Linda’s mother, has never gone abroad that I know of.”
“Elisa. Linda’s mother,” I repeat in a trance. Elisa. Linda’s mother. Elisa. Linda’s mother.
I leave the pharmacy stunned and hail a taxi back to the estate.
Elisa has a daughter?! When did she have her? Elisa’s thirty now, Linda is thirteen, so she had her at . . . “Holy shit!”
The taxi driver gasps. “Beg your pardon, sir. I can’t avoid the potholes. The asphalt’s practically disintegrating.”
“Sorry, I was thinking out loud.”
Elisa had Linda at seventeen! And she didn’t tell me shit!
I arrive at the estate and take off toward the annex without even waiting for the change from the fifty euros I give the taxi driver. On the driveway, I cross paths with Elisa.
“They said you were looking for me this morning,” she says icily. “Is there something you need to tell me?”
I don’t know. Maybe there’s something she needs to tell me too. “Not now, sorry,” I cut her short. “Can we talk later?”
“I have plans,” she replies sharply.
“I’m sure you have many,” I suggest. “But we have several things to talk about.”
She snorts, smugly. “I’m going to the stable. When you’ve finished your business, you can find me there.”
I wait for her to walk away before I dash up the steps of the annex, taking them three at a time, to find Linda still perched on the edge of the tub.
“You took your time, didn’t you?”
“Not a word,” I warn her, handing her the bag. “I think we’re even now.”
And while I watch her unwrap the pads, I realize that Linda is the spitting image of Elisa.
How the hell didn’t I notice before?