Chapter 57 Michael
Michael
I wasn’t holding my breath, but in the end, she said yes.
I’m waiting for Elisa at the restaurant—I reserved a lounge so we could have some privacy—and I’m feeling a bit rude for not having arranged to pick her up, though I didn’t want her to think this was a date.
When I see her, I get up to greet her. “You look great,” I say. She’s wearing jeans and a blue striped shirt, but she looks gorgeous.
“Thanks, so do you.” She sits on the sofa, sending a waft of her crazy-making scent in my direction. “It’s very . . . intimate here,” she observes.
“I just wanted a quiet space. It’s not a date.”
“Of course.”
“I took the liberty of ordering the tasting menu. The chef’s cuisine is quite unique, so you can have a taste of everything and eat what you like. You must be rather hungry, I imagine.”
“I’m dying,” she replies with a shy smile.
To be brutally honest, I asked for the tasting menu only because it has six courses, and I’d like the dinner to last as long as possible.
“There are some things I need to tell you,” I begin.
“Me too,” she replies. “About Linda.”
“We can agree that Linda is the absolute priority, but first there’s one thing you need to know: I postponed the deal between Bogdanovic and the Bingleys until mid-November so that you have time to make an offer. I can’t assure you it will be accepted, but at least you have a shot.”
“I don’t have a loan yet. The bank wants orders as collateral. That’s why I’m here at the fair, to find new customers. Anyway, thank you.”
We fall silent as the waiters serve the appetizers, after which I hurry to speak again.
“Listen.” I reach across the table to squeeze her hand, which, to my surprise, she doesn’t withdraw. It does, however, remain limp in my grasp. “I never wanted to be the bad guy in this story. I know how much you care about the vineyard. I’m sorry if I gave you the opposite impression.”
“You didn’t try very hard to prove yourself wrong, though.”
“Neither did you. I must say that you leave a lot to be desired when it comes to communication,” I reply, regretting my comment a second later when Elisa glances away, depriving me of the precious eye contact we’ve maintained so far.
“I think I can understand why you hid something as big as Linda’s birth from me.
May I hazard a guess that my brother wasn’t exactly honorable toward you? ”
“Is that a sugar-coated way of asking me to tell you how it went?”
Basically. “Only if you want . . .”
“It’s a story I don’t even like to tell to myself. It was painful and humiliating, and I’m not even sure I can get it straight.”
“Call me a masochist, but I really would like to know.”
“I met George in Florence, during his year abroad. Lucia and I were window-shopping on Via de’ Tornabuoni, fantasizing about what we’d buy if money were no object, and we almost collided with George as he was coming out of Gucci.
You and the Bingleys hadn’t been to the estate in three years, and he was quite struck by how different I looked.
He insisted on buying us dinner at the Palagio, then driving us home in his Maserati. ”
“My brother always loved living large and showing it off,” I comment.
“The next day he reappeared to invite Lucia—my unwitting chaperone—and me to visit Sammezzano castle. It has so many little passages that make it easy to get lost and is full of little nooks where you can hide. He wanted to play hide-and-seek, and of course Lucia disappeared right away and George found me just as quickly, only instead of saying I was ‘it,’ he pressed me against the wall and kissed me.”
Elisa can’t imagine, but I’m gripping my fork so hard right now I could crumple it in my palm.
“Am I boring you?” she asks me.
“No,” I say through clenched teeth, my jaw tightening. “Go on.”
“I wasn’t even seventeen, and it was the first time in my life I’d gotten any male attention.
I felt so flattered and wanted more. Let’s just say I didn’t exactly make him chase me.
” She stops when the second course arrives, waiting for the waiter to leave us alone again.
“I made it clear from the start that I liked him. He kept visiting Le Giuggiole every day to take me somewhere, and I always left the house with a different excuse. Lucia stopped coming; we’d made her feel like a third wheel.
And so we went from taking innocent strolls around pleasant places to locking ourselves up in his car, on the back seats, exploring the bases one by one until, on what was supposed to be his last night in Italy, I saw fit to mark the occasion by giving him my virginity.
Never for a second did he make me doubt his intentions toward me: He was always thoughtful, kind, gallant.
He said he planned to come and visit me every weekend and holiday .
. . I was so inexperienced, I never could have suspected it was just an act.
He insisted on not using any protection: ‘Condoms bother me. I can’t feel anything.
You can’t get pregnant your first time, I’ll be careful .
. .’ Telling him no seemed impolite, and so I just trusted him. ”
“He was very good at selling himself for what he wasn’t. That angelic face of his didn’t hurt.”
“When I found out I was pregnant, still thinking he was Prince Charming, I called him, certain he’d jump on the first flight to Florence to swear eternal love and raise the fruit of our passion together.
Instead he wanted nothing to do with it.
He told me it was my problem. If I wanted to get rid of it, he’d pay for the surgery, but if I kept the baby I would have to fend for myself.
He ordered me never to call him again, and if I dared let you or the Bingleys know that I was pregnant, he’d claim that I was only trying to set him up for money.
After that, he changed his number, and I never saw or heard from him again. ”
I look at Elisa, and I see so much dignity in her that I want to scream. “My brother was always unworthy of the oxygen he breathed. He probably knew that you’d rather cut out your own tongue than look like a gold digger, and he had no qualms about exploiting your weak point.”
The waiters take the plates away, and for the third time, hers is untouched. “Now you know everything.”
“I’m sorry I was so horrible when you told me Linda was my brother’s daughter. I couldn’t bear to think of you as one of his victims.”
“I’ve relegated it to a past I can’t forget but that I don’t want to remember. I only think about Linda and what a terrible thing she was born from.”
“I really can’t imagine the hell you went through.”
“We live in a world where a father who doesn’t recognize his children is let off the hook, but if a mother feeds her children a hot roll for dinner because she hasn’t managed to go grocery shopping after a fourteen-hour workday, she gets reported to social services.
Until society recognizes that parenting is the responsibility of both parties, there will always be girls like me who go to bed virgins and wake up whores, who give birth alone, who raise nobody’s children, while the father remains a saint with all the accolades and no burdens and lives his life as if nothing ever happened.
You know, when Count Umberto told me George had died, I felt relieved.
I was finally free of having to decide whether to reveal his existence to Linda or not.
I may be a bad person, but I don’t regret any of my decisions.
But maybe, if I’d been smarter, I would have made my daughter’s life easier. ”
“Speaking of such, that brings me to the point of this dinner. Linda’s surname.”
“What’s wrong with it?” she asks defensively.
“Nothing. Benetti’s a fine name, but I would like it very much, if you agreed, if she could add D’Arcy. I’d like to recognize her as family.”
“Michael,” she stops me, raising her hand. “I’ve already told you what I think. I don’t want any interference.”
“It’s only to facilitate—in a very distant future, I hope—her inheritance. My brother burned through everything down to the last cent, but I still own a more than substantial portion of the D’Arcy estate, and I have no heirs.”
“Maybe you’ll get some.”
“And maybe I’ll live until I’m a hundred, but I want Linda to have what she deserves. I know you’re not interested in my money, but I want to right my brother’s wrongs.”
“My free will as a mother is priceless.”
“It’s sacrosanct.”
“I’ll talk to her about it,” she replies in the tone of someone who wants to change the subject.
“I already talked to her.”
“What? How dare you?” Elisa is already on the brink of war.
“She called me at the office. She wanted a letter of recommendation for the high school you chose, and I asked her about it. Who do you think told me you were coming to the London Wine Fair?”
Elisa blinks, surprised. “Linda?”
“How else would I have found out?” I lean toward her, my face close enough to hers to feel the heat. “Sebastian didn’t ask me to go anywhere—I asked him.”
Finally, her beautiful mouth hints at a smile. “So you were there just to see me?”
“Afraid so,” I admit.
“So, was I right to dress up before arriving at the stand?”
“Did you dress up just for me?” I imitate her.
Elisa turns her fork on her empty plate. “Afraid so,” she says, playing along. And for the first time during this dinner, I feel something akin to relief. “I saw you from across the room, and I went to freshen up.”
“We’ve covered everything we said to each other during our fight except for one thing,” I say, ready to go all-in.
“What?”
“I told you I love you.”
“I remember.”
“And you didn’t answer me,” I add.
“I remember that too.”
“I’d like to know what you think.”
She places her napkin on the table. “I think it’s getting late. I have another long day at the fair tomorrow.”
Nothing. She’s inscrutable. I feel like I have twenty keys to open a single lock and not one of them works. “I’ll go with you,” I say, changing the subject.
“I have to get a taxi; my hotel is far.”
“Precisely.”
“We said this wasn’t a date.”
“Indeed, but this is a question of manners. I never let a woman travel alone after midnight.”
“Is this something that happens to you often, then?” she asks knowingly.
“Not lately. Don’t make me beg you,” I reply, getting up. “I care.”
In the end she gives in but on her own terms. The taxi ride is heavy with a silence so dense and cumbersome it’s suffocating. Elisa keeps her gaze fixed on the window, lost in the darkness. I’d give my right arm to know what she’s thinking.
“I believed in it,” she says out of the blue.
“In what?”
“Us.”
“You don’t believe in it anymore?” Suddenly I’m so anxious it feels like someone is holding my head under water.
“I can’t feel it.”
“Do you want to try?” How is it possible to start such an important conversation just as we’re pulling up to the hotel?
“I’ve learned that I can’t allow myself to have everything I want.”
As soon as the car stops, Elisa unclasps her seat belt and goes to open the door.
“Don’t go,” I stop her. “There are things you’re not telling me, but I need to hear them.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” The tremor in her voice contradicts the assertiveness of her words.
“Is that why you came out with this now? Why don’t you want to talk about it?”
Finally she deigns to raise her eyes and meet mine. “Michael, what kind of game are we playing?”
“I don’t know, but I’m tired of playing it.
” I can’t help but raise my hand to her chin.
“If you feel nothing, tell me now, and I promise I’ll go.
You won’t ever have to hear from me again, and in no way will I interfere between you and Linda.
But if you have feelings for me, there’s no point in us both suffering. ”
I expect a reply from her, but instead I receive a kiss. Elisa leans toward me, taking me by surprise, pressing her lips into mine in a gesture halfway between relief and desperation. “I love you,” she whispers into the kiss. “And I hate loving you because I can’t stop. I’ve tried, but I can’t.”
“Then don’t stop.”
The kiss lasts a long time and says all the things we didn’t. It is not a sensual, instinctive, physical kiss, the kind that starts on the lips and ends in bed; it’s a strange kind of kiss, one I’ve never experienced before. It goes straight to the soul.
She’s the one who pulls away, leaving me dazed. “I have to go,” she says. “I’m here another four days. I leave on Tuesday morning.”
“Is this an invitation to come find you?”
“Let’s just say if you did, I wouldn’t mind.” She kisses me again, this time just a peck. “Good night.” And she gets out of the car and walks into the hotel.
I wait until the sliding doors close behind her and reach for my phone.
Do you have plans tomorrow evening? I’d like to see you again.
PS It’s a date.
Elisa reads it in seconds, and I’m left awaiting her reply: Elisa Benetti is typing . . .