47
CECíLIA
At the first apartment, Dante liked the view, and I looked for where the clothesline was.
At the second one, I liked the kitchen, and he asked where he could work when he needed to stay home. The third one looked nice in the photos, but the commute to Bento’s school took twice as long as the listing suggested.
We got back in the car and crossed it off the list.
On the fourth visit, I started to feel like we were looking for two different homes.
I mentioned this over coffee, annoyed by the heat and by a door that had hit my shoulder while I was trying to gauge the width of a doorway.
Dante heard me, looked at our notes, and pulled the sheet closer.
“So let’s see what’s essential for each of us,” he said.
It wasn’t romantic. It was one of the conversations that made me want to live with him the most.
I wrote school, bakery, my mother, a kitchen I could move around in. He wrote a place to work without bringing meetings into the living room, a parking space he could leave without waking anyone, and room for Bento’s things.
In the next column, we listed our preferences.
Some preferences were expensive. Others were habits disguised as necessities. I realized this when I insisted that I needed a window facing a specific direction because my apartment had that particular light. Dante realized it when he insisted on a space he would use only a few times a month.
We managed to laugh in the middle of the argument.
A week later, we walked into an apartment that didn’t force us to give up what we’d written in the first column.
It was near the route I already took. The kitchen wasn’t huge, but had a counter by the window and room for my table. Bento could keep his school. My mother was close enough that Sunday lunch wouldn’t become a journey. There was a small room Dante could work in.
I stopped in the living room and tried to picture our furniture—not the pieces shown in the listing.
“My bookshelf will fit there,” I said.
Dante looked at the wall.
“It’ll fit.”
“It has a crooked shelf.”
“We can fix it.”
I turned my face toward him.
“I like it.”
He smiled.
“Then it comes with us.”
I ran my hand along the kitchen doorframe. An ordinary surface, a small mark near the bottom. Nothing here knew our history.
I liked that.
***
We took Bento to see the place before finalizing the details.
He walked in slowly, looking at the empty rooms. He asked where the bathroom was, then which room would be his. When I showed him, he stood in the middle of the room and clapped his hands to hear the echo.
“It’s going to be noisy,” he concluded.
I explained that the furniture and his things would change the sound.
“Is my bed coming?”
“Yes, it will.”
“And the rug?”
“That too.”
He looked at Dante.
“Does your bed go in the other room?”
Dante nodded.
Bento turned back to me, waiting for a piece of information I hadn’t yet mentioned in those exact words.
“The three of us are thinking about living here,” I explained. “Me, you, and Dad. We’ll get everything organized before we move.”
He was silent.
Over the next few days, Bento brought up the subject again. He wanted to know if he’d still see his grandmother, if he’d have to change schools, and how we’d get the drawing that was hanging on his bedroom wall to move with us. We answered each question as it came up.
I told him we’d take it with us.
Little by little, the move stopped being an empty house and started to include things he recognized inside it.
We needed that, too.
We handled the contract, the expenses, and the logistics with the care that our different realities demanded.
I wasn’t going to pay an impossible share just to prove my independence.
Nor did I want to be sidelined from decisions simply because Dante could afford to pay more.
We talked it over, sought guidance on what needed to be formalized, and reached an agreement that we both understood.
The bakery remained mine. My work wasn’t a hobby I’d bring into his life. His responsibility for Bento didn’t depend on what we shared as a couple.
When I signed the documents for the house, I knew what I was choosing.
***
Leda met Bento one Saturday in May, before the move.
Leda and I had talked again after that first coffee. This step toward her wasn’t a reward for my decision to live with Dante. It came because I could now imagine a short visit with us there, without making my son an answer to the adults’ guilt.
We arranged a short visit to her house. I explained to Bento who Leda was and what we would be doing. He asked if there were any toys. I replied that I’d bring some of his.
Leda greeted us at the door with a moved expression and empty hands.
I was grateful for that before we even went in.
She bent down a little to greet him, said she was glad to meet him, and waited. Bento answered quietly, gripping the backpack strap. Then he noticed a wooden object on the shelf and asked if he could look.
The rest began there.
Leda offered water, listened to an explanation about a toy car, and asked me if he could eat what she’d set out. Dante stood beside the sofa. Bento went to the table on his own.
I sat in an armchair from where I could see everyone.
For a moment, I remembered the chair Leda had sat in during the ceremony. The memory didn’t fade. Nor did it stop me from hearing when she called my name to include me in the conversation.
We left at the agreed-upon time.
In the car, Bento said Grandma Leda’s house had a clock that made noise. That was what he chose to remember first.
I let that be enough.
***
That night, after he fell asleep, I started sorting through a drawer in preparation for the move.
There were items I didn’t use, things I’d kept out of sentimentality, and an old photograph of Marina as a teenager pulling a funny face. I set aside what I wanted to take. Dante was in the living room, compiling a list of measurements that still needed to be checked.
I went over to him with a question that had been growing in my mind since that Sunday at the fair.
“Do you still want to marry me?”
He looked up immediately.
“I do.”
His answer was without hesitation. It took me a second to let the joy it brought me sink in.
I sat down next to him.
“I want to, too.”
Dante exhaled slowly.
I looked at our hands, resting close together on the couch.
“I thought a lot about whether I wanted another ceremony. Whether it was what I really wanted, or if I was just trying to fix a photo that no one had taken right. I think, for a while, I couldn’t even tell the difference.”
He waited.
“Now I want a day just for us. I want to pick out a dress, invite the people who are part of our lives, and say how I feel without having to look at you to see if I can finish.”
Dante took my hand.
“You’re going to finish.”
I looked at him.
“I know I can do it. Even if I cry.”
He smiled, his eyes glistening.
I wasn’t asking permission. I was telling him that the desire belonged to me again.
“I don’t want a huge party,” I added. “And I don’t want to bake the cake.”
Dante laughed, surprised.
“That part will need to be recorded with witnesses.”
“I know. Joana’s going to insist on it.”
He pulled me close, and I went with him. We kissed without the haste we’d once used to imagine that the whole future fit into a single promise.
Then I went back to the drawer.
There was a house to get ready before the party, and I’d decided what I wanted to take with me.