The Neapolitan Novels

38.

Lila had dedicated herself to the children body and soul. And it could not have been easy to wake them in time in the morning, get them washed and dressed, give them a solid but quick breakfast, take them to school in the Via Tasso neighborhood amid the morning chaos of the city, pick them up punctually in that same turmoil, bring them back to the neighborhood, feed them, supervise their homework, and keep up with her job, her domestic tasks. But, when I questioned Dede and Elsa closely, it became clear that she had managed very well. And now for them I was a more inadequate mother than ever. I didn’t know how to make pasta with tomato sauce the way Aunt Lina did, I didn’t know how to dry their hair and comb it with the skill and gentleness she had, I didn’t know how to perform any task that Aunt Lina didn’t approach with a superior sensitivity, except maybe singing certain songs that they loved and that she had admitted she didn’t know. To this it should be added that, especially in Dede’s eyes, that marvelous woman whom I didn’t visit often enough (Mamma, why don’t we go see Aunt Lina, why don’t you let us sleep at her house more, don’t you have to go away anymore?) had a specific quality that made her unequalled: she was the mother of Gennaro, whom my older daughter usually called Rino, and who seemed to her the most wonderful person of the male sex in the world.

At the moment I was hurt. My relations with the children were not wonderful and their idealization of Lila made things worse. Once, at yet another criticism of me, I lost my patience, I yelled: O.K., go to the market of mothers and buy another one. That market was a game of ours that generally served to alleviate conflicts and reconcile us. I would say: Sell me at the market of mothers if I’m no good for you; and they would answer, no, Mamma, we don’t want to sell you, we like you the way you are. On that occasion, however, maybe because of my harsh tone, Dede answered: Yes, let’s go right now, we can sell you and buy Aunt Lina.

That was the atmosphere for a while. And certainly it wasn’t the best one for telling the children that I had lied to them. My emotional state was complicated: shameless, shy, happy, anxious, innocent, guilty. And I didn’t know where to begin, the conversation was difficult: children, I thought I didn’t want another child, but I did, and in fact I’m pregnant, you’ll have a little brother or maybe another sister, but the father isn’t your father, the father is Nino, who already has a wife and two children, and I don’t know how he’ll take it. I thought about it, thought about it again, and put it off.

Then out of the blue came a conversation that surprised me. Dede, in front of Elsa, who listened in some alarm, said in the tone she took when she wanted to explain a problem full of perils:

“You know that Aunt Lina sleeps with Enzo, but they’re not married?”

“Who told you?”

“Rino. Enzo isn’t his father.”

“Rino told you that, too?”

“Yes. So I asked Aunt Lina and she explained to me.”

“What did she explain?”

She was tense. She observed me to see if she was making me angry.

“Shall I tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Aunt Lina has a husband just as you do, and that husband is Rino’s father, his name is Stefano Carracci. Then she has Enzo, Enzo Scanno, who sleeps with her. And the exact same thing happens with you: you have Papa, whose name is Airota, but you sleep with Nino, whose name is Sarratore.”

I smiled to reassure her.

“How did you ever learn all those surnames?”

“Aunt Lina talked to us about it, she said that they’re stupid. Rino came out of her stomach, he lives with her, but he’s called Carracci like his father. We came out of your stomach, we live much more with you than with Papa, but we’re called Airota.”

“So?”

“Mamma, if someone talks about Aunt Lina’s stomach he doesn’t say this is Stefano Carracci’s stomach, he says this is Lina Cerullo’s stomach. The same goes for you: your stomach is Elena Greco’s stomach, not Pietro Airota’s.”

“And what does that mean?”

“That it would be more correct for Rino to be called Rino Cerullo and us Dede and Elsa Greco.”

“Is that your idea?”

“No, Aunt Lina’s.”

“What do you think?”

“I think the same thing.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

But Elsa, since the atmosphere seemed favorable, tugged at me and intervened:

“It’s not true, Mamma. She said that when she gets married she’ll be called Dede Carracci.”

Dede exclaimed furiously: “Shut up, you’re a liar.”

I turned to Elsa:

“Why Dede Carracci?”

“Because she wants to marry Rino.”

I asked Dede:

“You like Rino?”

“Yes,” she said in an argumentative tone, “and even if we don’t get married I’ll sleep with him just the same.”

“With Rino?”

“Yes. Like Aunt Lina with Enzo. And also like you with Nino.”

“Can she do that, Mamma?” Elsa asked, dubiously.

I didn’t answer, I was evasive. But that exchange improved my mood and initiated a new phase. It didn’t take much, in fact, to recognize that with this and other conversations about real and pretend fathers, about old and new last names, Lila had managed to make the living situation into which I had cast Dede and Elsa not only acceptable in their eyes but even interesting. In fact almost miraculously my daughters stopped talking about how they missed Adele and Mariarosa; they stopped saying, when they returned from Florence, that they wanted to go and stay forever with their father and Doriana; they stopped making trouble for Mirella, the babysitter, as if she were their worst enemy; they stopped rejecting Naples, the school, the teachers, their classmates, and, above all, the fact that Nino slept in my bed. In short, they seemed more serene. And I noted those changes with relief. However vexing it might be that Lila had entered the lives of my daughters, binding them to her, the last thing I could accuse her of was not having given them the utmost affection, the utmost care, assistance in reducing their anxieties. That was the Lila I loved. She could emerge unexpectedly from within her very meanness, surprising me. Suddenly every offense faded—she’s malicious, she always has been, but she’s also much more, you have to put up with her—and I acknowledged that she was helping me do less harm to my daughters.

One morning I woke up and thought of her without hostility for the first time in a long while. I remembered when she got married, her first pregnancy: she was sixteen, only seven or eight years older than Dede. My daughter would soon be the age of the ghosts of our girlhood. I found it inconceivable that in a relatively small amount of time, my daughter could wear a wedding dress, as Lila had, end up brutalized in a man’s bed, lock herself into the role of Signora Carracci; I found it equally inconceivable that, as had happened to me, she could lie under the heavy body of a grown man, at night, on the Maronti, smeared with dark sand, damp air, and bodily fluids, just for revenge. I remembered the thousands of odious things we had gone through and I let the solidarity regain force. What a waste it would be, I said to myself, to ruin our story by leaving too much space for ill feelings: ill feelings are inevitable, but the essential thing is to keep them in check. I grew close to Lila again with the excuse that the children liked seeing her. Our pregnancies did the rest.