November Sun, page 20
“But after all of this is over, what do you think you’ll do?” Mimi persisted. Gina opened another letter, feeling irritated. “I don’t know yet.” It was another letter from the bank, confirming a meeting that had taken place a month ago.
“I really can’t think about anything until after the funeral.” She looked up. “Do you know anything about a bank loan? Mama had seen the bank manager about it. What did she need a bank loan for?” Her mother hadn’t mentioned a thing to her.
“A loan?” Something about the way her sister said it, told her that Mimi knew. “What does it say?”
Gina fell silent as she added it to the pile. “I’ll go through those later.”
“How long is he away for?”
“Not now, Mimi. We’ve got the funeral to take care of. First things, first.”
“But you’re not going to move until he returns?”
She slammed down the current letter in her hand. “Why are you so concerned about it?” She sensed there was something more to it. It was the job. The damned job for Marco she was sniffing about. It made her anxious, knowing that her sister was waiting to broach the subject, and she was going to cut that line of inquiry dead now.
“If you’re expecting me to invite Marco in for an interview, I can’t. Please don’t bring that up again. Nico makes the final decision on who we see and I don’t want to tell him who we need to consider based on how many degrees of separation there are between me and the prospective candidate.”
It wasn’t strictly true, she had a lot of say in who they hired and, often, Nico let her run with the first round of interviews, but she was done with being truthful to people if it meant she got an easier life out of it.
“I should have known you were only going to look out for yourself,” Mimi said. “Thank goodness Mama was here for us.”
Gina looked up.
“You’re going to find out anyway,” said her sister, looking away. “So I may as well tell you now. Mama was going to loan us some money, to help us out.”
Gina looked down at the letter in her hand, then rifled through the for-further-action pile. She plucked out the letters regarding the loan. “This loan,” she waved the letters around. “This is for you?”
“We want to move to Verona, and the houses are expensive here. I thought I already told you.”
“But why move here if you can’t afford it?”
“We’re hoping to sell the place we’re currently at but the market is slow, and we’ve got our heart set on a property not far from here.”
“You asked Mama for a loan?”
This was why Mimi had been so accommodating, why she had made the effort to spend more time with their mother, why she had been at the hospital as much as possible?
Guilt, gratitude, or obligation—which one?
A favor for a favor?
Disappointment cascaded over her like a waterfall. She wanted to believe that Mimi had been there for Mama out of love, not because of this. It left her mouth dry.
“We’re going to pay her back,” Mimi said quickly. “Marco stands to inherit something when his parents pass away and—”
But Gina had stopped listening. “Why do you want to know when I’m moving?” Had Mimi got designs on their mother’s house? Gina hadn’t thought what they might do with it, just as she hadn’t thought about her plans to move in with Christian.
“Why do you look so annoyed? It’s what parents do, isn’t it? Help their children. How much do you think you’ve saved in rent by living here?”
“I never thought of it in those terms.” Gina stood up, because the sudden burst of anger inside her made it impossible to sit still.
“We’ll have to sort things out soon,” said Mimi. “The matters of the will and—”
“Not now.” Gina threw her a stony look. Their mother hadn’t even been buried yet and Mimi was talking about the will, about divvying up Mama’s belongings, about the house. It made her sick to her stomach. “I can’t talk about it yet. I don’t want to talk about it yet.”
“Suit yourself,” huffed Mimi, and stormed upstairs again. A few moments later, Gina heard a loud angry buzz of the vacuum cleaner.
She picked up her cell phone, as she routinely did, checking for messages, and emails, trying to keep on top of things at work but there were no work related emails. She sensed that Nico had put a stop to anyone disturbing her.
She pushed the pile of letters away, not wanting to deal with them, not ready to, for the letters read as if Serafina Morosini were still alive, letters talking about hospital appointments, fliers for care homes and junk mail.
It broke her heart.
Chapter 33
He had flown back early this morning, not for her mother’s sake, but for Gina’s. She had been surprised and had told him that he didn’t need to have come all that way. But he wanted to be by her side, wanted to be the one to hold her and comfort her, but the house had been overrun with visitors, and he could see Gina was busy. They hadn’t had much time to talk, and even when he had kissed her on the cheek, and held her, she had seemed distracted.
So he had slunk into the background, and followed the funeral procession all the way to the cemetery, leaving Gina to be with her family, for she seemed to need them more than she did him. And that was fine, too.
He had been present all the way through Serafina Morosini’s funeral, close enough to Gina should she need him, and back far enough to not get in the way. He looked on, feeling very much like an outsider. He had never been able to make things up with her mother, had never had the chance to meet again so that she might form another, more healthy opinion of him, and for that he felt regret. It was also part of the reason he chose to watch from the sidelines, knowing that he hadn’t been someone she had taken to.
He could see Gina sobbing. He could tell by the way someone came over, an elderly uncle perhaps, and put his arms around her, that she was broken. It should have been him comforting her. Even now, he found it difficult to stand by and do nothing. It went against his grain. He wasn’t one to feel such pain and absorb it, and he couldn’t bear to see the woman he loved breaking apart in front of him. But she needed to tell him, she needed to let him know she wanted him by her side, and lately, all the signals from Gina had been muted. How could he not respect her wishes? Opposite him, in the row behind Gina and her close family, were Nico and his wife.
A car drove by, crawling slowly like an elongated black beetle down the quiet road lined with cypress trees. He turned to see his somber face reflected back in the shiny windows, and then watched it slide away further up the road. When he turned back, the congregation was starting to break up.
He took a few steps forward, eager to go up to Gina now, but she was busy talking to people, surrounded by a tight group, of which he wasn’t a part. He walked over to a tree, and waited.
“It’s Christian, isn’t it?” He snapped to attention quickly. He had been so busy keeping his attention fixed on Gina that he had been caught completely off-guard. It was a woman he vaguely recognized but whom he couldn’t yet place.
“Yes.”
“I’m Ines. I work with Gina.” He remembered her now.
“I’m trying to keep out of the way.”
“You’re succeeding,” she replied, giving him a warm smile. “Gina said you were in Geneva.”
“I flew back for the funeral.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Aaaww,” she seemed taken aback, “that’s real nice of you.”
“I wanted to be here for Gina,” he said, looking at the crowd that had gathered around Gina and her sister. He made sure to keep her in his direct line of sight.
“I’m sure she appreciates it.”
He didn’t say anything to that because her reaction when he had come up to her this morning told him nothing. “Hard to know what to do. She seems so preoccupied, and I feel as if I’m intruding.”
“Nonsense,” said Ines, flapping her hand dismissively. “She needs you, she’s just too overwhelmed by things to fully realize that yet.”
“Even so,” said Christian. “Gina’s mother and I didn’t get a chance to meet properly, and I’m not so sure she would want me here. I figure it’s better if I stay out of the way.”
“You’re here for Gina.”
“I’m trying to be even if she’s doing her best to keep me at bay. I’m worried about her.”
“I’m worried too. I didn’t think she would fall apart the way she did just now. She’s been holding it in for so long and you can’t do that forever. All that sadness and feeling has to go somewhere.”
“I know.”
“This is good, Christian, you being here, looking out for her. I’m trying to get through to her, to let her know that she needs you but it’s hard work. She can be hard work when she puts her mind to something. It’s hard to make her shift her perspective.”
He shook his head, disagreeing, “She’s not hard work for me.”
“Today was the first time I saw her really crumble,” her friend said.
He kept his hands in his pockets. “I haven’t seen her cry before either but I can see she’s hurting real bad. I can feel it.”
“You just keep on doing what you’re doing, Christian.”
“I aim to, I mean, I’m trying to, but I’m away for a few weeks and I’m not going to be able to keep an eye on her as much as I want to.”
“I can keep an eye on her at work, but she’ll need you, even if it doesn’t seem so right now. She’ll need you, maybe not today, or tomorrow but there’ll come a time. Just be ready.”
“I am.”
“I’d better go,” she said, looking away. “My husband will be waiting.”
“Can I give you my number?” he asked, as the idea suddenly came to him. “Just in case.”
The woman seemed to light up when he suggested it. “Sure.” He took a business card out of his wallet and scribbled his number on the back. “I’m sorry this seems so crass, a goddamn business card.”
She took it and smiled. “I don’t mind.”
He waited until the crowd had dispersed significantly, before making his way over to her. She broke away from a group of elderly people and walked over to him when she saw him waiting. He wasn’t sure whether to go back to her house, and was waiting to see what she would say.
“Hey,” he said, taking her hand. “It’s been a tough day.”
She nodded, running a hand across her forehead. “I didn’t see you.”
“I was at the back.”
“We’re going back to the house, if you want to come, but you’ve come all this way and you said you had to get back so …”
“I wanted to be here for you.” Even though he hadn’t managed to get anywhere near her.
“I appreciate you coming all this way.”
“It’s not a ridiculously long way. It’s not the US or anything. Just a 4 hour flight.”
“Thanks.”
He didn’t feel as if he was her lover, the way they spoke, he might as well have just been a long-lost colleague she had seen, like the way he felt on Emilio’s birthday, talking with his former colleagues from Fordana. The conversation was stilted and awkward. If he had been looking for clarification that she wanted him to come back to the house now, he had it.
“Take care,” he said, letting go of her hand.
“You’re not coming back to the house?”
“No, I ought to be getting back.”
“Well, thanks again for coming all this way, you didn’t have to. I didn’t expect it.”
It wasn’t the sort of thing two people who loved one another would say.
He saw Nico and Ava over by their car, talking to Mimi and the guy who must have been her husband, he assumed. “I think they’re waiting for you,” he said, nodding at them.
“Thanks for coming,” she said again.
~ ~
It was past 9 o’clock, not late at all by any stretch of the imagination, but she was in no mood to go to bed for the thought of sleep disturbed her. She often lay in bed tossing, and turning, and struggling.
Today had stretched out and seemed like a 48 hour day. She understood now what it was to be completely drained; it was a miracle she could move her arms and legs because she had not an ounce of energy, or will left inside her.
Hours earlier, Mimi and Ines had helped clear everything away, after friends and family had left. Having people around at the end, after burying her mother, had helped her to deal with the finality of it all. She’d held it all together until today, until they had lowered the casket and then she had crumbled. Because saying a final farewell was a surreal experience, and because she hadn’t been prepared for the avalanche of emotion that hurtled over her.
Uncle Roberto had been there to comfort her but it had been Christian she had wanted. She had seen him earlier this morning, and had been surprised and happy that he had come all the way from Geneva. It touched her, that he had made such an effort, but she hadn’t been able to talk to him after that. He had disappeared into the crowd, and by the time she and the other family members made their way over to the cemetery, she couldn’t see him at all.
She had hoped he might come back to the house but he hadn’t seemed too interested and she didn’t want him to feel as if he needed to, knowing the distance he had come. As it was, the house had been full of so many people, distant relatives on her mother’s side she hadn’t even seen before.
At last, the day she had long dreaded, was over and now that it was, she could carry on with her life, because the past few weeks, a month even, ever since her mother had fallen ill, she had felt as if her life had been in limbo.
She curled up into a ball, draped a blanket over her and looked around the room at the crosses and relics pinned to the wall. There was no sign of who had lived here, no pictures, no happy smiling faces, no stories to be told.
She wondered what treasures from her life her Mother had gathered over the years. Had it been memories she had collected, or regret? She thought back to the last image she had of her mother alive, when she had kissed her and told her she would be back. Had her mother waited for her? Had her mother believed she would once again return home?
She looked through her cellphone, searching for her recent memories, and found photos of her and Christian, some of her, some of him, some of the both of them that they had asked passersby to take; a picture of her in bed with nothing but a sheet on, her face beaming joy. Then, several pictures of Christian looking out from the balcony at his apartment in Trastavere, with the River Tiber in the background. There was one of him looking straight at her with his strong jaw and his mesmerizing eyes. She stared at that photo for the longest time, and it felt a slight thrill, as if he were looking at her right now, his eyes burning into her in that intense way he had sometimes of pinning her down with nothing but a stare. She looked away, unable to face him, for it was too much and instead she skimmed through pictures of them both smiling high up on the hill that day in Trastavere when they were on their Segways. That had been a happy moment, a defining moment, the real start of them getting together.
She re-read his most recent text again, the one he’d sent an hour ago when presumably he had arrived back:
I’m only in Geneva, but if you ever need me all you have to do is call
C
She typed out:
I need you now
And then, as her thumb hovered over the button to send it, she deleted it.
She turned the light off, and the lamp on, as her mother would have done, and sat in semi-darkness, wondering how strange it was that she would never hear her mother’s voice again. The sound of the clock diverted her thoughts, its monotonous tick-tock, a noise she had never noticed much before. Now in the dark silence of the room it seemed louder and more intrusive than ever.
She stayed on the sofa, hugging a cushion as she lay curled up into a ball, surrounded by her mother’s belongings, her memories, her smell.
Chapter 34
It was a week later that she returned to work full time. Up until then she had been coming in for a few hours here and there, whenever it suited her, but had preferred to work mostly from home.
But she had made up her mind that it was better to get back into the full flow of things. Business as usual, and this morning she had made her way to the office she still shared with Ines. It was another thing she needed to sort out today, the status of her infected PC.
“You’re early,” Ines remarked.
“I’m back full-time.”
“Are you sure you’re ready to come back, Gina?” Ines studied her closely. “A few more days away wouldn’t have done you any harm.”
“I can’t sit at home doing nothing.”
“You don’t have to sit at home. There are other, more healing, ways you could have taken your mind off things. Taking long walks, going for long drives, driving to Brescia, even.”
“Work is healing for me,” replied Gina, taking off her jacket.
“Oh,” said Ines, pointing a finger in the air as if she had suddenly remembered something. “As much as I would love for you to share this office with me forever, your PC has been fixed. It’s been fixed for a while now, actually.”
“It has?” Disappointment slowly crept across her at the idea that she could return to her own office. One of the other reasons for her coming back to work was so that she wouldn’t be alone with her thoughts. She and Ines always had plenty to talk about, and Gina knew her friend would find ways of putting a smile on her face, especially now. Gina craved company, not the sad, depressing company she had been surrounded by lately, where everyone she met wanted to know how her mother had passed away, and talked of her with fond memories, but normal company, normal conversation, normal laughter.
