We spent the afternoon with Giorgetta, who didn’t look as corpse-like as she had on the first day but still left her mother speechless and crying for a good couple of hours. She spent three months in the hospital, and I paid for it all, even for Aunt Gerarda to stay a few times. When the program was over she came out in a fairly decent state, so I went with them to Charles de Gaulle airport and we hugged and agreed to meet again soon. All three of us cried.
That night, while I was sleeping beside Kay, I heard him say: how odd, I feel a strange tingling in my arm. I woke up and said, wait, I’ll scratch you, but he said, no, not that one, the other one. We were both stunned. Can you feel your arm? I asked, rubbing my hand against him. Yes, he said, I feel your hand, the pressure of three of your fingers. He tried to move it and couldn’t, but it was an omen. Something was telling me that the loose or badly sewed threads of my life could be put back together again.
The next day I looked for the piece of paper my aunt had given me and dialed the number. It was a Miami number. When the phone started ringing at the other end I found I couldn’t breathe, so I hung up and waited a little. I poured myself two glasses of gin and the alcohol cleared my head. Then I gave the number to Jenofonte and told him to call from the next room, ask for Beatrice, then tell me. I had quickly downed another gin when Jenofonte said, Madame Beatrice on the telephone. I was unable to speak, but she heard my breathing and started speaking, daughter, I knew you were going to call so I’m ready, Gerarda told me you’re living in Paris and you’re rich, I know the kind of work you do and you mustn’t feel ashamed, what matters is that you had the courage to call, so speak now, tell me something. . I said hello in a thin voice and we both cried for a while then we started chatting and didn’t stop for three hours. At one point I said, Mamma, wait a second. I put my hand over the mouthpiece and told Jenofonte to call the travel agency and book a ticket on the next flight to Miami, and I said, Mamma, tell me your address, I’m coming straight away.
Our reunion was a happy one, if a little tense. She was sixty, but still elegant and beautiful. It was obvious she looked after herself, went to the gym every day, had had a few facelifts, and made a lot of effort to slay slim. She lived alone in an apartment near Coral Gables. She had separated from her Mexican lover more than seven years earlier, and although he was a fairly nasty and cynical individual, he had left her that apartment and enough money to give her an above-average monthly income. I waited nervously for the right moment to talk to her about my work, but it came very naturally. Do you know why I separated from him? she said, and I said, no, tell me, what happened? Mamma poured herself another dash of V8 with vodka, which was what we were drinking on her terrace, and she started her story, which wasn’t very long and basically fairly predictable.
I always knew he was cheating on me, she said, but I’d reached the age when a woman gives up and prefers to close her eyes. His meetings and business trips to Acapulco and Sinaloa and the Bahamas were getting longer and longer and seemed to be less and less justified, but I didn’t care because it all happened far away, in that great nothingness made up of all the places we haven’t lived and know only as dots on a map. Until one day he started to seem strange, nervous, exhausted. He would get home in the evening or at night and go straight in the shower claiming he was hot or tired. His mouth smelled of alcohol. One day he traveled to Chicago and I got into his office and gave it a complete once-over. That was a serious mistake, of course, because what you look for, you find. It’s something you should never do.
Well, I found it. A key ring with an address and two keys. 1587 Tijuana Drive, Apartment 6D. I went straight there, and it turned out to be a respectable-looking building, not luxurious but quite clean and well-maintained. When I got to the door of 6D I took out the key, but just as I was about to put it in the lock I heard a voice inside saying, can’t you get back before tomorrow? will you be here by noon? She was talking on a cell phone near the door. Then she said, bring me something nice, darling, different than what you always bring me. I felt jealous. I dialed Tony’s cell phone and of course it was engaged. I waited until the conversation was over and dialed again. This time he replied immediately and said, did you just call me? I was talking to the office, I’m going to have to stay until Saturday, it’s freezing cold here, but there’s no way I can get out of it, the Abbotts want to meet with me on Friday and it’s too much bother to go and come back.
The next day I found an observation post, a coffee shop on the corner of Tijuana Drive and Anchorage Street, just opposite the entrance to the building. Of course I saw him arrive at noon, right on time, with a bag of gifts. It made me angry, but then I cooled down and plotted my revenge. The first thing I did was make copies of the keys and leave them in their place so that he didn’t notice anything. Then I started keeping an eye on the bitch, who was a Colombian named Dorys. She was a stylist in a salon near Fito’s office, which was where he’d met her. One day I went in to get my hair done and studied her. She was an attractive woman just under forty, that idiot Fito had good taste. It was obvious she didn’t know who I was, because there was nothing nervous or uncomfortable about the way she behaved. On the contrary, she was very friendly and attentive. I started to make plans. My idea was to get her to dump him, or to make him believe that she had a lover. Something like that. One day, while Dorys was in the salon, I got into her apartment. It was quite nicely furnished, the home of someone who was neat and tidy but also romantic. A painting of a stormy dusk in the Caribbean, two heart-shaped red cushions, things like that. I looked through her underwear and was surprised not to find daring panties or garter belts, the kind of thing that appeals to older men going out with younger women. I wasn’t there for very long, I knew they’d be coming back together that night. Before I left, I put a pair of men’s socks beside the bed. That was part of my strategy. Leaving things that would incriminate her. Another day, I left a half-full bottle of eau de cologne, which I’d bought and half emptied, of course, like everything I left. And it worked, things started to go sour between them. One day I entered the apartment after they’d spent all weekend together, and saw that they had moved the TV into the bedroom. There was a bottle of rum, cigarette butts, and various DVDs strewn on the floor. I picked one up and saw you in the photograph on the cover. I recognized you in spite of the make-up and all the ways you’d changed, and in spite of the fact that you were naked. I sat down on the bed. My god, my husband has erotic parties with his lover and gets off on watching pornographic videos of my daughter. I felt really disgusted by the time I left, and when he got home I told him I knew everything and didn’t want to see him anymore. He gave me this apartment and a decent income. So I separated from him and found out what you did. Then I investigated a little and discovered that you were a great professional in that kind of thing and had even won prizes. I’m not going to tell you I was pleased, but I thought, if a person chooses to do something in life, however strange it may be, they should do it well, and that’s exactly what you’re doing, daughter.
I told her about my life, about Kay and Kim and Eve Studios, I talked about my experience with drugs, about Giorgetta and how hard things had been, but how that hardness had become my greatest treasure, an inexhaustible source of strength, and probably of talent. She felt guilty: if she had been closer I wouldn’t have suffered so much, but I insisted and said, Mamma, I repeat, those difficult years are my resource, I wouldn’t change them for anything.