Even though I don’t need any of this stuff, I keep buying things from him. And back at my house, in the mornings, I taste the day’s first coffee from one of those chipped cups. I read the magazine on my balcony and learn all about the actors and gossip and goings-on of another generation. I hang up the portrait and look at that young, timid face. What would have made her happy? Did she grow up to wear that flashy fur coat? Was it hers? Did she like feeling elegant, being admired as she rushed about doing errands in winter under a chilly blue sky?
One day the young man invites me in, he owes me some change. As soon as I set foot in the room I’m uneasy. The life lived in that house overwhelms me. It’s all been hoarded, neglected, ransacked.
Finally I ask, “Who owned these things?”
“My family. And me. I put together all those puzzles. I graduated from high school because I read those books. My mother cooked meals for decades in those pots and pans. My dad played with those cards. He never tossed anything out. When she died he didn’t want to get rid of her things. But this year he died, too, so it’s up to me, otherwise my girlfriend won’t spend the night here.”
And so for very little money my house transforms, and my spartan life perks up a bit. It builds in flavor like a slow-simmering broth, even though the yellowed paper of the magazines makes my eyes water and there are termites in the portrait. It doesn’t bother me, these new acquisitions entertain me, they keep me company. My orphaned neighbor, on the other hand, grows tired of the tedious sale, and maybe also of his only regular client. So one day he shoves it all into a big garbage bin and speeds off to the beach on his motorcycle, with his girlfriend’s arms clasped around him for dear life.
At the Cash Register
The idea of spending money, of buying myself something lovely but unnecessary, has always burdened me. Is it because my father would scrupulously count out his coins, and rub his fingers over every bill before giving me one in case there was another stuck to it? Who hated eating out, who wouldn’t order even a cup of tea in a coffee bar because a box of tea bags in the supermarket cost the same? Was it my parents’ strict tutelage that prompts me to always choose the least-expensive dress, greeting card, dish on the menu? To look at the tag before the item on the rack, the way people look at the descriptions of paintings in a museum before lifting their eyes to the work?
Maybe my father would have liked the bars in my neighborhood, where I can ask for a glass of water filled with bubbles that rise to the top, and sip it slowly while I catch my breath or have a quick chat with someone, without paying a cent.
And yet my father, the only one who earned money in the household, saved up to go to the theater, even springing for decent seats. That money was a type of personal investment for him, something that perhaps kept him sane. My mother, on the other hand, who never worked, and therefore never had any economic independence, always had a twisted relationship to money. I still remember her reproaching me once, years and years ago—I must have been seven or eight—when I wanted a frilly white dress in a store, with short sleeves and a little pearl necklace sewn right around the collar. That detail had enchanted me at the time.
That’s too expensive, don’t even go near it, she’d told me, irritated. And I felt bad, I felt terrible, not so much because I couldn’t have the dress as for having desired something out of reach, for having dared to desire such a thing.
Even more upsetting, a memory from when I was around thirteen. I’d gone out with a younger cousin, and it was my job to keep an eye on her, to be the responsible one. We took a bus into the city—what fun!—to spend the afternoon in a popular, crowded market, and there in the middle of hundreds of booths full of trinkets of every kind I was attracted to a pair of lightweight, dangling earrings: two columns of little plastic pieces, red ones and black ones. Nothing terribly special, but from everything that there was to choose they had caught my eye.
My mother had given me some money and so I’d bought them, satisfied with my purchase, but when I went back home and showed her my new jewelry, my mother, who asked how much I’d spent for them, turned angry, reprimanding me at length, saying, You don’t know how to handle money, no one pays that much for a pair of earrings like these, they cheated you. It was one of her typical rants. And after that I was never able to look at those earrings without hating myself.
And now I’m thinking of another important moment, when I was an adult. My first boyfriend was cleaning his room—the room where we would make love and where I lost my virginity—before moving to a new place. He wanted to get rid of the loose coins scattered and forgotten on the ground, under the bed, below the cushion of the armchair. They’re not worth much, there’s no point in picking them up, he’d said. He’d swept up all those coins along with heaps of dust accumulated for years behind the furniture, and in that moment I understood, with a painful lucidity, that our relationship would have to end.
By now I earn a decent amount and spend money every day without thinking too much about it. But the fear still grips me when I least expect it, if a paperback with an attractive cover catches my eye, or a cheerful plant for the balcony. Objects like this remind me of the red-and-black earrings and paralyze me. That’s why, every now and again, even if I’m dying of hunger, I pick the simplest sandwich, or I don’t eat, period. If I walk into a store, if I admire something but don’t buy it, if I walk out and manage to avoid the cash register, I feel like a virtuous daughter. And if I cave, well, I cave.
Today for instance, a chilly day, I pause in the pharmacy in front of some bottles of body oil. The pharmacist is attentive, patient. She lets me try a few, she introduces me to the various scents: lavender, rose, pomegranate.
“Our skin turns dry in this weather,” she says. “You can pour a drop of this right into the bathtub if you like. You need to pamper yourself, dottoressa.”
But I’m not convinced, I can’t justify the expense, surely I’ve already got something like this in my bathroom. In the end I just ask for the pills I always keep in my purse in case I get a headache.
In My Head
Why does it take me so long to get out of the house this morning? What bewilders me, even here at home? I’m finding it harder and harder to get up and do things right away: react, move, concentrate. Today, as I’m getting ready, without rushing, for an entirely ordinary day, I lose track of myself, I’m hesitant in front of my closet even though I really don’t care what I wear. I eat breakfast without sitting down, without enjoying it, I slice up an apple but don’t put the slices on a plate, I don’t know if I should have another coffee or not, I’m restless, I don’t know how to proceed. Fifteen minutes go by, they turn into half an hour.
I’m about to leave but then I stop, I take off my jacket and start looking for a necklace to perk up my dress, it must be here somewhere, in some jewelry box (though I prefer “joy box” for portagioie, which, come to think of it, is the most beautiful of Italian words).