The small garden Bruno had lovingly been caring for since they were tiny was turning into a wild, angry wasteland. When they had first moved into the apartment building in Pigneto—an old working-class neighborhood now undergoing a slow gentrification—the so-called garden at the back of their ground-floor apartment had been just a large patch of dirt, but Bruno prided himself on possessing a green thumb and immediately set to work. He planted all kinds of shrubs, creepers, bulbs and perennials, so that they would continue to flower all year round. Besides the herbaceous plants that would bloom in rotation, he also put in a peach and a plum tree, which he named after each girl, so that a few years later they were already eating Anita-peaches and Sofia-plums. But now, with astonishing speed, the plumbago and lantana bushes had lost their shape and become a tangle of twigs that suffocated the roses; the fruit trees needed pruning, their branches reaching out all the way to their bedroom windows, obscuring the view and punching against the glass, as though begging to be let in. The violent summer heat had sucked the chlorophyll off the hydrangeas’ leaves, and now they wilted, bleached by the sun, without sap. The soil had turned back into a dusty crust—one could hardly believe it once had been supple and full of nutrients. Anita and Sofia struggled to recall the deep-green shade the garden had once provided, filled with blooming flowers, sweet scents and butterflies. The familiar image of their father crouching by the flower beds, digging, transplanting, meticulously brushing the artemisia and lavender leaves so they could release their aroma, was already fading away.
Even the apartment had caught a malaise: objects seemed to be slowly losing their will to function. A film of dust—or was it a veil of carelessness?—had infiltrated every recess, so that light bulbs went out but nobody bothered to replace them, the sink clogged, the washer died, but there was no money to replace them.
The lack of money was another change. They had never been rich, but Bruno had always managed to pay for whatever was needed. He had been a sound technician in a sophisticated recording studio, highly sought after by musicians and composers. But he had never had life insurance and had left only a small amount of money in the bank and a mortgage pending on the apartment. All along Bruno had been spending everything he made, thinking he still had time to worry about savings.
Now Emilia needed to find a real job—yoga lessons weren’t going to pay the mortgage—but most of the time she was procrastinating, as though some kind of miracle would happen soon and resolve their financial situation. All she did was say, “We can’t afford it,” whenever the girls asked for something. Whether it was clothes, takeout pizza, a movie.
And then there was Mr. D’Onofrio.
That’s how they were supposed to address him, according to Emilia, even though Anita and Sofia had always been on a first-name basis with all of their parents’ friends and used surnames only when they talked to teachers, doctors or very old people. But was this Mr. D’Onofrio meant to be a friend? And if so, why couldn’t they call him Sandro? How come he had showed up so unexpectedly, and was coming over for dinner as though he were a relative, without anybody else ever being invited? And why, why, was he sitting at the head of the dining table, in their father’s place?
These were only a few of the questions Anita and Sofia didn’t dare pose to their mother. It was an unwritten rule that somehow she had silently established, to which they silently obeyed: they were not to ask, they were to take for granted that this stranger in well-ironed shirts and expensive suede loafers was now a fixture in their home. As though it were natural for her to have a new friend, with whom she seemed to be on quite intimate terms and who had suddenly popped out of nowhere, right after Bruno’s disappearance.
But if Sandro D’Onofrio was supposed to be Mamma’s new friend, to them he wasn’t friendly. If anything, he seemed embarrassed to be sitting with the three of them in front of the elaborate dishes Emilia cooked whenever he showed up. He was polite, but he hardly ever addressed the girls, as though he had no idea how to interact with them, or was afraid they might bite him. Emilia was the only one who seemed completely at ease: cheerful, chatty, somehow ecstatic. She didn’t pick up on the tension that ran around the table, or maybe she just pretended not to notice how stilted the conversation was.
“He’s married,” Anita told Sofia.
They had helped clear the table and had gone back to their room to finish their homework, while Emilia and Sandro were left to chat in the living room. Often the two of them drank Scotch after dinner, a new habit.
“He doesn’t have a wedding ring,” Sofia pointed out cautiously, sitting cross-legged on her bed.
“Nobody does anymore. That’s old-fashioned.”
“How can you tell he’s married?”
“Why do you think we have to eat so early when he comes around?”
Sofia shrugged. She didn’t particularly want to know. Once things were given a name, they became real.
“Because after dinner he goes back to his wife!” Anita sneered. “He probably has to eat twice.”
Unlike her little sister, she enjoyed unearthing all that went unsaid.
Sofia made a timid attempt at laughing.
“Really? He’s going to gain lots of weight, then.”
Anita glared. “She never set the table with two glasses for Papà,” she said. “And she was always a shitty cook, before.”
Emilia had become a “she.” She had turned into someone who had joined the other side of the divide. As the fault line ran quicker and deeper, she was getting farther and farther away from her daughters, along with all the things they had lost.
* * *
Sandro wasn’t sure about the girls.
There was such a rough edge about them: they had bushy eyebrows and dark curls, their knees and legs scabby, always covered in scratches, their nails never clean. On them any piece of clothing looked like some old hand-me-down, washed too many times and never properly ironed. He had a feeling they didn’t like to bathe too much, because their hair, unruly and jet-black, smelled of cooked food. He guessed that one day they’d grow into attractive adolescents and then young women, but now they looked too feral and unshaped to be considered pretty.
Emilia had insisted that he come to her place every now and again, to have a quick bite and “get familiar with the girls.” He had accepted, only because he didn’t have the heart to tell her that he’d rather not.
“I’ll tell them the truth, that you’re one of my former students and we’ve become good friends,” she’d said.
“Isn’t it too soon?”
“We have to start somewhere. I want them to get used to you.”
It worried him, this idea of familiarization. Did it mean that somewhere along the line they too were going to be a family? It seemed so farfetched and maybe, deep down, not what he wanted. He still wanted Emilia, but he could do without all the baggage that came with her. Not to mention those painful flashes of Ottavia and his daughter that tore like unwanted reminders through his reveries.