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But sooner or later, desperation would come for him just like it does for all idealists.
Without the informant’s name, all I can do right now is toss back my pills and try to recoup the lost sleep I’ve been missing for the past week. At least then, I can have some temporary solace, even if it’s all in my head.
ChapterSeven
JUNE
Afew weeks later, I’m preparing to leave the States to spend three months in Italy. It was a tough decision to make, but when I told my mother about my reservations, she almost slapped me.
“How could you say no to such a thing? You’re being handed an opportunity to work in a beautiful location for a large amount of extra money that could help you and the boys in ways you can’t even imagine. I know you’re not struggling anymore, but you never know when something will throw you for a loop. You need to go to Italy,” she says, turning to the closest reflective surface to fix her hair.
Her words echoed in my head all weekend until I finally made a choice to go. She’s right; I can’t afford to borrow against my future if I say no. Life could throw me a curveball at any moment, completely destabilizing me and the life I’ve worked so hard to create. The highs have been amazing, but the low points scared me so much that I still stay up at night remembering the fear and desperation that I felt in the early days of pregnancy and motherhood.
In order to protect myself and my boys, I’m taking the chance.
I’m still a bit hesitant to be going to the same place where I met Marcello. The hotel that my company has put me in is only a three-minute walk from the café where I first met him, and I’m curious to see how uncanny it will feel to be back there again when I swore I’d never go back. Marcello humiliated me and put me on the path to single motherhood. Though the chances of running into him again are slim, the thought of it happening is enough to make me anxious.
My flight leaves at six in the morning, so I drop the boys off at my mother’s house the night before I leave. I won’t have any extra bandwidth to handle a meltdown from either of them the day of my flight, so this is the best approach, even though I miss them to pieces as soon as I get home. I’m forcing myself to go to sleep at seven in the morning on the off chance that I’m actually awake enough to take this flight without wanting to die.
Getting on my plane the next morning feels surreal. I watch all kinds of people scatter around the cabin, some of them families with small children or old women with tiny dogs in purses. One woman on the far side of the cabin is crying, holding back sobs as she texts somebody. It’s strange to get a small glimpse into the lives of other people, even if I have to pull away and focus on my own again.
There’s no way to make a ten-hour flight enjoyable, but I can get through the worst of it with a handful of books I purchased months ago that I never got around to reading. I really hate that about myself, always with the intention of self-improvement or discipline without actually executing it.
The flight drags on forever, and when we finally land, it takes me a few minutes to feel the lower half of my body well enough to stand and exit. All I can think about is the bed at the hotel that my boss has compensated for me. It’s a nicer hotel than I’ve ever stayed in before, and they’ve assured me that any extras or amenities that I want can be added to the company credit card.
As nice as it all sounds, I still have to get a cab to the hotel while my blood sugar is low, I’m exhausted, and my back is killing me from the journey.
I finally arrive at the hotel an hour later, though I’m in a shitty mood from the driver trying to swindle me. I look younger than I am, and I’m certain he’s used to scamming inexperienced American kids.
As soon as I check in and head upstairs, I can already feel all of the excitement from five years ago come rushing back to me. I’d suppressed it since I accepted this proposal. I live under the assumption that my excitement will always turn my experience into a nightmare based purely on irony.
My chest flutters as I make my way up to my room, still worn down from the flight but with a renewed sense of curiosity and expectation. The room I’ve been given has a view right over the water, eerily similar to the way I saw the ocean on my date with Marcello. For a brief moment, I try to put myself back in that place. I want to recreate that same sense of naivete and youthful curiosity that I felt that day.
I don’t even bother to unpack my suitcase besides digging out a pair of sweatpants and a new t-shirt to wear to sleep. The idea of sleeping in this bed wearing the same clothes from my flight makes me itch deep in my skin, and I know that motherhood has turned me into something of a germaphobe. Maybe not the worst transformation, but it can be limiting at times.
I fall asleep almost as soon as I lie down without even pulling the blanket over my body. As I pause to hear the rhythm of the hotel, I can feel myself listening intently for the sound of one of my boys jumping off his bed. A childish scream of some kind would startle me, but it would fit the narrative that my brain is attempting to recreate where it doesn’t belong. I’m away from home, and I need to anticipate a whole new way of life for the foreseeable future.
I dream about missing my flight, which stresses me out enough to wake me several times. I’m annoyed at my brain for sabotaging itself, but I have to admit that going back to sleep immediately after awakening feels better than any drug on the planet.
The fan kicks on, blowing a cool stream of air over me as I rest. I can’t remember the last time I felt this relaxed. Being a mother has trained me to have my guard up constantly, to keep a rigid, evolving knowledge about every possible factor that could harm my kids or me. Grocery stores, malls, restaurants, everywhere holds the potential for catastrophe.
Now that I’m in perfect silence, I realize how loud my brain has been for the last five years.
All I can hear is the whirring of the fan in the dark. The frequency of the humming is almost meditative, and I allow myself to slip back into sleep for another three hours before I awaken again. Sleeping in a hotel is a special kind of peace, with only the sound of the air conditioning and the light from the smoke alarm to disturb you.
Being alone in silence is a foreign experience for me as a mother of two boys. The only time it’s ever quiet in my house is when both of them are asleep at the same time, and every night, one of them makes it their mission to stay up as late as possible after I’ve exhausted myself trying to get them to bed.
On the off-chance that I do have a quiet night, I usually spend it watching trash TV in my bedroom while I eat something questionable and bad for me. It’s the only solace that I get to have to myself, and there’s nobody there to parentmeabout my choices. If my mother knew how I behaved when she had my boys at her house, she would sit me down and scold me for having no hobbies and eating like shit.
With nothing to do for the weekend, I decide to head out into the town to see what I’ve been missing all these years. The pieces of Marcello that I’ve allowed to run my entire inner thought life are taking over stronger than ever. I try to imagine what he would like to see me in if he were to run into me by chance, what would draw his attention the way I had that first night at the bar. I picture what he would look like these days, remembering that he was a bit older than I was when we met.
He could be in a completely different place in life right now. But how would I even know? I had no idea who he really was when we met. He could have been living in his car for all I know. If that were the case, he pulled it off surprisingly well, but I’ve always been curious about what I would have found if I had gone back to his house with him.
Some of the guys I went on a handful of dates with all seemed to be normal and well-adjusted until I went to their house for the first time. I always ended up regretting it. Nine times out of ten, he either didn’t have any furniture or his place was filthy. I swear that I could have poured a soda all over the floor, and it would still be stuck to the same spot on the floor the next time I saw him. One time, there were even maggots in the sink, writhing in all their glory within a mountain of dirty dishes.
Maybe I’ll get lucky enough to meet someone who will help me forget about Marcello tonight. It would be super unlikely, but I might just have low expectations because American men are terrible.
That’s the problem. It’s Americans.
