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“No! No!” she answers with despair, her voice becomes loud only long enough to say these two words, because the next ones come out, again, whispered. “I was gonna tell you this weekend, I just... I couldn’t.”
“You couldn’t?Is that your justification? That you couldn’t? I asked you more than once!Only in the last week I must have asked about thirty and, in all of them, you ran away! You changed the subject! Months ago, Antonella!Months ago I asked you if there was anything else I needed to know, and you lied to my face!” I deny and open my arms, needing to expel from me all the indignation that dominates my body, mind and soul.I look at Antonella, who looks smaller and smaller, shrinking.Her face is red, as are her eyes.The traces of tears on her face are so many that they have already drawn on it a map as confusing as that of the São Paulo subway.I look away and frown, because I just can’t understand how she was able to keep lying to me. “You poured out lying words as if they were truths and had no shame in letting me believe them, Antonella!” Now, there is much more pain than anger in my accusations. “How could you?” I bite my lip and raise my eyebrows.I look down at the floor.The words spoken while she thought I was asleep take my mind by storm, turning what was confusing into chaos.Why would she do that?Why would she lie if she didn’t think I was even listening?
“I wanted to tell you, I swear I did, but it never seemed like the right time…”
“And now seems like the right time, Antonella?Does this moment feel right to you?”
My wife shakes her head from side to side, blinks her eyes quickly, moves her hands, bringing them to her face, and cries.In a much more painful way than she cried in my arms the morning after Isabella’s birthday, she cries, and the feeling I have is that of a hand sticking into my chest and strangling my heart.
I look away and fight against every fiber of my being that wants to cross the distance between us, hug her and say it’s okay, ask her not to cry.
“Fucking hell!” I put my hands to my hair and pull them, trying to understand what’s happening to me.Why the fuck can’t I just focus on one feeling?Why the fuck can’t I understand how I feel myself in a situation where the proper reaction is obvious?
Antonella starts to move, and I raise my eyes to her messy figure.Adding even more incomprehension to the chaotic state of my thoughts, she comes out of the static mode and moves back and forth, as if just talking wasn’t enough for her words to gain the strength they need.
She takes several breaths as she moves her arms up and down.She swallows sobs, fixes her eyes on mine, and a low sound like a puff leaves her lips.
“You have no idea what it’s like to be afraid of losing what you never had, Marcos, I...” She begins to try to explain herself, but I interrupt her in the first sentence.
“I don’t? And what do you think is happening now, Antonella?Because love isn’t enough to deal with this shit!Love does not sustain disappointments and frustrations over and over again!” I only realize I’m screaming when words are already flying out of my mouth like daggers in a shooting game.
“I was alone!” she shouts back and it is pathetic that this makes me a little less agonized to see her react.For wanting her to react, not for me, but for herself. “You’ve never been alone!You have no idea how it is!”
“And there hasn’t been a day since you came into my life that I haven’t done my best to make you never feel that way again! So I’m sorry if I don’t think that’s justification!” Tired, that’s how I feel when I say those words.But I’m surprised by her answer, which starts in exactly the same screamed tone she used before.
“You did!You did, and what was I supposed to do, Marcos? Giving up for the first time in my entire life feeling supported?I didn’t lie to make a fool of you!Months ago, I lied because it was none of your business!You said with all your heart that our marriage was a facade!I expected it, I was ready for it!I could handle it, and my lies would never affect you!”
“And then what, Antonella? What about when I asked you about this at our wedding, after I told you that if you had told me the truth, none of that would ever have happened?What about on the island, on the boat?What about when I told you honesty was key?What about every day since then when I asked if you were okay and if there was anything bothering you?” The more I argue, the worse I feel, because in trying to show her my view on everything, I just strengthen my own certainties and disappointments.
“I’ve always been alone, Marcos. I don’t expect you to understand it. But it would be easier if you did.I’ve always been alone...” She runs her hands over her face from the bottom up, dragging tears that still slid down her cheeks to the root and then down the length of her hair. “If you understood, you would understand that when things begin to change, the first natural reaction is to doubt; the second, to deny; and the third, to be terrified…I had no one, and suddenly I had you.Suddenly, you were dining with me every night, kissing my daughter, bringing her gifts, promising her parties, and building anti-monster fortresses.God, Marcos!You were showing her that there is a better world, a better life that I couldn’t give and that it has nothing to do with money.”
“Antonella! It’s not about that!”
“"Yes, it is!" she shouts even louder, and her eyes are the size of plates. “Yes, it is!And you need to understand that it’s the same thing!” She shakes her head from side to side several times. “That I lied to a man who was supposed to be nothing but a whimsical employment relationship, but who, every day, became the safe harbor I never thought I’d have.” Antonella tilts her head slightly to the side as if her words had some effect on me.It is a vain expectation, because though her words make sense, they are not yet enough. “It was none of your business, but all of a sudden, you were sleeping in the same bed as me and Isabella, all of a sudden, even unintentionally, you were being more than we ever had, and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t want what we never had, Marcos!” Crying threatens to take control of the trembling body again.Antonella closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, clench her hands into a fist and spends some time like this before she speaks again. “I never wanted to be a jerk, I never wanted to make a fool of you!But things were getting out of hand, I started to think the universe was laughing at me, and I just wanted to say no one was laughing.I just wanted to say that nobody cared about me and that it was okay, that I was okay.I just wanted to tell the universe that it wasn’t fair that it suddenly shows me that some people live differently, that it wasn’t fair that it used you for that, that I would never want to be different, and make me wonder, again and again, every hour, day, moment, second and thousandth of a second, if anything you were doing could mean more, because I had no idea if you wanted more.I just wanted to tell the universe that it was unfair to make me feel envious of my daughter, because it was easy for her to accept you without question, without fear.Even if I was terrified that two years from now it would become difficult, it would become impossible, even if I didn’t have a night that I wouldn’t lose at least an hour of sleep wondering if Isabella would hate me when we got divorced, because no matter how much you did, it wasn’t your job to keep her safe, it was mine, Marcos! It was mine! And I was failing and failing, and I keep failing every single day!And it sucks that there are some days when all I wanted was to be a normal twenty-one-year-old girl and it hurts that I’m not, it hurts that I can’t be.It hurts so much that I want to be and I can’t, I shouldn’t and I want to, because my daughter is not to blame!” Antonella shakes her head, reaffirming in gestures what she says in words, and I could bear it if that were all, but it’s not. Now her voice is a lint of trembling and despair.The tears cascade down her face and even though her words do not lessen my disappointment, the agony they overflow with is so great that it is impossible not to put my own feelings aside.There is so much pain, so much pain in Antonella’s words without pauses, dots or commas that I would not be able to continue making accusations and causing her more pain even if I did not feel for her what I feel. “It’s not her fault, Marcos.She has no idea how I feel when she hugs me, when she smiles at me, and when she looks at me like I’m her whole world.” Her eyes close and remain so as her next words pass her lips seeming to cause her physical pain judging by the painful expressions that take over her entire face. “She has no idea that sometimes when I was alone and very, very, very tired or scared, very, very scared, I imagined a world where she didn’t exist.”
Her whole body is trembling now, shaking in involuntary spasms that repudiate the words she has just said.Antonella is in agony, and I wonder how long.How long has she felt like this?How long has she been running?How long has she been hiding?How long has she been consumed with feeling alone, completely alone and guilty?So absurdly guilty.
I can’t blink, the air is trapped in my lungs because my breath is suspended.I watch Antonella with all the attention in the world, worried that if I look away from her for a moment, the woman will fall apart.She lowers her head and rubs her hands on her face.
I want to get closer, I want to touch her.God!I’ve never wanted it so much, I’ve never really needed to be so sure that someone would be okay, not like I need Antonella to be now.
I want to tell her a zillion words. I want to tell her she’s wrong, but her pain seems to have frozen me in place, I never knew anyone could feel so much pain and stay whole.I never knew I could feel so deeply a pain that is not mine.I never knew I could feel myself being shattered just by seeing someone suffer.
Antonella’s face rises, and I force myself to keep my eyes open.
“So tell me, Marcos.Where am I supposed to get the courage to let go of not feeling this way for the first time in my life?I never meant to make a fool of you. I just… I’m just too much of a coward.”
Oh, God! I can’t believe it! I can’t believe I actually admitted out loud things that I didn’t even dare to acknowledge to myself.I pull the air, but it doesn’t come.It just doesn’t come, and the tremor that runs through my body suddenly seems to focus on my legs.I don’t have the courage to look for Marcos’ eyes, terrified at the prospect of what I might find.
I struggle to stay on my feet, but I lose the battle and my body collapses.Before my knees reach the ground, arms wrap around my waist.I don’t lift my eyes, I don’t want to, I can’t, I can’t deal with the horror that must be stamped on my husband’s face, and yet his touch breaks down the last barrier that held me together.The feeling is that of being hit by a violent gust of wind.
It shouldn’t be that impactful, since I’ve long felt like I’m living in the eye of the hurricane, but it is. Yeah, and it shakes my whole body into an uncontrolled, aching cry.I feel like I opened the pandora’s box and all my fears and guilts are being released, but instead of dispersing around the world in order to torment it, they are concentrating around me and orbiting me, preventing the air from reaching my lungs, suffocating me.
Hands are sliding down my icy skin, words are being spoken, but I can’t hear them amid my own crying, and I feel my body hit the ground.Not in a fall, but with a gentle slide that leaves me sitting on something soft and warm, as warm as the place where my head is resting. Marcos. His smell is the only thing capable of sharing space with the despair in my consciousness at this moment, and I allow myself to cry and be embraced.
I don’t know why he’s doing this, I don’t know why he’s still here, why he didn’t come out slamming the door and telling me he doesn’t want to see me when he comes home and I don’t care because I’m not able to think of anything. So I cry. I cry until my throat is scratching, my eyes are burning, and the shirt on which my face is propped is completely drenched by my tears.
I cry every time I feel alone.For all the horrible thoughts I’ve had without being able to control myself over time, I cry for all the times I’ve been silent.I cry until I feel hollow.And even when there is not a tear left, I remain still, afraid to move and discover that all this support was just the craziness in my head and that, again, I am alone.
