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I understand his need, because somehow, it’s also mine.But there is a greater, much greater need, I just can’t remember what.I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.But I make an effort, even if it seems to stretch my neurons to the limit in an attempt to tear them in two.
And when I think I won’t be able to stand my own conflicts anymore, I remember.This marriage cannot fail beyond what is already broken.That’s the need.Isabella. Keep her well, safe, healthy.The most important of all my certainties and doubts.
It is she who gives me the strength, after a frantic, exhausting and silent inner battle, to release my hands from Marcos’ body, even though it seems that the skin of my palms is being separated from my muscles.
The first need, though less than the second, is so firm, consistent, impossible to ignore, and complete, that to lay a hand on his chest and drive him away from me makes me gasp, responding to the immense physical effort that required of me no expenditure of real energy.
His eyes burn me and turn almost everything to ashes, except the absurd desire to kiss him, to touch him.
“Antonella...” The voice is hoarse, the tone, pleading.
“Marcos...” I say his name, because I know that thenowill not come out. And I hope, with all that is inside of me, that he does not realize that this ridiculously brief moment only served to prove that the season of negatives coming out of my mouth in his direction has officially ended.
“Fuck, Antonella!” The stiffened body makes clear the level of self-control Marcos is exercising to respect my decision.Good, that’s good.And bad, terribly bad.
I avoid theyesI want to say, even if the word feels like barbed wire in my throat.I never thought that the need to be touched could be so palpable and that denying it when it is offered to me could, in fact, border on the painful.Marcos nods, and before any other words leave his mouth, the intercom rings.I could cry with relief.
?
“It’s a beautiful home what you built here,” Clara, the magazine’s representative, comments, when we are already sitting in the room, after the photo shoot.
Finally.I almost knelt and thanked the heavens when the photographer said he had enough.After the minutes leading up to the interviewers’ arrival, spending an hour drowning in the presence, smell, closeness, and touches of Marcos while posing for photos can definitely fall within the definition of torture.
“Thank you,” I say, and Marcos just smiles.
“So...” The black-skinned woman with voluminous hair smiles and, from the expression on her face, I already know that the next question will have nothing to do with our careers. “Everybody is talking about your marriage...” she begins, and I put a fake smile on my face.First, because I have no idea if that’s true or not, and second, because, if it is, is it serious that that’s really what she wants to ask? “It was an amazing union!How long have you been together?”
“Almost ten months now...” it is Marcos who answers, giving the answer we agreed.
“Between dating and marriage?” She does not write down any words, since she has her cell phone with a recorder app between us, recording each word said.
“What else can we say? We’re impulsive...” I joke.
“And would you say that it was impulsiveness that led you to cut ties with your parents, Antonella?” she asks at point-blank, as if she were talking about the weather. I raise my eyebrows in surprise.I knew the question would come, but I definitely didn’t think it would be anytime soon.Marcos’ embrace around me tightens into a silent show of support, and I smile elegantly, as I learned to do when I was a child.
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“And what would you say is the reason?”
“Actually, I have no intention of talking about it at all. I thought the subject of this interview was my marriage, not my relationship with my parents.” Clara smiles falsely, as if I were saying nonsense.
“I know! Of course, the main focus is your marriage, but it is precisely because you are the heirs of two of the greatest fortunes and legacies of Brazilian law, that understanding your family relationships is important for our readers to build your profiles...” she explains, with the answer on the tip of her tongue.Which tells me that as much as I knew she would ask, Clara also knew I would refuse to answer.
“Well, then I’m sorry that my profile will have to be incomplete in the minds of your readers, it’s a shame, but there’s really nothing I can do about it.” The interviewer tilts her head to the side, and then waves, agreeing.
“Okay…So, let’s talk about how you became the protagonist of a contemporary Cinderella novel? The maid heiress...” she comments and opens her hands in the air, before her own eyes, as if she were drawing the words in flashes. “Maybe that’s the title of the story,” she announces and looks at me again.Marcos does the same, looking in my face for something I don’t know what it is, and I laugh, this time, for real, although without any humor.
“Clara, darling, it seems to me that while you make such a point of reaffirming who I am, you are deliberately forgetting what that means. You see, my father is, as you said, one of the biggest names in Brazilian law, my husband is another, my father-in-law and my mother-in-law, others. Me? Well, although you didn’t ask, I’m a law student” I put a lock of hair behind my ear “You see, I learned to say no before I said any other words, and, like the good lawyer I am and who I’ve seen all the people around me be, I won’t be overcome by fatigue.Do you really want this interview? Because if the answer is yes, I suggest that you radically change your line of questioning, and if the answer is no, then I believe that my husband and I have already wasted too much time” I say each word without letting the smile slip from my face, unlike the journalist, who finally realizes that her tactic will not work.
“Very well, then... I’m sorry to have given the impression that I wanted to insist on an unwanted subject, why don’t we talk about the questions I emailed?”
“Sounds perfect!”
“That was intense...” I comment when the elevator doors close, taking away the magazine staff and Antonella laughs.
“Just the beginning, then she understood...”
“You didn’t exactly give her many options.”
