Midway.
It’s time to celebrate.
After dinner, I persuade Paola and the kids to go out. I also invite Oscar and Martina, now a wonderful steady couple. We’ve done this before, and it was marvelous.
A single word, summery and appetizing. Cremolato. A delicious Italian ice.
No figs this time, but lemon and strawberry, and melon. The kids lap it up. I watch them swap spoons, critique with the first spoonful, retract with the second, and just enjoy it all. They aren’t covetous, these two. They like what they have. They don’t particularly want what the other has. That makes me happy.
Later, Paola brings it up again. By “it” I mean the one thing she and I can never agree on. “You have to tell them,” she says.
“I thought we had settled that.”
“You settled it. It’s far from settled in my mind.”
“What do you want, Paola? Misery, for my last few days on earth?”
“It’s not all about you!” she says, with a flash in her eyes. “You think it’s just about you.”
“You’re better off not knowing some things, specially when you’re a kid. Trust me on that one.”
“You can’t judge that!” she says. “You’re leaving. People who leave can’t tell what’s best for the people who are left behind.”
Ouch. That hurts. She’s hurting really badly. I look at her closely, searching her face for the forgiveness I hope to see there. But she is angry.
“You tell them then!” I say. “I can’t.”
Now she’s furious. “I tell them? You’re crazy, Lucio. This can never come from me.”
So that’s that. We face each other like rival armies across a distant battlefield.