Cheeky Face #1, Page 2

notebook, as if I were a subject to study. I was interested in her too. In a different way, of course. I looked at her as if she were the character of a movie, to understand to what extent I can trust her. She can do, I admit it. She has black hair, cut short but with a feminine hairdo. She was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket. Simple, like me, and she doesn’t like people like aunt Patty. She moves around by moped, she said, and – mind-blowing woman – she even convinced my mother to buy me one if I go back to school and pass. Which is not such a difficult task. If I want. I always passed previous years, and they gave me nothing for free. If I end up deciding to, I can study, and how I can. The point is that I don’t want to. Why should I commit? Well, yes, for a light-blue Scarabeo maybe I could. I need to think about it. I also observed my mother, during the session, I mean. She’s different, looking at her like that, from the outside, let’s say. Sitting next to me, talking about us and our life. You can see that she cares about it, about me, about my future, about school. You can see that she’s ready to change to help me. Not that she makes mistakes, no, but for sure she’s a bit of a pain. She wants everything, commitment, presence, she wants the best from me, and I don't know how far I can get. I must compliment her, however, she deserves it. She hasn’t said a single word about my father. She said that it will be up to me to talk about him, or to him if he ever shows up again in our lives. The shrink agreed with her. All very soft. Woody Allen fitted it, even at the end of the scene, when, after that hour of thoughts and intense looks, the spotlights were finally switched off and we went back to be a daughter and a mother looking for peace. No shouts, no reproaches, no threats. I felt like a princess. Cool. OK, I admit it, sometimes I need these proofs to feel loved. And here comes the other problem. And for now only I know about it, not my mother, neither the shrink. The problem’s name is Paolo. And I liked him at first sight. That is since the first year in junior high. But he doesn’t consider me at all. He’s always been my best friend. We laughed a lot, like fools, making fun of everything and everyone. Now he wants to hang out with Marina, the worst dumbass of the class, but also the one boys likes a lot, all boys, let’s be clear. She has two wicked breasts, she’s always wearing short skirts to make herself looked at, and males ring around her as if she were the only female of the Earth. She already shagged three of them, the whole school knows. But for those idiots it is a point of pride to hang out with someone like her. Paolo told me that. He told me that he likes her. That he wants to hit on her. Shit. Do you understand, now, why I don't want to go to school?

  And, shrink or no shrink, I stayed home even today. It didn't suit me to see Paolo drooling over that busty girl, when she’s sitting in the courtyard and they all cheer around her. And yes, I know, you’re right too, this way the moped goes to hell, but come on, you well have to forfeit something. My mother left early. Her shift begins at dawn, poor thing. She phoned me from work, implored me, threatened me. She said she would cut my allowance, won’t let me go out in the weekend. No disco, no cinemas, nothing at all. She howled like crazy. I wonder what those poor dying patients might have thought? Who knows. Maybe today was one of those days in which no one is brought to ER. I don't know, there must well be a day like that! But it’s none of my problems. I was unmoving, hard like a stone (just like my mother, but I must take after somebody, right?) and I hung up. The telephone kept ringing, ringing, ringing. It’s not like I’m stupid. I haven’t answered anymore. In the end she got tired. So here I am, happy and rejoicing in front of the computer, watching Sex And The City and smoking like crazy. Free as a bird. Finally. And then it happened. Would you believe it? It happened one of those things that make you sleepless for years. It got me so scared! I heard the door being opened. Slowly. First thing, I thought it was my mother coming to pull me up from my shirt and bring me to school. Then I thought it might be a thief. I put the cigarette off, switched off the computer and stood motionless. Standing behind the door, with the mobile phone in hand, ready to call the police. I really didn't know what to do. What if a clockwork-orange-style gang was coming in? What could I do? What if they raped me and cut me to pieces, hid me in the refrigerator and threw me in the garbage? How would my mother get by? Would she go on TV for years, looking for news about me, or would she resign, thinking that I just run away from home? OK, I’m exaggerating. It’s just that I watch too much television too, in the evening, when I get bored. Or, better, too many films. Anyway I got a trip of a scare! But who did I see walk through the living room, step by step, as if walking in a minefield? No, you wouldn’t believe it. Not even I would believe it if someone told me. But yes. It was really him. My father, with his attaché case, and a pink panther look. Plush and unarmed. In poverty, I would say, shabby, but still him. My father, I was almost moved, and a small tear came out of my eye, but right when I was about to fling toward him like a thirsty who finally saw water, instead of jumping at my neck and cover me with kisses – which I would have loved – he looked at me as if I were the one who shouldn’t have been there. Reproachful and cold. Very cold.

  "Giulia, what are you doing here at this hour?"

  "Fuck! You scared me to death Dad, what a scare... What are you doing here?"

  "Language girl, you know you mustn’t curse."

  That’s parents for you. Do you see why they make children go crazy? They always have the upper hand and turn the tables. He comes into my and mom’s house without even asking for permission, like a thief – and he should be ashamed of himself – still, in a second, faster than light, he makes his Copernican revolution. As soon as he recovered after the trauma, he understood that he had to make a fool of me and he immediately started his reproach, good-father style. As usual. He came into my room with the stance of an army general at the military parade and looked around. He went even paler. OK, it’s true, it looked like there had really been thieves; bed undone, closet open, clothes on the floor, but come on, I am a teenager, I well have the right to my chaos no? There was also the ashtray full of stubs on the bed, but luckily he didn’t see it. And then it didn't seem to me it was the right time to start acting like the great dictator. The moralist, him, who abandoned me like that.

  "You should be at school at this time. Did you skip it? And why don't you answer the phone? What’s this mess? You smoked, didn’t you? Open the window right now."

  Shit! Only then I understood. It was him at the phone earlier, not mom. That's why; he wanted to be sure not to find anyone. And it was him in the house now, in that house that had been his, had been ours, where he now walked like a stranger. Half thief, half con-man. Funny, isn’t it? I opened the window like a robot and stood there, in a corner, looking at him. From afar. Serious. If I could, I would have shot him.

  "Are you feeling ill? Let me look better. You are grown, it seems to me. You seem thinner too."

  "I feel like I want. I’m not thinner and I won’t grow anymore at this age, Dad. I’m always the same. You, instead. What are you doing here? If mom finds out it will be a mess."

  He sat on the bed, between my computer and the ashtray. Strange to say, he didn’t dare answer me. I must admit it, I had never seen him like that. He put his hand in his hair, he always does that when he’s in trouble. I know him.

  "You know that I love you, cheeky face."

  "Dad, don’t act funny to make me feel sorry for you, and don’t call me cheeky face. You won't make it with me. You disappeared three months ago, you didn’t even make a phone call, just one... and you lecture me now?"

  I saw him collapse. More depressed that ever. I felt sorry for him, shit. He hid his face in his hand. My father coming like a thief to the house where he lived, and with a face like the Pietà by Michelangelo, on top of that. Why do such things always happen to me?

  "Giulia, you’re right, I’m sorry..."

  Sorry, sorry, sorry. What was he saying? I am not a shrink. I am fifteen-years old. I must be understood, not understand. I didn’t know what to say. Silence.

  "Would you make me a cof
fee? I need it."

  We moved to the kitchen like two sleepwalkers in a film. He swayed on one side and I on the other. I don't even know how to brew a coffee, but I tried to remember the motions. Water, powder, I hoped that something came out of that thing. I don’t know how it happened, but eventually I succeeded.

  "What about school? All fine?"

  "Marvellously."

  It’s not like I told a lie, come on. I didn't want to argue, that's all. If my father starts one of his lectures, it’s a real pain. But he was silent. Then he looked up again, seriously. I must say that his swinging mood was giving me some trouble. One second he was the father I know, another a perfect stranger lost in his thoughts. I missed his snuggle, that’s it, his way to make me feel unique. But above all, I must say it, I missed his words.

  "Your mother?"

  "As usual. You know how she is, nobody can stop her."

  "Yeah, always the same."

  Silence, more silence. My father’s eyes fixedly staring down, mine looking intently at the table. One of those situations in which we should have started throwing dishes at each other. After two minutes I couldn’t stand it any longer. I