Cheeky Face #1

started to vomit words, one after the other, for fear of that huge void, for fear of being dragged in. Someone must well act like an adult in this house.

  "Dad... why did you disappear? And why are you doing that? I heard mom say that you don't send her money anymore, that there is another woman in your life, maybe..."

  I repeated some of the things that mom and aunt Patty said, pretending to be a woman of the world by now. But I had a big desire to start crying and complaining, to tell him the truth, that I missed him. Him and all the world I had before losing him. The breakfasts in the morning, the chatters when we were perched in the living room in front of the TV, the homework he helped me doing, absent and present like only my father can be, a glance at the computer, one at me and one at the book open between us. And I missed the peace that was in the house when he lived with us, and there was always a lunch and a supper on the table, and some laughter, because my mother really doesn’t know where to find them, especially when she’s tired and depressed. And also the vacations and the days when the three of us went for a walk, hugging like a family. Shit, I wanted a family, one of those you see in commercials, full of smiles and happiness, where you are strong of nothing because you have everything, everything that a little girl wants, that is some love and harmony. But maybe I’m overstating, all this wasn’t there before, and we were a part-time family, when we happened to, when we wanted to. Every other time it was silences and quarrelling, bad moods and silences. However we three were together, and it was beautiful, and I would even have wanted to explain him that I would have liked him to come back home, with us. I would even have accepted his lectures, right, and his adorable way to make me feel unique. Instead I shot bullshit. As it suits a fifteen-year-old girl who doesn't have a clear mind and is completely wrong in turn.

  "Giulia, this is none of your business. Let’s not talk about it..."

  He motioned to stand up and go away. Well, nobody would believe it, but at that point I really started crying like a fountain. I had never seen myself like that. I howled and I cried, I cried and I shouted with a desperation that I didn't even know I had inside, as if the world was ending in that moment, as if he had stabbed me. And a refrain was coming out of my guts, more or less like, "you don't love me, you don't love me." I seemed possessed. In short, sometimes we do very weird things. I had never been able to say this thing, that my father didn't love me anymore. I couldn’t even think of it. I didn't know it. I didn’t allow me to. And now everything was coming out at once, like when you uncork a bottle and the water rushes down, and I was telling it to him. I was shouting it to him. I had broken the wall of silence. Suddenly the rough thief I had seen up to that moment threw away his mask and made a step toward me. He hugged me, and in that moment I went back to be little Giulia with her father, the saviour. When I was a child I always bumped against something. He picked me up from the floor, he pretended to beat the object guilty of my pain with all the strength he had in his body, and he made my smile come back. "Now I’ll teach you a lesson, ugly face", he said, striking, for instance, the table, and I felt important, protected. God, the fixations I have. I told you that I always need proofs.

  "Don’t cry like this, please. You know it’s not true, I adore you, cheeky face. You don't even know how much I love you. How can you think that I could live without you?"

  OK, we just missed the violins and the puppets of the commercials. But, in all of that American-movie-happy-ending sweetness, I was fine. My father was hugging me. He was really hugging me. He was himself again. Three months of silence and doubts were going away in that moment, and I was getting caresses and snuggle again. This was beautiful, and it made me start hoping in the world again.

  "Dad, will you tell me what’s happening? Don’t worry, I won’t open my mouth with mom, I won't tell her anything, but I need to know."

  "You are too young", he said, parting from me.

  "I am too young to understand, but not too young to be abandoned, aren’t I? Do you think you can do as you please? I am your daughter, do you remember? I am one responsibility of yours."

  I don't know where this one came from ,either, but I must recognize that I have a certain instinct, I exactly know how to blackmail him. How could my father escape now?

  "There’s the crisis... Do you know what the crisis is?"

  "Of course. A sad economic time like the one we are living. I heard it in the news. A lot of people killing themselves because they lost their jobs... but you? You’re not killing yourself, are you? You do have a job. And what does the crisis have to do with you, with us?"

  "It does. It does, Giulia. I did lose my job... I don't even have a house anymore. I went to live with your grandparents, do you understand? It’s not easy for me to say this to your mother, or to let her see me like this. How can I come and pick you up? Where do I bring you if want to go out with you? I am in trouble, Giulia, serious trouble. It’s just a period, of course, it will pass... Soon I’ll be again the one I was, but it takes time. I must work on it. I came here to take back some documents, some papers. I want to sue the company, to see if I can come out of this situation, take back my dignity..."

  I felt stupid, stupid and happy. I’d say happy because that whole tangle of feelings and abandonment that I had imagined around me didn't exist, but also worried for my father and for our possessions, for my future. Would I become suddenly poor? What would have been of me and him? And my mother? What could she think about this? She always says that dad is a slowcoach, that he lets everyone push him around. Now she would get a confirmation. And then this story about suicide. Not all of those who lose their job kill themselves, do they? A vortex, in short. And I stopped crying. Definitely. I looked at him like a daughter looks at a father in trouble.

  "Sorry, Dad. I didn't know. I couldn’t imagine... Can I help you?"

  "You? Sure, you can help me fall. Enough speaking, take the spaghetti pot, darling. "

  He put the water on the stove and left me there, alone, as he was looking for his papers. He disappeared in the living room. And I went to the stove, with some heat, and I almost felt like his wife, not his daughter. But I will never tell this to the shrink, otherwise she will think I have a terminal Oedipus complex and keep me under analysis for the rest of my future. When he came back to the kitchen he looked calmer. We ate the spaghetti. With pesto. I like them so much, and I don’t give a damn about Paolo and the busty girl, now that have my dad again. So I listened to his stories, the economic crisis, the company shutting down. The quarrels with the management. "It’s the crisis", he said every three words. "This crisis will kill us all". My father has always been a manager, the person in charge of human resources. Don't ask me what it means because it’s not like I ever understood. He optimizes, produces, hires people, fires them. Now it was his turn. Being fired, ending up without a salary. Feeling the shame on his skin. Not being able to confess to anybody that he felt like a loser. I only heard about this crisis thing on TV, I thought that it was at a thousand miles distance from me. What could I do? I melted. Literally. I have always been a little in love with him, I admit it. OK, I have the Oedipus, is it a guilt? He’s handsome, my dad. Sure, now he’s a little dowdy. I never saw him with a non-ironed shirt on before. But he will recover. He’s also looking for a job. It’s not easy when you are almost fifty-years old, but he can still try. He must. As for me, I will help him as I can. I swore I won’t say anything to mom. He must do that.

  "Will you call me tomorrow?” I told him, walking him to the door.

  "Sure, little star", he answered, kissing me. He left with his back straighter than when he arrived. I sat on my bed and thought that life is full of surprises and that, if you love someone, if you really love him inside, you also have to trust him. It’s not like someone who changed your diaper can really abandon you. So now I can’t wait to go again to the shrink, considering that I can’t say anything of what happened to mom. I must let off steam with someone. I must talk to someone. Well, anyway, just to tell
you how crazy I am, as soon as my father left I started studying. I have a lot of homework still to do, and when mom arrived, with the shopping bags full of reproaches and bitter words, she couldn’t believe her own eyes, seeing me in front of the open books. Then I kissed her and told her I’m an asshole. I even said I am sorry, a word that sounds like an earthquake coming from me. She raised her arms to the sky, of course. She didn’t realize anything. She will never know about my meeting with dad, she just convinced herself that she did well bringing me to the shrink and, you wouldn’t believe it, she wanted to see on internet the photo of the moped that she’s going to buy me. Blessed naivety! What did I tell you? Besides being a wood plank, she’s good and daft. A chocolate, but don't you tell anyone, or she’ll never speak to me again.

  The author

  Carla Cucchiarelli, Roman, is a journalist of the regional newscast of the RAI. She has published "Why mothers suffer. True stories in the Mother-saving Universe," written with Vincenzo Mastronardi and Maria Grazia Passeri (Armando Editore 2009). In September 2012 she published her first novel, "I killed Bambi" (Zerounoundici Edizioni), a