The first time it hadn’t been easy. The second…the second it was worse.
Carlo was an American, an Italian-American to be precise. Not so tall, dark, slightly on the heavy side. He worked in a second-hand car business, and wasn’t very lucky with girls. After a couple of disastrous relationships with American girls, he went back home to Sicily on holiday, and his relatives introduced him to Sofia. She was in her early thirties, petite, shy, modest, good in the house, and she knew enough English to get by. He was already forty, and he realised it was time to settle down and have a family. They got married in Italy, and went back to America.
Sofia didn’t fit in. She had grown up in a large family, and had never left home. Now, she wasn’t in familiar surroundings anymore, and everybody was a stranger. Their financial situation wasn’t good, and she managed to find a job as a nursery nurse. She loved children, anyhow, and her job was one of her only joys in life.
Sofia and Carlo were never passionately in love, but they wanted someone to share their lives with, and they wanted a family. They didn’t quarrel; they enjoyed some good old Italian songs, loved cooking, and they were quite content. But for one thing. Children.
Sofia got pregnant a couple of years after their marriage, but she lost the baby in her third month of pregnancy. The effect was devastating. Both of them blamed themselves for it. Carlo was convinced he should have made her stay at home. Sofia thought she had done something wrong.
The process of recovery was slow and painful, and their relationship suffered. Carlo spent as much time as possible away, to avoid confronting his wife, and she grew miserable and bitter. The marriage was on the verge of disaster when his sister Lucia intervened and convinced them to give it another go. They did, because they were Roman Catholics and divorce was still not an easy option for them, and Sofia got pregnant again.
This time both felt this was it. She was almost 35 and her biological clock was ticking faster now. And, Carlo knew that if this time anything went wrong, she wouldn’t recover.
It wasn’t fair; it wasn’t just, but- as Carlo’s mother used to say- life hardly ever is, and on her fifth month, when everybody was convinced that the dangerous period was over, she lost the baby again.
It was a baby boy. They had already decided on a name, Antonio, Tony, and had made plans for his future.
Sofia didn’t seem to take it in. She was strangely calm. She kept on talking about the baby as if he was still alive, and a reality. When they went out shopping, she would look at things for “the boy”, she would buy magazines about caring for babies; she would watch all the programmes on them…Carlo didn’t stop her. At first, he thought it was her way of getting over it, a fantasy that couldn’t do any harm. Later on, he realised that Tony was more than an idea for her. He really existed, even if it was only in her imagination. Their doctor reassured him; it wouldn’t last long, it was just a sign of pathological grief, but it would get better with time and attention. Only it didn’t. According to Sofia’s own version of things, Tony started attending the nursery where she was working, because that was the best arrangement for both of them. Sofia wouldn’t talk about Tony to anybody but Carlo, and every time he tried to explain what was happening to any of his friends, they didn’t take him seriously. As he could not win he joined his wife in her reveries about Tony, and they used to discuss his achievements, his failures (not that many, and never serious), his perfect health. Things remained the same for years, until one day, the company Carlo worked for offered him a managerial post in another town. After discussion with Sofia both decided that it was worth trying to start again, away from the scene of their painful experiences.
By the time they moved, “Tony” was already in his first year at University, in Princeton. Carlo was so busy with his new position at work that he left all the socialising to his wife, who seemed to get on very well in the middle-size town, more similar to her Sicilian hometown than the city.
He didn’t meet his neighbours until 3 months after their arrival, when they were invited to a barbecue next door. When a woman asked him how his son Tony was doing at University, and shared information about her children, he realised that Sofia had gone a step further this time. The fantasy was official now. His son Tony wasn’t real just for her, and, in a certain sense, him, but for the whole town.
When they went back home, Carlo tried to make her explain her behaviour, but she looked at him as if she didn’t know what he was talking about, and he didn’t dare to ask anymore. Over the next few months he kept on weighing what to do. She needed help, but he knew she wouldn’t accept it. The summer holiday was approaching, and with it, the end of the pretence, he hoped. The boy should be back home for it, but he wouldn’t be. She could make some excuse up, but a whole summer was a long time for such a devoted son not to go and visit his parents.
The first couple of weeks, Tony spent with his friend Andy, in Florida (official explanation). When Carlo came back from work, on the Monday of the third week, the house was full of people. All their neighbours seemed to be congregated there. His wife came to rescue him from his state of shock. She grabbed him by the arm, and took him to their dining room, where a young boy, tall and dark, was talking to Mrs. Spenser, the next door neighbour. Carlo didn’t know what it all meant, but felt faint when he heard his wife teasing him for not welcoming their son after their long separation.
Carlo mumbled something, and shook the hand of the stranger, who insisted on calling him “Dad” all evening. Carlo knew it was impossible, it had to be a bad dream, but he didn’t wake up. His sense of amazement gave way to anger and rage. When all the neighbours left, and his wife retired to bed, after kissing “their son”, he confronted the “alleged” Tony, whose continual insistence on not giving him any explanation and reiterating that he was his son, drove him crazy. He had tolerated his wife’s lunacy long enough already, but madness incarnate…No, it was too much. He put his hands around the boy’s throat, and pressed, and pressed…He didn’t even notice the resistance, he was concentrating so hard on his hands…
A couple of days later, Mrs. Spenser went to try and comfort Sofia with a few words about her son and the sad state of her husband’s mental health (he had been confined to a Secure Psychiatric Hospital for an undetermined length of time). Sofia’s reply made her feel ashamed and insensitive, against her best sense of logic.
Sofia said:
“I don’t mind about Carlo. I can marry again. There are plenty of men around. But Tony…as extraordinary a son as Tony, you only get one in a lifetime…if you’re lucky.”
THE END
REVENGE
by Peter Watson Jenkins
https://peter-watson-jenkins.com/