The First True Lie: A Novel Read online

  “You know, it’s handy having a friend who’s a nerd.”

  “If you don’t like it, we can go back to fighting.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Whoever says so is a hundred times more than me.”

  “You want me to give you a Chinese burn?” He twists the skin on my wrist with both hands until I’m the one who yells.

  Mama says it’s because I was born at seven months, and seven-month babies are more intelligent. I was in an incubator for two months. Maybe I’ve fallen back in, because once again I find myself in an evil machine that creates horrible nightmares and I’m still too small to get out and move away on my own. I don’t even know if it’s true that seven-month babies are more gifted. In any case I only want to be normal.

  Even if sometimes it’s useful to understand things first.

  At seven o’clock Davide’s mother buzzes the apartment.

  He thinks it’s my mother, but I know that it’s his. It has to be.

  “He’ll be right down,” I say into the intercom. “C’mon, get a move on, move, hurry,” I tell Davide, pushing him out the door.

  Friday night. It’s like taiga and tundra in the apartment.

  Titicaca more or less everywhere.

  I turn the key in the lock to Mama’s room and peek in. I think about the door in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and decide to leave it wide open.

  Maybe there really is a funny smell. Maybe it’s the toilet. Every so often it stinks because of the low pressure, Mama says.

  Low pressure over the entire Mediterranean basin, but people don’t seem to be any less stressed.

  I turn on every light. In the freezer I find two fish sticks. I look at the expiration date—it’s already passed. Doesn’t matter. It wasn’t that long ago. I put them in a pan with oil; I have to cook them for five minutes on each side.

  I’m not even sure I’m hungry.

  But I feel like I have to feed myself, so that I don’t waste away, don’t get sick, don’t get taken away.

  In orphanages the orphans always eat the same soup, it’s take it or leave it. I’d be happy to eat only fish sticks, chips, pizza, prosciutto, mashed potatoes, and meatballs. It’s not really the same thing, though.

  In orphanages you have to eat like all the other kids and with all the other kids, play with all the other kids, and sleep with all the other kids, even if you’re not tired. From what I can tell, in orphanages you can never do anything different from other people.

  I’m not used to that. I’m used to living with Mama, and our life is different.

  You can be equal, normal, or different.

  Equal is when you have to be like others. Normal is when you get to do great stuff everyone likes. Different is when you have a bit of a strange life that is definitely not equal, but neither is it normal; it’s a life that’s a bit lonely, a bit on its own, just like ours.

  Normal is the best of all, but different is better than dead equal.

  Equal is a bit like the sky when it’s gray all over, like the bottom of a frying pan.

  “Don’t scratch it or you’ll poison yourself.”

  Don’t climb over the gate or you’ll end up stuck like a chicken kebab. Don’t climb over the barbed-wire fence or you’ll get tetanus. Don’t jump on the mattress or the whole thing will collapse. Don’t stay out late or I’ll be worried. Don’t cross the street without looking. Don’t eat like a caveman. Don’t put your elbows on the table. Don’t talk to people you don’t know. Don’t trust people—hey, what are you doing?

  Nothing! Just frying some fish sticks!

  At the smell of fish, Blue launches himself like a surface-to-air missile onto the kitchen counter, knocking over the bottle of oil; he slips and slides like in cartoons, which makes me laugh out loud.

  “It’s not funny.” He looks at me like he’s really telling me off.

  “Yeah, but it still really makes me laugh.”

  When the sky is like that, all gray and uncaring, with everything sliding right off its back, you don’t think it can ever change. When it’s sunny with a few clouds, that’s normal. When it’s stormy, it’s bad but also beautiful.

  With Mama, it’s like always living in the moment before the storm: You don’t know if it will come, but you know it could. Some nights you even hope it will, just so you don’t have to be on guard the whole time.

  Now the storm is here and we’re all about to drown, but Blue and I are still bobbing along. Cats don’t even like water. They don’t let cats into orphanages.

  I don’t like having baths. But I have to have them because if I stink they might say: “It’s a bit fishy when such a clean boy starts to smell.”

  When Blue fell into the bathtub, he looked as if he’d stuck one of his paws in an electric socket. Don’t put your paws in the socket or you’ll get electrocuted, don’t stick your fingers in your nose, don’t stick your nose in other people’s business—he won’t fall for it again.

  “Believe me, a hot bath always does you good. You soak a bit and then you feel like new.”

  I turn on the bath taps and sit on the toilet. I check down there to see if any lichen and moss are growing—there aren’t, but when I sniff my hand it smells like cheese. I pour bubble bath into the water, the one that makes lots of foam. I take off my clothes and realize that my feet have joined the Blackfoot Indian tribe. The mirror is all fogged up; with my finger I write fucking shit on it. I get into the bath. At first the water is hot, then it cools down. My willy floats up in the water, more like a sea anemone, those strange flowers you see in aquariums, than like the red thing Mama keeps hidden in her underwear drawer. I wonder if, as I grow up, it will become more like the red thing and make the same noise, or maybe just a faint hissing like it does now with the bath foam sizzling around it.

  I’ve been in the bath long enough now that my fingers are wrinkled.

  “Come on, get out of the water. Can’t you see that your fingers are all wrinkly? How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “I told you, dear, raising a boy is war.” Grandma would stand ready with the towel with the blue and white anchors on it, a ham sandwich, and some apricots that had been in the sun so long they were almost rotten.

  Grandma would always talk too loudly because she’s a bit deaf, especially in the right ear, which is enormous and sawed in two by a dangly earring that’s too heavy, and Mama would plead: “Please don’t talk like that in front of the child.”

  I pull out the plug. When the water has finished going down, the drain burps, telling us that’s that, I’m all done digesting: foam, pieces of skin, black bits from my feet, a little fart. I put on Mama’s bathrobe like a boxer all in a daze at the end of the first round, and, since I’m here, I brush my teeth. Not all of them, though, just the front ones. In the mirror you can’t see fucking shit anymore, just my face, and it’s hard to read what was written there. I make faces. I yawn, like a hippopotamus from the documentaries. I’m sleepy.

  Where’s my quilt with the baby-blue clouds?

  First I have to go and say good night to Mama.

  I don’t really want to.

  I’d prefer not to see her, and instead remember her more alive than dead, like with movie actors. When they die, the images we see are how they were when they were alive, not when they’re all pale and wasted. That way you’re happier to remember them.

  The most they give us are pictures of the smashed-up cars, if they died in a car crash, like Princess Diana, who in my opinion was a lot less pretty than Mama.

  The only picture I’ve got in my head of the famous vanishing Dad is of him and Mama smiling in front of a motorcycle, him with a red bandanna around his neck and her in a leather jacket, her long hair blown to one side by the wind. Behind them there’s a house like a hotel, I think, though I wouldn’t swear to it, because at a certain point Mama stopped showing me that picture.

  “I lost it. I can’t find it anymore.”

  So I stand at the door, leaning against the f
rame, dripping on the floor, unsure of whether to go in or not. I turn around and fall asleep on the sofa. I like sleeping on the sofa even if I have the painting with the yucky weather above my head. I’m a little scared about having nightmares again, but then I fall into a dreamless sleep, my koala on the pillow and Blue tucked up close.

  5

  It’s Saturday, which is just as well.

  School gets out early.

  Mama says she doesn’t understand why children have to go to school on Saturdays, when their parents aren’t working. I don’t see why that matters to her, seeing as how she never goes anywhere anyway.

  “That has nothing to do with it. It’s about sleep. At least on Saturday people can sleep in.”

  She’s right, even if now it’s not a problem anymore.

  My problem is finding my shoes with the laces, because the ones I wore yesterday must sound like they have frogs in them. Everything is in the storage closet: Mama’s fancy high heels that she hasn’t worn in a while; riding boots, even though we only went horseback riding once; even swimming fins; but not what I’m looking for.

  You pay attention to details and then go to school wearing swimming fins in the middle of winter. Not such a hot idea.

  I put on yesterday’s shoes, even though they’re still soaking wet. When I walk in them, they go croak, croak, or maybe it’s more like the sound of Mama kneading pizza dough. When you walk in fresh snow, the noise is just like when you crack a meringue with a spoon. Crunch crunch crunch. When I was little, I thought snow was made by ghosts.

  At least it’s stopped raining today.

  To make up for it, it’s gotten colder.

  I leave my pajamas on underneath my clothes because they keep me warm and because it’s quicker that way. And anyway, at Saturday school nobody cares about anything because it’s Saturday. Everyone lets things go, already thinking about something else.

  Davide and his parents are going to the mountains because if it’s rained this much here in the city, there’ll be loads of snow in the mountains.

  Chubby Broccolo’s going to stay with his relatives in Puglia for one of their birthdays. They’ll eat heaps of orecchiette with broccoli. I don’t know what Antonella’s doing, but she seems like the type who always knows what to do. The others…I have no idea.

  Luca’s spending the weekend at home with his mother, for all I know.

  I’ve always hated it when they make you write about the weekend for your homework, or the topic is “What did you do on your vacation?” They do it to find out about your business and then use what they find out against you as soon as you mess up.

  So I write a story about the adventures of Blue, who’s a cat who seems like a cartoon. That way everyone has fun, including me.

  Blue’s ears are always cold, so I explain how when he was made, after they’d given him whiskers, a tail, little heart-shaped pillows under his feet, and everything else, they realized they’d run out of ears. They had to attach ones they took straight from the freezer, but first they made a mistake and attached two orecchiette with broccoli, so he meowed in Pugliese like Chubby in the third row and no one understood what he was meowing about. Then they found the proper cat ears and solved the problem. We clink our glasses and say “Cheers!” to celebrate, and Chubby gets an “Excellent” on his homework.

  Making it up as I go, and smiling, I get by.

  Even better than poor Chubby Broccolo from Brindisi, actually.

  One time before we had Blue I told a story about seeing a gigantic mosquito on the wall of the kitchen next to the refrigerator. It was huge, with such long skinny legs that it seemed harmless. But everyone was so worried about the malaria the immigrants were bringing into the city that they didn’t bother with the details of my private life.

  Our science teacher talked to us about third-world diseases.

  “It’s not the immigrants’ fault if they bring diseases here, because it’s not their fault if they’re sick. It’s because they’re poor.”

  “Why do mosquitoes only sting poor people?”

  “Maybe poor people are tastier?”

  “Why?”

  As we leave we all say good-bye. I wave ciao, ciao.

  I’ve just gone through the main door when I hear Mrs. Squarzetti calling me back.

  “Luca! Luca!”

  Suddenly I’m terrified again. Where did I mess up?

  “Sorry, Luca, but your mother forgot this the last time we saw each other. Would you be so kind as to give it to her?”

  She hands me my progress report and gives me a smile, showing off a mouthful of crooked teeth, then turns—hurry-hurry—on her heel. It’s Saturday for her too.

  This is what the authorities have to say about Luca:

  Luca displays self-confidence and a lively disposition. He is endowed with considerable intelligence and a sense of responsibility. The pupil succeeds in all subjects. He consistently applies himself, and the results are excellent. He has demonstrated a good deal of interest and ability in artistic activities and a notable interest in science and history. Kindhearted and generous, he does all he can for his classmates and is full of initiative.

  The pupil Luca responds:

  “Go fuck yourselves, every last one of you.”

  Assfaces. What do you know about being kindhearted, generous, and full of initiative? The only generous part of you is your asshole, the source of all your bullshit.

  I don’t know why, but I’m so furious.

  Well, I know why, but that just makes me twice as furious. For the first time in days there’s a blue streak in the sky that you can pick out between the raggedy clouds at the end of the street, but I don’t even know what to make of it.

  I march home with the report in my hand and the wind in my face, with every step feeling more and more desperate to shut the door behind me—soon—sooner—soonest—as soon as soon can be.

  The perfect image of a mama, the perfect image of a beautiful child, the perfect picture of health! Too bad Mama can’t read it and Dad disappeared into smoke and I’ve got a fucking shit of a weekend ahead of me. Too bad that not long from now Mama’s going to start to really stink.

  Corpses stink after a bit, regardless of your sense of responsibility. It’s a chemical process that can’t be stopped. Even Lieutenant Columbo says so. After three days corpses stink, just like fish and houseguests, but getting rid of them is not so simple, even if you’re bursting with initiative. I can’t send Mama to a hotel or off to stink up some other relative’s place.

  You think someone’s dead then and there, but it’s not true.

  If I tell you Mama’s stone-dead in her bed, my artistic gifts will no longer be of interest to you; you’ll send me straight to an orphanage to throw up little pasta tubes.

  My eyes fill up with hot water again. Bullshit, I’m in the shitty bullshit.

  And I have a whole weekend ahead of me.

  It’s strange. As I’m thinking all these things, I realize I’m already inside, leaning back against the apartment door to catch my breath, the little swinging cover over the spyhole winking at the elevator.

  It’s strange but I feel safer here inside the apartment, even with my dead mama’s body in the bed, than out there.

  It seems less serious. Here, inside, no one can hurt us. Here, inside, no one can pull me out just to put me in some other place I’ll never get out of, where no one will care about me only because they’re paid to care, which doesn’t count. It’s all a cheat. Like Grandma playing solitaire, when she chooses her cards and then boasts about always winning. I’m not falling for it. I try to turn the key again, but it’s already turned as far as it can go. I sneeze hard two or three times.

  Even if my hideout isn’t much, even if here on the eighth floor it feels like we’re living on stilts, like those shacks where all it takes is one strong gust of wind from the north to knock them down, it’s still a home. Like the condemned building in the piazza out front, which has had a sign saying that since be
fore we moved in, and nothing’s changed. It’s still there, and sometimes homeless guys sleep inside it. Since they don’t usually have a roof over their heads, they make do with one that might fall in at any moment. I’m sure even homeless guys would say, Better here than in a homeless shelter.

  I go to Mama and read her the progress report.

  For the first time since she stopped getting up, I lie down next to her.

  With my weight I pin down one of her arms under the covers.

  I stretch out at her side as if we had all kinds of time ahead of us. An entire weekend. As if we had all the time in the world just to lie here side by side. As if my time were the same as hers. Topsy-turvy.

  I know that she’s probably not interested in other people’s progress anymore, but then I’m not interested in her being dead either, in the strange blotches on her face, in how even with my stuffed-up nose I think I can tell she’s started to smell. If everything weren’t becoming so complicated, I’d say it’s all the same to me, that in some ways I understand her, that I understand if she was sick of living.

  It’s just that maybe together we could have made it, if only she’d realized I was here, not just for changing the cat litter or growing up or causing problems. I should have told her that more often. And she could have made me understand more of what it was that really wasn’t going right. We had a deal. I don’t know if it was she or me who broke it.

  Across from the bed there’s a dresser and on top of the dresser there are pictures of us in silver frames: me in a swing; Grandma looking like the Madonna; Mama after graduating from college, and looking like she’d showed up at the wrong party; Blue, taken the day he came to live with us. Mama’s dresser used to be Grandma’s. We only put the nicest photos up there, with all the assfaces cut out because otherwise they’d spoil the scene.

  I look at Mama and think, All in all she’s a lot better than Davide’s mama. Even now when she’s so different.

  I look on top of the dresser for the plastic bag with her makeup. It has to be there, even if she doesn’t use it much.

  I find lipstick and a tin shaped like a clamshell. I think it’s face powder. Inside it’s pink and cracked like a lump of desert, with a little sponge on top.