Like Family by Paolo Giordano Page A

one of them from the beginning. A marriage lived outside the preestablished roles was foreign to her. It may be that this contributed to the security her presence gave us, because through her we experienced a somewhat shameful nostalgia for an outmoded, simplified model of the family, a model in which everyone does not have to be everything at once—male andfemale, logical and emotional, submissive and strict, romantic and prosaic—a model that differs from the one that in our time saddles us with such broad, undifferentiated responsibilities and makes us feel constantly inadequate no matter what.
    For the most part, Mrs. A. was indulgent toward our domestic promiscuity, excusing it as a modern flaw, yet she instinctively opposed it. She couldn’t stand to see me fumbling with the laundry, nor could she conceive of Nora taking a drill and boring a hole in a wall (a job at which my wife is actually much more skillful than I am). At those times she found a way to shoo us out and do the task for us—she who was indeed capable of taking care of everything, since widowhood had turned her into a perfectly androgynous creature. In a sense her death was also a chance at salvation: had we relied on her perspective for too long, we might have found ourselves trapped in the roles of the intrepid husband and the submissive wife, in a rerun of marriage as conceived fifty years ago.
    She was a conventional woman, steeped in doctrine and inevitably chauvinistic, but she didn’t know it. It’s uncanny how her way of addressing me, slightly moredeferential than the way she spoke to Nora, confirmed me as the boss of the house. She acted as if she had no choice but to give more credence to my opinions, more attention to my needs, more importance to my qualities than to those of my wife, despite the fact that her affection was all for Nora.
    One summer I persuaded Nora to take an early vacation with her mother and Emanuele. During that brief period of bachelorhood, Mrs. A. looked after me with more care than ever before. She indulged herself in preparing dishes that Nora would have forbidden and often stayed to eat dinner in the evening—something she’d never done—in order to keep me company. In the morning she arrived earlier than usual, bearing the daily harvest from her vegetable garden. By the time I got up, she had already set the table for breakfast and placed a bag with my lunch next to my backpack: I would eat it later at the university instead of the cafeteria’s sandwiches that, she said, would only weigh me down. She even brought a bunch of orange gerberas that she set in the center of the table. She played the role of the dutiful wife, and I did not stop her.
    It was a muggy July, and we had not yet installed the air conditioners, so I walked around the apartment in my underwear. I had the impression that her eyes followed me, that she liked to look at me. As absurd as it may seem, after a week a faint erotic charge hovered in the rooms.
    By the time Nora came back, I had grown used to that strange intimacy. The first time my wife saw me appear in my underwear in front of Mrs. A., she asked me to follow her into the bedroom, where she ordered me to put on some pants.
    â€œSo now you’re even jealous of Babette?” I teased. “I don’t think she has any particular designs on me, you know.”
    â€œShe’s still a woman,” Nora said very seriously. “Don’t forget that.”
    _____
    The window from which Renato watched Mrs. A. tackle the ramp with the car, his heart in his mouth, is the same one from which she, in February, looks out at a blank scene. A disturbance in the Atlantic has settled over the northern part of the peninsula and alltold has dumped more snow than we’ve seen in the last ten years. Temperatures haven’t risen above zero, not even in the middle of the day, and adamantine corridors of ice cover the streets, causing people to