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have to come to an agreement.”
    “Explain yourself, what type of agreement.”
    “The children will live with me, and you’ll see them on the weekend.”
    “On the weekend where?”
    “At my house.”
    “And where is your house?”
    “I don’t know, I’ll decide later: here, in Milan, in Naples.”
    That word was enough: Naples. As soon as he heard it he jumped to his feet, opened his eyes wide, opened his mouth as if to bite me, raised his fist with such a ferocious expression that I was terrified. It was an endless moment. The faucet was dripping, the refrigerator humming, someone laughed in the courtyard. Pietro was large, he had big white knuckles. He had already hit me once, I knew that he would hit me now so violently that he would kill me, and I raised my arms abruptly to protect myself. But suddenly he changed his mind, turned, and once, twice, three times punched the metal closet where I kept the brooms. He would have continued if I hadn’t clung to his arm crying: Stop it, enough, you’ll hurt yourself.
    The result of that rage was that what I had feared on my return really happened: we ended up in the hospital. His arm was put in a cast, and on the way home he seemed almost cheerful. I remembered that it was Christmas and I made something to eat. We sat down at the table, and he said, point-blank:
    “Yesterday I called your mother.”
    I jumped.
    “How did that occur to you?”
    “Well, someone had to tell her. I told her what you did to me.”
    “It was my job to talk to her.”
    “Why? To lie to her the way you lied to me?”
    I became agitated again, but I tried to contain myself; I was afraid that he would start breaking his bones again to avoid breaking mine. Instead I saw that he smiled calmly, looking at his arm in the cast.
    “So I can’t drive,” he muttered.
    “Where do you have to go?”
    “To the station.”
    I discovered that my mother had set out by train on Christ­mas Day—the day she normally assumed domestic centrality, the highest of her responsibilities—and was about to arrive.

13.
    I was tempted to flee. I thought of going to Naples—escaping to my mother’s city just as she was arriving in mine—and seeking some tranquility with Nino. But I didn’t move. Although I felt that I was changed, I had remained the disciplined person who had never avoided anything. And besides, I said to myself, what can she do to me? I’m a woman, not a child. At most she’ll bring something good to eat, like that Christmas ten years ago, when I was sick and she came to see me in the dormitory at the Normale.
    I went with Pietro to get my mother at the station; I drove. She got off the train proudly, she had new clothes, a new purse, new shoes, even a little powder on her cheeks. You look well, I said, you’re very stylish. She hissed: No thanks to you, and didn’t say another word to me. To make up for it she was very affectionate toward Pietro. She asked about his cast, and since he was vague—he said he had bumped into a door—she began to mumble in hesitant Italian: Bumped, I know who made you bump it. I imagine, bumped.
    Once we got home she ended her feigned composure. She made me a long speech, limping back and forth in the living room. She praised my husband in an exaggerated fashion, she ordered me to ask his forgiveness immediately. When I didn’t, she began to beg him herself to forgive me and swore on Peppe, Gianni, and Elisa that she would not go home if the two of us did not make peace. At first, with all her hyperbole, she seemed to be making fun of both me and my husband. The list she made of Pietro’s virtues appeared infinite, and—I have to admit—she didn’t stint on mine, either. She emphasized endlessly that, when it came to intelligence and scholarship, we were made for each other. She urged us to think of Dede’s good—Dede was her favorite granddaughter, she forgot to mention Elsa—the child understood everything and it wasn’t right to make her