She spoke as if she were defending Lila’s rights against her brother’s intrusiveness. In fact, we all knew that she was defending herself and her own future. She was tired of depending on Stefano, she wanted to quit the grocery store, and she liked the idea of being the proprietor of a store in the center of the city. So a small war had been going on for some time between Rino and Michele, whose object was the management of the shoe store, a war inflamed by pressure from their respective fiancées: Rino insisted that Pinuccia should do it, Michele that Gigliola should. But Pinuccia was the more aggressive and had no doubt that she would get the best of it; she knew that she could add the authority of her brother to that of her fiancé. And so at every opportunity she put on airs, like someone who has already made the leap, has left behind the old neighborhood and now decrees what is suitable and what is not for the sophisticated customers in the center.
I realized that Rino was afraid his sister would take the offensive, but Lila displayed complete indifference. Then he checked his watch to let us all know that he was very busy, and said in the tone of one who sees into the future, “In my opinion that photograph has great commercial possibilities.” Then he kissed Pina, who immediately drew back, to signal disapproval, and left.
We girls remained. Pinuccia, hoping to use my authority to settle the question, asked me, sulkily, “Lenù, what do you think? Do you think the photo of Lina should stay in Piazza dei Martiri?”
I said, in Italian, “It’s Stefano who should decide, and since he went to the dressmaker purposely to get it removed from her window, I consider it out of the question that he’ll give permission.”
Pinuccia glowed with satisfaction, and almost shouted, “My goodness, how smart you are, Lenù.”
I waited for Lila to have her say. There was a long silence, then she spoke just to me: “How much do you want to bet you’re wrong? Stefano will give his permission.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“What do you want to bet?”
“If you lose, you must never again pass with anything less than the best grades.”
I looked at her in embarrassment. We hadn’t spoken about my difficulties, I didn’t even think she knew, but she was well informed and now was reproaching me. You weren’t up to it, she was saying, your grades fell. She expected from me what she would have done in my place. She really wanted me fixed in the role of someone who spends her life with books, while she had money, nice clothes, a house, television, a car, took everything, granted everything.
“And if you lose?” I asked, with a shade of bitterness.
That look of hers returned instantly, shot through dark slits.
“I’ll enroll in a private school, start studying again, and I swear I’ll get my diploma along with you and do better than you.”
“Are you serious?”
“When is a bet ever made as a joke?”
Pinuccia interrupted, aggressively.
“Lina, don’t start acting crazy the way you always do: you have the new grocery store, Stefano can’t manage it alone.” Immediately, however, she controlled herself, adding with false sweetness, “Besides, I’d like to know when you and Stefano are going to make me an aunt.”
She used that sweet-sounding formula but her tone seemed resentful to me, and I felt the reasons for that resentment irritatingly mixed with mine. Pinuccia meant: you’re married, my brother gives you everything, now do what you’re supposed to do. And in fact what’s the sense of being Signora Carracci if you’re going to shut all the doors, barricade yourself, obstruct, guard a poisoned fury in your stomach? Is it possible that you must always do harm, Lila? When will you stop? Will your energy diminish, will you be distracted, will you finally collapse, like a sleepy sentinel? When will you grow wide and sit at the cash register in the new neighborhood, with your stomach swelling, and make Pinuccia an aunt, and me, me, leave me to go my own way?
“Who knows,” Lila answered, and her eyes grew large and deep again.
“Am I going to become a mamma first?” said her sister-in-law, smiling.
“If you’re always pasted to Rino like that, it’s possible.”
They had a little skirmish; I didn’t stay to listen.
20.
To placate my mother, I had to find a summer job. Naturally I went to the stationer. She welcomed me the way you’d welcome a schoolteacher or the doctor, she called her daughters, who were playing in the back of the shop, and they embraced me, kissed me, wanted me to play with them. When I mentioned that I was looking for a job, she said that she was ready to send her daughters to the Sea Garden right away, without waiting for August, just so that they could spend their days with a good, intelligent girl like me.
“Right away when?” I asked.
