Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

I felt that not only in my book but in novels in general there was something that truly agitated me, a bare and throbbing heart, the same that had burst out of my chest in that distant moment when Lila had proposed we write a story together. It had fallen to me to do it seriously. But was that what I wanted? To write, to write with purpose, to write better than I already had? And to study the stories of the past and the present to understand how they worked, and to learn, learn everything about the world with the sole purpose of constructing living hearts, which no one would ever do better than me, not even Lila if she had the opportunity?

As this is the third installment of the Neapolitan Novels – and as, indeed, all four volumes may be considered one continuous work – I don't feel it necessary to go over, once again, what is specifically intriguing about Elena Ferrante's writing; except, perhaps, to point out that, as in the quote above, it seems to be true that in her novels, Ferrante has the ability to capture the living heart, bare and throbbing (and I am grateful that she, herself, has given me the words, finally, to capture the experience of reading these remarkable novels). Spoilers (and presumably fewer commas) from here.

As Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay opens, Elena recalls the last time she met with Lila in the old neighbourhood in Naples, five years earlier in the winter of 2005. Even as Elena is, indeed, writing about Lila on her computer, she's remembering that in this exchange Lila warned her that if she ever decides to write about their friendship, Lila would come look on her computer, read her files, and erase them. When Elena laughed and said that she was capable of protecting herself, Lila warned, “Not from me.” I have never forgotten those three words; it was the last thing she said to me: Not from me. I love the menace in that and I can't wait to see if Lila makes an appearance in the present before the fourth installment ends. From here, Elena rewinds and picks up the narrative from the end of The Story of a New Name; in a bookstore in Milan, with Nino Sarratore defending the merits of Elena's debut novel at her first author appearance. 

As I've noted before, these books not only capture the history of a friendship, but the history of Italy as well, and as childhood friends must choose sides between the Communists and Fascists who battle for control of their neighbourhood, city, and country, the friction escalates from a war of words to one with sticks, and knives, and guns. Lila is still working in deplorable conditions in the sausage factory in order to provide for her son, Rino, and unwittingly, she becomes the leader in an effort to unionise. When Lila suffers a breakdown and sends for Elena – herself now married to a professor and living in enviable conditions – Elena realises that, once again, she has overestimated the value of her own life:

I feel like the knight in an ancient romance as, wrapped in his shining armor, after performing a thousand astonishing feats throughout the world, he meets a ragged, starving herdsman, who, never leaving his pasture, subdues and controls horrible beasts with his bare hands, and with prodigious courage.

Again, even when Elena seems to be winning at their unacknowledged competition, Lila won't let her win. Soon the scales begin to tip in the other direction: Elena – burdened with the duties of motherhood and an unhappy marriage – finds herself unable to write another successful novel, and Lila – after quitting the sausage factory, returning to the neighbourhood, and consenting to a sexual relationship with the long-suffering Enzo – has her own skills as an early computer expert (gleaned while helping Enzo with his night courses) recognised, and by the end, she's working for the mobster Michele Solaras, earning in excess of 400 thousand lira/month (and for comparison, Elena was considered rich by her family when she was paid 200 thousand lira for her first novel). In the end, Elena breaks free – leaving her family for Nino, the final scene of this book sees the pair flying to France together – and the reader will need to wait for the fourth book to see where the scales will finally settle themselves.

While many of the characters in these books are sympathetic to and can make the case for the necessity of a Communist revolution in 1960s-70s Italy, in this volume, Elena discovers Feminism and it's through this lens that she's finally able to write a second book. Whether looking at Tolstoy's Anna Karenina or Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Elena finds that all of the models of femininity have been created by men (which would make it the ultimate in irony if the pseudonymous Ferrante – the author who is lauded everywhere for capturing the essence of the female experience – turns out in the end to have been a male writer), and along this line of thinking, she is shocked to discover that what has been a challenge to her throughout school has been her efforts to change her mind into a masculine one; and as the flipside, she realises that what makes Lila a special kind of genius is that she has always refused to mold her own mind to the dominant masculine norms. To the reader, however, there's irony in the fact that Elena, even after her eureka moment, needs the approval of a male mind to justify her efforts; she doesn't know if this second book is any good until Nino tells her so. 

As a final thought, I am continually intrigued by Elena's struggle between the Neapolitan dialect and actual Italian (I wouldn't have thought that these were two separate languages), and it's interesting to ponder on how the words one uses not only reflect culture but create it; you can't express the thoughts for which you haven't the words, as in:

Lila proceeded to talk generally about her sexuality. It was a subject completely new for us. The coarse language of the environment we came from was useful for attack or self-defense, but, precisely because it was the language of violence, it hindered, rather than encouraged, intimate confidences.

The Neapolitan Novels have been an intriguing journey so far and I am on the ambivalent cusp of the final leg: I am desperate to both reach the finish line and stretch this experience out for as long as possible.

Tunesday : Whatcha Gonna Do

Whatcha Gonna Do

(Macleod/Henderson) Performed by Chilliwack

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

There's no time for changing plans

I must leave, it's in your hands

I know you'll wait for how long

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

When I'm away you're gonna have a good time

What can I say, will you remember you're mine?

What will you do when they wanna touch ya?

What will you do when they wanna get you?

I know what they'll do

If you ever let 'em, are you gonna let 'em?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

When the boys all come to call

Will you take them in at all

Or will you send them far away?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Why don't you run and do what you wanna do?

Ain't nothin' wrong 'cause I'll be doing it too

If you give in, I don't wanna hear it

And if he wins I don't wanna see it

Whatever you do maybe you can hide it

Try to keep it quiet

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

And when it's night and I'm not there

When the cold is in the air

Will you make the best of it?

Someone there to keep you warm

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Where're you gonna be when I'm gone?

Who will be with you?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Where're you gonna be when I'm gone?

Who will be with you?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

Whatcha gonna do when I'm gone?

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how, when some new friends in Lethbridge asked me to meet them at the football game, my mother thought that sounded dodgy and she wouldn't let me go. When I asked again the next week, she said I could go, but only if I took my little brother, Kyler, with me. He wasn't even in high school yet -- he certainly wasn't fit to be my protector out in public -- but as a spoiler of fun, Kye was without equal. In the end, I was so desperate to make new friends that I was willing to babysit Kyler through a football game in order to get out of the house. Here's all I remember: it was cold in the stands, and even though I didn't know anything about football or its rules, the cheerleaders got the crowds going and it was a lot of fun to feel like a part of a community by cheering for our school. Kyler refused to sit with me, opting for running around under the stands with some kids from his own school, and it was tough to find him in the dispersing crowd before meeting Mum in the parking lot after the game. After that week -- once I had some actual friends with firmer plans -- I was allowed to go on my own.

Nearing the end of grade ten, my friends and I were excited to learn that Chilliwack would be coming to give a concert at the Sportsplex -- the same complex where the football games were played -- and by that time, I expected not to get any opposition from my parents if I wanted to go with my friends. Dead wrong. Maybe remembering the time that she let Ken go into Toronto for an AC/DC concert -- when he and his stoner friends got high and blamed it on the second-hand dope smoke in the air -- Mum said that I would only be allowed to go if she and Kyler came with us. Lethbridge is not Toronto, and Chilliwack is not AC/DC, but at fifteen, I had no power to complain. We got seats up in the stands and Mum and Kyler sat in the row right behind me, Kasia, Cindy, and Nancy, and even though my friends thought it was no big deal that they were there, I cringed as they both sang along to the songs they knew from the radio.

The next year, Corey Hart came to the Sportsplex, and at sixteen, I was finally allowed to go to a concert alone with my friends (perhaps because when she came to Chilliwack, my mother didn't see any evidence of drug use?) and that was a great time; what teenaged girl in 1984 wasn't in love with Corey Hart? As my friends and I swooned over Mr. Sunglasses-at-Night, it would have been a buzzkill to have either my mother or my baby brother along for the ride.

Those are the only two concerts I ever remember going to in Lethbridge. Obviously these weren't huge acts, but my friends and I should have been interested in seeing just about anyone at their level, and I don't remember now if no one else interesting came or if we just didn't bother going. When we were in grade twelve, Cindy and I took the Greyhound up to Calgary to see Elton John. Now that was a real concert -- he ended the show by smashing his baby grand in front of the sold out Saddledome -- and just being allowed to go actually blew my mind: taking the bus, negotiating a big city, sleeping at Cindy's aunt and uncle's house afterwards; that's a long way to come from not being allowed to attend a high school football game without a guardian. 

It's funny that I always remember my Dad as the controlling one, but it was often Mum who laid down the law. When she was in grade twelve, my mother went to a Gordon Lightfoot concert, and because she knew someone who knew someone, Mum was one of a gang of kids who went back to Lightfoot's hotel room afterwards and listened to him play and sing throughout the night. This apparently caused a bit of a scandal in 1960s Charlottetown -- boys and girls in a hotel room together after dark! -- but when Mum explained to her mother how innocent it all was, my grandmother believed her and defended her to anyone who might have raised an eyebrow over the incident. Although I grew up in a time and place where no one was monitoring and evaluating my "reputation", and despite the fact that my own mother had expected her parents to trust her judgement, my every move felt guarded and constrained when I was in high school; restraints my brothers didn't suffer. For someone who identified with the feminist movement, Mum didn't seem to mind treating us kids with double standards; and whether or not she was just keeping the peace by preempting what she thought my father would say whenever I went to ask her for permission to do something, I always wished Mum had been more trusting; had found a way to be on my side more often; hadn't resorted to using my little brother as my guardian.

As a side note: this week's song choice doesn't have any deeper meaning, it's simply my favourite Chilliwack song. 

Mind Picking : Easter Treats

I tell enough stories about my brother Ken that I guess I should include a story that he told his son that I don't remember and wouldn't otherwise memorialise here. When Conor got to our house for Easter dinner last night he immediately and excitedly started babbling, "Dad was telling me about the time he was supposed to go to PEI by himself for the first time, when he was thirteen, but he got in trouble over the dune buggy. Remember?"

I didn't remember and asked Conor to remind me.

"Well, Dad said that when he was thirteen, he was promised a trip to PEI by himself for the first time and he was really excited to go. He also said that Pop had a dune buggy that he kept in the back yard, but even though Pop had taught him to drive it, he wasn't allowed to touch it when Pop wasn't around. Remember?"

I do remember this dune buggy: Dad built it out of an old VW Beetle, and the only time I was ever taken for a drive in it, Dad had put it on a trailer and hauled it and us kids to a construction site. This was the new 404 into Toronto long before it opened to the public, and we spent the afternoon driving back and forth on the compacted sand; bouncing around with great hilarity and no seatbelts. Ken would have been thirteen, me twelve, and Kyler ten, and while BOTH of my brothers were taught to drive that day, Dad wouldn't allow me behind the wheel. So, yeah, I remember this dune buggy (with some bitterness) and I nodded at Conor to continue.

"Dad said that one day he took you for a drive in circles in the back yard when no one was home, but the neighbour told on him, and his trip was taken away." 

I totally don't remember this at all. Conor continued, "But then Dad did really really good at school, pulled his marks way up, and Nan and Pop allowed him to go on the trip after all."

I don't remember anything about driving around in circles in our tiny back yard (how was that even possible I wonder now?) or Ken going down to PEI without us, and while I get why Ken would want to tell his son a story that has a teaching moment at its heart, I couldn't really understand why Conor was so excited to share it with me (unless it was the schadenfreude at knowing that his Dad got in trouble, too, at the same age as he is now; that's a satisfying feeling, I guess.)

Conor went on to excitedly repeat this story to Granny and Grandpa in the other room, with Ken interjecting his corrections, and back in the kitchen, Ella asked me what Conor was talking about. (Ah, so it was a father-son thing, no girls allowed in on this experience; some things go on and on). I gave Ella a brief sketch of the story, and for her, I emphasised what I think is the main point: Ken was probably the smartest kid in his class, but never did that well in school. Yet if he wanted to, if he actually tried, nothing was easier for Ken than to pull his marks up and placate our parents. 

And speaking of Ella: she was at our house on Friday night with Mallory while I was over at their house, making sure Lolo knew we wanted them to come for Easter dinner. When Lolo asked what she could bring, I thought and then asked if she could do dessert. This is usually Lolo's forte, but I felt bad when she hmmmed and said, "Maybe I could buy something..." I tried to let her off the hook, but she insisted that she'd figure something out.

When Ella eventually came back home as we were leaving, Lolo met her in the hallway and said, "Okay, you can't use fondant, but do you want to make an Easter dessert to bring to Auntie Krista's on Sunday?"

Ella blinked at her Mom for a few seconds and replied drily, "So...can I use fondant?"

I love this weird sense of humour that Ella has -- which her parents blame on my girls' influence, even though it's not quite like theirs to me -- but I can understand why it might be challenging to live with (honestly, it's like nothing is serious to this kid), so I tried not to laugh out loud at this.

And then they showed up yesterday with this delicious carrot cake:

Delicious, beautiful, and surrounded with multi-coloured fondant balls. By the by, one of Ella's feet was stained green by spilled food dye, and if that's one of the reasons why her Mom tried to avoid the use of fondant, Ella won out in the end. And that's my favourite punchline of the day.

The Hero's Walk

Nirmala realized that her rhythm was off slightly and the students were uncertainly going through the steps. She wiped her eyes and nodded approvingly at the girl who was to play King Rama. She performed the hero's walk to perfection – graceful, dignified, measured. But the one who played Ravana, the demon king, was awkward and restrained. “Stamp harder,” she urged. “Remember you are also a great king, full of valour. But you are vain, and that is what sets you apart from the hero. Thrust out your chest, child. Twirl your moustache. Flex your muscles.”

The Hero's Walk has a fairly straightforward plotline – and since that plotline is spelled out on the back of the book, I don't think of this as a spoiler, per se, but consider this a warning – to wit: just as Sripathi Rao is approaching retirement age, and buckling under the pressures of providing for his mother, wife, sister, and son in the mouldering Big House that serves as the ancestral family home on the Bay of Bengal, he receives word that his estranged daughter and son-in-law in Vancouver have died in a car accident, making him the guardian of their seven-year-old daughter, whom he has never met. Bringing Nandana to India is a shocking experience for both of them, and while it doesn't go well at first, when Sripathi (and all the other major characters) learn to assert themselves against the strictures and prejudices of their culture – when each of them begin to stamp their feet and flex their muscles, becoming more Ravana than Rama – they find more satisfying paths to follow through life. For me, this was just an okay read – there were neither surprises or deep meaning – but my biggest complaint would be that this is a 10lb book in a 5lb bag; bloated and boring to bursting. 

I have read many books set in India, and while I usually enjoy learning new details about such a different culture, with The Hero's Walk, author Anita Rau Badami layers facts onto her plot without subtlety or finesse. The following is a typical passage:

Later that evening, after the dance students had dispersed, the family went to the temple. Nandana looked unfamiliar in a long, green cotton skirt and matching blouse instead of her usual jeans. Nirmala carried the fruit offerings in a silver platter – fresh bananas, a single apple (as apples were far too expensive now), a small bunch of grapes coated white with some pesticide that wouldn't wash off, a coconut with its fibre still intact (it was inauspicious to get rid of that tuft before the coconut was offered to God). A couple of garbatti sticks and a string of flowers to complete the picture. When Sripathi's father was alive, the offering was much grander and included out-of-season mangoes, pomegranates, even a silver coin or two.

Maybe that kind of infodump works for another reader, but it doesn't for me (and especially the parenthetical asides: these intrusions are jarring to me; an intrusive message directly from an author who can't find an organic way to share what she wants the reader to know). There were also many passages like the following, where the reader is taken out of the storyline in order to learn something unrelated to the action:

A horn blasted insistently behind him. Sripathi looked into his mirror and saw a bus hot on his heels. It had a complicated license number on its head – a series of letters followed by an illegible route number. The letters were the initials of the current chief minister of the state; an astrologer had said they were so powerfully good that they would ward off all accidents, but since the chief minister had several initials to her name, there was barely room for anything else. As a result, the number was sometimes omitted altogether or else painted on the side. The fact that nobody ever knew where they were going when they got into a bus became a regular excuse for lateness at offices around the town.

I did find that vignette interesting, but it goes on for another page before we cut back to Sripathi on his scooter, and that was annoying to me. 

Empathy was created with Sripathi's burdensome role as sole provider and keeper of the caste ways, and his wife Nirmala was well drawn. I liked when the point-of-view would switch to young Nandana and the tone became appropriately juvenile. The sister, Putti, was less developed; the mother, Ammayya, is a ridiculous cartoon (as was Sripathi's dead father in flashback); the son, Arun, is pretty pointless; and the book is bulked out with a long cast of characters that add nothing to the story but length. I was completely unsurprised by anything that happened – even Ammayya's final curse was predictable – and that made the whole experience unsatisfactory. On the other hand, Badami has won acclaim and prizes for this book, so other readers must be finding value in it. Just not this reader.

Gah -- what's with this year's Canada Reads finalists? This leaves only The Illegal (the eventual winner of the "contest") for me to read, but since I was one of the few people, anywhere, to have disliked the writing in The Book of Negroes, I don't know if I want to spend more time on Lawrence Hill. Even without having read that last title, however, I still wish Birdie had won.

The Story of a New Name

Your name is no longer Cerullo. You are Signora Carracci and you must do as I say.

The Story of a New Name resumes the story of Elena and Lila – starting with a scene from 1966 in which Elena, entrusted with her friend's private journals and writing exercises, throws them into the Arno River – and then rewinds to where My Brilliant Friend left off: at Lila's wedding to the rich grocer, Stephano. As in the first volume of this series, it would seem that the friendship of these women is like a seesaw: when one is up, the other is down; forever in peaks and valleys; neither finding a point of equilibrium. Again, author Elena Ferrante uses straightforward, plain language to capture what is essential in life, in friendship, in the Italian experience, and again, I was spellbound – frustrated, appalled, and enchanted – until the final, surprising scene. Everyone should be reading these books. This will include spoilers from here.

At the end of the last book, right in the middle of her wedding reception, Lila realised that her new husband had already betrayed her: giving the fateful shoes to the man she despised. Thinking that she had traded her freedom for her family's comfort – a deal she had been happy to accept – when Lila finds out that the Solaras (and their mob money) are the real backers of the shoe factory, she is filled with remorse and disgust: she no longer wants Stephano. When she tries to resist him on their wedding night, however, Stephano beats and rapes her; as is his right in their mutual understanding. 

We had grown up thinking that a stranger must not even touch us, but that our father, our boyfriend, and our husband could hit us when they liked, out of love, to educate us, to reeducate us.

Meanwhile, Elena continues her studies and nurses her lifelong crush for the fiercely intelligent Nino. When Elena is brought along as a paid companion for Lila and her sister-in-law on a beach vacation, Nino enters the scene and Lila is also captivated by the young man's mind. Lila – she who has all the trappings of wealth and comfort and security – takes from Elena the one thing the latter really wants: Nino's love. As Lila and Nino embark on a doomed romance, Elena wins a scholarship to the university in Pisa and attempts there to erase the lingering effects of her impoverished Neapolitan youth. Yet, no matter how Elena tries – no matter that she now speaks perfect Italian without a regional accent, is at the top of her classes, has a knowledge base that allows her to converse intelligently around academics – Elena understands that at her core, she'll always be a hick who is one insult away from resorting to violence and vulgarity.

I hadn't really succeeded in fitting in. I was one of those who labored day and night, got excellent results, were even treated with congeniality and respect, but would never carry off with the proper manner the high level of those studies. I would always be afraid: afraid of saying the wrong thing, of using an exaggerated tone, of dressing unsuitably, of revealing petty feelings, of not having interesting thoughts.

At the same time that Elena realises that her upbringing has not prepared her for polite, intelligent society, Lila is attempting to raise her young son in a stimulating and loving environment; attempting to override the exact same effects that Elena had regretted. By the end of this book, Elena has written (by some unknown compulsion) her first novel, which is met with success. It is only after rediscovering a story that the school-aged Lila had written that Elena realises that “The Blue Fairy” was the heart of her own narrative; proving once again that even when the two friends are no longer in contact, Lila is at the center of everything Elena does. Elena returns to Naples in triumph, wanting to track down Lila and return to her the sole copy of “The Blue Fairy”, but when she finds her, Lila is now living in squalor with her protector Enzo and working herself ragged at a sausage factory.

I understood that I had arrived there full of pride and realized that – in good faith, certainly, with affection – I had made that whole journey mainly to show her what she had lost and what I had won. But she had known from the moment I appeared, and now, risking tensions with her workmates, and fines, she was explaining to me that I had won nothing, that in the world there is nothing to win, that her life was full of varied and foolish adventures as much as mine, and that time simply slipped away without any meaning, and it was good just to see each other every so often to hear the mad sound of the brain of one echo in the mad sound of the brain of the other.

Even when Elena is winning in this unspoken contest, Lila won't let her win. So, that's the plot, but the plot is only there to illuminate these women and their experience of femininity and sorority. The beatings and the backstabbing and the clawing for status amongst their cohort in Naples is made doubly disturbing by the quiet acceptance of these as the norm. As Lila watches her family lose the shoe business, as she acknowledges her brother beating his wife as a revenge against her own cheating husband, she accepts that her sacrifices had been for nothing. Are all women's sacrifices, therefore, for nothing? What of their stooped and bent mothers, quietly taking their own beatings in due course? Elena and Lila, each in her own way, end this cycle: the one by devouring all the education she can access, the other by refusing to live quietly in a gilded cage. While the book begins with Lila being told that she will be defined forevermore by the adoption of her husband's name, by the end, she has shed it, becoming Cerullo once again. As for Elena, she is so enchanted by the sight of her name on the cover of the book she has written that she explains to her mother that even if she marries, she will always publish under Greco, her maiden name. 

I said to myself every day: I am what I am and I have to accept myself; I was born like this, in this city, with this dialect, without money; I will give what I can give, I will take what I can take, I will endure what has to be endured.

I love that we get this story from Elena's conflicted point of view, filled in with details from Lila's journals. You almost sense that Elena doesn't even particularly like her oldest friend, but whenever they get together after an absence, Lila is delighted to see her; knows that Elena is the one person that she can trust with her secrets and her love; and while Elena wants this place in Lila's life, it's all so tangled. On the one hand, Elena enjoys academic success, but is jealous of Lila's unique intelligence; even copying her style of writing for her first novel. People are often telling Elena that she's actually the better looking of the two, and yet, every single boy that they grew up with is more attracted to Lila. An old ally on the island of Ischia explains to Elena after meeting her friend for the first time, “Signora Lina knows that you're better than her and so she doesn't love you the way you love her”. Although Elena secretly enjoys this analysis, she's even more amused when this old woman shares what Nino's father has said about her friend, that “Lila had an almost ugly beauty, a type that males are, yes, enchanted by but also fear...The fear that their thingy won't function or it will fall off or she'll pull out a knife and cut it off.” Well, how do you compete with that?

It's so hard to capture what in Ferrante's writing makes these books seem special, but I feel like I've participated in an event when I finish one; can't wait to get to the next. I like that we begin The Story of a New Name with Elena destroying Lila's notebooks in the river and end with Lila destroying her one attempt at fiction, “The Blue Fairy”, in a fire; and yet, between the pages of this book, Elena has memorialised her friend after all. I like that Elena briefly explains how she used the tools of fiction to capture and explode the events of this book in her own first novel, and in some meta way, if the Neapolitan Series is indeed an autobiographical attempt by the pseudonymous Elena Ferrante, then this is some next level matryoshka doll of a novel. Perhaps, after all, it's most true when Lila cryptically states of books:

I've had it, it's always the same story: inside something small there's something even smaller that wants to leap out, and outside something large there's always something larger that wants to keep it a prisoner.

I was working at Chapters the other day, and when I saw a woman sighing at the kiosk, I asked if there was something I could help her with. She doubted it, but asked if I knew anything about modern Italian literature; was there anything I could recommend? How wonderful that I had this series at the tip of my brain! Yet, somehow, describing these books as the story of a friendship and the story of postwar Italy itself didn't really make this woman excited. I led her to the Ferrante section, pointed out the other, earlier, novels, and the woman dismissed me as she considered her options. I wish I could just have just shaken her and said, "Read them! Read them all!"

The following really got to me, but had no home in the review:

I thought: yes, Lila is right, the beauty of things is a trick, the sky is the throne of fear; I'm alive, now, here, ten steps from the water, and it is not at all beautiful, it's terrifying; along with this beach, the sea, the swarm of animal forms, I am part of the universal terror; at this moment I'm the infinitesimal particle through which the fear of everything becomes conscious of itself; I; I who listen to the sound of the sea, who feel the dampness and the cold sand; I who imagine all Ischia, the entwined bodies of Nina and Lila, Stephano sleeping by himself in the new house that is increasingly not so new, the furies who indulge the happiness of today to feed the violence of tomorrow. Ah, it's true, my fear is too great and so I hope that everything will end soon, that the figures of the nightmares will consume my soul. I hope that from this darkness packs of mad dogs will emerge, vipers, scorpions, enormous sea serpents. I hope that while I'm sitting here, on the edge of the sea, assassins will arrive out of the night and torture my body. Yes, yes, let me be punished for my insufficiency, let the worst happen, something so devastating that it will prevent me from facing tonight, tomorrow, the hours and days to come, reminding me with always more crushing evidence of my unsuitable constitution.

And then: the worst happened. 

Tunesday : Let's Hear it for the Boy

Let's Hear it for the Boy

(Pitchford, D / Snow, T) Performed by Denise Williams

My baby he don't talk sweet,
He ain't got much to say
But he loves me loves me loves me,
I know that he loves me anyway

And maybe he don't dress fine,
But I don't really mind
'Cause every time he pulls me near,
I just want to cheer

Let's hear it for the boy
Let's give the boy a hand
Let's hear it for my baby,
You know you gotta understand
Oh, maybe he's no Romeo,
But he's my lovin' one man show
Whoa whoa whoa whoa
Let's hear it for the boy

My baby may not be rich,
He's watchin' every dime
But he loves me loves me loves me,
We always have a real good time

And maybe he sings off key,
But that's alright by me, yeah
'Cause what he does he does so well,
Makes me wanna yell

Let's hear it for the boy
Oh, let's give the boy a hand
Let's hear it for my baby,
You know you gotta understand
Oh, maybe he's no Romeo,
But he's my lovin' one man show
Whoa whoa whoa whoa
Let's hear it for the boy

'Cause every time he pulls me near,
I just want to cheer

Let's hear it for the boy
Oh, let's give the boy a hand
Let's hear it for my baby,
You know you gotta understand
Oh, maybe he's no Romeo,
But he's my lovin' one man show
Whoa whoa whoa whoa
Let's hear it for the boy

(Let's hear it for the boy)
Let's hear it for my man
(Let's hear it for my babe)
Let's hear it my man
(Let's hear it for the boy)
(Let's hear it for my babe)
(Let's hear it for the boy)

Let's hear it for my man
(Let's hear it for my babe)
(Let's hear it for the boy)
Pull yourself together
(Let's hear it for my babe)
(Let's hear it for the boy)

Whoa let's hear it for my boy
(Let's hear it for my babe)
Let's hear it for my man
(Let's hear it for the boy) 
(Let's hear it for my babe) 
Let's it for my man

Previously, I gave an overview of my friends in high school and this week I want to write about my boyfriends. As I said last week, I was surprised to find out that my best friends thought of me as a goodie two-shoes, but when I'm thinking about the things I want to say today, I suppose the label fits. More than that, I wasn't very kind, and I'm not too proud of that. I have no illusions that this story will have wide appeal; this post is just part of my memoir project.

I didn't have a boyfriend for most of grade ten, although I did go to a hockey game with a boy who asked me out. John sat behind me in history, and although I wasn't really attracted to him, I said yes because he caught me off guard. The "date" was awkward -- he was really quiet and I wasn't much interested in the game -- and when John continued to ask me out again, I made excuses until he stopped asking.

Nearing the end of grade ten, Kasia started dating a boy in grade twelve, Jamie, and as I was slightly jealous that they would be going to Prom together, I was openly friendly to Jamie's best friend James. James was not a good looking guy -- he was gawkily tall with frizzy hair and bad acne -- and he was not immune to my charms; he asked me out (we went to see Gandhi; longest movie I ever saw in the theater) and then he asked me to Prom. Yes, I was using him, but the way that James was showing me off that night, he was obviously using me, too. We actually did have a good time dancing together, and on the way home, he parked by the lake and nearly crushed me with his kisses. James was hungry for me and that panicked me; his urgent need plus the sickening medicinal smell from his acne cream plus my sense that he was violating some unspoken agreement (hey, we're not seriously a couple, right?) suddenly made me feel like I never wanted to be alone with James again -- and isn't that a cold-blooded thing to be thinking while kissing a boy who just brought you to Prom? 

Meanwhile, I was in a city-wide Youth Orchestra, and before the end of the school year, we went on a band trip to Calgary and Red Deer. Also in the orchestra was a boy from another school, Greg, and I found him to be weirdly funny and fun to be around. When we were in Red Deer on the second night, everyone went to the hotel pool, and as we were totally unsupervised, there were boys and girls drinking together in the same rooms afterwards. At some point in the night Greg and I started kissing, and eventually, we fell asleep together (wearing our bathing suits the whole time). On the coach home the next night, we kissed the entire way in the dark, and by the time we got back to Lethbridge, we were a thing. 

James was in the school library the next time I saw him, and when he asked when he could see me again, I told him about Greg. James started crying right there, and while I felt terrible, there was nothing I could do to change things and he snapped at me to leave him alone. As I got up to leave, James yelled loud enough for everyone in the library to hear, "You know he only wants you for one thing." And that really stunned me: did James -- the boy who had frightened me with his sexual hunger -- think, somehow, that only he could have a pure and untainted love for me? That no other boy could see and appreciate the real me? I was so offended that I snapped back, "Oh yeah? Well how would you know what I want?" Even at the time I knew that was cruel, but as he lowered his head onto his arms in sobs, I was satisfied that at least it was over.

As a side note: My mother says that at some point the high school principal mentioned to her that he loved seeing me and James together; it was proof that "winners" always find each other. When she tells this story, she always follows that up with, "And I was thinking to myself, 'Oh yeah, Krista was only with him because she wanted to go to Prom'." And while that's true, I don't know if I told her that or if she just assumed that, but I don't think Mum would have known that at the actual time she was talking to the principal. Either way, it's a terrible story for her to tell about me; I can't imagine what the underlying point is that she thinks it demonstrates.

As summer began, Greg was technically my boyfriend, but we didn't see each other much. He came to my house once to watch a movie, and because he was wearing a spiked dog collar as a fashion accessory, my brothers thought he was a little odd. (When Ken offered Greg a Milkbone, he started to bark and pant. I still haven't entirely lived that down.) Halfway through the summer, we made plans to go to McDonald's for breakfast and Greg was whistling outside my bedroom window at six in the morning. We made the long walk in the misty dawn, had our breakfast, and went back to his house to make out. He told me that day about a Mormon Youth Dance that was coming up (he was technically Mormon but non-practising), and as he thought that we could have some laughs making fun of the cleancut youths (he would obviously be wearing the dog collar), I said that I'd be happy to go with him.

Meanwhile, I had been hanging out that summer with some other kids from the Youth Orchestra. My friend Karen (a recent graduate who spent the summer teaching me to play the saxophone) had hooked up with a boy named Bill (in another hotel room in Red Deer, they were doing the nasty all night long), Kasia had met and started dating Bill's friend Miles, and through Karen, it got back to me that their friend Carl had a crush on me. Now, while Greg was fun and silly, Carl was a very sexy guy; even though they were only 17, these guys had a cover band that was very popular at weddings, and as they often played at the banquet hall where Kasia and I worked, we saw them play many times and Carl's singing and guitar playing were mesmerising; the crush was totally mutual. In the end, Carl asked me to go out with him the same night as Greg's Youth Dance, and as was my way, I blew Greg off and made up excuses every time he asked me out again; until he stopped asking.

The night of our date, Karen, Bill, Carl and I went to a movie, and afterwards, we bought slushies, went to the lake, and Carl brought out a bottle of rye. In a slushie, that booze went down fast and I drank way too much but had a loud and hilarious night of talking and laughing with my friends. When they dropped me off, I stumbled towards my gate and Carl got out of the car and gave me a long and passionate kiss good night. At just that moment, my parents drove up, pinning us against the fence with their headlights. Carl retreated to the car (Karen was driving and I never knew if she was drunk, too), and I stumbled into the house but didn't make it to my bedroom before my parents -- and my aunt and uncle -- came in. It took them a minute to realise how wasted I was, and when they did, they totally freaked out; Mum was screaming, "What are you on? Is it pills?" (No idea why her mind always went there when I was in high school). And when I slurred out, "Rye", my father grabbed me by the upper arm, started wildly spanking me with his other hand (which I couldn't feel but thought was a ridiculous thing to do to a 15-year-old), and then he shoved me into my room, telling me that I was never to see any of those kids again.

I was so sick that I spent the night puking in my garbage can and spent the rest of the weekend in bed. This my mother called "cruelly punishing" to her and my father, but there wasn't much else I could do. She informed me that Karen had called the next day to see how I was feeling, and Mum told her to never call again; to tell the boys the same thing. Two related stories: when Kyler was about 15 himself, he got totally wasted on some of my parents' booze before leaving the house. When they had to pick him up off the front lawn and ask him what had possessed him to get drunk like that, he told them that he had been "curious" about alcohol ever since he had heard I had gotten drunk. What a weasel! As if that was the first time he had ever been drunk; and in the end, I was the only one in trouble: apparently, because of me, Kyler could have gotten alcohol poisoning. (And I was so sick after that night of rye, I could have had alcohol poisoning myself and no one really thought about that at the time.) Also: many years later, my Aunt Carlene (who had married into the family and eventually left) was talking about how angry she had been that evening to see my father hitting me. When I pointed out that I was only 15 and had been out drinking and driving and that Dad was probably acting out of fear more than anger, Carlene's face fell; she was old enough at that point to see the picture more clearly (as was I) and she needed to reexamine that story in her memory.

I recognised that being with Carl that evening made me lose control and I made a pact with myself to be more wary of boys that I found super sexy. Carl was definitely out of the picture -- I don't remember if he even called me after getting the message that he wasn't supposed to -- but since my best friend Kasia was still dating their friend Miles, and since Karen had gone away to university and broken up with Bill, somehow me and Bill ended up together. I honestly don't remember how that came about, but he's the one this week's song is for. Bill was not particularly attractive (he was short and chubby with a round and boyish face) and he had no money (we didn't go on many real dates, and if he wanted to pick me up, he needed to borrow his sister's rusty old Mini Cooper), but he was absolutely in love with me and he served as a placeholder so I wouldn't throw myself at any more boys that could make me lose control. And that's not to say that I was using Bill as I had used other boys: I loved being with him, certainly didn't care that he had no money, but I simply knew from the start that it wasn't forever. I also knew that Bill would never pressure me to have sex with him, which is actually kind of amazing since I knew that he had had a sexual relationship with Karen; he never frightened me like James had and that is probably why we stayed together for a year. Let's hear it for the boy!

We were together through all of grade eleven, even though my mother believed that Bill had been my date the night I had gotten drunk, and she was afraid that my Dad would find out and freak. I told her Bill had been Karen's date that night, but she still thought I should refer to him as William around my Dad. Whatever. I don't remember if Bill ever came to my house that whole year; don't remember if either Mum or Dad met him; we spent most of our time together making out in Miles' basement or at the lake. Kasia and I were still working at the banquet hall that year, and if the guys were playing a wedding, we would often get changed out of our uniforms after our shift was over and join the reception; sometimes drinking if there was an open bar, but always, brazenly, sitting with the guests in our jeans. (How we didn't get in trouble for that I'll never know; I certainly would have noticed if the waitresses from my wedding dinner had joined the reception; I certainly would have gotten mad.) I remember my music teacher asking me once if Bill (who went to a different school) was my boyfriend, and he was happy to hear that he was because he was such a talented trumpet player (another educator who was pleased to see "winners" finding each other.) I went to Bill's school dances with him and was flattered that at the end of the school year a bunch of guys wrote in Bill's yearbook about how hot his girlfriend was. Only down side to Bill: because Miles was in grade twelve and Bill in grade eleven, Kasia got to go to Prom again but I didn't (I'm only half-joking that that was disappointing...) The summer after grade eleven, Bill and I were both in summer school (not to catch up but to get ahead) and we were able to spend whole days together. A friend of Bill's from his high school was in summer school with us and I remember him saying that he hoped to one day have a true love like the one that Bill and I obviously shared, and while I enjoyed being a part of that picture, I was starting to get a little bored of Bill; of having a boyfriend who didn't really turn me on. In the end, Bill solved that problem for me. Bill called me one evening, nerves in his voice, to tell me something urgent: he had been offered a role in Up With People! and if he took it, he would be leaving within a week to go on a world tour that would last up to a year. It was an amazing opportunity, but he didn't want to go if I wouldn't be there for him when he got back. I told him that either way he had to do it, and whether or not he understood from that comment that I wouldn't likely be waiting for him for a year, he joined the troupe and I was saved another messy breakup. Let's hear it for my babe!

One thing that we loved doing in Lethbridge was cruising: driving a loop up Mayor Magrath Drive, west on Third Avenue, and turning around to go back at either the A&W or the Lethbridge Lodge Hotel. As soon as I got my driver's license in grade eleven, driving around with a carload of kids was the best way possible to spend a free Friday or Saturday night; listening to Top Forty, talking to other carloads of kids at red lights, racing anyone who revved their engines against my classic '64 Dodge Polara. By the time Bill had left, my friends and I were working at Bonanza and new friends from there (and especially Curtis) would often come cruising with us after work. One evening in December, we were cruising and we saw a couple of guys on mountain bikes, and as we zoomed past, Curtis shouted out the window, "Get a horse!" Incredibly, these guys put on the steam and surprised us at the next red light by catching up to us, knocking on the window, and asking us to repeat what we had said. We were a carful of giggling girls, plus Curtis, and these were a couple of hot guys, all smiles. They waved for us to pull over, and we did. Lisa was having a party the next night, and after talking and flirting with them for a while, she invited them to come to it. At the party, I was getting a definite vibe from the better looking of the two guys -- who were both older than us; college students -- and I had to make an instant decision: become the kind of girl who hooks up immediately with some older hot guy or keep the whole thing more casual. I kept it casual and made a play for the shyer of the friends. I had just turned seventeen, Doug was twenty and an Environmental Sciences student before that was really a thing, and even though he didn't actually make a pass at me at the party, he asked me out and got my number before he left.

The hot friend had sex with Cindy at the party (*see last week's tale of a girl gone wild), and I was drunk enough to go to bed before the party actually ended. Soon, the door opened and a guy came in -- Cam from Bonanza (not Curtis' brother Cam; a different Cam) -- and although I was trying to pass out, Cam tried to declare his undying love for me while I tried to drunkenly explain that I was interested in this Doug guy, sorry. Then the door flew open again and Curtis came in, grabbed Cam and threw him out, and returned to make sure I was all right. I assured Curtis I was, tried to pass out again, and Curtis declared his undying love for me. By the next summer, I would be the first person that Curtis would come out to, but at this point (as he would later insist) he was just trying to play the straight game and we were good enough friends that he thought, "Why not?" I told Curtis that we were too good of friends to ruin it with anything more, and I liked Doug, and he left. As an aside: while cleaning up the next day, Lisa said her mother found a near empty vial from some hash oil, and when she asked Lisa what it was, Lisa snatched it and said it was from a perfume sample. By the time her father came flying down the stairs a few minutes later to inspect it, Lisa said she had flushed it down the toilet (*see last week's tale of apparently all my friends were doing drugs without me).

Doug did end up calling and we were a thing for the next six months. Now this was a man with a beard and opinions and an apartment. He took me to fancy dinners at the fine dining room at the Lethbridge Lodge (and apparently just showing up with a bearded man was enough to compel them to serve me wine underage) and he could sit and talk politics with my mother, and above all, he treated me with kid gloves; rarely more than gently kissing me (which was actually fine by me; I had chosen the right friend to suit my "don't lose control of myself ever again" philosophy). When the spring came, we were walking at the lake together one day and he started tickling me and he brought me to the ground and kissed me and said, "My God, I'm in love with you." Now, that seemed to come out of nowhere, and surprised, I teased, "No you're not". I'm sure that hurt his feelings because the mood changed and I never heard those words again (and because he cut open my thigh with the lace hooks on his hiking boots, I have a faint and jagged scar that has served as a lifelong reminder of that day). Because he was in college -- and the semester ended in April -- and because he was from Winnipeg, I had to say goodbye to him not long after this while he went home to work for the summer. He wrote me long and witty letters (he sent me some sand from the beach at Lake Winnipeg once with a list of things I could do with it, including digging my toes in it and burying my beer to keep it cold), but they were more friendly than lovey-dovey letters and I was happy either way. At the beginning of June, Doug called to ask me when my Prom was, and when I told him, he said he thought he could make it. We had never talked about Prom and this blew my mind. In the end, he left work on a Friday in Winnipeg, drove all night to get to Lethbridge, and while he napped through my actual graduation ceremony, my handsome boyfriend was at my side for Prom. Down side: we had never actually danced together before and he was a bit of a goofball when he let loose. Downer side: there was a freak snowstorm during the Prom and the kegger afterparty was cancelled. In the end, Doug was still exhausted and we went home right after the dance was done anyway, and the next day, he was gone again to drive back home to work the next day. He kept writing to me throughout the summer, but when September came, Doug didn't call me to let me know when he was back in town. I ended up going over to his apartment one evening, and he and his friends were sitting around passing a joint, bypassing me every time, and as no one was even talking to me, I left and went home. And never talked to or saw Doug again. I have no idea what happened, but I got wordlessly dumped, and although that made me sad and confused, this was when I had taken a semester off school to work at Lilydale, and I was too exhausted all the time to do much socialising anyway.

Within a month of starting university after Christmas, I met Glen -- the hunky redneck I mentioned last week -- and meeting him erased everyone who came before. I was finally in love, but I'll get to him eventually. This week was about my high school boyfriends and in the end it's not a very scandalous story. Sure, I was a goody two shoes, maybe an ice queen, maybe a user, but I wasn't a floozy. After that drunken night with Carl -- a night when I probably would have agreed to anything he suggested; I was that drunk; that attracted -- I made a more or less conscious decision to not have sex in high school, and I was able to find boyfriends who respected me enough (feared me enough?) to not even ask me if I wanted to. Must be a vibe I sent out; the same vibe that stopped my friends from asking me to get high with them. I know I wasn't always kind to these boys, and I figure that if they remember me with spite, that's only fair.

A related story: Many years later -- I may have even been married to Dave by then -- Mirella came to Edmonton and looked me up. She came to my place for coffee and caught me up on all the Lethbridge gossip and it wasn't until then that I learned that she and Greg had been together for years after I had moved away. She made some comment about how it was okay with her that Greg and I had been each others' "first", and I was like, "Whoa, wait a minute, Greg and I weren't together like that." Mirella sighed as though I was lying and assured me that even though Greg had said he had a hard time getting over me, she got over being jealous a long time ago; it was a-okay that we had slept together. That's where I stopped her: Did he say we slept together? Because that was true -- Greg and I had slept together once in a hotel room in Red Deer -- but all we did was sleep. Again, Mirella didn't believe me -- why would her longtime boyfriend have lied to her about something like that; she was much more prepared to believe him than me -- and she was annoyed with me by the time she left. I wonder if Mirella would have ever seen Greg again, if she would have confronted him with my denial: would he have stuck to his story? Does it matter? I'll never see any of these people again, and if some boy I done wrong once upon a time needs to tell a different tale, I suppose karma owes him that.

Let's hear it for the boy

Oh, let's give the boy a hand

Let's hear it for my baby,

You know you gotta understand

Oh, maybe he's no Romeo,

But he's my lovin' one man show

Whoa whoa whoa whoa

Let's hear it for the boy