Mom is genuinely flustered today. She's getting ready to go out, but she can't decide. She must have tried on at least twenty dresses—Viola thinks—tossing them one after another onto the bed. Her mother is usually so neat. Still, Viola understands her nervousness well enough: how would she feel if she had to attend the book launch of her best friend at one of the city's most beautiful bookstores?
Besides, Viola has a dream tucked in her heart: she wants to be a writer when she grows up. That's why she watches Valeria—her mother's friend—with such keen attention whenever she comes by for tea. Valeria Parrella is a famous writer. Her latest book has the most beautiful cover: a woman, seen from behind, gazing out at the sea, short hair tousled by wind. It's called Tempo di imparare (Einaudi, 2013), and it tells—in the first person—the story of a young mother's relationship with Arturo, her disabled son.
A few days ago, Viola's mother read her some pages from this novel, and there's one scene in particular that has stayed with Viola ever since. She loves it madly.
"At your birthday party," Valeria Parrella writes, "the house like an inferno, children crammed into every corner, and I kept thinking that cleaning wouldn't be enough afterward—we'd need a full renovation. Ariel was on the sofa chatting with Antonio's father, and Antonio came over. He looked at Ariel very seriously: 'But Arturo is disabled?'. Antonio's father's face turned red, the way it does when innocence is lost.
But Ariel saw a word too big for Antonio's mouth, so she told him this story instead: 'Yes, he's disabled. We're a family of disabled people. It's like Native American tribes—you need just one member to carry the same marks, and then everyone has them. I'm disabled, Arturo's mother is disabled, the grandparents are disabled, and even the Botanist, you see that man smoking out on the balcony? He's a dear friend of ours, he's known Arturo since he was born, so he's disabled too.
His girlfriend, not quite as much—at least not until they get married.' 'And me?', Antonio asks. 'No, you're not disabled, sorry: you belong to a different tribe.'"
Viola—who loves imagining herself and Mimosa as two little squaws—appears at the doorway of her parents' bedroom. To her mother, who has finally settled on the green dress, she whispers, "Tell Valeria that our flower tribe wishes her all the luck in the world."
Giulia Galeotti, 2014