The end of dreams

6

Silvia was highly strung when she arrived at Michelle's apartment. Though she had just driven recklessly she hadn't been able, however, to give vent to all her mental strain; the news she had found in the web were shocking.

Anna opened the door and smiled at her.
«Come on in, Silvia, we've just arrived.»
Aunt Julia was cooking in the kitchen, Gaia was playing on the carpet, close to Michelle's feet, and Michelle was crouching on the sofa. Seemingly she was gazing at the huge television-set in front of her, but actually she was staring at the thin air.
She didn't receive Silvia by showing her a smile, but she just gave a hint of it.
«Hi, Ughino...»
The euphoria due to her discharge had made room for something else.
She looked like a little bird as she was sitting that way. She was thinner than ever, she was wearing a black undershirt that made her look plucky, but it highlighted her only remaining breast. Silvia recalled how many times they had bathed together, when they were young girls. She got the blues as she thought about how lovely Michelle's breast had once used to be. Anyway it was not the right moment to show sadness, so she gulped down her tears.
«So those damned idiots scared you...» she said, breaking the ice.
«Yeah. The onco-cutie assured me it is nothing serious, but I don't feel tranquil at all. I've got it here» she indicated a point on her forehead.
«He said he let escape a cell. But how many organs did that cell go through, before landing here?» she touched her own forehead once again.
«Come on, Michelle, if they told you it's a trifle then it can but be so.»
«They are three teeny-weeny nodules. But I'm scared. Cancer has proceeded... I hadn't finished my treatments yet when it moved on! What if the radiotherapy should not be enough? What if the tumor should arise again somewhere else in me? How can I find the courage to face all those check-ups? I'll have to undergo them my whole life long, do you understand? And I'm gonna have one check-up every three months for the next five years! How am I gonna handle all that strain? I can't take it anymore, this is no life, Silvia...»
Those words were followed by a horrible silence.
Michelle's worries were exactly the worries of everybody else, but nobody had the guts to admit it.

«I have something to tell you...» said Silvia, trying to divert her.
Michelle's eyes twinkled; she was a curious being and having a secret revealed would be enough for her to be happy.
Silvia paid attention to Anna, who was hanging around in the room, so she hesitated to speak.
«Mom» said Michelle in a blaming voice «haven't you called granny yet? Come on , tell her I've been discharged, what are you waiting for?»
«You're right! Your granny!»
And as soon as Anna ran into the other room to phone her mother, Silvia let the cat out of the bag.
She did it very frankly, as always, straight and thoughtless like a rifle-shot.
«I'm pregnant.»
The two girls took an austere look at each other.
«Who's the father?» asked Michelle, having a good laugh.
«I ain't got no idea, Pina!»
They could not stop laughing.
«And now who's gonna tell your father?»
Silvia's father was notoriously a man with an old-fashioned mentality, the typical Sicilian from the nineteenth century who'd rather die than have an unmarried mother as a daughter.
«He'll never know about it» said Silvia, regaining self-control «I'm not going to keep the baby.»
Michelle nodded.
«It's only up to you. Do think it over. One day you could repent it.»
«I think I'd repent more if I should decide to keep it.»
«Sure, the moment your father should be on the verge of killing you, you'd repent it strongly!»
And they started laughing again.

From a distance they both could have seemed to be light-hearted girls. As they were characterized by a somewhat freaky beauty and a tendency to laugh, one would not easily figure out the enormous burden they were bearing, unless one knew them very well.
It had been a terrible year for them both, filled up with physical suffering as well as psychological; Michelle's cancer, George's good-bye and now that catastrophical pregnancy... But for the presence of Gaia they would not even have been able to outlive a year like that.
But if one had had the possibility to observe them more closely, one could never but have realized the horror they were carrying inside. Their eyes had lost their cheerfulness, and also the fact that the colour of their complexions had shifted from the usual moonlike pallor, to a yellowish white, was a clear clue to their real situations.
They were destroyed.
The former had been fighting a breast tumor that, right after she had finished deeply painful treatments, had given her three good metastases in her brain as a present. The latter had a broken heart and was waiting for a baby whose father was unknown. Of course, those two problems could not bear comparison with each other at all, but in both cases someone's survival was dramatically concerned, and there was a good deal of nausea included on both sides.
They still were two beautiful girls anyway, in spite of the dull colors of their faces, their bags under the eyes and their slightly emaciated faces. Their new run-down countenances made them even more similar to one another. They were not blood-related sisters, actually there was no kinship between them. The only thing they had in common was that their fathers were Sicilians. Yet they had grown up together and that made two sisters of them. They had been hanging around with each other since they were babies, and that's why their voices sounded almost identical. Their voices actually possessed the same tones, the same rhythm, even the same timbre. Their mothers, incredibly, used to mistake them when talking with them on the phone or on the door-phone.
They were the same height too.
One could hardly believe they were both five feet and six (and a half) inches tall, not an inch more nor an inch less. Maybe because they had attended the same schools, taken up the same sports... maybe that was the reason for so bizarre a coincidence.
No other affinities made them so similar.
They were one the opposite of the other indeed; their images were symmetrical, to the attentive eye.
Michelle's hair was deeply black, Silvia was deeply fair-haired. Yet the style and the length of their hair was the same: Michelle had always used to keep her hair shoulder-long with a fringe on the side, till she had lost it; then she had been shaving her head after she had begun the chemotherapy. On that occasion too Silvia had followed suit, partly out of solidarity as she thought she would make her friend feel not so ill as she actually was; on the other hand she'd have felt quite odd if her beloved Michelle's haircut had been different from hers.
This way the radical change of their images was actually less upsetting.
It was no easy game for either of them to shift from long, lovely hair to nearly absent hair. But they cheered up each other and even realized that their new cut, or rather their new shaves, didn't look
any bad. Paradoxically their new looks made them very similar to beautiful nymphs whose eyes shone gracefully.
Michelle's eyes were very dark, like her hair. As a matter of fact her hair was so black that it inclined inevitably to the blue, like the night.
Silvia's hair was way fair instead. Its colour was indefinite, with an icelike nuance that could turn into grey, blue or yellow according to the light and the humours.
The girls had different, very strange eyes whose colours were akin to the colour of their hair. Whatever they should be looking at, they would do that in the same way.