Brava, Valentine

“Am I treating you badly?” I place my hands on my chest. I can feel my heart beating.

“I don’t spend enough time with you to know.”

“I’m doing the best I can. Give me a break here. I’m working all day and coming home to you at night. But that’s not the issue, is it? I think our real problem is that I’m not the girl in the pool in Capri.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asks.

“You fell for a sad sack who’d been abandoned by her boyfriend. You swept in and made it all better. Well, this go-round, I’m on a different track. I have a purpose here-and it’s not love first and foremost. But you were changing my mind about that.”

“Was I? Then why do you leave me here? Why don’t you ask me along, to be with you? You hide me in the hotel like a gigolo.”

“Are you serious?”

“Even your response insults me. I am not your ta

“Was?”

“This is not going to work, Valentina.”

“Hold on a second. Don’t tell me what works and what doesn’t. If you would live in the 21st century, we might have a chance! I could text you and tell you that I’m going to be late, but you refuse to text-you don’t even have a cell phone that works, you have one of those cheesy international models for emergencies. Well, guess what, it’s an emergency to me when I can’t get hold of you. I’ve got news for you, Gianluca. There aren’t any carrier pigeons with heart-shaped vials carrying handwritten notes through the air that say, ‘Hang on honey, I’m go

“It has nothing to do with phones.” Gianluca raises his voice.

“Then what is it?”

“You don’t trust me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You say you love me, but it isn’t possible to make love and mean it unless you trust.”

“I don’t understand!” I shout, but it’s unconvincing. Even I can hear the uncertainty in my voice.

“If you trusted me, you would honor me. You would put me first. You would tell Roberta that I was here, waiting. Did you tell Roberta about me?”

I shake my head that I didn’t. And now I’m forced to ask myself why I didn’t. I’m not ashamed of him. I’m not hiding him. But I am just begi

“You see, you aren’t really in love with me. The sex is good, and you like coming back to the hotel and having a good time, but you don’t want more than that. You say you do, but you don’t.”

“You’re the one who said you didn’t want any children!” I blurt. Now, why would I bring that up? This man is forcing me to look at things I would rather not confront. I feel myself getting angrier.

“I said it was up to you,” he says quietly.

“What kind of a commitment is that?” I yell.

“I told you, it’s up to you. But even that, even the decision to have a baby, you want me to make for you. You don’t want to decide anything for yourself, Valentina. I don’t like this wait-and-see-what-happens attitude that you have. I find it cowardly.”

“You don’t make me feel very secure.” I don’t know where this is coming from either. I’m not the woman that needs a man to make her feel confident. I am confident!

“How can I? You’re insecure within yourself. You tell me you cried when you caught your chef with another woman, but you were in fact relieved.”

“Do not bring up Roman!”

“He is part of this! He did to you what you expected-he chose someone else over you, because in your mind that’s what all men eventually do. They leave. So why not show them the door first? Why not mistreat them until they are forced to go? Why not honor your word and show up when you’re supposed to? You can’t. Because you don’t want to!”

“I didn’t mean to mistreat you. I’m trying to be here for you-and get my work done. I don’t have the luxury of taking time off to fall in love and cruise around town with you!”

“And I do? I will go home to Arezzo and a backlog of work that will take me weeks to complete.”

“Oh, now you have to sacrifice for me-”

“What do you think a relationship is, Valentina?”

“Evidently, I have no idea!”

“Finally the truth! You’ve treated me poorly. Maybe you expected me to take it, but I’ve had far too good a life to spend what’s left of it waiting around for you to grow up.”

“You are wrong! I am a grown-up!” I sound about thirteen years old.

“No, I am exactly right about this. You are a child. You have not grown up-you have not made your life your own.”

“Yes, I have!”

“How?”

“I took over the business. I…” I can’t think of any other grown-up things that I’ve done.

“You took over the business because you had to, not because you chose it. Don’t you see that you never choose?”

“I left teaching to become a shoemaker. I chose that.”

“And now, that’s your excuse for everything. Work. Work is always the excuse. I hoped that you were the kind of woman who wanted love as much as work. You don’t. You ca

“Now you’re the expert on me?”

“No, I’m not. Far from it. I have no idea who you really are, because you won’t show yourself to me. You don’t trust me, Valentina. And I ca

“I don’t think you’ll cheat on me,” I say quietly.

“This is not about infidelity. It’s about trusting me with your heart. You don’t. I see you act upon it in small ways-you don’t believe me, for example, when I say it’s cold outside, you go to the balcony and check for yourself. When you ask if there are any messages when you come in the door after work, and I tell you there are not, you call the front desk and check anyway. When I ask you to meet me and you agree to, when you don’t show up, it tells me that you don’t really want to be with me.”

“I don’t know what to say.” And I don’t, because he’s right. I’m so used to being on my own that I don’t know how to let him in-or if I even want to.

“You say you love your father and you forgave him for how he treated your mother-but you haven’t forgiven men in general for being human. You have high expectations, and then when we aren’t perfect, you say, See, there it is, you disappoint me. You make love to me, but you won’t make love a part of your life.”

Gianluca makes his way to the door.

“So that’s it. You invent me in your romantic letters, and then when I’m a human being and make a mistake, or a few of them, you leave. Now who isn’t being real?”

He picks up his suitcase. “I’m going back to Italy. Is that real enough for you?”

“Now you’re being cruel.”

“I believe it’s cruel to dismiss someone that you have feelings for.”

“But I didn’t do it deliberately! Okay, I’ve made about a million mistakes with you. But, you can’t just bail on me at the first sign of trouble. It might be Italian, but it’s not American. We fight for what we want.”

“I don’t believe you want me.”

“Oh, come on. I never said I was perfect, Gianluca. You made me that way in your letters. I’d fall in love with me the way you described me! But I’m more than a rendering of your imagination. I’m a mess.”

“I see you as a woman who has everything. Why would I pretend otherwise when I wrote to you?”

“Because I don’t have everything. Not even close! I know I can be horrible and selfish and single-minded and judgmental. I’m just hacking my way through this forest trying to get to daylight. I don’t know everything-but I was learning a lot from you. And if you do decide to leave me, you should know that.”

“I do know that,” he says quietly.

“I don’t know why I didn’t jump in the cab and come back here when I couldn’t reach you. And I don’t know why I didn’t bring you to the factory. And I don’t know why I didn’t check my phone! I’m so used to separating my work and my love life-because I’ve always had to. And maybe I saw, when I was a kid, that my grandparents’ marriage suffered because they worked together, and then they went up the stairs every night and lived together-it was just too much.”