Five hours and Three Years Between

“Oh, Lina! She’s gorgeous!”

I was crushed in an embrace, devoured by the rose perfume and the keen aromatic promise of dinner to come. So short, the touch forced me to almost bend in half to meet the grip of Mrs Gallo. She pressed her face into my shoulder. Taken aback, my arms hung beside her. Selina’s hand vanished from mine. I felt her shift away. The moment stretched on and still Selina’s mother pulled me into her. My hands found the strength to crawl across her back, returning the greeting.

She murmured, “how good it is to finally meet you. Thank you for bring our girl back home.”

Abruptly, she ripped away. I staggered a step as Mrs Gallo whipped around to the yawning door of the house, calling, “Enzo! Enzo, they’re here!”

Mr Gallo looked like Selina. They had the same flash of heartbreak on their faces when locking eyes. The same hesitation. He rushed out of the house to hug her. “Baby girl!”

Three years since they had seen Selina, and time had not changed her parents’ devotion. It pained me.

“Was it a long drive?” Mrs Gallo’s attention returned to me. On her tip-toes, she brushed the errant hairs from my face. I crumbled more with each touch; Warm fingers smoothing over my cold cheeks.

“A little tiring, yes.” An unconscious conversation, a script that required no participants. My focus divided between Selina’s mother and father.

Selina peeled away from her father and he moved towards me. Selina melted away, becoming a shadow. Mrs Gallo said something about the oven. She lurched towards Selina, stopped, then left us.

Mr Gallo leaned forward a moment for a hug, I stiffly copied. He changed his mind. He leaned back. He was a big man, skittish and fragile as a deer. He struck his hand forward. wavering, then committed, the dance I had seen so many fathers of girlfriends perform before. A performance I still had not perfected. I wavered. Your baby girl’s dating a woman, and no one knows quite how to manage that.

“You must be Samantha, we’ve heard so much about you,” he said when I pressed my hand into the work-rough callus of his. Honest hands, hands that had passed lifetime in labour to carve out a comfortable life for his family in this two-storey house among a street of two-storey houses. Details were dark with evening, but I found among the darkness all the evidence that explained the lives in the neighbourhood; The life of Selina’s upbringing. Filled double garages, a third car shunted to the sidewalk; children’s equipment populating the bright, groomed lawns. Extravagant gardens spilled onto the pavement, and apples trees grew unruly but well loved.

He was better at this game than I was.

“Yes Sir,” I said, “it’s lovely to meet you.”

In the way so many fathers do, Mr Gallo turned to practicality in order to satiate the discomfort of vulnerability. Both father and daughter would allow no tearful reunions on the front lawn. “Selina, your bags are in the car?”

“Yes, but you don’t need . . .” She trailed off, watching him heedlessly charge towards the small and out-of-place vehicle.

“That’s your car?” Mr Gallo asked me when he returned, crumbling beneath the burden of our suitcases. Luggage for a week. Mr Gallo was a man who had to do everything himself, to demonstrate his capability when three years ago he could do nothing to save Selina. Selina’s hand jolted forward, an attempt to take her rucksack which dripped from his underarm. Mr Gallo stepped away from her. “You worry about settling in. I’ll take these upstairs,” he instructed her.

“Yes sir,” I said again, a little stupidly. Then I felt the panic to supply something more valuable. “She’s not a pretty car, but she does the job.”

“Papà, you remembered to put us in the same room, right?”

Two parallel conversations. Selina was remembering how she used to speak to him. Her tone pitched and dived, searching for a place to sit between anxiousness, exasperation, and irritation.

“That’s what matters. Looks like you take care of it; good to see,” Mr Gallo replied. I watched his knuckles turning white on the suitcase handle, fingers turning purple. The sentiment: I was someone who took care of and understood my vehicle, thus I could be trusted with his daughter. “Selina, of course I remembered. You're in your bedroom. We turned the guestroom into a studio for your Mamma."

He lumbered inside. I could see the edge of the staircase. Mr Gallo dropped the rucksack as he attempted to ascend. It slugged down a few steps. I watched the man deliberate over it, his arms still full. He vanished for a minute, then returned to fetch it. When Mr Gallo glanced out at us, I turned my head away, not betraying this failing.

“They haven’t changed a bit,” Selina spoke quietly, her eyes on the burning yellow of the kitchen window. Inside, the shadow of Mrs Gallo moved. The scene reflected in her eyes, which were wide and a little dazed. It was darker, colder, after the rush of the welcome. I locked the car. Across the street, windows sparked to life, each screens of domesticity.

“They really care about you,” I padded back to her. I used my phone camera in an attempt to crudely mend my appearance. There was a mirror just inside the entrance, painting an empty hall. But I stayed on the path with Selina. We had driven five hours in our nice outfits. The side of Selina’s dress was creased where she had been sleeping against the window, and the imprint of the handle was still marked on her exposed arm. Goosebumps raced along her skin.

“I know they do,” she exhaled for a long moment.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“Are you?”

There was no point to conjuring some reply. We both smiled a little, then braved the house.

Mrs Gallo could not hug her daughter, too afraid to, so instead she demonstrated her earnest love in the enormous spread of food across the table. It didn’t make much of an impression on Selina. Selina, at least, remembered this love. She slid into one of the chairs without hesitation, opposite Mr Gallo and reached for the salad. The chairs they all knew to take, familiar places around the table.

When Mrs Gallo saw me lingering at the edge of the room, she burst, “would you like a drink? We have —” She stopped. Her lips pressed together and eyes swelled. Everyone glanced at Selina who lowered her head. “I’ll get some water. Do you need anything else dear?”

“No,” I said, my voice faint. “No, this looks perfect.” I sat beside Selina and covertly admired the banquet. It was not a love I remembered. Family dinners were unknown by me.

While we waited for the water, we were silent.

“Selina said you were a model,” Mrs Gallo said when she returned, bearing a platter of four tall glasses. They were wine flutes, glittering with water. “I remember finding you in one of my magazines. That must be exciting an exciting job.”

I plastered on a smile. “That was a few years ago. I — uh, I’m not a model anymore. It’s not a great industry.”

“Oh! That’s a shame.”

The second half of the confession, the one that always made my voice curl up in my throat: “I’m a receptionist now. At, um, a local hotel. It’s a decent job. It pays the bills.”

Mr Gallo asked, “what do your parents do?” And in it were all the assumptions contained in that question: the two adoring parents, the two storey house with family dinners.

“Uh,” I say, and the word wobbled into oblivion.

“Her Step Mum is a prosecutor,” Selina lamely supplied. In the corner of my vision, I catch her flinch. There was too much of a story there. A story I did not want to tell.

Selina’s parents waited, their eyes boring through me. I watched my fork dip into the risotto. Threads of cheese strained as I raised my hand, thinning, thinning. They snap.

“You have a lovely home,” I said.

After dinner, Mr Gallo cleared the table. Mrs Gallo collected the glasses.

“Would you like me to wash up?” I asked, half-rising from my chair.

Immediately, Mrs Gallo insisted, “no dear, that’s sweet, but don’t you worry. No guest of mine will be doing any cleaning. Lina's Nonna would be horrified. You just relax, now.”

I glanced at Selina, who hadn’t moved. She stared back, slow to understand. Finally, Selina said, “Mamma, can I help?” A request, not an offer.

“No —” but she paused. I could hear the clatter of Mr Gallo in the kitchen. “Well that would be nice.”

Selina slipped out of the chair. She rights her dress. She adjusts her heels. "Is my hair okay?" She asked. I nodded. She needed the armour. She crept after her mother.

I didn't know how to relax. If I invited myself into the lounge room, I would fall apart. I hovered outside the kitchen. I don’t know what to do with my hands. I smoothed them down my dress, pretending this was an urgent and absorbing occupation. I didn't like the dress. I felt like a shadow, looming, wondering where I could fit into this portrait of domesticity. I felt useless, itching to justify my presence.

They stand in a line at they sink. Tiny Mrs Gallo, Selina, and towering Mr Gallo. No one ever told me to stop using formalities, so the wall remained. Selina relaxed in the arrangement. The work of washing absorbed her. She doesn’t glance at my machinations of a human performance. On the wall was a photograph of a young girl flanked by young parents. There are many photos, all caught before Selina’s adolescence. Amber, prayers to return to the time before.

I left them to this new chance. I followed the portraits back into the hall. Gap-filled grins, glowing dark eyes. A treasured little girl crowded by cousins. Birthdays racing towards teenagehood then vanishing. Maternity photos: Mrs and and Mr Gallo beaming in anticipation. Minutes pool into an hour while I sit on the stairs. I cannot go into the guestroom. No one said I could.

Eventually, Selina found me. Her arms were bright from the heat of washing up. "What are you doing?" She asked.

I shrugged. I examined the tightness in her face. "Did something happen?"

Tears beaded down her cheek. Selina shook her head, mustering the stoic self-control she needed to survive. "I'm fine. Mamma and Papà are going to watch a movie. I don't know what. They said you could join them."

"What about you?"

"I'm going to bed."

I followed her up the stairs. I could not join Selina's parents alone. The ease and intimacy of movie-watching was beyond me. Selina immediately removed her dress, leaving it crumpled on an armchair of stuffed toys before crawling into the queen-sized bed. The furniture of the room was dated — bookshelf, nightstand, toy box and desk, all real, scuffed timber. Permanent. Curtains stitched from nauseating faded florals and pink carpet. Only the bed was a recent addition, betraying a cheap and mass-produced origin. It groaned as Selina settled. I imagined once there was a fairytale bed instead, draped in a sheer canopy. I used to salivate over pictures of princess beds in magazines when I was young. When was the bed of girlhood removed?

I changed into my pajamas and added them to the armchair. The teddy bear fell over. I righted him, and stroked the furry, tattered head.

"I feel like I need to run away," Selina whispered. Her phone was alight in her hands, but she stared at the ceiling. Fluorescent stars - stickers used to illuminate a child’s bedroom - crowded one corner. The ceiling light devoured their emmissions.

“We can leave,” I said. I could hear the rhthym of conversation downstairs. Music, just beyond reach. I scooped my car keys out of my wallet, letting them hang from my finger to show Selina, singing. I wasn't endorsing her desire to escape, but I wanted to show Selina that she was not trapped.

She deflated into the pillows. “I don’t know. I just don't know. They're being so sweet, and I know how much this means to them. I missed them. I don't know why it feels so painful. My therapist will be so annoyed if I flake on this."

"We're not here to please your therapist."

"How are you going? I'm sorry they were asking so many questions. I know this is hard for you too."

I put the keys in the lap of the teddy bear, just within reach of the bed. I slipped into place beside Selina. She dropped her phone, and it vanished into the duvet. She curled into me. I curled into her.

“I don’t know either. One dinner at a time, I suppose."