It’s where I used to walk with my mother, barefoot in the silky golden sand with the waves crashing on the shore. Back before I become the wolf and she became a husk of a woman. Before my father beat the both of us into the shapes he wanted us to be. Me, his perfect heir. Her, his perfect wife.
There are guards at the base of the path and I nod my approval as I go past them. I can see her now, dressed in some kind of billowy, white nightgown that the wind catches, walking slowly along the sand, her back to me. She has her arms wrapped around herself, though the wind isn’t cold, and I watch as she pauses and turns to face the sea.
She looks so like my mother, the way she’s standing and gazing out at the ocean like a desert island survivor looks for rescue. It sends a spear of ice right through me.
You know what you’re doing to her, don’t you?
I stop dead in the sand as the realisation comes to me. An unwelcome realisation. Because of course I know what I’m doing to her.
If she’s standing here on the beach, looking for rescue just like my mother, then I am my father, keeping her here. I am my father, accepting the parts of her that I like and rejecting the rest. Her need for freedom, her need to have a normal life, her need to feel safe.
I want her passion, her fire and her anger, yet I also want her to obey me, to stay here at my side, to accept the fact that I’m the head of the family and I decide what happens, not her.
The spear of ice twists inside me and a burst of pain radiates out through my chest, squeezing my heart.
It happened gradually to my mother. Stefano slowly crushed the life out of her with his insistence that she never argue with him. He was the head of the family and as his wife she had to obey, and even though he never hit her, his constant belittlements and criticisms took their toll.
Her failure to give him more children incensed him and so he exiled her here to the villa, making her stay so the doctors could examine her and give her special diets, and on occasion sedate her to keep her ‘calm’. All so she could conceive.
He didn’t stay with her. He kept her like a princess in a tower, his brood mare that he would visit every week to encourage a conception.
She loathed being a prisoner. That’s why she and I would walk along the beach every day. As a child I’d thought nothing of it since she’d make each walk an adventure, but in retrospect I knew that she paced the beach like a tiger pacing around the bars of a cage.
Until my father decided that she should join him in Rome for some big family meeting and the car she was in exploded. I was devastated when I learned she’d died. But now, with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder if in that moment of death she felt finally free.
You cannot do that to Caterina.
The world slows and stops as I stare at the tall, slender figure of my wife, standing and looking out to sea. The wind blows her black hair around her face and makes her nightgown billow around her calves, and the spear of ice in my chest begins to melt, filling my veins with ice water.
I try to ignore it, pushing the thoughts away as I make myself continue on to where she stands. She must have seen my approach but she doesn’t turn, her attention still on the distant horizon.
Dawn is flaming, the sun rising from the sea, red and pink shading the dense dark blue of the sky. Another beautiful sunrise, but all she is looking at are the bars of her cage, isn’t she?
‘My mother and I used to walk along this beach,’ I say after a moment. ‘We would look for shells and sea glass and pretty stones. Sometimes I’d pretend to be a pirate, and I’d kidnap her in my pirate ship, but then we’d become friends. She’d draw maps in the sand and tell me about all the places we’d sail to, and have adventures there.’
The waves lap against the sand. The tide is coming in. If she’s not careful, my wife will get her feet wet, yet she doesn’t seem to notice.
‘That sounds idyllic,’ she says, still looking out over the sea.
‘It was.’ I pause a moment. ‘Until I realised that my mother was trapped here and she came to the beach to feel free.’
Slowly, Caterina turns to me, her hair blowing around her face. Her green eyes are shadowed, and there are dark circles under them. ‘Why was your mother trapped here?’
I push my hands into my pockets. ‘My father wanted more children and decided that she needed to stay here being looked after by doctors and having her diet monitored. She’d be sedated sometimes too. He thought that would make it more likely for her to conceive. He used to visit her once a week.’
‘That’s awful.’
‘Yes.’ I meet her gaze. ‘She couldn’t leave and nothing she did or said could make my father change his mind. She had three miscarriages and after that, fell into a deep depression. After five years of being trapped here, my father eventually brought her to a family meeting in Rome and that’s when she was killed by the car bomb.’
There are flickers of pity and horror in Caterina’s eyes, and no wonder. Not considering her own position here and the similarities between my mother and herself.
‘Is that how you’re going to treat me?’ she asks bluntly.
I’m expecting the question, so I don’t hesitate. ‘No. Of course not. I would never do that to you.’
‘And yet that’s what you’re doing. I’m trapped here. You won’t even consider giving me my freedom.’
You know she’s right.
