Gionata had started talking, but slurred his speech a bit; he had a meek voice, always questioning, intelligent, but still went back to his invented language from when he was ill: “Kaku kaku katuto! Piko-pako!” We’d chatter together a few moments, voices bright.

“Piko-pako!”

“No!” he’d insist. “Pako-piko! Piko-pakuto!”

His ringlets were sparse; he was thin because he ate so little and was already talking about sex—he’d surprise you with: “I saw your dick!”

The twins: Giuseppe followed after Angelo, tiptoeing and laughing at the other’s antics as if he weren’t allowed to participate. Angelo was curious and would scramble onto furniture, but not Giuseppe, and sometimes he grew enraged and bit his brother; then, after a good cry, he’d go back to wandering around the apartment, waddling by, tagging after the other two.

My parents didn’t come over to Luca and Daniela’s anymore. They were frightened by my separation—they’d guessed it long before I was ready to tell them myself. For me, it was all an enormous gray bubble. I avoided them and left it up to Luca—that is, the most distant of us—to keep them informed. I did wind up telling my father what was going on, for just a minute, voices raised—

“Look, you can’t argue once and just get divorced,” I told him, pretending Barbara and I were fixing things.

“Well, yeah, but you have a history.”

We dropped it. And I never discussed it with my mother. Luca and I sometimes started drinking at four; if we ate lunch together, two drinks, and I was out.

Whenever I told my sister that Barbara was Leone’s now and I couldn’t have her back, Irene would tell me: “Don’t ever say Barbara belongs to somebody—or she’ll kill you,” or: “I understand completely—me, too—it’s why I always send my girlfriends back to their partners … it’s so sad … we really shouldn’t.”