The Lying Life of Adults

Spellbound by Aunt Vittoria’s physical presence, Giovanna follows her into the apartment. She admits of her aunt’s personality that “there was an impatience without filters that hit me in a flash […] I followed her as if she held me on a leash” (51). Aunt Vittoria contradicts everything Giovanna knows about respectability. Her aunt gestures brusquely, speaks in dialect (which Giovanna’s parents forbid), and uses vulgar, rude words. Once seated, Aunt Vittoria also startles Giovanna by making fresh-squeezed orange juice. Giovanna has only ever had juice from a carton. When her aunt hands her a glass with seeds and pulp and juice running down the sides, Giovanna’s stomach turns.

Aunt Vittoria asks Giovanna pointedly about a bracelet she supposedly gifted her niece as a newborn. Though Giovanna knows nothing about the bracelet, she lies about its fate to defend her parents. Aunt Vittoria immediately picks up on the lie but congratulates Giovanna on her willingness to defend her parents, calling her “smart.” She also commends Giovanna for admitting that she’s scared and advises her to always hold a reasonable amount of fear to better combat life. Aunt Vittoria then launches into an attack on Giovanna’s parents for various slights and affectations. She paints a completely different picture of her brother, telling Giovanna that her father not only destroys whatever he deems a threat, he destroyed Aunt Vittoria’s true love, Enzo, systematically and maliciously by first befriending Enzo (54-55). Enzo was a police sergeant who, according to Aunt Vittoria, had a heart of gold. She never loved a man before or after him.

Overcome with emotion, Aunt Vittoria rushes into the living room and begins loudly playing the same song she and Enzo danced to when they first met. She tells Giovanna that Giovanna isn’t growing up properly because she chooses to believe her parents’ lies versus looking and listening for the truth. Despite the emotional, strange visit, Giovanna—nicknamed Giannì now by Aunt Vittoria—plans to meet her aunt on May 23 to visit Enzo’s gravesite.

When Giovanna returns to the car, she lies about her visit to keep her father from worrying. Though Aunt Vittoria wants Giovanna to hurt Andrea by revealing that she and Aunt Vittoria danced to Enzo’s song, Giovanna doesn’t tell her father about the song. Later, she also practices skirting around the truth when her mother asks about the visit. She absentmindedly reveals info about the bracelet, and her mother asks Andrea. Andrea affirms that there was never a bracelet left for Giovanna. To Giovanna, the visit with her aunt marks yet another shift in her growing pains: She imagines herself hovering between two worlds, believing in her parents but also slightly believing Aunt Vittoria. She doesn’t want her parents knowing that she finds her aunt both ugly and beautiful, and that she can’t keep her aunt out of her thoughts despite initially having a sincere aversion to seeing her aunt again.

In addition to her parents, Giovanna begins lying to Ida and Angela. She enjoys lying to her friends because Ida and Angela’s parents have money and a close, giving family. The girls want for nothing, especially affection. Moreover, Costanza comes from a goldsmith family and has gorgeous jewelry. She allows Ida and Angela to play with the jewelry—except for one bracelet she always wears. Giovanna therefore believes that her lies level the playing field with her friends. Her biggest lie is informing the sisters that Aunt Vittoria left her a bracelet more beautiful than even Costanza’s bracelet. Giovanna has also begun wearing a gorgeous bracelet from her mother. She says Aunt Vitoria’s bracelet is also more beautiful than her own mother’s. Later, Giovanna stands naked in the mirror while wearing her mother’s bracelet but hates her scrawny features. She takes comfort in remembering Aunt Vittoria’s crudeness and their upcoming meeting.

On May 23, Giovanna anxiously waits for her parents to leave so she can visit Aunt Vittoria without them knowing. However, Aunt Vittoria arrives to pick Giovanna up, sending the house into chaos. Andrea coldly leaves without saying goodbye to anyone, and Giovanna’s mother, hurt, must negotiate a return time with Aunt Vittoria. Though Giovanna initially feels guilty about lying to her parents, she admits that Aunt Vittoria’s presence “[…] forced me to an attention, to a tension, that functioned like an anesthetic” (67). This tension between security and chaos, says Giovanna, will continue throughout her life.

At the cemetery, Aunt Vittoria accuses Giovanna’s parents—and all intellectuals—of fearing death. Giovanna tries defending her father’s belief that memory is a more important way to memorialize the dead than cemeteries but only succeeds in annoying her aunt further (68). (One of Giovanna’s biggest endeavors going forward is to say exactly the right words to receive her aunt’s love and praise.) Giovanna silently critiques Enzo’s features, considering him dull and ugly. She mythologizes the love between Enzo and Aunt Vittoria as a type of supreme love, especially because Aunt Vittoria’s attraction toward him seems incongruous due to his physical features. Though Giovanna wants Aunt Vittoria to teach her about love, she gets a visceral lecture about her hateful parents instead.

Giovanna learns from Aunt Vittoria that Andrea wanted to sell the family house. Aunt Vittoria refused, and when Enzo intervened by trying to pay Andrea his share of the house so that it might remain in the family, Andrea insulted Enzo and accused him of meddling. He then told Enzo’s wife about Enzo’s affair—in front of Enzo’s children. Giovanna doesn’t believe her father can be as cruel as Aunt Vittoria suggests, and she purposely presses her aunt about certain facts to get back at her. Aunt Vittoria calls Giovanna cruel and calculating, and though she also accuses Giovanna of enjoying hurting people, she applauds Giovanna’s tenacity. Aunt Vittoria then explains how she and Enzo’s wife, Margherita, made up when Enzo fell ill. Now they’re inseparable.

Aunt Vittoria uses explicit, vulgar language to describe the sex between her and Enzo. She then demands that Giovanna repeat the sexual encounters verbatim to Giovanna’s father. Though Giovanna feels elated that Aunt Vittoria speaks to her like an adult, Aunt Vittoria mistakes Giovanna’s quiet for unease and takes her home. Giovanna’s parents don’t get angry at her; instead, they allow her to visit Aunt Vittoria and ask only that she inform them of her visits. As her visits with her aunt become a routine, and with her first year of high school approaching, Giovanna hopes for a brighter future, one where she might even be instrumental in reconciling her aunt and father. However, her parents have no desire to reconcile, and Giovanna herself realizes that she prefers having her aunt’s rough influence all to herself.

While further bonding with Aunt Vittoria, Giovanna visits her relatives, all of whom she last saw as an infant. Everyone welcomes her and affectionately calls her Giannina like Aunt Vittoria does. Giovanna notices a stark contrast in her personality with her relatives, and she even believes that Giannina is a different person altogether from her life as Giovanna, the obedient girl who inhabits her parents’ house. Aunt Vittoria also introduces her to Margherita and her three children: Tonino, Corrado, and Giuliana. Tonino is shy, Corrado (Aunt Vittoria’s favorite) looks exactly like his father and has a crude, blunt manner, and Giuliana is beautiful and friendly. Giovanna notices that the family defers to Aunt Vittoria to settle matters, especially when they argue about one of Tonino’s friends, Roberto, staying over.

Aunt Vittoria continues pressing Giovanna to truly look at her parents and see how unrefined they are under their masks of perfection. Meanwhile, Giovanna confides in Angela and Ida about her relationship with her aunt. She paints such a vivid picture of Aunt Vittoria’s antics that her aunt almost seems supernatural in her estimation. Because of her depictions, the sisters beg to meet Aunt Vittoria. Giovanna, not wanting to destroy the false reality she’s painted about Aunt Vittoria, begins feeling so false with everyone—Aunt Vittoria threatens to stop seeing her if she remains on her parents’ side, her parents remain tightlipped and conservative, and her friends feel she’s holding out on them—that she starts spying on her parents (90).

While having dinner one night with Angela and Ida’s family, Giovanna sees Mariano wrap his ankles around Giovanna’s mother’s ankles under the table. It lasts for only a moment. Though Aunt Vittoria wants concrete information about Giovanna’s parents’ shortcomings, Giovanna worries that Aunt Vittoria will use this information to seriously harm her parents. Though she wants to know more, and though she feels the secret will rip her family apart, she decides not to tell Aunt Vittoria.