Margherita's Notebook

We dedicate this book to Patrizia, out of gratitude for her affection, her help, and her support throughout.

T
he date indicated in the Mayan calendar as the day the world would end had come and gone with no major catastrophes.

The end of Margherita's world instead depended on three things that all happened that Thursday.

But she didn't know it yet.

Though there had been some ominous signs.

Margherita was in a large round room with lots of doors. I have to get out of here, I have to leave, she thought to herself. So she went to the first door and tried the handle, but to no avail. The door had been double locked. She tried the second door. Nothing. Anxiety started welling up inside her. She couldn't stay there. She just had to get out. In desperation, she began running from one door to the next, feeling like a prisoner. There was only one door left. It was
the smallest of them all. She held out her hand fearfully. When she touched it lightly, the door sprang open. There, before her, appeared an immense, bright kitchen, overflowing with delicious, irresistible food, the fragrances tickling her nostrils . . . As she entered, though, the door began to shrink—or was it she who was growing disproportionately? She tried to walk through it but got stuck, unable to move or call for help . . . She felt more and more overpowered. Suddenly, the kitchen disappeared from sight, only to be replaced by a long, dark corridor. She struggled with the choking feeling in her throat; she tried to breathe, to free herself, to get some air . . .

All at once and gasping for breath, Margherita came out from under the tangle of blankets and furs that engulfed her in the double bed that took up most of the small bedroom. Francesco, her husband, gave an exasperated sigh and buried his head under his pillow. The furs moved in unison, revealing first a small bicolored face with big golden eyes and pointy ears, then a round pitch-black one, and, last, a bristly fat face covered in tangled fur that rather resembled the wild hairstyle of his owner.

Ratatouille, Asparagio, and Artusi.

“God, what a nightmare!” Margherita sighed in relief as she patted and scratched the two cats and the mutt that were vying for her attention: one was nibbling her big toe, another was “kneading” her legs, while the third was insistently pushing his paw against her arm.

At that moment, the radio alarm began playing a cheerful melody. As the last notes faded away, a woman's voice said, “Scorpio. Squeezed between Mars and Saturn, you'll have to wait until summer to smile again. If Mars is an anvil, then Saturn is the hammer! Today, its influence will force
you to eliminate from your life everything that is in any way weak or wrong.”

Margherita's blue eyes darkened as she contemplated the radio with annoyance.

“Expect a very negative day,” the voice continued. “You will be oppressed by news that you would rather not hear, but because you are a Scorpio, you will know how to benefit from Saturn's passage to make some important decisions.”

With a flick of her hand, Margherita changed the station. What a great way to start the day!

First, the nightmare. Now, this horoscope.

Normally, Margherita didn't believe in ominous dreams, nor did she set much store by cataclysmic horoscopes.

Earsplitting hip-hop filled the room.

“Margy!” Francesco popped his head out from under the pillow and stared at her angrily. “Will you turn that damned alarm off?”

“Sorry,” she said, pressing the off button while he buried himself once more under the pillow.

Margherita couldn't help thinking back to when it was Francesco who would get up early to make her a cup of coffee, which he would carry to their bed with a customary, “Good morning, sweetheart.” It had been such a tender ritual, and sometimes, between a kiss, a witty remark, a caress, they'd end up making love . . .

When exactly had everything changed?

For how long now had she been the one to get up, make coffee and breakfast, to try to sweeten his awakenings that seemed to be getting grumpier by the day?

I don't know.

She needed to do something to neutralize these thoughts that were making her feel restless. She hopped
out of bed and landed on the floor, surrounded by a chorus of howls and meows, pulling all the blankets off the bed with her.

“Ratatouille, Asparagio, Artusi, let's go, time for breakfast!”

“Margy, it's the same old story every day!” Francesco's voice was muffled by the pillow, but she could still tell he was angry. “Why don't you teach them that the bed is off-limits?” he continued, as he tried to straighten out the heap of blankets.

Margherita's feeling of vexation grew. And it made her feel guilty. After all, he was tired and stressed-out; she should try to be more understanding.

He works so hard, we don't have a lot of money, and I lost my job at the call center . . .

“You're absolutely right,” she answered sweetly. “I'll take them into the other room.”

As she left the bedroom followed by her tribe, she heard him muttering something she couldn't quite make out.

The walls of the short, narrow corridor that led to the kitchen (or, to be more exact, to the corner that Margherita obstinately referred to as the kitchen) were covered from top to bottom with pictures of her animals in funny poses, some individually, some in groups. Besides the threesome that was noisily following her at the moment, some of the pictures also featured a large mynah with shimmering feathers. The same one that greeted her as soon as Margherita lifted the cloth draped over the cage next to the window.

“Good morning, Valastro!”

“Hello, my love!” the bird replied, poking its beak between the bars to peck affectionately at her hand. She'd
found the bird with a broken wing, and after nursing it back to health, it had become a full-fledged member of her furry/feathery tribe.

Margherita smiled and gazed fondly at her motley crew of pets gathered around her in that corner of the house she liked so much: filled to the brim with all kinds of kitchen equipment, the refrigerator covered with magnets all inspired by food, and a plaque hanging over the stove that read
QUIET
 . . .
CHEF AT WORK!

“I love you all . . . ,” she said tenderly, as she held a few seeds out to Valastro.

Francesco had tried to convince her not to bring the whole menagerie to their new home. “Sweetheart, in just under five hundred square feet, there's barely enough room for us, let alone for two cats, a dog, and now a bird, can't you see?” But Margherita had been adamant about it. She had accepted the idea of moving to Rome, of looking for a new job, of living in this concrete nightmare where, if you opened the window on one side, all you could see was a wall, and if you opened the window on the other side, you could see your neighbors. “But honey, it's quiet and it's cheap, it's a bargain!” he'd told her, having given up on his dream of becoming a musician and accepting a mundane job in a real estate agency. But Margherita had refused to go anywhere without her pets.

As she fumbled with the coffeepot and cups of all different colors and sizes, Margherita found herself thinking that nothing had gone as she'd imagined. She had dreamed of living with Francesco in a house with a big garden where her animals could run and play while she dedicated herself to new culinary inventions and he rehearsed musical compositions that would make him famous—dreams
that had been shattered one after the other. All that remained was their love for each other. But wasn't that the most important thing? So how could she explain the vague feeling she was having lately? Once again, she drove the thought from her mind, focusing instead on preparing breakfast for her various customers: no canned food was allowed in her house. “Do you have any idea the kind of junk they put in there?” she had asked her husband indignantly when he'd suggested buying the food wholesale to save money.

After she'd finished feeding her pets, Margherita meticulously prepared a cup of fragrant coffee for Francesco and set it on a tray along with some of the coconut chocolate cookies she'd made the night before, trying to ignore the negative vibes she felt slithering inside her like a snake. Was it the nightmare that was bothering her? Or that horoscope? Or something else?

“Margy . . . where's the coffee?” Francesco's voice, part impatient and part beseeching, kept her from completing her train of thought. Yet one image did manage to cross her mind: a color photo that gradually faded into melancholy sepia, then into blurry black-and-white, and, last, into a gloomy negative. Was this what had happened to her life? She mentally drew a curtain over the image. She hurried toward the bedroom, set the tray down next to her husband, stroked his face, his hair, and . . . put her lips on his. But his kiss seemed hasty and absentminded—or was it just her gloomy frame of mind that made her think so? Francesco sipped his coffee, ignored the cookies, and got up in a hurry.

“It's late.” Then he looked straight at her and, knitting his eyebrows, he said, “Please, Margy. Don't make me look
bad, my boss himself made the call to the person in charge of hiring.”

Margherita just managed to hold back a snort.

“I know, I know. You've only told me about a million times already!”

“Only because you're the one who keeps losing her job!”

Now, that was a stab in the back!

“Are you saying it was my fault that the boiled cod who calls himself the manager at the call center fired me?”

“He fired you because you were suggesting recipes instead of convincing people to pay up!”

“I was trying to establish a rapport . . .”

Why, oh, why do I always have to justify what I do?

“All right, all right,” Francesco cut her off. “This job should be the right one for you. It involves food and people. The two things you like best, right?”

Why was the tone of his voice so . . . condescending?

But it was no time to start an argument, Margherita decided. After all, he'd gone to all that trouble to help her; he'd disturbed the big boss . . . Of course, working as a promoter for a cheese company wasn't exactly what she'd been dreaming of doing all her life, but nothing could be worse than working in a debt collection call center.

“So this time there shouldn't be any hitches,” he concluded, taking her silence as a yes. “Besides, the interview is really just a formality, all you have to do is smile and show you're interested in the product. We need that job, don't you forget that! So get going, or you'll be late.”