Coco Chanel Saved My Life (3 page)

“Yes, I think I know you pretty well…” (For sure more than he knew me.)

“Look, it's mainly thanks to you and to our long talks and beautiful moments together that I finally realized something – I have missed someone to love.”

My legs started to shake.

“And I believe I found the right person for me… Anna.”

Let me see if I get this. I need a moment to take stock of the situation: I meet an incredible man. I fall madly in love with him. We are getting along perfectly. Sex is fantastic. I leave my city and my job for him and finally he decides to love, seriously… another woman! He fell in love with another woman! He fell in love with Anna.

I grabbed my glass of warm champagne with my shaking hand and felt a terrible sense of vertigo. I tried to take a sip. Then I put the glass back on the table, almost spilling it. I felt a cold shiver through my spine, in spite of the Milanese heat.

“Are you ok?” He asked, looking at me, perplexed.

It was at that moment that this strong woman stopped worrying about perfect make-up, white pants, her hair, or what people think, and began to sob just like a little girl.

“Coco, my god, what's happening?”

“What's happening?” I tried to mumble through my tears and sobs. “Really? You are telling me you didn't get it?”

I looked at him. Was it possible that my ideal man was in reality an idiot and now he was here killing me with words! Was it possible that for this whole year he didn't realize what he meant to me?

“I didn't want to hurt you. I know how much you care about me, but things happen. Love comes and we can't choose when and whom to fall in love with. Do you understand?”

It was official. He was an idiot.

“How can you expect me to understand? What about me? What about us?”

“Rebecca, sex between us was fantastic and we were perfectly in tune, but you are a free spirit. You are fun loving, independent and strong. You like living on your own. You'll always be number one, even without the romance. I had a great time with you, but then I fell in love with someone else. I couldn't help it. That's all.”

At that precise moment I realized I didn't understand anything! While I loved him from the first moment we met, he was just looking for company and waiting for the woman of his life. While I spent months thinking we were building something important together, he used me as a protection against loneliness, waiting for true love. I really didn't understand anything. Maybe I was the real idiot, not him.

Niccolò, unable to stop my river of tears, said the most stupid thing a man can say after having broken a woman's heart into pieces. “Don't worry. I don't want to lose you. We'll remain good friends. You are important to me.”

I turned slowly towards him. I looked horrible with mascara running down my face. I stared at him for a long time, trying to stop sobbing. In a weak voice I finally admitted: “I love you.”

Niccolò backed away, suddenly stony faced. He looked at me and shook his head.

“No. It's not possible! You're wrong.”

“Wrong? I loved you from the first moment I saw you. I loved you for this whole fucking year!”

“No… no. You're upset now because you're losing me as lover… You don't love me, you're confused. You would have told me. You always affirmed to be independent. You told me you didn't need protection and sweet talk.”

“Yes, I told you that because I didn't want to pressure you, scare you, rush you. You seemed independent too, and I didn't want to force myself on you. I simply wanted you to come naturally to the realization that you loved me.”

“But this is crazy! It's silly…”

I burst into tears again. He wasn't only breaking my heart; he was telling me that I was stupid.”

“But I… I… ” Exhausted, I began to stammer.

“Rebecca, why didn't you tell me about your feelings? I don't think it would have eventually changed anything. I believe that ‘spark' in order to fall in love was missing in our relationship. But if I had known you loved me, I would have acted differently. If I had known I was more than a special friend, a
confidante
for you, I would have broken off our relationship long before today. Anna has nothing to do with our friendship. Please, try to understand me. I didn't
decide
to fall in love with her. It just happened. If it happened to you, I would have accepted it. Love doesn't allow alternatives. I hope one day you will be my friend again. I hope one day soon we can be friends again – we make such a
great team
.”

A
great team
. Now I began to understand the meaning of a great team for him. You were a great team when you went to bed with a man without feeling anything, without involvement, without making things complicated. When you allowed the man who stole your heart to fall in love with a friend you barely remembered. A skinny friend at that!

I stood up, barefoot, grabbing my sandals in my hand. I couldn't wear those torture tools for another minute! I looked at Niccolò with an empty and desperate gaze.

“Where are you going?” he whispered, with the same warm voice I loved so much.

“You broke my heart, Niccolò.”

“I didn't want to. You know it. But don't exaggerate now.” Yes, he was an idiot. A cruel idiot. “In a few days it will pass, Rebecca, and you'll understand that you never really loved me. We had fun – that's all. You will come back to me and we'll be wonderful friends again.”

“Goodbye, Niccolò.”

I stared at him as if it were the first time I saw him. I didn't recognize the man whom I had adored until an hour ago. I turned and started walking. Niccolò didn't move, but kept calling in a loud voice, “Rebecca, where are you going? Come back here.”

I didn't know what to do, where to go. Considering that the street asphalt was scorching and I was bare foot. I couldn't go far. I just turned the corner and sat on the kerb, careless of my white pants. I took off my hat, crushing it in my hands. I hoped he would re-think all of this. I hoped he would realize it was impossible to live without me and he would run to me to hug me tight and keep me with him forever.

He didn't come. He didn't run after me.

After half an hour that seemed like an eternity, I stood up with great effort and slowly began to limp toward the subway station. Young people outside bars, with aperitif glasses in hand, stared at me as if I were a ghost. I went down into the subway to wait for the train. Then I got on in my filthy dirty pants and collapsed into a grungy seat.

The few passengers in the empty smelly car, who stared at me with tears running down my face, couldn't imagine they were looking at the unhappiest woman in the world.

I had been living in Milan for a week. A week that seemed like a whole year.

I didn't hear from Niccolò. In some moments of weakness, I thought of calling him or sending him an e-mail, but I didn't do it. I was too wounded and fragile to risk another humiliation.

Immediately after our last surreal conversation, I returned to Venice. There I was on the train, leaning against the window, tears streaming down my face – tears that not even the icy air conditioning could dry.

I reached home on foot, completely oblivious of what was going on around me. I barely knew where I was and didn't know what was happening to me. I couldn't stop shamelessly sobbing. I didn't care about people staring as I walked along the canals. The wet mascara had turned my face into a bizarre carnival mask.

When I got to my house, I climbed the stairs slowly and at my apartment door I let myself slide down onto the floor. I couldn't stop crying. I never thought I could produce so many tears. You would think that by now my tears would have drained every ounce of water from my poor tired body. Maybe it's because I religiously consume two litres of water every day as an alleged guard against cellulite.

My apartment was silent and messy. I was renting a small place on the Cannareggio neighbourhood, since my ex-fiancé and I had put the place we bought together up for sale. At the moment the apartment seemed the perfect hide-out. An empty space where there were no memories of men who had wounded me.

I undressed, removed my make-up and slipped into bed. I spent two entire days in bed, getting out only to go to the bathroom or to eat some butter cookies that I kept hidden in my kitchen. I always hid sweets, so I wasn't tempted. But it was an emergency now. A tornado had wrecked my insides. I had to cure my broken heart. My self-esteem was completely destroyed. I needed sweets!

When our hearts are shattered, we lose any sense of time. It doesn't matter what time it is or what day of the week. The only thing we care about is what we're feeling inside. Small splinters seem to pierce the heart. There is an acute feeling of loss, of absence – a longing for the return of love, of something whole – but it rarely happens. We feel our throats closing, we are sleepless, unable to breathe.

Time has stopped and we keep going back to the past to analyze what happened. We search for answers in small details. We try to understand if things could have gone another way, if we had acted differently. If we had said something different. When we suffer for love, we are like animals in a cage, animals that have known freedom and lost it. We feel empty, hopeless. All that appeared important now seems lost.

Love is wonderful when overwhelms us. It empowers us – we feel cheerful, attractive, carefree, happy – in one word it makes us feel immortal. Yet when it ends, we are left alone to endure the pain of still loving that person who maybe never loved us. It's like a sudden and violent death. The euphoric mood becomes desperation. The enchantment becomes a nightmare.

I checked my telephone continuously hoping for a message. Maybe Niccolò had changed his mind, telling me he regretted his decision, that he realized I was the woman to love, not a skinny Anna with a pretty face. But nothing. Total silence.

At one point I started to fantasize that a meteorite would crash into his beautiful Milanese house, destroying all of his sophisticated designer furniture!

On the third day, when I began to recover a bit of my strength, I got out of bed and found the courage to look at myself in the mirror. I looked terrible. I got into the shower. I stayed under the steaming water for a long time, hoping it would wash away all my sadness, my unhappy thoughts, my disappointment and deep pain. When I got out of the shower I glanced at the scales near the sink: my scales, always my great enemy! I decided to hurt myself even more with an act of masochism. I stepped up onto them, as if I were someone on death row… but surprise! I had lost two pounds. I couldn't help but smile. Finally, good news. Two days of tears and fasting – except for a few tiny butter cookies – had been enough to lose two pounds. That was an aspect of suffering for love that I hadn't considered.

I looked at myself in the mirror again. I had dark circles and bags under my eyes and my skin was ashen grey. My gaze looked dead. It wouldn't be easy to forget and start over, but I could do it. I had pretended to be a strong woman for so long, now I had to be it for real.

I ran to the bedroom in my bathrobe and looked at the empty boxes for the move, piled up in a corner. I began to fill them furiously, without any plan, cramming in everything within reach.

I had decided to move to the big city for a man. Now that this man no longer existed (perhaps killed by a meteorite in his elegant apartment!), it was time to think of myself. I would move to Milan to begin a new life, by myself.

Two days later all my stuff was loaded into a van to transport everything to my new home.

Although my stomach was still in knots and I had lost my appetite, at least I had stopped checking my telephone every two minutes in the hope that he would come back – just like the perfect endings that happen only in the movies.

I kept telling myself that I could make it. So I arrived in Milan.

“You must go on with your life, Coco. You must get out and meet people.” Emma repeated, hoping I would move past my ‘post-broken-heart' depression.

The first week in Milan I had millions of things to do, including some bureaucracy stuff. Then I emptied my boxes, filled bookshelves, cleaned the apartment and made many trips to the supermarket to buy dish soap, laundry soap, sponges, etc. I also had to run to
Ikea
to get some essential décor items I couldn't live without: vanilla candles, a small PC desk, a painting of a cow, and some wine glasses. I spent all my evenings with Emma, sitting on my new couch and whining late into the night.

I still had some vacation days before starting my job at the new agency and I spent that time working at my apartment to make it a cozy safe haven. Above the bathroom shelf where I kept my box of pearl necklaces, I hung up copies of vintage Coco Chanel photographs. Once in a while I looked at those pictures, hoping she could give me some answers. But Chanel remained silent, staring at me in her wonderful and inseparable small black hat.

The biggest task had been to make a huge pile of all my shoes in their boxes. They took up half of my bedroom; they were like a great wall protecting me from the dangers of the world.

I kept myself busy trying not to think about him. I didn't want to go out in the evenings because I was afraid to see him together with the woman he had chosen to love.

“Don't be silly Coco,” Emma told me one day. “This city is huge. You live in different neighbourhoods. You don't even hang out with same crowd – except for the few friends in common – and we've made them swear never mention his name!”

“And if by coincidence he should decide to take a walk near my house?”

“So will you die locked in this apartment just so as not to run into him?”

“That's an idea!”

“You can't keep living this way.”

“I'm afraid I'll see him around every corner,” I admitted. “I can imagine seeing him in the subway and in every café where I order a cappuccino. It's like walking in a minefield.”