Born Winners
by
Leonie Martin

 

Some of us are born winners.

My brother, Marco, won his first prize at an early age without even having to move a muscle. When our mother finally held her new-born son in her arms, she found herself gazing into the same familiar shade of olive-brown eyes as those she looked at each day across the meal table; those of her Italian husband. Except that these new eyes were framed with eyelashes so long, they seemed to wave at you each time the child blinked. Thick, dark, glossy hair sprang from his head, even as a new baby. Whenever our mother was out shopping in the village, a huddle of old dears would lean into his pram and chatter away, as if expecting him to sit up and start a conversation with them about the long, hot summer we were having that year, or the extortionate price of salami. On Sundays, after church, our father’s family would descend on our house in swarms and hold court around this tiny celebrity.

Marco’s birth had been an expensive mission, even for a family as wealthy as ours, but he would grow to be the stallion our father had dreamed of for so long, and would ensure a continuation of the Lombardi dynasty. One day, he would take over the successful building company that had sustained our family for three generations.

From the minute Marco could walk, our father would lead him outside and teach him to kick a ball. Beads of sweat would spring up, glistening on his brow as he heaved his own pasta-loving, middle-aged body around the garden, trying to keep up with the tiny dynamo that flashed around his ankles like a stray spark. He would often take Marco out on site visits with him; even got him his own customised, little hard-hat – bright red, to match his boots. The family photo album is full of shots of our father and Marco standing hand in hand, next to the husks of half-built, concrete monoliths and massive, looming tower-cranes. Though if you look carefully enough, you can see that even back then, the twinkle in Marco’s eyes shone just a little too brightly.

As Marco shed the warm folds of babyhood, his limbs grew long and fluid as a young colt. In addition to our father’s dark, Latin hues, he’d also inherited our English mother’s tall, slim build. One Saturday, she heard Marco’s light footfall on the upstairs landing; strains of classical music were drifting through the open door from his playroom. She climbed the stairs, quietly, so as not to disturb him. On reaching the top, her pale, manicured hand clutched the mahogany balustrade. There, lost in a world of his own, her ten year old son was sashaying, ballerina-like, up and down the deep red carpet, wearing a pair of her own pale pink satin slippers; the ones with the soft burst of white feathers on each toe.

She never told our father about this, or the many further occasions she witnessed Marco’s ‘other side’. The thought of her strong husband’s familiar rugged features crumbling before her was too much.

But as the boy matured, his true nature became impossible to hide. He turned from his father’s solid young son, into a painfully graceful young man who shared his mother’s love of beauty and elegance. Over the years, a slow, sinking realisation began to dawn on the ageing couple. Our father would drag himself into work, dark eyes gazing blankly at his company’s latest masterpiece of construction; at the hundreds of little windows glittering in mockery as the sunshine bounced off them. Marco would soon be twenty-five, but instead of creating an heir for the Lombardi dynasty, his time was now spent styling the hair of celebrities at the exclusive salon in Milan that he ran with his lover, Ricardo.

 

Today, it looks unbearably hot. I can see our father watching from a distance, as his labourers destroy what was left of an old farmhouse that had stood on the site of a planned new development. As the last few stones fall with a soft thud, clouds of dust rise up, filling the air around him, clinging to his damp skin. He sighs, a long, throaty sigh from deep within his soul. Maybe he’s thinking about that day twenty six years ago when they had to make the decision: to choose which embryo to implant into my mother’s ageing womb? Maybe he’s wondering what a daughter would have been like after all? I like to think he would have loved me; been proud of me - the female embryo that they chose to discard.

As I said at the beginning – some of us are born winners. But others, like me, never even get that far.

 

 

© Leonie Martin 2007

 

 

 

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