In due course Simonetta gave birth to a girl and a week later Donatella gave birth to a boy. What more could any man ask? But the gods were not finished with Ivo. A short time later, Donatella informed Ivo that she was pregnant again, and the following week Simonetta also became pregnant. Nine months later, Donatella gave Ivo another son and Simonetta presented her husband with another daughter. Four months later, both women were pregnant again and this time they gave birth on the same day. Ivo frantically raced from the Salvator Mundi, where Simonetta was encouched, to the Clinica Santa Chiara where Ivo had taken Donatella. He sped from hospital to hospital, driving on the Raccordo Anulare, waving to the girls sitting in front of their little tents along the sides of the road, under pink umbrellas, waiting for customers. Ivo was driving too fast to see their faces, but he loved them all and wished them well.
Donatella gave birth to another boy and Simonetta to another girl.
Sometimes Ivo wished it had been the other way around. It was ironical that his wife had borne him daughters and his mistress had borne him sons, for he would have liked male heirs to carry on his name. Still, he was a contented man. He had three children with outdoor plumbing, and three children with indoor plumbing. He adored them and he was wonderful to them, remembering their birthdays, their saints’ days, and their names. The girls were called Isabella and Benedetta and Camilla. The boys were Francesco and Carlo and Luca.
As the children grew older, life began to get more complicated for Ivo. Including his wife, his mistress and his six children, Ivo had to cope with eight birthdays, eight saints’ days, and two of every holiday. He made sure that the children’s schools were well separated. The girls were sent to Saint Dominique, the French convent on the Via Cassia, and the boys to Massimo, the Jesuit school in EUR. Ivo met and charmed all their teachers, helped the children with their homework, played with them, fixed their broken toys. It taxed all of Ivo’s ingenuity to handle two families and keep them apart, but he managed. He was truly an exemplary father, husband and lover. On Christmas Day he stayed home with Simonetta, Isabella, Benedetta and Camilla. On Befana, the sixth of January, Ivo dressed up as the Befana, the witch, and handed out presents and carbone, the black rock candy prized by children, to Francesco, Carlo and Luca.
Ivo’s wife and his mistress were lovely, and his children were bright and beautiful, and he was proud of them all. Life was wonderful.
And then the gods shat in Ivo Palazzi’s face.
As in the case of most major disasters, this one struck without any warning.
Ivo had made love to Simonetta that morning before breakfast, and then had gone directly to his office, where he did a profitable morning’s work. At one o’clock he told his secretary—male, at Simonetta’s insistence—that he would be at a meeting the rest of the afternoon.
Smiling at the thought of the pleasures that lay ahead of him, Ivo circled the construction that blocked the street along the Lungo Tevere, where they had been building a subway for the past seventeen years, crossed the bridge to the Corso Francia, and thirty minutes later was driving into his garage at Via Montemignaio. The instant Ivo opened the door of the apartment, he knew something was terribly wrong. Francesco, Carlo and Luca were clustered around Donatella, sobbing, and as Ivo walked toward Donatella, she looked at him with an expression of such hatred on her face that for a moment Ivo thought he must have entered the wrong apartment.
“Stronzo!” she screamed at him.
Ivo looked around him, bewildered. “Carissima—children—what’s wrong? What have I done?”
Donatella rose to her feet “Here’s what you’ve done!” She threw a copy of the magazine Oggi in his face. “Look at it!”
Bewildered, Ivo reached down and picked up the magazine. Staring out from the cover was a photograph of himself, Simonetta and their three daughters. The caption read: “Padre di Famiglia.”
Dio! He had forgotten all about it Months before, the magazine had asked permission to do a story about him and he had foolishly agreed. But Ivo had never dreamed that it would be given this prominence. He looked over at his sobbing mistress and children, and said, “I can explain this…”