Bruno Bucciarati recalls a conversation he had with his father when he was around ten.

Paolo Bucciarati looked out at the sea with his weather-worn chin propped up upon his fist, thinking. His mug of oatmeal sat half-eaten, cold after being ignored for the better part of a morning.

"Papa, do you want me to heat that up?" Bruno asked, walking up to the stove in anticipation. Reheated oatmeal was better than nothing, although he wished his father had eaten it the first time. Bruno, ever alert and bushy-tailed in the wee hours of dawn, usually made breakfast for them both. It took him less time to get ready, sure, but it also just felt like the right thing to do.

His father shook his head absently, unable to look away from the windowsill. It was as though the salty sea had possessed him, presenting him with a mirage of something different. Something that could've been, should've been.

The last time Bruno had seen his mother was at Christmas. Despite stepping out of a taxi two hours later than what was planned, she was undeterred, waltzing around the quaint little home as she got all of the formalities out of the way. How are you? You've gotten so big! Have you been working hard at school? Gianni Rodari has an excellent English program for a bright boy like you. Just saying! Then she'd laugh for a moment too long when Bruno would remind her that he wanted to stay in Naples, and then wander into the kitchen to fix a meal of pasta none of them asked for. All the while, she expounded about the stylish, larger-than-life world of Milan, steam from the boiling water filling the tiny kitchen and spilling into the dining nook.

Paolo didn't seem to mind it. He sat mostly silent during the visit. His son couldn't help but worry the entire time. It was only when she seemed to run out of things to tell Bruno did she ask him anything at all. How's the fishing? Have your tours gone well? I hear bad things happen on those islands at night. He'd answer with a nod and a "Well, you know how it is." To her, his responses were vague acknowledgements that she had asked him a question at all. To Bruno, his responses were all one person could muster up amidst a sea of greying misfortune. A working class man like him couldn't even begin to describe all of the nuanced ways life throttled him every day. And so, all he could do is hum out a neutral few words.

It could be worse.

Wrapped in glistening tinsel, Bruno's mother had brought him a brand new stationery set; notebooks of fine paper bound in crisp leather, a gilded dip pen, and a glass pot of India ink. Good penmanship is a dying art, you know! She said with a smile creasing the ends of her eyes a little too much. Her insistence on Bruno's education had gotten more and more tactless as the visit went on. She only brought his father a fine bottle of white wine. The kind that must be commonplace in Milan, but was a luxury in this borough of Naples. It was so fine that, to a man with simple tastes like Paolo, both he and Bruno knew it would never be opened, never be squandered. Instead, it would sit on the mantelpiece collecting dust, indefinitely.

Her visit lasted approximately two hours, before she checked her watch and hurriedly gathered her things once again. He remembers the mournful way she hugged him, rubbing his back as though to imprint his small form within her psyche, when she'd hug Paolo for a fraction of the time.

And just as soon as she had arrived, she left, a whirlwind upon their little lives.

That's where they stood for the last few months, as winter turned into spring of 1991. Her failure to even send a card at Easter seemed to be getting under his father’s skin more than he first thought. For all of little Bruno's emotional acuity, the specifics of what ate at his father could be enigmatic to him.

"I got you some blueberries at the market, Papa. Don't you want some blueberries on your oatmeal?" He asked, pouring the now reheated porridge into his father's mug once again.

"Mm. Maybe. I don't like to eat them if you don't have any." His father's response was even more timid than usual, taking his spoon and pushing around at the top of the meal. Bruno frowned deeply at that sentiment.

"What about when I'm at school? If you don't eat them, they'll go bad. And you love blueberries..."

Paolo shrugged, averting his tired eyes before he started to speak. "I don't enjoy much when you're not around, Bruno."

Bruno felt a pit plunge deep into the recesses of his stomach at his father's words. "Wh... What?" He stammered, leaning imperceptibly forward for a response.

But, his father just shrugged again, and looked out to the sea as he had before. "Your mother and you were all I've ever had. She had to leave, and we both knew it. So all I have to look forward to now, is spending time with you."

He looked back at his son, that deep-set sadness weighing his tanned skin down to the very pore.

Rarely was his father so direct about his emotions. Emotions that Bruno knew his father was too frail to take care of on his own.

And yet...

Bruno had thought he'd been pulling both of their weight well enough. He worked hard at school, and worked hard on the fishing tours. He'd work his little hands down to scraped up blisters and go to bed with a back aching like an old man's, and still know it was no burden compared to the one that was set in Paolo's heart.

He knew all of this. The frustration he felt was, then, not in what he already knew. It was in learning that despite all of his work, he couldn't stitch together an independent, thriving existence for his father.

"You're a kind boy, Bruno. You need to be able to go off and do big things. You don't worry about me here when you go. I'll figure it out."

If Bruno was an angrier, snarkier child, he would have laughed at the irony of his fathers words putting a bandage over a bullet hole. But he wasn't. He barely felt like a child.

"...Okay. If you need me, Papa, please tell me." His voice was raspy, on the cusp of crying. Paolo smiled faintly, and Bruno dismissed himself at that meaningless expression.

He'd been keeping the stationery set on his desk, only having used the pen once or twice to try and squiggle down some seagulls from his own bedroom window. What a fool he had been to try and escape, even in that private, inaudible realm.

He threw the entirety of his mother's gift into the big, splinter-encrusted chest at the end of his bed, put on his jacket, and headed out to untangle the nets for the next fishing trip.

That day, Bruno threw away the last vestiges of his own hopes for the future, and doubled down for his father’s sake. It was silly and immature of him to think any differently.

A boy his age should know better.