My Brother's Guest

By Jacqueline Pouliot

Valentina is the youngest daughter of a controlling Italian mother and father.Each summer, she is forced to join the dysfunctional family for their summer vacation on the island of Capri. This year is different. This year, her brother brings a guest! (Lesbian, romance, 29 pages)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326319977

Book preview

My Brother's Guest

My Brother’s Guest

Jacqueline Pouliot

EPUB Edition

Copyright © 2015 Lulu Press

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-326-31997-7

My family strictly observes the traditions Mama and Papa have diligently devised over the years. These small rituals are designed to paint a public picture of our family as reputable and caring, with the added bonus of respectful children. 

To ignore these traditions is to risk being ostracised or punished in some seemingly unrelated but ingeniously cruel way. The subtle punishments were never obvious to those outside the family, so the good name of Bertolucci was never called into question. The punishments, I felt, were cruel, as you didn’t know when or where they would be applied and they lingered long after the so-called crime had been committed.

When I was a sixteen, I inadvertently forgot Nonna’s birthday, and even though I remembered an hour later and rushed frantically through the crowded streets of Roma, I arrived late and the damage was done.

Mamma had fixed me with that steely gaze of hers as I stood flushed and panting at the door and my brother Renato had whispered gleefully, ‘You are in huge trouble, Valentina, Mamma and Papa are livid with you.’

I had apologised to Nonna, of course. She had smiled benignly, and I wondered if she knew just how cruel her daughter could be. Or, did Mamma learn her tortures from Nonna?

When I tried to explain to Mamma, she had cut me off and waved me away with a cold glare. Clearly, I would be penalised for my lateness. Nervously, I waited for my punishment, waited for the other shoe to fall.

It fell a few days later when I was shopping with girlfriends and, mysteriously, my credit card was rejected. My friends laughed as I stammered some vague excuse to the haughty shop assistant, but I was thoroughly humiliated.

When I complained to Mamma, she said airily that she would look into it if she could find the time. Apparently she was very busy, and it took her two weeks before she chose to reactivate my credit card. I never missed a family function again.

Roma closes for the hottest month of summer and most of the population evacuates, fleeing to the Mediterranean or north to the mountains. Our family never went to the mountains, of course. How could Luchino Bertolucci and family hold court on some obscure mountaintop?

Instead, Papa and Mamma would shepherd us to a villa on Capri where we would laze away four weeks every year in the hot sun, pretending to be a happy family while entertaining the family’s business friends.

Even now, when my brother, my sister, Silvana, and I no longer live at home, we were still expected to