Teorema

Lucia, the mother: I realize now that I've never had any real interest in anything. I don't mean anything grand. Just the simple, everyday interest my husband takes in his work, or my son in his studies, or Odetta in family life. I've had nothing like that. I don't know how I lived with such emptiness, yet I did. If there was anything at all, some instinctive love of life, it has withering away - like a garden where no one ever goes. Actually, that void was filled with false and wretched values, an appalling jumble of misguided ideas. Now I see: You filled my life with a real and total interest. So by leaving, you're not destroying anything that was there before, except my chaste bourgeois reputation. Who cares about that?