Unfairness
Olga believed that Gina was in love with Mario. She even started joking that Gina was his fiancé. However, she wasn’t pleased with the whole situation at all. It was really strange that her husband spent more time with the widow and her daughter than with his own wife and children. She even tried to keep her “at a distance” to prevent them from getting too close. The irony was that it was “little Carla” who she should have been worried about. Gina wasn’t in love with Mario, she just tried to help her teenage daughter to win Mario’s love. Carla proved to be a dangerous enemy. Mario “looked at her as one looks from a gray area at white wall struck by the sun.”
A strategy
Long “sleepless nights” helped Olga to devise “a strategy” to save her marriage from falling apart completely. It consisted of “comfortable scenes of domestic life, understanding tones, an ostentatious sympathy, and even some light remarks.” She didn’t want to quarrel. On the contrary, Olga wanted to show him that she would be happy to reunite. The irony was that it failed to work. Mario was just a coward who simply didn’t have either strengths or courage to tell the truth. The whole situation was rather ironic. If Olga knew the whole truth, she wouldn’t have tried so hard or wouldn’t even have bothered to repair their marriage.
Abandoned life
When Olga “woke up,” and her “new situation as an abandoned wife returned slowly to” her mind, she decided that she “couldn’t take it anymore.” She got up “in daze,” “put the kitchen in order,” “hurried to pick up children from school, and waited for him to come by out of love for children.” The irony is that the whole situation is rather unfair. Mario can just leave everything behind and move on with a new woman whilst his ex-wife has to learn to move on, has to find strengths to accept the rejection and stay strong for their children’s sake. No matter how terribly she feels, she has to get up. “The children, the dog, shopping, lunch and dinner, money,” are her responsibilities now.
