The Truth About Death
Page 22
I had lots of friends, including hundreds of Facebook friends. After Howard broke our date for the prom, I unfriended him right away, and then I stopped logging on. I stopped tweeting too. I didn’t want to be smothered with sympathetic tweets, which started coming in right away, along with pictures of the prom. I went cold turkey. My eyes had been opened. I could see what a terrible school Carthage High was, and what a terrible place Carthage was. No one was interested in culture or art, the important things. I couldn’t wait to get out.
Severino:
Severino works for the parent company in Italy. Centro Guarnizione Italia S.p.A. “Guarnizione” means “gasket” in Italian, and it also means “garnish.” Like those little sprigs of parsley you sometimes find on your plate. “S.p.A” means “Sociatà per Azioni,” which means “Society for Actions,” whatever that means. It’s sort of like “Inc.” The company headquarters are in Sesto Fiorentino, which is close to Florence, but Severino lives in Florence. With his mother. It was his job to show my aunt around, and me too of course. To get her to meetings in Sesto, and to take us out to dinner in the evening.
There aren’t any men like Severino in Carthage. His looks. His clothes—and not those silly-looking Armani suits either. He was sooo at home everywhere. People stopped to talk to him on the street. He was friends with the waiters in all the restaurants. Wherever we ate, the chef came out to say hello and to bring us something special. He was full of masculine energy, but not cocky. Maybe even a little uncertain, like he was on a journey of self-discovery. Like me. And there was always the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. There was something spiritual about him too. He was named after a saint, San Severino, who was executed by having a wet leather band tied around his head. When it dried, it crushed his skull.
And he could talk about anything. He even made gaskets interesting. Gaskets for caskets, for example. Who cared? A lot of people. I thought that in Italy they dug up the bones after a few years and threw them in a big pile at the back of the cemetery, but Severino’s grandfather was buried in a special deluxe casket with a one-piece solid rubber gasket, and then a metal seal. The whole thing was soldered up tight and then put in a vault. And he could talk about all the works of art in Florence, like he studied art history all his life. Maybe he just grew up with it.
Describe the complication. The “complication” is whatever disturbs the status quo. It’s the problem or challenge that you need to resolve. Your description of the complication should help you figure out what is at stake. Try breaking it up into stages.
Stage 1: The Complication (First Night)
The complication is not hard to understand. I fell in love with Severino. I couldn’t get enough of him. I couldn’t think about anything else. I fell in love with him the very first night when he came to the hotel to take us out to dinner. At dinner I fingered the business card he’d given me and listened while he and Aunt Lydia talked about gaskets. They talked about gasket tools, gasket materials, full-face flange gaskets, ring-type flange gaskets, rubber gaskets, gasket-making tools, standard vs. custom gaskets, gasket cutting machinery, boiler gaskets, tapes and sealants, compression packing for gaskets, markets for gaskets, demand going up worldwide by 5.5 percent, demand increasing exponentially in India and China. It was interesting at first, but after a while I wanted Severino to talk to me. I didn’t know how to break into the conversation, except by asking questions about the menu, and that’s how I wound up ordering risotto with squid cooked in its own ink for my first course.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” Severino asked. “Squid in its own ink?”
“Of course,” I said as if I ate squid cooked in its own ink two or three times a week at home.
“That should take the taste of shame and humiliation out of your mouth,” Aunt Lydia said. I tried to stop her, but she went on to tell Severino about Howard Franklin and how he broke our date for the senior prom. She had to explain what a prom was.
We were drinking wine and eating bread that didn’t have any salt in it. It was the first time I’d ever drunk wine with dinner, and it was the first time I’d ever seen Aunt Lydia drink wine.
“Shame and humiliation,” Severino said, refilling my glass. “And what did you learn from this experience?”
“I learned that people will believe anything,” I said. “It doesn’t matter how ridiculous it is, somebody will believe it.” I was talking to make myself sound interesting. “Howard was a Christian Scientist,” I explained. “They believe that death and illness are illusions. And his father’s a funeral director! Mark Twain called Mary Baker Eddy the ‘queen of frauds and hypocrites.’ ”
Severino laughed. “Stella,” he said—and the sound of my name on his lips made my heart flutter—“there’s a Christian Science reading room in Via de’ Servi. Right downtown.”
“The funny thing,” I said, “is that I believed it myself for a while. I went to church with Howard a couple of times, and when I smashed my thumb in the door of his car, he took me to a Christian Science reader instead of a doctor.”
“And did it work?”
“My thumb got better, if that’s what you mean.”
“Like Christ healing the blind man at Siloam?”
“Exactly,” I said. The wine was making me bold. “It was exactly like that.” And I held out my thumb and stuck it in his face. He took it in his hand and examined it carefully. I thought I was going to have a heart attack.
“Perfect,” he said. “No sign of previous trauma.”
Stage 2: Mornings
Mornings, Aunt Lydia went to Sesto on the train with Severino. She didn’t get back till after six o’clock. I was on my own. Lost at first without my cell phone. Without my old Facebook friends. No one to talk to. But I bought a couple of sexy dresses at the San Lorenzo market. I didn’t bring any dresses because I didn’t think I’d need them. Just jeans and tops. It was the first time I’d actually spoken Italian. “Vorrei …” I said (“I would like …”), and pointed at a lime green dress hanging from an overhead rack. Piece of cake. You used the conditional just like in Spanish, more or less. I vorreied a black dress too, at the stall next to the one where I bought the green dress. I took the dresses back to the hotel, which was really lovely, by the way—air-conditioned—and modeled them in front of the big mirror in the bathroom.
Severino had given me a ticket for two o’clock at the Uffizi, so I wouldn’t have to stand in line. I stopped for pizza on the way. “Vorrei due,” I said—two slices, not two pizzas—and then farther down the street, I vorreied some ice cream.
I kept my map in my backpack, in case I got lost, but I didn’t really need it. I had a pretty good idea of how to get to the Uffizi, but I practiced asking directions anyway: “Dov’è l’Uffizi?”
Stage 3: Going to Museums
I liked going to the museums because I’m an artist, and I like art. I know that not everyone does. No one in Carthage does, except Mr. Bronson, the art teacher at the high school. And because I like being on my own. And besides, art gave me something to talk about in the evenings. Besides gaskets.
Severino knew all about gaskets, but he knew all about art too. It seemed like I hadn’t really seen anything till I’d talked to Severino at dinner and he’d started asking questions and I’d remember things like I was standing right in front of them—the haloes that look like deluxe Frisbees, the angels that go barefoot, the Virgin Mary who’s got her thumb stuck in the book she’s reading to keep her place while the Angel Gabriel’s telling her she’s preggers.
“Do you think a person can be changed by experiencing a great work of art?” I asked. I was conscious (as always) of trying to make myself interesting, but it was a real question too. I wanted to know.
I was wearing one of my new dresses, a sleeveless dress with little slits at the front and back to give it some toughness, and studded hardware for accents. Severino couldn’t not notice.
“Imported,” my aunt had said. “From China.” She’d loo
ked at the label while I was in the shower.
“Most people see what they want to see,” he said. “They can interpret anything so that it fits in with what they already believe.”
“But I’m not most people,” I said.
“Obviously,” he said. “Your job right now is to take chances, to open yourself to the possibility that you can be changed. It’s risky.”
“How about you?” I asked. “Have you ever been changed?”
“Go to the Bargello tomorrow,” he said. “Look at Donatello’s David and then tell me what you think.”
Eating in an Italian restaurant gave me a sense of well-being that I’d never felt at home. I think my aunt felt it too. There was nothing like it in Carthage. There were a couple of good restaurants in Carthage, but they were so dark you could hardly see your food. The restaurants in Florence were well lit. You started with bread and wine. Then maybe an antipasto, and then your primo, which was like a whole meal at home, and then you sit back and relax and the waiter comes and you order your secondo. No more squid in its own ink for me, but all sorts of wonderful things that I’m going to leave out, because I want to get to Donatello’s David.
There was a long line at the Bargello, but Severino had given me a ticket, so I didn’t have to wait too long. I went straight to the David on the second floor, and right away I could feel myself changing. David looked just like Severino, but a little younger, and I thought: this is what he’d wanted me to see. All my feelings for Severino boiled up inside me. This was beyond what I’d thought of as love. I knew that the David was the first freestanding life-sized nude bronze of the Renaissance, and I knew that there’d never been anything else quite like it. But even so it wasn’t what I had expected. I thought I’d been awakened sexually by Howard Franklin, but that was a snooze. Circling round the David I could feel my stomach churning. I was flooded with a desire to do all sorts of things that I’d heard about but had always found pretty disgusting. I wanted to take his penis into my mouth, his balls too. I opened my mouth as wide as I could to see if they’d fit. There was no barrier, no ropes like the ropes in movie theaters around the bronze statue. I had to restrain myself to keep from touching him, from licking him, from running my hands over his bare buttocks, from tearing his helmet off and putting it on my own head, from taking a shoe off and rolling Goliath’s head back and forth under my bare foot, from imagining that Goliath’s head was really my aunt Lydia’s head.
So this is what it’s all about, I thought. I’d always thought it was about something else.
That afternoon I wrote a letter to Severino on Hotel Mona Lisa stationery. His address was on the business card in my wallet. I told him in great detail everything that had happened and said that I’d like to talk to him about it privately. I figured that since he was an Italian, he’d be able to figure out what to do next. I wrote quickly, stuffed the letter in an envelope, and gave it to the woman at the front desk, who said she’d mail it immediately. Then I lay down in my bed and played with myself while I waited for my aunt to come back from Sesto. I’d always been able to talk to my aunt about anything, things that I couldn’t talk to my mother about. But Severino was my secret.
That night, over vin santo and biscotti di Prato, I gave Severino and my aunt an edited version of my impressions of David. But as usual, I soon felt that I hadn’t seen it at all. Where I’d seen a helmet, Severino saw a woman’s hat. Where I’d seen a hard-bodied young man, Severino saw a young woman’s prepubescent breasts. About the size of my own breasts, I realized when I looked at the statue in my imagination. On and on. The buttocks I’d wanted to lick were a young woman’s buttocks. A young woman only five feet tall. Shorter than me. And what about the penis and balls that I’d wanted to hold in my mouth? Where had all those fantasies come from? The statue had in fact been condemned by the Church, Severino said, and Donatello was lucky he hadn’t been burned at the stake. Donatello’s David wasn’t just a transvestite; it was a donnauomo or a femminauomo.
“How would you say that in English?” Severino asked, as he was paying the bill with his gasket-company credit card.
I didn’t have to think too hard. “How about a ‘sheman,’ ” I said, “or a ‘shemale’?”
“Bennissimo,” he said.
The event: Describe exactly what happened. What did you do? What did other characters do?
By the end of the week I was desperate. If Severino had received my letter, he gave no sign of it. I watched him like a hawk, waiting, trying to resign myself to an unspoken love that could only be expressed through meaningful glances, like the love between Rose and Jack in Titanic, but still competing with my aunt for Severino’s attention by interjecting Italian phrases into the conversation and by introducing my observations about the works of art that I’d seen. Anything but gaskets.
On Saturday night we ate again at the Osteria dei Pazzi. We shared a tris, which is three different kinds of pasta served family style, and then bistecca alla fiorentina. It was our last night in Florence, and I couldn’t bear to let go. On the way back to the hotel I said, “Let’s go up to Piazzale Michelangelo again.” I looked at Severino, and Severino looked at my aunt. We waited for a number thirteen bus at the stop by the post office. The first bus that came was a number twenty-three. “Let’s take the number twenty-three,” I said, “and ride all the way to the end of the line and then back. It will be an adventure.” I was imagining myself sitting next to Severino. (I wasn’t imagining Aunt Lydia at all.)
I got on the bus, punched my ticket in the ticket machine, and looked around for a good seat. The moment I sat down I realized that Aunt Lydia and Severino were not on the bus, which had already started to move. Out my window I caught a glimpse of Severino tying his shoe. Aunt Lydia was looking down at him, intently, as if she’d never seen anyone tie a shoe before.
This is sooo stupid, I thought.
I could have gotten off at the next stop, in front of the big Feltrinelli bookstore, but I was too annoyed. I could have gotten off at the station and found my way home easily. But by this time I was convinced that what had happened was not a stupid mistake; it was deliberate. I should have gotten off the bus and rushed back to the hotel, but something stopped me: what if they’d gone up to Piazzale Michelangelo without me?
Once we were past the station, I was in unfamiliar territory. I thought I recognized the street where the American Church was located, but I couldn’t be sure. After that, everything looked the same—the same shops over and over again, the same piazzas. The same but not the same. And then we were entering a different Florence. Definitely not the Florence you see pictured in the guidebooks. We stopped in piazzas and on poorly lit streets and then we plunged into the dark. No more piazzas. Just … factories? I couldn’t be sure. It was too dark to see. Housing developments? But why weren’t there any lights on? The driver kept making stops. People kept getting off. But no one was getting on. Finally I was the only one left on the bus.
I was angry now. At boiling point. How could they have done this to me? The bus was going faster and faster, not making any more stops. Even so, it was another fifteen minutes before we came to the end of the line. I was sitting by the back door, behind the ticket machine, waiting for the bus to start up again and head back into town. I think the driver didn’t see me at first. When he did, he came to the back of the bus and told me I had to get off, making his meaning clear with his hands.
I didn’t exactly panic, but I reverted to Spanish: “Quiero volver,” I said, showing him my ticket, which should have been good for an hour. And then in English: “I want to go back.”
“Non torna,” he said. “Capolinea. Finito. Basta.”
“Tengo que volver,” I said in Spanish. (“I have to turn back.”) But he shook his head. “Mi trovo in difficoltà,” I said. (“I find myself in difficulty.”) A useful phrase I’d learned from Severino. It was Italian, but I don’t know if the driver understood me or not. He just kept shaking his head and waving me off the bus.
I thought about it, and I thought about the letter and I thought about all the stupid things I’d said at dinner, trying to make myself interesting, as if I wasn’t interesting enough without jabbering on about Botticelli’s Primavera and Piero della Francesca’s Portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and about being changed by the Donatello David. I didn’t know what to make of it, didn’t know what to make of anything.
What to do? There was nothing there, just dark buildings and a row of parked cars. Somebody must live there, or be around somewhere. Whose cars were they? My fear was like the damp leather that they, whoever they were, had tied around the head of San Severino. The strap was starting to dry out and tighten.
I summoned up my anger to counteract my fear. I should have refused to get off the bus. I should have tried to explain to the driver. He could have called the hotel. Or a taxi.
I started to walk. I’d been walking for about ten minutes when I heard a car start up. Red taillights. Someone was backing out of a parking place. I ran toward the car and stood in the street in front of it, waving my arms. The car stopped. The driver rolled down his window.
“Mi trovo in difficoltà,” I said, and that was enough.
The driver was a young guy, about twenty-five. I didn’t notice his girlfriend till she opened her door and got into the backseat. I tried to protest, but she just laughed and motioned me into the front seat. Neither one of them spoke English, but that was all right. I didn’t really want to explain what I’d done.