We Are Family

by Fabio Bartolomei

  “Well, Papà? What do you say?”

  “Al, I’m dead on my feet, it took me an hour to find it . . . ”

  He gets out of the car and slams the door.

  “It’s no good, it’s not even a house,” he tells me.

  “Why not? It’s got everything, four walls, windows, doors . . . ”

  “Yes, it’s even got too many doors . . . Al, I thank you for what you tried to do, but now let us handle the search for a new home, that’s the right way to do it.”

  “What did I do wrong?”

  “These are things for grown-ups, Al. The structure itself is very spacious, the place is out of the way but quite charming, the price would be perfect, but to choose a house you have to take too many things into consideration, you can’t know them all.”

  “Can’t we talk about it?”

  “No, Al, we can’t.”

  I take note of the fact that helping grown-ups really isn’t easy.

  “Why can’t we?”

  “Because we can’t.”

  And that saving the world is going to be a long and arduous undertaking.

  “Papà?”

  “Yes, A-a-al?”

  “Just don’t complain about the fact that I have an imaginary friend.”

  28.

  Given her natural talent with household pets, Vittoria decided to show up at home one day with a stray kitten. The kitten, which must have sensed the danger in the air, decided to skip the suffering entirely.

  “It was meowing when I picked it up!”

  “Vittoria, it must have been very sick, maybe its mother abandoned it and it froze to death. You see that it’s not breathing?” Mamma says to her.

  “But what if it recovers?”

  “Put it out on this woolen rag, that’ll keep it warm. If it doesn’t recover in an hour, that means it’s dead and we’ll take it out into the field and bury it. All right?”

  We put the cat in a sheltered corner of the balcony, nicely wrapped up in the woolen rag.

  “I swear that it was meowing when I picked it up,” Vittoria says again.

  “Do you think it’ll recover? It looks pretty beat up to me. Just look how skinny it is, all those scabs on its eyes . . . ”

  I read in a magazine that a dead kitten was brought back to life by keeping it in a lit oven, like an incubator. Vittoria wants to give it a try. I raise the objection that it strikes me as dangerous. She says that there’s no danger because we’ll keep the oven at a low heat, very very low, barely warm. I’m so curious to try that I drop my objections, but I make a resolution to watch her step by step to make sure she doesn’t pull one of her boneheaded moves. We wait for Mamma to lie down for a nap and when the coast is clear we shut ourselves up in the kitchen.

  “How high should I set the temperature?” Vittoria asks me.

  “I’d say between 85 degrees and 105 . . . closer to 85.”

  She opens the oven door to slide the kitten in. I stop her.

  “Hold on, first let’s check to make sure the temperature is right.”

  We stick a hand into the oven, the heat is faint and pleasant. The thermostat in Mamma’s new electric oven works very well. We wait a little long to make sure that the temperature has stabilized, then we slip the cat into the oven. We shut the door.

  “Just to be safe, let’s leave it open a crack to let in air,” Vittoria suggests.

  “Good idea.”

  “Now let’s go into our room to pray to the Madonna, and we’ll come back in ten minutes.”

  I check the time on my watch, I stick my hand in to feel the temperature one last time, and then I leave the kitchen.

  “What do you say, should I turn on the light in the oven? If it wakes up and sees everything’s all dark, it might get scared . . . ” Vittoria says.

  “Go on, turn on the light and let’s go to our room before Mamma wakes up.”

  Vittoria goes back, pushes the button that turns on the light, and together we go to pray in front of the little painting of the Madonna.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee . . . Do you think that the Madonna will have time to look after kittens?” she asks me.

  “ . . . blessed art thou amongst women . . . If Superman can find the time, then the Madonna can find it, too, no?”

  “ . . . and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus . . . Superman doesn’t exist.”

  “ . . . Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners . . . Then I’d say it looks bad.”

  “Now and at the hour of our death” is a premonition that remains graven in our hearts, petrified by Mamma’s scream. I’ve never heard one like it. Not even that time that I set Grandma’s fox fur stole on fire.

  At dinner, Mamma remains shut up in her room. Every now and then we hear the frightful sound of retching. Papà would like to encourage Vittoria but he can’t find the words. He keeps slapping his thighs and biting off his sentences: “Sure, but . . . ,” “Well, if you ask me . . . ,” “Still, what I can’t understand is how . . . ” Vittoria sits there pouting. She’s a faint shadow of her former self, I can pilfer her fried potatoes without having to resort to the stratagem of the dropped napkin or the cockroach on the carpet. But it’s no fun this way, so I try to explain to Papà that I was an eyewitness and can testify to the fact that Vittoria did everything by the book, scrupulously and with great care.

  “I blame the engineer who designed that oven, only an idiot could have put the button for the light right next to the button for the broiler!” I say.

  In the other room, Mamma vomits.

  29.

  “Did you see what happened to Mario Elvis?”

  “No, Casimiro, what?”

  “How can you ask, he was right there on the floor, I didn’t think he was capable of falling. He was passed out, his eyes were all white . . . ”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Of course it is, he was there right in front of us, you can’t have missed it.”

  “Never seen Mario Elvis fall down in my life. As far as I can remember, he’s always been up on his feet, good and sound, solid as a rock.”

  “But I tell you he was flat on his back.”

  “That would be completely inexplicable, like some bad dream.”

  “I didn’t dream it.”

  “Then how do you explain?”

  “I have no explanation.”

  “It was just a bad dream, Casimiro . . . don’t give it another thought.”

  For no good reason that I can see, Papà has spent four days in bed. The doctor said that it’s just exhaustion, his body must have rebelled against too heavy a schedule and maybe one worry too many. I know that because I eavesdropped on the conversation through the kitchen wall. I pressed my ear against the bottom of a glass, the way Grandma Concetta used to do when the neighbors were fighting. These are things we do in pursuit of the truth, she would say, because afterwards everyone in the apartment house gossips and there’s no telling who’s wrong and who’s right. Mamma’s version of the doctor’s diagnosis is interesting. She told us that Papà’s only problem is that he’s behind on sleep, which means that if you don’t sleep eight hours every night, your body keeps track of the shortfall and sooner or later presents you with the bill. It might say nothing for a whole year and then, without warning, demand all its back pay, and you can’t ask it for more time, you’re obliged to stay in bed until you’ve paid back every last second of sleep. In other words, Papà has been burning the candle at both ends, his body noticed, and he was forced to sleep for ninety-six hours in a row. This morning he got up early and drove away in the car. Mamma started ironing, when we asked her where Papà was, she said that she didn’t know, maybe he’d just gone out for a drive. As she irons the towels, which she usually just folds and puts away nice and stiff the minute she takes them off the drying r
ack, and also the shirts that she’s already ironed once, she hums under her breath the tune of “Sugar Baby Love,” the beginning of the song, which you don’t need to know English to sing, because all it says is wat-choowarree. After twenty minutes of it, Mamma’s humming isn’t funny anymore, and after two hours it’s like being in a horror movie, the kind with the possessed girl and the evil spirit that sort of sings something to lure her into its trap. Vittoria is exhausted and tries to interrupt the hellish refrain.

  “Sugar baaaby lo-o-ove! . . . ” she suggests loudly.

  “Wat-choowarree, wat-choowarree-warree!” the possessed woman continues.

  I gather my courage and I take her Big Jim’s luau shirt. When I get there she’s ironing the hem of her skirt and she doesn’t even give me a chance to speak. She just takes the micro-shirt and starts removing the creases with tiny little delicate taps with the tip of the iron. Then the phone rings and she goes running into the living room, leaving the hot iron on the shirt, which slowly melts and adheres to the face of the iron.

  “Mario, well? . . . Really? . . . Oh my God, that big? Are you sure we can afford it?”

  Once we figure out the subject of the phone call, Vittoria and I press in close around Mamma. After all these years, we play the sardine game again.

  “And where is it? . . . Where? . . . Certainly, it’s a little out of the way, but a thousand square feet . . . How on earth did you manage to find it? . . . Al? He found it?”

  So I was right after all, that really was the promised home, and I’m the one who found it! Mamma gives me a wink, I shut both my eyes because I don’t know how to do just one.

  “What’s Papà saying? Huh, Mamma, what’s he saying?” I ask.

  “He’s saying that when you’re not attempting suicide by fire or stealing cars, you really can make yourself quite useful.”

  I get the impression that Mamma feels like running, maybe even shouting. We go into the kitchen to make a pizza and throw a nice celebratory dinner. We stick our hands into the flour, we start kneading the dough while Mamma slowly adds the water. No one has anything to say about my black fingernails, we forget the salt, we’re out of olive oil, but none of it matters because the fingernails, the salt, and the olive oil are all things that are here, and in our minds we’re already in the promised home, intently gazing at that thousand square feet and imagining the same things, the round table here, the corner sofa there, the tub for cannonball dives over there.

  30.

  Al, the chosen one, has succeeded in turning time back to when the Santamaria family used to pack into the car together and sing happily at the top of their lungs.

  “You see these apartment houses? Noisy neighbors, endless condo meetings, forget about all that!” Papà declares.

  “Shall we forget about all that?” Mamma asks, seeking confirmation.

  “Music playing full blast? We’re free to do as we please. Dancing at three in the morning? Yes we can.”

  “Playing soccer indoors?” I ask.

  “No, no we can’t. Everything else, though, yes.”

  “So it’s not this fine apartment building here, either . . . ” Mamma asks.

  “A rat warren, an architectural monstrosity from the 1960s. We’re almost there, now shut your eyes, shut them!” Papà shouts.

  “Eyes shut!”

  “Okay, now. Before you open them again, try to imagine what it will be like once we’ve done all the work. Understood? Don’t let yourself be influenced by what’s in there now, just evaluate the structure and the thousands of opportunities that it offers us . . . There, open your eyes!”

  “Where’s the house?” asks Vittoria.

  Soon we’ll have our promised home. Right now it’s occupied by a tire repair shop, but Mario Elvis has already drawn up plans. Mamma and Vittoria have the wrong looks on their faces because they can’t imagine it finished, without the stacks of tires and all the rest.

  “It’s not even a house,” Vittoria tells me, “I won’t be able to invite anyone over . . . Oh God, I’m so ashamed.”

  “There’s even a view of the countryside,” I tell her.

  “What countryside are you talking about, it looks like a dump.”

  Mamma and Papà hold each other close and stroll toward the house. It’s a very simple structure, long and low, a cement parallelepiped with two large metal roller shutters in the front and long, narrow windows in the back. It’s going to be the largest home we’ve ever owned.

  “Just try to imagine, Agnese . . . Instead of that roller shutter, we’ll put in a great big window. It’ll be enormous and it’ll fill the place with light.”

  From inside the house comes the hiss of an air compressor and a belch. Mamma pays no attention, she looks at Papà’s hand that trembles as he points to the roller shutter, it trembles in a frightening way. His voice trembles too as he says that we’ll have to keep the other one, that for a while we’ll just have to get used to having it as the front door of our home. I’ve never seen him tremble like that, he must be incredibly cold.

  “There’s no shame in having a roller shutter for a front door. We’ll paint it white and it will be lovely,” says Mamma.

  “Over there will be Vittoria’s room,” says Papà.

  “Where, Papà? Where?” she asks, all excited.

  It didn’t take much to purchase Vittoria’s consent. But Mamma’s isn’t going to come so easy. Right now she’s not saying a thing, she clutches Papà close and nods at everything he says, including the plan to build a second floor in the future. I think that when Mamma was small, she too spent years at a time drawing cozy little houses. That’s why she’s having such a hard time now recognizing this as our promised home. It doesn’t have the red pitched roof, it’s not square, it doesn’t even have the two little windows and the door at the center; still, though, this is it. The Santamaria family’s promised home.

  Are you able to hear me-e-e? This is the prodigious brain of Al Santamaria establishing direct contact with yours, the brain of an elderly and baffled pastry chef. Do not put up resista-a-ance . . . the cells of which I am composed are unrivaled in nature . . . surrende-e-er . . . the place you saw today is the pro-o-omised ho-o-ome . . . register this information: it–is–the–pro-o-omised–ho-o-ome! Do not put up resistance, all your negative sensations will vanish when I count three-ee-ee: one . . . two . . . oh wait, one last thing: the next time you go out to buy chocolate wafers, buy the big pa-a-a-ckage. Now register the information and re-e-est . . . one . . . two . . . three-ee-ee.

  PART TWO

  31.

  The year 1981 began as a year of records. Ronald Reagan is the first actor to become president of the United States, Tiina Lehtola the first woman ski jumper to surpass 100 meters, and in Italy it was finally possible to overturn a royal decree allowing citizens to go around armed with sabers. I’m fourteen years old, I’m taller than Mamma now, and most important of all, I’m in time to become the all-time youngest savior of the world, even though the preparatory phase of my project is taking its time, as does everything in the Santamaria family. Obtaining the promised home that, in Papà’s intentions, was going to be taken care of in just one year, actually took an extra six. After the pinwheel of Roman apartments and the eight months, tops, of exile in Torvaianica, which turned into twenty-six months, if not more, we went back to the Italian capital, and there we touched bottom: a cellar apartment, 320 square feet, so damp you could easily identify north by the moss on the walls. Aside from Raul, who came to see us in each of our new apartments, and Raimondo, who is willing to put up with as much as two hours on the bus for a guitar lesson, we’re always alone. Mamma and Papà have lost touch with even their last few friends and Vittoria, who’s by now legally an adult, only comes home to sleep. It’s the last effort, as Mario Elvis told us every day, and in the end he was right. With the money we’ve set aside by living in those hovels, we’ve got
enough money for a down payment, and we’ve bought the promised home with a twenty-year mortgage.

  Elvis Presley died on August 16th, four years ago. Papà dreamed that sooner or later he’d come to Italy to give a concert. Instead, the only live performance we’ll ever listen to will be by Papà, on the annual Elvis Day celebration held by the Santamaria family. Very likely there will be an Al Day too, eventually, as a worldwide secular festivity, but in the meantime I’m sowing my crop of relics: just last week I donated a photograph of my skull to science. Mamma and Papà were worried about something, I heard them whispering with the lady doctor about some strange things I’d supposedly said and some others that I’d supposedly done, and so I was forced to get another X-ray plus a triple ration of tests, the results of which they’re now anxiously awaiting. In my human flesh diary, I wrote, “If worrying is the work that parents do, when they retire, do they stop worrying?”

  For the first time, the Santamaria family is all together in the promised home. We can’t believe it’s true. We’re all sitting on the couch, exhausted from the move, truly dismayed at the sight of the mountain of cardboard boxes that we’re going to have to unpack sooner or later. We’re tired but soon we’ll celebrate the historic event with a big party. For the moment, the most we can manage to do is hold hands. Mamma holds mine, I hold Papà’s, and he holds nobody’s because for the past few years Vittoria has been sitting as if she were immune to the force of gravity. She’s lying on the floor with her feet propped up on the armrest and her ears anaesthetized by an Italian imitation of a Sony Walkman. Mario Elvis is the tiredest one of all, but he can’t seem to stop talking. He praises the fine workmanship of the floors, the excellent job that the mason did in transforming one of the doorways into a giant window, the remarkable skill of the cabinetmaker who put in the handsome walnut doorway, a door that, after we lower the metal shutter, we can consider burglarproof.