“Sounds pretty sophisticated. And I bet it was a real treat to stay in a fancy hotel. How was your room?”
“Absolutely stunning. Gregorio booked us a luxurious suite with a balcony overlooking the cove.”
“Sounds like a fairy tale honeymoon, honey,” her father said, grinding his cigarette butt in the ashtray.
“It was.” She wondered how Lily’s honeymoon in Toronto had gone; she had written to ask, but Lily had never replied to her letter, and it was no use asking her father. Everyone said there was lots to do in the city, like in New York. As far as Canada was concerned, Iris herself had never made it past Niagara Falls. “But that’s enough chit-chat, Dad. We’d better get going. Monte Carlo awaits us.”
“Mademoiselle!” The uniformed guard at the entrance to the Casinò de Monte-Carlo held up a hand to halt Iris. “Quel âge avez-vous?”
“I’m twenty-one. J’ai uh … j’ai vingt … vingt et un ans.”
“Passeport, s’il vous plaît!”
Men in uniform always made Iris nervous, and her unease was heightened by her language handicap. She wished she had enrolled in that language school in Genoa like she had planned on doing, until Gregorio suggested she wait, saying that she would certainly have other more important things to worry about soon. Hoping her high school French would see her through, she fumbled around in her purse and produced her United States passport. The guard flipped it open, looked at her again, nodded, and pointed his chin at her father.
“Et monsieur?”
“C’est mon père!” Iris said. She looked at her father, with his salt-and-pepper hair ruffled by the breeze of the Côte d’Azur, his olive skin infused with a bronze glow after a week of espresso sipping in Portofino and Santa Margherita, Rapallo and Camogli and any café in between that afforded a view of the sea and the passersby. Tufts of chest hair peeked over the emerald green polo shirt he wore under his all-occasion sport jacket. Iris imagined seeing him for the first time, and was shocked to realize that as long as her father was not forced to reveal the contents of his wallet, he could easily pass for an international playboy, or even a movie star.
The guard waved them in, and Iris took her father’s arm, giggling. “He didn’t believe you were my daddy – he thought you were my sugar daddy!” Her father roared with laughter as they entered the shiny marble foyer, paid their admission, and waltzed into the gaming room, arms linked. Neither of them had ever been to Las Vegas, or even Atlantic City. And here they were, frolicking around like the rich and famous, in Monte Carlo!
“It’s not exactly like poker night with the guys from Sacred Family,” her father said, transfixed by the piles of chips being swept away by the croupier at the roulette table. “How much do you figure that was, Iris?”
“Shhh,” she said, suppressing a giggle, as heads spun around, and eyes shot them dirty looks. “I don’t know,” she whispered behind her hand. “But it sure looked like a lot. Let’s lose these stiffs and see if we can find something more fun.”
An hour later they reemerged into the sunlight of a fine June day in Monaco, content to be relieved of the twenty thousand liras they had decided to blow on the slot machines. Freed of their burden, they strolled along the promenade to admire the yachts, and gape at the sparkling shop windows displaying precious watches and gems and gold, her father pointing and balking and speculating about prices that were too high for those who had to ask. Before Iris could stop him, he buzzed the bell of the Bulgari boutique, where he insisted Iris try on a diamond and emerald collier. After making her model the necklace, he told the proprietor he didn’t like it because it made his young girlfriend look too old. They were doubled over with laughter and still a few hundred yards from the station when Iris checked the Swiss watch Gregorio had given her for Christmas to replace her old Timex. She gasped when she realized their train was due to part in a just a matter of minutes, and announced that they had better make a dash for it.
“Jeepers Cripes!” her father said, as they settled in their seats. Struggling to catch his breath, he mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.
“Are you OK?” Iris asked. “I’m sorry I made you run!”
“Just a little winded,” her father said between coughs. “Damn cigarettes,” he muttered, reaching for the pack in his breast pocket. “Heck, that was fun!”
“Yes, it was. Thank you, Dad.”
“No, thank you.”
As the rapido sped east along the coast back to Genoa, Iris watched her father’s gaze focus and refocus, focus and refocus on the stunning views that flashed past them, and wondered what he was thinking. His eyes bulged slightly from their sockets; the skin on his throat was more slack than she remembered from her visit home the previous Christmas. She was concerned to see the veins in his neck pulsating from the exertion, yet was relieved that they did not throb with the fury that had been compressed in them for as long as Iris could remember. For the second time that day, she imagined she were seeing him for the first time, and was struck by her impressions. She saw a mature but still handsome man sitting across from her, a man whose animated expressions revealed a curious mind, a fun-loving nature, a boyish spirit, and an unaffected sort of sex appeal. Iris could easily see how her mother had fallen in love with him, a man so obviously her opposite, all those years ago. There must have been a great deal of passion fueling their relationship, until it had derailed and exploded.
She wondered when things had started to go wrong, after how many kids and why. Now that she herself was a married woman, she struggled to gain a clearer understanding of her parents’ mistakes, and a deeper compassion for their respective situations. She sometimes spoke to her father and Auntie Rosa on Sundays, when Gregorio offered her the possibility of phoning, but her efforts to keep in touch with her mother were erratic. Never having been in the habit of sharing confidences with her mother, Iris’s timid attempts at establishing a deeper dialogue from a safe distance were either too vague to elicit a response, or were simply ignored, as was the existence of their last painful conversation. As expected, Betty Capotosti’s sporadic replies were devoid of a mother’s sentimental drivel for a daughter living overseas, which might have encouraged Iris to open new channels of communication; but neither did they contain criticism of Iris’s choices, which may have closed them definitively. After dispensing a few words of generic affection, her mother always slipped into the more neutral territory of the legal reforms she was battling to achieve with her NOW sisters, often including newspaper clippings with highlighted paragraphs and notes in the margins. Iris read them with interest, discovering that her pride in her mother’s activities seemed to have grown in proportion with the distance that separated them.
Thank God she and Gregorio would never end up like her parents. For one thing, they certainly wouldn’t be having so many kids to contend with, maybe just two, or three at the most. Three would be perfect. But first they had to start with one. It was just taking a little longer than Iris had expected.
“You are quite the comedian, Carlo,” Isabella said, after he recounted the episode at Bulgari’s over dinner.
“Laughs aren’t so easy to come by these days,” he replied. “God has been good, giving me the opportunity to come over here, but He sure has been testing me.”
“Things have a way of resolving themselves with time, Carlo,” Isabella said. “Hopefully you can go back home rested and ready to start a new life.”
“There’s no new life for me, Isabella. Iris’s mother and I were married in the Church, and in the eyes of God, she will always will be my wife, even if she does have bats in her belfry.”
“I feel the same way, Carlo,” Isabella said. “No one could take the place of Gregorio’s father. No one.” She made the sign of the cross.
“But you were widowed, Mamma. It’s different,” Gregorio said. “And Babbo didn’t deserve you.”
“Gregorio, you know I will not tolerate such talk. He was a good father.”
“It’s easy to be a g
ood father when you are always on the road. All you have to do is remember to call every night and bring a present every time you come home.”
“May I remind you that your father’s job at the pharmaceutical company is what got you interested in medicine, Gregorio? Don’t you remember?”
“Yes, I remember well. Especially the skiing vacations in Cortina, where he invited all those doctors and their families on the company tab, but we got left behind.”
“That was his job, Gregorio. That was the way it was done. Did you feel you were missing out on anything, staying at home with your Mamma?”
“Could you please pass the champagne, Gregorio?” Iris said, wishing they would change the subject. She confessed to feeling a bit of a thrill when she walked into the wine shop in Monte Carlo and purchased a bottle of French champagne with the money Gregorio had given her. He never tired of reiterating his view that champagne was a waste of good grapes, so the investment had seemed oddly appropriate, especially since this was their last dinner with her father, and there was never anything to drink in Isabella’s house, a form of prohibition Gregorio had told her went back to the days when his father was still alive, and overindulged in more than one vice.
Gregorio handed her the sweaty bottle, and Iris cringed slightly as she refilled her father’s water glass with lukewarm liquid, thinking how absurd it was that the credenza of such a refined woman as Isabella did not contain an ice bucket or champagne glasses. Stealing a surreptitious glance at Gregorio, Iris filled her own glass, thanking the bubbles for the tiny explosions of joy they brought to both table and tongue. “Non esagerare,” Gregorio mouthed, taking the bottle from Iris’s hands. No, of course one mustn’t exaggerate, Iris thought, taking a long sip from her glass, savoring the way the bubbles tickled her nose and caressed her lips and teased her tongue, hundreds of tiny exclamation marks punctuating the pleasure of a perfect day, then vanishing.
The lanterna was clearly visible off to the west, the day her father left. She imagined him boarding his plane in Milan, as she stared off into the horizon, while rummaging through the balled-up tissues stuffed in the pockets of her denim skirt until she found one dry enough on which to blow her nose. Iris had wanted to drive her father to Malpensa, now that she had mastered her gear-shifting, but Gregorio said he didn’t think it wise for her to drive three hours each way on the highway, when the bus service from Genoa was perfectly convenient. Her father had agreed, but convenient didn’t stop her from crying all the way home after dropping him off.
Before her fantasies about moving to Italy had become a reality, she had naively imagined the cadenced stanzas of her life strung together by a series of poetic reunions and goodbyes. The poetry had quickly lost its hold on her emotions, though, leaving them swinging between bouts of longing and nostalgia. She had cried for days after Jasmine and Violet and Marguerite had departed, following their seven-day five-city tour to Italy shortly after she had moved over (knowing Lily had a wedding to save for, they hadn’t even told her about the trip so she wouldn’t feel left out). Now, each arrival or departure was a reminder of the passing time. She hadn’t factored that part into the equation, just like she hadn’t considered the fact that her father would one day grow old. Seeing him with fresh eyes had made her realize that he may soon need her even more than he had in the past. The Little Boys were teenagers now, and would soon be leaving home. Counting on Lily for help was out of the question, since she had crossed enemy lines to side with her mother. Iris had hoped to broach the subject of Lily with him, to encourage him to take the first step toward reconciliation now that she was married, but her fear of spoiling the unique opportunity to enjoy her father’s company, and see him enjoy himself, had made her postpone the conversation until it was too late. The older boys would certainly prove to be useless in time of need; of the older girls, only Jasmine seemed to have any patience at all with their father, but she was so taken with rescuing mistreated and abandoned animals and running her shelter, she had time for little else. Auntie Rosa was the one who had always been there for her father, whom she still referred to as her “poor baby brother.” She and Iris corresponded often, and she frequently mentioned meeting him after dinner at the local diner, where the coffee poured out by the waitresses was not nearly as bitter, nor the pots as bottomless, as the grief he poured out to her. As for Uncle Alfred, he continued to prefer guitars to people, and would doubtless age in oblivion, wrapped in a cocoon spun by millions of notes, protected from all things evil by a force field of melodious Hawaiian music.
But today was a day of celebration, so she had better recover from her negative spin and get herself in a festive mood. She had cleared her schedule of English lessons for the entire duration of her father’s stay, including today. She would have time to take a nice soak in the tub, give herself a pedicure and a manicure, then walk down to town and get her hair done. She had let it air dry that morning, which had left her with a head of unruly curls, already streaked with blond by her first swims in the sea. The summer they had married, exactly one year ago, Gregorio had said her uncombed hair made her look like a little orphan girl, which caused his heart to swell with tenderness. But with the approach of autumn, he had suggested a tamer look would be more suitable, and had come home one evening with a powerful blow-dryer and a set of styling brushes. The equipment tired her patience as much as her arms, and always left her with hair looking like a puffy helmet. She would let the hairdresser deal with it today. Gregorio had booked a table at their special occasion restaurant in Portofino to celebrate their anniversary; if straight hair was what he wanted, the least she could do was see to it that he got it, today of all days.
Although Iris couldn’t quite relate to the image reflected in the mirror as she dressed that evening, going to the hairdresser always “boosted up her morale,” to borrow one of Auntie Rosa’s favorite expressions. As she applied a touch of eye shadow and mascara, she envisioned her spirits being unchained from the sadness of the day, freed to be lifted by the prospect of spending a perfect summer evening dining al fresco. By the time a smiling waiter seated them at one of the best people-watching tables in the world-famous piazzetta, Iris was feeling ashamed for indulging in such self-pity; she was darn lucky to be here, and darn lucky her father had been able to visit. When the waiter returned with two welcome flutes of champagne, a little dish of caviar, and one of black olive paté, she felt the joy for her good fortune once again bubbling to the surface.
“I have something very special for you tonight, Iris,” Gregorio said. She recalled how shocked she had been, when he had surprised her on her twenty-first birthday with the eighteen-carat gold choker she wore this evening. It had taken her awhile to get used to the way it felt, so snug around her neck, but she had to admit, it did look stunning against her tanned skin, especially with the low-cut black dress she was wearing. She wondered what he had in store. It must be something that fit in his pocket, which was certainly a good sign.
“Can we have a toast first?” Iris said. She craved a sip of champagne, and wished to savor the anticipation for as long as possible.
“Certainly, Piccolina,” Gregorio said. “Alla nostra.” He raised his flute to hers.
“To us,” Iris said. She relished the sound of clinking crystal that announced the arrival of bubbly on her tongue. She smiled with pleasure at the taste, and giggled at Gregorio’s grimace when he took a perfunctory sip and set the glass back down on the table with a definitive thud.
She studied her husband from across the table, and liked what she saw. His blond hair, moustache and goatee were impeccably clipped, and the clarity of his pale blue eyes was accentuated by a face which was perennially bronze from his year-round scuba diving expeditions. She had often tried to persuade him to spend a little time on the beach with her after a dive, or to go for an occasional swim without his wetsuit in the summer so that the rest of his body would tan, but he was adamant about going straight home and rinsing his equipment with fresh water and hanging
it out to dry. Its non-Italian pallor was the only thing about Gregorio’s physique that did not appeal to Iris, but unless she saw him naked, she never even thought about it.
Gregorio reached into the pocket of his double-breasted blazer and extracted an envelope.
“This gift to you is long overdue, Iris.”
This was a real surprise, then. The possible presents she had been thinking of came in little velvet boxes, not in envelopes. She wondered what it could possibly contain. Could it be the title to a little used car of her own? Her heart raced at the thought of being able to take a drive down the coast all by herself, of not having to ask Gregorio to accompany her anywhere she couldn’t get to on foot or by bus or train.
“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” Gregorio stroked his goatee and smiled; he didn’t even scold Iris for downing the rest of her champagne.
What else could come in an envelope, she wondered. It couldn’t possibly be a ticket for a trip home, could it? Gregorio was no fool; he had certainly noticed how distraught Iris had been about not attending Lily’s wedding, and again seen how sad she was at her father’s departure. He was so sensitive, so incredibly thoughtful. That was probably what it was. She would much rather go home to see Lily and her family, than have a new ring, or even a car. Her eyes welled with tears as she looked expectantly at Gregorio.
“Not very many men would do this for their wives,” he said, sliding the envelope across the table to Iris.
A little laugh escaped her lips; her stomach fluttered. How she adored surprises! She took a sip of champagne from Gregorio’s flute, then reached for the envelope. She opened it, and was puzzled when her fingers encountered what felt like a normal sheet of paper inside the envelope. It didn’t feel like an airline ticket at all. It seemed more like a letter, or a document of some sort. Maybe it was a car, after all. A little used jalopy would be fine, something easy to drive, and good on gas, which was so expensive in Italy; a liter here cost more than a gallon back home.
The Complete Series Page 65
