“And was that so idyllic?”
“Most of the time,” Iris said. She thought of the dime-store presents piled under the Christmas tree, and of the charred hot dogs on the Fourth of July, and of fourteen people gathered around one big table, fourteen sets of elbows rubbing as fourteen forks fed fourteen mouths that talked and chewed and laughed and screamed and fought and cried. “But maybe there were just too many of us,” she added.
“Or maybe you only remember what you want to remember. It’s easy to do that, from over here on this side of the ocean.”
“But it would be different with us. We only want two or three kids, and I think I would be a good mother. And it would make Gregorio so happy.”
“I am sure, Iris. Just remember to be true to yourself. And remember to have a Plan B.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need a life, with or without kids. Why don’t you get a job? It’ll take your mind off the whole thing. Sometimes that’s all it takes, and at least you’d be getting experience in the meantime.”
“I can try and get you some more students,” Deirdre offered.
“Thanks, Deirdre. No offense, but I wouldn’t mind doing something more challenging than speaking English. I never looked for anything because I thought I’d just have to quit if I got pregnant. Plus, I didn’t think Gregorio would approve.”
“Iris, you can’t live your life based on ‘what ifs’ and ‘I didn’t thinks’. Let me talk to Salvatore. He has lots of contacts in the shipping business. They always need bilingual people in the office, and it’s hard to find anyone with really good English. Just take my advice, and don’t mention anything to Gregorio until the time comes.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea? I don’t want to hide anything from him.”
“I think it’s a great idea,” Liz said.
“Me too,” Deirdre said.
“Maybe you’re right. Just ask, though.” Iris said. “As for Gregorio, I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“I also think we should order another drink,” Liz said, signaling to the waiter as the speaker concluded her presentation to a round of polite applause.
Whether it was due to the release of tension from having shared her concerns with her friends, or having drafted a Plan B, or the hilarious way Liz had of imitating the ladies at the club, or the two gin and tonics on an empty stomach, Iris couldn’t stop laughing as she drove the trio home, up and down the slopes and bends of the Via Aurelia, in her practical white station wagon. They had just passed the town of Nervi, when she rounded a curve too quickly, and was waved down by the carabinieri at a road blockade.
“Merda!” Iris said, as she pulled the car over. Swear words sounded nicer to Iris in Italian, though she used them infrequently, and only when Gregorio and his family were out of earshot. “What am I gonna tell Gregorio if I get fined for drunken driving? He’s already cut off my glass of wine at dinner!”
“No one’s going to fine you, Iris. They’re looking for terrorists at these blockades. Just pretend you don’t speak Italian,” Liz instructed her. “That’s what I do when I get stopped. It’s quicker, not to mention more fun.”
“I’ll never be able to fake it,” Iris said as one of the officers approached the car, one hand on the Beretta slung over his shoulder. Her usual agitation at being confronted by authorities must have been quelled slightly by the cocktails; instead of feeling intimidated by the officer’s uniform, she found herself admiring the black jacket with silver buttons, the white bandoleer hanging diagonally from his left shoulder, the red stripes running down the outside seam of black trousers.
“It’s child’s play,” Liz said. “You’ll see.”
“We’ll back you up,” Deirdre said.
“Buongiorno,” said the officer, touching the rim of his hat as he nodded his head and peered in the window, scrutinizing the occupants of the car.
“Buongiorno,” Iris replied, imitating the worst of the accents she could recall hearing that afternoon at the Foreign Women’s Club.
“Documenti, per favore,” the man said.
“No capisco,” Iris said, flashing him a smile. “I don’t understand.”
“Documents. Patente. Passaporto.”
“Oh, yes!” Iris said. “Sure. Just a minute. Momento.” She reached for the purse Deirdre passed to her from the back seat. She fumbled with the zippers, then took her time fishing for her wallet as she reviewed her options. She did not want to show him her Italian driver’s license, and did not have the habit of carrying her passport around with her. She glanced at the photograph of her smiling father at an outdoor café in Portofino, which she always carried in her wallet, and noticed the corner of a blue card sticking out from behind it, hoping it was what she thought it was. She tugged at the card, and was happy to discover she had never removed her New York State driver’s license from her wallet after her last trip home. She handed it to her interrogator.
“Iris Capotosti?” the carabiniere inquired. “This is you?”
“Yes, sir,” Iris replied.
“Ma il nome è italiano. The name is Italian.”
“Yes, my grandfather. Mio nonno. Capotosti. He came from L’Aquila. Abruzzese,” Iris said, dropping her eyes to his firearm, which was eye-level with her, fortunately pointed to the ground.
Liz placed a hand over her mouth. “Lay off the Italian!” she said, wrapping the words in a fake cough.
“New York?” the carabiniere asked, as he perused both sides of the document.
Iris was not sure what the question was. She answered, “Yes, New York. Rochester, New York.”
“Mio zio sta a Yonkers. You know Yonkers? My uncle stays there.”
“Sure, Yonkers! Fantastic place. You should visit!” Iris said, as she continued smiling up at the man. He was probably around her age, possibly younger. Her eyes were drawn again to his firearm; the sight of a loaded weapon so close up both fascinated and frightened her.
“Signorina Capotosti,” the paramilitary policeman said, reverting to his formal stance. “This is not Monza. No Gran Premio.” He wagged his index finger in Iris’s face.
“No,” Iris said, shaking her head in agreement, like a child sensing she would get away with a scolding instead of a spanking if she acted as though she had learned her lesson.
“Vada, vada. You go. But remember. Prudenza. This road is pericoloso, Italian drivers are pericolosi. Very dangerous! You know?”
“Yes! I know,” Iris said, smiling up at him and batting her eyes. “Like Italian men are pericolosi!”
The carabiniere handed Iris back her driver’s license, touched the brim of his hat and made a circular motion with his forearm, indicating that she was free to go.
“Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the Holy Martyrs! Who would’ve guessed our angelic little Iris was such a fine fibber?” Deirdre said with a laugh, as they drove away.
“Funny,” Iris said. “It was easier than I thought.”
She hoped the nice young carabiniere would never have to fire that dreadful gun. Or that he wouldn’t be too disappointed if he ever made it to Yonkers.
If Iris did not deem the Foreign Women’s Club worthy of her wardrobe, the Genoa branch of Transoceanica was even less deserving of such ladylike finery. When the part-time job opportunity presented itself with surprising rapidity through Liz’s husband, Gregorio had been adamant that Iris politely decline. They did not need the money, he said, and she must avoid getting run down. But Iris had found the nerve to insist that it would be good for her to get out of the house more, that working half days would leave her plenty of time to take care of him and the house and still get her proper rest, and that having something else to think about besides babies would help her shake off the depression she had been experiencing. In the end, Gregorio surrendered to her Irish-Abruzzese stubbornness and consented, as long as she promised to quit the moment she became pregnant, which would no doubt happen soon after her operation.
When I
ris was interviewed for the job, she found the title of “foreign correspondent” intriguing; it conjured up images of a quick-paced environment akin to that of an international newsroom. Though the telex room did add a touch of “breaking news” urgency to the ambiance when the machine spontaneously came to life and spewed out notices of general averages and total losses, Iris’s job consisted of translating the technical correspondence that bounced back and forth between marine insurance claims adjusters in London, New York, New Delhi, Stockholm and hosts of other cities around the world, and the consignees, shippers, and forwarding agents on the Italian end. She performed her duties in a dreary shaft of a room, where she sat at a massive walnut desk for four hours each day. On the left corner of the desk sat a grey telephone with a rotary dial, which rang twice a day: once just minutes after she arrived, when Gregorio called before scrubbing up to check that she had made it to the office and wish her a good day; the second time a few hours later, when Gregorio slipped away from the operating room between surgeries, to call and tell her to make sure not to miss her train, so she could spend a restful afternoon at home. One day soon, she promised herself, she would stay in the city for lunch (she saw no real need to tell Gregorio), so she could go to the music store when it reopened for afternoon business. Iris always stopped to admire the guitars in the window, though the shop was still closed when she arrived in the morning and already closed for lunch when she left. She had been eyeing one acoustic guitar in particular, an Italian-made Eko, which was reasonably priced. She toyed with the idea of buying it at the end of the month, when she received her first paycheck. Ever since playing a few tunes with Uncle Alfred during her last visit home, she had been thinking of taking the instrument up again. Uncle Alfred had been patient, as usual, but as she struggled to remember the most basic chords, she was embarrassed at having forgotten so much of what he had taught her.
On the right hand corner of the desk stood a stack of technical dictionaries with yellowed pages and fractured spines. Between the volumes and the phone were two towers of color-coded folders containing the sheaves of documents that Iris must sift through in search of substantiation that a claim should be settled. Her daily goal was to make the pile of new files on the right diminish, by consequence of which the pile on the left would rise. Though the job could not be defined as exciting, Iris felt a surge of satisfaction each time she uncovered a determining piece of evidence: a surveyor’s expert opinion, a remark scribbled on a bill of lading, a mistranslated clause, a photograph of the insufficient lashing of cargo or the broken seal on a container door. Each completed translation, each settled claim, each transfer of a folder from the right pile to the left, filled Iris with a sense of order and sometimes even pride.
The dozen other young women employed by Transoceanica shared an open space where they assembled the documentation that became the files that ended up on Iris’s desk, as they gossiped in Genoese dialect, to the amusement of their boss, Elio Bacigalupo. Italians had a fetish for formal titles, and anyone with a university degree was called a doctor: il dottore for men, la dottoressa for women. Il Dottore, as Bacigalupo was referred to by the girls (Iris, by virtue of the fact that they spoke English together, was given the privilege of calling him Elio), sat at a cluttered desk at the rear of the room, where he was close enough to keep an eye on the girls and, more importantly, eavesdrop on their conversations as they stapled and typed and filed. A polyglot and pedagogue by passion, provocative and observant by nature, Elio had the habit of writing down on a chalkboard that hung behind his desk the juiciest morsels of gossip he overheard each day, accompanied by a comment in Latin, or Swedish, or Mandarin Chinese, which he translated for Iris. He had taken a special liking to her, and had insisted that she be segregated from her co-workers so she could concentrate better on her translations. Iris agreed that it would be difficult to hear herself think in the chatty common room, but suspected the real reason the boss gave her a private office was that he wanted to keep her to himself. He visited her office several times a day, having decided that she must learn a selection of expressions in Genoese, which he repeated to her and made her repeat to him, until she got the pronunciation just right. He sat in front of Iris for endless stretches, his logorrheic tongue keeping pace with his wandering mind as it skipped from one topic to another, while Iris fidgeted with her pen and glanced repeatedly at the pile of files awaiting her attention.
His soliloquy sailed through explanations of the ideograms he was currently studying, to the theories of Noam Chomsky, to random conjectures about Iris, her family and her private life, interspersed with accounts of his experiences abroad and unsolicited confidences about his past and present love affairs. Though some of the information he shared was interesting or humorous, Iris grew increasingly irritated by his visits and bored by the anecdotes which he, like all those who loved the sound of their own voices, repeated ad nauseum.
Each morning between eight and a quarter past, the Transoceanica girls arrived in their smart street clothes, disappeared into the cloak room, and reemerged a few moments later dressed in their uniforms of a white cotton blouse and a grey linen skirt, both of which were always wrinkled from use. Fashionable footwear was also abandoned in the cloak room, in favor of open-toed house shoes with rubber soles that whined their way up and down the tiled corridor outside Iris’s office. Iris worked with her door open, and at first, she always looked up from her paperwork and smiled when she heard someone approach; those passing always took a peek at the foreign bird in a cage but never stopped to say hello. Eventually, she learned to tune out the squeaky announcements of possible visitors and keep her head buried behind the stacks of dictionaries and files.
One morning, the cloakroom door had been left open a crack, and as she walked by, she overheard the girls giggling and mimicking her accent, referring to her as the Regina americana, “the American queen.” She slipped into her office, embarrassed and hurt that the girls would talk about her behind her back, but a part of her wondered whether it was her fault; whether she should try harder to make friends with them, maybe bake them a batch of brownies or something, while another part of her wondered why she should care. The truth was, she did care, but not enough to wear one of those dreadful grey skirts and shuffle around the office in slippers.
“Why don’t you have some more spinach, Iris?” Isabella asked. “It’s rich in iron, you know. Good for a woman’s blood.”
“Thank you, Isabella,” Iris said, taking the serving dish from her; it was hard to ruin steamed spinach. Iris marveled at the lack of creativity her mother-in-law put into the food she prepared, and figured her insistence on preparing a meal for the family every Sunday must stem from a sense of duty connected with her role as an Italian mother, rather than from the joy of preparing and sharing a meal with those she loved.
Filial duty rather than a craving for his mother’s cooking was certainly what bound Gregorio to this tradition; he and Iris never missed Sunday dinner, unless there was an emergency at the hospital. When the conditions were good for scuba diving, he went out early and managed to be back before noon, in time to pay his respects to God at the last Mass, then to his mother, who would be upset if she were to find out he had been diving. She had always objected to the sport, and tried to convince Iris to join forces in discouraging him from going, but Iris remained neutral. As far as she was concerned, Gregorio could dive all he wanted, as long as he didn’t try to make her take lessons again.
“Speaking of spinach, you need to finish yours, Antonio!” Cinzia said to her eldest son, named after her deceased father. At least someone would bear the man’s first name, if Iris could not do the family the honor of providing an heir to his surname.
The collective consumption of spinach was interrupted by the jangling of the phone. “Santa pazienza! Who could be so rude as to call at one o’clock on a Sunday?” Isabella said.
“Shall I get it, Mamma?” Gregorio asked, already half-standing.
“No, I make the rul
es here, and I’ll enforce them.” Once a judge, always a judge, Iris thought, as Isabella dabbed the corners of her mouth with her napkin, rose, and shuffled off to the telephone in the hallway on rectangles of felt, polishing the marble as she went.
“Pron-to?” Not everyone could cram such a dose of irritation into two short syllables. The table fell silent, all ears pricked for clues as to who the untimely caller might be. “Yes, this is Isabella.” Pause. “Yes, Iris is here.” Longer pause. “O Madonna santa! O Dio santo!” She raised her voice a notch and called, “Gregorio! Gregorio!”
“What is it, Mamma?” Gregorio said, pushing away from the table and scurrying off to his mother. Iris looked around the table at the raised eyebrows, turned heads, cold spinach, frozen forks; she wondered whether she had heard right, why Isabella had mentioned her name.
“Hello … oh … I see … when? … good God … I’m so sorry … of course … No, I’ll take care of it … don’t worry. We’ll call later … I will … Goodbye.” Iris had heard Gregorio speak in English many times, but had never before heard his voice falter. In fact, his calm, even voice had been one of the first qualities she had admired in him, that day he had met her and Auntie Rosa at the train station. Unlike the males in her family, he never spoke in an unnecessarily loud or emphatic tone, but always conveyed a sense of authority, and reassurance. She had often imagined that voice issuing orders in the operating room, while he monitored the vitals of the patients he kept suspended between life and death. The voice dropped to a murmur as Gregorio conferred with Isabella, then returned to the dining room, straightening his tie as he walked, his mother gliding in on his heels.
“Iris,” Gregorio said, again in control, concise. “That was your sister Violet.”
“Violet?” Iris could understand Isabella’s intolerance for phone calls during meal time because her father had always enforced the same rule, but it angered her that she wouldn’t make an exception for an overseas call from her sister. “Why didn’t you let me talk to her?”
[Iris and Lily 01.0 - 03.0] The Complete Series Page 69
