And I liked having his approval, though it was only imaginary, for during a writer's day, there is never a moment's approval, only a chronic, gnawing sense that this word, this sentence, this paragraph, this book, is not good enough, will never be good enough; that the puzzles will never work themselves out; that the problems will never be solved; and that if they are, the book will never be read anyway; and so the whole goddamned thing should be abandoned once and for all.
Abandoned. For what? To shop for vegetables, without the demon in the brain making up sentences, revising sentences, imagining situations, lopping the ends off paragraphs, writing nifty little segues, planning the next book, and the one after that, and the one after that. Even as the demon in the brain is making up stories about the people it sees while shopping— these two men, for example. One old; one, older.
But, of course, without the book, without a book, the demon in the brain wouldn't be quiet. Why no book? it would say. When is there going to be another book? it would harangue. You need to be making up sentences. Without making up sentences, you don't know what to do. And unless you start making up sentences, I'm going to annoy the shit out of you. Ym not going to leave you alone. And then the demon would begin its infernal list. Why not a book on biscotti; you like to bake biscotti. Maybe one on minestrone, you've cooked thirty or forty of the suckers by now; what a fucking waste of time all that cooking is unless you get a book out of it. How about one about June Miller, Henry Miller's ex; you read all those books; there's all that sex, now that would be fun for a change. I know: how about a book about finding your inner something-or-other; those books sell, they make money, they make a lot of sense. You're wasting your time. You're not getting any younger. You should be writing. You should be writing. You should be writing.
So whether you're writing or not writing, it's all the same. The demon won't leave you alone. Even if you say Shut the fuck up. So you may as well go home, may as well work, may as well write. And what you wish for is the day that the demon understands that there are moments when the writer would like to be the woman who simply shops for vegetables.
Anyway.
Because the son approved of my vegetables, and because of their looks, I thought these men had to be Italian, Southern Italian. The old man reminded me of my grandfather, so long dead. And in looking at this old man, I resurrected my grandfather, saw what he might have looked like at close to ninety, and he came back to me, embodied in this old man, and I thought that I might want to write about him, about my grandfather. Thought, too, that I might want to write about this old man and how he reminded me of my grandfather.
Then, the guilt: I was studying this old man to get material; I was turning him into a subject. I was using him, the way I use everything, for my work. I was feeding on human flesh.
Later, by the celery (which I also needed, having discovered that the celery I thought I could use had rotted unnoticed in the bottom bin of my refrigerator where, when I am writing, everything rots unnoticed), I heard the old man speak. Could the son get him another plastic bag?
He spoke in dialect that sounded like my grandfather's, and that's when I knew that they were Southern Italian. And I realized why I wanted them to be Southern Italian. Because they were normal people doing what normal people do, what I was doing. Buying fruits and vegetables. Being polite and civilized. Respecting each other. Being people worthy of respect.
The night before, while waiting for my husband to join me to watch a video, I was cruising through the channels, and I caught a few moments of an episode of The Sopranos.
When I first heard about the show, a few years before— that it was called The Sopranos and that it was about Italian Americans, I became excited. I thought it was going to be a TV series celebrating important Italian American women vocalists. How nice, I thought. A celebration of our accomplishments.
But when I heard what it was going to be about— the same old Mafia story, but, according to the publicity, with some dramatic new twists— I knew I wouldn't watch it. When I was small, my mother had inoculated me against having anything to do with anything that concerned the Mafia.
"If you hear the word 'Mafia,'" she said, "if you hear anyone talking about the subject, walk away, leave the room. Hearing anyone talk about those thugs is dangerous. Talking about those thugs is dangerous. Hearing stories about them will pollute your mind. We're not that kind of people. Always remember, there are a few of us who are like that, but this is not who we are."
Although my mother tried to control much about my life, she never censored anything I wanted to see or anything I wanted to read. She even checked The Kinsey Report out of the local library for me when I was a teenager because the librarian wouldn't let me do it. So it wasn't censorship that motivated her telling me not to listen to stories about the Mafia.
When I was older, I learned that my mother's attitude was shaped by the stories she heard at family gatherings about relatives of relatives who were, as they say, connected. And what she knew— about how the mob destroyed poor neighborhoods by selling drugs; how mobsters threatened and intimidated legitimate small businessmen into paying protection money; how they corrupted politicians; how they got young kids in poor neighborhoods to act as drug runners; how they turned young kids into thugs, got them to think there was more money in crime than in getting an education; how she knew what the underworld had done to the poor in the old country, how they controlled the water, how they helped landowners squelch rebellions for better working conditions— made her sick. My mother was the most moral person I ever knew. She believed in justice; hated inequity; despised violence. Though she also believed that guilty people should be punished one way or another.
One time, my mother heard that the daughter of one of these thugs had become addicted to heroin, was in rehab, and my mother said, "They got what they deserved. What did they think? That they could sell drugs in poor neighborhoods, black neighborhoods, build fancy houses for their families from the profits, and not pay for it?"
The daughter died of an overdose; left a few kids behind that the thug's wife had to raise. All my mother said was "Good riddance to bad rubbish."
I watched The Sopranos for a few moments, thinking I probably had some obligation to popular culture to take a look, to make a judgment, rather than dismissing it without ever watching it. I saw a man murdered. Decapitated. The bloodletting nauseated me. My mother's words came back to me. This is not who we are. Hearing stories about them will pollute your mind.
I started thinking about the hired thugs in Puglia who had ravaged my people. Who had protected the landowner's interests. Who had instituted a reign of terror where my ancestors came from.
The landowners in the South wouldn't even sit in the same room with farmworkers to listen to what they wanted: shelters for sleeping in the field; a living wage; transportation to their distant worksites. The landowners wouldn't sit in the same room with the farmworkers because they considered them animals. They believed they had the right to control their lives. And to hire criminals to destroy anyone who challenged them, to rule through fear.
And I thought that, yes, this is what criminal outlaw groups always are. Terrorists. And that's what the Mafia is: a terrorist organization. My mother used to say, "The only good thug is a dead thug, and, beyond that, the less said, the better."
So here they were, this old man and this older man, and the son was wearing a plaid jacket, the kind that workmen wear in the winter when they pour concrete, climb telephone poles, break up pavements with pneumatic drills— a jacket that will keep out the cold, but that won't make you uncomfortably warm while you're working. And the son also had on a tweed peaked cap, worn slightly off center, like the one my grandfather wore, like the one my father wears, like the one so many men from the South of Italy wore as they disembarked in New York from their ocean voyage, carrying a single suitcase or a bundle containing everything they owned in the world except their dreams.
And the son's hands were like my gran
dfather's hands, like my father's hands— big, muscled, reddened, callused, and always grimy from the work. The father was stooped, though not frail, and he wore a jacket like his son's, although the colors of his were more somber. And he wore a cap like his son's. And the father's hands were like the son's hands, too— big, muscled, reddened, callused, scarred, although the dirt in the creases of the knuckles had been worn away by time because he was no longer working, not even in his garden, if he had one.
His son pushed the cart around, following his father wherever he went, saying little, offering no opinions, and this was what I liked about him, that he was silent, that he made no suggestions, that he let the old man take the lead, that he let the old man go about his business in the way that he chose.
I stood, watching them, conjecturing, as they blocked my way. And I decided that, instead of asking them to move, I wouldn't disturb them, that I would go back down the aisle and around to the other side.
It took me a few minutes to accomplish this detour. (I got sidetracked by some very beautiful Sicilian eggplants that I could grill for dinner and garnish with garlic, mint, and olive oil.) But by the time I returned to the melons, they were still standing in the same place, the father and the son, and the old man was still taking his time, still choosing his melon. And his son was still silent, still waiting. (I imagined myself in the same situation, eager to move on, urging the old man to make a choice, selecting a melon for him.)
The old man picked up a melon, shook it, sniffed it, pressed the place where the melon had been attached to the vine to determine its ripeness, passed his hand over the skin to gauge its tautness, made a face, rejected it. This was not the kind of market where you could automatically be sure that what you were buying would be tasty. So he took another, shook it, sniffed it, pressed the place where it had been attached to the vine, felt it, made a face, rejected it. Took another, went through the whole process again, repeated it a few more times, and finally, was satisfied.
I stood across from them, miming an interest in the melons, but more interested in them than in the melons.
The son stood behind, waiting, watching his father choosing the melon, as if choosing the melon was all that mattered, as if choosing the melon was the most important thing in the world.
And I wondered if this son had always treated the father in this way, with such respect. (Respect. What my father said I never gave him. Respect. What my father said I never gave my mother. All I ask of you is that you show us some respect.) Or if it was not respect that I was seeing, but stony silence, born of years of enmity, of the son's learning that the less he said to this old man, the better. Had the strife of decades worn them into this placidity? Did the father tell the son, "You show me the respect I deserve"? Had the son shouted back, "You earn respect; you don't deserve it simply because you're my father"? But no, I thought, it couldn't be that. The son's face was too composed; too serene.
I wanted there to have been no strife between them, none of that intergenerational struggle born from the hardship of the past.
The father turned to his son and handed him the melon. The son placed it on the seat meant for babies. They were ready to move on.
I stood there, watching them go, wishing that I could have prolonged the moment. Imagined myself calling out to the old man, imagined him turning when he heard me. Imagined myself asking him to pick me a melon. Imagined him returning to the bin, choosing one for me with the same care he had devoted to choosing his own. But I knew that to demand his attention would have been a terrible imposition, given his age, given that we were not acquainted. And given the shopping he still had to do.
FEEDING THE DEAD
The last time my father and I talked, he told me that he is doing most of the cooking in his house. His wife (the woman he married not too long after my mother died) is now living her life behind a scrim of forgetfulness and often doesn't remember to cook their food, and when she does cook, she sometimes walks away from the stove, forgets she is making a meal, and burns it. So far, there hasn't been a fire because my father's always going into the kitchen, always vigilant, always checking. But still, it's a dangerous situation. And he wonders what will happen, who will take care of them, if he gets sick.
It's a shame, he tells me, because, when Milly cooks, when she remembers what she's cooking, she cooks well. She still makes a fabulous pot roast (he loves to soak up the gravy with a good, crusty bread) and a mean apple pie if she carries a timer around the house with her and if she remembers what the timer is timing. So it isn't as bad as all that. Then, too, her family helps by coming over with prepared foods and having supper several times a week. And there are "dinner and a movie" nights at our house, when we all have a simple meal— last night, some fresh figs and prosciutto; a pasta with vine ripened tomatoes, smoked mozzarella, garlic, and basil; some green beans with garlic oil— and then watch an Italian movie together.
These dinners occur once a week, usually on Mondays. And we have settled into a wonderful routine. My father goes to a local flower shop where the proprietor is Italian; he converses with her and buys some flowers to adorn our dinner table. Milly arranges the flowers for a centerpiece while we cook. Me, I just take flowers and shove them into a vase, add water. But Milly takes each flower, clips the stem, arranges, rearranges. Her centerpieces are beautiful. She jokes that she can't forget what she's doing because what she's doing is right in front of her.
Milly mourns the loss of her recent memory. But she can laugh about it. "The advantage," she says, "is that I never remember the movies we watch. You could show me the same one a dozen times and I'd be happy."
Last night, we watched Carlo Carlei's Flight of the Innocent. It's one of my favorites, not only because it's gorgeously filmed but also because it describes the brutalizing effects of centuries of racism towards Southern Italians, shows how gangs in the South kidnap wealthy children in the North for ransom and also for retribution.
The hero of the film is the child of a family that has kidnapped and killed a boy from the North. A rival gang assassinates his family, but he escapes by hiding between the mattress and box spring of his bed.
He knows they want him dead, so he travels all the way to Rome to find a cousin to help him. Witnesses the cousin's murder. Finds the ransom money paid for the murdered child.
But he will not continue the legacy of his family. He decides that what they have done is wrong; he longs for life in a family untainted by criminality and bloodletting, and decides to return the ransom money to the murdered child's family. He saves the child's father's life— a rival gang, pretending his son is still alive, tries to murder him when he delivers more ransom money.
At the end of the film, the child is shot by the rival gang. While unconscious, he has a fantasy about a dinner. Everyone— Southerners and Northerners alike, he and his family, the murdered child and his parents, all the people who are alive and all the people who are dead— sit around a table in the sweet light of sunset, serving one another pasta. He imagines an end to vengeance, an end to racism, an end to injustice.
Earlier in the movie, the young hero enters the room of the murdered child. He sees his desk, his toys. He sleeps in the child's comfortable bed. The difference between the hero's bedroom and this child's is staggering. Here, opulence. There, poverty.
At the end of the film, my father says, "That's the way it was when I lived in Italy. The people who had, had a lot. The people who didn't have, didn't have anything."
My father doesn't like to complain, so when he tells me that meals in his house are a problem I wonder whether things are worse than he says.
"I make out a menu every week," he tells me. "Tuesday, aglia olio; Wednesday, pasta fagioli; Thursday, some kind of pasta. Mostly Italian foods. All those things your grandmother and my mother used to cook. Nothing fancy, nothing that takes too long. This way I know what to buy."
My father tells me he likes to have a nice meal at the end of the day. If he doesn't, he's unhappy. The
meal doesn't have to be fancy. He prefers something simple but wonderful to something elaborate. "All I need," he says, "is a hunk of cheese, some good Italian bread, a few grapes, and a glass of wine."
I tell him I like to have a good meal at the end of the day, too. "Life's too short," I say, "to have one bad meal." I think of all the bad meals we had when I lived at home, wonder how my father could have been satisfied by my mother's cooking.
I watch the Food Network on television more than I care to admit. Watching people I don't know cooking food I can't eat has become my drug of choice. I figure it's better than booze, better than cocaine. I think watching TV Food has something to do with repairing wounds from childhood, with seeing a kitchen where no one fights and every dish turns out perfectly, my antidote to everything imperfect in the world. There is nothing I like doing more at the end of my workday, before I step into my own kitchen to prepare a meal, than watching TV Food. It's where I learn easy recipes and arcane information— that male eggplants are far better than females, for example, and that you can tell a female by the little dimple at the bottom of the eggplant. Knowing this kind of thing makes me feel smug and superior to Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary Shopper.
But it also makes me a fussy, obsessive, extremely inefficient, take-an-hour-to-buy-a-few-items kind of food shopper. This is why shopping takes me so long, leaves me so exhausted, why I can only choose three or four items to my husband's thirty. He finishes our weekly shopping during the time it takes me to pick out a pineapple (surreptitiously pull out a frond and smell it), a pound of Portobello mushrooms (examine the gills on the underside of each), asparagus (check out the base of each stalk, see if it's dried out; check out each tip, see if it's dried out or mashed up or wet or missing); search out purple potatoes, Forbidden rice, truffle oil, faro (an ancient grain I don't know how to prepare, but, I assure myself, I can learn), aged balsamic vinegar. This is why I usually shop alone.
Crazy in the Kitchen Page 21
