L'America

by Martha McPhee

  At the watermelon stand Cesare's friends watched them; they always watched the couple, wondering how long this affair would last, making private bets on who would take whom away from what. And, of course, that was the issue here: not a simple year abroad or a vacation to his girlfriend's family. In town one night someone spray-painted, GO HOME, AMERICAN on the walls beneath the portico along the Corso Roma. America was ugly and new and powerful, dictating to the world in the guise of spreading freedom. But really most of Cesare's friends loved Beth and loved things American: Nikes, Levi's, Bruce Springsteen, Simon and Garfunkel. One friend had her write down all the words to an entire album of Simon and Garfunkel songs so that he could learn them to sing along with his guitar. He spoke no English. Whenever Beth came from America, Cesare's friends would ask her to bring Vibram-soled shoes—Timberlands, L. L. Bean boots—and her suitcases filled with the orders. Cesare taught them all American football and baseball, presiding over his friends with the confidence of a politician, all charisma and charm. Emulation. Cesare, without having been to America, brought America to Città. As a result there was a trend: they wanted to look American, be American, and never leave Città.

  Cesare cleaned the paint up so that Beth would never know. But she had known. She had seen it, impossible to miss, a bright blue beneath the portico, when she was shopping on the Corso with Bea.

  "You're popular," Bea had said, her arm linked in Beth's, standing in front of the graffiti.

  "Oh very," Beth had replied. Suddenly she hated Italy. She wanted to go into a store and try on many items, leave them all unfolded and buy not a one, demolishing the unspoken law of trying on only what you intended to buy (which, even so, was an imposition on the sales help). "It's the most absurd idea," Beth had said to Bea. "How can you possibly know if a sweater looks good unless you try it on?"

  After occasions like these, Beth would write long, tearful letters to Sylvia, sitting in Bea's dark room with the shutters drawn, everyone else about their business. She would describe the painted sign in detail, complain about how faraway and alone she felt. Cesare's crowd of friends was very different from Bea's so they rarely went out together. Bea was always caught up with some new lover or other, anyway—some dangerous and illicit situation that Cesare didn't find very amusing. Cesare didn't like Bea, she would write; Cesare's family didn't much seem to care for Bea's, though Beth couldn't understand why, knew that there was some deeper social complexity that was beyond her desire to comprehend. The Cellinis never once asked about the Nuova family, referred to them as "the family from Genova" (it didn't matter that a hundred years had passed since the Nuova family had lived there) when Beth mentioned them. By the time Sylvia's response arrived in the mail (soothing letters, mostly filled with details of college life in Boston, escapades with boyfriends that made Beth long to be in college herself), Beth would be vibrant again, the insult forgotten. Then something else would occur and once again she would write.

  Of the graffiti incident Cesare said tenderly, "Non essere triste, Bet." She thought of all the friends, the meals and conversations, the Vibram-soled shoes, the ease with which they seemed to accept her, understanding it all now as a charade. "It does not mean anything, just jealousy." That's what her father always said whenever someone made fun of Claire, whenever anyone pointed out (her grandmother most of all) that in the United States of America there were over fifteen hundred such communal experiments in living and most of them failed. "Because of sex and drugs and ego," the grandmother would say, stabbing her listener with her piercing green eyes, her white hair rolled up like a crown. "I have two words: Jim Jones"

  "I can already see that the great experiment of America works perfectly," Cesare said beneath the bright lights of the watermelon stand. Beth lit up like a prize. He wanted to fly away with her right there, to rise up from the table in front of his friends to show them she wins.

  When Beth first met Cesare's father, Giovanni Paolo, she thought he was the gardener. Cesare had driven her to Fiori not long after they met again. It was early fall. The woods were thick with fallen leaves and the sky was gray and somewhat sad. Giovanni Paolo appeared from what seemed to be a garden arbor still very green with all the ivy. In his left hand he carried a small rifle and on his right hand he wore a thick black leather glove. The glove seemed odd to Beth, somehow hard, yet also very workmanlike and worn, something a gardener would wear. She imagined it had a mate he had already taken off. He was a small old man with a fringe of thin white hair on his otherwise bald scalp, and a serious demeanor. With some trouble he placed the gun beneath his right arm and, sticking out his left, ungloved, hand for her to shake, said, "Piacere." He did not look her in the eye or even smile, and she assumed this was because the gardener was either tired and shy or rude. The exchange lasted less than a minute before he vanished back into the arbor, so quickly Cesare did not have a chance to say a word. She noticed that this old man's shirt had ripped at the shoulder and that sweat beaded beneath his eyes. Then he was gone. "Why does the gardener carry a gun?" she had asked Cesare.

  "You mean my father." She blushed, mortified, and then just as quickly felt insulted. She pictured him zipping up to Bern with that small gun to save his daughter from the clowns.

  "He doesn't like me?" she asked.

  "He's scared of you," Cesare said.

  "Of me?" Beth almost laughed. She looked down at herself, feeling quite small and young but also sort of powerful like an army, a country, Cleopatra. Not long after this first meeting, the father would start asking Cesare, in front of Beth, "Whatever happened to Francesca?" Cesare was always formal and polite with his father and would never have corrected him about Francesca, though Beth would have liked him to. Even when Cesare teased his father over small things or funny coincidences (for example, the pope had the same brand of skis as Signor Cellini and liked to ski the same Cortina slopes as Signor Cellini, the parallels made room for jokes, especially since Giovanni Paolo was not at all religious), he did so with trepidation, as if he did not know how his father would respond, as if he knew he must always be careful. Beth would come to learn that Signor Cellini had supported Mussolini (briefly) in his youth and that now he gave impassioned speeches about the secession of the north from the south.

  The gun was for shooting uccellini, the small birds in the bird arbor, which the Cellinis ate every Sunday for pranzo on top of polenta that Cesare's mother stirred for an hour. Gentle Elena's nature above all was to compensate for her husband's hardness. When Beth first started seeing Cesare in Città after Greece, Beth had a chronic stomachache. Elena oversaw her cure, taking the girl (because Cesare loved her) to all the finest doctors and specialists, paying the bills without letting the girl know. Elena was also refined; she peeled all her fruit before eating it (including the grapes, of course) with a small knife and fork designed especially for the task. The skin slipped off to reveal the glistening, wet body of the fruit. Beth found the skill amazing in its intricacy, like the fine art of carving filigree. She couldn't imagine peeling her fruit; her father had taught her that that's where the nutrients were and on their farm they carefully grew produce organically, precisely so that the skin could be eaten. Chefs drove all the way from New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington for Claire's produce just because of the care with which it was grown. She remembered the chefs, their hands especially, how important the chefs had seemed as they handled the fruit, turning it delicately, their big hands prizing each piece, connoisseurs of the exquisite.

  Signora Cellini, who was always busy with social obligations and some sort of volunteer work, had several maids, one from Sri Lanka, one from North Africa, and one from Russia. The Russian was quite old, but had been with the family since the children were small. The Sri Lankan wore a sari at all times and tried to teach Beth and Cesare's sister, Laura, to put them on, wrapping them in yards and yards—nine to be exact, as in "the whole nine yards"—of silk. Beth knew how to wrap a sari; Preveena had taught her at Claire. But Beth did not let the Sri
Lankan maid know because the lesson and the knowledge seemed to be something that she prized sharing. "You're the luckiest girls alive," she said to them, holding her life up to theirs, "freed by your fate."

  Funny thing was, in some ways Beth felt like the Sri Lankan maid: that is, Beth felt that Laura was the luckiest girl alive. Beth didn't have Laura's privilege or Laura's funny beauty or Laura's sophistication or even Laura's intelligence. The first time Beth met her, she fell in love with her. Laura had just returned from America, overweight as she had promised her brother, from all the hamburgers. "Too many hamburgers," she had said, pulling Beth into an intimacy. It was the way Laura smiled as well, laughing at her newfound chubbiness. She was chubby, but Beth had not seen her before. Beth admired that she was amused rather than frightened by the extra weight: too many hamburgers, simple as that. Her blond hair was cropped short at her ears and she smiled and laughed and her good humor was infectious. Her funny stories of America—those girls to whom she taught English in the trailer; the cops who pulled her over, their mirrored sunglasses; the fans at the Springsteen concert throwing themselves at the feet of the singer—animated Cesare in a way Beth had never seen before. "I owe all my adventures to Cesare," Laura said, giving her brother a big kiss on the cheek. "It was his idea for me to go to America." They were standing in the kitchen of the Città villa, smells of dinner heating up the room, the cook swishing in and swishing out, pinching Laura's cheeks between her fingers in a tender, familiar gesture. Beth marveled at this world of maids and service, a world which Laura and Cesare knew well how to negotiate, knew just how far intimacy could be pushed. Beth observed the Cellinis, every detail. She felt jealousy and yearning. She wanted more than ever to be a part of the family, to be Laura's sister. And because Cesare loved this funny little American, Laura adopted Beth, lending Beth her beautiful clothes (much more classic in style than Bea's of-the-moment fashions) and skis, inviting her to stay with her in Milan, including her with girlfriends on shopping excursions to Florence. Laura, too, was studying economics at the Bocconi. She was behind Cesare but catching up while also, simultaneously, studying fashion. Her ambition was to design stockings and tights for women. In her apartment she had dozens of mannequin legs dressed with sumptuous silk samples. She had an adoring boyfriend, whom her parents fawned over, sending them back to Milan with food enough to last a week so that they'd be well fed and not need to worry about interrupting their studies. Jackson would never have saved Beth from clowns—perhaps that was a good thing, but Beth couldn't help but envy the fact that Giovanni Paolo would drop everything for Laura. Beth watched their relationship, watched how this confident girl, filled with good humor, could melt the hardened man in a way that Cesare never could. Signor Cellini would never raise his voice with her; he would never doubt her abilities with her studies. Sometimes Beth wished that Laura could take the baton from Cesare and take over the family's march across time.

  The Sri Lankan maid was in love with a middle-aged Italian man who still lived with his mother. Because of her brown Sri Lankan coloring, the mother forbade the marriage. They married anyway at a small church in the town of Porta dei Miracoli (Gate of Miracles) near the train station. Cesare served as witness and then paid for the banquet he had arranged in the station's trattoria. Bottles of wine were opened as trains rumbled by; the wedding party celebrated amid a flurry of passengers, everyone smoking. They dined on risotto con funghi porcini. A man played some romantic music on a guitar. Cesare presided with grace and like a brother because the Sri Lankan maid had had no one else. He lifted a glass of champagne to the bride and groom. "To outsmarting fate," he said. The train station had been the bride's choice; she wanted to be able to flee should her husband's mother try to intervene.

  Elena, with her friends—Cat in particular, skin permanently tanned and bejeweled—spoke of the American, making predictions on the course the relationship would run. Elena was lovely with Beth because she was Cesare's girlfriend, but the possibility of Beth scared her, too. She was not afraid of Beth remaining in Cesare's life so much as of Beth somehow being capable of taking him away. What mother wants to lose her child? "She is a kind girl," Signora Cellini said. "Though her manners are atrocious." Elena felt at once bad and liberated for saying that. The girl would start eating before everyone else, catch herself, and stop; she would sop her sauce with a piece of bread; she would pull apart her bread so that crumbs left a mess at her setting. "Perhaps she doesn't understand the way we do things here."

  "This relationship will pass," Cat said, identifying Elena's concern with the same precision and authority with which she identified the passion in Valeria's eyes in the Cellini fresco. "And if it doesn't pass, I assure you that son of yours will never leave Città. He is not capable. He has everything here. He is someone here. Do you think he wants to be an immigrant starting from nothing with nothing? Who wants to do that but unfortunates with nothing to lose?"

  "Si, si, é vero," Elena would admit, encouraged by her friend. But Cat and all the friends wondered what it was that drew Cesare to the American girl, who was cute, perhaps, though a bit awkward, with features just a little too big for the face that held them.

  From the finely spun and colored glass of the Venetian chandelier suspended above the Cellini's dining table dangled an ugly plastic buzzer that Signora Cellini pressed when she needed service. Service, Beth would come to understand, had a higher status than aesthetics. There was also a button hidden beneath the table that she could push discreetly with her foot. "Prego?" the maids would ask when beckoned. Accidentally, they were called when Signora Cellini learned that Beth was not christened. A nervous gesture, the button-pushing, and the maids descended and Signora Cellini crossed her chest and promised Beth that she would help her fix things. "Cara mia, cara mia, " she kept saying. All the commotion scared Beth, who hadn't quite understood (or couldn't quite believe) that christening could be this significant. "But what's wrong?" she asked, pushing her chair back from the table, truly stricken as if Cesare's mother had spotted the devil emerging from her. "Mamma, please," Cesare said, standing up to calm his mother with a wide embrace.

  Beth was as susceptible as any girl to the desire to please a potential mother-in-law. Simply put, Beth wanted Elena to love her, love her like a daughter the way that Bea's parents did. But for all her generosity and innocence, Elena had a strong reserve. She didn't let people in very easily. Beth wanted to be let in. She wondered, once alone with time to think, if Elena would warm to her more if she were christened.

  "I might like to be christened," Beth said to Cesare. When she really thought about it though, she realized that she didn't even know the difference between christening and baptizing (perhaps it had something to do with full immersion?) or if there was even a difference. Beth was woefully lacking in any religious education. And it is said that America is the most religious country in the world! She did know that babies were christened, in the Catholic Church anyway, to absolve original sin and that concept she couldn't abide by or get around. A little baby, sinful? And she told Cesare so.

  "It's only a metaphor," he said, stroking her hair, wishing she wouldn't take this all so seriously. He didn't. He never went to church or thought much about being Catholic.

  "A metaphor for what?"

  "Non importa," he said. "This is not important. Just think, her name is Elena. Elena was the mother of Constantine who because of her made Christianity legal." What Beth didn't tell him was that she wanted to find a way to make Elena love her. Then she thought about her father, about his love for her, how he loved to allow her her freedom to shape herself, to see what emerged on its own. She missed her father. Sometimes she missed him so absolutely she thought she would fly home to Claire and never leave. Sometimes she hated Jackson for his stubborn inability to leave Claire and visit her. She wondered if she were to die would he come to her then?

  Sometimes Cesare would look at Beth and try to imagine her on her farm with her father. Who would she be there? What would h
er father be like? Who would Cesare become there? He knew Jackson was a big man with a big presence, that he liked fun and drama and would loan his land to groups of people who would stage reenactments of battles from the Revolutionary War. Troops in red coats and blue coats shot off cannons and artillery in Claire's fields as all the people living there sat on the deck, cheering for one side or the other. Beth's grandmother cheered for England. Jackson always wanted to barter for the loan of the land the way he bartered with the Amish for butchering his livestock. Plenty needed doing at the farm. Beth, instead, would make the reenactors pay. It had been her job since childhood to see to it that her father didn't give too much away.

  Jackson wrote his daughter twice a week without fail, sending her small things from the farm: a dried soybean, a chicken feather, a red maple leaf in the fall. She knew the only way to have a relationship with him that was deep and meaningful would be for her to make her life at Claire, and she knew as well that she could never do that; for her that choice was not freedom, and she knew as well that her father understood this quite clearly. As it was with the others who came and left Claire, the decision was hers, and he would not judge it or interfere with it. Not returning to live at Claire, Beth realized, was as clear a path to her as not leaving Città was for Cesare, though neither could fully admit that yet.