L'America

by Martha McPhee

  "Cesare?" she said, opening her eyes in the dark. "Are you wearing a tuxedo?"

  "Do I look like a movie star?"

  "My movie star." Red lights from the street striped her face. Her hair was messy, her teeth unbrushed. Then suddenly sitting up: "What's wrong?"

  "I want you to get dressed," he said. "The car's waiting downstairs."

  "Where are we going?"

  "Las Vegas."

  "To do what?"

  "To get married." He had a good friend from Città who fell in love with a duke from Milan. When she was twenty-four, the duke flew her to America, to Las Vegas, and married her in a little chapel there. It was a surprise. Beth had always found the story very romantic, and Cesare knew that.

  "What's wrong?" she asked again. She had the sense that something big was coming. She was afraid. She was wide awake now. She had the urge to yell at him, to tell him he had been lazy, that he had not tried, that he had never given it a chance. She knew him absolutely, knew where he was headed.

  And then he said very simply, "I don't know who I am."

  Much later, the year 1997. Beth is eight months pregnant with Valeria. She's sitting in a row of three seats at a discount store. The store is not far from Claire in Pennsylvania. Beth and Preveena are Christmas shopping. Preveena has asked a saleswoman to check the price of an untagged item she wants to buy: an Italian knitted newborn outfit for Valeria. "It's only worth it if it's cheap," Beth has advised, and Preveena disappears to find the saleswoman. Beth now is sitting by herself near the cashiers. Sun streams through the glass, warming her neck. She's wearing a floor-length sheepskin coat and black pants with large white flowers all over them, boots, and a black sweater that neatly covers her belly. She is tired from the weight of the baby and its incessant kicking.

  "Are you Italian?" A tall older man appears before her, looking down at her. He has a closely shaved face spotted with nicks and tracks of dried blood. He sits down. His breath is bad.

  "No," she says. But she is flattered.

  "You look Italian." She wants to ask what it is about her that appears Italian. She thinks, All those years made me into something that I am.

  "Parlo Italiano pero'."

  "Di dov'e' Lei?"

  "Ho passato qualche anno a Città la Venice quand'ero giovane."

  "When you were young?" He laughs. "You're young now." She smiles, flattered again. "I grew up in Trieste in northeast Italy but I left after the war. Nearly fifty years ago. There was no work there."

  "More time here than there," she says. She turns her head slightly away from his because she doesn't like looking at his shaving scabs and smelling his breath.

  "Città is near Milano," he says. "I'll tell you a dirty joke in Milanese, but I won't translate it for you." He begins his joke. It comes out fast in an unfamiliar dialect. The only words she recognizes are "woman" and "snow." When he finishes he looks at her and laughs. "I won't translate it. You're too pretty to hear it." Again she's flattered. "I got a job two days after arriving in America," he says. "Working for the government. I speak four languages: German, French, Italian, and English. In Columbus, Ohio." She wonders what he's doing in a depressed shopping mall in Snyder County, Pennsylvania.

  "Do you ever go back to Italy?" she asks.

  "Every two years," he says. "I want to go back there permanently. I miss Italy."

  "That's one country that is easy to miss," Beth says. A short while ago she ate a clementine and her hands smell of the fruit and the smell alone brings back all of Italy, of eating them endlessly at Christmastime, the silver bowls of them, of skiing in the Alps, in the Dolomites, of bars made from snowdrifts with bottles of alcohol chilling in them, of skiing for a week and never on the same trail, of the huts high in the mountains serving goulash and polenta, of waltzing in ski boots in the early evening, chilled and stiff from the slopes, warming up with hot toddies.

  "My wife's American and her sister is handicapped so unless she dies soon we'll never be able to go back. She needs us. She can't move a limb. Completely paralyzed. She can't do anything without us."

  Beth wants to ask what happened to her, but doesn't. "I'm sorry," she says instead, and looks around for Preveena. At the register a long line has formed.

  "During the war I was in a concentration camp," the man says, and turns to Beth so that she can't avoid looking away from him, so that his eyes latch on to hers. She feels the baby move, kicking her little feet into her belly, pressing her head against her bladder. Beth shifts in her seat. The sun continues to prick against her neck.

  "In northern Italy I was in the camp. My father didn't agree with Fascism, wouldn't support Mussolini. My father was killed. He would never tell us who we were. I still have a sister over there. My brother was killed by the Germans. My town has recently erected a statue honoring my brother, and I want to go back and see it."

  His breath is horrendous. He still has her eye. The baby continues to kick. Beth's not sure what she is listening to.

  "I don't know who I am," he says, not in an existential way. Rather he says it directly, as a matter of fact. She thinks of Cesare in her small New York City apartment years ago, there in his tuxedo, wanting to cry, wanting her to somehow be the answer, thinks of herself in Italy.

  "I want to go back and ask questions. I want to know who I am. My father and brother were killed by Nazis. I was in a concentration camp. My father hated Fascism. He didn't want us to know who we are. I don't know who I am. America has allowed me to hide."

  The line at the register is now very long. Beth hopes the little knitted suit for Valeria will be too expensive because she doesn't want to wait for that line.

  "I think we're Jewish, but our father didn't want us to know that."

  Women pluck at the racks and racks and racks of discounted clothes. What is this story? She thinks of Cesare again. "I don't know who I am." She wonders if Cesare knows who he is today. Is this what he would have said fifty years later, after a lifetime in America? Preveena appears, beautiful as ever in her sari.

  "They even sell olive oil here," Preveena says, flashing Beth a bottle.

  "It'll be no good," the man offers.

  "Surely," Beth agrees.

  "But it says first cold-press," Preveena says.

  "It says," the man mocks, but not in an unkind manner.

  Scented soaps stack a table near the door. "I'll be right back," Preveena says. Preveena will be the closest thing that Valeria will have to a grandmother. Again, she disappears into the mess of the store. So much ugliness, Beth notes. After Beth dies, Jackson won't even be able to leave Claire to come to the memorials in New York City. Preveena will. Years later, thinking of Preveena, Cesare will understand that she set herself free. Ironically, Claire allowed Preveena to do so.

  "Beautiful woman," the man says.

  "She is," Beth acknowledges.

  "We got our revenge. We got it, indeed we did. I could be Jewish but our father needed to protect us from that. If we didn't know it, we wouldn't have to pretend. We got our revenge up there in northern Italy in a part of Italy that's now Croatia. Those Germans came." He says the name of a place, but the name is unfamiliar to Beth.

  Why is the man telling her his story? Cesare's father never let him forget who he was; the whole family kept itself alive with its history.

  "They came and we mowed them down with our guns. We shot every single one of those Nazis. We didn't take any prisoners. Not a one. We killed them all. Killed them with the guns and when they were dead..."

  Preveena appears with the little knit jumper, a fine knit for summer with a linen collar. On the collar are little figures—bears and boats. She's smiling triumphantly.

  "Only five ninety-nine," she says softly, and gives a can-you-believe-it expression. The man is still talking; the shoppers are still shopping. Preveena gets into the long line. Beth shifts uncomfortably in her seat. The sun burns her neck.

  "We got our revenge. They all died. We weren't going to take prisoners."
<
br />   She thinks of Cesare. He did not have to leave his country for a job. His father, for a short time, had been a Fascist. Was it to escape, a means of survival, a way to preserve all that history? Indeed, had Cesare left Italy he would have had no job. Where would she be if she had moved to Italy?

  "We didn't even bury those men. We wouldn't have let their bodies come near our graveyards where our good people lay. Not even a chance. You know what we did with them? You want to know? We threw their bodies like trash into the woods. Into the woods above the hills of grass where we shot them. Dumped them like trash. Not alongside our bodies would they lay. Not a chance. I'll go back and ask questions and I'll understand who I am. Sei bella, veramente." You're beautiful, you are. He traces her cheek with his thumb, a fatherly gesture of tenderness, the way Bea's father used to do.

  ***

  "I don't know who I am," Cesare said that night, looking dashing in his tuxedo, his dark hair receding at the temples. He undressed her, lifted her nightgown over her head. She undid the buttons of his shirt, slipped off his vest, unfastened his cuff links. She took his limp penis and sucked it until it filled her mouth. He imagined this was how she did it with all those boys. He touched her the way he imagined all those boys had touched her. He rolled her over almost violently, made her cry a little by withholding his fingers. Her front side pressed into the mattress, her arms splayed out above her head. He lay on her back, came in from behind, the way he imagined the boys had done. He wanted to hate her. She loved what he was doing to her. More, she pleaded. The summer night was not too hot but warm and sticky anyway. She wanted him. She was eager. She would do anything for him. It was this behavior he imagined she had learned from some of the college boys, daring, free American boys who didn't need to know who they were yet, who had time to figure it out, had choice to help them. Cesare told her what he saw her doing with other boys. He wanted to know the details. He asked her to tell him. He wanted to hear about her with others. They made him want her more; he needed reason to want her more.

  September 2001: Cesare sits in the velvet chair beneath Cellini's fresco. The light in the bulb suspended above the painting goes out slowly, the light rising from floor to ceiling until it vanishes completely, causing the illusion of the cloud seeming to suck the figure of the artist into it, seeming to swallow him whole.

  Isabella sleeps. Leonardo sleeps. In the morning Isabella will oversee the construction of a pool at Fiori. Delays have guaranteed that the pool will be ready in time for winter. The room is utterly black now. At the edges of the curtains the night is a shade lighter, adding not light but definition to the area. Cesare imagines his wife and son. Leonardo snuggles into the warmth of his mother's back. His small arms wrap around her thin waist. They're breathing each other in. Her dreams are filled with concerns about the pool. Even the idea of a pool had been forbidden when Cesare's father lived. Isabella is walking the line of preservation and perseverance. She knows the importance of continuity, but she adores her husband, his whims and ideas. She has the role and responsibility now to carry forward the Cellini line. Cesare sees Beth. She is poised at the top of a ski slope in a maroon down jacket, one size too big, about to begin her first race. She has only recently begun to ski. She is eighteen years old. Her hair is in braids peeking out from beneath an old wool hat that is orange and clashes with her jacket. He thinks he will buy her a hat for Christmas.

  In Cesare's chest is a ball. The ball has dimensions. It is large, basketball-size, possibly awkward—football-size. Heavy. Impossibly heavy, made of lead. It sits there, anchoring him to the velvet chair. He thinks of Isabella in the morning, fresh from a peaceful sleep, peeling her fruit. He thinks of Leonardo eager for the day, all expectation and boisterous energy. His little guy doesn't yet know the meaning of fear, of anything beyond desire. His little guy looks like Cesare with his thick dark hair and his bright, hopeful eyes. His little guy, he knows, will be a solvent for the lead in his chest, following Cesare around as he does, all ambition to learn. His little guy—Cesare had not known the possibilities of love, the contortions and odd shapes it could take and make.

  He thinks of Beth on the ski slope in Cortina in the L. L. Bean jacket. She is embarrassed by it, he imagines, perhaps because he is embarrassed himself by it. Her father gave it to her when she was ten, a few sizes too large so she would be able to grow into it, have it for a while. She has had it for eight years and has not fully grown into it. They are staying with Francesca and her fiance in their slope-side villa. Ski in; ski out. No need to carry skis. Francesca has an Ellesse ski suit and the latest up-to-date skis, K2s. For after ski, dopo sci as it is called, Francesca has a floor-length sheepskin and big white furry boots to keep her feet warm. She looks as cute as a button, more fur about her face, mink shaped into a hat. Beth will admire her on the evening streets of Cortina, alive with Austrians waltzing in their ski boots and drinking hot lemons, a light snow just beginning to fall. Standing there in the same maroon jacket she had used for skiing, Beth will observe Francesca with those keen eyes, compare herself to Francesca, then she'll pull the zipper of her coat up a little higher and stand a little taller. Watching Beth, Cesare will also want to buy her a floor-length sheepskin. He'll want everything for her—new skis, new clothes, new coats, new jewelry. He'll want to transform her, make her feel apart, make her Italian, make her like Francesca—not because he wants her to be Francesca, but because he wants her to deserve the same.

  But now Beth is on the slope at the race's starting gate. This is her first race. It's a foggy day. He can see her from where he stands alongside the gate and he can see the top portion of the course and a few of the posts she'll slalom around. She's using his father's old skis. The race begins. She starts off well. She's fast and determined, well positioned, tucked and low to the ground. She picks up speed easily. He wants to get her new gloves as well; she's wearing a pair of his sister's gloves. What does it mean to Beth to be staying with his old girlfriend in her mountainside villa, watching her in all her privilege?

  In the morning Isabella will talk about the details of the pool. Just a few days ago Beth had a thriving career in restaurants and food and cookbooks. He's searched her on the Internet, read reviews, learned about financial gains and fiascos. He's seen recipes from her books, one in particular, pasta carbonara—his recipe from Greece long ago, made with bacon because pancetta could not be found—makes him smile. In all this he understands how permanently Italy and he himself are in her. He can no longer see Valeria or the party hanging above him, just a darkness that has two shades to it. In the morning he will take Leonardo to school, go with Isabella to Fiori, and then to work, where he will attend to the business of making more money off of feet. In the morning Beth's Valeria will rise to another day without her mother. So long ago he wanted to steal Beth, protect her from her dreams, make her his own. A thief, he had wanted to rob her of ambition and desire. What if he had? What if? Those two little words.

  He saw then as she went down the slope, vanishing into the fog that swallowed her, zipping around those posts (she came in second, by the way), he saw again as she walked to the restaurant that evening beside Francesca, who was wrapped in all her fur and wealth, that what he had admired in Beth was her abandon, a willingness, an eagerness, a need, a desire to abandon everything and all for what she wanted, for what she set her mind on. (For a while she had set her mind on him.) It was somehow written on her simply in the coat: the coat was given to her by her father; she loved her father; it kept her warm; she didn't need to look like Francesca—she needed to look like herself. It was this abandon of pretension, of self, that he cherished, and he knew, as he saw her disappear down the hill, that he would be forever envious of, always wrestling with (indeed, hiding from), the desire to surrender to that abandon.

  She drops him off outside the TWA terminal at JFK. She kisses him. She holds on to him tightly as if she can pull him into her forever, but he has pulled away like old paint peeling from a wall, somehow stuck but no
t stuck. He is rising into those clouds, pulled by the ugly claw and whatever you want it to stand for. He tries, unconvincingly, to reassure her. The night in her apartment he cried. Once he stopped crying it was as if he had made a vow to himself that he would never cry again for her or for childish romantic notions.

  A reserve spreads across his face now. He seems eager to be gone. His demeanor shapes into something formal and foreign. "Good-bye," he says. "Good-bye?" she asks. The way he says the word is like addio, a final farewell—to God we go. She hangs on to him. He tells her it's going to be fine. Then he is gone, his back to her as he disappears into the odd wave-shaped terminal. And she knows that having had their dream, they will not meet again. It is their fate, just as the train dividing in the Spanish night was their fate. Every one of us has our bitter stories.