Incontinent on the Continent

by Jane Christmas

  “God, Mom,” I groaned wearily under my breath as I eased her into the chair. “I don’t think he’s with the Taliban.”

  “HE’S WITH THE TALIBAN?” she shouted.

  Something to remember: There is only one speaking volume used by the hearing impaired.

  I gave a sideways glance to the glowering porter and mouthed the word “sorry,” then raised my index finger to my ear and made a few circular motions before pointing to the back of Mom’s head. He accepted this with grudging understanding, gripped the handles of the wheelchair tightly, and led us through customs.

  Our flight to Bari was not leaving from Gatwick Airport; it was leaving from Stansted Airport, a fair distance away.

  Luckily my beau lives in London. He was only too happy to be our taxi.

  As I wheeled Mom out the door of customs, I spied Colin’s lanky frame leaning on the metal barricade, an ever-present newspaper rolled up in his hands. Colin waved and beamed at us. I returned a look that was all rolled eyes and grim face.

  “She’s grouchy; lousy f light,” I muttered as Colin and I kissed.

  He pulled gently away from me and crouched down in front of my mother.

  “Hello there, Val.” Colin spoke kindly, slightly upping the volume of his soft voice for Mom’s benefit. “How was your flight?”

  “It was lovely, absolutely perfect,” she chirped, flashing a multiwatt smile.

  He looked at me questioningly.

  I shrugged. What can I say? The woman lies.

  “I’ll get the car and bring it round to the front of the terminal,” he said. “Then we’ll go for lunch.”

  Then he repeated this a bit louder for my mother’s benefit:

  “Are you hungry, Val? I know a nice little pub on the way to Stansted that I think you’ll like.”

  “Wonderful!” she beamed.

  He looked at me for confirmation. I smiled and nodded.

  “Oh, he’s a nice man, Jane,” she said approvingly as Colin hurried away. “So cheerful. And tidy looking. I do like his hair.”

  In the forty years I have been on and off the dating circuit, Colin is the only man my mother has liked. Well, there was another guy she sort of liked, way back when I was a teenager.

  He was a drug user and a groper. She didn’t know that, of course.

  “Is Colin coming to Italy with us?” she asked.

  “No, but he’s coming in a few weeks when we get to Viterbo,” I said, wheeling her outside the terminal and scanning the sidewalk for a wheelchair ramp. I tried to channel Colin’s patience. “Remember? We’ve discussed that a few times now.”

  She stared ahead, and I could see the cogs in her brain churning to retrieve the information.

  Colin’s pale silvery-green car pulled up to the curb. I immediately pulled the luggage off the cart and began to stuff it into the hatchback. With an air of slight annoyance I stuck my head around the back end of the car to see why Colin was taking so long to help me. There he was, carefully helping my mother into the front seat of his car and ensuring that she was comfortable and that her arms and legs were safely tucked inside before he closed the car door. This is one reason why I love this man: He has his priorities straight.

  “I didn’t think she’d be able to get into the backseat,” he said, joining me at the back of the car. “Sorry.”

  He stole another kiss. I ran a hand through his gray-flecked ginger hair.

  “Nice to see you,” he smiled. “You look stressed. Everything ok?”

  “It’s my first time travelling with a disabled person,” I said.

  “Plus she’s my mother, and she’s crazy. I don’t know how I’m going to handle this.”

  “She seems fine to me,” he said. “Really chipper and lucid.

  C’mon. Let’s get some lunch.”

  I squeezed into the backseat, and off we drove.

  It was a relief to be in the backseat. It meant I could relinquish my responsibilities for a while. Colin and Mom were bantering between themselves, and I was about to nod off when...

  “But all the immigrants! I’ve never seen so many. Where would we be without them!”

  “Mom! Stop it!”

  “She’s so sensitive about this,” Mom said, shaking her head and confiding to Colin as if I weren’t there. “I just don’t understand her. Anyway, there were immigrants everywhere. ”

  “You’re an immigrant, too,” I said, smiling through clenched teeth.

  “I’m different,” she snorted.

  Naturally. It is the considered opinion of all immigrants that the immigration door should have been bolted after they were let in.

  “What do you think of all the colored people at airports?” she pressed Colin.

  I emitted a painful groan.

  “Mom, Colin travels a lot. And he lives in London, which, believe it or not, has ‘colored’ people.”

  “I don’t believe I was talking to you, dear,” she said in a singsong cadence as she cast me a Hyacinth Bucket smile— the one that is part pity, part shut the hell up.

  Colin gripped the steering wheel tighter—I could see the whites of his knuckles—and from the slight rev of the engine I knew he was surreptitiously pressing down on the accelerator pedal.

  AFTER A cozy lunch at the Goose and Turd—or something like that—Colin delivered us to Stansted Airport and kissed us good-bye before we handed ourselves over once again to the indignities of an airport security check.

  I had booked our flight from London to Bari over the Internet for the astonishingly low price of thirty-nine pence per person. The cost didn’t include taxes or luggage premiums but it did, I’m happy to report, include the wings for the plane.

  It also included a chance to engage with a swarm of humanity the likes of which I hope never to experience again.

  By the time we arrived in the departure lounge, our fellow Ryanair passengers were straining the flimsy fabric barrier of the preboarding corral. Some were practically crouched in a starting position, ready to make a mad dash across the tarmac to the plane as soon as the boarding announcement was made.

  A steward noticed my wheelchair-bound mom, and then me, cowering in the midst of the foaming-mouthed horde.

  “Might wanna move ’er over ’ere, luv,” the steward said. She bulldozed a path for us to the front of the line and, with a grim nod, added, “You get priority boarding.”

  The horde seemed to take great umbrage with this concession.

  Priority boarding among this group was a dubious advantage. It basically granted you a head start and a count of ten.

  “I suggest you move smartly, luv,” said the steward, lowering her voice and giving me a knowing look of raised eyebrows and pursed lips. She unhooked the fabric barricade and let us through. The other passengers surged forward. The last I heard from the steward was a loud thwacking sound and her booming voice. “’Ere! Get back you lot!”

  I pushed the wheelchair onto the tarmac and began walking briskly toward the plane. I looked back nervously several times to make sure the other passengers were still securely held in place. We were halfway to the plane when it became apparent that permission to board had been granted to one and all. It looked like a prison break.

  I stepped up my pace. OK, I won’t mince words: I was running for dear life. Mom clutched our purses to her breast.

  As we neared the plane, two ground crew workers intercepted us and hustled us into a wheelchair elevator. It lifted off and raised us to the airplane door just as the mob arrived, out of breath with their ties flopped over their shoulders and their hair and eyeglasses wildly askew.

  “Ha, ha! Suckers!” I chuckled to myself in a victorious James Bond sort of way.

  We grabbed our seats aboard the plane, and soon the silver beast was roaring down the runway toward a late afternoon sky streaked with the fading light of day.

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. We were on our way to Italy. Finally.

  There have been times in my life when I have felt
Italian to the depths of my soul, where the cells belonging to heritage reside. I do not possess a smidgen of Italian blood, yet whenever I hear Italian spoken on the street, my heart catches; whenever I hear Puccini’s La Bohème or Gianni Schicchi, I am overwhelmed to the point of tears; whenever I observe Italian families walking arm in arm or huddled in serious discussion around the meat counter debating the merits of one brand of prosciutto over another, my soul swells with happiness knowing that all is right with the world and that Italy is the last line of defense between those whose passion is political and religious fanaticism and those whose passion is living.

  When I would hit the valleys of a roller-coaster life and wonder what, aside from my children, there was worth living for, my mind would default to a series of clichéd images of Italy that shuddered into action like an old film reel—boisterous families gathered beneath a pergola of grape vines around a table laden with baskets of home-baked bread and bowls of fresh pasta, tomatoes, leafy greens, and fruit; a searing band of sunlight slashing through olive branches; red wine in raffia-wrapped bottles; an aerial view of a sports car zipping along a narrow, winding seawall road on a bright, clear day.

  “Yes,” I would sigh to myself as I quietly put away the razor blades. “There’s still Italy.”

  After five decades of pining, this was a long-awaited visit to my true homeland. I wanted to experience what Stendhal meant when he said, “The charm of Italy is akin to that of being in love.”

  Through one of the plane’s windows I saw the twinkling lights along the Adriatic coast come into view. I was on the verge of slipping into a state of profound contentment when...

  “Did you ask about a wheelchair?” Mom asked as the plane’s wheels bounced on the tarmac of Bari’s airport.

  Christ. The wheelchair again.

  “Yes,” I assured her with a forced smile.

  “I don’t see one out there,” she clucked, peering through the window to scan the runway.

  “Well, it is nighttime so it would be difficult to see a wheelchair,” I said. “Just be patient.” I bit back the urge to add, “Your Majesty.”

  Portable stairs were wheeled up to the plane, and the able-bodied passengers shoved, elbowed, swore, and kicked their way off the plane as if someone had shouted “sars!”

  Mom and I remained in our seats. A few rows ahead sat a woman with her leg in a cast.

  Four airport workers appeared onboard with a single wheelchair. Mom struggled to her feet and was about to make a hasty beeline for them when I grabbed the back of her pants and pulled her back in her seat.

  “If you do that they’ll think that you really don’t need a wheelchair,” I whispered sternly.

  “But what about . . . ?”

  “Just. Wait.”

  The crew gingerly moved the young woman from her seat to the wheelchair, then proceeded to discuss her injury (a broken knee) and how they were going to get her off the plane.

  The woman was accompanied by an older man who might have been her father, though you can never tell these days. She explained in Italian to the crew that her injury—a fall— had occurred in England. A vociferous discussion ensued. I did not understand everything but gathered they were talking about the English medical system and whether English surgeons were capable of properly resetting a broken bone.

  There were lots of furrowed brows, flailing arms, gesturing hands, shaking heads, and pointing fingers aimed at the young woman’s cast. It was like performance art.

  Italians love problems and puzzles. Everyone is a closet Galileo who believes he or she alone holds the key to enlightenment on any subject. If you are brave enough to dispute someone’s solution or opinion, he (or she) will shrug his shoulders as if to say, “Suit yourself, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Ah, the utter loveliness of hearing people converse in Italian, I thought.

  Mom, meanwhile, was getting impatient. She gave a little cough to get their attention.

  “Momento,” a crew member replied tersely, and the group resumed their discussion.

  About ten minutes later, having exhausted the subject and any possible solutions, the crew turned their eyes to my mother.

  They finally twigged to the bigger problem—two disabled women, one wheelchair. Another heated discussion arose. Finally, the fellow who seemed to be in charge of the crew said something to one of his coworkers, a tall, dark-haired, strapping young man, and gestured to my mother.

  The woman in the cast was wheeled into a portable elevator that had materialized at the cabin door while the young man strode over to my mother and, with great gentleness and purpose, took her hand and walked her to the lift. He held her hand during the descent in the elevator, he held her hand as he walked her into a second portable lift that lowered her to the tarmac, and he continued to hold her hand as he patiently and slowly walked her across the tarmac to the terminal. I suppose they had decided that as long as someone was holding her hand, my mother could magically walk better.

  A baggage handler had spotted my mother’s metallic-red walker in the luggage compartment of the plane and had placed it on the tarmac.

  The young man left my mother’s side and joined the baggage handler. Together they valiantly struggled with the packing tape and a shoulder strap from an old carry-on bag, which had held the walker tightly throughout our journey.

  “I did a good job tying that, didn’t I?” Mom whispered to me proudly.

  Suddenly, the walker sprang from its bounds and into position. Mom toddled unsteadily toward it like a child who suddenly spies a favorite toy.

  The young man placed his hand under my mother’s elbow while she pushed her walker. He took us through passport control and to our waiting luggage.

  “Do you think he’ll stay with us for the entire holiday?”

  Mom tittered. “He’s very handsome, isn’t he? I like his hair.

  Should I give him a little something? He seems to be waiting for a tip.”

  While the young man sat impassively with my mother it was left to me to heave our luggage off the baggage carousel, drag it over to the rental car counter, and haul it all through the parking lot while trying to locate our rental car.

  “Really, someone should be helping you,” admonished Mom when she caught up to me, having finally bid ciao to her handsome attendant. She had managed to find time to touch up her lipstick and face powder.

  “Unfortunately, airports do not offer Italian stallions to single, able-bodied, middle-aged women,” I grumbled.

  I loaded our two large, heavy suitcases, our two carry-on bags, and my mother’s red walker into the backseat of the rental car, a silver Ford Focus station wagon that shone under the glare of a nearby street lamp. Three men stood nearby, idly watching me, dragging on their cigarettes.

  I slid in behind the wheel and started up the car. I placed Mom’s disabled parking permit, which she had brought with her from Canada, onto the dashboard, and also retrieved from my purse the directions to Alberobello, about an hour and a half from the airport.

  Two weeks before we left for Italy I had awakened in the middle of the night in a sweat-soaked panic, overcome with fear about the prospect of driving in Italy. I had sprung out of bed, dashed downstairs, and Googled “driving in Italy,” which led to sites that either described the experience as insane (confirming my fears) or not so bad (confirming Google’s unreliability). I focused on the former and perused information about petrol stations, how to pump gas, horror stories about dealing with masses of directional signs, Kafkaesque roundabouts, and the nuances of Italian highway etiquette. None of what I found put my mind at ease.

  I telephoned a friend who had rented a car in Italy a few years earlier.

  “Are you an aggressive driver?” he asked.

  I was unsure whether it was wise to ask him to define “aggressive.”

  A survey by Britain’s Automobile Association ranked Italy as the second-worst country for bad drivers (the honor of first place goes to Spain). There
was also the worrying fact that nearly 5,500 people had been killed in Italy the previous year in traffic accidents. That’s the sort of statistic that makes you wonder whether a travel advisory ought to be issued.

  It was bad enough that I was driving in Italy, but to do so after a transatlantic flight and late at night was exceedingly reckless. It took three attempts to locate the on-ramp to the highway, but after that, to my surprise and relief, driving in Italy proved no different than driving at home. Within minutes of hitting the autostrada I was passing other vehicles with confidence.

  Then we got lost.

  “Where’s the map?” I asked.

  Mom began to slowly and delicately unfold the road map we had been given at the car rental kiosk.

  “You’re supposed to be my copilot. Don’t you think your first duty should be to unfold the map?”

  “Don’t snap at me,” she retorted. “Why don’t you stop at this gas station and ask directions?”

  “First, it’s closed. Second, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in Italy. They speak Italian; we don’t.”

  “I’m sure they understand English,” she said. “My friends told me everyone speaks English in Italy.”

  “Your friends were on a seniors’ coach tour,” I reminded her. “They only visited places that get a deluge of English-speaking tourists.”

  The farther we drove, the less sure I was of where we were. We followed signs to a five-star resort that was deserted except for a suspicious-looking man who was wandering the grounds. I collared him nonetheless. He spoke less English than I speak Italian, but I got the gist of what he was saying, and in short order we arrived at a road that got us on the right track.

  Then we got lost again.

  “There’s a place that’s open. Ask directions,” said Mom.

  “No. I don’t like the look of that place.”

  “Look, there’s a gas station that’s open. Just pull in there, and I’ll ask.”

  “No!”

  “Honestly, I’ve never met anyone so stubborn! You’re just like your father.”