Incontinent on the Continent

by Jane Christmas

  “I’ll bet that’s the market,” I said to Mom. “I’ll let you out here, and once I find a parking spot I’ll catch up with you.”

  I stopped the car to let her out, then jumped out myself to unpack her walker from the back of the station wagon, set it up, and help her and the walker mount the curb. Then I got back into the car and drove off in search of a parking spot.

  We had only been in Italy a couple of days, and already I was resenting the responsibility of driving and parking. Usually when I travel, I am free as a butterfly. I am more likely to be on foot and can stop and start, linger or jet off when the mood strikes. Not on this trip. I was responsible not only for my mother and her walker but also for our rental car, for finding our way around, for negotiating things in Italian, for deciding the itinerary, for, hell, even when and where to eat. I have on occasion been characterized as a control freak (usually by an ex-husband), and my reasonable response was always, “Well, someone has to be!” But truthfully, the accusation was patently unfair. I would kill—kill—to be led around by the nose for at least a week or so and have someone else take control of the day-to-day responsibilities.

  By the time I caught up to Mom, she had already scuttled halfway through the market. She and that red walker of hers can really fly.

  The market was crammed with vendors selling every conceivable item: clothing of questionable style and vintage, plastic bins, small appliances, leather or leather-looking purses (I was not tempted to take a closer look), duvets and comforters sporting large, unattractive floral patterns in faded pastels, and various household gadgets that, while likely useful, lacked esthetic charm.

  Mom and I stood out like greenhorns among the legion of local women, some who were weathered of face, with kerchiefs tied under their chins and dressed in Italy’s national color— black, others who were younger and wore smart-looking jeans but who, if such facial expressions as narrowed eyes and furrowed brows offer a window on a person’s lifestyle, endured hardworking lives and scant resources. They wandered by the stalls, casting looks of profound indifference at the wares displayed, occasionally poking and prodding an item as if taunting the vendors, who would then leap to their feet and launch into their sales pitch, which most certainly included the phrase, “Today, everything is 30 percent off.”

  In this crowd my mother was easy to spot. She wore beige slacks with a matching zip-front jacket. She was the only blonde in the crowd—Italian women dye their hair dark until their dying day—and she was pushing a metallic-red walker, a rare and novel contraption in these parts judging by the number of turned heads.

  Picking up the scent of fresh ignorant tourists, the vendors upped their volume and come-ons. Some made endearing attempts to speak English in the hope of coaxing Mom and me closer. I was tempted to try out what small amount of Italian I knew, but any skills I possessed (or even thought I possessed) now seemed patently inadequate.

  We were making our way along the narrow concourse of stalls when we came upon a small medieval church in the middle of a small piazza. We were about to enter it when my ears pricked up at the sound of two women speaking English. I sidled closer to them to be certain my ears hadn’t deceived me and then dove onto them as if they were long-lost relatives.

  “You speak English!” I said, with perhaps a tad too much enthusiasm. A raft of questions tumbled from my mouth. “Can you explain this place to us? Why do entire towns shut down midweek? How do we find our way around?”

  The women were from Scotland but had been holidaying in these parts for many years, the jolly one with dark hair, protruding teeth, and a chubby smile told me. The other, of slight build with spiky, gray hair and a severe expression, never spoke.

  “We’ve just purchased a trullo,” the chubby one gushed in a thick brogue. “We’re getting ready to renovate. We saw the plans yesterday.”

  I congratulated them. Buying and renovating property in a foreign country requires a definite leap of faith.

  “You must be very good with the language,” I said, privately entertaining fantasies of their taking Mom and me under their wing for the duration of our stay in Alberobello.

  “Oh, we’ve been coming here for fifteen years and we still can’t speak Italian,” the chubby one giggled. “Just say to them, ‘Il mio italiano è poco e male.’ It means, literally, ‘My Italian is small and bad.’ ”

  She sounded the phrase out slowly and deliberately and prompted me to repeat it. She must have been a schoolteacher.

  “What’s with the weather?” I asked. “I thought southern Italy was warmer than this.”

  “It is chilly today, isn’t it?” she said, pulling her sweater tightly around her big bosom. “You should have been here last week. It was seventy-five degrees and beautiful.”

  That sentence would be repeated many times during our trip. I wished the women well and headed off to find Mom, who had wandered away at some point during the conversation.

  When I located her, she was poking around a stall that sold kitchenware, and was holding a plastic spatula as if considering its purchase. I gently pried it out of her hand and placed it back on the table.

  “How on earth were you able to converse with those women?” Mom asked.

  “They spoke English, so it wasn’t too difficult for me,” I answered.

  “That didn’t sound like English to me.”

  We walked a little more, but Mom was now tiring.

  “Had enough?”

  She nodded.

  “Then let’s go home.”

  I steered her toward a rendezvous point and accompanied her across the street. Then I took off to get the car. In my absence, the parking lot had devolved into a hodgepodge of vehicles parked at random angles. There was nothing remotely organized about the arrangement. It looked like someone had given Stevie Wonder the authority to park cars.

  I located my car, boxed in by an old, faded-red Fiat, and before I had time to react, an elderly man came hobbling quickly toward me, got into the Fiat, and moved it out of the way. I gave him a wave of thanks, but he had already scooted off to find another car to block.

  I eased out of the lot—how I managed not to scrape every vehicle in the vicinity remains a mystery—and drove to the prearranged corner of the market area to pick up Mom. I threw the car into park, pushed a button to pop the trunk, jumped out, opened the passenger-side door for Mom, grabbed her walker, and folded it up and wedged it carefully into the trunk, then returned to the driver’s seat, did up my seat belt, and prepared to drive off. In the amount of time it took me to accomplish all those small tasks, Mom had managed to lift one leg into the car.

  Adjusting to the pace of someone at least ten times slower than normal speed made me feel as if I were in a perpetual state of slow motion. It drove me mad. I held back the urge to snap, “Andiamo!”

  Leaving Locorotondo, we slipped out onto the rural roads and headed toward our trullo, relying solely on instinct and vaguely familiar landmarks as we sailed through a sweep of empty pastures, ancient olive groves, vineyards, and farmland. In a distant field a lone, bent figure with a scythe methodically thwacked around the edges of his property while a small brush fire burned. Smoke curled from the chimney of a modest home. Those were the only signs that anyone was about. It was an eerily empty countryside.

  Then a movement indicating life materialized on the road ahead. Coming toward us was a man on horseback. I eased up on the gas pedal.

  He was a handsome fellow—I’m referring to the man, not the horse—well into middle age and elegantly attired in the chaps and fitted tweed jacket favored by lords of the manor. He looked not to have a care in the world as he swayed confidently and languorously on his steed. One of his brown-leather- gloved hands clutched the reins, and the other was raised to his ear: He was chatting merrily on his cell phone.

  As we passed he gave us a smile and a wink.

  “See?” harrumphed Mom. “Even he has a cell phone.”

  THE RAIN and cold persisted, and within days
Mom had developed a worrisome bronchial cough. It was so bad that I wasn’t sure whether to be concerned that she would develop pneumonia or that she would have a stroke brought on by her constant hacking. The worry and the hacking kept me awake at night.

  Early one morning, shivering from cold and heavy with sleep deprivation, I peeled off one of the blankets on my bed and took it to Mom.

  Knock, knock. No answer. I rapped again a bit louder. Still no answer. Finally I opened the door a crack. Mom was lying on her back, staring happily at the ceiling, occasionally coughing. She had obviously not heard me enter. I gave a little cough, but again she didn’t hear.

  “For God’s sake, get a hearing aid, woman,” I said. Still she didn’t hear me.

  So I shut the door quietly, then knocked quite loudly and opened it noisily.

  “Hi there!” she said, turning her head toward me.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “I brought you another blanket.

  Your coughing kept me awake.”

  “How did you sleep? I bet my coughing kept you awake.”

  “Yes,” I replied wearily.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t sleep well either.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “Well, I need to take my blood-sugar reading. The diabetes, you know.”

  I fetched her kit from the bathroom.

  “Can you help me up?” she asked, extending an arm.

  I pulled her five-foot-two-inch frame up and helped her swing her legs around to the edge of the bed. When she was seated, her feet just grazed the floor and swung slightly, like a child’s. A surge of protectiveness welled up in me.

  “Let me show you how I do it,” she said, eagerly opening her diabetes kit.

  It has come to this, I thought, as I took a seat beside her on the bed. Watching my mother prick her finger to extract blood for a diabetes reading was now passing for entertainment on my Italian holiday.

  She pricked her finger with a tiny needle, which automatically drew a small amount of blood and registered the reading on the kit’s lcd display.

  “Five point four?” she gasped, taking a closer look at the results.

  “Is that bad?” I asked with concern.

  “It’s incredible!” she said. “It’s never been that low. I wonder what I’m doing right!”

  “You should get back into bed,” I said. “So you don’t get cold. We won’t go out today. I’ll bring you some tea.”

  I sauntered into the kitchen and put on the kettle. As I waited for it to boil, I spied Chris, the property manager, by the pool. It didn’t matter that it was freezing outside or raining; Chris kept the pool in pristine condition. I was aching to use it.

  “The weather’s an aberration,” he said, anticipating my question when I joined him on the patio later. His brown, short-spiked hair was damp. “You should have been here a week ago.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said.

  “How’s your mum doing?”

  “Not so well,” I said. “She has a really bad cough. The trullo is freezing.”

  “Did you crank up the heat?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t sure whether that was something I should tinker with,” I said. “Are there any more blankets?”

  “Loads more,” he said. “I’ll show you where they are. And let’s get the heat going.”

  I received an unnecessary primer on the workings of the thermostat—honestly, I know how they operate—and was shown the stash of blankets piled in the cupboard that was under lock and key—a key that was, incidentally, not among the half-dozen or so Chris had given me.

  The sound of Mom’s coughing came from behind the bedroom door.

  Chris looked at me with alarm.

  “I really should get her some cough medicine,” I said. “Is there a pharmacy nearby?”

  “Let me drive you,” he said. “I’ll show you a shortcut.”

  I was grateful to be a passenger for once and let someone else do the thinking.

  As for shortcuts, well, call me a pessimist, but they do not exist in Italy. Chris’s “shortcut” turned out to be a more circuitous and convoluted route than I could imagine. By the time we reached the pharmacy—and I could not tell whether we were in Martina Franca or Locorotondo or even Italy for that matter—I was thoroughly confused and disoriented. Had Chris asked me to find my own way home, I might still be driving.

  The farmacia was a snug, rather precious shop with a white marble counter that spanned the width of the premises. Behind it small glass bottles and boxes and jars of every size and shape were neatly arranged on a wall of white shelving. A brass scale and a white marble mortar and pestle sat on the counter. I wasn’t sure whether those items were there for show or for actual use, but it was all charming nonetheless.

  In front of the counter there was just enough space to accommodate a handful of people, and several were there when we walked in, waiting impatiently for their prescriptions to be filled. They hurriedly shuffled closer to close the gaps in the queue. Judging by the looks on their faces I would say they all had something terminal.

  When our turn came, Chris spoke softly in Italian to the pharmacist, asking for cough syrup. I nudged Chris and asked him to add some Vicks VapoRub to the bill, but the pharmacist appeared to understand, because he produced a jar immediately. I paid the bill and we left.

  “I’ve got to stop off and get some nappies for our baby,” said Chris as we exited the farmacia. “Do you mind?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said. It would give me a chance to pick up some groceries. I hastily assembled a list in my head, beginning with wine.

  Once the errand was accomplished, we left the town and drove back to the trullo, passing dozens of these adorable abodes along the country road. There were stucco-clad trulli and tufo stone trulli; some domes sported finials in the shape of a ball, while others had a more fluted shape. Some trulli were close to the road; others were situated in distant fields.

  Thousands of these adorable buildings dot the countryside of Apulia (it’s actually called Puglia now, but I prefer the more historic appellation), and they have been under unesco’s protection since 1996. Recently, some of the restrictions governing trullo restoration and renovation have been lifted. I thought back to the Scottish women we had met in Locorotondo, and wondered how they would fare with their Italian trullo.

  I asked Chris about the hobbitlike homes.

  “Oh, they’re popular with the Italians, too,” Chris said. “They’re just waking up to the fact that trulli are a part of their heritage. Nobody ever takes their history seriously until people from another country come and snap up the real estate.

  “In fact,” he continued, “people in this area tend to use the trulli as holiday homes. Believe it or not, some people have a holiday home only a few miles from their regular home. If you see a lot of trulli boarded up, it’s only because it’s early in the season. Even the locals find them damp and cold at this time of year. But by summer—and believe me, the heat is hellish around here—a trullo is the coolest place to be.”

  Chris returned me to our frigid trullo, which was looking more like an igloo to me than a Mediterranean home.

  “I brought you a treat,” I said to Mom when I returned to her bedside.

  “Oh goody! What?”

  I placed the Vicks and the cough syrup on her pine bedside table. With a jazz-hand flourish I gave a little “ta-da!”

  She looked profoundly disappointed.

  “Did you have fun?” she asked.

  “Well, as much fun as you can have buying cough syrup and Vicks VapoRub in an Italian pharmacy,” I said.

  She sat up in bed, and I plumped the cushions for her.

  “I’m amazed how you go out and just get things,” she said.

  “Well, I didn’t this time,” I said. “Chris drove me. And he spoke Italian in the pharmacy on my behalf.”

  “Tell me about the pharmacy. What was it like?” she gushed excitedly, as if I had just ret
urned from an expedition to Katmandu.

  “It was what you’d expect. It was small and had lots of bottles and potions. It wasn’t like our drugstores in Canada.”

  “Oh,” she said blankly. I got the impression that she was hoping it might have provided a potential shopping excursion for her later in the week.

  “Did you have a sleep while I was gone?”

  “Not really; I was lying here thinking about when I was a little girl, about when I was a rebel.”

  “A rebel? You?”

  My mother’s idea of rebellion is wearing white before May 24 or having a shot of sherry before noon.

  “Once upon a time I was,” she said. “As a teenager. Oh, I was a bad girl.”

  This should be interesting, I thought.

  “Being a rebel doesn’t make you bad,” I offered as I sat on the edge of her bed. “What made you a rebel?”

  “Well, I rebelled about joining Hungarian social activities and about dating Hungarian men,” she said. “I refused to date a Hungarian, and my parents got so upset with me.”

  Mom had immigrated to Canada from Hungary with her parents when she was a youngster. By the time she hit her teens, her mind was made up that she was going to be part of wasp society, and that meant marrying a wasp. All her friends were Anglo-Saxons; she had no time for the marriageable sons of her parents’ friends.

  “One day, a Hungarian couple dropped by—they were friends of my parents—and they demanded that my parents force me to date or at least talk to their son, who was about my age. I was so angry and I refused to go out with him.”

  “What did Granny and Grandpa do?” I asked.

  “My dad, luckily, forgave me, but my mother wasn’t so easy,” said Mom. “But I didn’t care—that was her problem. I was set on marrying a Canadian.”

  At age eighteen, she had moved to Toronto and begun working as a reporter for the Canadian Press, quickly catching the eye of a blond, blue-eyed fellow reporter.