Incontinent on the Continent

by Jane Christmas

  Mom and I got out of the car, and I guided her through the mass of vehicles and up a flight of metal stairs to the passenger deck. The crew was hardened and rough-looking, with dirty hands and black grime outlining their fingernails. Their navy-blue uniforms were frayed at the cuffs and stained with dirt. Sweaty stubble, greasy hair, and dark circles under their eyes gave their gaunt faces a shifty, desperate look, the sort that conjures visions of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

  We took our seats facing the bow of the ferry so we could enjoy a good view of our approach to Sicily. The rain had paused, and it was warm enough for us to spend the half-hour voyage on the outer deck. I longed to feel the sea air on my face and to compare the receding Italian mainland with the approaching island of Sicily, but given our scruffy surroundings I decided to stay with Mom. Besides, she had taken to calling my name loudly and repeatedly whenever I drifted out of her sight, prompting the same response in me as someone yelling “GRENADE!”—the urge to dive for cover.

  A crew member approached us and beckoned me to follow. At the stairwell he pointed to the distressed wooden door of the women’s washroom and offered to unlock it for me. I glanced past the crewman’s shoulder and saw the large shy German trucker leaning against a wall, his arms crossed in front of him and his eyes fixed sternly on us. Catching my eye he quietly shook his head as a silent warning.

  “No, grazie,” I smiled politely to the crew member.

  The sailor was insistent, but I repeated “No” more emphatically this time and walked away. Mom never turns down a chance to use a washroom, but I had the feeling that this one would not produce a pleasant experience.

  “What did he want?” Mom asked when I returned to my seat.

  “He was, um, just showing me the vending machines in case we wanted food,” I replied quickly. “I don’t think we need anything. We’ll wait till we get to the hotel.”

  I glanced around the passenger deck and realized we were the only women onboard. It all seemed rather weird.

  “I don’t think many people go to Sicily,” I whispered to Mom.

  We sat it in our seats and stared straight ahead as the ferry chugged across the Strait of Messina. The sun had begun to dip, and its reflected rays looked like a million brilliant diamonds cast upon the water.

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Mom looking at me.

  “I was thinking of the conversation we had on the way down. The one about showing love,” she said. “Since you apparently like being touched so much, why don’t you let me do your hair? It needs a good brushing.”

  “I don’t think so, but thanks anyway,” I said, and took a sudden interest in the road map in my hand.

  Several minutes later I turned in my seat slightly and saw the stocky German trucker again. This time he was lost in thought as he gazed at Sicily’s coastline. Was he pining for someone he loved back home? Was he was thinking about the long-distance drives and how much he hated them? Was he casting about, as we all do from time to time, for ways to secure an easier future? Or was he replaying the what-ifs of his life?

  Then it dawned on me why he looked familiar. He reminded me of a neighbor I once had—same round features and stocky build, same quiet sadness. I’ve often wondered at the significance of meeting people on holiday who resemble or in some way remind me of people back home. Are doppelgän-gers sent to reassure us when we find ourselves in unfamiliar situations, or are they a cosmic nudge to be friendlier to the person back home?

  The ferry slid alongside the dock in Messina just after 4:00 pm. In March, night falls quickly in Italy; in another hour the sky would be pitch. With another thirty miles between Messina and Taormina, our destination, it was likely we would be arriving after dark.

  I don’t like arriving in an unfamiliar city in the dark. By midafternoon the cogs in my brain are grinding to a halt, along with any special powers of observation I need to locate and secure a place to lay my head for the night. This is especially true when I have driven over three hundred miles basically nonstop in one day.

  “Why are we going to Taormina?” asked Mom.

  “I was told it was worth checking out,” I said. A recommendation from someone I know is often all the encouragement I need to visit a place.

  We bade auf Wiedersehen to the German truckers, found our car, and drove off the ferry and onto the autostrada.

  By the time we reached the exit for Taormina, the only thing visible was the fluorescent glow from the road signs. We dutifully followed the arrows and began a circular ascent reminiscent of our experience in San Mango earlier that day.

  My preference is always to find a charming place to spend the night, and I usually conduct a dogged search upon arrival in a town I have never visited. It is a habit that irritates others, except Mom, who can’t imagine why someone would stay in a boring hotel when you could get a room that oozes history and architectural interest.

  But driving the skinny streets of Taormina, with its hairpin turns and gridlocked traffic—everyone seemed to be reversing his car on this particular night—I was too worn out to care. I would take any place that might have a bed to spare.

  After passing it twice during my initial pursuit of more appetizing fare, we pulled up in front of the Hotel Continental.

  “Stay here,” I said to Mom. “I’ll see if they have a room.” I said a quick prayer to myself that there would be one.

  I strode into the time warp of a yellowed 1970s-era lobby with swag lamps and tall plateglass windows hung with dull orange curtains. The furniture was Swedish Modern and upholstered in that indestructible but hideously bland, nubby, mustard-colored fabric that was popular once upon a time. It was the sort of establishment where a Clairtone tv would not have been out of place. In its day, this lobby was probably considered breathtakingly stylish.

  A well-groomed young man and woman in crisp navy-blue uniforms greeted me with smiles.

  “Good evening,” I smiled back, with a hint of pleading in my voice. “Do you have a room?”

  They did, and they offered to show it to me.

  The room had zero personality: two twin beds with faded green bedspreads and a claustrophobically small bathroom that was slightly elevated from the rest of the room and required a step up, which would be difficult for Mom’s arthritically heavy legs. “They are all like this,” apologized the front desk clerk who showed me the room. Orange, heavily lined drapes skimmed the windowsill. It was too dark outside to see what the view offered; all I could see was my own reflection, which showed the strain of a day spent on the road.

  “It’s perfect,” I said, turning to the desk clerk. “We’ll take it.”

  Mom has always been a conscientious student of design. She is self-taught, knows every architectural style, and has an uncanny knack with color and fabric. Every house we have ever lived in—and some of them were real dumps when my parents purchased them—was perfectly renovated and decorated and appointed all by her hand. Sometimes our homes ended up in magazine spreads. I’ve always wondered why she never pursued interior design as an occupation. To this day, she will arrive in a place and immediately start rearranging the furniture while critiquing the fabric choices and the placement of the artwork. She does this on occasion in my home.

  So after leading her through the shabby-retro lobby, then along a corridor with lighting that cast a puke-green glow and made everyone look like zombies, I flicked on the dim light in our hotel room and was shocked when she gushed, “This is lovely!”

  I looked at her as if she were joking.

  “Oh really, stop being so picky,” she said with irritation. “At my age all you care about is that the room has a bed and a toilet that flushes. And a dining room. When’s dinner?”

  Our dinner and service, I’m happy to report, were excellent. The dining room itself was down-at-the-heels—the same drab orange curtains hung on the patio doors, and another set acted as a barrier between the dining area and the kitchen. The ceilings were high and the lighting was dim, but no
one seemed to mind. We tucked into a delicious meal of roast pork, potatoes, and salad.

  The room was bustling and buzzing with a newly arrived coach tour of American seniors. All of them were trim and fit. The men looked slightly grizzled of face in a handsome, almost academic sort of way, and they wore solid-colored corduroy trousers with plaid shirts. The women were nicely coiffed—some with hairstyles that were sleek and chin length, others that were short and a bit trendy, with streaks and gelled ends—and many were attired in casual, sporty ensembles that invariably consisted of those dressy versions of track pants and matching jacket. It wasn’t a style that appealed to me, but for that age group it seemed practical. There wasn’t a cane or a walker among them.

  Some looked older than my mother, and I wondered why my mother, who had led such an active life—it wasn’t that long ago, really, that she was playing tennis—had physically deteriorated so much. This is going to sound irrational, but I was beginning to resent my mother’s physical condition. Perhaps if she had tried harder to keep her weight down, I thought, she would have staved off many of her infirmities.

  On a more superficial level, Mom’s hairstyle and clothing had not changed in decades. She had never taken an interest in fashion; her interests were restricted to art and architecture from a bygone era. She did not hold back on her suggestions that others—well, me at least—make changes, yet she never made changes to herself.

  “I need a new wardrobe,” Mom said out of the blue. “I was rather hoping the airline would lose my luggage.”

  She, too, was watching the American seniors.

  “Yes, you do need a bit of an update,” I ventured. “You spent your life renovating old homes and yet you never spent time or money maintaining yourself. Why was that?”

  “I couldn’t just go out and spend money on myself,” she replied, as if that were the most preposterous idea she had ever heard. “We had a family to raise. It wasn’t like you kids today going out and getting manicures and pedicures every week.”

  “But your generation used to go out and get their hair done every week,” I countered. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “When it came to clothes, no one ever offered to help me,” she shrugged, ignoring my question.

  Here it comes, I thought. The guilt. “No one” meant “you.”

  “I’d be happy to help you chose a wardrobe,” I said. “But I don’t think you’re willing to take my advice. Besides, you’re cheap when it comes to clothes and spending money on yourself.”

  “See that gal over there,” Mom said, zeroing in on a willowy woman with chin-length, side-parted hair that was hooked behind an ear on one side and hung freely on the other. “That’s a hairstyle I’d like. What do you think? Would it suit me?”

  “Sure, it would look great,” I said with slight exasperation at her inability to stick to a train of thought. “But you have to be prepared to let your hair grow to achieve that style.”

  “Oh, I have no patience for that,” she said, then turning to me: “It would be a good style for you, though. Why don’t you try that one?”

  “Why are you suggesting hairstyles for me that are worn by old women?” I asked pointedly.

  “Those people aren’t that old,” she said, taken aback. “I bet they’re your age!”

  I had to get out of there before I did something that might prompt a call to security.

  A pretty courtyard garden with an orange tree beckoned beyond the patio doors of the dining room.

  “I’m going for a walk after dinner,” I announced stiffly.

  “You can’t go out alone. You never know who’s out there,” she said.

  “I’m sure it’s safe,” I answered curtly. “It’s a small town.”

  The maître d’, whom I recognized from the front desk when we first arrived, came by to refill our water glasses. I rolled my eyes as Mom pressed him for his opinion of this madcap idea of mine.

  “Can you guarantee that she’ll be safe?” Mom asked him warily. “In writing? She’s the only daughter I have.”

  “Your daughter will be fine,” he assured her with a firm smile, giving me a paternalistic nod.

  The man was less than half my age. Honestly, my mother treats me like a ten-year-old.

  “I promise I won’t be long,” I told her as she poured her tea. She looked unconvinced.

  Was it my safety that she was worried about, or was she envious of my mobility? I was getting the sense that she expected me to hang back with her. Well, that wasn’t going to happen.

  I accompanied Mom back to our room, grabbed a jacket, gave her a peck on her forehead, and promised to be back soon.

  As I pushed open the tall black wrought-iron gate that opened onto a back lane, I felt the singular pleasure that comes from being footloose—no timetable, no destination, and a landscape unseen by me just waiting to be discovered. I love darting in and out of places, exploring their deepest regions if I want or just giving them a cursory appraisal.

  I trotted down four levels of stone steps and arrived on Taormina’s tiny main drag, Corso Umberto i, a charming and elegant pedestrian-only mall of chevron-patterned cobbles, black coach lamps, and wrought-iron balconies. At each end of the mall, soaring archways marked the town’s pre-Roman stone walls.

  The street itself was lined with fashionable, upscale boutiques. I wandered into a few of them, more out of something to do than actual interest. There was a relaxed vibe on the street. The Piazza Chiesa looked like a movie set, with its stone, cherub-topped fountain and café tables set out around the perimeter. Young, hand-holding couples strolled aimlessly along the lamplit thoroughfare, and I felt a pang of regret about not being able to share the moment with Colin.

  Taormina is known for a 5,400-seat Greek amphitheater, hailed as much for its preservation as its drop-dead gorgeous setting overlooking a scalloped coastline with snowcapped Mount Etna in the background. I wanted to see the theater for myself, but my attention was suddenly distracted by the words “Internet Point” flashing on a neon sign affixed to a rough stone building halfway up a dimly lit, ancient alley.

  The door to the Internet café was ajar. I stepped into a very modern space bathed in that electric cool-blue lighting that always makes me feel like I’m about to take part in some illicit activity. A young woman with the same bangs-and-bob hairstyle my mom had been pushing on me for some time whipped up a cappuccino and logged me on to a terminal.

  E-mails from my family cheered me immensely, and I wrote back describing my high-tech surroundings amid a pre– Roman Empire town. By a stroke of luck, Zoë was online at the same time and tapped back a message instantly. We bantered back and forth excitedly for a few minutes, comparing our respective adventures. She was still having a fabulous time in France.

  “And guess what?” she wrote. “I’ve already bought three pairs of shoes!” I gave a proud chuckle. Like mother, like daughter. Then I stared for a long time at her closing sentence, “I miss you so much.”

  I felt proud that we had such an open, un-self-conscious connection with one another, and at the same time I felt a bit wistful. I have never uttered those words to my own mother, nor has she said them to me. I could not put my finger on why Mom and I have had such a hard time expressing our feelings to each other or why it comes so easily to my daughter and me.

  The sky was spitting rain when I left the Internet café. I made my way back to the hotel and promised myself to check out the Greek amphitheater in the morning.

  At the door of our hotel room I quietly turned the knob and entered.

  It was the first time I had shared a room with my mother in about thirty years. I’ll say this much: Seniors make strange noises when they sleep. I listened to Mom’s labored breathing, the phlegmy rattle in her throat, her fitful cries and whimpers. She was curled on her side, away from me, and for the first time in my life I glimpsed her as someone other than my mother.

  There is a photo of my parents that sits in my mother’s living room. I love it
because it is the antithesis of the people who raised me: It was taken at a dance, when they were dating in their early twenties. The photo shows my elegant father in a white dinner jacket and black, loose trousers—zoot trousers, they were called back in those days, he had told me. His blond hair and happy, confident smile make him look like a movie star. His left hand rests on my mother’s tiny waist; the right one clutches her hand as they pose in mid-dance. My mother, too, is the epitome of early 1950s glamor. Her long, luxuriant raven hair tumbles with a bouncy thick curl over her shoulders; a sleek, ballet-length, shimmering polka-dot dress skims her lean figure; she stands erect in black peep-toe shoes with what look like five-inch heels.

  Now here she was with short white hair, a body far from slim and crippled by osteoarthritis, her mind slightly forgetful. The delicate, soft, small hands in the photograph are now gnarled with thick, ropy blue veins running like gopher tunnels beneath a crepey surface.

  I watched her sleeping: Her face looked peaceful, but I knew, as I have somehow always known, that inside churned decades of disappointment that her family—particularly her children—did not meet her ideals.

  She had longed for a family like the Waltons, with its cheerful optimism and loving interactions. What she ended up with best resembled a cross between the super-regimented Banks family in Mary Poppins and the wacky Beverly Hillbillies (minus the money).

  I stood beside Mom’s bed and watched her sleep. I tried to figure out where it had gone wrong, and why we had been too afraid, or perhaps too proud, to admit that there was a rift in the first place.

  I slipped into the twin bed next to hers and turned off the light.

  In the black void I prayed that she would recover from every ache, pain, and infirmity—emotional and physical— that plagued her.

  Then I prayed for a more graceful old age for myself—one that did not include a walker.

  6

  Sicily: Racalmuto, Agrigento