Still I waited. A handful of weather systems passed through during that time; afternoon slipped into evening. Still no train, no Colin.
After three hours I figured something was wrong. I approached a new group of attendants—the original group having finished their day’s shift—and again asked when the next train from Rome was expected.
It was from this new group that I learned there were, in fact, two train stations in Civita Castellana. Well, please thank the day shift for wasting my bloody time!
I stomped back to the hotel, soaked, angry, and frustrated. I approached the front desk clerk and gave him my lament. He produced a piece of paper and driving directions to the other train station.
I hopped in the car and sped off. Halfway there it occurred to me that despite the soggy paper of scrawled directions in my hand, I had no clue where I was going. It was pitch black, it was raining, and the invention of streetlights had not yet made its way to this neck of the planet. I retraced my route to the hotel and hired a cab.
The cab driver, who mercifully spoke English, said he had, coincidentally, just received a call from someone at the train station about an Englishman who appeared to be stranded there. We took off like a shot. I closed my eyes as the driver took reckless hairpin turns on unlit, rain-slicked roads. As a distraction, I revisited my earlier reunion fantasy. This new version ended with both of us in full body casts, limbs held aloft in traction devices.
When the taxi driver and I arrived at the train station, it was all but deserted. A barista, who was mopping up the countertop at his empty establishment and was about to turn the “Chiusa” sign on his shop door, said the Englishman had hitched a ride with some young locals back into town. I amended my fantasy to include a visit to a morgue and a courtroom date.
The driver and I ran through rain puddles back to the cab. We careened out of the train station and sped back to the center of Civita Castellana. Our hunch was that Colin had also discovered that there were two train stations and had headed for the other one.
We pulled up to the train station I had waited at earlier. Beside a park bench was Colin, wearing a look that said: “OK. What the hell should I do now?”
“Colin!” I squealed. If this had been a film starring Bogey and Bacall, this scene would have had audiences reaching for their Kleenex.
Except that it was nothing like that. Colin slid into the cab, smiled politely at the driver, and gave me a peck on the cheek. A peck on the cheek?
When we got into his hotel room, I tried to make like a vamp and cuddle up to him, but he would have none of it.
“I’m tired,” he smiled wanly. “It’s been a long day.”
Maybe tomorrow will be better, I thought as I returned dejectedly to my room—the one I was sharing with my mother.
OUR CAR pulled into the last parking spot in Siena just after noon the next day, all of us anxious to experience what we had been told about Siena’s Renaissance beauty.
Colin pulled Mom’s walker out of the car and set it up for her, and off we went.
“Why don’t you kids go off and have a look round,” Mom said as we made our way down the main thoroughfare through the crush of other tourists. “I’ll be fine on my own.”
Normally I would have protested, or at least put up a good pretense of, “No, really, it’s OK. We’ll stay and walk at a snail’s pace with you.”
This time, I didn’t ask twice. I was upset by Colin’s utter lack of affection toward me—he would not so much as hold my hand—so I grabbed him by the sleeve and said to Mom, “OK, see you in an hour.”
Maybe, I thought, he was nervous about appearing affectionate to me in front of my mother. He’s British, after all, so it could be that. He also had not been feeling well for the last few months—maybe it was that. Ours is a long-distance relationship, and it is difficult to understand your partner’s entire personality based on one-week visits every three or four months. And because our time together is always too brief, the tendency when our relationship hits a pothole is to quickly patch things up and move on rather than address the issue. It is far from ideal, but it is what it is.
We picked up a map at a tourist information center and tried to get our bearings. To its credit, Siena was the only Italian city we visited that had tourist information, knowledgeable, multilingual staff at the counter, and free maps for the asking. We huddled over the map, turning it every which way in an attempt to make sense of the labyrinth of passageways. Even Colin, a former competitive orienteer, was stumped.
It did not help that the streets were stuffed to capacity with people or that the shops—snobby Versace boutiques, MaxMara stores, and a gazillion gelaterie—were the types of establishments that can be found at any suburban mall. I was falling helplessly out of love with Siena before I had really made her acquaintance.
We ventured through claustrophobic lanes and several more exterior stairways until we stumbled into the vast and open Il Campo.
“I’d really like Mom to see this,” I said. “She’d love this.”
“Shall we stop for a glass of wine first?” Colin implored.
You would think I would have said yes, but I didn’t. I was suddenly overcome with concern about Mom and began to rush through the day-tripper-clogged streets to find her. Colin did his best to keep up.
She was not easy to find. We checked in all the cafés and hotel lobbies. “Have you seen a small white-haired lady with a walker?”
“She was just here,” said a doorman at one hotel. “I think she turned that way.”
Off we went. Up ahead a small clot of police officers and tourists were huddled around something. I immediately recognized the wheels of the red walker. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.
I pushed through the crowd and past several towering police officers. In the middle of a tight circle was my small mother, sweeping her hair away from her eyes and holding court with her story about how she had lost her daughter and wasn’t quite sure where or how to find her.
“Mom?”
“Oh, there you are!” she exclaimed, turning her head.
“Here’s my daughter!”
The crowd stared at me with immense resentment.
“You should look after your mother,” one of the police officers scolded me.
That stung. The rest of the crowd nodded their heads in agreement and began murmuring to one another. I fully expected a long torch to be lit as everyone mobilized behind the first person to shout, “Burn the negligent bitch!”
“But she wanted to be left on her own to amble about,” I pleaded to the police officer and anyone else within earshot.
“Look. After. Your. Mother,” the cop boomed sternly.
Mom did not come to my defense but simply toddled away with her red walker.
“Now, where did you park?” she called out to me. “I’ve had a delightful time, but I’m a bit tired now. Wasn’t that funny? All those nice policemen?”
I could barely contain my anger when I caught up to her.
“Why did you go to the police?” I asked.
“Well, I didn’t know where you were,” she said, her big brown eyes giving me a look of utter innocence. “You were gone so long.”
“We agreed to meet up in an hour, and in fact we were back in less than an hour. Did you hear that policeman say that I should take better care of you? How do you think I feel?”
“Well, it’s done now. Aren’t those scarves in that shop window pretty? Did you and Colin see anything interesting?”
I could not talk. I was too upset. Had Colin not been there I would have sat down and wept. Colin, meanwhile, did the British thing of keeping the conversation cheery and chatty while I nursed my bruised ego. We found the car, hoisted the walker into the trunk, got Mom buckled into the front seat, and off we went.
I stared grimly out the windshield. It wasn’t enough that my boyfriend was freezing me out; my mom was allowing police officers to accuse me of negligence. No doubt the episode colored my attitude t
oward Siena. For years I had listened to people raving about the place, that it was the perfect Italian city, that it was romantic beyond words. But Siena failed to cast its spell on me, and I felt a bit cheated.
Ditto for the Tuscan countryside. We sailed silently alongside pale gold fields and dark green cypress standing at attention. I can see why North America loves Tuscany. It looks a lot like North America, or rather a North American version of Italy: a little too idyllic and pretentious. A pang of longing shot through me for the drystone enclosures and the adorable little trulli of the South. I missed the tougher, more authentic way of life.
“Where are we off to now?” chirped Mom.
After a long pause I replied tersely, “San Gimignano.”
I had heard great things about San Gimi, the same great things I had heard about Siena. On our approach to San Gimi, the setting sun cast a burnished glow over the golden brick stone and red-tiled roofs. We found our way into yet another cobbled labyrinth but could not find our way out. We circled the centro storico endlessly and finally took a random road that angled steeply downward into what turned out to be a dead end. A dead end so tight it was almost impossible to turn the car around.
“What the . . . ?” I fumed.
I threw the car into reverse and after a series of to-and-fro shunting managed to turn it around. I stared up and up at the steep incline in front of us. I could not imagine that anything short of a crane would get us back to the top.
“How are you going to get out of this one now?” snapped Mom. “I am not walking up the hill. You’ll have to carry me.”
I tried to gun the accelerator pedal and plow up the hill, but we only made it halfway before the engine cut out and the car rolled back down.
A small crowd of locals gathered to watch.
“These towns are ridiculous,” Mom snorted. “What a stupid country.”
We had all become exceedingly testy. The distance travelled, the unexpected warm and humid weather, the lack of a proper meal, and our individual resentments against each other began to come to a boil.
“Let me drive,” said Colin with uncharacteristic irritation.
He got out of the backseat, slammed the door, and slipped behind the steering wheel. He got us up the hill, but by the time we reached the top, an acrid odor had filled the car.
“You’ve burned the clutch,” I snarled. “That’s brilliant.
Thanks a lot!”
I exhaled loudly for effect, and when we had exited the medieval walls of San Gimignano I ordered him to turn in at the first hotel.
He did, literally.
“Why here?” I demanded.
“You told me to pull into the first hotel, and so I did,” he shot back.
“Well, couldn’t you be a little more discriminating?”
“Fine! You tell me when and where . . . ” he said, putting the car angrily into gear.
“stop it right now!” bellowed Mom. “I am getting out here, and we are staying here! Do you understand?”
I looked at Colin.
“I’ll park the car and bring the bags,” he said stiffly.
The Hotel Villa Belvedere was an old villa of faded pink that had been converted into a family-run b&b. It had a commanding view of the Tuscan countryside from its perch, and I noticed a pool—closed, naturally—off to one side of the garden.
The owner, a handsome young father, pulled himself away from the afternoon football game on t v and took his place behind the marble front desk.
He responded to my query for two rooms politely and affirmatively. And yes, he added, one of the rooms was on the main floor, Mom’s preferred location.
Before exiting the front door to relay the information to Mom and Colin, I turned and asked, “Do you have a bar?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding toward a room to the left. “And we serve dinner and breakfast.”
We brought our luggage to our respective rooms. A few minutes later Colin, Mom, and I rendezvoused on the front patio to slake our thirst.
“I’m having a Scotch after that drive,” said Mom in a don’t-try- to-talk-me-out-of-it tone of voice. She had two in quick succession and retired to her room for a nap.
Colin and I sat in silence watching a large red-gold sun melt into a distant wheat field. Colin is such a contrast to me. I wished I had his patience, his ability to willingly adjust his pace to accommodate others. I sat there wishing that I were a nicer, gentler person.
Suddenly Colin reached for my hand. His touch caused me to jump.
“Why didn’t you hold my hand in Siena?” I asked. The words were still leaving my mouth when I realized it was the wrong thing to ask. I hurriedly added as lightly and softly as I could, “Just curious.”
He pulled his hand away as quickly as he had offered it, his jaw tightened, and he stared ahead into the distance for a minute. Then he stood up.
“Is there anything else I’ve done wrong today?” he demanded. He stomped off to his room.
I proceeded to drink in slight excess of my normal limit before staggering back inside to my room and falling on the bed into an inebriated slumber.
Two hours later we all met up again in the dining room, cheerful, rested, and showered, with nary a mention of the earlier fracas.
“How about an after-dinner walk?” Colin said to me.
I looked at Mom.
“Of course, go on,” she said. “I’m ready for bed anyway.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “We’d hate to come back and find that you had called the police.”
“I’m sure,” she said.
“We might be longer than an hour,” I probed.
“Whenever you get back,” she smiled.
Hand in hand and back on speaking terms—such is the mystery of the British that they can be angry at you one minute and then act like nothing was ever amiss the next, without ever raising the subject—Colin and I walked across the road toward San Gimignano’s fortressed walls and took the first turn in. It was now dark, and the cobbled piazzas had emptied of tourists. Dark corners, shadowy figures, and dead silence gave it a spooky but enchanting atmosphere.
We passed a few hotels, whose inviting glow drew us in. They were romantic places, most dating from the 11th century, awash in medieval and Renaissance atmosphere with vaulted ceilings, arched entranceways, vine-covered facades, exposed stone-and-beam rooftop restaurants. How had we missed this earlier in the car when we were dodging tourists and trying in vain to find some place that said “hotel”? It really is true what they say about seeing things differently when you’re on foot than when you’re in a car.
“This,” I said to Colin with a sweep of my arm, “is what I hoped to see in Italy.”
“Well, let’s pick up some brochures and plan another trip,” he smiled.
We stopped in for a glass of wine in a low-ceilinged tratto-ria, had a gelato farther down the road, and doubled back for a cappuccino. We were trying to cram every experience you could possibly want in Italy—well, every legal one—into one hour.
Then, with a blanket of stars overhead, we bid a reluctant ciao to San Gimi.
15
Pisa, Florence
OVERNIGHT, our rental car miraculously recovered from the trauma of the previous day. It was going to need more than a tune-up at the end of this journey—it was going to need therapy. Come to think of it, so was I.
In the sort of cheery humor that comes from a good night’s sleep and a satisfying breakfast, we set off for Pisa.
Pisa was only about an hour or so away from San Gimig-nano, so we took a secondary road through golden swaths of Tuscan countryside.
No sooner had we arrived in Pisa than Mom insisted we look for a hotel.
“But it’s only eleven o’clock,” I protested.
“I don’t care how early it is, I am not going through what we went through yesterday,” she said, folding her arms in front of her and staring resolutely ahead. I was well acquainted with that body language.
We follow
ed signs to the “Grand Hotel 4*” and pulled up to the front doors minutes later. The star system had obviously not been updated in this decade, or the previous two, for that matter, but I’m sure that in its glory days—likely 1968—the hotel’s four-star rating had been well deserved. I approached the front desk and inquired about rooms.
“We’re in luck,” I said brightly to Mom when I returned to the car. “And the price is fairly reasonable: 160 euros for the two of us, including breakfast. Colin, a single is a hundred.”
“That’s fine,” he said, reaching for his wallet.
“Well, maybe we should check that place out across the street,” said Mom, not moving from the passenger seat.
I followed her eyes to a small pensione. I dutifully walked over and checked it out—eighty euros a person but no breakfast.
“What about that one?” Mom pointed to another pensione farther down the street.
I let out a huge sigh and sprinted up the street to check that one, too.
“Same price, and there are no lifts in either one,” I said when I returned to the car.
“Do they have main-floor rooms?” she asked.
“I didn’t ask.”
Mom sat mulling this over a minute, working her lip. Colin and I waited for her verdict.
“OK , that’s long enough,” I snapped after fifteen seconds.
“We’re staying here.”
Honestly, indecision stretches my tolerance. When you want a hotel and a perfectly adequate one presents itself, what’s to decide?
What the Grand Hotel lacked in esthetics it more than made up for in location. When I threw open the shutters in our room and thrust my head out, a little thrill rose up.
“Look!” I shouted excitedly to Mom and Colin.
Both poked their heads through the window and saw a clear view of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
“You can’t beat that for a view, eh?” I smiled at Mom. It was the most excitement I had felt in quite some time.
“I suppose,” she said indifferently and wandered off to unpack her bag.
The tower kept us—well, Colin and me at least—enthralled all day. Even better, all the main sights of Pisa—the tower, the Duomo, and the baptistery—were all located in one grand park. All we had to do was roll Mom and her red walker down two short blocks and there it was. Connecting them all was a string of souvenir stalls. Mom loves this sort of playground.
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