Summers in Supino

by Maria Coletta McLean

  “Oh, Bob. Don’t . . .”

  “It’s going to be okay. I don’t want you worrying about this. There’s nothing we can do, but I can say how I live my life until then and it won’t be waiting in hospitals and doctors’ offices,” said Bob. “I want you to do something for me. I don’t want to be in a hospital bed, hooked up with tubes and oxygen tanks and machines. I want to be at home with you, and our family. Mmm?” he said.

  “Mmm.”

  Bob was still able to get up and dress every day. We continued with our work routines, but that only lasted a few short weeks. Ken and Kathryn went into the coffee company instead. The next week, they moved our double bed into a room downstairs so Bob wouldn’t have to climb the stairs. The room had two windows — one framed the front lawn and the other the long driveway. We placed the bed so Bob could see either view. When he couldn’t breathe without help, we arranged for an oxygen tank, but we kept the tank behind the bed.

  The end of September marked our youngest grandson Miguel’s second birthday. Bob was determined to come to the dinner table. He couldn’t make the trip from bedroom to kitchen without his portable oxygen tank. Bob parked the tank behind his chair and tied a balloon on Miguel’s chair. “I’m turning off the oxygen when it’s time for dessert,” he said.

  “We don’t have to have candles. We can just have cake and ice cream,” I said.

  “No,” said Bob, “let Miguel have his two candles.”

  That was the last day that Bob was able to come to the dinner table.

  Now, the older grandchildren took turns riding the scooter down the long driveway to get the mail, a trip that Bob used to make daily with the youngest grandchildren. They waved to Bob on their way down and waved the mail on their way back. People sent cards and flowers, but Bob didn’t want them in our room; instead we arranged pictures of the children and grandchildren and photos of Supino. We also took the telephone out of the room, putting it in the kitchen, where I used it, often late at night, sitting on the floor behind the kitchen door, updating a cousin or a friend.

  Joe called late one night from Supino. “Bloody cancer,” he said. “Try to be strong, Maria.”

  Then Davide called to speak with Kathryn, and later with me. “Maria, sono Davide. My father said to tell you he’s there with you and Bob, ogni momento, ogni giorno, every moment, every day.”

  “Maria, sono Liounna. Guido says, ‘Mi dispiace, mi dispiace.’”

  We had 42 days together. Bob made a small list of people he wanted to see one last time. No one stayed long; no one cried; no one mentioned the reason for the visit, except for cousin Bill.

  He said, “That’s got to be a heck of a moment, Bob, to hear the doctors say they can’t do anything.”

  “One minute I’m making plans in Supino and the next minute a doctor’s giving me a death sentence. Telling me that it’s all over,” said Bob. “But I got a few weeks’ notice. I can spend my last days with my family. That’s what it comes down to in the end.”

  The hospital bed was delivered in October; Bob needed to sleep in an upright position and we couldn’t manage it properly with pillows. Now I slept on the chesterfield beside the bed. During the day, I spent most of the time sitting on the chair beside the bed. We passed a lot of hours just holding hands. In the evenings, the children and grandchildren took turns sitting with Bob and telling him stories of work and school. I spent that time sitting in the living room, reading. I was reading a booklet about death. It listed all the signs of death’s approach and I was trying to convince myself that Bob was not showing any of these signs, yet.

  I brushed back the curls from his forehead. Bob opened his eyes. “Every time I wake up,” he said, “I’m surprised I’m still here.”

  “I’m glad you’re still here,” I said.

  “I’ve got something for you. I had given it to Kathryn, to give to you at Christmastime, but I’d like to see you open it.”

  He reached beneath his pillow and pulled out a small box as dark as a blue Supino sky. Gold letters spelled out the name of the jewellery store. Inside was a pair of gold earrings.

  “Oh, Bob, how am I going to live without you?”

  “You’re strong. You’re going to be okay. Tell you what, let’s listen to that CD.” Bob had bought the soundtrack from Big Night and loved that Louie Prima song about the little jewellery shop and the moon above the Mediterranean Sea. “Even though he’s singing about Napoli,” Bob said, “it reminds me of Supino.”

  On the Tuesday morning, Bob removed the oxygen tube. The oxygen dried out his nose and sometimes he liked to have a break from the dryness. I knew that in a few minutes, he’d put it back on. But he didn’t.

  “You need to keep that on,” I reminded him.

  “No, I don’t. I’m going to die today.”

  For a moment, I stopped breathing. Had I heard correctly? Was he hallucinating? Was I? The questions flashed through my mind as quickly as shooting stars and all I could grasp were the question marks.

  I looked at Ken: he’d heard Bob’s words and seemed to be waiting for my response. I wanted to say something positive and comforting, but although Bob’s emaciated body was in the room with us, his mind and his soul had already begun to soar.

  “No,” I said.

  “I have to go. He’s waiting for me at the gate.”

  “Who?”

  “Your father.”

  Bob was looking beyond us, as if he could actually see the gate and my father waiting there. I couldn’t think of anything to say or do. Bob was so calm, almost joyous. There was no sense of hurry, no glimmer of fear; a peacefulness had settled into the room. Ken was sitting beside the bed, holding his father’s hand.

  For 42 days and nights, I’d watched helplessly as Bob’s body grew weaker, the fluid in his lungs gurgling in the night as he tried to find a space to breathe, his muscles so weak that he couldn’t lift the ice chips to his mouth. The oxygen tube was lying on his pillow; if he put it back on, he might breathe a few more minutes, but he was beyond us now, heading somewhere that we could not go. And that somewhere would be peaceful.

  I leaned down to kiss Bob’s forehead. He spoke so softly. “I’m flying to Italy now. Your father’s waiting for me. He’s been waiting a long time . . .”

  EPILOGUE

  Tuesday, October 23, 2001, 6:30 p.m.

  After that first call to Bob’s parents, after saying those words, “Bob’s dead,” I must have called others because my brother and my cousins were at the house. My father-in-law, wearing his sunglasses, was standing in the living room; my cousin Nancy was sitting beside me on the couch, holding my hand. We were drinking whisky and the phone kept ringing.

  Some men came from the funeral parlour to pick up Bob’s body; our children were all in the bedroom and the men said it might be better if they left, but Kathryn and I stayed. We watched them zip Bob’s body into a burgundy plastic body bag — I can still hear the sound of the zipper — and we stood in the doorway and watched them wheel the gurney down the hallway. We heard the sound of the back door closing, the car doors closing, the car heading down the long driveway, and, when we couldn’t hear anything more, we went back into the living room to make plans for the next day.

  I dressed in black for the funeral-parlour visitation. When I opened the jewellery box to take out the gold earrings Bob had given me, I saw his wedding band nestled there. His fingers had grown so thin that the band kept slipping off and he’d asked me to put it away. Once I’d put on the earrings, it didn’t seem right to close up the gold band all alone in the box, so I strung his wedding band on my gold chain and wore it around my neck.

  “Ready,” said Kathryn. She had the car keys in her hand, but neither of us moved. We knew that once we got into the car, we were beginning a journey that neither of us wanted to take.

  We heard a knock on the door. The flower deliveryman stood on our d
oorstep once again. Kathryn put the small wicker basket stuffed with miniature roses on the kitchen table and pulled out the card: “From your neighbours on via condotto vecchio.”

  I remembered Peppe’s message: “We are with you ogni momento, ogni giorno, every moment, every day.”

  Kathryn and I got into the car. Eight hours later, we were back at the house, and the answering machine was blinking as usual.

  “Maria? Sono Peppe. Mi dispiace. Bob, my friend.”

  “Maria? Sono Liounna. Guido can’t speak. Mi dispiace.”

  “Maria? Sono Joe. That bloody cancer. The neighbours ask me to phone and say mi dispiace.”

  “Maria,” said the president of the Supino Social Club. “Everyone is welcome to come to the club after the funeral on Saturday. We’ll take care of the food. Your brother phoned and offered to pay for the drinks, but I told him, ‘For Bob McLean, we take care of everything. Son of Supino, you understand?’”

  Months passed. I thought about selling the little house in Supino, but I couldn’t do that without solving the hydro issue and the constantly disappearing patio. We might have a terra cotta patio now; Bob would never see it.

  “We should plan our trip to Supino,” said Kathryn.

  “I don’t want to go. I can’t bear the idea of seeing Guido and Joe and Peppe and all of them. They’ll all want to say sorry and shake my hand.”

  “What’s wrong with that? You’d be pretty upset if they didn’t want to.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t want them to say sorry, and I don’t want them to say nothing, so I don’t want to go.”

  “I think that’s a little crazy, Mom.”

  “Me too.”

  But my life was a little crazy. The original shock had worn off, and I was hanging on to an idea that I’d read and heard over and over again: that if you could get through the first year, things got easier. Peppe had sent a Christmas card that year, and inside he’d written a note, assuring me that, in time, I’d remember only the good memories. Since Peppe’s wife had died of cancer years ago, I believed him, and I tried to hold on to the good memories. But somehow those good memories were the very thing that kept me from wanting to return to the village. I tried to imagine myself in Supino without Bob. Would I walk down to the Bar Italia every morning by myself? Bianca would have to reach for one cup, instead of two. I’d have to try not to cry.

  Then my friend Netta called me one day. She works in publicity and marketing.

  “Jeanne Marshall from the National Post wants to do an interview with you.”

  “I’ve cancelled all my book publicity stuff,” I said.

  “I know, but Jeanne’s currently living in Rome and would like to do the interview there. I figured you could do it en route to Supino.”

  “I’m not going to Supino.”

  “Why not? Supino’s always good for you.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “You should go,” said Kathryn when I told her about the call. “I can drive us into Rome from the airport, you can do the interview. We’ll stay overnight and drive down to Supino the next day.”

  A decade before, when we’d bought the house, Bob had said that we’d always have it as a part of my father’s village and our village. Now I’d have to see Supino as my village, if I could. I began to visualize myself alone in Supino, but I was never alone. The memory of my father, the memory of Bob, all the good memories accompanied me. I imagined the villagers still watching out for my little house, and me. When the president of the Supino Social Club called me to talk about the proposed National Post interview in Rome, I never even considered how he knew about it.

  “After the interview in Rome,” he began, “we want to make a little festa in the village. Father Antonio will bless the book. Will you donate a signed copy for the Supino library? Afterwards, we’ll have a little dinner at the restaurant in the woods. The journalist can be the guest of honour. Bring the photographer. We’ll make them honorary Supino Social Club members. What’s the date of the interview, Maria?”

  In the end, a letter from Sergio Coletta in Moss Point, Mississippi, helped me to decide. He wrote that he remembered that this was the time of year when Bob and I would be planning our trip to Supino:

  Thank you for the cedar branch that you sent with your letter. You have no idea how much that meant to me. You’re very kind. Maybe I can do something for you. I don’t know if you stop in Rome when you go to Supino, but my son-in-law’s cousin owns a small hotel and restaurant in Rome near the Vatican and I am sending his business card. They are looking forward to meeting you.

  In Supino, there’s a question our neighbours often ask — a kind of Supinese version of “How are things going?” Tutto a posto? literally means Is everything in place? And so it seemed that everything was in place that summer for me to return to the village. I found myself sitting in the departure lounge at the Toronto airport. Once we landed in Rome and picked up our rental car, I’d meet the journalist at Osteria dei Pontefici, Sergio Coletta’s son-in-law’s cousin’s restaurant in Rome, and the following day we’d head down the autostrada until we reached the blue sign pointing to Supino.

  The news of Bob’s death would have rung from the bell tower of San Sebastiano and sprung from the fountain in a hundred icy teardrops. The wind would have already carried his name beyond the village and up the mountain path to Santa Serena to put down roots among the clouds. The village would open her arms to me, and I would walk right into them, as if I had come home.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to the wonderful villagers in Supino and from Supino (now scattered across the globe) for your fine hospitality and your interest in My Father Came from Italy and in Summers in Supino: Becoming Italian.

  I’m grateful to have Carolyn Swayze as my agent and my friend, and to work with Jack David and his talented team at ECW Press.

  My thanks to early readers Maria Cioni, Janet Looker, and Kathryn McLean. And to Johnny and Suzy Paglia, who provided the Italian translations.

  Most of all I wish to thank my children Rob, Ken, Carole, Paula, and Kathryn, and their partners and my grandchildren, especially Paige and Miguel, who shared the difficult days of Bob’s illness with me. Every family member contributed in their own way even though they are not mentioned individually in the book, and every one of them, including the newest grandson, Julian Robert, remain the most important blessings of my life, as they were of Bob’s.

  MARIA COLETTA McLEAN is the author of the bestselling memoir My Father Came From Italy and the editor of Mamma Mia! Good Italian Girls Talk Back. In 2002, she was awarded the Golden Jubilee Medal for her contribution to the Canadian literary landscape. Maria is also a member of the Supino Social Club of Toronto and maintains a home in Supino, where the patio is still under construction. Otherwise, she lives in Toronto, Ontario, and can be found online at MariaColetta.com.

  Copyright © Maria Coletta McLean, 2013

  Published by ECW Press

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  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  McLean, Maria Coletta, 1946–

  Summers in Supino : becoming Italian : a memoir / Maria

  Col
etta McLean.

  ISBN 978-1-77041-137-1

  Also issued as: 978-1-77090-363-0 (PDF); 978-1-77090-364-7 (ePUB)

  1. McLean, Maria Coletta, 1946– —Travel—Italy—Supino.

  2. Supino (Italy)—Biography. 3. Supino (Italy)—Description

  and travel. I. Title.

  DG692.M35 2013 914.56'220492 C2012-907509-4

  Cover and text design: Tania Craan

  Cover image: © Ron Watts/Corbis

  Author photo: John Carvalho, Exposures Photography

  The publication of Summers in Supino has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, and by the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit. The marketing of this book was made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation.