by Phil Doran
She laughed. Then she slumped down at the table and started to cry. I felt terrible. I reached out to touch her and she looked up at me with eyes radiant and tender. Blinking back the tears, she told me that moving to Italy, and even the house itself, was really about saving my life. She explained that she had bought the rustico with the sole idea of getting me out of Hollywood.
I knew she was worried, but I hadn’t expected this. Despite my constant assurances that I was handling things, she felt that unless we got away from our life in L.A., I was going to stress myself into a stroke. Nancy’s father had died when he was about my age. She was a teenager at the time, so she grew up painfully aware of how fragile life can be. And I’d certainly done my part to give her cause for concern.
Ever since I’d turned fifty and the television business suddenly saw me as a relic from another age, I had been flipping out in the most colorful ways. My mood volleyballed back and forth between sullen and contrite, interrupted only by episodes where I was irritable and downright argumentative. Problem was, I was so used to defining myself by my Big Job and my Big Title that without it, I felt naked and empty. With no office to go to, my days became interminable. Minutes crept by like centuries. I tried to stay current by reading the trades, but that only led me to obsess over other people’s success. I threw myself into writing spec scripts, but instead of concentrating on the work, I kept brooding about doing this for no money, only to have it judged by somebody half my age with a fraction of my experience.
My nights were consumed with flailing under the covers, ruminating over all the mistakes in my life, and replaying old conversations in my head. It was becoming increasingly difficult to get anybody on the phone, including my agent, and each small indignity only fueled my bitterness and rage.
Nancy’s instincts were correct. L.A. is such a company town, everything there reminded me that I was now on the outside looking in. I wanted to run away, perhaps out of humiliation. Live like a Bedouin and keep traveling wherever the winds blew. Never settle down again—certainly not in a place as backward as Italy, where, when it’s three o’clock in New York, it’s 1537 A.D. in Florence.
But mostly I wanted to keep working at the only life I’d ever known. Hang tough and ride out this nightmare. After all, I had come to Hollywood with no connections or friends in the business and through hard work, hustle, and sheer dumb luck, I had made myself into an established sitcom writer-producer. And, hey, if I could do it once, I could do it again. I just needed to come up with that one golden idea that would rocket me back to the top. So I kept writing and bugging people for meetings as I watched our house in Brentwood eat through our savings like fire ants in a candy store.
I refused to sell it, though. That house was more than just our dwelling. Its four bedrooms, seven television sets, and sprawling view of the Santa Monica Mountains were a temple to my success. To sell it would be to admit that I had lost confidence in myself. Besides, what would I be leaving it for? To become an olive wrangler in a house Ted Kaczynski wouldn’t live in?
Maybe someday I’d be ready to retire. But not now. And certainly not in that sinkhole she’d gotten us into.
I knew I’d get nowhere arguing with her. I needed to come at it from a different angle. Perhaps I should tell her that if she really wanted to live in Italy that bad, we should get out from under this disaster. Then maybe we could go find a place together, the operative word being maybe.
I was staring at the back of her head as she stood at the sink. As I watched her rinse off the breakfast dishes, I reminded myself that Nancy seemed to like fixing up these places more than she liked living in them.
Of course! She was like me . . . she needed a project. If we could somehow resolve this denuncia issue, and Nancy was able to gingerbread this place, I was sure we could get our money out. Maybe even make a few bucks. After all, everybody wants a house in Tuscany. Everybody but me, it seemed.
“I think you got the wrong idea about how I feel,” I said.
“Wonder how I got that?” She turned to me and blew a strand of hair off her face.
“Truth is, despite all my whining, there’s something about Tuscany I really love.”
“Other than the food?”
“I don’t know, I think this place is starting to get to me. Like, I was walking around our land the other day and it was so aromatic, I could just about smell the color green in a million shades and hues.”
“Are you pulling my noodle in some weird passive-aggressive way?”
“I’m just saying that maybe you’re right. Maybe getting away from the biz is just what I need right now.”
She dried her hands, studying my face for the slightest trace of irony.
“And once you do your number on that little house—”
“You realize how much work it’s going to take to just make it livable,” she said.
“It’ll be fun. You love a fixer-upper.”
“I must, I married you.”
“Hey, I wasn’t that bad.”
“Oh, please. Those green corduroy pants. And those J. C. Penney Back-to-School shirts?”
“So, you fine-tuned my look a little.”
“And those Hush Puppies.” She raised an eyebrow in mock horror. “How did I ever go to bed with you?”
“Drugs.”
She laughed and the room filled with the warmth of burning logs.
I could always make her laugh. I even took a perverse pride in making her think that buried beneath my near-addictive need for glitz and glitter lay a caring, sensitive soul. Someone so in touch with his softer, feminine side that perhaps deep down, I was a lesbian. She slid into the oversized chair I was sitting on. Her hair had the teasing smell of crushed flowers and I could feel her warm breath on my neck.
“Know what would make you feel better?” she asked.
Yes, I did, and it was something that both a man and a lesbian could enjoy. I started to caress her.
“Italian lessons,” she said, reaching for the phrase book. “When I first came here, I found it a lot easier to cope if I could complain to somebody. Not that it did any good.”
“Do we have to do this now?”
“When?”
“Okay,” I said, taking my hand off her thigh. “But instead of all those verb tenses that just give me a headache, how about some common, everyday phrases I could really use?”
“Well . . . we’re going to be dealing with a lot of workmen, so here’s some things they always say when you ask them a question.”
“A question?”
“Yeah, you know, like: ‘When will the work be done?’ or even ‘Can it be done?’ ”
“Okay.”
“Now, their first response will always be, ‘No, impossibile,’ which means . . .”
“Pretty much what it sounds like.”
“Right. Then the second thing they say is ‘Speriamo bene,’ which means, ‘I really hope so, but . . .’ Like in, ‘Please, Tiziano, winter’s almost here; is there any way you can finish installing our boiler before we freeze to death?’ ”
“Speriamo bene.”
“Bravo. Now, the last phrase is ‘Magari.’ This is a bit more mystical and is usually said with an upward toss of the hand,” she said, illustrating the motion.
“And it means?”
“If only the heavens would allow it. Like when you say, ‘For God sakes, Claudio, our septic tank has backed up and it’s flooding the house! Can you get over here right now?’ ”
“Magari . . .” I said with an upward toss of my hand.
“Ti amo, tesoro.”
“I hope you’re not saying that to the workers.”
She kissed me. I kissed her back, and the phrase book dropped to the floor.
That afternoon Nancy went out to buy us a cell phone. While she was gone, I decided to dedicate myself to the serious pursuit of the Italian language. I opened the phrase book and began to study, vowing that this would be just like college. And just like college, within twe
nty seconds I started to doze off. Then I remembered that many immigrants to America learn their English by watching television, which certainly explains why so many people fresh to our shores can intelligently discuss “yellow waxy buildup” and “the heart-break of psoriasis.”
I turned on the set and up came one of the staples of Italian TV, the game show. These programs, sporting titles like Sarabanda and Furore, are not game shows as we know them, but rather frantic, high-energy quizzes featuring a bevy of attractive young women in scanty outfits furiously shaking their culos every time a contestant does something noteworthy. After an hour of watching, however, I realized that I had become so distracted by all the furious culo-shaking, I had pretty much forgotten that I was supposed to be learning Italian.
I switched over to the news, where the anchorman was speaking with such velocity, I couldn’t understand a word. I was able to pick up what he was reporting on from the graphics, but my attention was drawn to the movements of his hands. I watched in fascination as he punctuated each story with an appropriate gesture: raising a fist to the heavens while he chronicled the latest villainy of the Sicilian Mafia, tapping his heart in sadness as he described a train wreck outside Milan, and kissing his fingertips in appreciation of the pulchritude of the new Miss Palermo.
I then realized that in all my years of watching American TV, I had never once seen Tom Brokaw’s hands.
5
All in the Famiglia
We parked on a narrow street lined with elms and walked toward a house we knew to be Dino’s from the incessant yapping of dogs. It was a large neo-Palladian structure with sturdy brick walls and narrow windows cross-hatched with an ominous grid of iron bars. A common feature in a country intensely paranoid about crime, these bars tended to make the houses of most well-to-do Italians look like a home for the criminally insane.
I rang the doorbell and “Brindisi” from La Traviata chimed out over the barking of hounds. Dino opened the door, his face aglow with good cheer. I handed him the bottle of Chianti Riserva we had paid far too much for at our local enoteca. He examined the bottle and concluded that it was of sufficient vintage to merit an appreciative nod, although being store bought, it could never compete with the homemade Chianti he had just decanted for the occasion.
He welcomed us in and as he helped Nancy off with her coat, he asked her about her fungus. I thought this was a rather intimate line of questioning but I soon realized that he was referring to a disease that was attacking our olive trees up at the piccolo rustico.
We pretended that we knew about it and casually asked him what he would do. He told us that we should immediately hire his cousin Faustino, who was renowned throughout Tuscany as a mighty warrior against the funghi. We were in luck because cousin Faustino was coming for dinner and Dino would arrange for him to help us.
We thanked him for his kindness, and he looked at us in shock that it should be any other way. After all, we were famiglia. Dino expressed himself with such sincerity that we almost forgot he was constantly hustling us.
We followed Dino down a narrow stairway, unable to tell where the baying frenzy of the dogs ended and the overheated babble of human voices began. As we descended the stairs, the scent of fermenting grapes grew so intense, it smelled as if this part of the house had been marinating in red wine for centuries. We were entering the cantina, the heart and soul of every Tuscan home. And to dismiss this as an Italian version of the American den, the English drawing room, or the French parlor is to miss a vital facet of its character.
Every Tuscan home, no matter how humble, is guaranteed two things by law: a forno for baking bread and a cantina where the family can make wine. No one is guaranteed a bathroom, but every citizen must have their pane e vino. For that reason, it was usually the first room built, and many houses in this part of Tuscany were literally constructed around it.
As modern life encroached and winemaking evolved into more of a hobby, albeit a deadly serious one, the cantina was used less for its original purpose and more as a place for social gatherings. Because the cantina is subterranean, it’s the coolest place in the house, so in addition to be being an all-purpose party room, it’s also used for the storage of food. Along with racks of hundreds of dusty wine bottles, every shelf, tabletop, and nook in Dino’s cantina was stocked with glass jars of red peppers, marble-white chunks of mozzarella, silvery anchovies, and olives in every shade between green and black, all preserved in olive oil as golden as Mediterranean sunshine. The net effect of all this stored food and wine was to give one the feeling of being at a party held inside a large pantry.
Dino’s cantina was dominated by an aircraft-carrier-sized banquet table and an authentic pietra serena fireplace large enough to spit-roast a baby elephant. A dozen people lounging on rickety pine furniture were gathered around the stufa, a cast-iron potbellied stove. The guests were drinking wine and munching on bruschetta. Their shrill voices, as well as the scratchy accordion music playing on a phonograph, were harshly amplified by the low ceiling and the lack of either curtains or carpets for muffling.
“Ascolta, tutti, ascolta, eccoli Americani,” Dino said, announcing our entrance as if we had personally liberated their village from the Germans.
Everyone stopped talking and turned to us in a moment of rare silence for a roomful of Italians.
“Benvenuti nella nostra casa.” A stout woman in a batik muumuu greeted us with kisses that felt wet on our cheeks.
“This is my wife, Flavia,” Dino said.
Flavia was an energetic lady who, had circumstances been different, could have enjoyed a flourishing career in public relations, given her fondness for throwing in flattering soubriquets for each person she introduced us to. Thus, the dour, cantankerous old man muttering to himself in the corner became the “irrepressible” Uncle Carmuzzi. The hulking, barrelchested guy stuffing his face with crostini was the “urbane” Cousin Aldo. The three black-shrouded old women huddled together like a scene out of Macbeth were the “convivial” Nina, Nona, and Nana. And finally, the pompous aesthete holding court on the sofa was introduced as the “genial” Dottore Spotto, with his wife, the “pious” Monica, and their “mythically gifted” children Leonardo, Rafael, and la bimba Artemisia.
“Piacere, piacere,” Nancy and I said with each introduction, our heads bouncing like a couple of bobble-head dolls.
“Cousin Faustino will be here later,” Dino said, taking us aside. “He’s still in the olive groves, such a hard worker. And the best part is: he is my cousin, so if he screws up I can strangle him.”
“So he’s bonded,” I said.
Dino beckoned over a small, chinless man who had been staring at us from under his continuous eyebrow. “I want you should meet Cousin Spartaco.”
“Ah, piacere, Spartaco. Apprezziamo molto la sua bellissima casa.” Nancy shook his hand and told him how much we appreciated living in his beautiful house—the one whose walls, it must be remembered, had been covered with alternating images of Jesus Christ and naked women.
Nancy kept addressing him, but Spartaco seemed incapable of speech because his eyes were riveted on her chest.
“A-hem.” I cleared my throat.
Cousin Spartaco realized I was staring at him. He clutched at the crucifix hanging around his neck and slinked off, either to pray or masturbate.
Nancy joined the group of women oohing and ahhing over la bimba Artemisia as Dottore Spotto came over and poured me a glass of home-bottled Chianti. I took a sip and felt the fullness of the Sangiovese grapes permeate my palate like a long, slow seduction. I held the taste in my mouth as long as I could and then swallowed. I raised my glass in appreciation. Il dottore gave me a celestial smile and went off to dispense his ambrosia to the other guests.
No sooner had he left than Uncle Carmuzzi approached. Swooping his weathervane of a nose uncomfortably close to my glass, he made a face as if I had been drinking raw sewage. He then produced his own labelless bottle and poured me a glass of garnet-red rosso. I t
ook a sip while he stared at me in anticipation. The wine was so lush, it was like holding the liquid essence of a Tuscan forest in my mouth. I twisted my index finger into my cheek where a dimple might have gone, using the Italian gesture to describe something too delicious for words.
Dottore Spotto strolled past and, seeing me delight in another man’s wine, grabbed Uncle Carmuzzi’s bottle and swirled it around, disturbing the sediment. This caused much agony for Uncle Carmuzzi, who had been handling his wine with the delicacy of one carrying a vial of anthrax. Il dottore peered at the billowing clouds of sediment and clucked as if he were examining a tumorous kidney. Incidentally, I have no idea what kind of dottore he was, the Italians being so lavish with that title, they often bestow it on anyone who’s knuckled their way through four years at a university.
Sneering at the sediment as proof of the wine’s inferiority, Dottore Spotto retrieved the wine I had started and refreshed it. Then, standing arms akimbo in a stance vaguely reminiscent of Mussolini, he stared at me until I began drinking. Uncle Carmuzzi glared angrily when I showed pleasure in the dottore’s home brew, and the good dottore’s lips twisted in rage when I gestured that I liked Uncle Carmuzzi’s as well.
Both men stood facing me, vigorously extolling the qualities of their particular wine, two sets of hands emphatically flying in the air. Uncle Carmuzzi’s hands occupied the horizontal plane, while Dottore Spotto’s the vertical. And like airliners stacked up over a busy airport, there were many near misses, but miraculously, no collisions.