Sometimes I Dream in Italian

by Rita Ciresi

  “A lot,” I said. “But maybe some other time.”

  Obviously I had made some cut in the selection process, because Dirk reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out his Academic Planner, and wanted to know if I was free to get together two Thursdays from now.

  Imagining the long list of women he had to interview, I rudely asked, “Why not next Thursday?”

  Dirk flushed. Next week was spring break. He was going back to Minnesota—which was enjoying a thaw—to help his father paint the barn. White, not red.

  When he came back, I found out that Minnesota had been snowed under. Rainer was pronounced RHY-ner. Heine was not pronounced like that childish euphemism for a man's gluteus maximus, and Günter Grass's last name had nothing whatsoever to do with a lawn. I learned all this—and much, much more than I ever wanted to know—about Teutonic literature. According to Dirk, one of my great attractions was my ability to really discuss things. “You have no idea how stultifying it is,” he said, “teaching bored undergrads how to say, Where is the exit?”

  “How do you say that?”

  “Where is the exit?” Dirk smiled. I waited a couple of weeks, only to find out that this was as close to telling a joke as he would ever get.

  Armed with farm-boy thrift—and a salary not much larger than my own—Dirk also had to count his nickels. We hung out in coffee shops, and when the weather finally broke we went for long walks in the park and visited Lyndhurst, Boscobel, and Van Cortlandt Manor. While admiring the roped-off rooms of former robber barons, Dirk spoke strongly against conspicuous displays of wealth and rampant materialism; meanwhile, I mourned the death of my platinum-and-diamond engagement ring.

  As we stood in Frederick Vanderbilt's suggestively carved and molded bedroom, Dirk told me, “You know, Angel, you're the first woman I've met in Poughkeepsie who drinks the tap water and isn't ashamed to admit it.”

  “I can't afford Evian,” I said. “But just for the record, I wouldn't mind drinking it. Or living here. Or sleeping there,” I said, gesturing to the eminently fuckworthy four-poster bed.

  Dirk immediately turned to his guide. “The posters of Frederick's bed are modeled after the baldacchino of Saint Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. But what's the matter, Angel? You look extraordinarily pale.”

  “I need some fresh air,” I said.

  We stepped out onto one of the many porches of the Vanderbilt Mansion. As we looked out onto the wide, brown Hudson River, Dirk asked, “You don't really want to live in such a place, do you?”

  “Beats a garret,” I said. Then I shrugged and laughed and told Dirk about how Lina and I used to lie beneath the sloped roof of our cramped, depressing bedroom, constructing our Dream House room by room in our imagination. Greedy Lina wanted a Venetian palazzo, a chateau in the south of France, and a penthouse with a view of Central Park.

  “I would have settled for a Swiss chalet,” I said. “You know, like the kind on a cuckoo clock?”

  Dirk nodded. Approvingly. And said something about a Haus that was klein. Or kleine.

  House. Small. These simple words I could understand. But in spite of Dirk's patient drills in the rudiments of German grammar, I still mixed up the feminine and the masculine, and I could not tell the who from the how and the where from the why.

  In gradual progression—as if mastering the solid pronouns before tackling the juicier verbs—I held Dirk's hairless hand, I kissed his peach-tinged lips, I leaned into his muscular chest to receive his embrace. I always greeted and said good-bye to Dirk at the bottom of the stairs—right outside my landlord's door—where I hoped overhearing some heated activity transpiring inside would spur Dirk to pursue me two flights up to my garret, where together we would make the leaking rafters shake. But as April slid into May, I wrote in my diary: I'll bet Dirk waits until he turns in his final grades before he fucks me.

  Dear Diary: I was right. At the end of spring semester, I knew sex finally was on the syllabus when a bottle of white wine rested on the passenger seat of his Volkswagen hatchback. It was Thursday—two-dollar night—and Dirk was taking me to the kind of movie theater where no popcorn was sold in the lobby. After we sat down in Dirk's favorite place—the exact middle of the theater—I whispered, “I crave salt.”

  I don't know what I expected in response to this statement. But my fleeting, ludicrous fantasy (that he'd strip off his twill shirt and chinos and offer up his whole body, like a salted celery stick, for me to lick) got dashed to the ground when he said, “That's your Mediterranean blood speaking.”

  “Huh?” I said. “I mean, Wo bitte?”

  “Wie bitte.”

  “Pardon me?”

  Dirk looked over his shoulder—a not-so-subtle hint that I could stand to lower my voice. “I meant nothing offensive. I just think you're genetically coded to live in warmer climates. You crave salt because it helps the body retain fluids.”

  “In other words, I look bloated?”

  Dirk gave me a puzzled look. “Angel. You're acting like… a woman.”

  “Imagine!”

  Dirk's milky cheeks flushed. “Does high blood pressure run in your family?”

  “No,” I said. “But PMS does.”

  Dirk raised his eyebrow. “Ich nehme das Wetter, wie es kommt.”

  “Translation?”

  “I take the weather as it comes. You, of course, obviously fight it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “From that story you told me. About your mother and the lemons.”

  How I wished I never told Dirk this tale: that on summer days—when emotional temperatures in our home pitched past the boiling point—Mama parked the peevish, quarreling Lina and me on the front porch with a plateful of salted lemon slivers and made us suck on them until our lips burned. Lina and I actually liked this punishment, which only proved Mama's point: We were always looking for an excuse to make a sour face. If it's hot, you want cold, Mama said. If cold, then hot. For you, nothing good is ever good enough!

  Dating Dirk made me think she was right. As the theater filled with other two-dollar, tap-water-drinking types, I tried to damp down my dissatisfaction with Dirk. Although I liked the way I could complain about my childhood to him, his response seemed so middle American. Clean and sturdy as winter-hardy wheat, he made me feel like some tropical agricultural product that had to undergo rigorous inspection before it could be permitted beyond the U.S. border. I regretted every second I spent trying to adjust myself to pass his scrutiny and every hour (and there were many) that I devoted to grading his behavior and obsessing over this question: Was he The One? I may have bombed symbolic logic, but I'd had enough disappointment in my life to realize that if A wasn't B, then at some point C would have to become good enough.

  The lights lowered and the credits rolled up on this German art film called Das Haus ist blau. Since all of the movies we saw were foreign, I'd grown accustomed to sitting next to Dirk during brief scenes of nudity (they bothered me only insofar as the breasts shown looked firmer and higher than my own). But less than ten minutes after the screening, it became obvious that Blue House was going to show a lot, lot more than two suckable nipples. Here was a moist vagina. Then came a highly improbable long pole of a penis. Then close-ups of the man's firm, clenching buttocks and the woman's gritted teeth were accompanied by the now-moot subtitles:

  I'll fuck you into the ground.

  Give it to me. Again. Again. Again!

  Dirk leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Are you as embarrassed as I am?”

  I was aroused. So badly I thought people sitting two rows ahead and behind probably could smell my vaginal odor. But I simply nodded. Dirk took my arm, and before I knew it, I was being ushered out. We were not sitting on the aisle, and for the rest of my life I knew I'd remember the hiss of a man's voice—”Sit down!” —and the sick squish that sounded forth when I stepped on a woman's Doc Martens in my haste to reach the exit.

  On our short walk through the lobby, I kept my eyes so studiously avert
ed I memorized the worn pattern on the once-red Oriental carpet. Out on the street, it was cold and raining.

  “I left my umbrella inside,” Dirk said.

  “Just leave it.”

  Dirk put his arm around me. “Angel. I apologize. Deeply. I failed to do my homework. I had no idea what sort of film that was or I never would have taken you to see it.”

  The flecks of water on my face felt clean and good, and as we walked across the slick parking lot, the thought of the wine awaiting us in the car washed away some of my peevishness. “You don't have to keep saying you're sorry,” I said, even though Dirk had said it only once.

  “I should have read the reviews. I had no idea it would be so… tawdry.”

  My sole consolation: At least Dirk had not gone up to the cashier and asked for his four dollars back. He unlocked the passenger side of the car. When I got in, I bent down to retrieve the wine bottle from the car floor, and as I fastened my seat belt, I cradled the bottle between my legs.

  He pointed to the cork. “That's for us.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “If—when we get back to your place—you'll invite me up.”

  “I will.”

  As a former Eagle Scout—and farm boy at heart—Dirk carried a Swiss Army knife at all times. “I have a corkscrew on my Swiss.”

  “I own a corkscrew,” I said. “And two wineglasses.”

  But I didn't own much else. That became apparent the moment I opened the door to my drafty studio, futilely jacked up the thermostat, and invited Dirk to sit down on the only item in the room that had a right to be called furniture: my Castro convertible couch. Dirk immediately gravitated toward my books, stacked on Dixon Park Soda crates my father had swiped from the warehouse. Dirk proved himself to be more of a man than I originally thought by bypassing Chekhov and Nabokov and picking up the framed photo of Lina that sat on top of the crates. The picture showed Lina standing—without Phil—on the porch of her new house. Homeownership agreed with her—or at least it improved her posture. In any case, Dirk seemed all eyes for Lina's thrown-back shoulders and her proud and provocative breasts.

  “So this is your famous sister,” he said.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “You say it like you don't want it to be so.”

  “I told you. She always got all the attention.”

  “Why isn't her husband in the picture?”

  “He's very good-looking,” I said. “I'd find him a distraction.”

  Dirk put down the photo. “Why don't you visit them more often?”

  “They're busy. Settling down into their new house. Which is bigger and better than the big huge one they had before.”

  Dirk fell silent. For all his lofty talk about intellectual versus material wealth, he, too, was eaten away inside by real-estate envy. Although he never said as much, I suspected that Herr and Frau Diederhoff—being of the land—considered their scholarly youngest son mentally deficient because he didn't want to till 1,500 acres.

  I sighed. “It's so dreadful to be poor.”

  “You're not poor,” Dirk said. “You have a roof over your head.”

  “I was quoting,” I said. “One of the opening lines. Of Little Women.”

  “I've never read it.”

  “There's a German professor in it.”

  “How is he portrayed?”

  “As the love interest of the heroine.”

  “Maybe I'll look at it sometime.”

  My throat went dry. I swallowed, and my throat felt even more parched as I imagined Dirk reading this line: Mr. Bhaer could read several languages, but he had not learned to read women yet. “I'm sure you'd think Little Women was very sentimental,” I said. “The characterization of the professor is… well, hokey. I mean, he lumbers around saying doofus things like, You haf no umbrella! Gif me your ear! That is not our omniboos! and That ist gut!”

  “Das,” said Dirk. “Das ist gut.”

  “And he keeps correcting the heroine's grammar.”

  “I see.” Dirk paused. “Well? In the end, does she finally get it right?”

  Personally, I loathed the way Jo March settled for promenading with the Professor on muddy roads while her prettier sister Amy and the highly desirable Teddy Laurence took conjugal strolls over velvet carpets. Nevertheless, I said, “It's considered a happy ending.”

  “That means marriage,” said Dirk.

  “How do you know, if you've never read it?”

  “It's written by a woman,” Dirk said, and before I could wedge in a word of protest, he added, “and it's a nineteenth-century domestic novel, probably written in the tradition of Jane Austen, for an audience that would consider spinsterhood a very unsavory prospect. Thus the little woman undoubtedly marries the professor.”

  “There are four little women,” I said. “Three of them get married and the other one drops dead.”

  “What of?”

  I wanted to say heartache. But I couldn't remember whether Beth March suffered from pneumonia or consumption. Louisa May Alcott was so metaphorical about death, I told Dirk, that the first time I read the novel, I did not understand that the phrase the fire was out was meant to mark Beth's passing. “I figured someone had forgotten to stoke the coal,” I said, “and then I was confused, for the rest of the book, why the dead sister never was mentioned again.”

  According to Dirk, I had grown into a much more sophisticated reader. But I certainly owned the lowest grade of kitchen implements. Dirk rejected my corkscrew and took out his Swiss Army knife. He got ten points for not breaking the cork, and another ten for pouring me a huge gobletful of wine. We clinked glasses. “Prost,” said Dirk—and fool that I was, I asked for an exact translation.

  An interjection. Third person singular. The subjunctive of prodesse, to do good.

  “To your health,” I said, and swallowed an unseemly mouthful. I was no wine connoisseur, but I could tell this white from the Rhine Valley was good stuff—hardly the rotgut red I bought, which was cultivated and bottled in strange places like Chile and Yugoslavia.

  On the couch—an uneasy six inches between the right leg of my Gap jeans and the left leg of his L. L. Bean chinos—I found out that the U.S. government sometimes paid subsidies to Dirk's father for letting his fields go fallow, that from 1976 to 1979 (when the crop was sold at a decent price to General Mills), I may have ingested Diederhoff wheat each morning at the breakfast table, that Elective Affinities was written as a way of sublimating the author's love for a girl forty years his junior, and that Caspar Hauser or The Sluggishness of the Heart was based on the true story of a teenage foundling who displayed normal intelligence in spite of having no record of ever having communicated with other humans. As Dirk held forth, I kept drinking and thinking I could not possibly spend the rest of this evening—or my entire life—listening to this man gas on about the great Goethe and his heirs to the literary throne. I have my landlord to thank for saving me from such a sad fate. In the midst of expounding upon the Germanic Romantic hero—often feminized and displaying behavior more traditionally associated with the Mediterranean temperament, hence Werther practically pistol-whipping himself into hysterics over Charlotte—Dirk stopped and said, “Es friert.”

  “What?”

  “Angel, it's very cold in here.”

  “I told the landlord.”

  “Told him what?”

  “That the thermostat is broken.”

  “Tell him again.”

  “I don't want to tell him again.” When Dirk looked at me like I was irrational, I added, “I guess it's a woman thing. I don't like to go down there. He makes me shiver—”

  “So you'd rather shiver up here?”

  Knowing I had to put a stop to this caviling—or the night would be lost forever—I clutched the stem of my wineglass and told Dirk, “There was a time in March when I considered writing him a nasty letter.” I paused. “But I wrote to you. Instead.”

  Who could claim now I didn't understand cause and effect? A
s if he were replacing the chalk on the ledge after a lecture, Dirk put his glass down on my plastic Parsons table, leaned over, and pressed his lips on mine. By then I'd had enough wine to find myself entirely responsive to the gesture. I put down my goblet, and within a moment my arms were around his neck and my tongue was exploring the curious lack of cavities—or rather, silver fillings—in his mouth.

  “I want to sleep with you,” Dirk murmured in my ear.

  My fingers were already going for his belt buckle when he added, “But only if you think it's right.”

  “It's right.”

  “Let's go into your bedroom.”

  “You're sitting on it.”

  Dirk broke away and gave me a puzzled look.

  “This couch,” I said. “It folds out.”

  Dirk rose and held both wine goblets while I moved the Parsons table. One of the legs fell off and it was all I could do to keep from muttering obscenities as I pushed the severed leg back into place. I removed the couch cushions. Probably figuring it took a man to do what this girl accomplished on her own every night, Dirk stepped in to pull out the creaky springs and thin mattress. All this hoisting about of furniture did nothing to stoke the flames of romance. However, it did afford me the necessary break to—as Dirk hesitantly put it—take precautions.

  I ran the water in the bathroom sink so Dirk couldn't hear me squirting the soon-to-expire spermicide into the too-brittle cup of my four-year-old diaphragm. I really was out of practice. I put too much jelly on the rim, and twice when I squatted to insert the diaphragm, it slithered out of my hand and ripped across the room like some berserko flying saucer, once even hitting the duct tape that the landlord had put up to patch a ceiling leak. When I finally got it in, the diaphragm felt twisted and cold and clammy as the voice of the uptight, would-be-liberal woman whose pained lecture on birth control was the high price I paid for getting examined at the Free Clinic. “If you girls… want it… again,” she said, her lips pursing purple at such a thought, “you must insert more spermicide.”