Sometimes I Dream in Italian

by Rita Ciresi

  “Lina took the runner when my mother died,” I said. “But Pammy spilled grape Kool-Aid on it.”

  “Do you want to get her another?” Dirk asked.

  I shrugged.

  Dirk put his hand around my waist. “I'll get it for her.”

  I pointed to the handwritten sign on the door. “È chiuso,” I reminded him. “Closed.”

  “On the way back, then.”

  “We may get lost again.”

  “I'll remember the way,” Dirk said.

  As it turned out, we weren't that far from the church. When we rounded the next bend, the curved apse of the Frari jutted out onto the path. An old woman in black sat on the wall, eating a piece of bread. Behind the garden gate, a friar was clipping roses and arranging them in a tin watering can.

  After the heat of the sun and the press of the crowds in Saint Mark's, it was a relief to enter the dark church, which we had practically to ourselves. Candles sputtered in the side chapels, throwing shadows on the statues and paintings. The wooden altar rail felt cold beneath my fingers. When I put my backpack down on one of the wooden pews, the knickknacks inside made a loud clatter. Dirk turned around and frowned. He went up to the altar, glancing at his guide book.

  I sat down in the pew, watching the greens and purples and blues on the stained-glass windows turn a little less brilliant as the sun shifted. Then, taking up my clattering bag again, I wandered to the back of the church, where a white marble statue by Canova reposed. The sculpture seemed too curvy and suggestive for a church.

  Dirk came up behind me.

  “This doesn't seem to belong in a church,” I said.

  Dirk looked around. Seeing the back chapel was empty, he said, “Neither does this.” He leaned over, grasped my upper arm, and kissed me. We'd had panini for lunch. His tongue was salted with the creamy, smoky flavor of prosciutto and Fontina.

  He smiled at me. He couldn't have planned a scenario more exact to my tastes—the empty church, the darkness, the coolness of the marble and the high ceilings, the sun casting blocks of light on the stone floors, the feeling that we had nowhere else to go, but that the whole city lay before us.

  “Let's get married,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I mean—I'm not sure. I want to think about it. Talk about it.”

  “That's fair,” he said.

  “I don't want to rush into things.”

  He blinked. “Of course,” he said. “I totally agree.”

  “I mean, there's a lot to figure out,” I said. “I'm not sure I know how to have a good relationship. My parents didn't have one—”

  “Oh, for people of that generation, that's practically a given,” Dirk said.

  “Then Lina and Phil don't get along so well.”

  “Yes, but what does that have to do with us?” Dirk asked.

  I shrugged. “Everything. The way other members of your family get married—the way they raise their families—is probably some kind of pattern.”

  Dirk stared at me. “Why do you always define yourself in terms of your family? They're not you.” He took my hand, and his grip felt too insistent. “They're not you,” he repeated, as suddenly, from up above, the church bells began to toll the hour.

  That night I did everything I could to get to sleep. I breathed long and steady breaths; I said om over and over again in my head; I imagined my body filling up with sand and emptying out again; I reconstructed the house I had grown up in room by room; I recited the rosary. As a last resort I imagined myself floating on a gondola past all the lacy arcades of the palaces lining the Grand Canal, counting each gaudy, barbershop-striped pole that marked each landing. But it was useless. At the dock directly below our hotel window, the water taxis came and went, their motors seemingly louder by the hour. Boatloads of people floated by, gondoliers sang “O Sole Mio,” and accordions played. The red lights of the gondolas shone through a crack in the shutters and illuminated the walls for a moment before they glided on. Across the canal, the lights of the railroad station shone continuously. Around midnight I heard the melancholy whistle of the last train leaving. Then I lay still for another hour, listening to the click of my travel clock and Dirk's breathing.

  At one-thirty I got up, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt I had left on the chair, and exited the room. The lock snapped when I turned the doorknob. I looked back at Dirk's inert form, relieved that I hadn't woken him.

  The stairwell was narrow and had no rail. I trailed my hand along the wall, pulling down a few cobwebs as I groped my way down the steps to the dark lobby. I remembered the lamp was in the corner, and I started to move forward. But before I could reach the corner I heard a click, and the light blazed in my face. For a moment I had the irrational fear that it was Dirk who had thrown the switch. But on the cracked vinyl seat of the couch, his tobacco-stained fingers still on the lamp, sat the night clerk, Nico. He had been dozing on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table. He probably was in his mid-thirties, but he looked much older than me because he had two teeth missing on top. Although he was from one of the hill towns, his dental problems caused him to make the same kind of whistling sound when he talked that I associated with southern Italians.

  “Come sta?” he asked me.

  “Non posso dormire,” I said.

  “Sta male?” he asked.

  I paused, and he seemed to realize that I suddenly had blocked on all my Italian.

  “You know I speak English,” he said.

  I knew. The previous evening, Dirk had asked him for directions to a restaurant, and Nico had answered in precise but excessively formal English.

  I looked into Nico's liquidy dark eyes, then looked around the faded lobby. The stale smells from the faded curtains, the partially emptied ashtrays, and the guest book that no one probably had signed in years, all made the room look uninviting—not to mention I knew it was improper to sit with a man I hardly knew in a dark room in the middle of the night. Yet within seconds I found myself on a too-soft chair sitting kitty-corner to Nico. My throat caught as I admitted, “I'm homesick.”

  He looked alarmed. “Is a doctor necessary?” “No, no. Sick for home,” I explained. “I miss my home.” He nodded. “Si, ora capisco.” He paused. “New York?” “Connecticut. It's next door. Nearby. Close. I grew up there, but now I live in New York.” “Ho un cugino a Baltimore.” “That's pretty far away.” He nodded.

  “Have you ever visited the United States?” I asked. “No, no.” “Maybe someday.”

  He shook his head and looked intently at me. “When will your husband take you back?” “Non siamo sposati.”

  He raised one eyebrow. But if he was shocked, he didn't show it.

  “But we're getting married,” I said. “We will be married.” “I—” He paused, searching for the right word. “I congratulate you. This will please your parents.” “My mother is dead,” I said. He crossed himself. “Poverina.” “And my father's older now. He forgets a lot.” Nico nodded. “That's the way the cookies crumble.” I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I wondered what other American idioms he had been forced to memorize: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; don't count your chickens before they hatch? Then I remembered some of the Italian idioms I had learned, all of which probably seemed equally absurd to natives: in bocco al lupo! for good luck; caspita! for you don't say; and ad ogni uccello il suo nido è bello—every bird likes his own nest, the Italian equivalent for there's no place like home.

  Nico fell silent. I looked at his hands. They were large and covered with dark hair. He wore no wedding ring.

  “Do you have a family?” I asked him. “I mean, besides the cousin in Baltimore.”

  “I have a mother and a father and the father of my wife. I have four children. Two are sons and two are daughters.”

  “That's a big family,” I said. We sat for a while in silence. “È contento?” I blurted out. It was one of the first things I learned in Italian, and I was sure it was a phrase that Dirk ha
d learned in one of his first German lessons: I am happy. Are you happy?

  Nico shrugged, as if happiness were an irrelevant issue. “Va bene,” he said. “My life goes well. It is possible to go better. It is possible to go worse also.”

  He smiled, and the dark gap in between his teeth glistened with a little saliva. He leaned forward a little, and the springs on the couch creaked. “Hot milk?” he offered, his eyes wet with expectation.

  I hesitated, then shook my head. He leaned back again, and the moment was lost. This did not seem to bother him nearly as much as it did me.

  In the morning I lay in bed, groggy from lack of sleep, while Dirk went down the hall to take a shower. Then I got up and moved the bag that contained the lace runner Dirk had bought for Lina off the chair. I opened the green shutters, sat down by the window, and looked out onto the Grand Canal. Fog hovered above the dark water. Mossy seaweed clung to the foundations of the buildings. The air was moist and smelled like moldy bread.

  At my feet lay the knapsack full of souvenirs for Lina. I sorted through it and pulled out a postcard of the Trevi Fountain. The blue pools of water were full of gold, silver, and copper coins thrown by thousands of tourists who had closed their eyes and made a wish to return to Italy.

  I took Dirk's black fountain pen off the table. Dear Lina, I wrote. Rome seems like long ago. It's easy to get lost in Venice, but the natives help you find the way. By the time you get this, I'll be home again. Love, Angel

  In a P.S., I wrote, Dirk and I are getting married.

  I stared at the P.S. for a moment. It seemed so final now that it was written in black ink. Below, from the canal, I heard a low whistle. On the sidewalk one of the gondoliers in his garish red-and-white striped shirt leaned against a dock post. He looked up and winked at me. I stared at him for a moment before I put the postcard on the table and closed the shutters. Then I went down the hall to use the bathroom. I felt a dull pain in my abdomen— the beginning of cramps—so I took a tampon.

  When I got back, Dirk was standing by the window, rubbing one side of his pale hair with one of the rough white towels provided by the hotel. His head was bent down toward the table where the postcard sat.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked sharply.

  He turned with a puzzled look on his face, and I realized with relief that he couldn't read a damn thing without his glasses.

  AFTER LINA TRIED to kill herself by closing all the windows and turning on the gas oven, Phil went to Sears and bought a new Kenmore electric. I played kickball with the kids in the backyard while the servicemen ripped out the old stove and installed the new. Lina was upstairs, lying in bed. She had assumed the supine position immediately after Phil brought her back from the psychiatric ward, and she had remained in that posture for almost the entire weekend. “We'll have to give Mommy some time to herself,” Phil had told Pammy and Richie. “In the meantime, here's Auntie Angel to take her place. Angel's going to stay with us until Mommy's all better, aren't you, Angel?”

  I nodded vigorously at the kids, as if I were a stable customer they could rely upon. But inside I felt like a basket case. Insomnia had kept me fitful for weeks, and I actually had been contemplating downing a handful of Xanax when Phil called to tell me that Lina had tried to commit suicide.

  “I can't believe it,” I said.

  “Well, believe it. It's true.” He paused. “You sound sick.”

  “I just broke it off with Dirk,” I told Phil.

  “Again?”

  “This time it's for good,” I said.

  “Can you come?” Phil asked. “I really need your help. Please come.”

  Phil's ragged voice—usually so smooth and calm—convinced me that he really wanted me. I called my boss and told her I had a family emergency—I had to be there for my sister. But the truth was I wanted to be there for Phil. For years I had tried to get over the strange feeling I had whenever we were washing dishes and Phil got too close to me at the sink, so close I could smell the detergent on his freshly washed shirt. I had tried to stop waking up in the middle of the night, wet from some dream I had spun about him, even while Dirk slept next to me. I had prayed to God to squelch my obsession with Phil. I had rolled the I Ching and consulted tarot cards and even done high-impact aerobics to sweat him out of my system. But nothing worked. My eyes still were drawn to the slope of his butt, his rumpled collar, his tie askew when he came home from work. Phil was a hospital administrator. He was the kind of dispassionate person who distanced himself from the patients—people like me and Lina, who were either sick in the body or spirit. That distance—plus his unattainability—no doubt attracted me. Or, as the no-nonsense counselor I recently had visited phrased it, You want him because you can't have him.

  After the servicemen left, the kids stayed outside to play on the swing set and I went back inside. Phil sat at the kitchen table and read the manual for the new oven. Then he took a pen from his pocket—he always carried the silver pen Lina had given him in his shirt pocket—and filled out the warranty card.

  To test the new stove, I heated water—coffee for Phil, tea for me. Neither one of us bothered to ask if Lina wanted anything. Like a flu patient or a pregnant woman, she had eaten nothing but soup and saltine crackers since she came home. Whenever I put the tray down on her bed, she pursed her lips and said, “Just the smell of that food makes me want to lose it.”

  The burner crackled and the coils were a luminous red when I took the whistling copper kettle off the stove. I steeped an Earl Grey tea bag for me and then poured water over the Irish creme beans I had ground for Phil. I stood at the counter listening to the water gurgling through the filter into the cup, then I brought our drinks over to the table. I liked serving Phil. He always looked so delighted when you gave him a cup of coffee or passed him some bread at the dinner table, as if simple courtesy were something extraordinary. Living with Lina had reduced him to that.

  Phil smiled and thanked me for the coffee. He finished filling out the warranty card and put it in the pile of mail he had been preparing all morning—hospital bills, insurance forms, thank-you notes. He sighed as he looked at the pile of letters, pushing one of the wayward bills back into the even stack. “She could have died,” he said.

  He hadn't talked about the incident, as he called it, since the first day I had arrived there. I didn't know how to respond, so I nodded.

  “If the UPS man hadn't gotten here…” he said.

  I nodded again.

  “If he hadn't come to the side door…”

  And I thought, If she hadn't ordered, exactly four days before, two push-up bras from Victoria's Secret… The bras were inside the package the UPS man had delivered—Phil had me open the box. We stared, with embarrassment, at the honey-colored silk lingerie, size 36C. Then Phil took the bras upstairs and told me to throw out the box. “I can't stand looking at it,” he said. I wondered where Phil put the bras. Lina and I had the same exact cup size, even though she had given birth to two children and I had never had any babies to stretch my bosom.

  I sipped my weak Earl Grey and told Phil, “It's no use thinking about what-ifs.”

  “That's all I ever think about,” Phil said. “Anymore.”

  “Me too,” I said. I kept my eyes focused on the table. It was imitation French country kitchen, pine wood, with inlaid blue-and-white tiles that matched the white brightness of the new stove.

  “So what happened with Dirk?” Phil asked me.

  “I tried,” I said. “I wanted it to work.”

  “I thought you would have been married by now,” Phil said. “I thought you two were going to elope when you went off to Italy.”

  “Dirk would never elope,” I said. “He wouldn't know how many pairs of underwear to bring.”

  Phil laughed. “You were hard on him, Angel.”

  “He annoyed me.”

  Phil blinked. “You looked exactly like Lina when you said that.”

  I shrugged. I listened to the kids out in the backya
rd, the creak of the swing, the whooompft when Richie threw himself down on the dented slide. The conversation should have drifted on to other things. But then I told Phil, “I just knew it wasn't going to work out with Dirk, that's all. And I knew there would be nothing worse than being in the wrong relationship forever, maybe even having kids in the bargain.”

  “You made the right choice, then,” Phil said.

  “So why do I feel so lousy?” I asked.

  “I have to admit, I've never considered you a very”—Phil paused, carefully choosing his words—” buoyant soul.”

  “Even when we were kids, Lina and I were never happy,” I said.

  Phil took a sip of his coffee. “I hope you don't mind my saying it, but your family always has seemed a little warped to me.”

  “That's the understatement of the year,” I said.

  “I always got odd vibes when I walked into your house. Like even the furniture was sad, and the walls were angry.” Phil hesitated. “Still, I always felt Lina exaggerated a lot of the things that were wrong in your family. She held grudges. She wanted to blame a lot on your parents. In the hospital, when she was lying there so miserable, the doctor asked her, ‘Can you remember a time in your childhood when you were happy?'”

  “I'd have to think about it,” I said, as if Phil had posed the question to me. Then a memory came to me unbidden: Lina and I sat sprawl-legged on the stained living-room rug, merrily snipping chains of paper dolls, while outside, the hot August sky grew a bloated, bruised purple, then turned pitch as night. Suddenly the wind whipped through, causing the window shades to flap and the paper dolls to scatter. Lina and I turned to each other in wonder. “God's moving the furniture upstairs!” we said in one hushed voice, the moment we heard the first ominous rumble of thunder.

  “Why can't Lina remember that?” I blurted out.

  “Remember what?” Phil asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “That's just what Lina told the doctor: nothing. ‘There's nothing I remember,’ she said, ‘and anyway, if memories are all you have, then why stay alive?’ So the doctor gave her a legal pad and a pencil and said, ‘Make me a list of ten good reasons why you should be alive right now, then.’ She sat there with the pencil in her hand and it took her a whole minute to write down the kids.”