Beulah walked in and saw three plates set at the table, a bottle of wine open and three of her small glass tumblers next to the plates.
“I no see your wine glasses. I use those,” she said, pointing again with the knife to the glass tumblers.
“Really, Rossella, you don’t have to cook for me,” Beulah said. “I meant to cook for you tonight. You’re my guest, after all.”
“No problem,” she said. “This week I cook for you. Tomatoes I found in the garden, still good. Tonight, we have spaghetti pomodoro. You like.”
Beulah wondered who was going to be the third person? Had Mrs. DeVechio invited Jake?
“You’ve been to the garden?”
“I walk outside and see what we have. Nice beans, but no arugula. You make big mistake not planting arugula.”
Arugula? She had never even heard of it.
Just then, Woody entered the back door, wearing his overalls with one suspender hanging down and smiling with his big toothy grin, the loose upper plate jiggling ever so slightly.
“I was dropping off the wheelbarrow I borrowed when I saw Rossella in the garden. She invited me to dinner,” Woody said, obviously pleased with the invitation.
“I love Eye-talian,” he said. “Stella took me to a nice place up in Chicago last weekend,” he said before realizing his slip.
“Stella?” Beulah asked, forgetting for the moment her kitchen had fallen into chaos.
“Well, yeah, you know I had to go up there to look at some horses, and, well, uh, I remembered she was there and thought maybe we could grab a bite to eat. So we did… .Would you look at this,” he said, leaning in to smell the concoction, a look of ecstasy on his face. Jealousy seared Beulah upon hearing Woody’s admiration for another cook—and right in her own kitchen to boot.
To make matters worse, here they were with a bottle of wine open on her kitchen table for all the world to see. Poor Woody, an occasional Methodist, was likely to stumble at seeing her Christian witness diminished by the fermented fruit of the vine. Well, he had to know she had nothing to do with it.
Rossella pulled fresh-baked bread out of the oven and put it on the table.
“Sit!” she told Beulah and Woody. “I fix you.”
For all Beulah’s indignation, she knew of nothing else to do but obey Rossella. They sat.
The little woman took the tin of olive oil and poured some of the greenest oil Beulah had ever seen onto the white plate. She cut the bread and gave them each a slice. With a slice in her own hand, she pushed it onto the plate of oil and let it soak. Then she popped it into her mouth.
“You do,” she said.
Beulah watched Woody do it first and then she followed suit. The oil tasted earthy, but it flavored the crusty bread nicely. The bread was too chewy for her, though. Good bread took the right hand, and Rossella doesn’t have it, she thought smugly.
When the tomato sauce was finished, Rossella put spaghetti on each of their plates and then a ladleful of sauce. When she sat at the table, she tried to pour Beulah wine.
“No, thank you,” Beulah said firmly.
Rossella just raised her eyebrows and poured some for Woody and her.
If Woody wanted to partake, it was his business, but he wouldn’t see Beulah doing it.
The spaghetti was heavy on garlic and Beulah dreaded the indigestion sure to follow later. Woody had second helpings of the spaghetti and of the wine. Beulah dearly hoped the mound of spaghetti would offset the effects of drink.
“Rossella, this was the best meal I’ve had in a long time,” Woody said, and pushed his plate away. Another sting to Beulah’s pride since he had just sat at her table less than two weeks before.
“Why don’t you stay around a bit? You did have two glasses of wine; maybe you shouldn’t drive quite yet.” Beulah said.
“I take a little wine every night for medicinal purposes,” he said. “I’m kindly used to it, but I believe I might sit outside and smoke my pipe before I head home.”
“I sit with you,” Rossella said, and then turned to Beulah.
“You no do dishes. I do later,” she said.
Beulah was glad to leave her to the pile of greasy dishes. She went upstairs to her bedroom, feeling the garlic roll around in her chest. It was going to be a long night.
No, it was going to be a long week.
Chapter Twenty-Two
WITH A LITTLE sleep on the plane and a light breakfast just before arrival Annie felt reasonably rested and ready to face the day. After de-boarding, they searched for rental car signs in the terminal.
“This is certainly a new experience,” she said. “Normally we’re working the flight and catching the bus afterwards to the hotel.”
“This way,” Janice said, plowing ahead.
It seemed a mile of walking through a maze of halls, escalators, and moving sidewalks.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Annie asked. “It says to go this way for rental cars.” She pointed at the sign.
Janice stopped and pulled out the map.
“Paulo said not to go there. He’s sending us to the VIP counter where we don’t have to wait in line. He got us a good deal: twenty-nine dollars a day.”
Janice pointed to a place on the map and then looked up at the signs.
“Should be at the end of this hall,” she said, taking off with her rolling bag. Annie followed and soon they were in a parking garage.
“Here’s the counter,” Janice said. “I’ll go in and get the keys.”
Annie sat on a bench to wait and tried not to think how much she would like a shower.
A few minutes later, Janice was dangling keys in front of her.
“Can you drive a manual?”
“Sure, but you know how to read the road signs. Wouldn’t you rather drive?”
“I can’t drive a stick shift. Anyway, I need to navigate,” Janice said. “All right, it’s in parking space thirty. Over there.”
She followed Janice and then spotted the bright red car. Something wasn’t right. Annie checked the number again.
“Aw! He’s going to get a good Christmas present this year,” Janice said.
“You have got to be kidding,” Annie said.
“Sweet, huh?” Janice opened the trunk.
“Janice, I can’t drive this! It’s a Ferrari.”
“Annie, if you can drive a straight shift, you can drive this car.”
“What if I wreck?”
“Why do you think we have insurance?” Janice asked, heaving her bag into the trunk. “Here, I’ll load your bag. Get up there in the driver’s seat and get familiar.”
“Let’s go back and trade it for something normal,” she said, and groaned.
“To some people, this is normal,” Janice said and grinned. “Let’s go.”
The low driver’s seat practically swallowed her. After driving a truck all summer, it was like sitting on the pavement. In the dark of the parking garage, she squinted at the instrument panel while Janice studied the map. This was surely a bad idea.
Annie turned on the car and put it in reverse. They jerked backward and the car stalled. She tried again and this time let out the clutch slowly while giving it more gas. Janice looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“Remember you asked for it, so no comments.”
Slowly down the parking garage ramp, she circled and circled, until they exited the airport parking and entered the autostrada toward Rome.
“Okay, we are going to merge onto the Grande Raccordo Anulare,” Janice said.
“The what?”
“The GRA. Watch the Mercedes!”
A silver car whizzed by them on the left as if they were standing still.
“Good grief,” Annie said. “They fly around here.”
“I doubt they expect a Ferrari to be going at a snail’s pace. You’re driving like a grandma. C’mon, speed it up. Now, stay to the right, the exit is coming up,” Janice said.
Muscles tense, Annie longed for a st
out Italian espresso. Watching her mirrors, she eased onto the GRA.
“Now what?” she said.
“We’re taking the A1, but we’ll need to go through a toll booth first. Go to the lane where it says ‘ticket’,” Janice said.
“Which lane? My Italian brain hasn’t kicked in yet.”
“Biglietto,” Janice said, and pointed.
Annie sailed into the lane and then stopped and stalled the car, forgetting to press down on the clutch. She grabbed a ticket and handed it to Janice. When she restarted the car, the motor rumbled and echoed off the concrete tollbooths before she launched onto the A1.
“How far on this?”
“I think a little more than two hours. Oh, I forgot to tell you. My cousin called and someone is using his apartment, so he’s putting us up in the Grand Hotel Vesuvio.”
“Sounds fancy.”
“Probably is,” Janice said. “He felt bad about the mix up. His wife scheduled somebody else without him knowing about it.”
“I had no idea traveling with you meant such luxuries,” Annie said. “First the Ferrari, now the hotel.”
Janice laughed. “The price is right. And it helps to have a big Italian family on both sides of the pond. Hey, do you want to stop and eat lunch on the way or just go on to Naples?”
“Let’s get there. I’d like to get this driving behind us,” she said. “Do you have directions to the hotel?”
Janice pulled out several sheets of paper and rifled through them until she found the one she wanted.
“Here it is,” she said.
In two hours, they were on the outskirts of Naples after passing the exits for the historic archeological sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum. A view of Mount Vesuvius was in front of them and the natural beauty of the landscape had gradually changed to include heaps of garbage on the side of the road.
“Why does this look so different?” Annie asked.
“It’s the Camorra, the local mafia. They’ve taken over the removal of trash, some of it toxic, and then dump it wherever they want,” Janice said.
“Terrible,” Annie said, looking at the bags filled with trash, television and computer screens, appliances, and clothing piled on the sides of the road and under the overpasses.
“The percentages of cancer diagnosis are up dramatically in the last few years. It’s partly why my aunt and uncle spend half their time in the US. But Naples is their home, so they don’t want to abandon it entirely. It’s really sad for the people who live here.”
“Who knows what’s buried or thrown out to sea,” Annie said.
“Okay, we are going to turn up here,” Janice said, pointing to the right.
For the next few minutes, they wound around streets with the Bay of Naples off to the right and the stunning Mount Vesuvius in front. As much as Annie wanted to enjoy the view, she concentrated on her driving. She was mastering the straight shift but traffic darted in and out, motor scooters whizzed by, and if she missed the turn into the hotel, it would mean another circling around.
“It should be up here on the left, less than a quarter of a mile,” Janice said, leaning forward in the seat to see. “Yes, there it is. Just pull into the reception parking.”
Annie did, and it was with great relief she turned off the car. A bellman met them and took their bags. Standing and stretching her arms, she felt the effects of the long flight, the stress of the drive, and the jet lag. She gathered her purse out of the car and followed Janice and the bellman into the lobby.
A shiny marble floor, antique furnishings, Persian rugs, and staff standing at attention told her this wasn’t like the hotels she was accustomed to as a flight attendant or on her own personal travel. Janice’s cousin had gone above and beyond in compensating for the booked apartment.
Janice got the room key and they took the elevator upstairs. The room was large and had two twin beds in the Italian custom. If they had needed a king bed, the twins would have been pushed together. It was quite practical, she had always thought.
After the bellman was tipped and out the door, Janice turned to her.
“What about a quick bite of lunch in the hotel restaurant, then a short nap? Or do you want to go now to the address?”
“I don’t think I could do it now,” Annie sat down on the bed. “I’d like to be fresh when we knock on their door.”
“Okay, then tonight we’ll go out to dinner. Let’s get a taxi so we don’t have to navigate the downtown streets, since we have no idea where we’re going. We can leave early, and let them drive us by the address first. You can decide if you want to stop tonight or we can scope it out and go first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” Annie said. “It might be a better time to catch a family at home. But I like the idea; let’s see what it looks like tonight before dinner.”
With a plan in place, they ate bruschetta with tomatoes for lunch along with a green salad, and then retired to the room for naps. By seven, they had both rested and showered and were ready to go. Annie tucked the copy of the letter and the address in her purse, along with the picture of Elena.
They stopped by the concierge and Janice asked about the location of the address. The woman’s dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck and she squinted through stylish glasses.
“Ah, thees address eez een the historic area of Naples,” she said in her heavily accented English. “We are on the edge of it, but this eez here,” she said pointed to a place not terribly far from the bay.
“Is there a restaurant or osteria you might recommend in this same area? We would like a taxi to drive us by this address first.”
“Oh, no,” she answered immediately. “Thees eez not a good area. But I can recommend thees and eetz not too far from thees address.”
The woman wrote down the name of a restaurant and an address.
“Would you like me to call a taxi for you?”
“Please,” Janice said.
A few minutes later, butterflies danced in her stomach when they set off for the address where the Caivanos lived in 1943. She could not imagine what Naples looked like back then, but certainly the garbage and toxic waste would not have been piled on the roadsides. But it was in the middle of a war, so it may not have looked much better. She did know Mount Vesuvius had not changed remarkably, and the Bay of Naples must have looked the same as well.
The driver took them down toward the bay and she tried to imagine it through the eyes of her great-uncle Ephraim. While she saw a beautiful view of the ocean with Mount Vesuvius off to the left, he would have seen all types of naval ships in port. Finally came the day he saw Naples for the last time, when he loaded a carrier ship for the Battle of Anzio, which would be the last place on earth he would see. Her own eyes welled with tears as she imagined what he might have seen before leaving this place, and his loved one, for good.
The taxi slowed and pulled next to a vacant building with graffiti written on the side. He took the address from Janice and looked again and spoke to her in Italian. She answered and pointed to the building. He shook his head and said something else, then eased back out onto the street.
“Was that it?” Annie asked.
“No, but we are close. I think this area must have looked much different in 1943,” Janice said. Buildings on both sides of the street had boarded up windows, graffiti marked the stone fronts and broken glass shards hung in the windows not boarded up.
“He thinks it’s the next street up,” Janice said.
When he turned, Annie recognized the street name from the envelope. This was the address. The taxi driver pulled up in front of an aged metal door that covered the storefront. The three-story building was vacant and she wished she could see behind the metal covering to the storefront behind, to better imagine what Ephraim would have seen during the war. To the left of the metal store covering, there was a wooden door. She guessed it led to the family’s upstairs apartments, just as the letters said.
The taxi driv
er said something to Janice.
“Do you want to get out? He said he’d wait.”
“Sure,” Annie said. When she stared up at the apartment building, she envisioned a street alive with activity as people bought and sold, lived and loved, ate and drank in the midst of a war. For a moment, she could feel the poverty, the fear, and even hope as the Italians were freed from the rule of a dictator.
When reality of what existed today set in, she could not quell the disappointment. The Caivanos were gone. Long gone. Annie should have known it would turn out like this when nothing surfaced after all the Internet searching they had both done prior to the trip. With only one address several decades old, how could they possibly track them down now?
Beulah would want to see it, even if there was nothing much to see, so she took pictures of the building and the street.
The restaurant was just a few blocks away and they were both quiet on the drive over. Once they were seated at a table, Janice order sparkling water and a half carafe of the house wine.
The waiter brought a basket of bread and olive oil and they placed their order for a shared antipasto of cured meats, and their individual selections of the primo piatto, the pasta dish.
“Are you discouraged?” Janice asked, adding salt and pepper to the olive oil before letting her bread soak in it.
“A little. I didn’t really expect to go there and find the store and their apartment just as it was in the 1940s. I did hope it would be an active neighborhood and we might have found someone with a lead on the family—maybe someone who knew them or knew relatives. If we only had a name for Elena’s son, it would help so much.”
“Yeah, it puts us at a disadvantage for sure,” Janice said. “But I noticed a Naples history museum advertised in the hotel stuff. I wonder if that might be a good place to go tomorrow. Maybe we can get a lead on what happened after World War II.”
“Good idea,” Annie said, a sense of encouragement at having some direction. “And what about going through the phone book, placing random calls to Caivanos to see if we turn something up? … If you don’t mind to do the talking.”
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