We Are Family

by Fabio Bartolomei

  Waiting with Vittoria was pure torture, my head felt like it was about to explode. “I have a surprise,” “a nice surprise for Mamma,” “a surprise that has to do with her chocolate ciambelloni,” “that conerns her chocolate ciambelloni and the café right outside the school.” Having spoiled the surprise for my sister in five minutes flat, I made up my mind to take a more grown-up approach with Mamma. In the car, the topic comes up immediately.

  “Al, the ciambellone’s gone, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “What ciambellone?”

  “You know perfectly well! It was supposed to last all week.”

  “Huh, who knows.”

  “What did you do with it? Did you eat the whole thing? Did you sell it? Did you set it on fire?”

  “Just guess . . . ”

  “Al, tell me right away what you did with it!”

  If you spill the beans straightaway then you spoil the surprise, if you create a little suspense then they get mad, it’s no good, whatever you do is wrong.

  “It was supposed to be a surprise, Mamma . . . I sold it to the café at school, with a special promotional price for the first sales period, a little under market price, and then rising to standard market price. The supply contract calls for three ciambelloni a week, for a full year. We’re rich.”

  A certain Daniela from Bologna has been elected the perfect Italian wife. She passed her tests with flying colors in the fields of general knowledge, child rearing, floral arrangements, cocktail preparation, and, also according to the newspaper article, she enchanted the judges with her baked lasagna. Signora Daniela is proud to wear her pageant sash but she only enjoys that privilege because none of us thought of trying to run Mamma in the competition. She may not be much at floral arrangements and she doesn’t have the foggiest idea of how to make a cocktail, but she’d be able to enchant the judges with her dazzling smile alone, the wonderful smile that has started to appear on her face regularly since she’s been able to tell everyone that she’s a pastry chef. I went back to see the man who fixes doors because Agnese and Mario Elvis went to vote and I thought he might enjoy my company. I found him inside a detached home. We chatted for a while, his name is Raul, he told me that he’s a highly respected professional, he used to work in Rome, but now he’s commuting between Ostia and Torvaianica to attract new customers. He says that every now and then it’s good to move on to greener pastures. Then all of a sudden he pulled a Monopoly box out of his bag and told me to get out of there because he had no more time to waste with me. At that point it dawned on me that there is no single recipe for making people happy, saving the world is going to be a titanic undertaking.

  When Mamma and Papà get back I’m waiting for them in the living room, bent over my schoolbooks just as I’d promised.

  “Well, have you exercised your rights as citizens?” I ask.

  “Yes, Al . . . ” Mamma replies.

  “Have you voted according to conscience?”

  “No matter what you ask, it’s useless, we’re not going to tell you how we voted.”

  “I understand . . . which means that you implicitly authorize the keeping of secrets within the nuclear family.”

  “Al, cut it out, we voted ‘no.’”

  “Oh great. I have parents who are opposed to the abolition of divorce . . . who call into question the survival of the family, this basic cell, this instrument of progress, this guarantee of continuity, fertilizer of the earth, great mother, hearth and home capable of warming and fostering ideas and affections, cradle of the most fervent sanctity!”

  “It’s the nuns, I told you . . . ” Papà gets argumentative with Mamma.

  “So you want to keep divorce? Then you’d better be well aware that next comes abortion. And after that, homosexuals getting married. And after that, your wife might very well leave you to run away with the maid!”

  “No, I know who it is . . . ” Mamma replies, “this is Fanfani at the rally of the Christian Democrats . . . Al, you’ve been listening to the radio again!”

  23.

  When Torvaianica finally started to seem like a normal city, with lots of shops open for business, lines of cars, and loads of people on the beach, we were forced to take shelter back in Rome, in a one-bedroom apartment on the Via Casilina. The landlord had told Mamma and Papà that for the month of August they could either give him triple the rent or else they were free to get the hell out. We went back to the beach in September, yearning to enjoy the last few days of summer, and we found the door broken in and the whole place upside down. It took me a whole day to track down Raul, but in the end I found him and I convinced him to change our lock. It wasn’t easy, I had to beg him and play the captivating smile card. I discovered that he’s actually a very shy person: when I introduced him to Mamma he bowed his head and stayed that way until he was done with the job. He didn’t want to accept payment, he only took an espresso and a slice of cake.

  Vittoria has gone back to hanging out with the same group of friends she managed to assemble before our first exodus from Rome. I don’t understand why Mamma and Papà don’t say something to her, and yet I know they’ve seen these kids. They’re between eleven and fourteen years of age, nearly all of them have flunked a year, and the ones that aren’t repeating a year over have quit school entirely. They walk along dragging their feet like the living dead and all they talk about is soccer and pussy, subjects they’re especially expert on because those are the same subjects their fathers and older brothers mastered. I’ve made friends with a kid myself, a boy my age. His name is Raimondo, and he really had no say in the matter. He works behind the counter at the local café so if you order something and talk to him, he’s forced to listen, I knew that because I saw it in a movie once. His parents are always cheerful and laughing, but they’re not really happy, they have coin-operated smiles. They work like pay phones, pinball machines, and jukeboxes. They turn on the cheer when a customer walks through the door and they turn it off again the minute he leaves, to save on power. I like Raimondo because he seems shy but the minute his parents leave him alone, he livens up, and sometimes veers into the diabolic. He’s a very talented musician, the only one I know who is able to play the cardboard box that contains liquorice strings. He made a big circular hole in it, and attached rubber bands from one side to the other, varying the tension in order to obtain high and low notes. Of course, he can only play his cardboard box when he’s alone, when his parents are out running errands. They’re worried at the thought that their son might have a different talent than what is needed to manage a bar.

  I leave Mamma whistling in the kitchen as she listens to one of Papà’s tapes, actually a mix tape, with a lesson on estimating land revenues for fiscal purposes and a couple of Elvis songs, a double-entry accounting lesson with a song by Bobby Solo following it. She kneads and bakes chocolate ciambelloni all day long. On her ID card, she has drawn a line through “Housewife” and written in “Pastry Chef,” with a pen. According to Papà, sooner or later they’ll arrest her. I go straight to the café. All the kids drop by to put a few coins into the pinball machine on their way back from the beach. They come in dripping wet, barefoot, and the minute they start to put their coins into the metal slot an array of spectacular white and blue sparks appears. Two of them have gotten stuck to the pinball machine, and one—this I witnessed personally—to the jukebox. In the end Raimondo’s father decided to insulate them by putting wooden boards under the legs, and since then it’s been necessary to come up with new ideas to have fun.

  I walk into the bar and I go over to the counter. Raimondo doesn’t even say hello, he just tips his head toward a little kid drenched from head to heels, furiously playing the pinball machine. Water sprays from his hair.

  “This damned pinball machine doesn’t work right, the specials don’t light up!” says the kid.

  Raimondo puts on that smile I like so well.
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  “It’s probably because of the plug, it might not be snug in the outlet . . . ” he tells him with disarming promptness.

  A second later, the kid, still dripping seawater, is behind the pinball machine, fooling around with the plug.

  When I get home I see Vittoria walk into the courtyard where the bicycles are stored and I hide behind the street door. She immediately notices the flowers on the bike seat. She looks around. She seems to be stunned. This morning I left a big paper heart for her, but she must have thought it was for somebody else, that whoever it was had just left it there. Now she has no doubts and she smiles, the idiot. Yesterday she came back from the beach with her face all gloomy. “What’s wrong?” I asked her and she said: “My ankles are fat.” “Who says so?” “Everyone.” And I realized that our last few days of vacation were about to turn into pure hell. A practically adolescent girl who’s depressed because she thinks that her ankles aren’t skinny enough is a ticking time bomb and I don’t particularly feel like having my vacation days ruined because Cristiano, or Cris as he likes to be called, or “everyone,” as my sister chooses to call him, has just found out that Vittoria wasn’t constructed in the Mattel laboratories. “Your ankles are fine just the way they are,” I told her, and she said: “What do you know about it.” Nothing, never mind, what do I know about it. I have my dreams too, you know, I’d like to be able to bend a lamppost with a single punch like Spiderman, but still I’m not willing to ruin my summer because the most I’m able to do is bend a fork or because Mamma isn’t thrilled with my displays of strength. I come in and she immediately hides the flowers in the bike basket.

  “What are you doing?” I ask her.

  “Nothing, just going out for a spin. Leave the door open for me, the electricity has gone out in the whole building.”

  “Oh right, at the café too.”

  There’s something powerful about what I’ve done. This morning Vittoria leapt out of bed and ran down into the courtyard to pump up the tires of her bicycle, or at least so she claimed. She couldn’t wait to see whether her secret admirer had left her another present. When she came back upstairs she seemed to be in a trance, even more than usual, I mean. The anonymous message composed of letters cut out of the newspaper must have worked.

  “Vittoria, what are you planning?” my mother shouts.

  “I’m co-o-oming,” she replies from the bathroom.

  “What the hell has she been doing in there for the past hour . . . ”

  “She’s brushing her hair,” I say.

  “Does it have to take so long?”

  “If you brush your hair like Rita Hayworth, yes . . . ”

  “Al, you shouldn’t peep through the keyhole.”

  “I just wanted to make sure she was still alive.”

  “If she’s putting on this whole production because she thinks she won’t have to go to the beach, I’ll fix her little red wagon. I don’t want to hear another word about her ankles,” Mamma mutters.

  Vittoria walks out of the bathroom in her swimsuit, with a sarong wrapped around her waist, and a mouthful of lipstick. Her hair, electrified by the excessive brushing, whips the air wildly.

  “Oooh, how pretty we are,” says Mamma.

  Vittoria replies in a bored tone of voice, she’s felt pretty since yesterday afternoon, and she already seems to be tired of the idea. She leans against the doorjamb and crosses her legs. Her hair levitates and sticks to the wooden doorjamb, in search of a ground.

  “I’m guessing that you’re going to the beach,” Mamma says to her.

  “Of course I am, we’re at the beach, where else would I go.”

  “Fine, but take off the lipstick.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “No argument out of you!”

  “She put on perfume, too . . . ” I say.

  My mother investigates, sniffing the air.

  “It’s so I don’t reek of the stench of Al’s feet,” says the lovely Vittoria.

  “Take off that lipstick and come eat your breakfast.”

  The diva sashays lazily to the bathroom. On my heart and on my brain I jot down this note: “Making a woman happy is easy, remember to do it every day. For your own good.”

  24.

  “Al, not today, I’m begging you! We have to go to the lady doctor and today I don’t want you to play the fool! Understood?”

  “Ah’m vara sarra, Mamma, bat tadaa Ah’m anla asang tha vawal ‘a.’”

  “Why on earth would you do such a thing? Get going, it’s late, too! You will be in big trouble, Al Santamaria, if you make me look like a fool today in front of the lady doctor, I swear you will catch it tonight . . . first from me and then from your father!”

  We get to the office of the calm lady doctor after a car trip that lasts an hour and twenty minutes plus a short walk that consisted of much jerking along by the hand and a string of threats. How can I make them understand that I don’t want to go to this lady doctor anymore? Once we’ve determined that I’m a genius, enough is enough, right? Why keep hammering at it?

  “Hello, Al, how are you today?” the lady doctor asks me.

  My mother glares at me. She clenches my hand tightly.

  “Well, ve-e-e-ery well,” I say, and my mother heaves a sigh of relief. “Bet Decter? De yee mend mech ef tedey Eh enly ese the vewel ‘e’?”

  I don’t have anything against this lady. In her way, she’s even likable. If you ask me, she uses the cotton ball the way Mamma did before becoming a pastry chef. She’s never in a hurry, she’s loving, she doesn’t seem to have anything else to do but tend to me. But the point is that I don’t really like seeing Mamma and Papà wasting money on these visits, if then when we finally find the promised home, we won’t have enough left over to buy it. The sleepy lady doctor is very good at drawing words out of me but I know that I need to be careful and the whole time I make a special effort to talk about harmless topics, like school, my friends, my sister, my dreams of becoming a superhero. It wasn’t easy, but it seems to me that it went quite well.

  “Al, do you mind waiting outside while I talk to your Mamma?”

  “Certeenly, Decter.”

  The absurdity of grown-ups. They still believe that if they tell me to leave the room just when they’re getting to the interesting part, I’m going to just sit down and be a good boy, instead of gluing my ear to the door.

  “Believe me, Signora, I’ve never had a thing like this happen before. We spoke for a solid half hour and I kept forgetting I was sitting across from a seven-year-old child,” says the lady doctor.

  “What did he talk about?”

  “About the new law on public financing of political parties, about the inflation, about al-Fatah, about the commercials with Pippopotamus . . . ”

  “Oh yes, he loves him.”

  “No, Signora, he hates him. He sees him as a crowbar to force open the consciousness of the public and induce them to purchase needlessly costly consumer goods.”

  “Pippopotamus?”

  “And he believes that financial restitution to the former colonies is only just and fair. Your son is a happy boy, he adores his family, but there’s something oppressing him, he seems anguished . . . ”

  “We do everything we can to keep him from reading the papers and watching TV . . . I don’t know how he finds out about certain things, my husband and I never talk about politics.”

  “He’s surprisingly precocious but don’t be fooled, he’s still a child and there are certain things that are too grown-up for him, he’s not capable of processing them . . . ”

  “I can process them perfectly well, actually!”

  “Al, stop eavesdropping!” shouts Mamma.

  There, now they’re whispering and I can’t understand a darned thing they’re saying. Too bad for them, now I’ll get bored and there’s nothing in the world more dangerou
s than a bored little boy, right, Casimiro? Anyway, I know exactly what they must be saying to each other. So long newspapers, so long TV, hello parties with my friends and soccer cards. Oh God.

  “What’s that smell?” the lady doctor asks from inside the room.

  “Al!”

  “What smell?” I ask.

  “You’re burning something!”

  “Me? No, no.”

  Wake u-u-up . . . wake u-u-up . . . my amazing brain is sending you impulses ordering you to wake u-u-up . . . don’t try putting up any resistance, it’s futi-i-i-ile . . . I’m looking at you intensely and my massive brain which is already so active at four in the morning is establishing contact with your sleeping pastry chef brain . . . let yourself be guided by my superior impulses . . . when I count to three you will awaken . . . one . . . two . . . three-e-e-e . . .

  “A-a-al . . . ” Agnese mutters from between the sheets.

  It works!

  “What are you doing up? . . . What time is it? . . . ”

  “I’ve had a great idea, Mamma.”

  “You can tell me tomorrow, now scoot back to bed . . . ”

  “It’ll only take a minute! You need to put a chocolate meteorite in the ciambellone. In the ciambellone-e-e-e . . . you understand, Mamma?”

  “What? . . . ”

  “A chocolate meteorite, a bigger chunk of chocolate than the others, much bigger, and whoever finds it gets the slice for free. You understand, Mamma? It’ll make sales sky-y-yrocket! Listen to me-e-e-e . . . ”

  “Yes, yes, I understand . . . but now, I’m begging you, go back to bed . . . ”

  Do you hear me? This is Al’s extraordinary brain talking to you . . . the supremacy of my brain cells orders you to put a chocolate meteorite in the ciambellone-e-e-e . . . and while you’re at it: it’s time to cut it out with these visits to the way too calm lady do-o-oct-o-or. Now go to sleep . . . slee-ee-eep . . . slee-ee-ee-eep . . . and when I count to three you’ll sleep and you’ll give rest and recuperation to your exhausted body . . . one . . . two . . .