Home Sweet Anywhere

by Lynne Martin

  “An answer this week would be fine,” he responded flatly.

  “Hold your horses, bub. She doesn’t show a tunnel at all, but I think that instead of taking that little off ramp, you’d better just get in there with them,” I replied in an equally unfriendly tone.

  Of course, he ignored me and took the off ramp. For his efforts, we had to double back, drive half a mile through heavy traffic, double back again, and get across three fast-moving, crowded lanes circling a big monument to some big-deal general. All of this allowed him to again push his way into that tunnel road. And all of which did nothing for our souring moods.

  “Oh great,” he moaned, once he settled into the lane. “It’s petering out here and I don’t know what to do now.”

  “Make a legal U-turn as soon as possible and proceed to Via Nazionale,” Victoria said calmly. I glared at her. Making a U-turn in Florence holds the same likelihood as me becoming the editor of the New York Times. We finally ignored Victoria’s high-brow yammering, pulled over, and dragged out a paper map. Between the map and a re-booted Victoria, we finally made it through the center of the city and drove toward the hill where we would be living.

  Once we were on course, I dared to glance at the city. Sun-baked red tile topped all the stucco buildings in their faded pink, ochre, and tan. Along the wide boulevards, venerable trees canopied massive bronze generals eternally riding their steeds and classical marble Roman deities intertwining with sculptured angels. We passed shops offering fine jewelry and silk scarves, and almost every block boasted an enticing gelato shop. At little sidewalk cafés, people downed cups of espresso and munched on their afternoon pastries.

  A loud car horn blast interrupted my tourist observations…and was the last straw for the agitated Tim. After shouting an obscenity and favoring the offender with the international hand signal of displeasure, Tim’s glare suddenly softened and he said, “Wow! Look at this. There’s the gas station Martha mentioned and that little deli where we are supposed to turn. I think we’ve made it.”

  In retrospect, I have no idea how we managed to reach our new home that day. As if getting through Florence wasn’t beastly enough, a hairpin turn confronted us at the bottom of our road every time we returned from an outing. It was so sharp that, during our entire stay, Tim managed to make it in one try only twice. The other hundred or so times, he stopped, backed up, and started from another angle, while keeping a sharp eye for oncoming vehicles and scooters from both directions. Or should I say, onrushing. Before making the next turn, a blind corner, Tim hit the horn to prevent someone from screaming down the impossibly narrow street and killing everyone involved. Italians, like the Irish, drive as if they are certain of a happy afterlife (and I’m sure many of them are).

  When we arrived, there to greet us were ecstatic dogs, our host Francesco and hostess Martha, the gardener, the maid, and a neighbor who was passing by. All of them helped us drag our suitcases up a steep hill to our gate. Suddenly, it felt like we had walked into a scene from Under the Tuscan Sun.

  Likewise, the apartment was HUGE by our standards. We were accustomed by then to living in apartments that were five hundred square feet or less. This place was at least a thousand square feet! Every room offered postcard views of vineyards, villas, churches, orchards, and neat rows of Italian cypress bordering verdant fields. In the center of the valley, Florence’s Duomo gleamed. On the terrace we had an outdoor fireplace, a deep sink, and a serving countertop for entertaining. Our arrangement also included use of the pool on the next level up, so we could splash around and take in the view at the same time. Perfezione!

  Francesco, who is an attorney in Florence, invited us to a dinner party the next night downstairs at his and Martha’s apartment. When he left us, we rounded up cool drinks and nibbles that Martha had thoughtfully provided as a welcome gift. “Now, this is terrific!” Tim exclaimed. “We have two whole months here, so we can really settle in and enjoy ourselves. We can write in the morning and then get out for a while in the afternoon and see some things. I’ll bet I can make some headway on my book while we’re here, and you’ll have plenty of time to finish the Wall Street Journal article and get it submitted. Then, later in the day, we can come home, have a swim, prepare a simple dinner, and dine on the terrace.”

  He’s a very organized person, thank God. Somebody needs to figure it all out. I admired his enthusiasm.

  “Simple is the operative word here,” I replied. “After a month in Paris and four days on the road, I could skip some dinners altogether.”

  But in the meantime, I took a big sip of Chianti and reached for some fresh-herbed goat cheese slathered on homemade bread, topped off with some sun-dried tomatoes.

  Martha, our hostess, was the half-sister of a dear friend back in Los Angeles. They shared the same father, but Martha was 100 percent Italian in every possible way. This beautiful, dynamic woman wore her silver hair in an appealing, messy bun and dressed in floaty, soft outfits perfectly suited to the climate. Through the years, when Martha had come to visit her half-brother in California, who was a composer and a very dear friend of Guy’s and mine, we grew to know each other very well. Tim and I had stayed at Martha’s country house, the castle Porciano in the Casentino Valley about an hour outside of Florence (yes, I did just say she lives in a castle) the previous year, but this time we wanted a Florence experience, so she gave us a discounted rate for the apartment while its regular tenants were away. Our situation seemed ideal, and we settled back in our terrace chairs to watch the pink evening sky fade while the twinkling lights of the city came alive.

  The next day, Martha drove us to Esselunga, a major supermarket. In typical Italian fashion, she used landmarks to help us remember the route. “See that clump of cypress at the end of the median?” She veered suddenly to avoid a Vespa carrying an Italian family of four. “That’s where you go around the circle so you can turn left up that street. And look,” she continued, merrily waving one hand at a long terra-cotta building with a tile roof, as if that near-collision with the Vespa never existed. “At the end of this building, when you see that very large pine tree, you’ll turn right.”

  Our heads were spinning trying to remember it all. Let me tell you: there are probably five thousand pine trees and six thousand cypress clumps in every neighborhood of Florence. Also, every building is some shade of terra-cotta with a tile roof. Martha did her best to teach us, but we proved poor students. For a long time, the true location of Esselunga remained as elusive as Bigfoot. We knew that each time we struck out for a shopping expedition, we would get lost at least once, sometimes more. As the Italians say, così è la vita, such is life!

  ***

  That night, we arrived at the dinner party, where twelve people of five nationalities were gathered on Martha and Francesco’s terrace. Everyone was multilingual—except us. Did we just land in a Bon Appétit magazine photo spread? You know the kind: lots of glamorous, intelligent-looking people lounging around a colorful table, candlelight glowing…and, for added measure, authentic Tuscan food and good wine in abundance. The sophisticated Europeans were kind to us less fortunate mortals and translated so we could participate. The surrounding hillsides echoed with stories told in several languages and accompanied with laughter (which sounds the same, whether it’s in Italian, French, English, or Croatian).

  As the conversation rippled along, Tim mentioned how anxious we were to get into the wonderful city of Florence again. Imagine our surprise when the guests, and even Martha and Francesco, unanimously lamented its sad condition.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “We were here for a few days just eighteen months ago, and it was just as captivating as it has always been! The piazzas, the wonderful sculpture, the sophisticated stores, the unparalleled art and architecture…how can that have changed?”

  “That’s what we want to warn you about, so you won’t be so disappointed,” one of the guests, Alta Macadam, a travel writer who has edited over forty Blue Guide to Italy books, said. �
�Our city has taken some terrible economic hits, so Florence has suffered badly recently. There isn’t enough funding to keep everything in good order. It’s breaking our hearts.”

  Dejan Atanackovic, a Serbian who was teaching visual arts to New York University students in their study abroad program and also rented an apartment on the villa’s grounds, concurred. “You know what Florence is like today? It’s turned into a big Renaissance Disneyland, in my opinion, and a dirty one, at that. The average tourist spends four and a half hours to see a city that has the greatest art collection of any city of its size in the world. But the city doesn’t have enough money to clean the streets and care for its homeless. It’s shocking and sad.” The others shook their heads in agreement.

  “It’s the cruise ships,” his friend from Croatia commented. “The people come into the city on buses or on day trips from places like Venice or Rome, have a piece of pizza and some gelato, stand in line for hours to see the David, and then get back on their buses, leaving tons of trash but little cash behind them in their wake.” We knew what he meant. We had privately thought about that the previous year when we saw the seemingly endless lines of “boat people” waiting to see Michelangelo’s magnificent statue of David at the Accademia Gallery. It didn’t look like our idea of fun. A woman at the far end of the table, who taught art history in Venice, tossed in a few remarks about the similarities of the tourist problems in that much-visited city.

  As the dishes were cleared away and coffee was served, a deep discussion between Dejan and the Croatian about the nature of reality riveted everyone at the table. I must admit that my tired brain was having a little trouble following those brilliant remarks. It was a fascinating group.

  Later that night, as we sat on our own (private!) terrace, wearing our jammies and eau du mosquito repellent, we replayed the evening. “Nights like this make me understand why we’re leading this crazy life,” Tim said. “I haven’t heard such smart dinner conversation in a long time: a Serbian educator and a Croatian statistician discussing whether mathematical equations and probabilities can be used to prove or disprove whether just thinking of something means that it can occur? I couldn’t believe how he tinkered with the wording of the question until he expressed it in a way that ‘yes’ could be the answer. It was a pretty good party trick.”

  I sipped my wine. “Yes, you’re right. I kept looking around the table, overhearing bits and pieces of such interesting conversations. Did you get to speak with the boat builder who made a transatlantic voyage single-handedly in a sailboat? What a triumph! But hearing about Florence’s decline was discouraging.”

  Tim poured the last drop of Chianti. “Well, I think we’d better go see for ourselves in the next day or so, after we get our pantry set up.”

  ***

  The next morning, we adhered to our model routine, and went out to get groceries. We sat in the car on a tiny street outside the villa, waiting for the temperature to cool from what felt like 150 degrees while we prepared ourselves mentally for taking up the gauntlet and facing Italian traffic again. I tapped instructions into Victoria. After taking a few deep breaths to summon his courage, Tim started down the hill to Avenue Bolognese (which Victoria pronounced BOWL AGH KNEES). He negotiated hairpins and blind corners with the courage of Mario Andretti, the famous race car driver. Once again, Tim’s skill at getting us where we needed to be made me gaze at him in wonder. He even remained semi-calm when scooter drivers whizzed within inches of our car and sped off into the traffic. (Not quiet, mind you, but calm.)

  We reached the Esselunga Market in spite of Victoria, who seemed to be having a bad day, and despite our inability to find Martha’s cypress tree or other landmarks. In other words, we ended up just following our instincts, something we could probably benefit from doing more often. Esselunga is like all large supermarkets, but with a decidedly Italian sensibility. In other words, it’s confusing and crowded with people in a hurry who don’t appreciate looky-loos who slow them down.

  We quickly discovered that grocery shopping at Esselunga is a contact sport that requires skill and determination. Here’s the drill for produce shopping in an Italian supermarket: a machine in the middle of the area dispenses flimsy plastic gloves and bags. The shopper snaps on a little plastic glove, grabs several plastic bags, and then makes his or her choices. Squeezing is not allowed. One must look, choose items, and plop them in the bag using a gloved hand only. Quickly, please.

  For the first few visits, I kept my cart alongside me, which resulted in some pushing and shoving from other shoppers. At first, it annoyed me no end. I never thought of the Italians as being rude! Tim usually (and wisely) stayed on the sidelines in overcrowded situations for obvious reasons. Since I was the one fully engaged in field combat as he observed from a little distance, he could detect patterns I couldn’t see. After a few excursions, he pointed out that the Italians parked their carts in the center of the department and just carried their little plastic bags around as they filled them. This way, they weren’t bumping each other and shoving their carts into the tomato bins. Bingo. When I copied their method instead of bucking the system, things got easier. Adapting to our host country is an important part of being good travelers—not to mention a relief. I keep reminding myself of this all the time!

  Back to the produce-buying process. After choosing fruits and vegetables, the shopper jumps into a haphazard line in front of the weighing station. The purchases are plunked on a scale and the buyer punches the picture button, which matches the item on the machine. If the product’s picture is not featured on a button, he must type in its product number, which is displayed in microscopic letters on the price card in the bin. Not remembering that number means giving up your spot in line to the next person who, unlike the more passive, hands-off French people, has been nudging you to hurry up with her bag of peppers; marching back to the bin, avoiding the elbows of territorial shoppers and minding your feet so your toes are not squashed by a fast-moving cart; and then retrieving the number and starting all over. Finally, the machine spits out a sticky label, which is supposed to adhere to the bag, but usually grabs your glove, too.

  I usually stuck to buying produce that had a picture, because I could never remember the numbers. Also, it seemed there was always some tiny elderly Italian widow in a floral dress breathing down my neck—or up my neck, owing to our height difference—as I made a fool of myself, caught in a sticky loop of label, glove, and plastic bag as I hurried to tag our purchases. At this point, my teammate, who watched the action from the bench, helpfully snorted with laughter. It took some time for me to see the humor in it.

  After a few visits, we started to find our way with little difficulty. Once we had conquered the rules, we enjoyed the great bounty an Italian market offers, if not the sporting aspect of getting it. We feasted for an entire summer on sweet white peaches shaped like little sultans’ hats, melons always at the peak of perfection, abundant fresh fish, and perfect Italian tomatoes that tasted as if a neighbor had grown them. Tuscan bread, made without salt, is the basis for the Tuscan bread salad Martha later taught me to make. We also indulged in cured Italian ham, olives, and other antipasto treats, the best in the world.

  The food was to die for, but the drivers were not. Every time we stepped into the car, Tim learned another way to save our lives. For our entire stay, it seemed we were the target del giorno for every Tuscan driver. Tailgaters and hostile motorcyclists charged us daily, seemingly without reason. We thought Tim was driving really well and courteously, so we couldn’t figure it out. When we asked Martha why we were trouble magnets, she looked at us with pity and informed us that the blue F on the back of our car told other drivers all they needed to know. F, as in France. Once Martha explained that the Italians she knew were not fond of the French, rather than being oddly displeased with the two of us, we stopped taking it personally and just accepted the abuse.

  Unfortunately for us, many Italians had sunk into a collective bad mood even before we arrived. L
ocals told us that the country was sweating through its hottest summer in two hundred years. Day after day, the temperature soared above 100 degrees and barely cooled off at night.

  The heat was so intense that we ran errands and played tourist only in the morning. Then we retreated to the apartment, where we could move little and stay in range of the several fans we ran all the time. One day, as we hunkered down waiting for evening so we could open the shutters, Tim said, “I feel like a mole living in a renaissance convection oven!” He was right. There was no rain. Not a breath of air moved, except when we batted at mosquitos.

  ***

  That said, we did enjoy one haven on those hot afternoons: the sparkling pool. It sat at a higher elevation than our apartment, giving us an even more spectacular view of Florence. On days when the heat was slightly less beastly, we took drinks, snacks, and our books and computers and whiled away our afternoons under the trees. We read and chatted and wrote as cicadas provided the perfect summer soundtrack, then we dipped in the pool to stay cool.

  Each day, the celebrated Tuscan light would change the hills and the city into a glowing golden work of art. It was easy to see why the celebrated Italian painters had given the world the priceless gift of such wondrous skies in their work. That golden light had also drawn our friend, Judy Butcher, to Florence to take art classes at one of the institutes. We’d kept in touch since we met her in Mexico, and she was a senior member of our growing international community of friends. After all, we were forever indebted to her for telling us ahead of time about the Schengen Agreement. Judy had sublet an apartment near the Arno River in the heart of Florence from a woman she had met in Alaska on a bus of all places.

  We made a dinner date at her apartment and met her in the square of Santo Spirito Church. By then, Tim and I had learned how to park at the train depot, Santa Maria Novella. In fact, the depot’s main attraction was its big underground parking lot, which was easy to negotiate and kept the car relatively cool. But by the time we slogged from there through Florence, across the Arno bridge, we were panting and damp. We were very happy to find Judy waiting to take us around the corner into her small building.