by Marcy Gordon
My fellow art students set up their easels. One is already reproducing the central tower of Castello Pasquini, the sixteenth century castle for which the town is named. In fact, Castiglioncello boasts an impressive artistic history, from cinema’s Marcello Mastroianni, who won acting honors the world over to nineteenth century art’s Giovanni Fattori, who made famous the landscapes I look upon now.
Oh, and there’s me. Christian has me do a “quick, little sketch” to assess my “talent,” but after a rather phallic rendition of the castle’s tower, it is obvious that painting may not be my forte while in Italy. So Christian hands me ten pounds of soapstone and a narrow metal chisel.
“What do you want to sculpt? To see emerge from this rock?!” His eyes flare and recede with the efficient swish of a cape.
I stare at the lopsided stone. “A ball?”
Christian pouts. “Is that really all you see?”
He has a point. I take a closer look and slide the chisel against the stone, producing a soft “soapy” powder light enough to lift into the air, onto clothes, perhaps even out to sea. After a careful pause, I notice the slope of a curving backbone. “An elephant!” I shout.
Smiling with pride, Christian helps me position the chisel and hits the top handle with a quick knock of a hammer. Sure enough, a clean shard falls away, and so begins my attempt to free un elefante from flaking chips of stone.
After class, my new exercise regime awaits. My mother and I take the shallow steps down to the promenade. Most of the seaside bodegas have already closed their painted shutters for the season and no longer bustle with vacationing famiglie, their laughter and summer cavorting mere memories that lilt on offshore breezes. We veer left at a pace set by my hobbling until we find a stretch of sand and an open gelateria.
Even though the Tyrrhenian Sea isn’t frigid to the touch like the Northern California Pacific I’m used to, no one else is in the water, save a lone snorkeler and a collection of wet-suited surfers paddling past the low stone jetty to the break between the harbor and a dark scattering of rocks. But I’m intimidated to frolic in my bikini so close to the idle men on the shore: the older set wearing various shades of beige are harmless enough, but the much younger and shirtless uomini have lingering eyes and flirt with occasional hollers.
Instead, I carry out a far better plan. I walk down the other side of the jetty, the one with a convenient concrete walkway meant for accommodating boats. I step gingerly into the lapping water, occasionally glancing back at my mother, as if I’m five (instead of twenty-eight) and learning to swim. I do frolic a little as she snaps a photo and let her have this moment without the embarrassed annoyance I might exhibit Stateside. With one last step, I push off into the cooling water. Then slice. Or was that a crunch? I must have stepped on an innocuous little seashell.
“I stepped on a seashell!” I yell, both of us still smiling and oblivious. I float on my back like an otter and lift the ball of my foot into sight, as if it is now the shell I intend to crack. Instead, half a dozen black sea urchin spines sprout at electrified angles. At least two-dozen more have sunk beneath the skin, thinly exposed like worn stubs of pencil lead. My heart rate elevates, but not in the way I’ve missed. Did I mention it’s the same foot as the running injury? This must be why there are stalls with colorful rubber booties next to the gelateria and outside most of the shops on the main road. Just in case you want to saunter into the sea along a barnacle-infested concrete ramp.
I cry. I’ve been acting five anyway so what’s the harm? On my good leg, I hop to shore and rest on the jetty, not caring that I now attract attention from both sides. My mother’s face twists with worry and we both take a closer look. Out of the water, the urchin incisions are no longer soothed by a salty sea bath and I can’t help the sob (or six) that escape. When I muster the courage to pull on one protruding spine, blood streams then dilutes to pink along my wet skin, just like the watercolors my fellow students mixed earlier that afternoon. The strongest awareness I have is that these are foreign entities, and I want them out of my body.
One of the older men approaches. He is a short, rotund figure with a few stains on the shirt that stretches over his belly to meet his pants. (Yes, they’re beige, at least one word that looks identical in English and Italian.) He smoothes his graying comb-over and gestures in time with inquiries that bubble melodically from his jet-black mustache. All I can make out is his name, Alfonse. My mother offers her present-tense bursts of the language, but my foot tells as straightforward a story as any. With an expression that says he’s seen this all before, he whips out his wallet and pulls back greased and creased leather folds until he plucks a dull sewing needle. He floats it like a symphony conductor’s baton toward my foot, which I pull back like a babe in need of protection.
Alfonse shrugs, returning the needle to its trusty home, and gestures to a small orange Fiat parked on a sloping road leading down to the promenade. We gather he can give us a ride home so we can figure our way to the hospital twenty minutes away (yes, the same ospedale). I can’t say I would advise two women travelers to accept such an offer, even if the man in question does bear a reassuring resemblance to Danny DeVito. Still, we trust. I manage to fold myself into the compact backseat, littered with remnants of a long vehicle ownership, but where I can at least extend my pronged foot out the open window.
For anyone keeping score: Number of days in Italy: three. Trips to the hospital: two.
After Valentina once again gives us a ride, the brunette nurse behind the check-in desk nods her head with bemused recognition. The wait is only four hours this time before I see a doctor who employs a now familiar, though sterile, approach, and uses a needle to fish out the stubborn, embedded spines. He explains that they are brittle and break like glass, making excision difficult. He manages to free three or four, but I will have to be patient for the rest to surface. (I know this one, io sono paziente.) They can give me a tetanus shot, as the sea urchin is the bacterial equivalent of an exposed nail (or thirty), but the doctor explains that the blood-screening regulations are not the same in Italy as they are in the States. I pass on the vaccine and am sent home with tweezers and an ointment closely related to rubber cement but which should draw the spines out overnight.
In the morning, I awake eager to pull back the gauze and find all the critters defeated and dislodged. Instead, the tweezers can’t even get at one solitary spindle. The next plan of attack is to soak the foot in order to loosen the skin around spines. So that means ice for the first injury, heat for the second. Without a bathtub, the bidet proves the most logical receptacle for soaking. I spend an hour sitting on the windowsill, my foot dangling in a disinfectant bidet bath as I flip through magazines. As the bidet drains, I hobble to the living room to twist my foot until the spines are in view, hopeful they are lined up and ready to tweeze. I push two to the surface and the release is as satisfying as any. Then it’s onto the balcony with an ice pack to attend to the initial injury, a procedure I supplement with table wine intake, although more generally acceptable over a long lunch at the corner cafe. (I’ve quickly developed an appetite for frutti di mare and its lurking shell life.)
The next day, I limp alongside my art class to our late morning cappuccino break that arrives all of one hour into the lesson, and regale my German, Swiss, and Canadian classmates with my aquatic adventure.
“I’ve only gotten a couple out so far,” I say of the suspects, which have turned out to be half a centimeter or so in length, little sharp nothings capable of halting physical exertion.
Christian tilts his head to the side, where his short black ponytail collapses like a paintbrush against his shoulder, and says, “One prick per day.”
I take a deep breath and nod with recognition. The wisdom is succinct and as good as any advice for life, for learning a language, for getting over the physical or emotional injuries we bear at home and try to release far away from it all. I should know how to pace myself by now, without burning out at work, at exercise
, or any of the agendas I try to overpower back home. Some pricks to the foot are a good reminder; I will force no more, but be content with no less.
“You may not get them all out. The foot is tough,” he says, slapping his palm. “Some may stay down, but they should not bother you by then.”
In the moment, I accept what may be beyond measured control. We walk back along the road, still drying from an early morning rain, through the grove, and to our workstations at the edge of Italy. I pick up my chisel and continue to shape the elefante beginning to emerge, little by little, each day. So what if a few of the tiny foreign bodies stick around? Like any worthwhile trip—and tetanus withstanding—they, too, will just have to become a part of me.
Jennifer Massoni was the Senior Editor of the Gentry family of magazines for many years. Her journalism has also appeared in Vanity Fair, Crawdaddy!, CAFÉ, California Home & Design, and I Love Chile News. In addition to sculpting elephants in Italy, she has written about finding ghosts in New Mexico, surfing waves in California, and making wine in Chile. In 2011, she earned her MFA in Prose from Mills College, where she won the Amanda Davis MFA Thesis in Fiction Award and the Ardella Mills Prize for Literary Composition. Ready to put her wanderlust to the test, she and her husband moved six thousand miles away to Santiago. You can follow her expat adventures and adjustments at notesfromthesouthernhemisphere.blogspot.com.
JILL PARIS
Advice for Closet Cougars
OMG! Like, totally!
A few summers ago, I signed up to spend a whole month in Paris at a writing workshop. “Those things are for kids,” my mother had said. “Nuh-uh,” I replied, even though I feared she might be right. I actually tried justifying the learning aspect and talked up the inexpensive housing that would allow me to explore the city on a budget. Yet, the night before I left, she somehow predicted imminent behavior of the moronic kind. Her parting words: “Don’t act like an idiot and remember how many calories there are in alcohol.”
A week after settling into my two-star hotel room, I’d become friends with a couple of girls in the program, Tina-Marie and Sara. Although my new buds were half my age they remarked that I could “totally pass for thirty,” and I stupidly started to believe it. My energy was boundless. My thirst to drink up that potent city and relive my younger days became a literal interpretation. (Gunning for perpetually intoxicated seemed about right.)
One day the three of us were strolling around St. Germain. We stopped in front of a shop and the slutty display brought back fond memories from my ’80s punk rock phase.
“Too bad I can’t wear shoes like that anymore,” I said to my pals with nonexistent pores.
“Honey, you should. You’re still hot,” Tina-Marie quipped.
I hate it when someone says that. It makes me think of a chicken that’s been taken out of the oven and left on the counter, but might still be edible. Even though the time limit for actual hotness has passed, its lukewarm state could be overlooked by the truly starving.
Tina-Marie and Sara dragged me in amongst the stacks of shoeboxes. Maybe it was Paris, maybe it was the umpteen Kir Royales I’d consumed, or maybe it was the fact I was shopping with twenty-four year olds? I’m not quite sure, but I spied a pair of metallic t-strapped five-inch platforms and slapped them on. I caught a glimpse of knotted calf in the mirror.
“You HAVE to get those!” they both shrieked.
I teetered around the boutique trying to recall the last time I’d worn heels so high. Oh, right. How could I forget that wasted night at Nell’s, in pleather vintage boots designed solely for leaning against a brick wall in a dark alley, or anything that did not involve walking. I sprained my ankle so badly, the next day my foot looked like a meatloaf.
Yet, the optimism in the girls’ eyes led me to believe I could pull them off.
“O.K.,” I agreed. Why the hell not?
“You should totally wear those tonight,” the girls chimed in unison.
For some stupid-ass reason, I’d also packed a Victoria’s Secret push-up bra I’d bought the year before to appease the guy I was dating after he’d pointed at Tyra Banks’ cleavage during America’s Next Top Model and grunted, “I like.” Jesus. Whatever possessed me to Kardashian-up is unknown, but somehow I figured the hoisting of the boobs went nicely with the hooker heels. A plunging v-neck dress completed my new persona. I could have been a living ad for a doll named “Menopausal Cougar Barbie” (Detachable paunch sold separately).
It reminded me of when I used to trade tops with some prettier friend in Junior High. Back then I thought sporting a disguise would lead to a better, zit-free life. The idea of donning another girl’s threads was moderately thrilling and usually lasted until somebody complimented her for wearing my blouse.
Later at a crowded, hipster brasserie with the rankest unisex toilet in Western Europe, our trio kicked back under an awning and naturally ordered more drinks. Underneath the glimmering streetlights, there he stood, a swizzle-stick in a dirty suit, smoking a long, brown cigarette. He looked majorly cool in his too-tight jacket, like the dude from Twilight, only without the pallid skin tone.
“He’s totally checking you out,” said Tina-Marie.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” I laughed.
He flicked his cigarette butt onto the wet cobblestones and sauntered over to our table. His arrogant eyes locked with mine. But, as he moved closer, his B.O. reeked more than the bathroom’s stench, if that was possible. I quickly rose with an attempt to gasp fresher air and fell forward knocking my purse off an empty chair. My drunk-ass scramble caused my legs to wobble like a newborn colt on coke. I always wondered if I could still do the splits.
“From a deestance, I thought your mother waz one of those housewives from your American television,” he said in broken English, looking at Sara.
If only I’d learned the French translation for “Blow me.” I should have kicked that stinky prick upside the Balzac. But, technically he was right. Forgetting your age can often backfire. And it felt just as shitty as the first time some Jack-wad called me “Ma’am.”
I quietly limped off into the darkness and hailed a taxi back to the hotel, which seemed to be the most non-idiotic thing I’d done since arriving in Paris. I’m pretty sure I called my mom and bitched about the eight-pound weight gain situation, but maturely blamed it on the baked goods.
Jill Paris is a writer living in Los Angeles. She holds an M.A. in Humanities and a Master of Professional Writing degree from the University of California. Her work has appeared in The Best Travel Writing 2009, Travel Africa magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Wanderlust & Lipstick, Fathom, Thought Catalog and others. She travels for the unexpectedness of human connection.
SARAH KATIN
Mt. Fuji in a Trash Bag
A hiker finds her power in reverse.
“Pack warm clothes it’s going to be cold. I checked the weather reports; it’s supposed to rain,” Jen warns me. Cold? It’s the middle of July. As I lie on the floor in only my underwear, soaking in a bath of my own sticky sweat, it’s hard to imagine putting anything resembling “warm clothes” on my body. Summertime in Tokyo is a sweltering nightmare of mind-bending heat and humidity. Sweaters have become my enemy; they are currently being held prisoner under my bed where I don’t have to see them and be reminded of their wooliness. Also, there isn’t a whole lot of room for storage in the teeny tiny box the school I’m working for calls an apartment.
“I’ve heard reports of a monsoon. There’s supposed to be gale force winds,” Jen adds.
I’m not exactly sure how forceful a gale is, but deciding to heed Jen’s advice I toss a couple long sleeved t-shirts and an extra pair of socks into my backpack. On my way to Shinjuku Station I pop into a 99 yen store, buy myself a plastic raincoat and think, yeah, that should do it!
“I’m cold,” I shiver miserably at the base camp of Mt. Fuji after I’ve layered every bit of clothing I could get my hands on.
“I told you it would be cold,” Jen says not
very sympathetic to my plight.
“How was I supposed to know there’d be snow? Who’s ever heard of snow in July?”
Mt. Fuji is only open to the public during the months of July and August as the weather is too severe any other time of the year. Apparently monsoon season doesn’t rank high on the weather severity chart for the The Japanese. These real hikers view climbing Fuji as a rite of passage that must be honored at some point in their life. For this reason the mountain is teeming with hordes of pilgrimage hungry mountaineers decked out in the finest gear. Teams of them are wearing matching stream-lined snow jackets all branded with some famous mountaineering label, argyle socks stretching to their knees, spring-loaded walking sticks, heat-activated gloves, spiky shoes, hats with lamps, fog proof goggles, and blinking tracking devices in case of an unfortunate tumble off a cliff. I stand, clearly inferior, in a few lumpy mismatched layers and what is essentially a trash bag with armholes masquerading as a raincoat.
“Dave, what else have you got in that bag of yours?” I ask, scavenging for more.
“Just this bottle of champagne.”
Dave has been waiting weeks to make his move on Jen, and he’s decided this trip is the perfect opportunity. He plans to impress Jen by pulling out the bottle of bubbly, at the top of Japan, as the sun pokes its sleepy head out to awaken the day.
“You got that champagne from the 99 yen store, it was next to my coat. Classy.” I give him a look that says, good luck with that buddy.
“Here.” Dion says offering me an extra hoodie.
Dion didn’t have anything better to do, which is how he came to be the fourth member of our not so stylish, nor adequately prepared, Japanese expat mountain climbing team.