Next, with both of us working and money coming in, I turned my attention to finding us a home of our own.
CHAPTER 14
As we were slowly building a new life in Massachusetts, one thing remained missing for me. I felt guilty about not marrying in the Church, not having a wedding with my family and friends there. I loved being married to Brandon. And our ceremony at the chapel in California was special to me. But still, I had always wanted a large wedding in the Catholic Church with a festive Italian reception to follow. Brandon knew that I wanted this and he told me many times that once we got stable and could afford it, we would do it.
I came home late one evening from the bank and Brandon was waiting with a dinner he had made, candles on the table.
“You worked all day, too,” I said. “You shouldn’t do this.”
“Yes, I should.”
He came over to me and grasped my hands. I could tell that something was on his mind. Before I could say anything, he lowered himself to one knee.
“Luisa Cloutier,” he said. “You are the love of my life. I don’t ever want to spend a day without you. You have made my life magic since I met you. And you made me the happiest man in the world when you married me. Now I want to marry you the right way, in a church in Naples. Will you marry me again?”
I felt tears streaming down my cheek. I sank down to the floor beside him and kissed his lips. “My love,” I whispered to him, gazing into his eyes. “The best thing I ever did in my life is marry you. I would marry you again a hundred times.”
He kissed me the he smiled and said, “I think that’s a yes, right?”
. . . . .
My father agreed to pay for the reception. Angela helped plan everything in Naples, since I was here. Brandon bought two tickets. In July of 1997, we went to Logan airport to fly back to Italy for the first time since I had left four years earlier. As we rode in the taxi from Hudson, I was as happy that I was going to my family again as I was about marrying Brandon the way I’d always dreamed.
We checked in, feeling like we were walking on air. I carried my wedding gown, not wanting anything from it to get lost by the baggage people. It wouldn’t fit in a suitcase anyway. Brandon and I couldn’t keep our eyes off of each other. Or our hands. I knew this would be wonderful. I felt even more in love with him than I had before. Also, a guilt was going to be lifted from me. God would forgive me for getting married by a Justice of the Peace and not in a church.
“Can I have you passports please?” the ticket agent said as we checked in. We gave them to her.
Brandon asked me who was going to meet us at the airport.
“My brother.”
“He knows what time we’re arriving and the airline?”
“Yes. Everything is all set.”
“Ms. Cloutier,” the ticket agent interrupted. “May I see your Green Card.?”
“Of course.” I dug into my handbag, but couldn’t find it. I looked up at Brandon. “Do you have it?”
“I don’t have it, no.”
I looked at the ticket agent. “Isn’t the passport enough?”
“If you want to come back into the country, you’re going to need to have it. I can’t let you leave without it.”
“You have to,” I said. “We’re going to Italy to get married. If I’m not on this flight, I’ll miss the wedding. Now, you have to let us go.”
“It’s government regulations. It’s not me.”
“I have to go.” I started crying. “Please.”
“It’s out of my hands.”
I looked at Brandon, desperate.
Brandon turned to the ticket agent. “You have to let her go. This is our wedding. You have to make an exception.”
I was holding my wedding gown. “Look,” I said. “Please. Help us.”
“I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”
“Let me speak to a supervisor,” Brandon said. He tried to calm me as the agent went off to find a supervisor. He whispered, “It’s going to be all right, my love. Don’t worry.”
“They have to let us go. If we miss this...”
He hushed me. “We’re not going to miss it. We’ll talk to them.”
The supervisor came over now. “I understand your predicament,” she said, “but regulations are clear. We can’t let you get on the flight without your green card. How far away do you live? Can you get it and get back for the flight?”
“It’ll take two hours,” Brandon said.
“Can someone bring it?”
“Not for at least an hour.”
She looked at her watch. “You’ll miss the flight by then.”
“Please,” I asked her. “It’s my wedding. Everything is all arranged. If we missing it, they can’t just do it the next day. It’ll be over. Please let us go.”
Brandon said, “There’s got to be some way you can let us go.”
“Please!” I said again, trying to stop crying but the tears kept coming.
She took our passports and gestured for us to follow her over to a different ticket counter, away from other people. “I can lose my job,” she said as she began typing into the airline computer. “I need you to promise me that before you get on the plane, you’ll call someone and have they FedEx the green card to you in Italy.”
“Absolutely,” Brandon said. “I’ll do it right now.”
“You’re letting us go?” I asked.
She handed us boarding passes and our passports and smiled at me. “It’s your wedding. How can you not go?”
“Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Congratulations,” she said. “Enjoy it.”
. . . . .
As the airline announced boarding for our flight to Rome, we stood at the pay phone and dialed Brandon’s mother again. The phone rang and rang and again the answering machine picked up.
“I don’t know why she isn’t answering,” Brandon said. “We better just leave a message.” He handed me the phone. “You explain where it is, okay?”
I took the phone and left her a message, telling her exactly where the card was. “My Green Card is pink,” I said. “Is not green. Please don’t get it confused with my Italian driver’s license which is blue and pink. Thank you. I love you.”
I hung up and we ran to catch the plane.
. . . . .
The wedding was everything I had always dreamed of. Having my family standing behind us in the church made it feel right. I felt bad for Brandon because his family couldn’t be there, but he said he didn’t mind. If his mother and grandmother and brother and sister could have afforded it, they would have been here, too. They loved her and were glad we had got married—twice now. And, he said, I was his closest family anyway, so he did have family with him.
The ceremony was in Italian. If they spoke slowly, Brandon could understand, but getting everyone to speak slowly was not always possible. Italians are emotional and excitable and even if they start out speaking slowly, before you know it momentum gets the best of them. Everyone is talking over everyone else. Understanding what’s going on isn’t easy.
Still, Brandon’s attitude was incredible. He looked so full of joy every time he gazed into my eyes. When it came to the part of the vows, I translated what the priest was asking.
“I, Luisa, take you, Brandon, as my husband,” I said. “I promise I will be faithful to you always, when there is joy and pain, when there is health and when we are sick, and I will love you and honor you, every day.” I smiled at him and said, “Until forever.”
I looked at the priest as
he asked me if I promised that.
“Si,” I said, and then to Brandon I said, “I do, my love.”
“Si, too,” Brandon said.
The reception lasted all afternoon and was the best party I had ever been to in my life. Brandon was able to laugh and joke with people who didn’t speak a word of English. And he was always attending to me, making sure I was happy and had everything I wanted.
“This is your day,” he told me. “I want you to enjoy every moment.”
At one point, my aunt Gianna brought over a wine class, wrapped it inside a white napkin and told us to break it.
“Are you Jewish or Catholic?” Brandon asked.
“That is the custom here,” I told him. “We break it and count the pieces, and that is the number of years we’ll be happily married.”
“Really? Give me that.” He grabbed the glass. “By the time I’m done with it, it’ll be broken into a thousand pieces.”
We laughed and drank and that night made love in a beautiful hotel by the sea. The honeymoon was short because we both had to get back to work. We could only stay in Italy for two weeks.
While we were dealing with the wedding, I tried not to think about going back to America, but once everything was finished, I began to be nervous because nothing had arrived by FedEx, and without my Green Card, I couldn’t go back.
Brandon called his mother because time was running out.
“Yes, I sent it,” she said. “As soon as I got the message. But I didn’t listen to the messages until two days ago. But it’s on its way. I should arrive any day.”
“Italy is not like America,” I told Brandon. “Things don’t go on time like there.”
“It’ll arrive,” he told me. “Everything will be all right.”
The day before we were scheduled to leave, the FedEx driver stopped at my sister’s house where we were staying. I ran down the stairs to meet him, and he handed me the envelope from the U.S.
“Tanta grazie,” I told him.
I loved Italy, and I loved being with my family again, but I knew my future wasn’t there, my life wasn’t there. We were building a life in Hudson and we needed to get back.
I tore open the flap, reached in and pulled out my Italian driver’s license.
. . . . .
My friend Mario picked us up to drive us to the airport in Rome. He worked for the Carbinieri, Italy’s national police, and drove as if the speeding laws didn’t apply to him. I was nervous most of the ride, thinking we were going to crash. Accidents were more common in Italy than in the U.S. and the outcomes were usually more severe. Brandon didn’t seem worried about that, but he looked lost in thought, concerned about the Green Card issue.
When we got to the airport and tried to check in for the flight, the customs agent looked at my passport and asked for my Green Card. I explained what had happened, showed him the Italian driver’s license and assured him that Brandon’s mother would be waiting at the airport with the Green Card when we arrived.
He handed the passport back to me. “I’m sorry. You cannot leave the country.”
“What do you mean? I have to go.”
“I can’t help you. Without the Green Card, you can’t go.”
“But I have to. We have to get back to work. I’ll lose my job. No, we have to go.”
The customs agent pointed at Brandon. “He can go. You have to stay.”
“I’m not leaving without my wife,” Brandon said.
The customs agent shrugged. “There’s nothing I can do.”
We realized he wasn’t going to give in like the airline agent in Boston had. He wasn’t concerned about our problem.
“My mother can send the Green Card today,” Brandon told me. “We’ll get it in a couple days.”
“We’ll lose the tickets. We can’t afford two new tickets. One, maybe.”
“I’m not going to leave you here.”
“This is my country,” I said. “I have my family here. Mario will take me back to Angela’s. I’ll be okay. You go home. When the Green Card comes, I’ll buy a new ticket and follow. It will be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll miss you every moment.”
“So will I,” Brandon said.
I kissed him, a long kiss to make sure he remembered me. We hadn’t been apart overnight since he had left the Marines, and the thought of it did make me sad, and a little nervous, but I knew it was the right thing to do. We had to be as strong as our love for each other and endure the short separation.
“Call me when you arrive,” I told him. “I’ll be waiting.”
. . . . .
My Green Card did come, but leaving was not easy. As is the custom in Italy, things don’t go smoothly. We returned to Rome a few days later and went to the American Consulate because they had to verify my information and sign release papers allowing me to return home. I was eager to straighten this out so Angela and I went early, when the doors opened.
The computers were not working when we arrived there, so we had to wait. Then it was lunch and no one was working, so we had to come back later. Then it was late in the afternoon and they were closing soon so we had to come back the next day. The next day, it started all over again. The computers were down, there wasn’t enough time, someone wasn’t at their desk.
By the third day, I was fed up with the Italian way of doing things. After four years in the U.S., I was used to the efficiency and didn’t have the patience for doing everything slowly and not being helpful. Finally I had reached my limit.
“Listen to me,” I told the man at the consulate. “I have to go. I have a job waiting for me. My husband is waiting for me. I’ve been here three days. I need to go.”
“We have to verify the information and the computers are down.”
“I don’t care if the computers are down.” I reached down and picked up his telephone. “Call and verify whatever you need to verify,” I said. “But let me go home.”
“Calm down, signora. Let me see what I can do. Have a seat.”
I reluctantly sat. Fifteen minutes later he came back.
“We verified everything,” he said. “Show me your airline ticket and I can release you to go back.”
“My ticket expired a week ago.”
“I can’t release you without a ticket.”
Angela and her boyfriend Luca were with me. “I’ll buy you one now,” Luca said. “You pay me back later.”
The consulate man looked at his watch. “We close in an hour. You better hurry.”
We ran to the travel agency a block away and pushed the woman there to quickly get us a ticket for a plane leaving later that night. Then we ran back to the Consulate and arrived just as they were about to lock the door. I knew they were going to try to tell us to come back tomorrow, but I glared at the man at the door before he could say anything. He let us in and within a few minutes they finally released me to return home.
As I waited in the airport that evening for my flight to depart, I realized that I needed to get my U.S. Citizenship so I would never have to deal with this situation again.
Less than two years later, at Faneuil Hall in Boston, I was sworn in as a U.S. Citizen.
CHAPTER 15
Our lives steadily improved financially. Brandon got a better job at PC Connection as a sales rep, with more money and better hours. He also decided to pursue his lifelong interest in fitness and got certified as a personal trainer. I was promoted a few times at the bank and then I accepted an offer for even more money working for Hewlett Packard. We saved up enough to put a down payment on a h
ouse and we became homeowners.
Both of us were busy most of the time and had less time to spend with each other. And while we were successful in our jobs, neither of us was happy. I hated my work at Hewlett Packard to the point that it made me sick to go there every day. Brandon kept saying that the sales rep job at PC Connection was not his future, but for now it was secure money, as was my job.
Then Brandon learned that his company would be laying off people soon. Instead of panicking, he saw it as an opportunity. He had always wanted to make fitness his career, and this seemed like the time to make the leap. With his personal trainer certification in hand, Brandon applied for work at Global Fitness. The manager liked him and gave him a chance. A chance was all Brandon ever needed.
It did not take long before he showed the manager how valuable he was as a trainer. The customers liked him right away. He was handsome and had an infectious personality. He made people want to work out. Everyone wanted to train with him. He generated new membership packages and renewals like the manager had never seen before. Clients were inviting him to parties. He started making more money. He loved it.
And I loved seeming him happy and successful.
My work, though, continued being misery for me. I knew we needed the money, and I still wanted a career, so I went every day, but Brandon could see every night how unhappy I was.
One evening, after a long tiring day for both of us, while we were sitting on the back deck of our house looking at the stars and sipping wine, Brandon hugged me and said, “My love, I’m working on getting you out of your job.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to open a business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Personal training.”
Until Forever Page 12