Ask Bob: A Novel

by Peter Gethers

  At three-thirty I passed a small fire station and a park, which I was reasonably sure I’d passed an hour or so before. As far as I knew I’d been going in one direction, so I wasn’t quite sure how I could have passed something twice. But by this point I had stopped trusting anything that was emanating from my brain. And my trudging was on the verge of becoming something closer to a crawl, the hands-and-knees kind. Then, somehow, I found myself on a small, white-stone beach. (There’s no sand in Favignana, just white pebbles and crushed shells, a fact I discovered when I sat down, exhausted, and discovered that lying down on the lovely landscape was like leaping onto a red-hot table topped with crushed glass.) Since I knew Marcella lived on the water and I was now on the water myself, I took this little white beach as a very good sign that I was on the verge of finding my way home.

  And here was another good sign: On that pebble-and-shell beach was one of the most stunning women I’d ever seen in my life, lying serenely on a towel a few feet from me, impervious to the pain of the shells and pebbles. She was wearing cut-off jeans and a bathing suit top. Her legs were long and flawlessly tapered. Her hair was medium-dark brown, streaked lighter from the sun and layered as it made its way down to her perfectly shaped shoulders. Her eyes were brown and oval and hypnotic. I honestly don’t think I’d ever seen anyone who was so beautiful in a nonintimidating way. She was so intoxicating that I didn’t give all that much thought to the fact that I was sweating more than Shaquille O’Neal after quadruple overtime, or that my skin was starting to blister in a way that made me look vaguely leprous. I just stumbled over to her and went into my new Vito Scotti impersonation, the by now almost rote I’m-a-dumb-American-no-money-no-idea-of-anything-except-I-have-to-find-Bar-Ingresso.

  She looked at me strangely. I’d gotten extremely odd looks throughout the day, but this one had that special extra subtext of “Are you a dangerous lunatic or just a tragic, helpless lunatic?” But when she didn’t say anything, I finally said, “Do you speak English?”

  She hesitated, then said, “A leetle.”

  If I thought the Scandinavian accent was appealing, this Italian accent almost made my head spin, which wasn’t much of an accomplishment at that point. Still, it was pretty intoxicating.

  “You want Bar Ingresso?” she now said.

  I nodded.

  “Nothing more?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’d also like to find my friend or maybe even a hospital with an oxygen tank and a burn unit, but Bar Ingresso would be a good start.”

  She looked at me blankly, obviously not understanding a word I’d said. Determined to help my cause, I said, “See, I was jogging, but I have a terrible sense of direction, so I memorized the name of a bar, Bar Ingresso, that was close to where I’m staying and … and … well, I’ve been running around the island … and…”

  I degenerated into “and”s and “well”s because I perceptively realized I wasn’t actually helping my cause. I was making a case for commitment to a mental institution. But she must have seen something that touched her because she mercifully interrupted my blathering and said, “You want you should walk with me?” Then she shook her head fiercely, annoyed at herself. “You want I should walk with you?”

  All I could think of was how beautiful her hair looked when she shook it that way, but I just said, “Bar Ingresso is close?”

  “Close,” she mimicked, nodding. “Sì. At end of … how you say … bitch?”

  “Beach.”

  “Ah yes. Beee-eeech. At end of beach.”

  “Then yes,” I said, hoping I didn’t burst into tears of relief and giddy joy. “I would very much want I should walk with you.”

  She smiled now, just a little slip of one, but it was more than enough for me. We began walking to the far end of the beach.

  After a few steps, the beautiful, saintlike Italian woman said, “You look…”

  She trailed off, shrugged in frustration, not coming up with the English word.

  “Tired?” I said. “Burned? Frustrated? Stupid? Insane? Ridiculous?”

  “No,” she said. “But okay. All of them.”

  We walked across the beach, then up to a road, talking the whole way, me in my imbecilic nonlanguage, her in her poor English with the beautiful Italian lilt. Somehow we understood each other. We didn’t talk about anything important, but it was all very easy and comfortable. I learned that her name was Annabella and that she wasn’t from the island, just visiting a friend for a few days. I told her my name was Bob, Robert; she called me Roberto, and the way she said it made me loathe the flat, one-syllable version I’d used my entire life. I told her I was studying to work with animals, and she liked that. I asked if she was a model, and that made her laugh. When she laughed, the sunlight caught her hair and made it glow and my heart skipped a tiny beat.

  As she led me down the road, I forgot about being lost and my Lawrence of Arabia–like past few hours and having no idea how I’d ever get my money or my passport. I certainly forgot all about Joly and Marcella, at least until they drove right by us.

  Marcella stopped short, her tires screeching. She and Joly both jumped out of the car, Joly crying hysterically, saying she thought I’d had a heart attack and fallen and drowned, and I went, “What?” because even for her that seemed a tad melodramatic. Marcella scowled harder than ever and muttered ominously in Italian. Joly, as it sank in that I wasn’t dead, got angrier and angrier and then, noticing Annabella, angrier still. She started screaming at Annabella in English, who shrugged and tried to say she didn’t understand, so Marcella started yelling at her in Italian. She must have said something really awful because Annabella turned around and started walking away, without saying a word. And then, in remarkably short order, Joly took my suitcase out of the car and threw it on the road, and she and Marcella drove off. My first thought wasn’t that they’d just left me in some godforsaken spot, basically on my own; my first thought was to wonder why they’d bothered to put my suitcase in the car. I figured they must have expected to discover that I was floating in whatever sea Favignana was in the middle of, and they were either going to ship my belongings back to my parents or give everything away to the Home for Unslaughtered Tunas. At which point I began to wonder what the hell I was going to do now.

  I bent down, rummaged through my suitcase, and found my money and passport—they’d done a very tidy and complete packing job. Suddenly I remembered Annabella; turning, I found her staring at me in total bewilderment. Happily, she’d made her way back to me after the two crazy women had left.

  “Your girlfriend,” she said in halting English. “She’s very angry.”

  “Not my girlfriend,” I said. And for some reason, I began to pour out the whole story. My first trip to Europe, and how I wanted it to change everything, only it hadn’t; traveling alone, which was exhilarating but lonely and isolating; going to the Anne Frank House and all the crying and scowling and how I was going to be a vet and only had a few days before I had to go back to reality. And how reality was starting to scare the shit out of me now, and I wasn’t exactly sure why, except that I felt as if I was on the verge of understanding something after my summer in Europe, even if I didn’t know what that something was. I told her everything I’d been thinking but hadn’t acknowledged, realizing I hadn’t even fully known what I’d been thinking until I spoke the words.

  Finally I stopped babbling and said, “Oh shit, you don’t even understand anything I’m saying.”

  “Sì,” she said. “I understand.”

  “You do?”

  “Sì.”

  “Well, I’m glad. But I don’t see how, because I could barely understand what I was saying.”

  She nodded and said, “There’s something I’d better tell you.”

  I nodded back and said, “Okay.” And then said, “What happened to your Italian accent?” Because it had disappeared.

  A look of deep embarrassment crossed her face. “Don’t kill me,” she said.

  “Seriously. W
hat happened to your accent?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m American.”

  I said the following, I think without taking a breath: “What? No, you’re not! You’re Italian! You’re American? What the hell do you mean?”

  Now she was fidgeting. Even so, she projected a certain confidence as she confessed, as if she knew she’d do it all again if given a chance. “Well … you seemed so confused, and there was no one around, and I thought it’d be funny if I pretended to be Italian, just to see how long I could keep you going. I didn’t realize quite what a mess you were, and by the time I did I thought maybe you’d get angry so I just kept it going, figuring I’m never going to see you again anyway, so what difference does it make. And then when those two crazy girls came by, I didn’t want them to talk to me.”

  “What was Marcella screaming at you in Italian?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t want them to talk to me. I don’t speak Italian.”

  “What!”

  “Well, that’s not totally true. I speak a tiny little bit. Enough to know why you couldn’t find your Bar Ingresso.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because ingresso means ‘entrance.’”

  I said, “What?” for probably the hundredth time, but I wasn’t capable of coming up with anything more incisive.

  She nodded, and that’s when I got the smile—the killer one, not just the little subtle one. “You’ve been going up to people saying that you’re lost and don’t have any money and all you need to do is find the entrance to the nearest bar.”

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  She nodded in agreement. “Yeah.” And with that “yeah” there was also a raised eyebrow and an even bigger smile. She didn’t bother to attempt to suppress it.

  I was about to get really angry. At the fact that I was so hot and thirsty that I was on the verge of collapsing. At how humiliated and lost I felt. At my own stupidity. And mostly at her for making me feel even stupider than I already was.

  That’s when she burst out laughing. She couldn’t keep it inside any longer; the smile was no longer enough to convey the sense of the day’s absurdity. It was an unusual laugh. Not violent in any way. More seductive than a giggle, and more grown-up. I could tell she wasn’t laughing at me. Well, yes, she was. But she was also laughing at the whole world, at all the craziness everywhere. It was a laugh that made you appreciate that craziness even though you wanted to run away from it. You wanted to run right into the arms of the person laughing at it.

  Then I started to laugh, too. I couldn’t help it. It was impossible not to.

  “You’re not angry?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “Just tell me your name is really Annabella.”

  “Nope,” she said. “Just Anna. I needed something that sounded more Italian, so I added the ‘bella.’”

  “Oh my god.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “But I know that I should be, if that makes you feel any better.”

  She led me a few hundred feet away, and we got in her car. She didn’t invite me; it simply seemed the thing to do. And as she began driving—it was her friend’s car, the one she was visiting—the laughter turned into a remarkably comfortable silence. Remarkable because both things—comfort and silence—shouldn’t have been remotely possible at this point. It wasn’t broken until she asked me a question. She had a real talent for being able to veer from laughter to comfort to serious probing without making it seem anything but natural.

  “The angry girl. Joly. What did you see in her? I mean, what possibly made you think it was a good idea to spend a week with her other than breasts the size of mutant watermelons?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I went quiet again, although this was a different kind of silence, because when Anna asked a question she asked it in a way that made you want to think about it so you could give her a worthy answer. “Actually, I do know,” I finally said. “It’s because everything seemed so sad to her. She took everything so hard. I thought she needed someone to be nice to her.”

  “You were nice. But you could have left. You didn’t have to keep being nice.”

  I shrugged. “It just didn’t seem right.”

  “Is that why you want to be a vet?”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “Because you feel this compunction to make everything feel better?”

  I thought about this. Shook my head and said, “No.”

  “So what is it? Why are you so nice to small little animals and big-breasted women?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it’s because I’ve always been better with animals than with people. And because I think the world’s a fairly fucked-up place. So sometimes it’s important to be kind. I find it a lot easier to be kind to animals. Well, that’s not quite right. I find that animals respond a lot better to my kindness. They don’t…”

  I wasn’t sure how to finish my sentence. Anna finished it for me.

  “… shit all over you? Like Watermelon Breasts?”

  When I nodded, she cocked her head at me in such a curious way I felt compelled to ask, “Is that so weird?”

  “No,” she said. “I think about this a lot. I mean the fucked-upness part. Sometimes I try to separate all the bad stuff from the good stuff, put the bad people in a different place from the good ones, you know? Think about what the difference is.”

  “And?”

  “And I think if you get rid of all the shit and all the bad stuff and just try to keep what we’re supposed to keep and strip everything else away…”

  She hesitated. I told her I couldn’t stand the suspense.

  “Well,” she said, “then I think all we have left is our kindness.”

  I realized it later. Or, rather, acknowledged it later. The truth is, I knew it even then. My heart ached with an emotion I barely recognized. But I was sure I knew what it was. That’s the moment I fell in love with Anna.

  I don’t know exactly when she fell in love with me—probably a few months after that—but the important thing is that eventually she did. So a little less than a year later we got married and set about trying to be kind to each other for the rest of our lives.

  * * *

  From the New York Daily Examiner:

  ASK DR. BOB

  Dr. Robert Heller, one of New York’s leading veterinarians, is the author of They Have Nothing but Their Kindness, a book about how to care for your pet. Dr. Bob takes care of cats, dogs, horses, birds, snakes, turtles, frogs, small pigs, and many varieties of rodents. You can e-mail him at DrBob@NYDE.com and ask him any question about the animal you love. His column runs every Tuesday in NYC’s most popular newspaper.

  Dear Doc Bob:

  I just bought my first kitten, a lovely little girl I’ve named Lulu. I’ve had Lulu for a week now, and the problem is that she seems so mournful. She’s not a happy cat. She doesn’t want to play most of the time. She’s not eating well. I guess I’m probably anthropomorphizing, but she seems to be moping. When I bought her from the breeder, I saw that she came from a large litter and had five or six brothers and sisters. I’m wondering if the moping is because she misses her siblings and her mother. Should I go back to the breeder and try to reunite Lulu with one of her family members? Do you think that would solve the problem? I can’t stand seeing this sweet little girl unhappy.

  Sincerely,

  Struggling with a Broken Family

  Dear Struggling:

  Might Lulu be better off being reunited with a sibling? Sure. But is that a foolproof solution to her (and your) problem? Let me put it this way: Family reunions can be awfully nice. Or they can be your basic nightmare. It all depends on the family. I don’t think that parents and siblings a family make. At least, to quote George Gershwin’s cat, Rhythm, who once said to George, after he accused her of scratching
a few piano keys: “It ain’t necessarily so.” Families can be a source of comfort, but the crucial thing is how one defines the word “family.” I’m not a big believer in using bloodlines as the defining factor. A family is, or should be, any group that provides love and support. Groups I’d define as happy families include Snow White and her very loyal seven dwarfs, the 1969 Knicks, and the von Trapps. Note that not all of them were actually related. In my book, unhappy families would include Willy and the rest of the Lomans, the Manson clan, and Cinderella and her charming stepsisters and stepmother. In case I haven’t made my point clear: Would it be a bad thing for you to go out and bring one of Lulu’s bros or sisters home? No, of course not. I’m all for adding as many animals as possible to a happy home. But it’s no longer Lulu’s biological family’s responsibility to be there for Lulu. You and she need to be there for each other. Lulu is now your family, and you are hers. It can take time to create that kind of bond and that kind of trust. But that’s what you need to do: get Lulu to love and trust you the way she trusted her cat mom. Give her the same kind of comfort she got from her cat siblings. Once you both learn to love and trust each other, most of your family problems will be solved. At least until Lulu becomes a teenager and starts dating.

  —Dr. Bob

  * * *

  CHAPTER 2

  I would never say that I am an expert on human nature—far from it. I’m on much surer footing when it comes to analyzing the symptoms of Cushing’s disease in cats (I will wager my knowledge of the feline adrenal cortex against anyone’s) or the reasons many Yorkshire terriers lose half their teeth by the age of two. (In case you’re interested, it’s because our desire to breed perfect show dogs, hunting dogs, and just plain cute dogs, particularly when it comes to toy breeds, has led to the distortion of the Yorkie’s natural jawline; in other words, humans have created adorable little dogs that now have jaws too small to accommodate all their teeth.) However, I don’t only pay attention to the animals that are brought to me; I try to focus a bit on their owners as well. So while my powers of observation may be somewhat limited, I have come to trust in their accuracy.