Incontinent on the Continent

by Jane Christmas

  Sorrento is a genteel, picturesque seaside town, unmistakably elegant without the pomposity that often aff licts towns that know they are beautiful. It is relatively small, about twenty thousand people, and now one of the most popular tourist destinations in Italy. It is easy to see why: It has a manageable scale, it is tidy, and it has a laid-back vibe. Unlike almost every other Italian town or city, Sorrento is built on flat terrain, a boon to those with walkers and motorized wheelchairs who want an Italian town without the inclines. The downside, of course, is that Sorrento is a boon to those with walkers and motorized wheelchairs who want an Italian town without the inclines.

  I followed the scent of lemons down a rain-soaked laneway and found two young men loading up the back of their small pickup with the bounty from a backyard grove. Fresh, tart, young—no, not the men, the lemons—they produced a heady, magnificent aroma, something I cut, pasted, and saved in the part of my brain that is reserved for olfactory memories. I longed to possess the language to tell these men that the smell of the lemons was heavenly.

  There was a buzz in the air when I reached Piazza Tasso. Preparations were underway for a major event that afternoon in front of the Fauno Bar: the unveiling of the new Maserati.

  Flags sporting Maserati’s corporate ink-blue color and stylized trident logo fluttered excitedly on tall, lean standards; massive terra-cotta urns filled with lush greenery were hoisted into curvy ironwork plant stands on casters and rolled into place.

  And then the main attraction arrived—a sleek, inky-blue racing car. It was reverently unloaded from a flatbed truck, eliciting gasps from all the men in the crowd, who salivated at its smooth angles, curvaceous and slightly raised back end, voluptuous front end, luscious butterlike upholstery, and aloof style. Put a pair of dark sunglasses on this baby and it would be indistinguishable from much of Italy’s female population.

  “Che bella macchina!” The swooning chorus was delivered with the sort of moan normally associated with the sexually frustrated. I wondered whether the lusty glances and sighs projected at the car were secretly meant for the cool, slender beauties in their tight, ink-blue skirts, jackets, and matching stockings and shoes who worked the crowd. There was not a blonde among them.

  “Quanto costa questo?” I asked a young Maserati rep.

  “Ah, this is a racing car, so it is not for sale,” he said. “It would cost about two hundred and fifty thousand euros. The cars for everyone else”—more sedate sedans began arriving in the piazza as we spoke—“are not so much.”

  “I see,” I replied, rocking on my heels and nodding knowingly, as if I were accustomed to discussing high-end cars.

  The truth is, I know zip about cars. I can’t imagine discussing cars for more than ten seconds. But I had read somewhere and somehow retained the information that the 2008 Mase-rati GranTurismo, considered a masterpiece by those who equate car showrooms with art galleries, clocks in at around 100,000 euros. Only about 4,000 would be manufactured.

  I lingered longer than I would have usually at a car event. The fact that I had spent so much time on the road in the last few weeks might have piqued my interest in things automotive. When I discovered that the GranTurismo’s trunk space could not accommodate a walker I lost interest and wandered away.

  My eyes landed on an immense bower of wisteria that was draped over a high black iron gateway across the street. It was the entrance to the gardens of the Albergo Vittoria, a hotel that is not ashamed to display a plaque beside the gate announcing that Enrico Caruso died here in 1921.

  I decided that a walk through the gardens would be a pleasant way to pass the time, but just as I entered the gates a security guard intercepted me explaining that a wedding was taking place and that unless I was a guest I couldn’t get in. There was no way I looked like a guest, so I retreated.

  I stood on the sidewalk for a moment wondering what to do next. I wasn’t ready to go back to the hotel.

  A couple of well-dressed men strolled by, arm in arm. One of them—a dark-haired man with thick black glasses and a red foulard around his neck—was chatting and gesturing dramatically to his partner.

  I took off after them along the Corso Italia. They paused in front of a Baroque-looking building and then walked toward the entrance. I followed them in and soon found myself in a large, bright reception room that had been turned into a gallery of local art.

  I wandered around pretending I had money, and privately selected a few paintings. All of a sudden, one of the men I had followed in appeared at my side.

  “Parla italiano?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied. “Inglese. I’m Canadian.”

  “Ah, how lovely,” he said, switching to English. “You seem very interested in these paintings. Now tell me, which ones catch your eye? I want to buy something but I always need help choosing.”

  He was an eccentric fellow, from Dubai, he said, and he mentioned that he collected paintings from every place he visited.

  “I’ll come back after you’ve had some time to look at everything, but I really want your advice,” he said kindly, perhaps noticing the look of wide-eyed fear on my face.

  I strolled around the room and soon fell into easy conversation with a few other people as we compared notes about a painting’s subject or the view that had prompted inspiration for an artist.

  I surprised myself at how easily I could banter about cars one minute and art the next. In a foreign country I feel more intelligent and articulate than I do at home; I can rise to the point of relative brilliance when no expectations are placed on me. I think that’s one of the reasons I like to travel. It is only when I’m in another country that I can see, hear, and appreciate myself most clearly, when my true self emerges.

  About twenty minutes passed, and the man from Dubai approached me again.

  “Well?” he asked eagerly.

  I pointed out a few canvases, but even the one I was most taken with—a field of big blood-red poppies and soothing spikes of lavender—did not impress him.

  “No, I want you to see this,” he said emphatically. He linked his arm through mine and dragged me to a cluster of small portraits.

  “It’s important to buy art that has people in it,” he counselled gently. “That scene of the poppies is nice but it could be anywhere. Faces, however, they are so evocative of the area, so distinctive. Don’t you see? Which of these do you like best?”

  I chose one of a young girl with large dark eyes like melted chocolate, and one of a middle-aged woman whose posture indicated confidence but whose eyes betrayed her vulnerability.

  “Yes, excellent choices,” said the man approvingly. Pointing to another study he said: “This woman here, she looks too perfect, doesn’t she? Women who are too beautiful lack mystique and depth.”

  He thanked me for my help and gave me a warm hug, then turned around to find someone to process his purchase.

  Well, that was a productive use of my time, I told myself, and exhaled with satisfaction. I left the gallery and returned to the street.

  The rain had resumed, and I pushed open my umbrella and moved confidently toward the narrow streets that emanated like tentacles off the Piazza Tasso and disappeared into a medina-like labyrinth. I selected one that looked promising and set off to see what adventure it held.

  An Internet café presented itself, so I ducked in and tapped out a quick message to Zoë, updating her about our whereabouts and relating my failed visit to the Blue Grotto.

  She happened to be online—again. She was at school working on a project in the library, she explained hurriedly, and was just coincidentally checking her e-mail.

  I didn’t care about the excuse. I was thrilled to be connected, however briefly and tenuously, to my daughter.

  “Sucks about the Grotto,” she wrote, “but don’t worry ’cuz you and I are going to go to Italy together one day, and we’ll visit the Grotto then.”

  I loved her optimism.

  When I left the Internet café the sound of metal sec
urity shutters being pulled down for siesta by their shopowners was reverberating through the town. It was a sound I never liked to hear: The streets were always being rolled up just as I was getting into a groove to explore.

  A gelateria was still open for business, so I ducked in, even though it was definitely not gelato weather. It was obviously an establishment of some repute because its walls were covered with framed newspaper clippings and autographs from famous Italians. A huge chocolate statue of a naked woman dominated the middle of the shop.

  I moved to the counter and, from about twenty or so flavors of gelato, I chose pistachio. A small dish of it was handed to me. The moment I tasted it I knew I had made the wrong choice. This almost never happens to me.

  I sulked to the side wall and picked away at it anyway.

  What was going on with my taste buds? I am a veritable addict when it comes to ice cream, and pistachio, well, how could something so promising taste so bland?

  “’Ow’s your gelato?” a cheerful man next to me said. In his hand was a cone of what looked like chocolate gelato.

  He was visiting from Brisbane, he said, by way of introduction.

  “You probably made a better choice,” I said. “This isn’t terribly yummy.”

  “Neither is mine,” he confessed. “What’s the big deal about gelato anyway? Give me real ice cream any day. But, you see, the wife and I missed lunch today, and at this point I’ll eat anything.”

  And then, conspiratorially, he asked, “’Ave you by chance, um, eaten anywhere interesting?”

  “Sadly, I haven’t,” I answered. “What do you make of the food in Italy?”

  “It’s shit,” he said. “All we heard about before we came to Italy was how incredible the food was. I guess you need to travel with a food writer to experience that side.”

  We traded stories about our respective travels through Italy.

  “I visited a brothel yesterday,” he said, leaning over and lowering his voice.

  “Is that a fact?” I answered, not quite knowing how to respond. I took a quick glance at his wife, who was talking to someone else.

  “Oh, it was all above board,” Brisbane laughed. “We were at Pompeii. Did you know there were more than twenty-five brothels uncovered at Pompeii?”

  I confessed I did not, but I did tell him that we were headed for Pompeii the very next day.

  11

  Pompeii, Mount Vesuvius

  ATHUNDEROUS BOOM that nearly shattered my eardrums shook me awake the next morning. It was followed by apocalyptic lightning, a torrential downpour, thrashing wind, the works: A perfect day to visit Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius.

  Mom had signed us up for an organized tour. She finds coach excursions thrilling; she loves the precision and organization and, of course, someone else making the decisions. She figured that a bus tour would be a treat for me because it would mean I would not have to drive. Bus tours, however, come with their own stresses.

  After breakfast, we drove our car from the hotel to the appointed rendezvous point, a distance of two blocks. I retrieved the red walker from the trunk, popped open the umbrella, and with my free hand guided Mom across the street.

  And there we waited. And waited. Sheets of rain abused us from every angle for the better part of an hour. It was also humid, and after a while I could not tell which parts of me were wet and which were sweaty. I was pretty certain my makeup was running down my face.

  “Something’s not right,” Mom said eventually.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” I said amid a crash of thunder. By now small rivers had formed on the road, and the branches of the trees that were providing a modicum of shelter for us were swaying dangerously.

  “Maybe we should go back to the hotel and ask Maria to find out what happened,” she said. “But I don’t think I can walk back to the car.”

  I opened her folding cane so she would have something to lean on while I pushed her walker back to the car (not a good look for me, by the way) through the rain, loaded the walker into the trunk, and then drove the car across the street, got out, and helped Mom in.

  We circled the block back to the hotel, and had just got out of the car and were dodging large puddles on our way to the hotel’s entrance when Maria came bursting out the front door.

  “Where have you been? The bus is waiting for you!” she cried.

  “We just came from there, and there was no bus,” I replied as rain sluiced off my face and clothing.

  “They have arrived, and now they are wondering where you are!”

  We turned around and shuffled back to the car, the rain pelting us mercilessly.

  Mom struggled into the car, and I folded up the walker once again and stowed it in the trunk.

  We drove back to the prearranged corner, where the hulking coach was idling, cloaked in an exhaust fog of impatience. I put the car in park, got out, helped Mom out of the car, steadied her as she negotiated the steps of the bus, then returned to the car, got back in, and drove to a nearby parking spot on the street.

  Gathering my purse, I got out of the car, locked the door, and quickly opened the umbrella, which promptly blew inside out as a gust of wind did its best to throw me off balance. I steeled myself against the wind to retrieve the red walker for the umpteenth time from the trunk of the car, unfolded it, and pushed it half a block to the waiting bus while simultaneously trying to control it with one hand and battling the wind over control of my umbrella with the other.

  And then I snapped. Right in the middle of the intersection. In front of a church.

  “Fucking rain! Fucking trip!” I screamed like a lunatic into the Sunday-morning streets.

  I was ready to collapse and let the rain and the wind sweep me into a sewer.

  The foul weather had exhausted me, but so had the responsibility of caring for my mother. I was wiped from being in charge of every single detail of this trip and having to undertake every request, errand, and duty every single day and every single hour of that day. Any time I had to myself was used to recharge my patience and energy. I did not even have the luxury of wearing myself out; someone else was taking care of that! How do people care for loved ones around the clock without going completely mad?

  By the time I reached the bus my fury was as apparent as my drenched appearance. My hair was matted to my skull, and my mascara must have looked like skid marks on my cheeks. I’m sure I looked like a madwoman.

  The bus driver was waiting by the luggage hold to take the walker from me, but instead of handing it to him I swung the walker and threw it as hard as I could into the hold. I wanted to smash it to bits. I was angry at it, angry that my mother’s life had come to the point of having to depend on it, angry that it now exerted control over me.

  “We held the bus for you,” the young tour guide said sweetly as I heaved myself up the steps of the bus, water squishing from the sides of my shoes.

  “No you didn’t,” I snapped back. “We waited an hour in this weather for you. Could you not have had the decency to phone the hotel to say you were going to be late?”

  I glanced down the aisle. A busload of dark, murderous eyes stared back at me, eyes that said they had no patience for a cranky passenger holding up their tour.

  “Oh well, we’re here now,” Mom said nervously in a singsong voice, patting my arm as I sloshed into the seat beside her. “You can sit back and relax for a change.”

  Well, what can I say? When you travel with a person who has a disability, one of you has to be the bitch, and it most certainly isn’t the person with the disability.

  One of the things I was discovering on this trip was my mother’s chipper attitude. For the most part she was unfailingly happy and easygoing. A gentle, almost beatific smile was always on her face—even when she was in pain. Except for the first day or two and the odd seat belt infraction since, which I put down to forgetfulness rather than recalcitrance, she had been compliant to a fault.

  This was not the mother I remembered from my childhood. I rememb
ered a distracted, intense, on-the-go woman who had no time to join me in the sandbox and no interest in dressing up Barbie dolls. My mother-daughter “quality time” was spent accompanying her to the grocery store or to an interview she had to do for a story she was working on. She did not approve of idleness; our family was in a constant state of motion. Now, in Italy, she was different. She was urging me to relax and slow down. Who was this woman and where had she been during my childhood?

  During our travels through Italy everyone loved Mom. They found her refreshing—even inspiring, according to a few people. They marvelled at the way she persevered despite her physical limitations and how engaged she seemed.

  I, however, was the riled, harried daughter, the woman with the pinched face, the snapping voice, the set-in-stone itinerary to follow, the one in charge. At which point during our lives had we swapped roles?

  Several months earlier I had been out with a friend for a drink when I realized to my alarm that my posture was exactly like my mother’s: leaning across the café table with my elbows resting on it, slowly rubbing the palms of my hand and then aligning my fingertips to form a dome. My head-nods and some of my verbal responses to my friend’s conversation were my mom’s to a T. I looked at my hands and fingers and realized they were the same shape as my mother’s, right down to the nail shape.

  I immediately shifted my body in the chair to settle into un-Mom-like poses—hanging an arm over the back of the chair and swinging one leg over the other, or twisting to one side of the chair, arm bent on the chair back to support my tilted head in my hand. I have no idea what my friend must have thought about these sudden, frantic contortions.

  Now, as we sat side by side on the coach heading to Pompeii, I glanced down at the backs of my hands and noticed with quiet alarm the ropy veins that were lurking beneath my thinning, somewhat crepey skin. Oh Jesus. I turned my head slightly to look at Mom and thought of the White Stripes’ song “I’m Slowly Turning Into You”, a ditty that reminds us that the traits we despise or ridicule in others are often the traits we possess ourselves.