The town house had two bedrooms: one on the lower level and one on the upper level. Mom would have to sleep on the pullout sofa in the kitchen—on the main level—if she was to avoid steps inside. I could already hear her loud, defiant protestations. At least there were laundry facilities and a bathroom on the main level.
I pretended to listen while Signora Marconi explained in Italian how to work the heating system while I tried to come up with a way to sell this arrangement to Mom. It wasn’t like we had an alternative.
In the kitchen a black iron spiral staircase led to a loft bedroom. Ah yes, the loft bedroom. From the moment I had viewed images of it on the Internet I had dreamed of this loft with its exposed ancient stone walls and angled roof lines. I had already claimed it as my nest for three weeks and imagined Colin and me spending some serious cuddling time there.
I made my way up the steps eager to get a real-life glimpse of the loft. I craned my neck, and bang! The crown of my head made contact with the sharp edge of one of the iron risers.
A sledgehammer of pain ripped into me, setting off weeks of pent-up stress. I burst into wild sobs. Signora Marconi stood awkwardly, her hands folded in front of her, not knowing where precisely to look at this moment, or whether to comfort me or wait out my tears. I tried to compose myself, but each time I did, another wave of convulsive sobs overwhelmed me.
Through the blurry film of tears I spied a small welcome basket thoughtfully prepared for our arrival by the town house owner: maps, crackers, a letter with my name on it, and a bottle of red wine. I managed to tamp down the urge to grab the bottle, smash its neck, and empty its contents into my gizzard. Instead, I picked up the map of Viterbo and the letter, and turned to leave.
Signora Marconi and I walked hurriedly back to her home. We each tried to make small talk but neither of us could put our sentiments into words that were understandable to the other. Besides, I was holding back the emotional floodgates, and every time I opened my mouth it seemed another round was rising in my throat. I tried desperately to figure out what to do next.
At Signora Marconi’s home her teenage daughter, who spoke the barest amount of English, explained on behalf of her mother that parking was not allowed anywhere near Viterbo’s medieval quarter. Mom and I would have to park outside the district and cart our luggage in on foot. This situation was getting worse by the moment. I told them as carefully and clearly as I was able that the town house would not work out.
“Non solo uno notte,” I said. Not even one night. I told Signora Marconi’s daughter that I would call the owner that evening and explain the situation.
I returned to the car and found Mom in the same position I had left her—sitting ramrod straight, purse clutched on her lap, a grim, stony look on her face. I got into the car and made sure the windows were tightly rolled up. Then I let loose another round of uncontrollable, convulsive sobs.
They were sobs of disappointment, but also of exhaustion— a larger explosion of pent-up frustration, weariness, self-pity, and sleep deprivation than I had unleashed in Sor-rento. I was tired. Tired of driving all over goddamn Italy and maneuvering our car through smaller and smaller towns with increasingly narrower, tighter roads, dodging pedestrians; tired of being responsible for directions, accommodations, and restaurants and for conducting all our business in Italian, making sure the itinerary flowed, and troubleshooting when it did not. I was tired of the crappy weather, the crappy food—I would have killed for a big salad with something more than iceberg lettuce.
Mom had offered to take off a bit of the pressure by doing some of the driving and letting me catnap instead. And that might have been an option had I wanted to end up in Slovakia or, worse, a ditch. Right now, all I could think about was that a big chunk of our plans, including our accommodation, were suddenly down the drain.
“You poor dear,” said my mother, patting my arm stiffly. “I knew it wouldn’t work out.”
Well, thanks. That just made me feel a ton better.
“What are we going to do now?” I wailed. “We were supposed to stay here for three weeks and now we have nothing else booked.”
“We’re going to find a hotel,” Mom said matter-of-factly.
“Start the car and just drive. We’ll find one.”
After a couple of inquiries and many rejections, we landed at the four-star Hotel Nibbio, just outside Viterbo’s fortress walls. It did have a room for us, but it lost a star when no one helped us with our luggage. Parking was in a rear laneway, but despite there being a convenient door to the hotel from the laneway, patrons were not allowed to use it—even to convey luggage. It made no sense at all. The hotel also had no wine bar and no restaurant. Deduct two more stars.
My first call was to the owner of the Viterbo town house. I explained to her why it could not work out for us. She kindly agreed to a refund.
The next call was to Colin, who was due to visit us later that week. The plan had changed, I told him weepily, and at the moment I did not have an alternate one.
I made a third call to an acquaintance I had run into in Toronto a few months earlier who was now living in Italy. Sofia had invited me to come and stay with her and her husband. Rarely do I take up people’s kind offers of hospitality, especially those I barely know, but that was about to change.
“You must come and stay with us,” Sofia enthused on the phone when I told her of our predicament. “When can you come?”
“How about tomorrow?” I asked boldly.
“Tomorrow won’t be convenient, I’m afraid,” she said apologetically. “Our car’s in being repaired. The day after?”
Done.
I called down to the hotel’s front desk and told them we would be staying an extra night. It would give me a chance to come up with a Plan B—and perhaps a Plan C.
Mom and I ordered pizza and wine from a nearby restaurant and brought it to our room.
One of the things Mom and I had discussed when we first planned this trip was to use our time together to air past grievances and come to an understanding and acceptance of our stormy past. I had asked her to come up with three things about me that had gnawed at her over the years. I said I would do likewise about her.
“Well,” Mom had harrumphed defensively. “You won’t have much of a list when it comes to me because I was a perfect mother.”
Now as we sat in silence pulling apart the pizza I figured, well, there’s no time like the present to get a start on this discussion.
“Remember that list of three things I asked you to come up with?” I finally asked. “Feel like talking about it now?”
Without batting an eye or questioning what I was talking about, Mom snapped open her purse, pulled out a small piece of white paper—it looked as if it had been folded and refolded many times—and plunged right in.
“First of all, you were indifferent to me and to your father when you were growing up,” she began, without so much as a preface to her remarks. “You never listened to our advice. You were always telling us to shut up. You were so single-minded.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but she was already on item number two.
“Second, you changed once you came home from university. It was Thanksgiving weekend, your first year in Ottawa.
You were never the same to us.
“Third, your choice of husbands. You never listened to us. And the result? Well, you made some very poor choices.”
I glanced at the bottle of wine. I was the only one drinking, but it looked as if this discussion could outlast its contents.
“Even when you were little you never bonded with us,” she continued, gathering steam and changing the rules of engagement by broaching item number four. “Your independence was hurtful. Whenever we went on holidays to a cottage you would find another family on the beach and stick with them. You completely ignored us.”
I did?
“What did you do about it?” I asked. Obviously I could not recall those instances.
“What could we do?
” she said, shaking her head. “We tried to laugh it off, chalk it up to the fact that this was just your personality. But it caused us a lot of pain. You really hurt your father.”
Oh. OK. She’s playing the dad card now. To undo me completely when she makes a point my mother needs only to mention my father.
Tears filled my eyes, and the nerve endings in my nose began to tingle as if it was being pricked by tiny needles.
I missed him all over again. Like my mother Dad had been strict and formal, but unlike my mother he could tell when my teenage soul was hurting, and he would sit down on the edge of my bed to soothe my wailing. He handled my outbursts by lowering his voice and saying in a steady tone, “Now, Jane . . . ” My mother’s approach was to match my outburst in both volume and accusations. Whereas my dad was open to reason, my mother considered reason a tactic used by children to undermine parental power.
How I wished my dad were here now, not just to referee this conversation but to be in Italy with us.
The wine was taking effect. It wasn’t good wine, it was bitter and heavy tasting. I reminded myself not to be bitter and heavy in this conversation.
“Well, let’s talk about that fourth point,” I said, trying to handle this in a mature and upbeat manner. “I was three years old at the time, wasn’t I? I can’t explain how or why I behaved the way I did then.”
It was a perfect opportunity to suggest to Mom that more hugging and less reprimanding on her part might have helped, but that would have been a criticism of her parenting skills. I did not want to turn the discussion into a tennis match, with each of us firing killer serves at the other. I was prepared to accept my share of the blame and acknowledge my imperfections, and I wanted her to do likewise. But she is a tough, unforgiving warrior and when she prepares for battle she aims to win.
I soldiered on.
“As for your second point, about my apparent change in behavior when I returned home from university that particular Thanksgiving,” I said. “I do remember that weekend very clearly, but how is it possible for us to recall this one episode from two totally different perspectives?
“It was the first time I felt as if you and Dad were treating me like an adult. I was thrilled by that. I had great philosophical discussions with Dad that weekend. I can’t remember about what exactly—maybe it was religion or an upcoming federal election—but I do remember the three of us sitting in the family room and all of us talking so sensibly and openly. I saw it as a watershed in our relationship. When I returned to Ottawa I told my friends what a great time I had had.”
I took a deep breath.
“To address your third point, concerning my choice of husbands, well, I have no defense there,” I said. “At the time they seemed like the right choice. They were both good and decent men. Relationships blossom for a reason, and they self-destruct for another reason. I wasn’t perfect either. Every one of us has a different path to walk.”
“Well, you’re on a very crooked path,” Mom replied tersely.
I had no energy left to argue. Wine and weariness were overtaking me.
“I’m sorry,” I slurred in surrender. “Sorry for everything. I have no explanation for any of it. I’m just sorry. And it’s true that I was—that I am—single-minded. I don’t quite know how that happened.”
“I guess it’s time for bed, then,” said Mom primly.
We embraced awkwardly, kissed each other good night, and turned out the lights.
In the darkness the conversation looped through my mind. It wasn’t so much the content that exhausted me, it was the fact that we had to have this conversation. As in so many such conversations in the past, I ended up apologizing for being myself, which is rather ironic given that my mother contributed half the genetic material that was used to create me. I have some of her fighting spirit, but I also have my dad’s sense of when to throw in the towel.
Why couldn’t I just get past the fact that ours was a dysfunctional relationship and leave it at that? It’s not like we were the only ones. Why have these conversations in the first place? What was the point of dredging up the past other than to make me feel belittled? I always ended up apologizing as if the whole mess were entirely my fault. Why didn’t I have the guts to fire back and say what was really on my mind, tell her that she had been a demanding mother who rarely found a positive thing to say about me?
I had learned to tiptoe around so many things, to ignore the poison arrows just to keep peace. All we knew now was how to tiptoe, not to walk with the confidence that comes with unconditional love. Our self-restraint had only built up pressure and stress over the years. Like Etna and Vesuvius we heaved and boiled under the surface of a benign facade.
Before the wine knocked me out for the evening I thought of something else. Mom had not asked about my three grievances. I wondered if she ever would.
THE NEXT morning I decided to give Viterbo a second chance. Mom wanted the morning to herself to shower and do her hair, so I set off alone to explore.
The air was sunny and cool as I crossed the Piazza della Rocca, the old city’s main square. Most Italian towns began at the tops of hills and developed outward and downward. In contrast, Viterbo’s took root on a small plain between two substantial hills and developed outward and upward.
I randomly selected one of the narrow streets that emanated like streamers from the square and gradually descended through the various strata of Viterbo’s history: 18th century, Renaissance, medieval. I found Via San Pellegrino and retraced my steps to the town house we had intended to rent. At the foot of the stone steps leading up to the front door I tried to will it to work for us, but it was not to be. Mom’s physical condition—and perhaps her emotional one—precluded any thought of adapting to the situation. That much was clear to me. At this point in her life she needed modern hotels with lifts and accessible bathrooms. Try getting that in Italy.
I walked back to Via San Pellegrino and wandered along the cobblestone street to the small Piazza San Pellegrino. There I sat down on a church step and surveyed my surroundings. Everything was built from volcanic, gray peperino stone—the large smooth cobbles of the street, the walls, the fountains, the churches. Black wrought iron and the occasional wood-plank door provided the only relief to a drab, morose palette.
There was an abundance of Romanesque arches, covered balconies, nooks and crannies, and simple but elegant architectural detailing. I loved that. But there was also an unsettling stillness to the place. When a sound arose, it cut the air like a shock wave and ricocheted off the high walls. The beating wings of pigeons sounded like a flock of pterodactyls; the brief whine of a circular saw sounded like someone screaming. I heard a man whistling for his dog, a sound that in the English countryside would have sounded friendly but here was abrupt, piercing. Water trickling from a nearby fountain sounded like blood dripping.
I decided to have a look in some nearby shops, none of which had signs indicating the manner of business being conducted inside. I ventured into an antique shop and found its owner deep in conversation, sotto voce, with a client or friend. Everyone seemed to speak in hushed tones here. My presence was acknowledged with a wary “’giorno” and a too-long stare, and then the whispering resumed.
In another shop I found a collection of beautiful, small blue-and-green majolica plates for five euros each. Mom collects majolica, and for a moment I considered buying them—as a peace offering or as a distraction, I’m not sure which. Then I reconsidered the purchase, mainly because the owner seemed agitated by my presence, as if having a customer in his shop were highly irregular.
I ducked into a third antique shop. There I was tempted by a bed tester of ornate gilded wood, from which hung about twelve inches of gloriously faded fabric. But again the owner eyed me so contemptuously that I left empty-handed and with the strong impression that Viterbo’s shopowners could use a lesson in customer service.
I proceeded along Via San Pellegrino to see if a cheerier welcome could be found. At another piaz
za a gang of geezers, whispering among themselves like spies, regarded me with such dark and sour-looking expressions—they actually stopped talking and stared directly at me—that I did not feel comfortable venturing farther. What a grumpy town! It was a shame, really, because I completely missed two buildings I had hoped to see—the Cathedral of San Lorenzo and the Papal Palace, of which I had read so much. Instead, I retraced my steps rather quickly out of the Dark Ages.
I found myself in Piazza Dante Alighieri but saw no sign or memorial to the poet, just a plaque explaining that the church there was the last valuable piece of Romanesque architecture. I did come across another wee church, however, with a notation indicating that it was the Chiesa di San Marco and that it had been consecrated in 1198 by Pope Innocent iii.
I wanted desperately to fall in love with Viterbo, because I adore medieval art and architecture, but this place wasn’t throwing me a bone. I walked around some more and came to the conclusion that Viterbo was fine for a few days but not for three weeks. A week of this, and I would be resorting to self-flagellation as entertainment.
Up the steps from Via Cavour a very pretty building of peperino stone caught my eye. Its main entrance on the upper level was accessed by a side staircase supported by a sweeping arch on one side without any visible underpinning on the other. It was quite the engineering puzzle. A plaque explained that this was Casa Poscia, built in the 14th century, and that it possessed the best preserved example in all of Viterbo of a profferlo, an outside staircase with a small arcade beneath it. It was a decorative feature that offered privacy and protection to the main house, which was accessed from the upper level only, while providing commercial space at street level for the homeowner.
Casa Poscia itself had an endearing history. It was known as la casa della Bella Galiana and had been the home of the most beautiful girl in Viterbo. Hundreds of years ago young swains would loiter in front of this lovely structure with the hope of catching a glimpse of the fair maiden.
And how apropos that today beneath Casa Poscia’s arch, in the space where the father of the most beautiful girl in Vit-erbo once conducted his business, is a lingerie shop. The meshing of the modern and the medieval was alternately fascinating and amusingly jarring. Shops with such names as Pink, Lunatic, Barghini, and Bum Bum occupied space in buildings that six or seven hundred years ago might have sold quills, spices from the Orient, or a cup of mead to a tired traveller.
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