The Reluctant Tuscan

by Phil Doran

  That said, we went about planning the affair with the understanding that we were older and wiser now than at the time of our original wedding, so this one shouldn’t degenerate into a bout of name calling and death threats. And it probably wouldn’t have if we had been living in any place but Italy, where everything is run by the Italians.

  The longer you live here, the more you fall in step with the idea that everything has a season. Not to get too biblical about it, but in the course of a year, you discover that there is a time to eat figs and a time to dig up porcini mushrooms. A time for the birth of your livestock and a time to visit the graves of your dead relatives. There is a season for hunting, a season for the opera, and a season to go on strike.

  The word for strike is sciopero (she-OP-per-oh), and it’s an important word to know for when you come to Italy and can’t understand why something you vitally need is not open, running, or serving. In times past Italian labor unions were fond of throwing a sciopero in the middle of tourist season, thereby paralyzing the railroad system, the bus lines, and all the hotel chains without a moment’s warning. Though these still go on, they are short, some lasting only a few hours, for the unions have learned that if they drive the tourists away, they’ll be no need to go on strike because the whole country will be out of work.

  In the fall, when the rest of the world leaves them alone, the Italians get down to the nasty business of going on strike in earnest. Aside from the basic human need to be paid more for working less, Italian laborers have been known to walk out because the walls were painted an irritating color, they were being told what to do by someone who came from farther down the boot than they, or management had begun to insidiously brew the espresso with fewer beans.

  Our own espresso beans had scarcely started to brew early on the morning of our second wedding when the phone rang. It was Nancy’s mom calling from the Rome airport. She and Aunt Rose had just flown in from London, where they had started their trip, only to discover that the flight that was to shuttle them to Pisa had been canceled by a strike. Moreover, no trains were running because the rail lines had already been on strike for three days.

  This threw us into an immediate panic. One of us had to jump in the car and drive to Rome if there was any chance of getting back in time. We decided that Nancy would stay to make the house ready and await the arrival of the food, the flowers, and the wine, while I threw my pants on and drove like a maniac down to Fiumicino Airport.

  One of the first things you learn in Italy is that, although all roads lead to Rome, there are only two that matter. The major artery is the A1, which you pick up just west of Florence. You turn south and it’s a straight shot all the way into the Eternal City. That, of course, was my plan, until I tried to get onto the autostrada that morning and found a line of cars backed up at the on-ramp.

  A quick survey of my fellow drivers revealed the problem was an impromptu strike called by the toll collectors. No one knew how long it would last, so those without mothers-in-law stranded at the airports bided their time.

  I peeled out of line and hauled ass toward the other route, the Viale Mare. This is a lovely highway that runs from Pisa down the coast to a point west of Rome where the airport actually sits. The advantage here is that you don’t have to go through or around Rome. The disadvantage is that it’s slower and, on a pleasant Sunday morning like this, more apt to be clogged with pokey sedans full of families on their way to Mamma’s for lunch.

  I phoned Nancy to apprise her of my progress and she updated me on hers. The wine had arrived without incident, but Salvatore from Trattoria Toscana had called, and because of a trucker’s strike, they had not received enough eggplant to make the lasagna alla melanzana. Would we be okay if he substituted a fricandò di cavolfiore e guanciale? I told her that would be fine because if I mentioned that I didn’t know what the hell that was, she would have started to recite the recipe, and that’s all I needed to listen to while I was stuck behind an enormous truck carrying such a wide load, it was labeled TRASPORTO ECCEZIONALE.

  I asked her if she had heard from my sister, and Nancy said that they had called from Genoa. My sister and her husband had flown in earlier in the week and spent a few days unwinding at Lake Como. Then they rented a car with the idea of driving down to us. But no one could have anticipated the toll collector’s strike, and who knew how long that would go on? I told Nancy I’d call back when I picked up Mom, and not to worry because everything would work out. I then hung up and tried to convince myself of that as well.

  Instead of dwelling over what would happen if I gave the truck ahead of me a NASCAR tap and tried to whip around it, I focused on relaxing the muscles behind my eyes. I took some deep inhalations to let my brain chemistry settle down as I sat back to enjoy the most beautiful part of the trip, even though that damn truck was blocking the best part of my view.

  Sooner or later we’d get to a passing lane, but for now I let the hum of the car and gentle undulation of the highway calm me as the road curved around the ancient port city of Cecina. For the next hundred kilometers or so the highway presented a sublime diorama of the sea on one side and the mountains on the other. Fairy tale hill towns fought for my attention with the mist-shrouded loneliness of the island of Capraia. It was a rugged landscape, but not as savage as the Amalfi Coast, or even Big Sur. In fact, the assorted palm trees and orange groves I passed made me feel like I was tooling down the Pacific Coast Highway near Malibu. And in an odd twist of synchronicity, I passed a town, and I am not making this up, called La California.

  I smiled at how different La California was from L.A., California. And that made me think about all the ways living in Italy had changed me. I hadn’t been to a movie in seven months, but I’d seen five operas. I’d been well trained by an army of waiters never to sprinkle parmigiano cheese on pasta with seafood in it, and not to even think about getting a cup of coffee until after a meal had been eaten. I had discovered that there was life after the Dodgers because I’d started to follow our local soccer team, tooting my horn at every fellow tifoso (sports fan) I passed when we won, and sulking around the house, unable to speak, when we lost. Moreover, I’d begun to relish how everything closes down for three hours in the middle of the day so there’s always time to eat lunch, drink wine, and make love. When I first arrived, I thought the Italians were crazy, but now I know that they’re sane—it’s the rest of the world that’s gone mad.

  Something had happened to my body clock. It ran slower in Italy, for what was the point of rushing through life when all the Italians around you are busy enjoying the moment? There was less urgency to everything I did. I was more tranquil. Composed. Even serene.

  “Va fan culo!” I screamed at the truck in front of me that had apparently decided to occupy both his lane and the passing lane at the same time.

  Yes, I was more serene, except when I was driving, which I guess made me a genuine Italian.

  By the time I pulled up in our driveway, our guests had started to arrive. Italians like to come early and stay late, so a social gathering tends to become a marathonlike test of a host’s endurance. And this one promised to be quite an ordeal, judging by how frazzled Nancy looked as she came running out of the house to greet us.

  “People started arriving as soon as you left,” Nancy hollered in my direction as she rushed over to hug her mom.

  “Oh, my God, the house is magnificent,” her mom said. “I’m so proud of you, honey.”

  “Thanks, Ma, but this wedding is turning into a real disaster. Dino and Flavia invited even more cousins than I knew they had,” Nancy said, as she moved over to hug her aunt Rose. “The flowers haven’t arrived, I haven’t even had a chance to change yet, and the wine sucks!”

  “The flowers haven’t arrived?” I said.

  “You did a helluva remodeling job here, kiddo,” Aunt Rose said. “It looks absolutely wonderful.”

  “Unfortunately, Rose, so do you,” I said, out of breath from lugging their suitcases out of the car.r />
  “Since when is that a problem?” Rose asked as we entered the rustico.

  “Only when we’ve told everybody that you’re my mom and that you’ve crawled out of your deathbed to be here,” Nancy said to her aunt.

  It was true. Even though both women were in their seventies, Betty and Rose looked terrific. Despite a little bit of a hearing loss, Rose was a vibrant, cheerful woman with elegant silver hair. And Betty was slim and fashionable, like an older version of Nancy with a New Jersey accent.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Aunt Rose chirped. “Tell everybody I’m so revitalized by just being here, I’ve come back to life.”

  “Oh, la mamma has arrived!” Dino announced entering the kitchen in an ebullient mood.

  “Mamma, this is our friend Dino,” Nancy said.

  “Piacere, Mamma,” Dino said, swallowing Aunt Rose up in a hug.

  “Pleased to meet you, Dino,” Aunt Rose said in a subdued tone of voice. “My daughter has told me so much about you, but she never mentioned how molto bello you were.”

  As Dino beamed, Nancy and I smiled at how clever we had been to pick an Italian to play an Italian.

  “Thank you so much, dear lady. And how are you feeling?” he said with the voice one uses for the dying.

  “I have good days and bad,” Aunt Rose said throwing in a little wheeze.

  “And this is my aunt Rose,” Nancy said indicating her mother.

  “Benvenuta,” Dino said, giving Nancy’s mom a hug. “I don’t know why it is, but Nancy looks more like her aunt than her mamma.”

  “Anybody hungry?” I said to change the subject.

  “I’d kill for a glass of wine,” Aunt Rose said. Then, realizing, “My doctor thinks it’s good for my blood.”

  “I don’t think this wine is good for anything,” Nancy said, picking up the bottle and making a face.

  Dino looked at the bottle. “Did you buy it from Enrico?”

  “It tasted great at his store,” Nancy said. “Think he switched on us?”

  “Did he offer you anything to eat?” Dino said.

  “Matter of fact, he did put out some snacks,” I recalled.

  “Like what?” Dino asked.

  “Sausages.”

  “And what was in those sausages?” Dino said.

  “Uh . . . meat?” I said.

  “Finocchio?” Dino suggested.

  “Yeah,” Nancy said turning to me. “Remember how delicious that taste of fennel was?”

  “Oldest trick in the book,” Dino said, shaking his head. “Wine seller gives you a mouthful of finocchio and the next sip of wine you drink tastes fantastic.”

  “Che ladro!” Nancy exclaimed. What a crook!

  “Don’t worry,” Dino said. “I talk to him tomorrow and get you a full refund. Meantime, I send Cousin Turrido over to my house to bring over some good wine.”

  Other guests started drifting into the kitchen. Avvocato Bonetti entered with a clock he had purchased at a discount from the shop next to his office, and when he put it on the table with the rest of our wedding gifts, it started chiming through its gift wrapping. Signor Tito Tughi caught my eye and took me aside to slip me an envelope as if this were the wedding scene out of The Godfather. But instead of containing a wad of blood money, it was the paperwork showing that the insurance company had sent him a check so the repair of our damaged car could begin. I thanked him, secretly wondering if he thought that he was going to get away with this being our present. Annamaria came in from outside, carrying Pepe and praising Santa Fabiola that the little guy was doing so well in our care. And Vagabondo strolled by to see if either of these American ladies was wealthy enough to afford a young Italian lover.

  I peeled away and got on the phone to try and find out what had happened to our flowers. The florist shop was closed, but after some calling around, I was able to track down the owner. There had been a communication breakdown and it was my fault. When I placed the order I had meant to tell him mandare fiori, “to deliver the flowers.” But because the words are so close, I mistakenly said mandare fuori, which means “to put them outside.” Which is exactly what he did, so all our bouquets and floral arrangements were currently sitting on the sidewalk outside his shop.

  “I got to go pick up our flowers,” I said to Nancy, grabbing my car keys and explaining on the run.

  She followed me outside, begging me to calm down and drive carefully. We didn’t need another accident today.

  “You’re right.” I slid behind the wheel and started the car in one motion. “It’ll be okay. Everything’ll be just fine.”

  I started to back out just as an ancient Lancia came chugging up our driveway, trailing a thick plume of exhaust. Through the dense blue smoke I was able to recognize the occupants as the lady and her daughter from the Alimentari Brutti.

  “Tell them to park down the hill,” I called out to Nancy.

  “Actually . . . they’re delivering something,” Nancy said, biting her lip.

  “Aw, no.”

  “I couldn’t help it. They dropped by when I was on the phone with Trattoria Toscana. She heard I was having trouble getting lasagna alla melanzana, so she said she they had tons of it.”

  “Of course they do, it’s been sitting in their store since 1974.”

  “I know.” Nancy smiled and waved to the two ladies, who were approaching us with foil-covered chaffing dishes. “What can we do about it?”

  “Just tell everybody to have a good time but don’t drink the wine or eat the food.”

  I roared into town like I was holding pole position at the Daytona 500, screeching to a stop in front of the florist shop. To my relief no one had stolen our flowers, nor had any dogs irrigated them in the course of their morning ablutions. I gathered up our bouquets, corsages, boutonnieres, and assorted nosegays and tossed them in the backseat. I jumped back in the car, put her in gear, and popped the clutch. But the car died and when I tried to restart it, all I got was the sickening whine of the starter. I glanced at the dashboard and realized I had driven to Rome and back without ever checking the gas gauge. Empty.

  I screamed enough obscenities to wilt the amaryllis in the backseat, pounding on the steering wheel with my fist until I almost broke it. Then I remembered having passed a gas station up the street and being surprised that somebody was there on a Sunday. Sunday is the worst day to gas up because almost all the filling stations are closed, leaving you with two choices: either try to deal with intricacies of an Italian self-service pump, or get on the autostrada and stop at one of the Autogrills.

  I jumped out of the car and started sprinting toward the service station, praying that they’d have a gas can they’d let me use. If worse came to worst, I could always buy one. How much could they want for it? A couple of euros at the most. Maybe five tops.

  But wait a minute . . . when they saw how bad I needed it they’d raise the price. Ten euros . . . no, twenty, that’s what they’ll want! Those greedy bastards, I fumed as I staggered into the gas station, ready to tell them what they could do with their damn can.

  “Of course we have a can for you to borrow,” the mechanic told me. “But we have no benzina.”

  He had just come in to the station to work on his own car today because, thanks to the truckers’ latest sciopero, they had not received their delivery of gas.

  “How can they go on strike?” I fumed. “What about the public safety?”

  “Ha ragione,” he said, telling me that I was right. Then he explained that technically they don’t go on strike but rather they call a big meeting to discuss going on strike, which has the same effect.

  That was it! I was going on strike myself. I was going to lie down in the middle of the street and not move a muscle until I was either run over or this whole goddamn country came to its senses! And that’s what I was thinking as I ran back to the car, scooped up all our stinking flowers, and started to jog home. Sweat was flying off my face and petals were flying off our flowers as I zigzagged my way throu
gh the line of cars that were creeping through the Piazza Maggiore. One car in particular started honking at me, and since I didn’t have a free hand to give them the gesture the Italians call “the fig,” I kept running. Then I heard somebody call my name and when I looked back I recognized my sister and her husband as the ones who were honking at me.

  I ran over to them, and there were hugs and kisses all around as I threw the flowers in the backseat and jumped in. By some miracle they had gotten all the way from Genoa without the use of the autostrada, and now they had to get me home in time to make my own wedding.

  35

  Tanti Auguri

  It was so crowded by the time we got back to the rustico, we had to park at the bottom of the hill. Every square inch of our property was covered with friends and neighbors, and friends and neighbors of friends and neighbors. New allegiances were formed and old animosities forgotten as our stereo boomed out a rousing tarantella and Dino’s good wine flowed.

  Maybe too much good wine, judging by how Cousin Aldo and Gigi got into an arm-wrestling contest that was fought to a red-faced draw. Then they laughed and started dancing with each other. Even Dino found himself in high enough spirits to tolerate Rudolfo showing up with Stefano. And while Dino was cool but cordial, Flavia was downright gracious, sitting down with Stefano and getting to know him, and delighted to learn that his family owned a fabric store in Massa that she shopped in all the time. This solved another problem, because the first thing an Italian woman worries about, with two men living together, is, who is going to do the sewing?

  The mayor and his wife arrived and started circulating through the crowd. Perhaps he was still unnerved about having run into me on the way to visit his mistress, because he acted especially devoted to his wife in my presence. And since word had gotten around that I wasn’t going to be revealing any dirty little secrets about the town, he didn’t mention my article and I never brought it up.