Italy in the rain

Want to know how to ruin a perfectly good new manicure? Try pulling vines of trees and walls at your father’s property in Italy.

I managed to do nothing whatsoever for a few hours my first day visiting until I could see he was bored by my inactivity. My siblings come here and work. My brothers cut down trees, fix things and my sister cleans and cooks. I am a guest and not a frequent one, as they are, so I keep myself back until an opportunity to help presents itself. Then we discussed the trees, and then the innumerable vines, which we then pulled off poplars, fences, and the walls of his home. His old stone farmhouse is covered. Soon I am knee deep and barefoot in vines, and thorny branches, my arms itch and prickers bore into my hands. It is hopeless. If I want to clean I start outdoors.

Then he shows me a little rose he wants to plant. Now this really is my forte. I’m a gardener but this is Italia. I don’t recognize every plant. He has grapevines (fancy that) growing every where: On his old stone cupola where we drink proseco in the evenings, and Mulberry trees that have branches coming off of the top and hanging down like dreadlocks. The hole he sort of dug –2 inches deep at most—is rocky and I thought it wouldn’t drain. We filled the hole with water and stared together at the water, not draining. I said, loudly, since he is very hard of hearing, that the rose wouldn’t be happy with wet feet.
‘But these rose are here,” he said.
I looked at three he spoke of. They are small trees. One is at least eight feet, all spindly with foliage starting a good three feet up from the ground. I had already pruned away the spent blooms. The other, several feet away, has no foliage or spent blooms. It is five feet perhaps with a small straggly bit of leafs at the very top. The other is also quite tall and did bloom. But…
“The water is not draining,” I said.
He walked away. My father is 88. He wears a tee shirt and shorts. He is wrinkled and shorter now but still fairly fit. He got new knees a few years ago. He can’t hear well but his mind is sharp as always. His teeth are brown now and terribly crooked like his house and the things inside it. Bulbs lean precariously in lamps, chairs are broken, empty pots are half buried by weeds, a marble statue of some goddess in the yard –Venus? --has fallen off its pedestal, which is also toppled on its side. They are his ruins.

His home sits on a hillock of its own, surrounded by other hillocks with other old stone homes, yellow and red, with white stripes running horizontally. The later I learn signifies a Bandolini home, once the landowners in this commune. Vineyards flow from the hills like the wine that is grown from them. In the distance are more hills and then the Italian Alps. This area is known as the pre-Alpi. Before the Alps.

My luggage had gone missing on its way. I have bad luggage karma. I’ve never stolen another’s bag, I just have bad bag juju. Once a woman took my bags home with her and then called me the next day demanding I come get them, as thought it was my fault.
I went a whole week in Jamaica with no luggage. Two weeks later the bag was returned to me in Idaho. The only thing missing was a wrapped box of caramels.
In Jamaica the airline never reimbursed me for the medications, cosmetics or clothes I had to buy, though it said it would. I’ve lost my luggage going to or from Hawaii, Florida, Italy (twice now) Idaho (several times) New York and Arizona.
One bag never was returned. I was quite young then, a virgin when it came to lost luggage. But I remember this jean outfit—jacket and very tight bellbottom pants with embroidery --that matched I had received for Christmas. Who knows what else was in the bag.

Before my bag was delivered I wore a black skirt made from bamboo that I’d worn on the plane and snagged a shirt from a bureau that held my sister’s stuff. When the luggage arrived I was able to change in time for my fathers’ girlfriend, Daniella, to arrive for dinner. Jack beamed when Daniela and I came around the corner. We had already kissed and said hello. She is tiny, and chic and I instantly understand he is smitten.

“You are-a so happy your daughter-a is here,” she said looking at his soft, smiley face. He looked confused. I understood. His happiness was her, and she assumed it was me.

She calls his little dog, Spike-a.
When she left later after dinner, wine, chat and mini Italian lessons I said, “Well, Daniella is adorable.”
“She is,” he said. “She is the most selfless person I have ever met.”
“So kind and nice and fun,” I said.
He nodded as he put things away in his cuccina.
“She is an amazing woman.” He only wants to be with her, I thought. My father is in love. It is also adorable.

My father buys his food in Aviano, at the US Military base. As a retired captain he is allowed. How I wish it were not so. Here we are in the deepest of Italy and his cupboards are filled with American processed food items. Yesterday he offered me Hot Pockets for lunch. I declined. I am longing to walk in a town with a basket, buying fresh produce, herbs and hardy Italian bread. Being here is not so much a visit to Italy but is a morphed stay in a lush green fantasy plunked down in Peoria.

But tonight he takes to his friend Nicoletta’s restaurant, La Fragnola. All afternoon it had rained, and I finally gave up and got under the quilt in my room to read. A surprising nap ensued. I am a little bored. Hunger was a distant concept.
Nicoletta’s is bright yellow inside, table clothes and walls but everything about it as traditional as can be. The ceiling is beamed; in the middle of the room is an open fire, which the six foot four inch grill master works as each order is brought. In Italy they make massive amounts of fire and then pull the burning embers under the drill. Food is never smoky or dry when cooked this way.

Spike-a came with us and stayed under the table. Though he behaved well, (“Lui buon cane,” my father said,) he kept up a soft but persistent whine directed at a shabby brown terrier, which my father couldn’t hear.
My primi piatti was tagliatelli and chicken, enough so that with a salad I might have called it done, but my secondi arrived: A chicken breast cooked over the embers, with sun dried tomatoes, roasted potatoes, polenta along with roasted tomatoes, peppers and endive.

After stuffing ourselves, we exited to the bar, where as we were among the last customers, Nicoletta poured us a digestif. Mine was cough medicine, I swear. Beware fruit liquors unless you see the label. The people with the terrier joined us talking and laughing. We were somehow included in all this, since Nicoletta knew my father. There was an older woman--skinny with deep black hair and vivid blue eye shadow. With her was a young man with a ponytail, shorts and a tee shirt reading Hard Rock Café. On older man spoke with a high nasally voice, but when he said good night he said ‘thank you’ the way Americans murmur ‘Grazie’ at an Italian restaurant. Another man was gruff and macho, with a short-haired wife clad in black slacks and a black spangled top. Spike turned himself inside and out for the straggly female terrier, but she looked the other way. No interest. It was as though she was an aging femme fatale, and he a teenage showoff making no headway. I think his ego was wounded a touch by the slight.
On the way out, my father pointed to some wording painted in the entry way, saying, “Dana look.”
The wall, which I’d ignored on my way in, read, “Il Frantino, Lueve di La, Entrance Free, Love all, Serve all, assholes double price.”

“Yesterday we went to Aviano, where my father gets his mail and shops in the commissary. We drove through gorgeous changing countryside: down windy roads from hill top to shrouded green forests, along ridges above a lake, and into old cities, past church towers to industrial sections. Aviano is a small town that is completely overwhelmed by giant US military complex. Barbed wide rolls sit atop every high wall.
After parking, we tied Spike up to a faucet outside.
“Why don’t you go into the BX while I get the mail,” Jack said.
I nodded, his deafness is making me mute in response, and followed his directions having no idea what a BX was.
Inside, I realized quite swiftly was a mall of sorts. There was a crowd of people lined up and eating at tables in front of Taco Bell, some chicken place and other fast food booths. Down another hall were stands selling everything from cell phones to “Italian” pottery. Straight ahead was mall hell. Like a Kmart, or a Wall Mart there were racks of hideous clothing, giant signs pointed to House wares, Children, etc. I moved to cosmetics figuring I could find moisturizer. Everything smelled atrocious: sickly sweet; unbearable, like cheap perfume.
One good thing: No overbearing shop ladies ran my way to spritz me or look down upon my uneven skin tone. I did that myself by trying some designer tinted moisturizer out without a guard watching. No need. Guards are everywhere. Men and women in camouflage shopped blindly amidst the endless American consumer goods with their pasty faced children. I found Jack looking for a self-help book my sister wanted. She lives in England. Apparently there are no bookstores there. I’m tempted to tell her to drive to Wales where that great book town is. They’ll have Ekhart Toole, no doubt.

In the commissary, I shopped for a dinner party we are to have. Every recognizable brand is on hand. More pasty-faced American service people, men and their overweight wives (civilians, no doubt) loaded their carts with Twinkies, soda, Campbell’s and Kraft.
A pretty, young girl with long dark hair smiled at me while I was looking for scallions.
“I don’t know how to cook for myself any longer,” she laughed.
“It’s not easy,” I suggested, though in truth I enjoy it.
“My husband was just deployed. And I just got back.”
“How was it?” I said, with concern.
“Okay. It was my third time.”
“Wow,” I stuttered, at a loss for words amidst her nonchalance. “Tell me something, does anyone ever shop off base?”
“Sure. I love Italian food. But some people never leave the base. I was so excited when we were transferred to Italy. I thought I’d get all fat,” she grinned. “We were in Germany before. I love German food too.”
“Good luck,” I said, meaning the rest of the war. And she laughed and said, “Thanks, I guess I have to learn how to cook for one!”

I wandered off to find my father looking for Dill pickles for my sister. I guess they have none in England, either.

Most everything called for in the recipe was found but I still needed mozzarella, scallions and prusciotto. I told him firmly as he reached for a square of Kraft mozzarella, that I needed a round ball of proper Italian mozzarella. This was beginning to wear on me. We’d already hassled over bread; when I insisted we needed crusty bread, not a soft, Wonder bread like roll. We compromised by on a baguette at the American commissary, which proved to be quite tasteless and dull. Mama mia.

Today I will cook. It is cold and damp.

One thing I know before the evening starts is that Daniella is charming and adorable how can they not all be at her feet, and Jack, the eldest, stole her heart. How many of them thought it was not possible? Certainly not Susan, whom Jack is still working around. Susan who is a touch jealous, and I think possessive about her friends: Jack and Daniella. Just whom is she jealous of though.
At the table are Jackie and Barrie Keefe (an English playwright), Brit-wits of artsy connections who are the cultural touchstones of the group; the nearly dowdy but once cute-as-a-button Lorna, and her bulky husband Tino. These are the friends, the group. Jack knows his relationship with Daniella is too close and that he stepped out of bounds by falling for a friend of Susan’s, a young friend at that. And he succeeded. They love him and are in awe.
And yet Susan, whom Jack erroneously called big, and doesn’t seem so at all, is a leader. Like me? Like Lindsay?
Susan talks and it encourages others to talk. She enlivens the room. She speaks Italian fluently; her smiles are frequent and infectious. She touches here and there into conversations, relating a story to one person drawing forth a shared memory to another, and meets everyone’s eyes as she does so. She says we met nearly 20 years previously at a dinner at Jacks, which is a slight memory but builds as she relates it. And then, the piece de resistance, she finally puts at rest a fragmented memory of my own, so distinct an experience: I had only just arrived, and my bag had not come. I was exhausted but we went in search of some friends of Jacks. The house was cozy and candlelight and everyone was sitting at a long table against a bench like-banquet. They made room for Jack and I, and we were given wine. Then something they called a cuppa d’amici—with different spouts--was passed around like a peace pipe. I don’t drink coffee but this had something like milky coffee with a hazel nut flavor and grappa.
“But of course, it was a Marie-Therese’s, we had quite a lot of grappa,” she says.
“Ah! Thank you for filling in the blanks,” I respond. “It wasn’t some random Italian fantasy. Where can I get one of those?”
Everyone is laughing. I am charmed.
“Yes, don’t you remember Jack?” Susan launches into an explanation of the cup, and slips into Italian to describe the person and place to the others.
Through it all Daniella is adrift, lessened by Susan’s largesse, her ease, and her obvious sense of fun. She makes Daniella seem almost mousy. Susan’s bigness, as Jack refers to it, is exactly why she overwhelms him. He needs her because of her fluency and ease but Daniella needs him.
Jack is aware and soon he is leaning toward Daniella and quietly talking to her.

The donkey nearby is braying. This sounds much nicer than the jackass is honking but it’s all the same. Either either. Lets call the whole thing off. The rain is keeping us indoors. Jack is at his computer or he is watching the news or he is....somewhere. I read, and write, and nap, and wander. When the sun appears I grab Spike-a and we walk down the rutted dirt trail that passes for a road, or drive to the house. I find thyme growing wild along the banks of the hill, next to the vines. There are also an abundance of fig trees, olive trees, chestnuts trees. Everything is blindingly green

I have drunk much wine today. Jackie and Barrie have hosted us for what turned out to be a five-hour luncheon. I barely had time to dress since I arouse form bed at 12:27 p.m. after a night out. I understand why he lives here. He has dear friends, who look after him. Invite him over and treat him with respect. It’s a good life for him, though it seems to not have that much to do with Italy sometimes. At any rate, they are all younger than he and get him out and about.
Susan’s bright idea last night was for 10 of us to go to an enormous club where one pays for a prix fixe dinner at the start, then make your way into one of several different dance areas. The largest is the band room where couples dance around and around in a circle doing the exact same step.
During dinner I was singled out—as the stranger, fresh meat that I am—by Flores, a Belgian friend of Susan’s. He rattled off French German, Italian and English to me, attempting to seduce me with incomprehensible nonsense. I laughed uproariously and caught many an eye as the others kept an amused and knowing eye. We wandered around after dinner to all the many dance arenas out and inside, part of the whole complex. There were gardens with bars, and Brazilian tunes, one courtyard where hip-hop boomed, even a pool where in the warm weather presumably one can dance and swim.
My throat was parched. “I am thirsty,” I told Flores a couple times. He was either deaf or ignoring me, I realized.
“What side of him were you on?” Susan asked later.
“The right.”
“Ah. He’s deaf on both sides,” she said, with a laugh.
Flores swept me out onto the dance floor where we laughed and spun madly around. Quite the dancer, Flores. I kept up rather well until he wanted to join the crazy Italians going around and around in the same damn step. One, one-two. One, one-two.
Finally Jack broke in and we had a quiet, father daughter slow spin around the dance floor. Someone clearly put him up to it, but I didn’t mind. It was a rare moment of closeness. I wanted to lay my head on his sweatered shoulder but couldn’t do it. We’ve never had that kind of relationship, though Daniella kept making sweet comments about how we did. I heard him say several times that it had been 20 years since we’d danced together, that may be. It escapes me.
The group disbanded well after midnight.
Jackie showed me her chapel. I made a silent prayer for more fun,
My wine intake and my food intake certainly increased yesterday, I am in training for Paris.