Only in Naples (24 page)

Then the bishop raised a white handkerchief, the symbol that the blood had liquefied.

At that precise moment, San Gennaro, with his red cape and pointy hat and pissed-off expression, became a rock star. He was the Beatles, he was Elvis, he was Madonna at Madison Square Garden. The crowd gave it up, cheering and clapping and crying. Outside, fireworks started popping. The bishop announced, bellowing over the crowd, that when he opened the safe, the blood was
already liquid.
“People of Naples!” he paused, waiting for the commotion to quiet down. “San Gennaro loves us! San Gennaro will protect us!” The crowd answered with shouts of
Evviva San Gennaro!
Long live San Gennaro! Then he repeated, “
Cari Napoletani,
dear people of Naples, the blood was
already liquid.
”

My gentleman friend shook his head in amazement and gratitude.
“Era già sciolto,”
it was already liquid. His subtext was: Despite my hard life, despite the fact that I'm unemployed and my son has gotten in with the
camorra,
despite this,
I am loved.
I am so loved that it was already liquid. And there I was worried and lacking in faith!

The blood, in its magnificent orbed scepter, was carried by the bishop down the aisle, lined today by a red carpet. The pushing became ridiculous. I touched (I think) boobs, thighs, elbows, wispy old-man hair, sweaty underarms. And I was touched in ways that probably would be considered molestation in some countries. But what everybody wanted to touch was the blood.

Again, we would have to wait. After mass, the bishop announced that the relic would be available for kissing between four and six that afternoon. Only those hours. (So it's pointless to get your hopes and puckers up before that!) He also announced that someone had lost a set of keys—he would keep them at the altar after the service.

There was one last, explosive
Evviva San Gennaro!
, followed by applause, before everyone left the Duomo, exhausted but renewed. Confident of the protection and love of that little Buddha with his pointy hat.

R
affaella visited us often in Rome. We decided to look for a bigger apartment—Salva's internship had become a job in sports marketing, and he had made some Neapolitan friends in Rome and wasn't grumbling so much about the Romans. We were planning (read: I was chomping at the bit) to start a family. Raffaella helped us find and remodel a new place near the Colosseum.

From the time I was a little girl, I imagined that my home as a grown-up would have wall-to-wall carpeting. I didn't have a specific mental image of where my home would be, whether it would be a house or an apartment, in the city or in the country, in the United States or abroad. But I knew that when it was my turn to decide for myself, there would be no talk of area rugs or parquet. My family's and my bare feet would sink into soft, thick, creamy carpets in our home.

My parents' house in Bethesda, Maryland, is not cozy. The living areas (called “the sitting room” and “the craft room” by a team of designers in the eighties, no
TV
room or actual
living
room for us) look a little like Louis XIV met up with Liberace and went to a Sotheby's auction. The walls are painted to look like marble. Statues of whirling dervishes stand on gilt pedestals. There are small, valuable Persian rugs on the wood floors.

My childhood longing for wall-to-wall carpeting bespoke a desire for us to be a “normal” suburban family, and a need for comfort, quiet, and peace. I could hang out barefoot and in PJs on a carpet. Loud voices would be absorbed, not echoed. One day, when I was big, I would cuddle with a golden retriever or a child of my own on my carpet (in some soft pastel color) without being eyed by a nineteenth-century nude lady in a painting.

“
Amore,
there is bug inside,” Salva told me gently, when he understood that the wall-to-wall carpeting issue was close to my heart. He was trying to talk me out of it with sensitivity, using English instead of Italian, since he knew it was a touchy subject. What he meant was that wall-to-wall carpeting was not hygienic, particularly in Italy, where there is so much dust in the stone buildings.

“Do you mean dust mites? What, dust mites can't live in area rugs? Or you just want to get freezing marble so if we have children they'll be forced to wear ski socks in the apartment and probably crack their heads on the travertine?”

“
Shh, shhh.
There now.”

I had known the battle was coming. I had never seen wall-to-wall carpeting in Italy. I didn't know whether it was a matter of aesthetics, or the fact that marble is inexpensive, or the reality of the “bug inside.” Whatever the reason, people looked at me like I was nuts when I said the word
moquette
(there's not even an Italian word for it! They had to use the French word! Where had I ended up?).

There were so many decisions to be made. How big to make the
salotto,
or living room? Will the dining room be a room of
rappresentanza,
for formal entertaining? Should the kitchen be small and compact, or American with Formica and room to play? These questions brought to a head the central one: What kind of people are we, American or Neapolitan?

Since Salva was working, it was Raffaella who jumped on the train and accompanied me to the architects, the carpenter, the upholstery guy, the marble cutter. These artisans, after they understood that the apartment was mine, would explain to me the advantages of this or that molding, this or that kind of wood for the paneling. Then Raffaella would take over. Of course they need a separate room and bathroom for their live-in nanny (but the apartment is small! And we didn't even have children yet!). Of course they prefer a small kitchen, because it's easier to cook well in a small kitchen (but I'm uncoordinated and will burn myself!). Of course the curtains must have brass rods with curlicues and the door handles must have silk tassels tied on them (but if we have kids?). The countertops near the stove should be travertine, though it's a shame that you can't put lemon or anything hot on them. Can't spill on them, in fact.
Ma sono bellissimi!

What did I want for my home? What kind of wife and mother would I be? I hadn't figured it out yet. I listened to Raffaella's advice and nodded and said, “I'll talk it over with Salva” until Raffaella offhandedly said these words: “Oh, and I meant to tell you, when Nino worked at the hotel he had a client who sold beautiful Persian area rugs. We have a bunch of them in the basement. The colors are gorgeous—deep red, midnight-blue…”

When I get riled up, you can tell from my upper lip. It starts to quiver. It's where I hold my tension. Not in my stomach, or my shoulders. My lip started to tremble, but Raffaella didn't notice. She was talking about the carpenter and the kitchen cupboards. Finally, when she said, “off-white trim,” I burst into tears.

“No! Non ce la faccio più!”
I can't take it anymore. And I stormed off.

I canceled all my appointments with Raffaella for the next week. Oh, I have to meet a friend on Tuesday. Wednesday I have a dubbing turn…that lasts all day. No need to come to Rome, thank you very much. I snapped at Salva and didn't answer Raffaella's calls. I wanted this home to be mine, bug inside or not.

By the time we got to the bug-in-the-rug conversation, Salva was handling me with kid gloves, because he could see how upset I was. He folded me in his arms when I started to cry, blubbering and letting it all out. “But I want a playroom,
amore,
I want to spill on my counters! I don't want to
rappresentare
with our dining room! I don't want a lady from the Philippines living in a closet! I don't want tassels on the doors. I want air-conditioning everywhere!
I want the bug inside!”

“Have you told my mother these things, Ketrin?”

“Not exactly.”

“She wants to help us. She won't be offended if you say what you want. She's not
permalosa.
”

“But when we talk about choices for the apartment she says things like
si fa—
this is what's done. Like it's the only way to do things here. She's the expert.”

“
She
decides for her home and
you
decide for ours. That is what's done here.”

I loved him a lot.

I answered Raffaella's call on my cellphone the next day. My end of the conversation was tense and fake. Hers was relaxed. She'd heard of an acupuncturist that she wanted to get Nino to; the stuffed zucchini she had made for a lunch the day before had turned out exquisite. Surprisingly, she didn't mention the architect or the carpenter or any of the arrangements. “Ketrin, my friend Paola wants to meet you. She said Saturday afternoon we can stop by for a coffee, what do you say?”

Salva and I were going to Naples for the weekend, but I didn't feel like accompanying her to the
salotto
of one of her chic friends. I didn't want to listen to her tell her friends about “our” decisions regarding shower stalls and shelves. But I felt guilty saying no after I'd been avoiding her for a week. And I had been working up a monologue in which I described how although I found the doorknob rosettes she had chosen lovely, I wanted first to make sure that there was air-conditioning, everywhere.

Paola Martone lived on the top floor of an apartment building overlooking the Bay of Naples. Raffaella and I squeezed into the tiny elevator, the sweet smell of her perfume enveloping us. She pushed a stray hair from my forehead. “You'll
love
her apartment,” she told me. Oh, would I? I was irritated. I wanted to get this over with and go home.

A blond, curvy lady with enormous collagen-filled lips opened the door.
“Rafffffa!”
she cooed, as my mother-in-law hugged her with a
“Paoliiiiina!”

That's when I looked down to see the lady's elegant beige Magli heels resting on thick, royal-blue wall-to-wall carpeting. I understood why we were here.

“Paoliii,
thanks so much for having us, honey. I wanted to show Ketrin what's possible with wall-to-wall carpeting. Yours is the most beautiful in Naples.”

S
oon after we moved into our new apartment, I learned that there was no surer way to provoke a fight with my husband than to throw the wrong thing down the sink, the bidet, the shower drain, or the toilet. We, along with most young couples who redo their homes in Italy (with even more likelihood if there is a foreigner in the mix), have major plumbing problems.

The ancient Romans figured out how to flush toilets, and imported water from miles away for their sinks and elaborate fountains. This was over two thousand years ago, when the rest of the world was using buckets and digging holes in the dirt. But that expertise didn't trickle down to contemporary Italian plumbers. It seems that the basic rule for Roman toilets is: the longer ago the system was put in, the better it works.

While Raffaella and I picked out curtain rods and searched high and low for synthetic countertops that would stand the test of my acidic American salad dressing, our plumber was screwing up big-time. He decided to put one tiny drain, which would service the whole apartment, in the corner opposite the kitchen and bathrooms, far away from the fixtures.

Along with the wall-to-wall carpeting and air-conditioning, a disposal in the kitchen was one of my longings. The Avallones had never seen one. I explained how convenient it would be, especially given this country's garbage collection difficulties. Our plumber installed one, but did not communicate three important facts: 1) that disposals are illegal in many parts of Italy, 2) that ours could never be used because the tubes for the plumbing in our apartment were too small, and 3) that he had rigged our pipes and our drains in a such a way that nothing could ever go down the kitchen sink but water.

Salva had a sense that the disposal (
tritarifiuti
in Italian—chop up the trash) was a recipe for disaster. “Let's not use it, Ketrin, okay?” Oh, I thought, he's just a traditional Neapolitan man who is wary of technology. Especially newfangled appliances in the kitchen. His mother still has clay pots, for Christ's sake! I will introduce them all to the wonders of the microwave! I will usher them into the twenty-first century in our high-tech American kitchen! These were my thoughts as I stuffed the contents of a two-pound bag of
erbette
, spinach-like greens, down our new disposal.

The
erbette
had gone bad. I had bought them and forgotten about them, which is something that you just don't do in Italy. Nobody was home, and I wanted to eliminate all traces of them. I wanted to mince them to oblivion. They never existed, I told myself as I turned on the disposal. The green mass went down okay, it was only a minute or so after the procedure began that I saw green goo start to slime up from the bubbling drain.

Salva and I were Lucy and Ricky Ricardo that evening when he got home.
“Amore?
There are plumbing problems.”

“Perchè hai quella roba verde dappertutto?”
Why are you covered with green slime, dear?

Physically speaking, the locus of anger in many American men is their chest. It is a puffed-up chest, a
who-do-you-think-you're-messing-with
chest. The arms are still, the head up, and the torso rotates from side to side. It is a torso that is looking around to see who else might be trying to fuck with it.
Bring it on.
American men often become larger in their anger, more horizontal and more intimidating. Salvatore, meanwhile, like many Neopolitans, gets angry with his legs close together and his feet in first position. His heels touching and toes splayed outward, he moves vertically. There was a Neapolitan toy sold after the war, when people would invent anything to make a few lire, called
scicchegnacco int'a butteglia.
It was a marble suspended in a bottle that would go up and down when children shook it. It is this image that best conveys Salva's up-and-down anger, his long, lean body expressing its
furia.

I know that it's not healthy or psychologically enlightened to engage in name-calling. I know that would be the first thing that we would learn in an anger management seminar. But have the leaders of those seminars ever had to call the
autospurgo
at 3:00
A.M.
, after six hours of wiping and plunging and dumping? (Collins translates it as a “gully sucker.” My not-so-technical translation would be “a man who comes, sucks, and pumps.”) On that night of the green slime, we were not managing our anger in any sort of enlightened way.

“Ma quanto sei scema!”
(How stupid you are! His hand hits his forehead at a forty-five-degree angle in the Neapolitan gesture meaning there's nothing inside your head, your brains are gone.)

“Sei uno stronzo.”
(You're an asshole. No hand gestures, but boy, is my upper lip quivering.)

“Pigliati una camomilla.”
(Have a chamomile tea, but no, it's not the kind suggestion that I might benefit from the calming effects of an herbal tea. The translation might be something along the lines of get a grip on yourself. His hand is doing the motion of lifting a cup of tea.)

“Vaffanculo.”
(Fuck you.)

“Stai dando i numeri!”
(Literally, you're giving the numbers. His hand hits his forehead perpendicularly, which means that I've gone from being just stupid to being out of my mind.)

“The numbers” in Naples refers to the centuries-old
tombola
, a game similar to bingo. Each number from one to ninety is associated with a person, an object, a concept, or an event. So, for example, the number 61 is hunting and 51 is a garden or yard. If I dream of hunting for a mouse outside, I might be advised to play the numbers 61, 51, and 11 for mouse at the lottery the next day. I must consult an expert (usually an old wizened Neapolitan grandmother who has “the gift”) who can interpret the numbers.

When must I play the numbers? Either when I have a strange dream or when something completely out of the ordinary occurs. For example, several years ago I had my wallet stolen in Rome the day after my sister had her wallet stolen in New York and the day before my mother had her wallet stolen in Washington. Now, either word had gotten around the globe about the Wilson ladies' absentmindedness, or something supernatural was up. My father-in-law called me immediately when we realized the “coincidence.”

“I've found someone who is
bravissima,
an expert at interpreting your numbers,” he told me. “You're going to play them, aren't you?”

I didn't, in fact, play them, but learned that my numbers would have been 79, 70, and 52 (79 for thief, 70 for a tall building, New York, 52 for
la mamma
).

Benedetta, at one point during her teenage years, was dating a guy named Luca who was unstable and had abandonment issues (his nickname was
'o pazzo
or Luke the Crazyman). When my sister-in-law decided to break up with him, he threatened suicide, calling out from the top of the rocky promontory of Posillipo where he lived that he loved her and would throw himself into the Bay of Naples below if she didn't take him back. In the crowd that soon gathered around him, there were of course people trying to dissuade him from jumping. But there were others who, in hushed tones among themselves, whispered,
“Sta dando i numeri”
—he's giving the numbers. It was an event that was out of the ordinary, and smart Neapolitans knew they had to find a soothsayer in the crowd to interpret the numbers so they could play the lottery. There was even, Salva tells me, one man calling to passersby on the road, “Ladies and gentlemen, there's a crazy man about to jump. Come and find out the numbers!”

So, back to our fight. According to my husband, I am so out of my mind that I'm “giving the numbers,” and according to me, he is quite simply being an asshole. I remember with nostalgia the days when we were first dating and I didn't understand Italian and he didn't understand English. What wonderful discussions we had! How we saw eye-to-eye on everything! It was idyllic. As I learned more Italian and he learned more English, though, our communication became more complicated.

I realize now that the real difficulties began when we mastered the subjunctive and the conditional. When you are limited to the present indicative of verbs, you are inevitably drawn to the present: to needs, to wants, to likes and dislikes.
I need to pee. I like ice cream, do you?
What you say is necessary and true, and that makes for great relationships. Just look at the simple beauty of second-grade friendships as evidence.

Unfortunately, though, if you know how to use the subjunctive and the conditional, the relationship changes. You start thinking, and then saying,
If you hadn't insisted on the disposal, we wouldn't have stayed up cleaning pipes
and
I wish you weren't such an asshole
. Life is no longer in the here and now but is being compared to some ideal in your brain. Gone are the days of
I'm hungry
and
Do you want to cook
erbette
?
It is now
I wish we had hired a different plumber
and
There wouldn't be any green slime if you hadn't said we needed to eat more vegetables.
Your life and the person you love are measuring up (or
not
measuring up) to the ideals that you've created with your fancy old verb forms.

I suppose I must be grateful that, despite the complicated nuances of our language of litigation, in the language of making up, nothing is lost in translation. I threw a balled-up Kleenex at him as a peace offering. He grabbed me in his arms and said,
“Ma quanto mi fai arrabbiare!”
You get me so darned mad! We admitted to each other that neither of us liked
erbette—
they were nothing compared to the
scarole
sautéed with olives that you find in Naples.

“Promise me that you won't use the
tritarifiuti
? Ever again?
”

I promised him. It has stayed under our sink, unused, ever since.