Only in Naples (31 page)

I opened the bag and thought, Damn, we should have made labels so we knew whose sandwich was whose without having to open them all up.
Vediamo,
let's see. I pulled the first one out and saw something scribbled in ink on the brown paper packaging.
Entoni?
What did that mean? I got out the next one:
Nonna.
Then
Papi Salva. Piccola Lella.
When I got to the big oily luscious monster at the bottom I saw
Mami Ketrin.

While we conversed in the shop, the man had focused on and remembered each of our names and, of course, our relationships. The sandwich man didn't just write Salva, or Ketrin, but included the
papi
and
mami
. These
marenne,
the first sandwiches of my children's lives, were made specifically, personally, lovingly, for each of us. The sun was still shining, and we had caught a rare, delicious species of headless haddock with a pasta strainer. Lessons or no lessons, things could have been a lot worse.

N
onna Raffaella had three grandsons, whom she tried to dress in lace well into elementary school. When a granddaughter was born, Raffaella's costuming instinct went ballistic. For as long as Nonna Raffaella could get away with it, little Raffaella wore things that were gorgeous, scratchy, expensive, and couldn't go in the washing machine.

And then my little Neapolitan American girl
s'è scetàta,
as they say in dialect. She woke herself up.

As a child, I knew one thing as a deep, unshakeable truth, and it was that my mother was beautiful and that she knew how to dress. I also knew that only dumb, lazy rich people shopped at places like Neiman Marcus and Lord & Taylor (we certainly couldn't afford to shop there, my mother convinced us, and wouldn't have, even if we could!).

Women who were smart shopped at one store, and one store only: Loehmann's.

We learned math by calculating the Loehmann's Red Dot Sales prices for Mommy. She would ask us, “What is the ‘compare at' price?” (Read: How much did your smart mommy save?) Anna and I learned addition, subtraction, and percentages at Loehmann's. We learned that you
can
get a Ralph Lauren evening gown for the National Symphony Ball for $13.99 and look fabulous in it. If you're smart.

We also learned about death and mortality at Loehmann's, when we saw an elderly lady collapse under a pile of clothes that she was going to try on in the dressing room of the Rockville, Maryland, store in 1984. “Girls,” our mother told us, “that's probably how your mama's gonna go.”

Unfortunately (and tragically for my mother), Loehmann's did not have children's clothes. So when it came time for Bonnie to bring clothes from the States to her granddaughter, my mother brought cheap, comfortable clothes from other discount stores. She waited with anticipation for her granddaughter's rite of passage: the day when she could take little Raffaella to the Loehmann's dressing room to find the bargains beyond all bargains. In the meantime, there would be no lace collars or subdued pastels. There would be $2.99 T.J.Maxx leopard skin leggings and Marshall's $6.99 (compare at $19.99!) fluorescent off-the-shoulder sweatshirts.

Little Raffaella ate them up.
These
were clothes.

My mother-in-law despaired. When we went to Naples, she would lay out pink cashmere wraps and dresses with frills on little Raffaella's bed as a “surprise.” Silently, when no one was looking, little Raffaella would fold them neatly and replace them on her grandmother's bed.

“Raffa, amore, hai visto il regalo di Nonna?”
Sweetheart, did you see Nonna's gift on your bed? Raffaella would ask over lunch, her smile concealing how important the outfit was to her.

My daughter would ignore the question and ask for some more
pasta al forno. “È buonissima, Nonna!
It's the best
pasta al forno
that you've ever made.”

She would
not
be wearing the frills.

I didn't get in the way. I was proud of her. My girl could negotiate her two worlds, her two identities, with
naturalezza.
She could appreciate the divine dishes that her
nonna
prepared but say no thanks to embroidery and lace.

When Nonna Raffaella finally gave up, little Raffaella was almost seven. My mother-in-law came to Rome with a shoe box in one last-ditch effort to save her grandchild.
“Le scarpe,
Ketrin, solo le scarpe,”
she whispered to me, on the verge of tears. The shoes, just the shoes. Give me that, at least.

They were patent leather Mary Janes. There was no chance. Once again, I stayed out of it, leaving the two Raffaellas in my daughter's room to hash it out. I heard a few words through the door, though.
“Amore, hai visto come stai meglio? Come sei elegante?
È tutta un'altra cosa!”
Love, can't you see how much better you look? How elegant they are? You look like a different person!”

And then my daughter. Trying to make her grandmother understand, patiently explaining an obvious truth. “Nonna
,
don't you see? I can run
so
much faster in these sneakers! And if they get dirty it's no big deal. Bonnie got them seventy percent off at Target.”

I
f there were a New Testament play in Neapolitan, I imagine Nonna Raffaella in two possible roles. One is the female lead, the Virgin Mary, and the other is a man who is not named, who is simply called a friend.

First, Maria. Her most important line is one word, and one of my favorite expressions in Italian.
Eccomi
. Here I am. But even simpler than “Here I am,” because it is just one word, fluid vowels flowing into consonants.
eh-ko-me:
one word that sums up her approach to life. When the Archangel Gabriel came to give Mary the Son-of-God-in-Your-Tummy announcement, Mary's response was
Eccomi.
It was not
“What the **?!”
or “Actually, I'm not even married” or “When were you thinking, 'cause I was planning on finishing my degree?” It was a very simple
Eccomi.

This is the expression that Nonna Raffaella uses when someone asks her for help, for time, or for lasagna. “Raffaella? Salva is really down and stressed about work. Can you make him a
sartù di riso
?”
Eccomi!
“Raffaella? I'm worn out by the kids. Can you take them for a few days so I can rest?”
Eccomi!
No questions asked or emotional price tag attached. Here I am.

The other role for Raffaella would be the man who figured out a way to get his paralyzed friend into the crowded house where Jesus was performing miracles. The tiny house was packed and there was a multitude outside the door, trying to make it in. A crowd of the crippled, the sick, the desperate. The friend cut a hole in the roof, and with some helpers lowered the paralyzed man down to where Jesus was preaching.

Che problema c'è?
I imagine Raffaella saying to her friend paralyzed on a mat. I'll get you in. Who needs a door?

I imagine her cheerfully studying the logistics of the house and finding the right instruments. I imagine her calling three friends (all Neapolitan women, all in Pucci caftans) to help her cut a hole in the roof. I imagine them lowering their friend down to Jesus, not even seeing Him themselves. Lowering their friend through the roof and making it home in time to prepare lunch for the family.

Last summer Raffaella invited some of her blond, Botoxed friends to Positano for a girls' beach week. No men allowed. “And Nino?” I asked her. Her husband is past eighty now, and depends on her for everything.
“L'ho sistemato,”
she answered—I set him up. “Mitzi will take care of cooking, and I've organized a gin rummy playdate for him every afternoon.
Ketrin?
Ci vuole.
” Katherine? I need it. I need to take care of myself, too.

Five
signore
packed their sparkly fuchsia bikinis in Louis Vuitton suitcases and headed to Positano to join Lella for beach week. During the day, they sunbathed and read magazines. In the evenings they played cards until 3:00
A.M.
And the food? “Sometimes, Ketrin, you don't feel like cooking.”

Raffaella had Mitzi cook platters of risotto,
insalata caprese,
and
babà
cakes in Naples. She had trained him well, and the dishes tasted almost like hers. It sounded like she was coming close to trusting him. How did he get the stuff to Positano, though? Mitzi doesn't drive, and Raffaella certainly couldn't bring it several days in advance!

A hole in the roof big enough for a paralyzed man? The delivery of a feast on the beach of Positano? Why not?

Sri Lankan Mitzi with his New York Yankees baseball cap arrived from Naples on the
aliscafo,
the motorboat that crosses the bay. Raffaella, in her flowing beach cover-up, met the boat at the pier flanked by three of her cohorts, and examined the trays of food to be sure that Mitzi had cooked them to her satisfaction. “Make sure Nino is dressed properly for the gin rummy game at four,” she reminded Mitzi after thanking him for his delivery. She bought him a croissant and a glass of cold milk on the pier before sending him back to Naples on the next
aliscafo.

When beach week was over, and Nino went to pick up his wife at the port of Naples, he found her radiant and rejuvenated. Stepping down off the
aliscafo
with her posse, all talking at once, she rushed up to Nino, kissed him, and caressed his cheek. Her giddiness was like an adolescent's, not that of a sixty-five-year-old
signora.
She was ready to go home and embrace domestic life just as she embraced her beach week with the girls. When Nino sulked a little bit, miffed that she had left him for a week and that she had such fun without him, she asked what she could prepare him for dinner.

“Lasagne,”
he replied. Elaborate, time-consuming, his favorite dish. Mitzi, after all, doesn't make it just the way she does. And Raffaella's response to her husband of forty years was one word:
Eccomi.