Going Off Script (3 page)

When I wasn’t mimicking Barbara Harrison at home, I sat in front of my bedroom mirror pretending to be Oprah. I would act like I was interviewing Matt Dillon. I loved him from
The Outsiders.
And Ralph Macchio from
The Karate Kid.
I would ask them if they had a girlfriend, what they liked in a girl. Blondes or brunettes? Would they ever marry a regular girl or would they only marry a celebrity? Basically, the “hard-hitting” questions I still ask on the red carpet. Then, when Fake Oprah was done interviewing all her invisible, famous guests, I would flop across my bed with my head hanging over the edge and listen carefully to Eddie Murphy’s
Delirious
album on my record player. Eddie was an excellent English coach. Eddie taught me how to curse like an American. Upside down. My whole family cursed frequently and extravagantly in Italian, and speaking any language without the ability to swear would have been like singing opera with just a one-octave range. Once again, Berlitz was miserably failing Monica and Pasquale, who were being drilled on crucial vocabulary lessons (“Is that your dog?” “How much are the oranges?”) while Eddie Murphy was showing me how to effortlessly drop the f-bomb in any situation. So that honky bitch of a second-grade teacher could just kiss my sweet Italian ass, because I was going to be the best fucking anchorwoman in the U.S.A., goddammit. And Miss USA, too. I was going to be Miss U Expletive S of Undeleted A, too.

Just to clarify: Beauty queen wasn’t so much my Plan B as it was my companion career to Plan A, unless, of course, there
was a network out there with the foresight to have their anchors deliver the evening news wearing tiaras and ball gowns. Pageant mania ran in my family. We’d get out our pencils and paper, make a big bowl of popcorn, and settle in for a happy night around the TV to cheer on our favorite contestants and mercilessly heckle the rest. Babbo was the most intense, especially during the Miss Universe pageant, which we had watched back in Italy, too. Babbo would work himself into a lather when Miss Italy appeared. “She is a dog!” he would rail. “This, a country full of so many beautiful women, and this is who they chose?” The judges must have felt the same way, because Italy never even made the finals when we were watching.

I got pretty good at predicting the winner and runners-up, and I fantasized endlessly about someday standing on that stage myself wearing the Miss USA sash and crown. I had some naive notion of making the entire country proud of me (while I blew kisses in the spotlight). I wouldn’t be the dumb immigrant kid anymore. I would win everyone over. I didn’t fantasize about mere approval—what I wanted was public adulation. I had seen what that was like when I was a little girl in Naples and went out with Mama to watch a parade one day. I was nearly swept away by the cheering crowd, but I was too little to see who or what was causing such a commotion. Processions were always winding through the streets in honor of some saint or another, but the size and fervor of this particular crowd signaled something more exciting than another flower-bedecked statue of St. Francis or the Virgin Mary being carried on a platform through town. People were literally weeping with joy, and I jumped up and down, trying to see over their heads.

“Who is it, Mama? Is it the pope?” I asked. As Catholics, we were more dutiful than devout, but I couldn’t think of anyone else who might spark such mob hysteria on the streets of Naples.

“No, it’s Maradona, the greatest football player in the world!” Mama told me. I wasn’t into soccer, but this Maradona’s adoring fan base really impressed me.

“Oh, Mama, isn’t it wonderful that the greatest player in the
whole world
is from here?” I cried, catching the crowd’s wave of what I now understood to be patriotic pride. Mama looked down at me in puzzlement and shook her head.

“He’s not Italian,” she shouted over the cheers. “He’s from Argentina!”

I wouldn’t have been able to put words to it then, but something clicked and my subconscious took note:

Local approval good.

Universal approval better.

Throughout my childhood, I never once wavered from my twin ambitions of anchorwoman and Miss USA, even as my friends changed their minds a zillion times about what they wanted to be when they grew up. It was like the Christmas doll: This was what I wanted. It was all I wanted. Period, end of story.

I had no clue how I would actually get what I wanted so desperately. I’d have to figure that out later, but I had utter confidence in my own abilities. That was something of a miracle in and of itself, since no one else seemed to have all that much faith in me. As the baby of the family, my dreams were considered “cute” well into adulthood. Everyone treated my aspirations like a joke
—Giuliana on TV?
—and I was doomed to be seen as precocious instead of passionate. Since they didn’t realize how serious I was, my family couldn’t have known how hurt my feelings were. Besides, the DePandi family already had a star, and her name was Monica. My older sister was smart, beautiful, and hilarious.

Monica and I were mortal enemies, but she was also the object
of my grudging admiration and envy. Monica had inherited our father’s discerning eye and exquisite taste. Style was always something I would have to work hard to achieve, but for Monica, it came naturally. So naturally, I borrowed her stylish things—without what might, in a court of law, technically be considered permission or anything remotely resembling it. It would be stupid not to take advantage of the years’ worth of experience Monica had in the fashion department. She was basically the prototype for Suri Cruise. From a very young age, my sister would insist on designer clothes, and my parents would give in to her demands. We were all spoiled, but Monica could pitch a fit like no one else if she was denied. And there was no arguing that she had superior taste. If Dolce & Gabbana had made diapers when she was a baby, she would have worn the samples.

Much as Monica’s shameless materialism made me cringe whenever she wanted a new Versace top or yet another pair of buttery leather boots, my disgust never stopped me from sneaking into her closet when she wasn’t home. Junior high started later than Monica’s high school did, so I would wait for her to leave, then go back upstairs to change into something cool of hers. I was always careful to put things back exactly where I found them later that afternoon, and I even took care not to wear perfume or scented deodorant that would give me away. I’d show up in homeroom, and jaws would drop. Once, I borrowed a pair of cowboy ankle boots, which I proudly wore with slouchy white socks and shorts—not exactly a flattering look for my skinny legs and surfboard feet. My classmates fell over laughing and called me “Rodeo Raheem,” a name that made as much sense then as it does now. “I’ll be laughing in a year when everyone is wearing this!” I shot back. You better believe, every other kid had a pair of those ankle boots a year later. Monica had a knack for forecasting fashion trends. She could also accessorize with the brilliance of a
Vogue
stylist. I shopped at the Gap and
Limited, but Monica worshipped Neiman Marcus and, given the amount of our parents’ money she spent there, the feeling was surely mutual. Even if she wanted to buy a basic white shirt, it had to be the highest quality. She loved the finer things, but to get the finer things, it took money. Cash was her drug of choice. When I was twelve, she even stole the seventy dollars I had saved from leftover lunch money and odd jobs around the neighborhood. When I went to my secret hiding place behind the stuffed animals on my bedroom shelf and the money was gone, I let out a banshee wail that brought everyone running.

“She stole my money!” I shrieked at Mama. “Call the police! I’m calling the police right now so they can arrest her!”

Monica was unfazed. “Oh, stop being so dramatic. I needed it, big deal.”

Mama frantically dug into her purse and produced a sheaf of bills. “Here, Giuliana, it’s okay, look, here’s seventy dollars. Stop crying now.”

“No,” I keened as Monica smugly walked away unpunished yet again. “I want
my
money!” Mama couldn’t possibly understand my indignation and fury; she let herself get fleeced by Monica on a daily basis and did nothing. Every morning as we got ready for school, Mama would ask us the same question:

“Okay, how much do you need for lunch today?”

“Forty,” Monica would answer, shooting me her death-ray look. Mama would just hand her a couple of twenties without ever voicing dismay at the price of sloppy joes on a high school cafeteria tray. I felt like the silent bystander to the same mugging every morning, and would try to even things out by insisting that I only needed a dollar even as Mama tried to cajole me into taking five. I would often sneak loose change or a few dollars I had saved back into Mama’s purse later. It’s hard to explain why. I realized we weren’t poor, of course; after a year of renting in Virginia, my parents had bought a beautiful colonial house with
a pool in Bethesda, a posh Maryland suburb. And contrary to my beloved grandfather’s early proclamations, I was no flaxen-haired angel from heaven: I just wanted, in my childish way, to somehow pay Mama back for all she and Babbo sacrificed to give us whatever we wanted. I believed in karma even before I knew the word for it.

Now that I’m a mother too, I get it that Mama’s need to appease Monica no matter how brazen or bratty she acted probably had a lot to do with having seen her child suffer, and wanting, in any and every way possible, to make it all better somehow. I despised Monica for her attitude back then, but I know today that it would absolutely shatter me if I ever had to see my son endure the pain my sister did as a child.

Monica was in grade school when she was diagnosed with scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that tends to run in families, most typically affecting girls. The causes are usually unknown, and the treatment, in Monica’s case, consisted of spending junior high in a full-torso metal brace, day and night, in hopes her seventy-two-degree curve wouldn’t worsen as she grew. Her seventh- and eighth-grade school pictures show the rod with its metal bar and neck ring sticking up out of her turtleneck sweater. Kids couldn’t help but stare. The physical pain was awful, too. The bowing of the spine causes chronic back pain, but if the C- or S-shaped curve of scoliosis gets bad enough, the rib cage can press against the heart or lungs, causing potentially life-threatening complications. Over the course of a miserable year, the brace did what you would expect such an ugly contraption to do to a young girl’s self-esteem, and nothing at all for Monica’s spine. When she was thirteen, we all went to Children’s Hospital in Boston so Dr. John Hall, a renowned orthopedic surgeon out of Harvard, could operate on her. When she woke up, I remember my tough sister moaning and crying in agony. Her body was encased in a cast. From a corner of her
hospital room, I watched, wide-eyed and terrified, as Mama and Babbo tried helplessly to comfort her.

“Can you open the window for me?” she begged. “I need you to just open the window.”

“You want some fresh air?” the doctor asked.

“No, I want to jump out,” Monica answered. “I want to die.” I knew, even at eight, that she meant it. Her pain was unbearable to see, much less feel. After a slow and excruciating recovery, an even tougher Monica emerged from the cast. Life, she seemed to be declaring on a daily basis, owed her one. And, by God, she was going to collect.

When it came to pulling a fast one, though, even Monica was no match for our brother, Pasquale.

Pasquale turned fifteen two years after we left Italy, and on his birthday, he informed my parents that in America, all kids got cars when they could drive. And just so they knew in advance, he helpfully added, Pasquale would be wanting a Porsche Turbo convertible. Red, of course. Sure enough, even though the fanciest car in our Virginia neighborhood would have been maybe a Trans Am, and even though our parents drove a modest car, four months shy of his sixteenth birthday, Mama and Babbo tapped into their savings to give Pasquale a Porsche 944 lipstick-red convertible, fully loaded. Pasquale then insisted on having professional photos taken of him posing alongside the Porsche in a black leather jacket and black driving gloves. Off he roared to the tenth grade. It didn’t take long for the school to call Babbo.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the principal demanded. “He can’t drive that car to school!”

“Whatta you mean?” Babbo said.

“It’s not legal,” the principal argued.

“No, Pasquale, he can drive!” Babbo insisted. “He has piece of paper that says he can drive.”

“No,” the principal tried to explain. “What he’s showing you is a learner’s permit. It does not allow him to drive by himself.”

Pasquale wasn’t even grounded for his b.s. job, and he was allowed to keep the car. According to my parents, this was all the principal’s fault, not his. My parents remained more perplexed than perturbed. What was this paper that said Pasquale could drive but couldn’t drive? And what kind of a permit denied a boy permission to drive his own Porsche Turbo? The possibility that Pasquale had done anything wrong was not entertained. “That guy’s an idiot,” Babbo assured Pasquale. “Drive anywhere you want, just not to school.” Pasquale was the prince, the one and only son.

Overindulgent as they were, Mama and Babbo were also extremely overprotective and often illogical when it came to our social lives. It took a long time to convince them to let us go on sleepovers, or even to football games at the school. House parties were forbidden, but nightclubs were allowed, probably because it was considered such a harmless diversion for teens in Italy, where you only had to be thirteen to get in. Every summer, we spent time on Ischia, a beautiful volcanic island in the Bay of Naples. The older kids would all go dancing at the club while the parents socialized late into the night at their own nightclubs or outdoor cafés. “Take Giuliana with you,” my parents always ordered my sister. Monica would dress me in cute clothes and apply full makeup to try to sneak me into the teen club her crowd favored, but it rarely worked, and I usually ended up dancing outside with my friends to the music we could hear booming through the walls.