Heaven Is Paved with Oreos (6 page)

The nun had a glass of wine with supper. I think it is okay for nuns to drink wine, though really it is none of my business. My supper was lasagna and a salad and a roll and a tiny chocolate cake, and it was extremely good. Far better than what the cafeteria serves and better than what Mom usually makes, although I will not tell Mom that. I got pop, too, which I never get with supper, but I am on vacation.

Z and the man next to her got wine more than once.

It is important that I sleep because we will be landing at two o'clock in the morning our time, although it will be normal morning time for the Italians. Even the nun is taking out her little travel pillow. I have said “good night,” and she said “good night” and also “God bless you,” which must have extra-special power when a nun says it. Kind of like Z reconnecting with God from Rome rather than our living room.

I will not say who it is I wish was next to me right now. But I will say the name of someone who I'm glad isn't: Emily. I bet Emily wouldn't be brave enough to do this trip.

I will not think about what Emily might be doing in Red Bend.

 

 

I think I can hear Z snoring.

 

 

WE ARE IN ROME!!!

We are sitting outside at a little table at a coffee shop that Italians call a
caffè
, which is pronounced “cah-fey,” next to people who are smoking and speaking in a different language, and we are in Rome. We called Mom to tell her we landed safely, and she said she's pleased everything is going so well. Z did not want Mom and me to talk long. Z says we must drink in every moment, and communicating with Wisconsin will prevent us from doing that. I am glad she has that rule, because now, even though I think about Curtis, I don't have to worry about what he and I would say. I can't talk to him because I am drinking.

We landed at an airport and took a train from the airport into the center of Rome. The whole experience felt like a dream because it was sunny and morning, but my body kept telling me it was 2:00 a.m. Everything looks different, even the trees. They are either extremely tall and skinny like pencils, or wide like umbrellas—they look like something from Dr. Seuss. And guess what I saw: goats! A real herd of real goats, climbing on a little hill and nibbling at things. I am guessing they were nibbling; the train was going so fast that I didn't have time to tell for sure. But they implied nibbling.

Those goats made me smile. They made me feel like Rome has been here forever.

From the train station we walked to our hotel. You can usually pick out the tourists because they have shoes that look like Mom bought them. But sometimes you see a man in a suit who has shoes that are black and shiny, or a woman who is dressed up and wearing high heels even though the streets are bumpy cobblestones that would be dangerous to walk on in heels, not to mention impossible—and those people are Roman. That's what Z says, anyway. There are almost no dogs. I guess Italians don't like dogs. Jack Russell George would have lots to smell, but no one to wag to.

Our hotel room is tiny and dark and foreign. The bathtub is much smaller than a normal bathtub. A lot of people I know would not fit in this tub. None of the Schwenks would. They would have to fold in half just to rinse.

Z and I unpacked our clothes, which did not take long, and just as I was sitting down Z said, “We must not sit or we will never stand up again!” So off we went to explore the Eternal City (= Rome's nickname). We only went a little ways, though, before we sat down again, at this caffè. But a caffè is different from a hotel room. Even if you don't drink anything, you're still drinking in every moment!

So we are drinking coffee and drinking Rome. Z is having a cappuccino. She says Italian coffee is better than American coffee could ever be, and she works in a coffee shop! She even let me have a kind of cappuccino with lots of milk that came in a glass like it was juice—coffee juice!—and it was delicious once I added sugar.

Here are the Italian words that Z knows:

1. Ciao
   = hello or goodbye. You pronounce it “chaow,” kind of like
   meow
   but only one syllable. Z says it all the time. I am not sure she uses it correctly.
   
2. Grazie
   = thank you. It's pronounced “grot-see-ay.”
   

Z also knows words like
pasta
and
pizza
and
spaghetti
and
cappuccino.
And
caffè,
and the names of the churches. And the name of the hotel. And
bellissima
and
amore.
But she most definitely cannot say
My granddaughter and I are lost and could you please direct us to the nearest clean bathroom.
When Z said that she spoke Italian, it may have been wishful thinking.

Miss Hesselgrave did not know Italian either. She says not to bother because the Romans will always pretend not to understand. And she says a woman must never under any circumstances travel in Rome without a male escort. But she also says that two American ladies when properly protected are quite enough to navigate the city. By “protected” she means parasols and comfortable shoes. Z and I do not have parasols, but we do have comfortable shoes, so I think even without a male escort or Italian or parasols, we will be okay.

The sky is extremely sunny, but that is not a problem because I have my fisherman's hat and sunglasses, and I now have a great deal of energy, which is good because Z has just said that we must muster and prepare to walk!

 

 

Z and I came to Rome to be pilgrims, but we will start being pilgrims tomorrow. Today we are only tourists.

Rome used to have lots of pilgrims back in Miss Hesselgrave's olden days. You could tell they were pilgrims because they dressed in brown and carried wooden walking sticks and looked like they'd been walking for months, which some of them had, to visit Rome and especially the seven churches. Going to all seven churches helped you get into heaven. Pilgrims weren't supposed to have money either but instead rely on the kindness of strangers. If you were a really good pilgrim, you would walk to all seven churches in one day even though they're miles and miles apart.

Miss Hesselgrave made it clear in
Two Lady Pilgrims in Rome
that she was not
that
kind of pilgrim. She liked the walking part and she was a fan of God, but she stayed in hotels and never once relied on strangers' kindnesses. Miss Hesselgrave had a low opinion of strangers, especially Roman strangers. She also took several days to visit the seven churches, and she spent more time describing the artwork and the history than she did the religious part. I think she felt religion was too personal to put in a book. History and art she could talk about forever. Trust me.

Rome doesn't have any pilgrims now, though, at least not pilgrims who dress in brown and beg for food and look like they've walked for months. Well, it has some people who look like that, but I think they're homeless people. They don't look church oriented if you know what I mean.

I do not see anyone else carrying a copy of
Two Lady Pilgrims in Rome.
I do see lots of people carrying guidebooks and maps.

Right now it is late afternoon. We are sitting in another caffè, which is how I can write; I could not walk and write at the same time! I am eating my first
gelato,
which means “ice cream” although it doesn't taste like ice cream. I asked Z for vanilla, but she made a mistake and got something else. It is good, but it does not taste like home.

I do not miss Curtis at all. Not one little bit.

We have walked so far—our hotel was only the beginning. The first thing we visited was an old building called the Pantheon
.
It is an old Roman temple with columns in front that are huge—bigger than any columns I have ever seen, even in Chicago and Canada and Minneapolis—and each column is made out of a single piece of stone! They each must weigh tons and tons and tons. The columns weren't lifted in place by machinery, either: they were put there by people.
Roman
as in
two thousand years ago.
It is amazing that the columns haven't fallen down yet. An important person is buried inside, because two soldiers stand in front of his tomb. The soldiers don't move, but they are real. You can tell. The ceiling has a hole in the middle for sunlight to come in, and pigeons fly through it.

Then Z took me to see an elephant. I was extremely disappointed at first, because I thought she meant a live elephant, which this was not. It is a statue. But it is possibly the cutest statue I have ever seen in my life, of a little baby elephant who is waving his trunk and smiling, and on his back he has an obelisk. An obelisk, if you don't know, is a stone thing that looks like the Washington monument, only smaller. They are all over Rome. Miss Hesselgrave says obelisks are an eternal expression of the Roman character. She does not sound approving when she says this.

There are postcard stands everywhere, but I will not write a postcard to Curtis. You do not write to someone you've broken up with, no matter how much you think about him,
which I am not.
But if I did write him, this is what the postcard would say:

 

Dear Curtis:

 

We are here in Rome. It is hot. How is Boris? I have not seen any cows, though I did see goats. I hope baseball is going well. I wish I could show you the elephant.

Ciao, Sarah.

 

Now Z says we have to walk more. I wish I could dunk my feet in gelato.

 

 

I cannot believe Miss Hesselgrave does not complain about her feet—she is tougher than I realized, no matter how much she criticizes Roman air and Roman drivers.

After the Pantheon, Z and I walked to the really old part of Rome—the Forum—which is a bunch of rocks and tourists and (you can smell) cats. We watched a couple of people digging under a tent—we think they were archeologists. It didn't look like they were getting much done.

Now we are sitting under an umbrella in another caffè, and Z is having a glass of wine that has bubbles but isn't champagne, and I am having a pop, which here they call cola, and we are eating sandwiches made out of squishy white bread. Z is reading aloud how Miss Hesselgrave chipped bricks out of the Coliseum to take home as souvenirs.

We are shocked. Miss Hesselgrave, you are a looter!

 

 

I have never in my life been so happy to see a bed! I get to rest my poor little feet! I will never think of shoes the same way again.

Tonight we saw the biggest fountain in Rome. It is stuck to the side of a building. The building looks normal (= normal for Rome) until you notice one side has a big pool of water in front and carved naked statues and splashing. Hundreds (I am not exaggerating) of people were there when we got there. All looking at a fountain. Strange, right?

So of course Z wanted to sit and look too, though for her (and for other people too, I think)
looking at the fountain
really means
looking at other people looking at the fountain.
Apparently it's a tradition that if you throw a coin into this fountain, you will return to Rome. I guess all the tourists tonight want to come back, because every one of them threw a coin in! Whoever gets the coins must be rich.

I threw in a quarter, which is not the money they use in Rome, but Z says it doesn't matter. She says it worked for her, and do you know when she threw her coin in?
1967!

Z says Rome is different from how it was in the 1960s but not as much as you'd think. Back then, women had to wear a veil to walk into the churches, even if they were only there for the art and not the religious part. Even women who weren't Catholic had to wear veils. Now they don't. Z says this is a good thing because she was always losing her veil so she and her friends would have to take turns going in to see whatever famous painting was inside.

“There was a lot of that, too,” Z said, pointing to two people near us at the fountain who were kissing so hard that their bodies looked pasted to each other.

To be honest, I found the kissing uncomfortable. But I don't think Z noticed my uncomfortableness. In fact, I am sure she didn't, because I had to say her name three times before she answered, and even then it was clear she was not paying attention. Her mind was somewhere else. I thought about asking what she was thinking, but she looked so preoccupied and serious that I'm not sure I wanted to know.

 

 

Our pilgrimage begins!

Today we are going to walk all the way to St. Peter's, which is the most important church of our seven pilgrimage churches, which means it is the most important church in all of Rome, which means it is the most important church in the world.

We are at breakfast now in the hotel because breakfast comes free with our room. Roman breakfasts are intensely different from American breakfasts. All the food is spread on a long table—many different kinds of food because many nationalities of people stay here and they all have their own kinds of breakfasts. So there is cereal and ham and cheese and rolls and toast and fruit and a thing that looks like pie made out of scrambled eggs and other things I don't even know. And juice. Z is having cappuccino and looking exceedingly satisfied. She is figuring out how we are going to get to St. Peter's, because the streets between here and there look like a plate of spaghetti. I am having ham and two kinds of cheese for breakfast, which I have never done before. The people at the next table are arguing the way people would in a restaurant in Red Bend. You know: quietly, so no one notices. But they're doing it in a foreign language. Isn't that wild?