The Cake is a Lie

What good are these memories? They must
be forgotten. They must.

Sitting at my cousin’s big kitchen
table, dunking whale-sized cookies into my big cup of coffee and
milk—I was content for the moment. The trip to Italy had not been
smooth. Tantrum after tantrum greeted the news that I’d be saying
goodbye to my friends for half the summer. I wouldn’t be back until
school began and who knew if we’d be in the same 3rd grade class? I
felt mollified only after we arrived in this warm place and my
relatives began to spoil me.

Mom was in the kitchen too, talking in
Italian with Cousin Elena. I had no idea what they were saying. The
sunlight pouring in from the windows was forcing me to squint.
There was no T.V. or computer and not much to look at besides the
cracking, orange pastel walls. They were so different from the
plain white walls back in Seattle.

I hopped down from the big stool and
headed over to them. I grabbed my mom’s hanging hand and gave it a
good tug as I leaned back. “Mom translate for me,” I
whined.

She left her hand dangling in my grasp
but didn’t acknowledge me. It struck me that they must be talking
about something important. Elena reminded me of Strega Nona, the
old wise Italian woman from my favorite picture book, because she
was always wearing an apron and cooking.

Not wanting to interrupt again, I tried
to listen very patiently, steering my eyes back and forth as they
took turns speaking.

From my mom I’d learned to look people
in the eye and nod at the right time so it looked like I was
genuinely fascinated with them. She’d also given me my dark brown
hair, my relative happiness with my symmetrical face, olive skin
and the imperceptible tilt in my nose that you’d recognize if you
saw me every day.

Another visitor had come that morning,
an old man. He was standing quietly next to Elena, hunched over
with a grotesque crook in his back. Sweat kept a few of the hairs
from his comb over stuck to the top of his head while the rest
peeled off and lay askew. Long grey hairs climbed down from his
nose, entwining with his untidy beard. I didn’t like looking at
him, I just pretended he wasn’t there.

When my mom spoke in Italian her voice
climbed two octaves and both her arms shot into the air. But she
was nothing compared to Elena, Elena’s voice got going so fast and
her hands became so animated, you couldn’t help but get caught up
in the excitement. But their gibberish could only occupy me for a
moment, my perfect child act started to wane. Slowly, I reached
around my mom’s waist and then stacked both my feet on top of her
shoe. This was my favorite balancing act–I liked standing
completely off the ground on my mom.

“
Stop it, Marcolino,” she
scolded while shrugging me off.

“
Translate for me please,
mom.” I begged again.

“
Alright, honey.”

She held a finger up to Elena. “This is
Elena’s father, Gabriele,” she pointed to the gross man.

Only his eyes acknowledged me, standing
next to Elena he was an ice cube. He must be so grumpy because he’s
so old and ugly, I pondered. My dad always said, “Getting old is
not for sissies, Marco.”

“
Elena is retelling Gabriele
and Olimpia’s famous love story, Marcolino,” mom told me. She said
something in Italian, and Elena started once more. But right as she
began rolling again, my mom waved her hand, and Elena reluctantly
screeched to a halt.

“
Sixty years ago in Altzono,
the town your cousins are from. Back then, everyone in the village
made their living raising cattle.” When my mom translated Italian
into English she always added an Italian accent in the hope that it
would help me learn the language.

Elena began again, and my mom let her
go for a while until just when I thought my mom had forgotten about
me, she stopped Elena again. “All the big families owned plots of
land where the cattle would graze. And you’ll think this is funny,
Marco, they had a saying in Altzono, ‘You don’t touch another
family’s women or their cows.’” I was suspicious of my mom’s
translating because her summaries were much shorter than the time
Elena spent speaking. But the story continued on in this fashion,
going, stopping, summarizing.

“
Olimpia was the most
popular girl in all of Altzono. People would always say Olimpia was
bigger than life, big in personality, big in heart, just plain big.
And every afternoon she would go out to the fields and sing to all
the workers. She sang like an angel, still the most beautiful voice
Gabriele has ever heard.”

Spitting saliva, the old man said
something to Elena and my mom as if they’d forgotten something
important.

“
You have to
understand…working in the fields was very hard, Marco, and every
day Gabriele had only Olimpia’s singing to look forward to. He
would weep in the fields listening to the wind carry her voice to
him.

“
Gabriele loved Olimpia, but
she didn’t pay him much attention. He was shy, quiet, and small–the
exact opposite of Olimpia. But Gabriele tirelessly courted her for
six years as the other suitors came and went.” A big smile that I
didn’t think he had in him spread across the ancient man’s
face.

“
Every month he would come
and leave flowers at her door. Isn’t that beautiful,
Marcolino?

“
Eventually Gabriele saved
up enough money to buy his own plot of land and was finally able to
convince Olimpia to marry him. They were happily married until the
day she died. She would ask him, ‘Do you love me, Gabriele?’ and
he’d always reply ‘sempre e un giorno.’ That means, I will love you
for forever and a day.” The grin was stuck on Gabriele’s face. The
genuine look of longing on the old man struck me. I had a gift for
picking up on these sort of things. Olimpia must’ve been something,
I wondered.

Gabrielle muttered something else, and
my mom translated, “Now she’s waiting for him in heaven.

“
Alright, Marco,” Mom began
after everyone had taken a moment to pause and reflect. “Run along
and find your brother while I talk some more with your
cousins.”

My older brother was in
their room reading so I headed out to the garden. Navigating
through the cornstalk tunnels, picking cherry tomatoes, chasing the
chickens—I’d spend hours out there, lost in imagination land. Each
afternoon I’d become a handsome prince, the best fighter ever born,
but more interested in pinching maidens’ bottoms than battling orcs
and stormtroopers. Or a general in Sparticus’ army, or the union,
winning battles that would be remembered in the history books for
forever. Listening to my dad and older brother argue about history,
I’d picked up enough to convince everyone my age I was really
smart. Even a 4
^th
grader who invented her own math theorem and went
on the tonight show, Koleka Furlott, told me it scared her how
smart I was.

That morning, I strolled around the
garden deep in my dreams. The love of my life, the one that would
wait for me in heaven, was somewhere on earth. I imagined what she
was doing at that very moment. I pictured her getting ready for bed
back in America, brushing her hair in her Lion King pajamas. If
that disgusting hunchback could have won over Olimpia, I could
marry anyone. Probably an actress or a rock star. I was going to be
ten thousand times better than that gross old man.

I saw my one sinking her head into a
big comfy down pillow, completely unaware that we were destined to
fall in love.

When I broke up with my girlfriend of
four years, Emma, she composedly went into a spiel where in so many
words she said we were doomed from the beginning because, “You
never wanted to commit yourself to love with me.”

When we’d broken up before,
she’d said nasty things or hung up crying. But when we broke up for
real, she was as cool as a frozen fan.

“
I was a fool in love with
someone who doesn’t even know what love is. And that hurts more
than anything.”

“
It’s more complicated than
that.” I couldn’t think of anything great to say in the heat of the
moment. It’s a true gift to think up a great line spur of the
moment.