We'll Always Have Paris (14 page)

“Pisa, take two,” I said to Katie, waking her for our Saturday adventure. We purchased train tickets for a few euros and hopped aboard. Although I knew the ride would take nearly an hour, I felt panic-stricken every ten minutes and was compelled to shoot my fellow passengers a pathetic look and ask, “Pisa?” The conductor assured me that he would alert us when the next stop was Pisa, but I kept worrying about what would happen if we missed our stop. How far would we go before realizing we were in another part of Italy altogether? I was sweating at the thought of the conductor announcing, “Oopsy doopsy, we are now in Austria.” Instead he smiled patiently and said, “
Signora
, next stop is a Pisa.”

Although we could not see the Leaning Tower from the train station, finding it was quite easy. All I had to do was ask where,
dov’è
, while holding my hands overhead and leaning—a much easier charade than Pompeii.

Katie and I filled our backpack with books, water, and snacks, knowing that we might have a very long wait to climb the tower. In front of us in line were people grumbling with disappointment. The next ticket to climb the tower was three hours away. “
Buono
,” I told the ticket agent when he informed me of the wait.

“You wait till three in the afternoon?” he asked to clarify.

I gestured my head toward Katie and said, “I wait till ten at night,” then gave a shrug. “You have
bambinos
?”

He smiled at Katie, “You have good mama.”

For the next several hours, we sat in the shade of the Leaning Tower, moving with the sun as necessary. At our appointed time, Katie and I stood in line for the three-hundred-step climb to the top of the Leaning Tower. After about fifty steps, I started to feel as if I were on the mad teacup ride at Disney World. This tower didn’t just feel like it was leaning, but swaying and spinning too. I asked a security guard if Katie could make the trip on her own.

“How old?” he asked.

Gripping the rail, I squeaked, “Eighteen?”

“
Bella
, she’s a no eighteen years,” he said sympathetically.

“She is here,” I replied, pointing to my head.

“Don’t you feel well?” Katie asked.

“I feel great. I just think you can make it faster on your own.”

“Children go with the adult,” I was informed.

Inhaling deeply, I began counting steps.

***

My mother must have felt the same way when she thought about taking me on the rides at Disney World, which had just opened in Orlando, Florida. I was eleven years old, and my mother offered to take me on a special trip for just the two of us. I could choose anywhere in the country. She tossed out a few suggestions—an ashram in New Mexico, a bed and breakfast in Provincetown, the Shakespeare Festival in Oregon.

When I told her I wanted to make the pilgrimage to Disney, her face dropped. “You don’t like rides?” I asked.

“No…I—” my mother’s voice trailed off. “Sure, we’ll go to Disneyland.”

“
World
, Ma, this is Disney
World
.”

What I hadn’t known at the time was that, six months earlier, my mother had just dealt with the blunt end of our family’s greatest tragedy. Everyone was told that my mother’s only sibling, her older brother Ernie, had been struck by an untimely heart attack on his forty-fourth birthday. It was my mother who went alone to her brother’s home in Miami to face the scene where he was brutally murdered. She arranged a funeral and lied to her eighty-year-old mother about why Ernie could not have an open-casket wake. Aggie never understood why her son couldn’t have a proper Catholic wake, but in a dark corner of her mind, she might have suspected that the birthday money she sent her son was the motive for a house burglary that went terribly, terribly wrong.

Returning to Florida so soon after was one of the most selfless acts my mother could have performed. She wore mouse ears and held a balloon. Mercifully, however, she was spared the rides. Waiting in the entrance line to enter Disney World, we looked at our map, selecting attractions and rides. My vote was for Space Mountain. She thought Tomorrowland looked good.

“You sound like our family,” said a black woman in a red straw hat who was standing in front of us.

“Love the hat,” my mother commented.

“I like yours,” she replied. Gesturing to a man and a woman about her age, she said, “These two wanna go on all sorts of crazy rides, Whiplash Mountain, Pirates of Death. Honey, you can count me out.”

“Aw, now Lavonne, we ain’t come to Disney World to see no wax figures,” said her husband.

“Mmm-hmm,” the other woman agreed.

As my mother began chatting with the trio, we learned that Lavonne and Shawn were married, and Doreen and Lavonne were sisters. Shawn and Doreen were my kind of people: thrill-seekers. My mother and Lavonne were a match made in heaven: hat-lovers in search of air-conditioned, static displays.

“Why don’t you two take Jennifer on the rides and Lavonne and I will go at a slower pace till lunch?” my mother suggested.

The three looked at each other tentatively. “I’m sorry,” my mother said. “I’ve overstepped.”

Shawn laughed. “Lady, you ain’t from the South.”

In a moment, my mother understood. Despite the recent victories of the civil rights movement, Florida still wasn’t the kind of place where a black couple could walk around with a little white girl and not raise a few eyebrows.

We stood for a moment before Shawn broke the silence. “Aww, let’s try it. But Carol, Lavonne, you don’t see us back here at noon, you head straight to Mickey’s police station, ’cause that’s where we gonna be.”

Our mix-and-match families split to pursue our Disney dreams. “Jennie, we run to the rides; that okay with you?” Shawn asked.

“Shawn, you are speaking my language,” I said, bolting toward Space Mountain.

When we met for lunch, my mother was wearing Minnie Mouse ears over her white sunhat. Lavonne had bought herself a fan and a large bag of fudge from the Main Street candy shop. “I am so glad I met this lady!” Lavonne said. “Carol knows everything about theater and the ballet. I am gonna get myself to New York City someday soon, Carol. We’re gonna see
A
Chorus
Line
!”

My mother and I returned to the Ramada Inn that evening and shared our highlights. We sat on a bench outside, watching palm trees and fountain water change color as tinted spotlights cycled the rainbow. It was the most exotic place I had ever seen. “I’m glad you didn’t have to go on the rides,” I told my mother.

“Me too,” she said. “They make me light-headed.”

“What if we hadn’t met that family?” I asked.

“I would’ve been light-headed.”

***

“I cannot believe I am on the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa!” Katie said for the sixteenth time.

“I know, pretty incredible.” Once we reached the top, Katie and I stood outside, which made a world of difference because I could focus on the horizon.

“What do you want to do tonight?” I asked Katie.

“Mom, we are on top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa right now!” Katie reminded me. “Look around.” I turned to see open fields and the University of Pisa stadium. I looked down and saw the square and small shops. I even took in the line of people waiting to make the climb and gave them a little wave.

Back on the train to Florence, I asked again about our evening plans. Katie told me she wanted to walk to the bakery and get a giant meringue puff. “Then, I don’t know, let’s see what Florence has in store for us,” she said with a shrug.

That evening, as we neared the Arno River, we saw a couple playing music at the base of the Uffizi and a crowd of nearly a hundred people gathered on the steps listening to them. “Oh Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart, you’re shaking my confidence daily,” the man and woman sang in harmony.

“Let’s stay!” Katie suggested.

We found a space on the steps, clasped hands, and swayed as we sang along to Simon and Garfunkel’s song about how they’ve all come to look for Ameeeerica. The couple with the guitar led the group in singing about fifty ways to leave your lover and begged mama not to take their Kodachrome away.

These
songs
would
be
perfect
for
the
slideshow
at
my
funeral
, I had the good sense not to say. I longed for the day I would have the good sense not to even think it.

“
Ciao
bella
,” a handsome young man in kelly green pants said as he sat next to me.

We politely chatted for a few minutes about the music and the city before he invited me to a party. “A party?”

“
Si
, a party.”

“I can’t go to a party,” I told him.

He pouted a full bottom lip and sank his head to accentuate his brown eyes. “Why no?”

“Umm, because I am with my child. Plus, I’m married and quite a bit older than you.”

“But you are so beautiful. You put the baby to sleep and come to party with me.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not going to happen.”

Then he pulled out the big guns. He looked deep into my crow’s feet and shook his head, as though he could not believe what he was seeing. “
Mama
mia
, you are the top model.”

***

Whenever girlfriends get divorced, I urge them to get on the next plane to Italy, where they will be lavished with male attention. I realize this is very shallow. After a serious break-up, one needs a time of mourning and serious introspection. Plus, I am fully aware that Italian men are mentored—starting in nursery school—in the art of seduction. They were all charmingly full of shit, but I still enjoyed it. I hadn’t felt so thoroughly beautiful in my entire life as I did during our month in Italy.

My mother’s crowd subscribed to the belief that they needed to bolster children’s self-esteem by telling them they were the shining center of the universe. We were told we could do anything or be anything we wanted. We weren’t just smart; we were the smartest. We weren’t just great; we were the greatest. And we weren’t just pretty; we were the most beautiful in the entire world. What our parents didn’t realize is that some of us would grow dependent on this steady stream of compliments. I was one of the superlative junkies in desperate, constant search of a fix.

Once when I was very young, my mother left me alone in her room to listen to a vinyl record of
Snow
White
. The magic mirror told the Wicked Queen that someone else’s beauty had surpassed hers. “This child is the most beautiful girl in all of the land,” the mirror reported. Terrified, I hid under her bed, certain that a huntsman was coming to get me.

I heard my mother’s voice becoming increasingly concerned the longer she searched for me, so I gave a loud
Psssst
as she passed her bedroom.

“Jennifer, why are you under there?”

“The Wicked Queen,” I whispered. “She found out about me and she’s really mad. She wants me dead!”

“She wants
you
dead?”

“Yeah, the mirror told her about me.”

“The mirror mentioned
you
?”

“Yes, she said the fairest one of all the land. That’s me, and now the queen wants me dead!”

“Sweetheart, the queen is after Snow White, not you,” my mother explained. “We live in a different land, so you’re the most beautiful girl in
this
world, but Snow White is the most beautiful girl where she lives.”

That was the last time I ever felt such certainty about my looks.

At forty-two, I was still holding up pretty well, but my once effortlessly lean body now looked as though it belonged in a Dove firming cream ad—the one where they give women permission to have thighs. When I unbuttoned my jeans at night, I swore I heard the same sound that Pillsbury dough made when I twisted the cylindrical container. My hair was beginning to gray, and when I smiled, the parentheses around my mouth remained. My least favorite position in yoga class was the downward dog because, as I hung my head downward, I always felt like the skin from my face was about to splatter against my mat like pancake batter hitting the griddle. So being called the top model by a young Italian was a wonderful souvenir, though cheaper than the toys sold outside the Pantheon in Rome.

***

On our final day in Florence, there was talk of a possible train strike, but when we arrived at the station, there were no picketers or any signs of trouble. Inside, though, there were far too many people. It was clear that travelers were not boarding trains and leaving. Finally we heard that the employees of Italy’s transit system were officially on strike. People milled about casually. We could sense the other Americans by their panicked expressions. We were freaking out about how we would get to our destinations.

“Excuse me, you’re Americans,” I said to a family of four, parents and two lanky teens. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“There’s a train strike,” said the husband. “No one seems to care though.”

“Why isn’t anybody demanding answers?” the wife said in a thick New York accent. She was right. Everyone seemed so nonchalant about this strike, not the least bit anxious that they were missing their trains. No one but us seemed uncomfortable with the uncertainty.

Another American gravitated toward us and asked if we had any information. “Is anyone negotiating? Do you know anything?” he asked.

The wife got frantic. “We have reservations in Rome! How the hell are we going to get there?!”

Her teens rolled their eyes. I glared at them.
She’s right, you little shits. Stop texting and panic with us!

A man in a Trenitalia uniform and a clipboard approached us. “Where you are going?”

“When will the strike end?!” the wife asked, now shrill.

“I ask where you are going.”

We all looked perplexed, so the man in the uniform filled us in. “If you go to
Milano
, then strike ends at two in afternoon;
Roma
is at five.”