The Reluctant Tuscan (5 page)

“Oh, Dino, how kind of you to bring us wood,” I said with such Old World graciousness, Nancy glared at me for being an asshole.

“Is no problem.” Dino tossed a couple of logs into the fireplace, which startled the dogs into a frenzy of barking. “I come by yesterday but you no home.”

“If we had a phone, you could have called first,” I shouted over the barking.

“Stai zitta!”
Dino screamed at his dogs, urging them to shut up. “I
molto
sorry for the phone. I talk to Telecom Italia,
che idioti
! They promise they install in two days but then they go on strike.”

“And how are we able to tell when they're on strike?” I asked as I picked up the dead bird Scheherazade had brought us and tossed it out the door.

“The thing is,” Nancy said in her gentlest tone, “my husband's concerned that I'm not very comfortable in the cold, and—”

“Cold?
È maggio
.
Primavera
. Even in winter nobody uses heat.”

“Look, Nancy's prone to bronchitis,” I said, “and this kind of damp cold—”

“
Ai,
you should have seen how it was during the war. I was just a baby. Nine months old. We hid up in the hills with the partisans when the Germans attack! My grandmother wrap me in leaves because we had no blankets and she carry me down the mountain with the Germans shooting at us from one side and the
Americani
dropping bombs on us from above!”

“My goodness,” Nancy said, cupping her hands over the coffeepot for warmth.

“And no food!” Dino squatted in front of the fireplace and struck a match to the kindling. “Just how you say . . .
castagne
?”

“Chestnuts,” Nancy said.

“Yes, chest-a-nuts. And we had to fight the squirrels for them!”

“We can't go on like this,” I blurted. “That fireplace is totally inadequate and unless we get some real heat—”

“That's what I'm here to tell you. Rudolfo come home tomorrow and he get your heater working.”

“Tomorrow?” I was, of course, skeptical.

“
Sì,
I invite you over to our house for dinner,” Dino said, shooing Cosimo away before the dog could pee on the firewood. “I make a party for my son and you come and meet the whole family.”

“
Grazie,
Dino,” Nancy said.

“Yes, thanks for the invitation,” I said, “but I don't see why you can't—”

“O Dio, mia nonna!”
Dino suddenly remembered that he needed to put flowers on the grave of the grandmother who had carried him down the mountain wrapped in leaves. I fired off a look at Nancy that strongly suggested she say something either in English or Italian before he got out the door.

“Can we bring anything?” she called out as Dino departed in a cloud of dog dust.

“Can we bring anything?” I said, mocking her. “You're such a wimp. If he pulled this in America, we'd throw him in jail for being a slumlord.”

“We're not in America,” she said. “And you don't even try to understand how things work around here!”

“Oh, I'd love to understand how things work around here. But as hard as I try, I still can't figure out why every store and office in this country closes up for a four-hour lunch break in the middle of the afternoon. Why our
ingegnere
doesn't have an answering machine. Why two Italians'll block traffic by sitting in their cars in the middle of the road having a conversation. Why their houses have three different-sized electrical sockets and yet whenever I go to plug something in, it doesn't fit in any of them. Why every restaurant but McDonald's can't be open for dinner before eight o'clock at night. Why it's impossible to make an appointment with anybody, and when you finally get one, they're always late. And finally, how come when you question an Italian about any of these things they look at you like
you're
crazy?”

She laughed. Then she slumped down at the table and started to cry. I felt terrible. I reached out to touch her and she looked up at me with eyes radiant and tender. Blinking back the tears, she told me that moving to Italy, and even the house itself, was really about saving my life. She explained that she had bought the
rustico
with the sole idea of getting me out of Hollywood.

I knew she was worried, but I hadn't expected this. Despite my constant assurances that I was handling things, she felt that unless we got away from our life in L.A., I was going to stress myself into a stroke. Nancy's father had died when he was about my age. She was a teenager at the time, so she grew up painfully aware of how fragile life can be. And I'd certainly done my part to give her cause for concern.

Ever since I'd turned fifty and the television business suddenly saw me as a relic from another age, I had been flipping out in the most colorful ways. My mood volleyballed back and forth between sullen and contrite, interrupted only by episodes where I was irritable and downright argumentative. Problem was, I was so used to defining myself by my Big Job and my Big Title that without it, I felt naked and empty. With no office to go to, my days became interminable. Minutes crept by like centuries. I tried to stay current by reading the trades, but that only led me to obsess over other people's success. I threw myself into writing spec scripts, but instead of concentrating on the work, I kept brooding about doing this for no money, only to have it judged by somebody half my age with a fraction of my experience.

My nights were consumed with flailing under the covers, ruminating over all the mistakes in my life, and replaying old conversations in my head. It was becoming increasingly difficult to get anybody on the phone, including my agent, and each small indignity only fueled my bitterness and rage.

Nancy's instincts were correct. L.A. is such a company town, everything there reminded me that I was now on the outside looking in. I wanted to run away, perhaps out of humiliation. Live like a Bedouin and keep traveling wherever the winds blew. Never settle down again—certainly not in a place as backward as Italy, where, when it's three o'clock in New York, it's 1537 A.D. in Florence.

But mostly I wanted to keep working at the only life I'd ever known. Hang tough and ride out this nightmare. After all, I had come to Hollywood with no connections or friends in the business and through hard work, hustle, and sheer dumb luck, I had made myself into an established sitcom writer-producer. And, hey, if I could do it once, I could do it again. I just needed to come up with that one golden idea that would rocket me back to the top. So I kept writing and bugging people for meetings as I watched our house in Brentwood eat through our savings like fire ants in a candy store.

I refused to sell it, though. That house was more than just our dwelling. Its four bedrooms, seven television sets, and sprawling view of the Santa Monica Mountains were a temple to my success. To sell it would be to admit that I had lost confidence in myself. Besides, what would I be leaving it for? To become an olive wrangler in a house Ted Kaczynski wouldn't live in?

Maybe someday I'd be ready to retire. But not now. And certainly not in that sinkhole she'd gotten us into.

I knew I'd get nowhere arguing with her. I needed to come at it from a different angle. Perhaps I should tell her that if she really wanted to live in Italy that bad, we should get out from under this disaster. Then maybe we could go find a place together, the operative word being
maybe
.

I was staring at the back of her head as she stood at the sink. As I watched her rinse off the breakfast dishes, I reminded myself that Nancy seemed to like fixing up these places more than she liked living in them.

Of course! She was like me . . . she needed a project. If we could somehow resolve this
denuncia
issue, and Nancy was able to gingerbread this place, I was sure we could get our money out. Maybe even make a few bucks. After all, everybody wants a house in Tuscany. Everybody but me, it seemed.

“I think you got the wrong idea about how I feel,” I said.

“Wonder how I got that?” She turned to me and blew a strand of hair off her face.

“Truth is, despite all my whining, there's something about Tuscany I really love.”

“Other than the food?”

“I don't know, I think this place is starting to get to me. Like, I was walking around our land the other day and it was so aromatic, I could just about smell the color green in a million shades and hues.”

“Are you pulling my noodle in some weird passive-aggressive way?”

“I'm just saying that maybe you're right. Maybe getting away from the biz is just what I need right now.”

She dried her hands, studying my face for the slightest trace of irony.

“And once you do your number on that little house—”

“You realize how much work it's going to take to just make it livable,” she said.

“It'll be fun. You love a fixer-upper.”

“I must, I married you.”

“Hey, I wasn't that bad.”

“Oh, please. Those green corduroy pants. And those J. C. Penney Back-to-School shirts?”

“So, you fine-tuned my look a little.”

“And those Hush Puppies.” She raised an eyebrow in mock horror. “How did I ever go to bed with you?”

“Drugs.”

She laughed and the room filled with the warmth of burning logs.

I could always make her laugh. I even took a perverse pride in making her think that buried beneath my near-addictive need for glitz and glitter lay a caring, sensitive soul. Someone so in touch with his softer, feminine side that perhaps deep down, I was a lesbian. She slid into the oversized chair I was sitting on. Her hair had the teasing smell of crushed flowers and I could feel her warm breath on my neck.

“Know what would make you feel better?” she asked.

Yes, I did, and it was something that both a man and a lesbian could enjoy. I started to caress her.

“Italian lessons,” she said, reaching for the phrase book. “When I first came here, I found it a lot easier to cope if I could complain to somebody. Not that it did any good.”

“Do we have to do this now?”

“When?”

“Okay,” I said, taking my hand off her thigh. “But instead of all those verb tenses that just give me a headache, how about some common, everyday phrases I could really use?”

“Well . . . we're going to be dealing with a lot of workmen, so here's some things they always say when you ask them a question.”

“A question?”

“Yeah, you know, like: ‘When will the work be done?' or even ‘Can it be done?' ”

“Okay.”

“Now, their first response will always be,
‘No, impossibile,'
which means . . .”

“Pretty much what it sounds like.”

“Right. Then the second thing they say is
‘Speriamo bene,'
which means, ‘I really hope so,
but
. . .' Like in, ‘Please, Tiziano, winter's almost here; is there any way you can finish installing our boiler before we freeze to death?' ”

“Bravo. Now, the last phrase is
‘Magari.'
This is a bit more mystical and is usually said with an upward toss of the hand,” she said, illustrating the motion.

“And it means?”

“If only the heavens would allow it. Like when you say, ‘For God sakes, Claudio, our septic tank has backed up and it's flooding the house! Can you get over here right now?' ”

“Magari . . .”
I said with an upward toss of my hand.

“I hope you're not saying that to the workers.”

She kissed me. I kissed her back, and the phrase book dropped to the floor.

 

 

That afternoon
Nancy went out to buy us a cell phone. While she was gone, I decided to dedicate myself to the serious pursuit of the Italian language. I opened the phrase book and began to study, vowing that this would be just like college. And just like college, within twenty seconds I started to doze off. Then I remembered that many immigrants to America learn their English by watching television, which certainly explains why so many people fresh to our shores can intelligently discuss “yellow waxy buildup” and “the heart-break of psoriasis.”

I turned on the set and up came one of the staples of Italian TV, the game show. These programs, sporting titles like
Sarabanda
and
Furore
, are not game shows as we know them, but rather frantic, high-energy quizzes featuring a bevy of attractive young women in scanty outfits furiously shaking their
culos
every time a contestant does something noteworthy. After an hour of watching, however, I realized that I had become so distracted by all the furious
culo
-shaking, I had pretty much forgotten that I was supposed to be learning Italian.

I switched over to the news, where the anchorman was speaking with such velocity, I couldn't understand a word. I was able to pick up what he was reporting on from the graphics, but my attention was drawn to the movements of his hands. I watched in fascination as he punctuated each story with an appropriate gesture: raising a fist to the heavens while he chronicled the latest villainy of the Sicilian Mafia, tapping his heart in sadness as he described a train wreck outside Milan, and kissing his fingertips in appreciation of the pulchritude of the new Miss Palermo.

I then realized that in all my years of watching American TV, I had never once seen Tom Brokaw's hands.