A Semester Abroad (28 page)

“You can’t go home,” I said as I walked him up the stairs of my apartment building. He was laughing and protesting; his smile was unguarded. He was following me, though. And again the lights went out. I took the opportunity to get close to him, to reach into his pocket and find the keys. He was too slow to stop me, testament to how drunk he was.

“
Che fai
?” he asked, following me into the apartment. I sat him on the comfy chair in the dining room. People fucked there; it was good enough to sleep on. I got one of the other chairs and put his feet up. I took off his black leather shoes. He was still protesting jumbled words. Tomorrow he had another soccer match early. He said he could drive. He was accusing me of being too American. It was something he heard about, taking the keys, but he didn’t quite understand it and he was so far drunk it wouldn’t make sense anyway. I waved my hand at him and stood before him, shaking my head.

“
Senti,
Gaetano
,
if you leave, I will never speak to you again. Do you understand? Never.” He nodded. He understood. I may not have said it right, but I knew he understood my tone.

“The way you Americans drink,” he said, slurring a bit. “It’s too much.”

I nodded. I found him a blanket; I took one that Kaitlin kicked off the bed. She was sleeping peacefully in my house full of drunks. When I returned to put the blanket on Gaetano, he was out. I kissed his forehead.

Back in my room there was the slight smell of sickness. I didn’t have the energy to wash up. There was another blanket on the floor, I spread this out and bunched some dirty laundry under my head. I hid the keys to the
vespa
beneath it.

I woke to Gaetano kneeling above me saying my name. I sat up. It was late morning, he missed the beginning of his game. He had to hurry. I searched for the keys beneath the laundry pile. He looked exhausted but laughed anyway at my resourcefulness. He bent to kiss my cheek and whispered beautiful Italian in my ear.

“Last night you saved my life,
tesoro
.”

I woke up again hours later with a hangover, a deep pain behind my eyes. Kaitlin lay helplessly dehydrated in my bed.

Gaetano rang the doorbell. He dropped off pastries and a package of espresso. He didn’t stay, leaving me with two kisses on each cheek and best wishes for Kaitlin’s trip back to Paris.

I got Kaitlin more water and made the espresso. I bit a piece off each delicious pastry, but that was all I could stomach. I put them in the fridge.

And later, when I got back from bringing Kaitlin to the bus station, I was hungry. Of course those pastries were gone save for a bite of one that mocked me. The out-of-control food thief struck again.

Cazzo!

I stood in my kitchen, hungry and livid. But I was alone in the apartment; there was no one to complain to or yell at. I stood there, listening to the stillness and looking out the window. I was alone, but for a change it didn’t make me anxious. It was peaceful. My anger left me.

I thought of how it had been so long since I’d seen Kaitlin that drunk. Maybe she hadn’t let herself go in months because she always had to keep track of me, but last night, finally, she thought she could relax.

What if I wasn’t fooling her about getting better? What if I was actually starting to do okay?

And Gaetano was the one that I always leaned on, but last night he let himself lean on me. I thought about how we “Americans drink.” Not all of us drank like that, but I did. Sometimes it was too much. I needed to get to a place where it was just enough but not too much.

My stomach nagged me again. I looked for the loaf of bread I split with Kaitlin before I took her to the station. That bread was gone, too. Oh, the fucking food thief. I was trying not to let it get to me, but I needed to eat.

I found three eggs in the fridge next to a brown bag of hardened rolls. I took them all, becoming a food thief myself. I entertained the notion that maybe the whole “food thief” thing was just a series of misunderstandings and desperate hunger and I laughed. How I wished that were true.

I wet the rolls with some water so they softened and I cut them in half. I cracked the eggs into a bowl, but I couldn’t bring myself to whisk them just then. I admired them, in spite of my hunger. These were eggs from the Crai supermarket but the yolks were a bright yellow, unlike any I had ever seen at home. I wanted to talk to Gaetano sometime about the “Italian way” of eating and all he probably took for granted.

I added olive oil to the skillet and scrambled the eggs right in the pan. I dried the halves of the bread and drizzled them with more olive oil. I found a clove of garlic and ran it along the open tops of rolls. I put the bread down on the skillet around the eggs. It was starting to smell good. I added some pepper and some
pepperoncino
for color and heat. What I really needed was
prezzemolo
. I cut a bunch, and as I finished cutting the parsley, my eggs were done.

I considered eating it right there by the stove, but this simple meal deserved a little more. So did I. I put everything on a plate and added a few more splashes of olive oil, the rest of the parsley and a pinch more of the red pepper. I poured myself some almost flat
acqua con gas
that also belonged to someone else.

I ate that meal, looking out the window at the countryside. I was okay being alone. Being alone didn’t mean I had to let my mind go anywhere I didn’t want it to go. When I was finished, I smiled at the meal I made for myself, enjoying the feeling of perfect satiation in my body. I decided to give the whole kitchen a thorough cleaning. I paused before I brought my plate to the sink, still smiling.

“
Biglietto
,” I said quietly to no one, to myself.

“
Biglietto
,” I said again louder, listening, understanding how subtle and important that
g
was to the word. How the two
t
’s created a different sound from just one. They all worked together. Without each letter making each sound, you might have a different word in a different language. Without them, maybe you wouldn’t deserve a ticket to go anywhere.

“
Biglietto
,” I said again, now shouting out over those red-tiled roofs beyond my window.

There was no one around to hear me. But I heard. And I knew that my accent was perfect.

One Friday when Signora Filmona released us early Gaetano was there. I hadn’t seen him too much in the past two weeks because he had to study for exams. He gave me the thumbs-up sign so I knew that he passed all his tests. He held up a plastic bag. Inside it was bread and cheese and pesto.

“I thought we could have a picnic and I could help you with your speech,” he said. “Now that I passed my exams, you need to pass yours.”

I planned on going to the film class. I had only been to the class twice. Part of my grade would be based on a paper I wrote about Italian film. I couldn’t understand the teacher, who spoke fast despite the class being made up entirely of
stranieri.
Really, it was pointless. Arturo was going to grade my paper, anyway. The
università
was only responsible for our language grades.

I didn’t know how to say, “Don’t twist my arm” in Italian so I got behind him on the bike.

We went to the grounds of the monastery. It was nice there, with a lush green square next to the old stone church. We sat on the hill that led down to the field and ate our fine feast. We talked about my travel plans. In four weeks, I would leave.

I told Gaetano about all the cities we might go to. Lately, every time I saw Olivia, she had a new plan for us to attack the entire continent of Europe and perhaps a little of North Africa. I was budgeting only a month of travel and coming back to Siena for the July Palio, which was the horse race that took place in the Piazza del Campo. This was when most tourists came to Siena. It was supposed to be amazing, with all the neighborhoods, dressing up in medieval garb, partying and scheming to beat each other. It was the big showdown. I wasn’t sure where we were going to stay. Hotels were supposed to be so expensive, but there was no way I was going to miss it.

Lately, I had been toying with the idea of traveling more after the July Palio and then coming back again for the August Palio. I had no idea how I was going to afford that or what I was going to say to my parents to make them agree.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’ve been here for four months already,” I said to Gaetano as he handed me a plastic cup of cheap red wine.

“You have learned a lot. You have had a good professor,” he said, laughing. He considered himself my best teacher. “You are lucky, you Americans. You get to see so much.”

“Yeah, but it isn’t enough. There’s so much more I still want to do.”

“You can. You aren’t leaving tomorrow.”

“I know,” I said. “The weather is just starting to get nice. It’s so strange how people are already starting to get their tickets to go back home. I feel like it’s ending. If I left when some people are leaving, I would have been here for only five months.” I stopped and smiled at him. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“I said, ‘I would have been here.’ Future perfect, right? Can you believe it?”

He laughed. “Gabi, I’ve long since stopped being surprised by how well you speak Italian.”

“Well, I’m surprised.”

“I can see that,” he said

“You know I only talk this well with you.”

“I don’t think that’s true anymore. At first you were most confident with me, but I have heard you speak many times. You speak well.”

“And now I’m going to lose it all.” He sucked his teeth and shook his head. His hands reached out to pinch a little of my cheek. Then he kissed his hand. It was all southern Italian mumbo jumbo that I had come to slightly understand like the future perfect.

“Don’t worry so much. Worry about me for when you are gone.” I pouted at him. He swatted at me and then grabbed my notebook with the speech. He handed it to me. “
Allora
.”

The speech was mostly written. I read it to him, and he occasionally corrected my pronunciation or told me how to rephrase something so it flowed better. When I was done, we smoked a couple of cigarettes and finished up the wine.

Some of his fellow dormers called him from the field below. They were kicking around a soccer ball. He shook his head and shouted to them in dialect.

“Why not play?” I asked. “You should go. I’ll work on my speech more. Go ahead. I never see you play.”

“Okay,” he said. He stood up, dusted off his pants and cursed over an imperceptible stain. Italians were vain about their clothes. I threw on anything, but they wouldn’t dream of wearing something that was stained or ripped.

I watched them play for a while. Gaetano knew how to play the game he called
calcio
. I clapped when he did this funny dribble with his legs. He moved the ball with both legs, almost like an airborne Road Runner. I laughed. I didn’t know anything about soccer, but this game meant so much to him. He spent so much time doing it, and I’d never seen it before. It was a change to be watching him without having him look at me.

Then instead of working on my speech, I wrote in my journal. For the first time ever, I wrote the whole entry in Italian. Finally, I felt I could express myself better in that language.

Gaetano came back up the hill, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. He shook his finger at me. “I thought you were going to watch me.”

“I was watching you. I saw what you did.” I moved my hands up and down fast in front of me like he had done with his legs. Once again, I didn’t know the words.

“You saw that,” he asked, pleased.

“Yes, Renaldo, I did.” Renaldo was his favorite Italian soccer player. I knew nothing about this guy, but Gaetano’s eyes got a faraway look whenever he talked about Renaldo. I had no idea what the player even looked like, but it didn’t matter to Gaetano. He smiled at me for invoking the sacred name.

Gaetano took me back to my apartment. He was meeting some of his classmates for dinner to celebrate the end of their exams. He said that he probably wasn’t going to be able to make the party that Janine decided to have, but he would try to come later.

“Don’t get as drunk as you were last time if you plan to ride this
vespa
.”

“Yes, Gabi,” he said and saluted.