How to Love an American Man

How to Love
an
American Man

— A True Story —

Kristine Gasbarre

Dedication

For Mom and Dad.

Thank you for raising me with such deep love and intrigue of family, and encouraging me to prove Grandpa's words true: A girl can do anything she wants to do.

Second Dedication

Bonds with family are priceless, and bonds between women are necessary. A thousand thanks to my grandma who shared so many stories and insights with me as I worked on this book. I believe the most powerful legacy a grandparent can give her family is a stronger sense of identity, and I will always appreciate the joy you found in teaching me more about where we come from and who I am. Love you, Glo.

Contents

 

 

Introduction

I
HAVE ALMOST NOTHING
in common with my grandmother.

One Sunday when I was about twelve I burst through her front door to announce with great fanfare to all of my extended family that my cousin had just gotten her first period. While my three aunts rushed to said cousin's side to nurse her like Sleeping Beauty's fairy godmothers, Grandma groped her chest with both hands and ducked into the kitchen. I followed her and popped a shrimp cocktail in my mouth. “Grandma, what?” I said. “This is huge.” In response, Grandma scrambled to the stove to stir Grandpa's spaghetti sauce, which she's ordinarily too daunted by his perfect recipe to touch. I think in that moment she'd have done anything not to have to show me how my frankness had flustered her.

Our views of womanhood have always been this different. I discuss with great candor topics that cause Grandma to blush red like a beet, and while she honors my youth and modern spirit by remaining silent, the discrepancies between us crash as loud as the sea. She never knew her father; mine is her affectionate and smiling third son. She never finished college; I graduated with my master's. She never traveled or lived alone; I spent all of my twenties questing and introspecting to understand where I fit in the world. She married my grandpa when she was nineteen; last year at twenty-eight I moved back in with my parents to decide whether it was time to wrap up my quarter-life adventures of living in New York and Europe.

On the spectrum between traditional and contemporary, Grandma Gloria occupies the demure, cross-ankled, ladylike end, while I dance loud and proud at the opposite extreme. Intellectually we understand our inherent responsibilities to love each other, and we do—but to say we
understand
each other would be, to employ Grandma's 1940s terminology, a fib.

However, there is one subject on which we see eye-to-eye: my grandfather. In the year and a half since he died, just two months before their sixtieth anniversary, I have grown to appreciate that my grandma and I share an equally intense affinity for the first-generation all-American alpha male that our family and community adored. She was his wife, I was his firstborn grandchild, and of course Grandma's relationship with Grandpa was very different than mine. But she and I had a similar goal: in everything we did, we both hoped to please him.

To me, Grandpa was the perfect man. He was a self-taught engineer and entrepreneur of our family's now-international business that makes industrial parts for cars and appliances. He'd helped to liberate the Jews from the concentration camps as a soldier in World War II. He went to Mass most Sundays, raised money for our schools, and threw parties so legendary that last year at our tenth annual bocce ball tournament we toasted with his signature martinis to celebrate his memory. And he took care of my grandma with such unshakable devotion that you could've sworn she was the only woman God had ever created.

For her every need and insecurity and reason for excitement or celebration, he was there. With all of his hard work and dynamism and steadfastness, he built a modern American life for the two of them—five smart kids, twelve happy grandkids, three houses, golf on the weekends, and a pontoon on our central Pennsylvania lake. Grandpa had a vision for his life and his family, and he
made it happen
. He was a great guy and an amazing man. About two years ago, just a few months before he was diagnosed with lung cancer and still smiling and well, I told him that if I ever found a man as enterprising as he was, I'd be the happiest girl in the world.

Since I was a kid my grandpa had always cheered on my achievements very vocally, but just before he got sick he confided in my parents something he'd kept silent about: he was beginning to worry I'd never find a husband and settle down. During a regular call to him after church one lonely Sunday as I strolled past couples brunching at bistros, I gently set the record straight. “I live in New York, Grandpa,” I told him, trying to talk over the roar of traffic but not loudly enough for people on the street to hear me. “The men here are impossible, all they're after is sex and money and when I date them I feel invisible.” Then I spotted the lean, tan boyfriend of a tiny blonde in a tube dress. He was dropping a bite of French toast on the sidewalk and encouraging their puppy to snatch it up.
Well
, I thought,
almost all the men here are impossible
. I myself had a hard time locating the ones who were . . . let's say . . .
possible
, and I blamed our American pursuit of self-advancement for my romantic drought.

In an effort to replenish my hopes about men (and any sense I'd ever possessed of feeling alluring), I planned a vacation in Italy to visit the village outside Rome where Grandpa's parents were born and married before settling in rural Pennsylvania in what's now my hometown.

That trip to Italy was pivotal, to say the least. For two weeks tanned men in windy linen pants flocked to my friend Elena and me like we were sparkling, big-toothed movie stars straight from Hollywood. “American women?” they'd smile, shaking their hands in prayer position and looking up to the sky.
“Mamma mia!
” Elena and I flirtatiously accepted their admiration, giving each other high-fives and mouthing
Oh my God!
when they weren't looking.

The Italian men grandly bestowed after-dinner shots of limoncello and gelato upon us from a carnival vendor on a hill overlooking Florence. They popped us onto the backs of their motorcycles and rode us off to quaint, authentic dinners. They invited us on Tuscan bicycle rides and to parties full of stylish Europeans who hung on the words of us American women, and suddenly I perceived myself completely differently than I had back home. It was as though my exhausted, work-driven American existence had transformed into the flowery cadence of a Romance language; as though I'd dressed in the wardrobe of some irresistible theater character and took on the deliciousness of her traits. The more fun I had with this goddess I'd adopted, the more the European men seemed to respond with their attention. I relished this vivid version of myself so much more than the one who sneaks out of humiliating speed dating events for—exciting!—buttoned-up book publishing dinners for work.
I felt so much more beautiful there than I did at home!

I spun into a panic attack when my grandpa's cousin Rocco drove Elena and me to the airport in his Fiat to catch our flight back to New York. I'd fallen in love with the European me—this carefree, glowing manifestation of my real spirit—and I didn't want to return home without her. This was the Krissy who didn't just want beauty and romance, but who
was
beauty and romance.

The last site Elena and I visited before we boarded the plane was the enchanting Boboli Gardens in Florence. Through the vines of fresh flowers and bushes heavy with lemons, we came upon a marble and seashell pedestal that made me stop dead in my tracks: a Renaissance statue of Adam and Eve.

I couldn't move.

The middle finger of Adam's hand was broken off, but he caressed his beloved's wild curls on his shoulder as they both stared back at me with vacant, woe-filled eyes. It was them against the world, committed for eternity; the first man planted here with his wife, still standing witness to their love as time marches on and the rest of the earth turns.
I
wanted a love like that. I took a snapshot so that at the very least, I could have it digitally.

When I landed at JFK, I felt radiant from all the holiday fantasy and international male attention . . . and, honestly, quite certain that I'd never find it at home. The very next night I didn't much help my case, when I got embarrassingly drunk on a date with a young CEO named Chuck and then tried to blame it on jet lag. The following week the distinguished friend who had introduced me to Chuck sat me down for a talking-to about how I might want to behave on dates. While I was utterly nauseated at my behavior, the experience made me long even more to meet someone who would accept me just the way I was. Surely there had to be a man down-to-earth enough out there to
love everything about me.

My grandpa's smart and handsome and successful and he loves me, you American creeps!
I wanted to yell in the streets.
You knobs just don't know what you're missing!

T
WO WEEKS LATER
I met Adam Hunt. It was during a bachelor-ette party that my college roommates from Cleveland had flown in for; an August night so sensuous and humid that as we meandered the twinkle-lighted bar patio on the Lower East Side, our perfume seemed to stick to the air behind us.

Adam and I spotted each other by complete accident, when I was pulling my heavy hair off my neck and resting my Miller Lite bottle against my skin. He smiled thoughtfully at me, and quickly I looked away. I could tell he was English by his sharp button-down shirt and blond faux-hawk and the way his sultry blue eyes seemed to have seen a thousand wars. My heart pounded and I tried earnestly to engage myself in another conversation as he and his friends approached us. He waited patiently for me to spin around to him, and when I finally gained the courage to turn slowly, he asked me my name.

“I'm Krissy.”

“Krissy.” He sized me up. “That's very American, isn't it.”

“I guess it is.” His accent and his eyes were melting me but I tried to stay cool. “And yours?”

“Adam.”

I raised my eyebrows in fake ambivalence and took a sip from my bottle as my mind flashed back to the Creation statue in Florence.
Adam
. It was the name of the first man; a name that meant heart, loyalty, and strength. Finally.

I tried hard to remain aloof and barely interested as his friends and mine huddled off to the next club together. Up at the bar, Adam handed me a cold beer and then knocked the lip of my bottle with the bottom of his, sending a fountain of foam rushing to the top so that I had to chug it to keep it from spilling down the front of me. When I reciprocated by slamming the bottom of my bottle against the top of his, the lip of his bottle shattered. He shrugged and moved the bottle toward his mouth. “No,” I pleaded, wrapping my grip around his. “Please don't, there could be glass inside.” The bartender leaned in for me to yell my order over the music, and I smiled to pass Adam a fresh Corona. He marveled at me.

“That's the nicest thing a girl's ever done for me.” His
girl
came out like
gihl
. I wanted to slather butter on his words and eat them with tea.

I leaned my back against the bar and looked out at the crowd. “It wasn't nice, it was necessary.” His invitation to dance made me feel shy and on-the-spot, so then he set his hand soft on the small of my back.

“Can I kiss you?” He smelled like Hugo Boss and cigarettes and summer.

I lifted my chin to his face like some hard-hearted old-time film maven.
“Adam,”
I said, “I'm an American woman. If you want to kiss me, then you kiss me. You don't ask.”

His lips landed soft on mine, and I opened my mouth to taste Marlboro and the lime from his Corona. The warmth of his breath against my lips instantly loosened my limbs and my good judgment, but I could sense his friends surrounding us like schoolboys. I pulled away.

“I'm only here another week but I'm calling you for dinner!” he called behind me.

I smiled back at him, disappearing through the crowd and into the lights outside.

My friends and I squealed over his English accent as our cab pulled into uptown traffic. The romance that ensued as a result of that chance meeting is now, as they say, history.

G
RANDPA WAS THE ONLY
one who believed in my decision to move to Italy. “If it's something you've always wanted to do, then you have to try it,” he said. “You can't listen to what your parents want for your life and your career. What have I always told you: You can do anything you want to do.”

I was visiting him and Grandma at their winter home in Florida for Valentine's Day, and lamenting over the difficulties of my long-distance relationship with Adam. “If I take the nanny job in Italy and he's in London, then we'll just be a short plane ride apart from each other. Grandma . . .” I paused cautiously. “. . . do you think it sounds like he's really serious about me?”

She set down a bowl of spaghetti on the table. “You want the truth?”

No, I didn't. “Yes, I do.”

“To me it sounds like a fling.”

Ouch. Where had she gathered that? Grandpa poured me more wine—first into Grandma's glass, then mine, then his own. As she sat down and slid her napkin onto her lap, she told me, “Don't move for this relationship, move because living in Italy and learning about our family is something you want to do for yourself.”

“Oh, oh, of course I wouldn't move just for the relationship, of course this is to learn about our family.” I pictured myself throwing the encyclopedic family tree that Grandpa created out the top of a convertible as Adam and I whipped with abandon through the hills of the English countryside. “I have my priorities straight,” I lied, and then Grandpa raised his glass.

“To our first grandchild,” he said. “You make us happy when you come to visit.” I smiled; we clinked glasses. After dinner Grandma kissed us both good-night and excused herself to bed, and Grandpa shut off the hall light so she could sleep. Then he joined me back at the table, where he and I stayed up all night talking.

The next day he had a heart attack. He and Grandma and I were watching Oprah interview an author whose book I was doing marketing for in New York. If Grandpa's distraction from my connection to Oprah—“Grandpa, only one degree of separation between us!” I'd said, shaking his knee—didn't make it obvious that something was wrong, his expression did. He braced himself to lie down on the couch—he was never known to rest—and apparently when I was out of earshot, he told Grandma that his chest and stomach hurt. That night we rushed him to the hospital, and they admitted him for procedures.