A Semester Abroad (12 page)

“I thought Michelle and Janine were best friends or something,”

“Somehow, I don’t think they anticipated what it would be like to actually live together in a foreign country.” I thought about mentioning what Janine said about Michelle puking and then, feeling embarrassed for Michelle, decided not to.

“Did any of us?’

“Absolutely not.” We laughed. I offered Olivia a piece of pasta from the water. I learned that
pici
takes a long time to cook, but if you overcook, you can’t go back. “What do you think?”

“Another minute.”

“That’s what I thought.” I stirred the
pici
and succumbed to a coughing fit.

“Gaetano said you were
ammalata
. I didn’t realize it was this sick.”

“
Si
,” I said laughing through my phlegm cough. “He really helped me out.”

“Of course he did. You are his treasure, his
tesoro
.” She ducked as I swatted her with the dishtowel.

“I think he understands now that we can just be friends. He accepts the fake boyfriend.” Olivia raised her ever-arching eyebrow and nodded, pursing her lips.

“It’s true.” I said defiantly.

“Okay, okay. Drain the pasta.”

“Okay.”

As we ate, Olivia told me all about her life in Firenze. She said that she preferred Siena, that Florence was big and overwhelming in comparison. She wished that her family talked to her more, but she thought that they took her and Suzie in to make money.

“I guess it was silly to think I would learn anything from them. When are you going to come visit?”
I hesitated. A week before I got sick, I planned to go up to see her. When I went to the kiosk in Piazza Gramschi to buy the tickets, the man behind the counter had chastised me.
Biglietto,
the word for ticket had a
g
in it that was sort of silent but not exactly. The
g
made the
l
sound different. When I asked for my ticket, the man said the word again.

“
Si
,” I nodded, thinking that he was clarifying. It sounded exactly like what I just said. I held up one finger. “
Uno
.”

“
No, biglietto
,” he said moving his lips to enunciate. I understood that I was supposed to repeat.

“
Biglietto
,” I said, I might have still had a smile on my face. I smiled constantly, hoping the people of Siena would take a little pity on me and forgive my awful accent.

“
No
,” he said again, quickly. He held a hand up to his mouth. “
Biglietto.
”

I repeated it again, concentrating on saying exactly what I thought he was. There was something subtle I was missing, because I had to repeat it again seven times. He moved his hand by his mouth so I could see how his tongue slid under his moustache into the
o
. At last he shrugged and relented, handing me a ticket. I knew I hadn’t perfected the word, hadn’t figured out the subtlety I was missing. I was a lost cause. I imagined a wall of sound I couldn’t comprehend on the bus to Firenze. The idea of being trapped again in the language for the whole ride overwhelmed me. Instead of going to surprise Olivia as planned, I went back to my room and took a nap.

But I didn’t tell Olivia any of that.

“I was going to come, I bought the ticket, but, you know, I just got sick.”

I hesitated too long, and she looked at me, perhaps reading that something was wrong. She was debating whether or not to ask me, to go there. I got that look from Kaitlin many times. I looked down at my plate of
pici
and took another bite.

“Well, you can use that ticket if you want,” she said at last. “You can meet up with me and Suzie and come with us to Milan and Switzerland the weekend after next.”

I was so happy that she was asking me and excited about a weekend away. I agreed.

“Good, then let me show you the plan.” She pulled a book out of her bag. The book was a bunch of train timetables for all of Europe. Olivia mapped out an entire plan for our trip. She was so positive and ready to take on everything.

“This is pretty cool, Olivia.
Brava
, as they say. Who is this Thomas Cook guy anyway?” I asked, reading the name on the train guide.

“Someone who is going to help me see this continent. And you too,
tesoro
.”

“Great. Is Suzie coming?”

“I hope so.”

“Is Kurt coming?”

“I doubt it. Can you take Friday off?”

“And miss an exciting educational and challenging lesson that will have me speaking this language like it was my mother tongue? Absolutely. I’ll take you to the hot new bar Gaetano showed me now that we are just drinking buddies.”

I broke into my budget to buy a pair of short-heeled boots of brown leather from the store in the
campo
.

“
Mi piacciono queste scarpe italiane
,” Gaetano said, nodding with approval over the shoes. He smirked and reminded me that this was one of the reasons that American women came to Italy. He liked proving his points.

Those shoes were slippery. I slid around some of the downhills in Siena. I didn’t like walking with the clumsy steps. But I had to get used to walking in them.

I tried not to wear my sneakers anymore. I didn’t want to be an obvious American. Michelle and Janine were constantly exercising, donning their sneakers and sweats and running through the streets with the Italians shouting, “
americane, americane
.”

I didn’t run, didn’t want to run. But one day, I wanted to explore the outskirts and head toward the red brick rooftops I saw from my window. I grabbed my Walkman, put on my sneakers that were almost dusty and borrowed one of Michelle’s bulky sweats.

I didn’t walk through the city. I didn’t want to be seen or shouted at by Italians. I didn’t want to be labeled for what I was. I walked out of my building, turning right down the street, past the few pizzerias where darker
stranieri
cooked in kitchens. There was a fish store I still hadn’t been into. It was icy and I couldn’t get any colder. I was beginning to identify the smells of the city, separate the
pizza al forno
from the
pane
. It was a small victory that I knew which windy cobblestone hill of a street bisected another.

I continued out of the walls through the Porta San Marco, traveling past the hotel that Olivia and Suzie used to live in and then into what wasn’t exactly the countryside but more like the Sienese suburb. I passed houses with laundry hanging and the smell of delicious meat being cooked. I smelled the fresh fertile dirt in the ground.

When I walked for about twenty minutes and passed at most two people, I was far enough away from the center of Siena. I began to sing along with my tape. I hit all the high notes with the singer. I belted at the top of my lungs, singing along and also trying to will it in myself. “Change, change, change.”

I was outside myself for a little while. I imagined one of those movies where they just start singing. I was finding that cinematic freedom and hoping that by the time the credits rolled I might have a happy ending.

One night, as I was finishing my
compito
, there was a knock at the door. It was Gaetano and a man with bright blue eyes named Duccio. Gaetano laughed as he introduced Duccio, because his name was
troppo sienese
. In culture class, we read about a number of Tuscans named Duccio. I would be sure to tell Olivia about that name. Duccio playfully smacked the top of Gaetano’s head and then they both laughed at my bare feet. This they said was
troppo americana
.

“So,
tesoro
, have you eaten? We’d like to take you to a
trattoria
outside the walls. Of course this means you must put on your shoes.” I invited them in while I got shoes. Lisa pounced on the Italians and tested out the new words she learned. She wasn’t flirting; she was showing off, hungry for praise. I quickly zipped my new boots and went out to the dining room to rescue them. Lisa excused herself. I was certain that if we didn’t hurry she would return after boning up on another idiomatic phrase to impress them with.

“
Andiamo
?” I asked. I wanted to make a quick getaway while Lisa was in her room.

“Will your roommate come?” Duccio asked.

“Her?” I pointed toward Lisa’s bedroom.

“No,” he said, staring into the kitchen where Michelle had just begun to prepare a low-fat meal. “Ask the beautiful one in the kitchen. The one wearing the American pants.”

The sneaker-clad Michelle had no idea she was being talked about. We
stranieri
had a tendency, maybe a gift, to tune out Italian when we weren’t directly involved in a conversation or concentrating on our professors.

“Michelle,” I said. I began speaking English fast in a way I knew the Italians couldn’t understand. “Seems you got a little admirer. This dude wants to go to dinner with you. He wants you to come with us.”

“What?” Michelle said, coming out the kitchen. She wiped her wet hands on her nylon running pants. She stopped when she saw Duccio and smiled. Something happened between them that I felt. I looked at Gaetano, who shrugged and introduced Duccio to Michelle.

Michelle was quite pretty, even with her hair hastily pulled back. Her eyes widened, and she extended her hand to Duccio. A color rose into her cheeks across the top of her neck. When she spoke, her accent was casual and perfect.

“
Piacere
,” she said, taking his hand, as they were introduced. Then she turned to me and spoke fast, “Give me five, okay? And I’ll come with. Tell them.”

Since she hurried out of the room, neither of the guys understood that she was coming until I explained it. Duccio was so relieved that Gaetano offered him a cigarette. Gaetano got up to make us espresso, and while he was in the kitchen, I stole one of his cigarettes.

Gaetano and Duccio began to discuss their favorite soccer team, and I tuned out as Michelle had. What about Michelle made Duccio so smitten? I wished I could create that reaction to me even if I wasn’t ready to deal with it. When I looked up at Gaetano’s constant gray gaze, I realized. It wouldn’t have really mattered if Duccio had liked me. I would always be off-limits to any friend of Gaetano’s, no matter how cute they were.

After fifteen minutes, I went to Michelle’s door to see what was taking so long. Michelle stood in her bra and a long tight skirt she must have been hiding, even from Janine.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Michelle said. “I’m trying to hurry. I don’t know what to wear. Come in.”

Inside, just about every shirt Michelle and Janine owned was on the bed, having been tried on and discarded.

“Michelle, I was just going to wear this. Gaetano’s in jeans, did you see?”

“I know, I know. I just, I don’t know, I want to look good.”

“I hate to say this, but you weren’t exactly dressed to impress when you came out of the kitchen and obviously you had an affect.”

“Well, I’m not going to wear my jogging pants, if that’s what you mean.” Michelle gave herself a look in the mirror, making a face she never made in life. “And I look like shit, fuck. Oh, hey, can I borrow your red cardigan?”

“Okay. Do you want the tank that goes underneath?”

“No, a little cleave will do me good. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll go get it.” I started for the door and stopped. “I’m starving.”

“Okay, okay, I’m hurrying.”

I ran to my room to get the sweater, saying “
un attimo, un attimo
” to the guys as I ran back through the dining room. As I suspected, Lisa, textbooks open, was asking Duccio and Gaetano detailed question about
forma passiva
. It was a lesson she wouldn’t have for another three weeks.

“So can I use it with all tenses or just third person?” she asked.

Michelle was putting on makeup when I got back to her room. I held out the sweater. “Now they are being attacked by Lisa and her thirst for knowledge.”

“Okay, okay.” Michelle grabbed the cardigan and put it on. She smiled at herself in the mirror, tugged the neckline down and then tugged it back up. She turned to me for an assessment, and I tugged it down, once again.

“I think you’re ready,” I said, and Michelle took another critical look in the mirror and applied more lipstick. I sighed.

“C’mon, G, you know it’s less of a production with me than with Janine.”

“That’s not really too much of an accomplishment, now is it?”

At last we were on our way. Gaetano said “wow” when Michelle emerged from her room and I briefly considered changing my outfit into something nicer. No, who was I trying to impress?

We walked through the city to get to Duccio’s car. Gaetano and I helped Duccio and Michelle communicate. It wasn’t easy, Duccio’s English was worse than Gaetano’s.

I had no idea where they were bringing us, but at last we passed what looked like a small racetrack and went into a building. This was the
trattoria
. It had maybe fifteen square wooden tables with the straw-backed old-school chairs I had seen in a lot of in restaurants. Wine was on the table before I had a chance to think about it. Gaetano winked at me while explaining to Duccio how long our semester was.

We all got
cinghiale
, wild boar, except for Michelle, who didn’t eat meat. It took a while to explain how and why Michelle didn’t eat meat. Duccio was amazed by this fact about her, as all Italians were, but he was amazed by everything about her. She split the
primi
pasta with us and then asked for
fagioli all’uccelletto
, white beans with rosemary for her
secondo
. I noticed she pushed her food around a bit, but she ate more than usual.