Enchantments (5 page)

Theirs was white, with pink doors and shutters— it looked exactly like a dollhouse. I'd thought they might live in a skyscraper. But of all the houses I'd been in it was my favorite. It wasn't too big, like Schifanoia, where I had to walk kilometers to find Mama. And it wasn't too small, like the apartment in Paris, where your only choices were the bedroom or the living room—no surprises, nothing to discover. In Angelica and Jack's house there were a number of possibilities, but not too many. If you shouted, somebody would hear you. The second-floor rooms had dormer windows that looked like bulging eyes. When I sat close to the panes, I felt suspended in midair—at the same level as the branches where squirrels were scurrying and leaping. In the basement there was a room with wood paneling and a bar with tall stools. On the walls there were posters of concerts and ballets because Angelica and Jack's daughter was a ballerina and her husband was a conductor. Next to that room there was a pantry with a freezer that was always full of broccoli and ice cream.

At the dinner table Jack would look at me with his round, transparent eyes and say, “Bella, eat the broccoli, bella!” And if I didn't eat, Aunt Angelica would raise her eyes to Heaven, her face
twisted with disappointment, and say, “Oh-ah! You don't like my broccoli, oh-ah!” And then she'd get over it and go on chewing like a cow with a cud, which made my sister and me burst out laughing.

They were very affectionate with Mama, who had lost both her parents when she was young. At meals, Uncle Jack would look at her contemplatively and then blow her kisses, saying, “Oh-ah! Mamie, you are so beautiful!” And then he'd start telling us stories about Mama—how beautiful she had been when she'd met Papa at a boxing match, so beautiful in her big hat and with her velvet eyes, like a Hollywood star. “The Italian” had been bowled over and started a conversation with Jack just so he could meet Mama, who, quite rightly, had played hard to get. But then there was the blizzard of 1947 and New York was one enormous white stalagmite and Mama had accepted Papa's invitation to have tea at the Plaza and when they came back to the house all covered with snow and radiant, Jack had understood that this Italian was going to take his Mamie, was going to take her far away, and Jack was half sad and half happy, happy for Mama because Papa was handsome and smart, but sad because he knew that from then on he would have to live his life without his Mamie.

It was because we lived so far away that Jack and Angelica gave us so many presents, more than to their grandchildren—a mirror with a frame of seashells, two bars of perfumed soap, a porcelain ballerina with a tulle tutu, a plastic bear to put honey in.

A few days after we arrived, Angelica took us to the “supermarchetta,” the biggest I'd ever seen. Shelf after shelf of bright-colored boxes. Angelica, Clara, and I each took a cart and loaded them as if we were shopping for a family of giants. Broccoli and ice cream, of course, but also Sara Lee brownies (which we'd already tried) and Oreos, black outside, white inside, a dramatic contrast of chocolate and cream that seduced us as soon as we saw them. And finally popcorn in its own little pan sealed in tinfoil. You put it on the stove, and then there was a mysterious hissing and then the foil puffed up into a wonderful silver ball. You punctured it with a knife, and there before your eyes was the popcorn, as fluffy as a pile of cotton balls.

On weekends my mother's cousins came to visit. They were more like her sisters since they'd all grown up together. I liked Laura because when I talked with her I didn't feel backed into a corner the way I did with other grown-ups. Talking with Laura was like walking around in a big,
airy room. I could ask her anything. Whereas Mama became impatient when she had to explain things, Laura always made an effort to find a reasonable answer. Alba, my mother's other cousin, who was Angelica and Jack's daughter, fascinated me because she'd been a great ballerina. I tried to imitate the way she walked with her feet resolutely turned out.

Laura had a daughter my age, Kate, who was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. In the photos they took of us she's always smiling while Clara and I look like sullen old ladies. One time, as a joke, Kate put the clasp she used on her dog, Piccola, in her hair. When she laughed and turned toward me, I felt pierced by her splendor.

Alba had two children, a boy and a girl. They all thought the boy was a genius. He had a complete collection of
Life
magazines and a chemistry set. One time his sister broke a test tube, and he threw himself on the ground screaming. Clara and I had a fit of hysterical laughter, which made it all the worse—the more we laughed, the more furiously Tommy beat his fists on the floor. His sister, Norma, dressed like Sports Barbie, and her bedroom was just like Barbie's, white and fuchsia, with upholstered night tables and lace around the bed and windows.

With these cousins we spoke some English and some Italian but more Italian because they were intent on learning it. My mother said, “They're smarter than you, they're thinking ahead. I have four provincial children who are embarrassed to speak English. But you'll be sorry one day.” It was true that I was embarrassed to speak English. When I was on vacation in Italy I was embarrassed when it came out that I knew French. It would be worse when they found out I also spoke English. For some reason, wherever I went I wasn't like most people. In France, they knew I was Italian. In Italy, they knew I lived in France and had an American mother. In America, they knew I came from one old country or other, whereas here everything was brand-new. My American cousins already knew at the age of seven what university they would go to. I had the confused and unpleasant feeling that nothing in me was there for a reason, nothing had any purpose. In their lives everything made sense and was bound to flourish. So being with them made me feel old, old and worn out and with nothing ahead of me.

Yes, my parents quarreled.

Paris, an evening like any other, all of us at dinner, my father at the head of the table. We're talking about school—my brothers’ report cards or tests. Mama complains about them a bit, Papa raises his voice—in my brothers’ world the usual routine of failings and reprimands. It goes on like this for a while, until a different note in my father's voice gets my attention, that unequivocal freezing of his voice, as if it has suddenly crossed a cold current, and I know that the chain has snapped: he's not barking anymore, he's ready to bite. This time it's Pietro, the younger of the two, who has perhaps looked up with a grin and is now getting up from the table to retreat to a safer place. He still hasn't left the dining room when
my father's shoe hits him in the head, drawing blood from his temple. My mother jumps to her feet and rushes to him. And there she is lifting her bloody hand like a battle standard while a roar rises up through her—from what deep dark cave of resentment and blame I don't know, but I'm terrified. I don't recognize her.

There's a shouting match between my parents, with words like claws that tear my heart to pieces. Words such as
separation
and
divorce.

Then, when my father leaves the room, a long silence knots our throats until my mother says to me, “Go to your father, don't let him be by himself.” Of course I go, because after a family quarrel it's almost always up to me to go from one to the other with the same message: “Come on, don't be hurt, we're like the fingers of a hand, inseparable.” But there's a hesitation in my steps, and the words that I'm preparing for my father are caught in my throat like the long silence at the table.

It's dark in their bedroom. Papa is in the bathroom, the door open. He's washing his face, getting ready to go out. But the worst moments aren't over. He's still breathing hard, and his face is twisted, his nose and mouth out of place. He picks up a towel, and that face disappears in its
whiteness. I'm standing there beside the sink, I don't know what to do, and I still have that knot in my throat but now it's worse, it's my heart throbbing with embarrassment and sorrow. I see my hand reach out toward him. It touches his arm, and at last a sound slips out—”Papa … “His voice breaks through the whiteness: “Go away, Judas. I know you're on their side.” I step back as if slapped, but I'm relieved in a way, because I deserved it. Yes, I'm like that Judas person—some sort of woman famous for having preferred her mother to her father.

My father tilts his head back, his eyes bug open, and he makes a thread of saliva come out of a hole under his chin—a wound from his days as a partisan. We call it “mooky-worm.” My father knows when it's about to thunder, he knows the spell to attract fireflies into the palm of your hand. My father has a friend who is a witch and who can—if we turn off all the lights in our bedroom—make it rain candies. My father can transform himself into a fire-breathing dragon, into a hypnotizing snake, into a child-eating ogre.

Sometimes I'm embarrassed by him in front of my friends because he calls them “his little old ladies.” He always exaggerates. When we invite my friends to a restaurant, he forces them to eat snails or, at the Chinese place, snake soup.

And I'm embarrassed by him when he swears that as soon as Clara and I have suitors he's going to kick them head over heels down the stairs. And I'm embarrassed when he sends our dressed-like-an-admiral doorman to pick us up at school.

Sometimes he surprises me, taking me to eat ice cream at the Hilton at eleven at night or to a late movie in the middle of the week. When I'm the one to ask him to take us out he surprises me: “Yes, tonight we're going to the Teatro Bian-chini with blankets and cushions.” Then I might sit on his knees and lay my head on the curve of his stomach. And there, sucking a cube of sugar dipped in cognac, I can feel the very center of his breathing.

Sometimes I adore him. I throw my arms around his neck, and I smother his broad face with kisses: the chin, the eyes, the nose, the cheeks rough as sandpaper. When he returns from a trip I adore him, I throw my arms around his neck, and I see myself in his exuberance, I see myself in his bright, happy eyes. One time he and Mama don't tell us they're coming back from their trip to South America and the doorman/ admiral makes us go round and round before letting us in, and when we go into the apartment it
seems as deserted as ever. But in the bedroom, on each of our beds, is a mountain of presents, yes, truly a mountain, and sometimes there's a landslide and part of it falls to the ground (a sombrero, an Inca mask, a colored cymbal), and Clara and I know that they're back and we start looking for them frantically, but they're not in their room, so we open the bathroom door and there they are, radiant, with Papa trying to hide behind Mama, even though he's too big. Because it's not enough for him, he wants more games, more magic, more marvels, until something moves between his feet, a poodle puppy, with a red ribbon around its neck.

Sometimes my father scares me.

I have locked myself in the bathroom, and now he's at the door. I've done something bad, and he's at the door. He says, “Open.” I think of his thick, hard hands, and I don't open. But I sense something more terrible than those hands, I don't know what it is, but it won't go away if I stay behind that closed door. I hesitate. I hesitate so much with my fingers on the key that my legs shake. My father scares me even though he has hit me only once.

We're passing the border at Mont Blanc. It's summer, it's very hot, and we're stuck in a
long line of cars. It's not moving at all. They all go to get something to drink. “Come on,” they say and I answer that I'm tired and would rather stay there. The truth is, I want to pretend I'm driving. I like to turn the steering wheel, make long big swoops as if I'm flying around the earth. But the wheel is burning hot and I give up. I look out the window, but there's nothing interesting to look at, only a man in his undershirt picking his nose leaning against the door of the car next to ours, and after a while I'm bored. I regret not having gone to the café with the others. Then I remember the penny that Papa gave me. I pet my pocket and pull it out. It's brand-new, blazing red. I look at the profile of the murdered president and think that I wouldn't want to be president of a country like America where there are so many people and, of course, some crazy person who might decide to shoot you. I turn the penny around, but there's little to see on that side, only some kind of a monument with pillars. So I start playing around with the coin, trying to make it roll from one finger to the next, but I'm not very good and the coin falls on the floor. I bend over to pick it up, and as I'm getting up I notice the ignition. The hole is about the same size as the penny. I wonder if the penny fits. Yes,
it's perfect. Exactly the right size, so I stick the coin in several times. At first just a little bit, then more and more, until it's half, more than half, until I only have a sliver between my fingers. Suddenly the penny disappears into the hole. I don't worry right away. I try to get it using a hairpin that I find in the glove compartment. But I only make things worse; all I can see now is a thin red line deep inside the hole.