Читать книгу The Errant Child - Ozzie Logozzo - Страница 19

Rome, central Italy Piazza del Colosseo,

If looks could kill, Emily would make a first- class gladiator. After all, female gladiators, until banned, fought alongside their male counterparts for hundreds of years.

It befuddles me how such beauty can co- exist with pristine physic brutality and revulsion.

My thoughts stray as we sit on a patio, across from the Coliseum, waiting for our lunch orders.

When I first met Emily, I associated her name with Emily Bronte, author of ‘Wuthering Heights’, one of my favorite childhood paperbacks alongside the collected works of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Regularly, Emily makes me think of fictional characters like ‘Heathcliff’ and ‘Professor

Moriarty’.

I recollect a portentous day at her family’s club picnic. We were only days into our engagement when, in a moment of personal frustration while playing cards with her friends, she turned to me, a spectator, and told me, with combined evilness of Heathcliff and Moriarty, to “fuck off”.

My wife is the second child of Valeria and Augusto. She was born in Toronto, Canada. She is a university graduate with an honors degree in psychology. She has excelled in extracurricular activities: figure skating, gymnastics and hot yoga. For a time, she yearned to be a model and an actress. Her mom always expected her to go into the nunnery. They compromised. She settled as a suburban boutique owner, acting happy, selling young ladies’ dress fashions while promising to teach Sunday catechism classes at the local church.

Emily is a classic beauty with natural blonde hair. She is tirelessly teasing with others and ‘ballsy’ toward me at the slightestirritation. She hasaradiant smile and entrancing green eyes. Women spy her with jealous looks. Men ogle. I really do not mind as long as such gestures are unreciprocated. Perhaps I am shallow. In my core, when such overtures are invited or shared, thoughts of betrayal begin. Doubt festers and the fury in me becomes agonizing.

Emily is talking and I listen but my mind wanders as it does so often when listening to the same refrain. The geography is different; perhaps even some of the words, but the condemnations and the callousness are painfully familiar.

“You are a selfish, hard-headed Calabrese.”

Emily points her finger at me like a scolding schoolteacher.

“You do what you want, when you want. You never think of me or the kids.”

“I’m not Calabrese.”

I reply calmly hoping to smother the flaming

fire.

“I was born in Tarquinia. I am Roman, if

anything. Do you wish to see my passport? I told you. I had to go to the washroom. You have been harping and arguing silliness. Why can’t we simply enjoy this breathtaking city? Just let it go.”

“If we didn’t have kids, I know what I’d let

go.”

For my sanity, I dodge Emily’s innuendo. I

avoid any entanglement in her desired lunch-and- learn, shadow boxing session although I digress and wonder whether I would be better as Sonny Liston or Muhammad Ali. Our levelheaded son, Mark Anthony looks ashamed. Christina, our precocious daughter, frowns in utter revulsion.

“I would really like us to eat our lunch in peace,” I propose truthfully.

“I’m causing you stress, am I? Why don’t you write it in your notebook? Perhaps, a cathartic poem, in pentatonic verse, criticizing me. Alternatively, you could call back home and check up on your real estate business, Mr. Executive. I am sure that you have lots of time before the meal comes. These damn Italians take way too long to cook a modest meal.”

My wife is the daughter of Italian immigrants but her American preferences call for neon lights, fast

food and quick service not the slow movement and rhythms of Europeans who scorn cuisine shortcuts.

I divert my attention to a busboy that has just cleared and reset a table next to Emily. He turns, face flushed, to address Emily but before he can utter what I assume would have been appreciative words, a waiter and a juvenile female helper arrive to deliver the order.

“Pizza con prosciutto for the signore; pizza Margherita for la signora; Calzone for la signorina and Stromboli for il giovanotto. Eat, okay?”

Hostaria Al Colosseo, an old-style restaurant situated opposite the Coliseum, with its colorful red, blue and white tablecloths is high on passion and even higher on prices for tourists. The wait staff claims that while sitting in the shadow of the centuries old structure, the sounds of battling gladiators echo on a Strega (bewitching) night.

The Coliseum, the largest amphitheater in the world, is at the centerof aroundabout that echoes with the sounds of vehicular traffic and legions of pedestrians in the piazza. Of course, there is the predominance of motorbikes that are as common as mozzarella and pepperoni on pizza. Their horns beep away but their frail sound is difficult to take seriously.

The food tastes reheated. As anywhere in Italy, side street eateries offer better fare at a more reasonable cost than main street outlets targeted to tourists. I slip a pizza slice to a mutt sitting by the edge of the curb. The mongrel sniffs and moves along.

The pizzeria is a nice-looking establishment

and a convenient place to meet. It is active with tired, famished vacationers and locals engrossed in animated conversations. Even several off-duty carabinieri sit at adjacent tables. One of them keeps whispering in his sweetheart’s ear. She reacts, like a woodpecker in heat, with kisses to his face.

“Emily, afterwards, do you want to go back to St. Peter’s Basilica and take in the celebrations? It sounds like a spectacle to remember.”

“What for? So you can leave us stranded

again?”

It is best I do not engage her further.

Emily does not desire to adjust to the

downshifting, laid-back Italian life-style. She craves excitement. With my slide into silence, she turns her venom on Christina.

“Stop slouching and take that frown off your

face.”

“Don’t talk to me lady. Do not tell me what to

do. Just leave me alone. You are so annoying.”

“Are you going to let her talk to me like that?” spouts Emily in my face.

I am not so secretly amused. I snicker and remain resigned to Christina’s emulation of my wife’s true nature. A ‘just dessert’ is the phrase that echoes in my brain.

Christina interjects as she bolts from her chair, “I’m not really hungry. I am going over to see if I can get a personal tour of the Coliseum. Marc Anthony, come with me.”

Mark Anthony seizes his Calzone and leaves the table before Emily or I get a chance to protest. They both jog down the sidewalk and cross over to

the Roman Coliseum.

“Nice role model you are for your kids,” bites

Emily.

“Will you lay off? Stop breaking my balls.

You are always demeaning me in public, in front of strangers and in front of our family. I have told you hundreds of times not to quarrel in front of the kids. There is no mileage in arguing and lying in front of them. All you’re going to do is get them to hate you and me.”

“First I’m a flirt. Now I’m a liar. Is there no end to your twisted view of me?”

“You’re both. Flirting is a mix bag of white lies that communicates dishonesty and deception. Lying, by doing or remaining silent, is contempt for the trust and the feelings of another person. You demean me when you flirt and lie. You also disrespect yourself.”

“Really, professor? You are quite the arrogant bastard! I suppose you do not keep secrets. What about that bimbo who sat next to you on the plane? Were you authentic with her or did you put on a façade?”

“Actually, I do not have any regrets about that conversation. Ali is just an arts professor familiar with my hometown. Nothing was said that could not be said in your presence.”

“Ali? Ali? Ali is it? How nice for you.” I reach into my shirt pocket.

“Look, she gave me her business card.”

“Ali did. Indeed, she did. Allegra Lupo, Associate Professor.”

Emily, with the exaggerated face of an

amateurish actor, sneers sternly at the card.

“You are either a man of matchless integrity or a blind simpleton. I choose the latter,” and with that Emily rips the business card into four pieces and tosses the remnants onto my plate.

Without raising my eyes from the fragments, I negotiate a different course.

“I need to pick up our rental car before 8

p.m. tonight. If we leave after breakfast tomorrow,

we should be in Tarquinia by 11 a.m.”

“Great, perhaps you’ll find someone there who will confirm you are not a Mafioso’s errant child.”

Emily is continually egging me into an acute, psychiatric disorder. I will be damned before I accept her coquettish crap. Her hallucinogenic words give me visions of pay back. I am convinced that there exists in me a person who is vastly different in moral character. So often, Emily has toyed with my trigger. It will not take much more for my protective bubble to burst.