Only in Naples (11 page)

Raffaella referred to Nunzia as a
brava donna,
a good woman, faint praise that in Naples basically means “not a thief.” It's too bad, though, she told me once, that Nunzia doesn't know how to cook or clean.

To test Nunzia, Raffaella would play tricks on her. One day she took a big piece of
pizza di scarola,
a focaccia-like bread stuffed with escarole, olives, and pine nuts, and put it in the refrigerator, knowing that it was Nunzia's favorite. When Nunzia left, she checked the size of the slice. “Watch this!” she told me mischievously the next day when all three of us were in the kitchen.

“Nunzia, where is the
pizza di scarola
that was in the fridge yesterday?” Raffaella feigned nonchalance, but was seriously enjoying this.

“It's still there, ma'am, in the fridge.”

“No, I mean the other half. Somebody ate it.”

Silence.

“Who was it?”

“Actually, it was me, ma'am.”

“Aaah, ho capito, ho capito.”
I see. Raffaella looked at me and winked, joyous in her victory.

Nunzia, I assumed, resented her high-maintenance boss. When Raffaella left the room, she rolled her eyes and even flicked the back of her hand in the Neapolitan gesture signifying someone who is
pesante,
or heavy, hard to take.

After episodes like this, it surprised me when I found out that Nunzia came to Raffaella sometimes to get her shots. She had some kind of thyroid problem and had to get shots every month. Since Raffaella was known for her skill in administering shots, Nunzia stood in her employer's marble bathroom and rolled down her thick pantyhose. Raffaella returned from whatever fancy reception she was attending to plunge the needle in her maid's pudgy backside. Dressed in a Chanel suit and balanced on three-inch heels, Raffaella would hold an ice pack for at least five minutes to Nunzia's butt—
“Non ti muovere!”
Don't move! There was that familiar imperative again!—before packing her in the Lancia to give her a ride home.

M
any of the students in the English school where I taught were college guys in their twenties. “
Teeeacher, we go out later, you come?”
they would suggest in class. Nobody was asking me for a date—it was a group. Sometimes I went. I enjoyed them, especially a smart, unattractive guy named Gianmarco who really liked talking about me, and America.

One afternoon after class, Gianmarco told me that he and some of his high school friends (both young men and young women,
ragazzi
and
ragazze
) were going to Abruzzo to ski over the weekend—did I want to come?

I'd never been to Abruzzo! Skiing was fun!

I asked Salva midweek what his plans were for the weekend. “Plans” can be translated as
progetti
in Italian. Projects. “Do you have plans?” translates roughly as “Any projects up your sleeve?” Often, in Naples, projects are not scheduled more than one day in advance, which can make an American go bonkers (
How do we know we'll be alive?
Salva asks me when I want to book plane tickets a few months in advance).

“Nope. No projects this weekend,” he told me.

“I'm thinking of going to Abruzzo,” I ventured. “Do you mind?”

His voice was clipped when he answered. “Do whatever you want.
Sei adulta e vaccinata.”
You're a grown-up who's had her vaccinations, an expression meaning you're free to choose for yourself.

He had an exam coming up, so chances were he'd be spending most of the weekend with his
Code of Canon Law
book. I wasn't interested in any of the men I'd be traveling with, so I had a clear conscience. I bought some heavy sweaters with little snowflakes on them and packed a suitcase for the trip.

Much of the Abruzzo region is made up of little towns named after rocks: Roccaraso, Rocca di Mezzo, Rocca Pia. They are nestled in the Apennine Mountains, which cut through the center of the Italian boot. We were headed for Roccaraso, where Gianmarco's parents, like the Avallones and many other Neapolitan families, had a little apartment. Zio Toto, I would later learn, goes skiing there every winter. (But the plastic hand? I asked Salva. “Oh, he duct-tapes it to his ski pole. You've gotta avoid him on ski lifts, because if the tape gets wet and starts to come off, he asks the person next to him on the
seggiovia
to reattach it.”)

Roccaraso is an hour-and-a-half drive from Naples. In the car with Gianmarco and his friends, I noticed castles and fortresses from the Middle Ages zooming by. Gianmarco was definitely nerdy, and not very cute, and still he drove like a maniac. I was riding shotgun. In the backseat two guys and two girls were packed in, and it became apparent as we flew over the mountain roads that they were paired off. The “group of friends” wasn't an amorphous gang hanging out: there were exactly three couples, and the two couples in the backseat were sucking face by the time we reached L'Aquila. This would be a long weekend.

Roccaraso was bombed beyond recognition during World War II (“by the Americans!” one of Gianmarco's friends in the backseat exclaimed, and I decided to keep quiet), so there is nothing medieval about it. The buildings are from the 1960s and are brown and rectangular, with Swiss-like wooden balconies. We parked on the main street and piled out.

I remarked on the silence, the peace, the mountain splendor. “Just wait,” Gianmarco said. “Wait till the rest of Naples gets here.”

The first cold weekends of the year, the period surrounding New Year's Eve, and the week of Carnevale in February are the periods of the Neapolitan Descent, he explained to me. At these times, the town becomes the site of Neapolitans
in trasferta
(a sports term referring to a team that is playing an away game but that is also used to describe a group that goes somewhere en masse). No serene, tranquil Abruzzese atmosphere then—it's more like an eighth-grade field trip. Naples
in trasferta
is chaos, noise, laughter. Pushing and shoving. Women in full-length furs (which they wear exclusively in Roccaraso; Naples is too warm) doing what they call “laps” down the main street to be seen.

I didn't know Neapolitans were big skiers. Given the way they drove, I was starting to get skeptical about going down the mountain with them. My fears were justified.

After a breakfast of croissants and cappuccinos in his little gingerbread-house apartment the next morning, Gianmarco and his dark-skinned, black-haired guy friends got done up in high-tech Spyder ski attire. The women had hairbands that matched the buckles on their ski boots. They all looked like expert downhill racers who'd just come off the pages of a ski magazine.

I wasn't an expert skier. I took after my mother.

Before they were married, Bonnie Salango made Ed Wilson believe that she loved the outdoors. Sports were very important for my father, and he told my mother he could never marry a woman who didn't enjoy tennis, skiing, and swimming as much as he did. “Oh, I ski,” she told him, batting her eyelashes. “We can go
after
we're married.”

Their first and last “after-we're-married” ski trip was to Aspen, Colorado. My father didn't think it necessary to verify that his wife could make it down the mountain on her skis. He took her to the top of the highest slope, and after spraying to a parallel stop, noticed that she hadn't managed to get off the chairlift. As he slalomed down (in an enormous Siberian wolf hat that would be a source of embarrassment throughout my skiing career), he looked up to see Bonnie riding the lift back down the other side.

“Bonnie! What in God's name are you doing?”
he screamed.

“Ayyyed, ya never told me to get off!”

She went up again, and this time managed to dismount. My father led her to a black-diamond slope. When she saw how steep it was, she calmly took off her skis and pushed them down the mountain. Then she sat on her waterproofed butt and slid down to the base.

“Shouldn't someone help that woman?” a gentleman asked my father.

“Oh, I think she'll be just fine.”

My mother never skied again, but my sister and I went to Aspen every year with our father. Anna looked like Suzy Chapstick coming down the mountain, while my lavender ski pants were always too tight around the thighs and my glasses fogged up under my goggles. I never saw any reason to give up the snowplow, which was why my father and sister gave me the nickname Plow.