Only in Naples (22 page)

R
ecently, I overheard two Neapolitan ladies I had never seen before talking about “that wedding in America.” Sitting by the swimming pool and gossiping, one said to the other, “Did you hear? All the friends of the bride wore
the same dress
! There was a
rehearsal.
And everyone got up from the table to dance, during dinner!”

I felt proud. Proud that in some way I helped a group of Neapolitans understand that one can party without pasta and live to tell the tale.

There is a word that you will not find in your Italian-English dictionary:
sfamarsi.
Like
sdrammatizzare, sfamarsi
uses that little
s
to turn a verb into its opposite.
Sfamarsi
is to dehunger oneself. I learned at my wedding to Salvatore that it is very difficult for Neapolitans to dehunger themselves without pasta.

No one will come if we get married in the United States, Salva had said. It's too far. It's too expensive. (He didn't say, how will we dehunger ourselves? That came later.) So we planned the wedding for mid-August, when all of Italy is on vacation anyway. My mother organized a four-day affair in Washington. Months before the event, Salva's Neapolitan friends and family got an invitation that looked like a book. It contained individual invitation cards for the rehearsal dinner, the ceremony, and the Sunday barbecue, as well as maps, pickup times, contact numbers, and dress codes. In Naples, they'd never seen anything so organized. They got their butts to the travel agency, bought tranquilizers for their fear of flying, and signed on. Forty of them.

The Neapolitans who arrived for the Wilson-Avallone wedding averaged three suitcases a head. After they finished their American tour (and learned a new word in English:
outlet
, pronounced
aauutlet
), that number rose to four. The women's sporty casual look was white and pastel oxford shirts with tight, tapered pants and ankle boots. Big rhinestone-studded sunglasses held back their perfectly styled hair. The men wore linen jackets and moccasins that were red or lilac. Most had a terra-cotta tan.

In the evening, necklines plunged and heels soared. The ladies' chiffon wraps seemed to match their husbands' silky-soft made-to-order suits. My aunt and uncle hosted a buffet dinner for out-of-town guests two nights before the wedding. “Katherine,” my aunt whispered to me soon after the Neapolitans had stepped down from the bus in their stilettos and Maglis and partaken of the buffet,
“there's nothing left to eat.”
The caterers had brought huge platters of baby lamb chops, sautéed vegetables, cheese wheels.
“They've already eaten everything.”

What had happened? These were not bingers, and no one was obese. Benedetta later explained to me that the Avallones and their friends had dehungered themselves in the only way possible. “We were just trying to
sfamarci.
We don't know how to do it without pasta,
voi americani come fate
?” How do you Americans do it? How do you satisfy yourselves in this Land Without Pasta?

When it came to determining the menu for our wedding reception, Salva and I decided that rather than serving pasta that would surely not taste like the
primi
Italians were used to, it would be better to stick to typical American dishes. Actually, “Salva and I decided” is perhaps a simplification. Our conversations about the day of the wedding went something like this:

He could not get over the fact that at our wedding there would be no pasta. On the most important day of his life, he would not eat pasta: this was extremely difficult to
mandare giù
, to send down or swallow. He and his compatriots would have to eat an entire cow and a school of fish to dehunger themselves. On top of that, they would have to focus their attention (at least part of the time) on something other than the food.

Italian weddings are about what you wear and what you eat. And what other people wear and what they eat. I have been to weddings in Naples where I have sat, masticating, for five straight hours. No dancing, no mingling. Conversation is limited to what is being served and what color sandals the mother of the bride is wearing (with some inevitable soccer discussion among the men).

“Hi, nice to meet you! Where are you from? What do you do?” I do not recommend this line of conversation at a wedding in Italy. I have tried it. Feeling like a bored overstuffed pig, I have ventured out into the taboo territory of putting questions to people I don't know. The response is usually “Here,” and the job description is one or two words with the subtext, “I do it because I have to but count the minutes until my next vacation.” That shuts me up and sends me back to examining the twelfth plate of food that has been set before me. Praise the food, dissect the consistency of the risotto, and you will find people interested in conversation at Italian weddings, I have discovered. At least that way you'll find something to do with your mouth other than chew.

It is tradition in Naples for the mother of the groom to hand the bride her bouquet, ceremoniously. The photographer is there, ready to record the ritual. The bride and her future mother-in-law look in each other's eyes, faces glowing with respect and love. Other emotions are hidden for later:
Now you're the one who's going to have to make his
pasta con piselli,
grinding up the little pieces of onion! Ha!
Or, on the other side:
You'd better not even think of coming over to our place uninvited!
This is a moment of calm before the storm of daily life and grandchildren, and the photo of it is usually displayed in a silver picture frame in Neapolitan newlyweds' living rooms.

No one told me about this tradition. I had to figure it out for myself. Unfortunately, I figured it out after the photo op.

At the entrance of Washington's National Presbyterian Church, Salvatore and his Neapolitan groomsmen stood tall in white tie and tails, greeting the American guests in their best English. They looked gorgeous. I had explained to my future husband that in the States, tuxedos can be rented, and after his initial terror of powder blue and ruffles, he agreed to let my mother and me herd him and his six buddies to Bob's Tuxedo Junction a few days before the ceremony. The fact that we Americans had successfully costumed the Neapolitan men, and that their women kept saying that they were
elegantissimi! Elegantissimi!
was a great source of pride.

In the women's dressing room, my bridesmaids were adjusting their matching sleeveless sky-blue dresses and putting the finishing touches to their makeup. Benedetta's two sons (Claudio had been born after Emilio, and I was getting the hang of being a
zia,
falling deeply, hopelessly in love with both boys) were playing tag in their ivory silk ringbearer outfits. My sister was trying to fasten my grandmother's necklace around my neck. It had a minuscule silver clasp from around 1910 that was impossible to hook. My mother was in such a state of tension that at a certain point she just started doing laps around the perimeter of the room, managing to look stunning in her eggplant strapless gown despite her anxiety-induced dementia.