Only in Naples (28 page)

B
enedetta and Mauro's marriage was on the rocks. Salvatore noticed that Benedetta was buying her groceries at the discount supermarket: that's how he knew.

At the beginning of their marriage, love was expressed through both Benedetta's and Raffaella's cooking. It was a mother-daughter team. Raffaella had prepared her daughter well—Benedetta knew that peas were to be cooked in May, that eggplants were not to be canned when she was menstruating. (One day I tried to help Raffaella pack her boiled eggplants in jars, and she asked me, “Do you have the
ciclo
?” I didn't have the cycle, but wanted to know why it mattered. “They say the eggplants will become acidic,” Raffaella explained, “because hormones are transmitted through your hands. Better not to take the risk.”)

A weekly menu was established based on what was fresh that moment, which vegetables were particularly good in the countryside around Naples that year. (Neapolitan women have found it genuinely funny that I cook sausage in the summer or asparagus in the fall. She must come from a place where they grow asparagus in September! This is considered akin to wearing ski boots in July.)

As her relationship with Mauro deteriorated, so did Benedetta's cooking. She no longer asked Raffaella to make her specialty casseroles. All she asked her mother to do was to cook for her two boys—don't worry about Mauro! He can eat anything, it doesn't matter. Benedetta's dishes were
arrangiati,
meaning put together with no care. She was cooking without love.

Was this the woman who had made
tagliolini
casseroles for her husband, taking special care to use the cheeses that Mauro preferred? Who went across town to get the ricotta that was the freshest? The woman who based her (and her mother's) cooking on “how Mauro likes it”?

When Salvatore saw the plastic bags from Tuodì supermarket, he confronted his sister and asked her what was going on.

Benedetta had fallen out of love with Mauro. “He doesn't do anything here. He's never even changed a diaper! He's a
peso
[a burden].” That word,
peso,
which literally means a weight, was the same word that I'd heard other Neapolitan women use for their husbands. “Things are so much easier without him” was another sentence that I had heard before.

I told Benedetta that I was surprised. In the early years of their marriage, she would often say what a caring and helpful partner Mauro was. Her response now was an
“Eeeeh”
on the exhale—what are you gonna do? That was before children. “You know? He's never even given the boys a bath! He doesn't know how to screw in a lightbulb, or fold a shirt. I mean, come
on.
”

My sister-in-law did something that would have been impossible in Naples in the past: she left her husband. (Well, I shouldn't say left, since it was she who kept the apartment and the kids and the lasagna in the elevator.) Salvatore tried to mediate. He understood his sister and the problems she had with Mauro, and at the same time felt for his forty-five-year-old brother-in-law who had to move back in with his mother. (Live on his own? That option wasn't even considered. Mauro didn't know how to fry an egg! How would he survive?)

Is there any chance that he could get custody? I asked Salva. In Italy, no. The mother has to be a drug addict or a prostitute, and even then, she usually gets custody of the children.
“La mamma è sempre la mamma”
is an expression that you hear all the time: Mama will always be Mama, there's no one like Mama. The subtext being that Papa is a nice addendum, but never a substitute.

It seemed to me that Salvatore was an objective mediator. He had the necessary emotional distance. He wasn't blinded by anger and showed respect and consideration for all involved. That is, until the Day of the Eggplant Parmesan.

The whole family had gathered for Sunday lunch. Benedetta's two boys played with their little cousin Anthony; Raffaella cooked and served. Salva, Nino, Benedetta, and I sat at the table and consumed. No one mentioned Mauro. Benedetta seemed to be happy—she had even started dating a man she worked with. She'd been separated from Mauro for a few months, but it would be years before they could officially divorce. (In the best-case scenario, when a husband and wife are consensual, an Italian couple can apply for a divorce after three years of separation. If not, it can take closer to a decade. This was the case for Benedetta and Mauro.)

Tutto a posto
, everything in its place. In a new place, granted, but in place. There was peace and children's laughter and magnificent food.

Benedetta's new flame lived a short drive away, by himself. If I had been raised in Naples, I probably would have thought, It's Sunday, and Benedetta's new boyfriend is alone! What's the poor guy going to have for lunch? but it didn't occur to me. After we had eaten the pasta with beans, the sautéed
friarielli
greens, huge milky balls of mozzarella, and the most divine eggplant Parmesan Raffaella had ever baked, Benedetta got up and asked her mother for a plastic plate.

“What are you doing?” Salva asked her as she cut a hunk of the deep purple
parmigiana
and positioned it on the plate.

“Can you give me some plastic wrap, Mom?” she said.

Salva stood up menacingly. “What are you doing?”

Benedetta was wrapping the cellophane around the plate. Once, twice…

“Who is that for?”

Salva knew that his sister was planning to take their mother's
parmigiana
out of their home. She was going to put it on the passenger seat of her little Fiat and take it to the apartment of her new partner. She had fallen in love and this was the way she expressed it.

But Salva saw it as a betrayal. His mother had dried the eggplants in the sun for two days. She had then fried them in strips. Raffaella had even used the tomatoes that she canned herself. All this to satisfy the appetite of his sister's lover? Suddenly that dark purple
parmigiana
was so sexual. Salvatore never spoke of honor, or of family, or used any words that a Neapolitan brother would have used just one generation ago. But he lost his
shit
over that eggplant Parmesan.

My husband's knees bounced and his hands flew. Benedetta cried and screamed and used expressions in Neapolitan dialect that I didn't understand. I swept Emilio, Claudio, and Anthony off to the bedroom, where I taught them rock, paper, scissors in English. When I heard silence at last, I came back to the kitchen to find the plastic plate with the
parmigiana
snapped in two and the floor splattered with blood-red tomato sauce. Everyone else had stormed off and Raffaella was alone with that heartbreaking mess. How could I help?

Raffaella put on her magic yellow kitchen gloves (“When I put these on I'm more efficient,” she told me once. “Without gloves I don't even know where to start!”). She picked up the chunks and wiped the oil away with newspapers. Then she started mopping. She was a cleaning machine.

I felt sick with pity for this mother who for forty years had stirred and fried and baked her love for her daughter, and for the last ten had learned to do the same for a son-in-law. Suddenly she had to unlove him at the drop of a hat. She had to not care anymore what he ate and start learning instead how Benedetta's new partner liked his
pasta e fagioli,
whether he preferred his Easter
pastiera
cake with or without candied fruit.

After wringing out the dishrags, my mother-in-law looked me in the eye and I saw her concern. There was no Neapolitan tradition that told her where the
parmigiana
was to end up in a broken and blended family. Her Catholic church didn't give instructions on how to uproot someone from her heart, someone who with great effort she had taught herself to love.

But I had misinterpreted Raffaella's concern.
“Tesoro,”
Honey, she said, and grabbed my hand, “did you want another piece of that before it went on the floor?”

“
W
hat do you have to do with it?” Raffaella asked me, genuinely baffled.

The problem was Anthony's jealousy. My son had turned into an eighteenth-century southern Italian, sword-brandishing, jilted lover. One of the things I appreciated about my husband was that he didn't have the possessive love that so many Neapolitan men have for their women. The
You're not wearing that, are you?
to short skirts or plunging necklines. The
When you go out, we go out together.
It exists, still. Although Salva is passionate and chivalrous, he has never had any macho possessiveness. I always credited his mother for having raised him to respect women's independence.

But apparently, mothers have nothing to do with it. The character trait jealousy—just like
permalosità,
shyness, aggression, you name it—is something you inherit from your relatives just as you would blue eyes or curly hair.

“Zio Renato era geloso,”
Raffaella informed me. Apparently Anthony had gotten the trait from an uncle on his grandmother's side who was known for his possessive jealousy.

I was pregnant with a girl, and Anthony was on fire with rage. He spent his time glaring at me as if he had caught me in flagrante with a nemesis. It made no difference how I played with him or doted on him or spoon-fed him his favorite dishes: he was ready to pull out the saber and sing a Puccini aria before putting an end to it all.

Anthony and I had been spending a lot of time together at the park of the Domus Aurea—Nero's golden palace, on the Oppian Hill above the Colosseum. While the Italian mothers chatted about what they were preparing for lunch, I loaded my pudgy love on my back and pretended I was a racehorse at the Kentucky Derby. Faster, faster,
here's
the starting gate, Mommy! Not there.
Here!
I neighed, very loudly. Everyone thought I was insane. I was having more fun than I'd ever had in my whole life.

The doctor told me when I was pregnant that it was probably better not to reenact the Preakness at the park with my son.

“We can play with Legos!” I told Anthony. “And pick-up sticks!” He wasn't interested. “Horsey wasn't fun, Mommy,” he told me. “No fun. Never.”

I neighed. I thought we'd had something good.

He didn't want to go to the park with me anymore. He didn't want to
see
me. Although he'd been potty-trained for a while, he pooed in the middle of our living room, and said, “Mommy, something in
salotto.
Clean it up.”

I asked Raffaella for advice. Where had I gone wrong? It must have been the way I'd handled it. I shouldn't have told him…I should have waited…I shouldn't have…

That's when she asked, “What have you got to do with it?”

As an American mother, I assume that every negative behavioral trait that my children have can be traced back to me. Specifically, to what I did or didn't do. This is absolutely unheard of for a Neapolitan. What a strange Anglo-Saxon cocktail of omnipotence and narcissism! Sure,
la mamma è sempre la mamma
and all that, but what can you do if your kid inherits Aunt Mary's rudeness?

I was off the hook. When we went to Naples for the weekend and Anthony had a tantrum, I was spared the
Katherine really should handle the situation better.
At most, Zia Pia or Raffaella would murmur
Good thing the jealousy gene skipped over Salvatore!
or
Yup, that's Zio Renato's jealousy there. Remember the time he camped out near his girlfriend's apartment?

The period of my daughter's gestation and birth was a haze of tantrums, rage, and exhaustion. There were enormous amounts of caffeine and a lot of shouting. Anthony fumed; Salva and I fought. There was no Mozart played for the fetus. The books would say that didn't bode well for having a healthy, happy baby.

Luckily, my little girl inherited not only the name but the character of her
nonna.

One of the most miraculous things about a newborn is her hands. I'm sure that little Lella's hands were tiny pink gems. At some point they probably rested, inert, on an embroidered sheet in her bassinet. But I have no memory of them. Because I have no recollection of Lella's hands ever being still.

It seems that from the time she was born, my daughter's hands were showing me how to do things. They were blending the blush on my cheeks (
dis no look right
), defending herself from her brother (
me hold up fist like dis
), braiding her best friend's hair.
This is the best way to cut potatoes, Mommy!
(Where'd you learn that?)—and the little fingers would fly, showing me the width of the strips.

When I told her, “I know it's hard for you when Anthony…” she waited patiently for me to finish, stroking my arm as if to reassure me that what I had to say was important. Then, it was: “Okay,
me
talk now. Remember, Mommy, it's always better to…” and there were the hands, showing me how to tie shoelaces, or fold wrapping paper.

At school, she cheerfully organized playdates for the other kids. “Simona wanted to go over to Francesco's house. I made sure they worked it out and told him what she likes for snack.”
Li ho sistemati,
I set them up. With a great big smile, the girl got people where they needed to be, doing what they needed to be doing. She made sure her mommy looked decent, put her brother in his place, and learned how to make her grandmother's tomato sauce by the age of six.

Che problema c'è?