Dirty Dishes Page 6

  Start spreading the news.

  I looked around as the other passengers began smiling in recognition and looking out the window and pointing.

  I’m leaving today.

  It’s a corny song. A gaudy song. But it shook me out of my trance. It woke me up and energized me.

  As the song played on, I took in the city, shining in the light of day, the sun sparkling across the glass and steel of the buildings.

  After being afraid for eight hours, I became excited. The song reawakened in me the sense of America I’d had all my life: that it was, more than anything, a dream. The dream is different for everybody, but everybody’s dreams have a few things in common, namely freedom and prosperity.

  I wasn’t coming to stay, but those ideals were enough to momentarily lift my spirits. I put my arm around Patty as the song came to its end.

  It’s up to you . . .

  Maybe everything would be OK after all.

  . . . New York, New York.

  The plane lurched as its wheels met the tarmac. The song faded, and the crew made the necessary announcements.

  I kept tapping my finger, still hearing the song in my head, ignoring the flight attendants.

  I couldn’t understand what they were saying anyway.

  I didn’t speak more than a few words of English.

  WE FILED OFF the plane and into John F. Kennedy International Airport. As the Italian passengers scattered in different directions, the familiar sounds of my native language were diluted, and eventually overcome, by English. It was a swift and jarring transition: the air was full of words I couldn’t understand. People rushed by in all directions, speaking to each other in a growing cacophony.

  Suddenly, I’d been transformed from a confident man—an actor, a person accustomed to strutting on stage and baring my soul (or at least that of my character) to roomfuls of people—to a mute: if separated from Patty, I’d have no means of communication. I also had this odd sense of paranoia that people were looking at me with curiosity. I began to feel like a bit of an animal, like King Kong lashing out at the pop of flashbulbs.

  We got our luggage and found our way into a taxi, Patty doing the talking for both of us. The cab screeched its way out of the airport and onto the highway. It was dark outside, and I had no idea where we were. All I knew was that we were going in the wrong direction, away from Manhattan and deeper and deeper into Queens. Shadows washed over us as we passed in and out of the range of streetlights, and the terrain kept changing: one moment we were breezing past neighborhoods elevated above the highway on grassy embankments; the next we were passing a desolate stretch of asphalt and concrete with no life in sight. Every time I had my bearings, the environs would change yet again, until we drove past a final cluster of row houses and strip malls, and finally arrived in a community of sad little houses, a world far from the action.

  So much for Sinatra. I felt like I was at the end of the Earth.

  We got out at the brownstone where we’d be staying and walked up dark stairs to the second-floor apartment Patty’s family friend had arranged for us. She turned the key in the lock and opened the door, then fumbled around for the light switch and flicked it on. When the lights came up, my experience took on an entirely new level of unreality. The living room was very simple and clean, with functional furniture, avocado-colored walls, track lighting overhead, and a thick carpet. It reminded me of any American television show I’d ever seen about a police detective, like Kojak, who lived in Queens, on his own, with a parakeet or a dog.

  I went into the bedroom and put my suitcase down on the floor, but I didn’t open it. Once it was open, I would begin unpacking, and that would be an acknowledgment of my arrival in this new place. As long as it remained closed, I was in transit, with the possibility of moving on, or of returning home.

  Lying in bed later with the lights out, I heard all the night sounds of a New York City outer borough: ferocious barking dogs, wailing sirens, rumbling subway trains, and harsh voices that drifted up from the street and through the thin glass of the windowpanes. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could make out the texture of the pressed-tin ceiling, a far cry from the night sky that spread out above my terrace back home. Remembering a trick from childhood, I closed my eyes hard and when I opened them little sparks seemed to be twirling in the air over me, an approximation of the stars over Rome. I kept on doing this over and over until finally, after God knows how long, I fell into a deep, deep sleep.

  WHEN I WOKE up the next morning, I didn’t move. For the longest time, I just stared at that tin ceiling. Outside it was gray, with rain drizzling, and I passed the entire day just prowling around the apartment, looking out the windows at the dull houses, picking at the green couch we’d inherited. By six o’clock, Patty couldn’t take it anymore and she urged me to get dressed so we could go shopping for food.

  I hadn’t really thought much about sustenance since we’d arrived, but the mention of food gave me a great idea: I’d cook us dinner. Right away, I knew how I’d begin the meal, with pappa al pomodoro. By the time I had my raincoat on, my mood had swung and I was giddy with excitement.

  We left the building and walked down the road. It was already getting dark and I remember you couldn’t quite see Manhattan in the distance, but you could see the glow of its lights, like a carnival over a hill. Until that moment, I had forgotten that we were in New York City. I don’t know where I thought I was. I guess it didn’t matter. The fact that I wasn’t home was all that really counted.

  We came upon a supermarket. My first impression was less than favorable: the fluorescent lighting was garish, and once the automatic doors slid shut behind us, there was filthy linoleum underfoot.

  I was jet-lagged and disoriented, and I felt like I was suddenly in Eastern Europe. This wasn’t what I thought of when I thought of New York. The store was just four or five aisles that seemed to go on forever, and they were understocked, not like the stores we had in Rome, where everything was bountiful.

  I followed Patty, pushing the shopping cart, one wheel wobbling, as she casually tossed basics into its depths. She also bought something that she called olive oil, but it looked like it was meant for the engine of a car, and it came in a big plastic jug, shaped almost like one you would buy at a gas station.

  Being around food aroused my appetite anyway and I found that I was suddenly starving. I had only been here for about twenty-four hours, but with home so far away, my body was craving something that would reconnect it with the feeling of belonging and of familiarity. I went looking for the produce section, which I thought would be a touchstone, a gateway back, if only through my senses.

  I spotted a wall of leafy greens at the end of the aisle up ahead and stepped up my pace, racing past cereal boxes with unfamiliar cartoon characters on them, and bottles of soda with more familiar names—Coke, Pepsi, Tab.

  Arriving in the produce section, I looked left and right for red, the red of tomatoes, which always stand out among the vegetables. I spotted them on the wall, and beelined for them. But as I approached, it quickly became apparent that something was wrong: the tomatoes were pale and wan and wrapped—pinned would be more like it—against a little rectangular Styrofoam tray, encased by taut cellophane. This strange land in which I found myself had just become even stranger. I looked around: it wasn’t just the tomatoes. Everything was encased in plastic: little culinary condoms covered all the vegetables, from the cauliflower to the corn to the lettuces.

  It wasn’t until then that I really took in the department around me: it was lifeless, and it felt more like an emergency room than a place to present and sell food; and this feeling was only reinforced by the picked-over bins of onions and garlic and by the absence of fresh herbs. In Italy, even in supermarkets, produce was accorded a certain level of respect; the rest of the store might be sterile, but the produce section was a shrine.

  I was overcome with grief. I wanted to drop to the filthy linoleum floor and curl up in a ball. Suddenly,
home—which I had planned to conjure up in the kitchen—seemed once again hopelessly far away.

  I was breathless, almost panting, and my heart was pounding palpably beneath my chest. I felt clammy and cold and disoriented, almost in a dream state. The people around me—a smattering of single elderly shoppers—seemed strange and otherworldly.

  I scanned around for Patty, but she was nowhere in sight.

  I began walking, looking for her, tracing the perimeter of the store. Passing the meat department, I was struck that there was no butcher; all of the cuts had already been made and the anemic specimens were wrapped in plastic just like all the fruits and vegetables. If the produce section was the E.R., then this was the morgue, and the dairy section, too, was a horror, with mass-produced cheeses that looked like they were made of rubber.

  I had never seen anything so bizarre, so antithetical to my idea of food and cooking—which I was realizing right then and there was the same as my idea of life itself.

  I stopped to catch my breath. A thought crept into my head: would wearing a uniform and subjecting myself to military training actually have been worse that what I’d embarked on?

  By the time I found Patty, I was no longer interested in cooking or even in eating. I just wanted to get home, to get into bed, to pull the covers over my head and make myself disappear.

  THREE

  Land of Opportunity

  BACK AT THE apartment, Patty cooked for the two of us, making the chicken cacciatore I’d taught her in Rome. I slouched on the sofa, surfing the handful of television channels available back in those days.

  To my surprise, I quickly came across a familiar face, the politician Ronald Reagan. It was just a few weeks before the 1980 presidential election and he was making a speech. With his rosy Howdy Doody cheeks, rhythmic nodding, and folksy voice, Reagan quickly lulled me into a trance. I couldn’t understand a thing he was saying, but he exuded humanity and warmth and reassured me with his embodiment of everything that I had always associated with America—not New York, but America: its promise, its optimism, its open arms and open mind. If you want to understand the appeal of Reagan, you need look no farther than the sight of me, sprawled out on that sofa, an unshaven, unhappy, newly arrived immigrant, already beaten down by the grimy indifference of the city, but suddenly grinning ear to ear. I felt as if I had found an American papá, my own Uncle Sam. He was such a contrast to the archetypical Italian bureaucrat, those shameless shakedown artists who cared nothing for the people they “served.”

  Just like that, my demons were exorcised. I knew that Reagan had been an actor, like me. Maybe not a very good one, but an actor nonetheless. And now here he was, poised to become president of the United States. This could never have happened in Italy. When I decided to become an actor, it wasn’t just my father who scoffed. Everybody had had their doubts. That’s the way Italians are: you aren’t supposed to stray too far from the family tradition, to get too big a head, to try something too ambitious or outlandish. But this guy, this Reagan, was about to become the most powerful man in the world, and it seemed perfectly natural.

  Of course, I had no idea how long I’d have to stay here in America, or what I’d do. But that’s just the point, I realized: I could do anything.

  I shook off all the negativity I’d been wearing like a shawl since we’d arrived. I shot up off the sofa so quickly that Patty almost dropped the plates she was carrying to the table. I told her that I was over it, and ready to get on with things.

  We made plans to get up early the next morning and go into Manhattan.

  THE NEXT DAY, a Monday, was sunny. I woke up excited, thinking, “Today is the day. Today’s the day I’m going to New York City.”

  We boarded the A train. When we got through the tunnel under the East River and arrived on the Manhattan side, I couldn’t wait to get to the streets. I wanted to exit at the first station, Broadway-Nassau, but Patty talked me out of it and instead we got out at Chambers Street, near Wall Street. The difference between the Financial District and Ozone Park was like the difference between Kansas and Oz: there were huge buildings of marble and steel and glass that towered so high you almost had to bend your back to see up to their tops. It was one of those October days in New York City when it’s summer in the sun and fall in the shade, with the cool air splashing up against your face. In the canyons of the Financial District, the light didn’t come through directly, instead tinting the streets a refracted blue. There was steam billowing up through grates in the sidewalk, where it was sucked up by the wind and dissipated into the air. All around us, American businessmen raced to and fro, briefcases swinging at the ends of their arms like pendulums. The spectacle was insane, but I loved it: I had never seen such a pure expression of the power of money—what it can buy, what it can build, how it makes people feel, and how crazy it makes them act. It was a street-level representation of capitalism, of the raw desire and energy required to milk it for all it was worth.

  And then there were Patty and I, in our jeans and corduroy jackets. We were very out of place, but nobody cared, and I loved that, too.

  We went to see Patty’s family friend, a Yugoslavian immigrant I’ll call Hadi, who was a director of Bank of America on Broad Street. The lobby of his office building was immense and intimidating. We put on little visitor badges and rode the elevator up to his office. After some perfunctory greetings, he took us to lunch in the corporate dining room. Sunlight flooded the room through the floor-to-ceiling windows and I had the sensation we were floating above the city, with a view unlike anything I had ever seen before. As Patty and Hadi spoke, I kept stealing glances out the window: watching taxis and people glide along the streets and sidewalks, the metropolis playing out its life in miniature. As awesome as it was, I was a bit taken aback. One of the things I’d loved most about Florence was being in a city with great restaurants and museums that was also just a stone’s throw from the countryside, a duality that I considered distinctly Florentine. (The closest thing I can think of in the United States is Portland or Seattle, where you have all the electricity of town, but can hop in a car or on a bike, and be hiking up a mountain, or visiting a farm, or gaping at a waterfall in a matter of minutes.) Gazing out over Manhattan from that skyscraper, I was struck that there was no greenery in sight. If you were to put a building this high in Florence, or even in certain parts of Rome, you’d be able to see the countryside beyond the city limits.

  Though I didn’t speak English, Hadi decided to tell me one thing in the language of America: “Just make yourself at home,” he said. “Look at me. I’m an immigrant. I came here and I went through all the steps and now I am what I am.”

  For emphasis, he gestured at the portrait of the bank’s founder, Mr. A. P. Giannini, that hung over the dining room, and with a nod, he added all he thought I needed to hear: “Italian.”

  WE LEFT HADI and walked north. Within minutes we arrived in the West Village, a neighborhood that made me feel right at home with its cobblestone streets and nineteenth-century brownstones. All the buildings were old and low and human, and I felt like I could be in Siena, or Munich, or Amsterdam.

  I couldn’t believe how many different worlds we had been through in just a few hours: Ozone Park, Wall Street, the Village. I had a growing sense that New York could be whatever you wanted it to, that time and space had no meaning—you could snap your fingers and go from one reality to another.

  At the end of the day, we picked up a Village Voice and secured a booth in a coffee shop to go through it and look for apartment listings. There weren’t many, but we mapped them out and scheduled appointments from the pay phone in the back.

  I called my mother to let her know that I was in one piece, and she said that she hoped the situation would be resolved soon. From her somewhat guarded tone, I could tell that my father was close by, but I didn’t ask for him and he didn’t ask for me.

  I also took the opportunity to call my lawyer in Italy and check in on his discussions with the military.r />
  “They don’t want to hear from you,” he told me. “Things don’t look good. There’s a warrant for your arrest. If you come back, you’ll be put in jail.”

  I looked over at Patty, sitting there circling apartment listings with her pen. She was the only person I knew on this side of the ocean, and all those terrible thoughts came flooding back, all those doubts about what might become of me here in America, where I had no marketable skills and didn’t speak the language.

  OF THE TWO of us, Patty was the first one to get a job, as an assistant secretary in the private banking department of Bank of America. Though we were a one-income couple, her salary provided enough money that by the first week in November, we were renting a small, one-bedroom apartment at Third Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street on the Upper East Side. We would rather have been in Greenwich Village, but we couldn’t afford it. This was the only place we could find that had a living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom for just six hundred dollars per month. From inside, the unit was charming, with a generous view down Third Avenue from the living room and kitchen. The owner was Italian—a member of the Bari family of Ray Bari pizza fame—and operated a pizzeria downstairs. He had also had the building painted with broad green, white, and red bands, representing the Italian flag, although he must have had a miscommunication with the painters because the stripes were horizontal instead of vertical. I love Italy, but it was a real eyesore.

  We were living in the promised land of Manhattan, but I was alone during the day, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I walked the streets for hours, aimless and confused. One day, I was on Eighth Avenue and having one of those moments you have when you first move to New York when you can’t tell which way is north and which way is south and haven’t yet learned to use certain markers, like the Twin Towers or the Empire State Building, as reference points.