Merrill Joan Gerber - Botticelli blue skies: an American in Florence

BOTTICELLI BLUE SKIES
AN AMERICAN IN FLORENCE

MERRILL JOAN GERBER

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright 2002 by Merrill Joan Gerber

Published 2014 by Dzanc Books

Cover design by Steven Seighman
Original Cover Painting by Merrill Joan Gerber

978-1-4804-9017-8

Dzanc Books
1334 Woodbourne Street
Westland, MI 48186
www.dzancbooks.org

Distributed by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com

Authors Note

My gratitude and affection to Professor Mario Materassi and his wife, Millicent Lim, who read this book in manuscript and made many valuable suggestions about Italian matters and language. For whatever errors remain, I am solely responsible.

For guidance, support, and friendship, I thank Katerine Gaja, Riccardo and Angela Martelli, Renata Ceramelli, and Emanuela De Carlo.

The events described in this book took place in the fall of 1996.

Though this memoir is factual, in some cases names have been changed.

For Jenijoy La Belle

Contents

I Cant Go To Italy

There is no possibility on earth that I can go to Italy with my husband in the fall. I am too firmly rooted in my California life to pick up and fly across a continent, though he promises me we will have a fine adventure. I cant tell you exactly what will happen, but something will. And it will all be new and interesting.

I explain to him patiently that Italy is irrelevant to the center of my life, whichas he knowsis my mothers endless dying. I cant be across the world when she dies.

Joe points out that my mother has been dying for an extremely long time, more than five years. We are moving along ourselvesif we want to travel, the time for us is now. To each of my arguments he offers a solution. My sister will be here to look after my mother. Our daughters are grown and independent; perhaps one or all three of them can come and visit us in Italy. The cat? We will hire someone to feed him. My writing? I can do my work in Italy as well as here; well take along my laptop computer. He points out the many virtues of this opportunity for him to teach a group of students in Florence for next years fall term. Well have three months in Tuscany, with an apartment provided and my regular salary to live on. How else could we ever afford to live in Italy for three months! I think we should definitely do this, he says. Its our chance.

The next day I go to my mothers bedside at the nursing home, where she lies paralyzed and on a feeding tube. I ask her what she thinks about my going to Italy for three months.

You cant wait for me, I could live to be a hundred. Go and do what you have to do. Ill just be here. And if something happensdont come back.

Meaning?

Meaning if I die, dont come back.

Even with her permission, I am resistant. Do I really want to leave my friends, my comfortable life, my familiar surroundings? Do I want to leave my kitchen appliances, my computer, my down comforter?

Each evening at dinner, as the deadline for Joes decision approaches, he and I debate at the kitchen table, he using words like adventure and travel and new things to think about while I counter with comfort, obligations, our life here. Who will water the plants? Who will take care of the house? I remind him of the scene in Virginia Woolfs To The Lighthouse, whereafter the mother dies and the family abandons the summer housethe place is invaded by the elements, by wind and rain, by rats and mice, and goes to ruin. Joe seems incredulous that I am worried about the grass in the yard, and a few scraggly houseplants. The problem is, hes not a worrier. He doesnt have my highly developed skill of being able to imagine catastrophes.

In secret I invent private, infantile arguments I cant bring myself to say to his face: Ill just be a tag-along teachers wife. Ill be a third wheel. You and the Italian teacher will be a team, and Ill have nothing to do. The students wont be interested in me; youll be too busy to pay attention to me. Ill be bored. Bored in Italy? Id have to be in a coma, I assure myself. One day I am talking to the clerk at the Post Office and remark: I may have to go to Italy for three months. He replies: My heart is breaking for you. You really have my sympathy. He hands me a roll of stamps. Could I come and carry your bags?

Okay, I tell my husband at dinnertime one night. Okay, Ill go to Italy. My tone of voice suggests I have been coerced, have no choice, that I must give in, go to this foreign country and possibly lose my mind there, maybe even my life.

Good, Joe says cheerfully. Ill tell the Director of the Study-Abroad Program that we accept the offer. He gets up from his chair and kisses the top of my head. Thank you, he adds.

With the trip still months away, I begin making my Trip List. Errands to do, items to take, bills to pay in advance, things to be sure not to forget. I will have to interview candidates to feed my cat. I will have to ask my doctor for medicines for every possible disease. (I check the Merck Manual and begin to make lists of what diseases might befall us in Italy.) I will have to buy walking shoes, reinforced and padded, to prepare for the cobblestones of Florence. I will have to get travelers checks, put my checking account in order, exchange dollars for lire. I start looking through my wardrobe and find it totally lacking. I do not own one article of clothing I could take on a trip. I am exhausted already.

In the meantime, Joe gets busy improving his Italian.

Buona sera, signora, says the tape player at breakfast. Dov il gabinetto? Quanto costa un biglietto turistico? Vorrei una birra.

Dont you want to practice? Joe asks me.

And learn to talk like a two year old? No thank you. Arrivederci. Ciao.

Im Going To Italy

As with any major shock in life, the kind you first refuse, then resist, then deny, eventually you must take it in and make a space for it.

I am going to Italy in September, and that is that.

What will I do there? I dont know yet. I hold in my mind, as a kind of mantra, what Joe said to me: I cant tell you exactly what will happen, but something will.

Taking this trip will be a matter of faith. What is the game children play in school to help them learn to trust others? They fall backwards and let others catch them. So I must fall backwards into the arms of Italy and hope to be embraced and treated gently. Still, should the arms of Italy be slightly askew when I land, I have to make some preparations for my being dropped there for three months.

Will I go to the famous museums? Of course, but not too many. Will I go to the great churches? Of course, but not every day. Like a newborn, I will discover life and language at my own pace in this new world.

For the last year or two, my three daughters have communicated with me daily from their various places in the world by e-mail. If I can continue to connect to them from Italy, I will be happy. However, no computer expert to whom I turn for advice seems quite sure how this will work or if it will work; I am cautioned by everyone that Italy is famous for how nothing works as expected. The Italian phone lines are different, equipment from the USA may not recognize Italian dial tones. But slowly I put together a plan: I buy a modem, a voltage regulator, an Italian phone jack, plug adapters, surge protectors, even a portable printer. I subscribe to an internet server that promises a connection in Florence but cautions me: there are no guarantees. The moment of truth will come the day I try to log on.