I’ve been cracking away at this chapter with the spirit of Marilyn Monroe to be frank with you. For some reason, she’s been very present for me, on my mind, as I have attempted this treatment, and I’ve made some headway.
I get to Naples to reunite with my cousins…early…to not tell them my story at Christmas. I came early in the style of Bonnie Hunt in Only You…trying to speak Italian, explain it. So here it is…just sharing a little section of it.
You know, it’s a delicate balance — does it not work? Should I insist? Still don’t know but I’m trying to build this chapter almost like a song…and you know, just to say, by this point, though they don’t, that my father had Alzheimer’s…at least. You’ll be able to tell, I think, and I’m trying to let that live…? We’ll see.
You see, to them, I didn’t remember who I was. I didn’t catch that…but I did catch a line on guitar strings across the hall, his voice soft.
“La la la la…”
I opened the door, didn’t make a sound, didn’t want to disturb anybody.
“Un papillon…un papillon di seta blu…”
Approaching the door, for my thirtieth birthday, an impossible, electric blue hit me on wings just like my mother: Joy. Almost unnatural this blue, brilliant, butterfly from the Amazon in a black case. Just the contrast, like Naples. Awareness even. Communication too. My friends told me the salesperson said that they didn’t want it because it was missing an antenna. I had barely opened it.
“It’s perfect,” they said.
Many teased me that I was a little “special.” I always got warmhearted about it, somehow comforted when people saw that I was different but why was I missing something? Oh, but that’s what we love about you. I was beginning not to. I didn’t know what to do with that because it wasn’t exactly…true…It was the most beautiful gift I had ever received…My life was a gift…
Um, into the room, on the edge of a duvet a darker shade of blue, he strummed his guitar.
“A butterfly…of?”
Across his neck, he made it: a blue bowtie.
It’s called that?
I sat down.
They moved three beds into this room so I could have my own. I felt bad.
“Si, si,” he nodded in a cool clean light coming over my figure.
We made the gesture for “imagination,” yes.
“Bello…”
He strummed his guitar, gave me the title with an okay sign.
“Vecchio Frac.”
“It’s about a man…”
“I see yellow…”
“Si, si.”
He turned on the street lamps.
“The streets at midnight…”
“It’s dark, nothing, niente…”
“The streets are deserted, silent, one last carriage, wheels crack, disappears—crash, into the night.”
He moved his hand to describe the man, how he moved, the atmosphere.
He made a suit, even elegant.
“He wears a top hat, two diamonds as…a cane…crystal, a flower…and…on top of his white waistcoat…”
“Does he really say all that?’’
The bowtie, in suspension.
“Si, si,” he reassured me, played on.
“A window yawns on the silent river and in the white light, a hat, flower, tailcoat float away…”
“Who IS this person invisible?”
In French.
“No one knows...”
Carmine continued his song.
“Bello,” I said.
“You…”
Legend goes that Naples vowed to rise a city of music when their siren failed to lure Odysseus and washed ashore. Naples traces its lineage back to this moment weaved in myth and mystery and music just like my beginnings. We gave gifts to this creature for her song, in no imminent danger, but she gained the reputation of being an evil songstress when she might have been gifted even a healer. A story can travel so far away from its origins in other words that it can end up meaning something else entirely. We think we know the story but we may discover that we were wrong, didn’t have the full picture, even about ourselves.
He wanted me to sing with him. I didn’t want to.
He looked at me as if I wasn’t Maria.
I didn’t understand his reaction.
He didn’t understand mine.
That’s all “you” did.
“I did?”
“Si.”
“I write Carmine…”
Hand over his mouth, bathed in light, he pressed.
“How do you…not sing anymore?”
I searched through the light, I always did that. Out the sliding glass door, took in the tub for a balcony, a cool clean light that day.
“Write, sono chill, okay? You know this…?”
I didn’t have the word for word.
Carmine took the bait, getting cold quizzically.
“No, no,” I cracked up.
But they didn’t let up, not about this.
“Calm.”
I was anything but.
A race car skidding fast around a curve on TV, Franco swept me away.
“YOU? YOU stopped singing?”
Flora appeared from the kitchen, a warm glow.
Carmine pushed up his glasses. Apparently.
“Maria?”
Flora rang, above, like are you there?
Maybe I wasn’t understanding…
They pursued me; this was strange. Meaning, my demeanor the second…I came back.
I cracked up.
You’re joking? Why was I laughing? Why is she laughing? Are you trying to be funny? It’s not a funny joke. Franco.
“What the fuck do you do then …?”
“She writes,” Carmine said.
Franco judged me.
“TU,” I gave him a full body there because he kept saying “you.”
“Si…”
Flora floated.
“YOU DON’T SING ANYMORE?”
Why did he keep on saying it?
“Si, si” Flora nudged me to say the obvious.
“Sing…”
She shrugged yes.
How could I not crack up?
“Eh,” Flora was tight, uncomfortable.
I could only crack up sometimes…
With my story, I could only crack up sometimes.
I wasn’t expecting this…”
Any of this…
Like Carmine with his guitar. How well he played, how well he remembered.
Hey, you know, “you sang me a silly song…”
They just didn’t stop.
“Oh?”
Carmine paused.
“Si, what was it…from a cartoon… what was it? It was funny…”
“Non remember…”
“Yes you do…”
“I did?”
He remembered this?
Walnuts…sunlight flickering through large leaves…yellow on the pavement…calla lilies rippling through the air like paper airplanes, cacti and agave, wispy vines crawling over a black fence…
I remembered when I first arrived at Angela and Vico’s house…the creaking of their front door…opening…
His eyes sparkling as fierce as the sea at high noon, he shot me at nine with a song from ‘69 like a sniper, direct, in the French.
“Sento—”
No sooner did I shut the gate all these years later did he open his front door and launch the same lyric over jasmines, camelias, fleche like feathers, and crawling vines and hook me as a child back in time with my mouth agape and pulled.
“Sento—”
I feel.
The beginning of everything.
Affecting, Carmine described it.
“Touching,” he said, nasal, flat.
So were they. A blue façade across the street had the same squiggly diamond gate. He looked to the side like…this was always your quality.
“Io?”
“Si,” unaffected.
“Wasn’t it a Disney song?”
“No lo so!”
“You translated it…”
“Oh?”
“Si.”
Carmine searched.
In my eyes, he pulled it back.
What, what was that song…
A song is a real hook, Vico knew it well, so when he stepped out his front door and launched the same line over the vines, I burst into my mother’s smile, Joy. Oranges hanging above me, I couldn’t believe it then and now. I took off like I did when I was a kid, shooting back.
He was a “siren!”
A real siren!
Dorothea crawlers rushed over the roof of the pink and grey house trees rising tall behind it against clouds thick and periwinkle, palms like daggers, Augusta paddles huge and floppy, olives, and oranges, oranges, oranges.
“La la la…”
Into the room a darker shade of blue, remembering my nature, “la la la la…”
“Something about not knowing each other…but we were,” I interrupted him.
“Vero, tu,” I pointed to my head.
He remembered this?
“Si, si,” he gestured.
“We were on a journey of some kind…”
“Really?”
Family always was, really.
Swept away, on a dark, dark highway, they impaled me from so many directions headed down one road: Christmas.
It wasn’t so much that I reunited with my cousins, that was part of it…Franco coming after me with Formula One on TV. Family had one result — crash, into the night, a wall, an atmosphere. Up in smoke, that was family from day one. Four years old. I got it, finally.
“A princess…”
He insisted.
“Oh?”
Yes, this atmosphere.
Back in a beautiful costume.
“Eh, it’s Disney…what else would it be?”
“Lo so…”
I sort snapped, felt bad.
“Doesn’t know that though…”
“Maria, it’s a girl who was a princess but forgot? Love is a river…?”
I was floored, pieces falling into place.
“Anastasia?!”
His brows lifted.
“Love is a river, no?”
A song about a girl who doesn’t remember who she is…
A cool, clean light, soft, began to break through the dark, casting an unforgettable glow around Carmine, the man who could understand me when no one else could. The story I had was my problem that I had to resolve. It’s a story about an orphan, I thought, and I wasn’t but it became part of the mystique about me.
Aunt Jane called me Little Orphan Annie — “given away to Brazilians?!”
What was my story even? I didn’t remember who I was, where I came from.
But Vico hooked me long ago! Before I even crossed the threshold. A ghost of a line that tugged from time to time, it never let me go. I couldn’t contain my joy, how he, in a paradise coming to life, never called me by name only by this song. Joy! He too could erupt through the plum trees, his dark curls tight, his apron hanging loose, through the apricots too.
“Sento!”
I feel! The beginning of everything.
We frolicked, truly speaking.
“La la la!” I had never been so happy
I was a kid once.
Swept away, on a dark, dark highway, I didn’t know. They impaled me from so many directions! Joy! Franco coming after me with Formula One on TV…about that, too.
We can begin a story from many angles. We can end up somewhere else entirely. For them, music was my true root, beginning, before everything. The music, the music, shocked me, so unresolved, even bitter. I couldn’t believe how much they cared about that — a family coming after me. It blew me away…down a dark, dark highway…I didn’t understand.
Carmine turned down the music a moment and tried to, rubbing his palm, which he always does when he’s thinking, basically explain it. Speaking slowly, which itched me, he made a pinch with his fingers tapping on the invisible wall, pecking around. Like, churning the soil, even, the ground of me, it didn’t make sense. Where I was…now. Directionally speaking.
Opening a book even with his hands, trying to unfold the material of it, um, he had to, “it’s normal for a family to do this…” He couldn’t quite see the road we were on either even with his owl eyes, all-seeing, meeting mine.
Was it? Was this what family did? Well, there were many families out there.
“This is not the point,” he said. I was from here.
The deal, we made the deal in sounds, finger scanning it. He made it with a sound, to end it.
“E TE?”
Brows raised, not as transparently expressive as I am, we had always been a pair though so “meh, bah, it wasn’t the same…”
But we had always been a pair, Carmine and I.
In the hall, I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know Carmine could play like that.
“La la la…”
Staring at the hangers in a basket in the next room, what do I do?
Flora’s slippers clicked across the hall in a confident sweep as if it were her house.
I froze, sorry.
“Maria?”
Clear tone.
I pointed to the hangers, should I act like I didn’t know, intend to take them. I didn’t know how to act in this case…she frowned, just take some. I smiled my mother’s smile.
“Grazie,” she seemed sort of pinched about that.
I heard Carmine’s soft voice, his guitar strings, mostly.
I played innocent, how did she feel about it, since we already talked about it? With Carmine’s head graining back for “before” with his silky sails. This is my Filippa, it is I Achille Papin, excuse me. I had to stay silent even, respectfully, to his playing. A carriage in a late-night, acid-yellow atmosphere, crash into the night. I conjured it.
“Bello…”
I said, even toward her, his mother.
“Si, si.”
Right.
I see.
No, “si, si,” she said, he plays well. It’s true.
You see, I didn’t remember who I was and Carmine didn’t know who he was. Putting his guitar down with her longer fingernails so well kept, maybe he did.
I’ll stop there for a moment because this might — the transition into Carmine might come a little later. But I think it works, even if it’s going to take me a second to work the style and understand the chapter breaks.
If you think about a Christmas tree — how you decorate it, build it, you go a little up, down, around. And I like that image.
What I’m doing on this dark road with Carmine, and I pushed ahead, is getting to the bar — that’s Carmine’s band, the man of the hour. I’m going to realize it’s Christmas.
I came early because of my story.
Probably will try and warn them — cheering.
I didn’t remember myself and they welcomed me back in song.
That’s the point of this first section.
They impaled me from so many angles to pull me home — I was in pieces. In a sense, a real one. That’s Vico. I found myself as a party — I was home, I had a song.
It even bonded me with Rosa since this song is about the two of us. Family.
So that’s where I am at today.
“What were you expecting?” The lead singer of his band says.
“You disappeared…”
“I did?”
“Yes, it’s not a secret.”
“Isn’t it normal for…a family to be happy when a family member returns?”
Sure, in song.
I’ll try to keep maybe Vico running through this first section — they welcomed me back in song…and maybe move the Carmine section a little later…once we get into the bar. “What does it take to stay together…” we’ll understand his band of ten years is at risk…one last…Christmas. A warm glow. What does it take to make it…
I’ll probably head for Angela around then — into a house, smells, home. Angela’s cooking.
I am remembering all this from a different place. So, once more time with joy…I’m sure I’ll say it more than once. For the moment, I like just the touch of my mother, Joy, a ghost. It, feeling wise, hits the right note. The drive through it all — the charge, you’ll get that. I didn’t want to lose it.
Again, it’s more like plugging into the emotional current and beginning to tell the story of it with these pieces. The order of them, if you would, is less my concern.
Anyway, thanks for reading!