From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(23)

“They will think they have failed me as parents. I’m abandoning them, not marrying an Italian or a Sicilian. But I love you. That’s all that matters. And right now, I need to swing by Acqua al 2 before I leave.”

“You need to handle this, Saro. That’s what you need to do. And I love you, too.”

The whole situation left me feeling a little more aware of the deep fractures that must have existed in their relationship. And the whole Valentina thing felt insane. Like saying someone from Louisiana couldn’t have a successful relationship with someone from New Jersey. I was getting hot under the collar trying to process all this. I left the couch and poured myself another hefty glass of the kind of wine that can be found in a corner liquor store for under ten dollars. Despite trying to push Saro’s parents to the margins of my mind, inside I felt a weird mixture of confusion, frustration, and anger at the mountain people I had never met. Furthermore, they seemed to paralyze my perfectly capable man with indecision about whether to even talk to them about the most important aspects of his life. And if what he said was true about his parents’ reaction to a girlfriend from a different island in the Mediterranean, what the hell would they think of an American black girl from Texas?

On a crisp afternoon in late November, Saro arrived at our front door after tackling five flights of stairs with all of his luggage from Italy. I had spent the whole day in an excited mania—cleaning, stocking the fridge, rearranging new throw pillows from Pottery Barn on the white shabby chic couch I had purchased with my cash tips from the bar. I had even bought his Italian newspaper and placed it on the kitchen counter. I wanted the place to be perfect and for him to feel at home as soon as he walked through the door. I imagined that we’d make love and make our way across Broadway for a late-night snack, then walk back home via West End Avenue.

The first thing he said when he crossed the threshold was “We did it. I’m here.”

I jumped on him, tying my legs around his waist, refusing to let go. I couldn’t believe the reality of the moment. He held me for a while, and then I gave him a tour of all five hundred square feet of our new home. He loved the exposed brick wall best of all.

“After we settle in, I’ll make us some pasta and let my parents know I made it.”

“What did they say when you told them?” I asked, trying to be casual and nonjudgmental.

“Not much. They aren’t very talkative. My father said nothing. My mother sighed and said, ‘Take care of yourself.’?”

“That’s it?” I tried not to betray my feelings about their less-than-supportive response as I began to help him unpack a few of his clothes. Still, I was unable to push back even as I felt a growing apprehension and distrust for people who could wall off parts of themselves. People like that seemed destined to inflict a world of hurt on themselves or others.

It didn’t take long to finish unpacking. Saro’s wardrobe was minimalist compared to mine of many colors, shoes of every heel height known to womankind. When we were done and he had put his last T-shirt away, I handed him the phone to call his parents. His younger sister, Franca, who was recently married and pregnant with her second child, answered.

“Tell them I arrived,” I heard Saro say in Italian. Then they talked for a few more minutes in Sicilian. Unsure if what I was hearing was a dialect of Italian or a language unto itself, either way I didn’t know or understand a word of it. Hearing just one side of the conversation, it was hard to tell if Saro’s parents were home or not, harder still to gauge how the call home was settling with him. When he hung up, he just smiled and headed into the kitchen. As much as I wanted to launch into a full inquiry, I chose to let it be. He was visibly tired. It was our first night in a new city, starting our new lives. All I wanted was to make love, eat, and perhaps take an evening stroll along the Hudson. In that precise moment, I was more than willing to let his parents remain at the margins of the dream life that was just coming into fruition.



* * *



Saro mixed fresh pasta dough delicately by hand in that postage stamp–sized kitchen. I came up behind him, looked over his shoulder, and said, “I think we should get married.” In the three days since he had arrived, that was all I could think about. We had talked about it generally for months, but now that we were living together the desire had new urgency.

He didn’t look up. “Sure, of course.”

My asking him to marry me while he was making pasta just seemed the most natural and logical thing to do.

“We need it for the INS. You need to have permanent resident status so you can work. We can go down to City Hall.”

He laid the dough out on a cutting board and sliced into it, making ten-inch-long strips and then rolling them over into long thin tubes.

“Of course, let’s do it, amore.” And he reached over and kissed me. It was the kind of kiss that was both simple and affirmative. Half an hour later, we ate while looking out onto the terrace and back sides of the brownstones of 91st Street. We agreed we’d tell no one of our marriage plan. A wedding would come later. For now, this moment was just about us. We chose my close college friend Susan to be our witness. Susan was good with discretion and anything romantic. She worked at the World Trade Center, near City Hall in lower Manhattan. A quick call, and she agreed to meet us on her lunch break and be our witness.

We applied for a license and bought rings in the West Village. They were simple silver bands—two for twenty dollars from a vendor who sold incenses, roach clips, and I LOVE THE BIG APPLE T-shirts. We put the rings on and then walked around the corner to get a cappuccino at Caffè dell’ Artista on Greenwich Avenue. I loved that café, with its mismatched antique tables, bohemian lamps, and deep couches throughout. But my favorite thing about the café was the custom of patrons leaving an aspirational message, confession, desire, or literary quotes in the drawers of the desktops and tables throughout the café. Sometimes there were whole love letters written years earlier. That day I left my own message: “I want to spend my life in love and companionship.”