From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home(24)

When we finally stood in the small government office with the justice of the peace at a podium and a sliver of a view of the East River through a small window, I was giddy in a white floral blouse and black pleated pants. Saro had his Italian newspaper in hand. Susan, always one to wear her emotions on her sleeve, stood behind us in tears. I held Saro’s hand and couldn’t believe the clipped speed at which the county clerk married folks. In less than five minutes, we were husband and wife, and neither of our families knew. It was just what we wanted.

The sun was bright as we left the dark recesses of City Hall. We figured the best way to celebrate was with a slice of pizza and a slow walk back uptown. Traversing Manhattan as newly married people would happen only once. We took the scenic route, stopping in Chelsea, crossing Times Square, and then passing Lincoln Center before making our way back to the apartment on 92nd Street. We stopped and bought cheese at Zabar’s. That night we had pecorino grated over more of Saro’s homemade pasta. I poured wine, and we toasted each other. My life felt rich with possibility. I had the man of my dreams at my side and the sense the career I had always dreamed of was within arm’s reach. I was in the pulse of magic.



* * *



“You’ve got to tell them,” I said to Saro as we went for a late-morning jog around the Hollywood Reservoir, a glorified municipal pond perched on a swanky hill among celebrity compounds and eucalyptus trees. Our time together in New York had turned out to be short lived. After I landed a minor recurring role on a soap opera, my first real TV credit, I had immediately gotten an agent, who told me I needed to come to Los Angeles as soon as possible. We had no furniture or jobs but plenty of aspiration. I booked my first audition and immediately I told Saro, “I think I could get used to this.”

The years since we’d been in L.A. had flown by in a clipped pace of auditions, scripts, rejections, and figuring out where to get the best Italian coffee. We didn’t know many people yet, and the sheer expanse of the city was mind-numbing. But we had the distraction of planning our official wedding, which would take us back to Florence to exchange nuptials in front of friends and family.

In the nearly five years that Saro and I had been together, I had barely even so much as exchanged hellos with his parents over the phone. Still, it was a surprise for me when I learned that Saro had yet to tell his parents that we were getting married (again), this time in Italy.

The invitations had been ordered in English and Italian. “We request the honor of your presence at the marriage of . . .” Saro had scored a rather grande dame of a sapphire ring with facets so blue it was audacious enough to make the Mediterranean go green with envy. It was a five-carat Ceylon royal blue oval flanked by six round-cut diamonds in an antique setting of 18-karat white and yellow gold. I knew that ring would take me a lifetime to grow into. Everything was coming together.

“I know, I know,” he continued the conversation. He struggled for breath, him the tortoise to my hare. “Slow down!”

“So when?” I picked up the conversation in the confines of our tiny Toyota as I coasted down the winding Hollywood Hills and Saro searched the floorboards for a stray bottle of water. Any mention of his parents reminded him of their relationship, fraught with disappointment, worry, and fear. Those had been fracture points long before he had fallen in love with me.

“Not on the phone. I have to do this my way,” he said, flushed with growing anger by the time he turned the key to our apartment on Kenmore Avenue in Los Feliz.

“Saro, you are not leaving this apartment until you sit down and write the letter,” I said, angling past him to be the first to get into the shower and putting in my final two cents’ worth.

Exactly five drafts, three days, and two nights of painful insomnia later, he had a letter ready to send. It read (in Italian):

Dearest Mamma and Papa,

I had hoped to not have to share this news with you in a letter, but there is no way I can say this in person. I am getting married. I love Tembi, and we will spend the rest of our lives together. Our wedding will be in Florence this summer on July 26. I hope you will choose to come. I welcome your presence.

Your son,

Saro

I mailed the letter, and then we waited.

When the response came from Sicily two weeks later, it was decisive and delivered in a three-minute crackly phone call. His father, Giuseppe, said, “Non ho più figlio—I have no son.” Saro was devastated. Watching him retreat inward was painful, like wanting to soothe a wounded animal but having no means to do so. I tried to cheer him up, but I was crushed under the weight of my own free-floating disappointment and disillusionment. I had never seen this coming.

If mistrust had a minion, Saro’s father was its most loyal one. That much I had gathered from the bits and pieces Saro had reluctantly offered up over the years. I knew, for example, that Giuseppe hadn’t spoken to his own brother-in-law for nearly twenty years because of a joke—he hadn’t liked the punch line. I also knew he raised garlic and fermented his own wine; he had flat feet and knobby knees; he played cards, not dominoes, but never for money. Money he kept in a tight wad, swaddled in plastic and stuffed between the slats under his mattress. Rarely in the bank. He trusted the post office more than the bank because the postman lived in his town; he knew where to find him. The banker was from one town over. Basically, Giuseppe trusted no one born outside the entrance and exit of his nearly forgotten mountain town. That included me.