The Italian Teacher(17)
Pinch is a source of fascination because he is a proper American. Or so they believe. By passport, he’s a Canadian like his mother. Anyway, when he utters English words, it sounds exotically American to them.
“Jets!” a girl echoes when he mentions “jazz.”
“BROOK-leen!” another cries, contributing the only English word that enters her mind, then hiding against her boyfriend’s shoulder.
“Man-AT-tan!” someone adds.
His celebrity increases when he claims intimate knowledge of New York City. This is not strictly true, but he is visiting there soon—a fact that makes him smile uncontrollably. The invitation came during his last phone call with Dad, who said casually, “Why in hell don’t I ever see you, kiddo? I’m busting for a bit of Charlie around these parts!”
“Could I come out there one time?”
“Nothing would make me happier, old man! Tell your mom to arrange it. On me, naturally.”
Pinch has barely slept a full night since. At lunch break he pores over the school copy of the New York Herald Tribune to prepare himself: gleaming astronauts, President Lyndon B. Johnson, humble sportsmen doffing caps. Even the stock tables signify something now, pulsating beneath black print.
Speaking to these Roman teens, he fixes on one girl—overweight, pimply—who watches him with viridian eyes, though he is seeing her in black-and-white, a photo of Jayne Mansfield in a cleavage-exposing blouse, his pulse quickening, casting ahead to Manhattan bohemia. He intends to kiss a girl during his New York trip, and hears himself confiding to the Italians what he has not dared tell his mother: He won’t be returning here. Rome is a backwater for the modern artist. Crumbled ruins, crumbled careers. He is moving to New York for good.
“Magari, un giorno leggerò il tuo nome sul giornale,” the girl says, impressed.
Blushing, chuckling, he looks down at his shoes, in love with this young woman whom he’ll never see after today. He thrills at the self-sacrifice of this. The first of many loves, he thinks when lying in bed that night, impatient for the future.
16
Wearing blazer and tie, Pinch is sandwiched between two businessmen who squash him without compunction. Never having flown before, the boy lurches at each shudder of turbulence, scanning other passengers for panic. To calm himself, he visits the toilets, splashes water on his face, his fleshy pink lips gnawed, greasy blond hair short, a neat side-parting swept across, a few pale chin whiskers.
He’s not the baby of the family anymore, and has younger siblings to meet in America. Pinch intends to take a big-brother role with them but is unsure what this entails. All he knows about his extended clan comes from Birdie, who is in her early twenties now, apprenticing at stables in Kentucky. (Her teen love of horses wasn’t just a phase, it turns out.) She stayed in touch, writing every few months since that summer, often to bemoan their father. With a chill, Pinch recalls her trip to Rome, a previous kid from a previous family, meeting the new Bavinsky clan. He cannot blunder, won’t crowd Dad, nor argue. Recently, Birdie was driving to a horse farm in Upstate New York and she dropped by Dad’s, meeting his new wife then writing Pinch a catty letter about the woman. “Just Daddy’s type, in the worst way,” she said—which has resolved Pinch to like the new Mrs. Bavinsky.
At the airport arrivals, Carol spots him and waves. A big-boned blonde in her early thirties, she folds her chewing gum into a paper napkin, then smiles. “So pleased to meet you, son!” They drive and drive, ignoring each turnoff for Manhattan. Pinch always assumed that Dad’s mailing address of “Larchmont, New York” was a neighborhood of New York City. Instead, they motor deep into Westchester County.
“I was so sorry we never met in Rome,” Carol remarks.
“Oh yes,” he says, perplexed. “I didn’t really know you lived there.”
“Oh, sure. That’s where me and your pop met. It’ll always feel so romantic to me: Bear’s studio by the Tiber. Makes me swoon still.”
“You were there?”
“Was I? How many hours I sat posing in that cave of his! But don’t you adore Italy?” she continues. “What I wouldn’t give for those Roman meatballs!”
Hazily, Pinch gazes through the station wagon window. He orders himself to be charming. “Yes, meatballs are neat,” he agrees. “I guess that, um, guess I never thought of them as especially Roman. They make me think of Sweden.”
“Where’s Sweden again, honey? Is that in Switzerland?”
He turns to her. She looks back guilelessly, then at the road. “Gee, I sure love Europe.”
He heaves his luggage into their sprawling suburban home, craning around for Bear, whom he expected at the airport. Pinch wipes his clammy fingers on the tie, chest thudding beneath.
“Well, well, well—see what the wife dragged in. Put it there, kiddo!” Bear, not seen for four years, shoots out his hand as he strides toward Pinch. His youngest daughter, Widgeon, hugs to her father’s leg, a six-year-old goggling up at her own personal giant. Following is Dad’s eight-year-old, Owen, who lugs a thick medical textbook.
Before thinking, Pinch charges to his father, causing the man to tuck his visiting son (suddenly little again) against his chest, kissing his temple, a big loving smack. “Been busting to see you!”
That phrase—“busting to see you!”—fills Pinch nearly to busting. Yet he shrinks back, fearing he’s done something stupid and has deflated their affection. Scratching his beard, Bear grins down, admiring this half-grown little man. He grabs Pinch’s suitcase and lugs it upstairs, everyone tromping after. Pinch follows so close as to inadvertently step on the back of his father’s slippers. Owen keeps tapping his new stepbrother on the shoulder, and when Pinch turns, the kid holds up his medical book, open to an image of burn victims. Unaware, everyone continues to the guest room, where Bear tosses his son’s suitcase on the bed.