Marc Alan Di Martino

     My  mother  is  sitting  alone  on  a  park bench in Villa Borghese,  eating

     a  sandwich.  It  isn’t  an  easy  thing  to find a sandwich in Rome in 1966.

     She's  had  to  root  out  the  Bar degli Americani on Via Veneto, near the 

     Embassy,  in   order   to   find   ham   on  white   bread. No mayonnaise.

     Imagine  that: a  Jewish  girl  eating  a  ham sandwich on a  park bench in 

     Rome  with  no  mayo.  What's  she  doing there, so far from home? And 

     where is home, anyway?  Her parents’ home in Brookline, Massachusetts?

     That isn’t home. Not anymore.  She ran away from that home and came to 

     Rome via Paris via San Francisco. Anywhere but at the shabbos table with 

     that  tyrant  her  mother and  her ineffectual father.  A ham sandwich on a 

     park  bench  is  better  than  that,   she  says  to  herself as a dapper man   

     appears  dressed  in  a  smart black suit. She notices... his teeth. Naively,

     she thinks he might be Marcello Mastroianni, her singular destiny to meet

     a movie star, fall in love and become his wife. Live happily ever after. The

     fantasies that run through a young woman’s head. This  man  is not Eddie 

     Fisher.  Nice  Jewish  boy.  Dungaree  Doll.  This  man is  a smooth-talker.

     He  wants  to  sell  her  something.  Realizing  she's American, he begins 

     speaking in broken schoolboy English. He turns  on  the  charm, and she 

     is  charmed.  What is he selling?  Wine—what else?  You're in Italy, poor 

     girl, eating a sandwich, all  alone.  He overwhelms  her,  makes  her  feel 

     like  Audrey  Hepburn.  She,  in  turn,  is  an  easy  target. Not like Italian 

     women. To get into their pants you have to go through their  families.  He

     knows.   He   has   two   sisters.  He’s   always   beating  up  guys  in  his

     neighborhood for putting their hands on them.  He’s got a reputation. But 

     everyone  knows  American  women  are  unmoored.  Why  else do they

     come  here?  To  get  into  trouble.  To  meet a Casanova. To have what's

     called  a  ‘fling’.  (He learned  that word in a movie.)  Then  they  go back

     home and get married to a Rock Hudson or  a John Wayne, have two kids 

     and  two  cars  and  pursue  their  dreams of  happiness. Europeans have 

     history,  Americans  have  dreams. That  seems to him a profound insight.

     My   mother   crinkles  the  cellophane  into  a  ball,  rolls  it  in her palm,

     brushes  the  crumbs from  her  skirt.   He  looks  at  her knees,  the  skin 

     boldly  exposed, wonders  what’s beyond them. She  isn’t  thin, he thinks,

     as  he  absorbs her body with his eyes. He isn’t subtle. You don’t need to

     be in 1966.  All  you  need to have is charm, and he has excellent charm. 

     She  decides in  that  moment  she will go anywhere with this man. She'll 

     do  anything  he asks. She has nothing to lose, no one waiting for her on 

     the  other  side of the ocean,  no Eddie Fisher.  Her brother is married to

     a  German.  Her  brother  the  magician, who disappeared into a German  

     woman  and  never came out. How  she  would  like to disappear into this 

     man, fall  into  the  black  hole of him, learn  to  curse her own parents in

     his  tongue,  allow  the  sensual  inflections  of  Italian to evict the Yiddish

     gutturals  lodged  in  her throat like fish bones. How she would like like to 

     learn  to  trill  her  Rs,  double  her  consonants, put a crucifix around her

     neck  for  the  sheer pleasure  of  seeing her mother’s dumbstruck punim,

     bury  her  alive  with  Roman  invective:  li  mortacci  tua—fuck your dead 

     ancestors—tear  the   crucifix  off  and  flush  it  down  the  toilet,  having 

     exhausted its usefulness. She smooths her skirt, a little flushed.