Living in a Foreign Language by Michael Tucker

Author:Michael Tucker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2007-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Mayes and Bruno

“You know, you could really lighten this place up,” he said, his eyes darting around the room. “I had plans to knock this wall down so that it opened up to the new section. And then maybe move the fireplace more to the middle.”

Knock the wall down? It’s 350 years old; I’m going to knock it down? “Sure, why not?”

He grinned. “You got a pen?”

I fetched a pen and paper and he started sketching. I watched over his shoulder as our dark little salotto turned into a gracious, sun-filled room with space for a long dining table with all our friends around it, and comfy chairs by the fire. There was a curved staircase in the new part that led to a new master bedroom upstairs—also equipped with a fireplace. He did all this with a few quickly drawn lines on paper.

“You want a Jacuzzi?” That grin again.

I started salivating with the possibilities.

“Martin said we might—”

“Yeah, Martin’s good,” he said dismissively, his eyes moving around the room again.

Martin’s an architect; Bruno designs movie sets. Martin deals with real houses; Bruno makes pictures—beautiful pictures.

“Pasta’s ready!” Caroline from the kitchen.

We sat down to steaming bowls of tortellini Bolognese, spooning freshly grated parmigiano on top. I opened the next bottle and filled everyone’s glass. Bruno tasted the pasta, and then tasted again.

“Wow, this is the real thing. You got it right.”

I blushed with pleasure.

“You know, when Mayes and I first got married, she cooked pasta for me.”

“I had to learn Italian cooking immediately,” said Mayes in her Mexican-accented English. “Or he would have divorced me.”

“So I’m sitting there,” said Bruno, “waiting for my first dinner from my new wife—spaghetti carbonara, which she knows I’ve loved since I was a little kid in Rome. She brings it very proudly to the table and I see immediately it has little peas in it, and prosciutto instead of pancetta and . . . I couldn’t believe it!!”

“You said it was great,” piped in Mayes.

“Yeah, it was fine, but it wasn’t carbonara! Carbonara is pancetta, eggs, cheese, spaghetti. Basta cosi! I told her she could call it anything she wants—call it pasta vaffanculo—just don’t tell me I’m having carbonara!”

Pasta vaffanculo, by the way, can be roughly translated as “pasta up your ass.”

“So, the next day,” continues Bruno, “she brings me this pasta—it had like American ketchup on it and . . . I don’t know what else. And I asked her, ‘What’s this?’ And she looks right into my eyes and tells me, ‘That’s pasta vaffanculo.’

“I never criticized her cooking again.”

We had more tortellini; we filled the wineglasses again; we told stories about past cooking disasters, which quickly reminded me to check on my chickens in the fireplace. Then Jill cleared the pasta bowls and set the plates for our secondo, while I cut up the chickens—done just fine, thank God—into serving pieces. Mayes and Caroline talked about taking a hike together the next morning and Jill said that she would join them. That meant the girls could now eat the next course without guilt.

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