I got married on Capri, which doesn’t sound too bad. Nobody from my family was there. In fact, I was barely there myself. Our anniversary? You tell me.
I don’t put much store in weddings, funerals, and the like. I haven’t remembered anybody’s birthday since I was born. As for my own, I wouldn’t know it if they didn’t hand me a cake. You’d think that somebody with my capacity for numbers wouldn’t have a hole in his brain where events are supposed to be, but there it is. I call it a defense mechanism.
I was just in Naples for my father-in-law’s 85th birthday. He looks great, as dapper as ever, though I wish he’d wear some kind of diaper, since elegance wears thin if you can’t hold it in. And my poor mother-in-law is a wreck, with new hips, knees, and elbows all screwed into the tiniest bits of living bone – all out of alignment and ready to collapse. What’s amazing, though, is how she brings it off, how dignified she is, and how beautiful. What she reveals is nothing, which is a miracle of upbringing. Because you have to remember: likewise incontinent, she’s also somewhat crazy, which seems to run in good families.
Everybody says my father-in-law is in denial. Like, he refuses to get my mother-in-law a wheelchair. A wheelchair doesn’t look seemly, as if needing three people to get her from the car into the restaurant looks better. On Capri, we have what looks like a dining room chair with tiny little wheels, which takes two people to navigate and remains the only concession my father-in-law is willing to make towards the law of gravity.
All during the weekend he was worried about his boat, which he has every intention of using this summer, and which thought strikes terror in the heart of anyone obliged to join him, like me. We’re all convinced that my mother-in-law will die on that boat, one broken joint over her limit, while trying to obey my father-in-law’s command to jump, something she will never do again, so that they might board another yacht and join some friends for lunch.
I saw L’avventura recently, without subtitles. You don’t need subtitles either. I imagined the cast in 60 years, like the world’s longest running reality show, and there I am - still watching. Who wouldn’t? I still don’t know what those people are looking for, but trying to find it is compelling as ever. As for the girl who got lost, I guess married her.
So far, my wife seems perfectly sane. Then again, so did her mother when we got married. My wife’s brother, on the other hand, is ready for a straight jacket. This guy looks like a movie star except now he’s back at home, wandering all over the house in his underwear like a ghost who eats, which turns out to be not very attractive.
My brother-in-law was married to a perfect gold-digger - tits, legs, everything. She didn’t realize how crazy he was until it was too late. She also thought he had money, which he most certainly does not. Now she exists only by phone, hounding the poor wretch for dough. He’s 57 and still bumming cigarettes, unable to afford his own, as he sends every Euro his father gives him to this woman. When asked about his son, my father-in-law always says that everything is fine. All is normal. If you consider that certain families have crazy people and gold-diggers, I guess it is.
My father-in-law’s best friend just died, which cast a pall over the birthday festivities. This best friend was best by default, the latest in a line of dominoes that have been falling over lately. My father-in-law hadn’t seen the widow since the funeral, so my wife and I insisted that we take her out to dinner, which we did the night before the party.
The widow is an English Lady who fell in love long ago with a gorgeous Italian who had the sweetest boat in the darsena. She left her husband and children to do it, but it always seemed well worth the trouble. Now that he's dead, for the first time in 40 years, she’s a stranger in a strange land. Don’t get me wrong - her Italian is perfect. She just isn’t Italian.
This lady accuses everyone she meets of ulterior motives, which is entirely justified in Naples. But in her case, it’s to disavow the truth of her own life. Every time a stranger appears on the scene she suspects them, as if by doing so she can level the field, hurt as she was hurt, judge as she was judged. I got the treatment, believe me, and not from anybody but her. Still, I won her over once it was apparent that I was able to pick up the check once in awhile. Besides, she gets to speak in English with me, like someone gasping for air.
My father-in-law managed to get through three courses without mentioning the deceased’s name. This guy was the life of the party, and it didn’t matter that his absence was like a gaping hole in the floor. To mention his name would be to acknowledge his demise, which is something my father-in-law is not prepared to do.
As for the English Lady, she’s all alone, poor thing. With her husband dead, she has only herself to consider. She has to finish living the dream, alone among the company she chose to keep, hanging on as long as possible, which is what everybody else seems to be doing over there.
