Chapter 23 A Father Out of Water
A Father Out of Water
“May I have some cheese?” George asked, sitting at a table outside of a restaurant on the Campo Santa Margherita square in Venice.
Despite the punishing heat of the early afternoon and a mob of tourists bumping into each other while all trying to take the same pictures, this city had an impenetrable charm.
They’d secured an outdoor table draped in a white tablecloth, resting under an awning and roped off from the crowds spilling gelato all over themselves. Italy had a smell to it, a combination of pasta cooking in a pot, coffee, a hint of cigarettes, fresh flowers, and maybe chocolate.
The handsome server, dressed in black, shook his head. “Non capisco.” I don’t understand.
“Queso, I mean. Or . . .” George looked at Bianca, who was immersed in her bowl of squid ink pasta—totally black pasta—quite possibly the most disgusting dish he could ever imagine. “How do you say cheese, B?”
She looked up, oblivious to the conversation he was trying to have with the server. “Formaggio.”
Back to the server, George asked, “Can I get some formaggio, per favore?” How was it possible that these Italian men were all so good looking? No wonder Bianca wanted to live here.
Suddenly paying attention, Bianca mocked him. “Can I get some formaggio? Dad, please never say that again. It’s: potrei avere del formaggio? Try it.”
George mangled it but did his best.
The server shook his head. “No.” Then he said something in Italian. George looked at Bianca for a translation.
“He’s asking why.”
“Why? Because I need cheese.”
“For what?”
Growing slightly frustrated at how difficult this seemingly simple request had become, he gestured toward his shrimp pasta. Or gamberetti, whatever. It was getting cold, that was for sure.
“For my pasta. Why else would I need cheese?”
The server shook his head and spoke more Italian to Bianca. They were sharing a “moment” that George didn’t appreciate for a host of reasons.
“What’s he saying?”
Bianca broke into an infuriating laugh. “You can’t put cheese on seafood pasta. It’s a sin. Like dipping fries in soy sauce. You don’t do it.”
He unfurled his hands. “It’s my pasta. I want cheese.” Was this a fucking Seinfeld bit?
“He won’t give it to you.”
A standoff followed. Dead quiet. George looked at Bianca, then the server. He wasn’t sure whether they were pulling his leg. “Are you messing with me?”
“No,” Bianca said through a giggle. “The Italians take their food seriously. He won’t give it to you.”
“Okay, fine. Gracias,” he said to the server.
“It’s grazie!”
“Grazie,” George corrected. “And keep your eyes off my daughter.”
When the server left, George took a sip of his water. “I don’t know how you do it. These people are nuts.”
“Because they don’t like cheese on pasta?”
“Because I can’t put cheese on my pasta. I’m not putting it on his pasta.”
“Still, it’s an insult to the chef.”
“He should try it. I think he’d be surprised.” George looked at his plate. Six shrimp still in the shell. “And they couldn’t even take the heads off. I should get a discount for having to do it myself. Do I have to go back and wash the dishes afterward?”
Bianca motioned to a table of people who were gawking at them.
“What?” he said, not appreciating how she was making him out to be the bad guy.
“Dad, you’re ridiculous. Please stop embarrassing yourself and go with the flow. This is what travel is, learning other cultures. Seeing that things are done differently.”
George sighed. She was right. “Okay, okay.” He took a bite. “It is good, though. I’ll give them that.”
“Darn right, it’s good. We’re in Venice. Some of the best food in the entire world.” She twirled up a bite of her black pasta with shellfish. “Taste it.”
“Um, no thank you. I prefer my pasta without black toxic goo. And so sue me, I like it with cheese.” He shook his head, then looked up at Bianca. God bless her, she was giving him some slack and grinning, accepting him for who he was. Even George had a hard time accepting George.
And her patience for him, layered with the obvious and infectious love, did something to him deep down, rattled his cage.
He laughed at himself and at this whole absurd ride called life. “All right, okay. Let me try again. I don’t mean to be obnoxious.”
“Look at you,” she said. “I think you’re having fun. Even without cheese on your shrimp pasta.” She offered him a bite of her black sludge noodles again.
He backed away. “Muffin, not even Sir Parm would eat that vile concoction.”
Bianca wasn’t having it, and he knew that look in her eye, because her mother often had the same one. She wanted something and wouldn’t let up until she got it.
“Want me to do the airplane?” While making a motor noise with her mouth, she turned her fork into an airplane and tried to land it in his mouth.
“Okay, okay.” She was hard to say no to. “What the hell.”
He let her land the sludge plane and then chewed the bite, trying not to think about it being squid ink.
“Oh, wow,” he said after a few chews, feeling his eyes widen. He felt lighter inside, not only because of the pasta but maybe because he was letting go.
“I told you.” She leaned forward and said, “And Dad, don’t you see? There’s nothing wrong with you. You simply need to find more moments like this, whatever it takes.”
In a flash, the light feeling died. He stuck a fork back in his own pasta, wondering if this was okay, him talking to his daughter about his stuff.
She’d been working on him for the last two days, prying out of him the difficulties of retirement.
He’d opened up, though he’d certainly not told her of his suicidal ideations.
“Don’t do that; don’t get in your head,” she said.
“I don’t like talking about it. It doesn’t matter that you’re a shrink. I’m your dad.”
She poured them both more Pellegrino. “That’s what your generation does, hides it all.
What are you afraid of? You know what I’d tell you if you were on my couch?
That you don’t need another job. You don’t need to beg Intel for another chance.
Nor do you need consulting work. You don’t even need to hunt Sir Parm as if he were Bin Laden.
You need to find another purpose, a real one, not hunting mice and squirrels. ”
It’d be funny if it weren’t true, he thought.
“Let’s look at it another way,” she said. “I agree, you’re not a golfer. You don’t need to get into baking sourdough boules or playing the flute.”
He set his fork down with a clang. “The flute? If I were to play an instrument, it wouldn’t be the flute.”
“What’s wrong with the flute?”
He shrugged. “I’m more a trumpet guy.”
“Okay, trumpet then, Louis Armstrong. What I’m saying is you have to find purpose in the present moment.
And I’m the pot calling the kettle black.
I’m working on this too. But what if we both simply gave each moment the reverence it deserved?
It’s not about choosing a hobby. It’s about choosing life.
What’s that thing Alan Watts said about how you should measure your days by the degree of presence, not productivity? ”
“Yeah, but I still have to do something. I can’t sit around waiting to die, present or not.”
“That’s a matter of perspective: waiting to die versus enjoying each precious breath.”
Bianca plowed ahead. “Even the simplest moments, like being rejected when trying to get cheese for your seafood pasta, are all one needs to find purpose. No matter your religion, I can’t think of a better way to give back for being gifted life than to be fully engaged in the now.”
She took a moment to enjoy a bite, then: “It’s difficult to put into practice because we all have our fears.
Our doubts. Our insecurities. Why do you and I both work so hard?
Why do we have to-do lists? Why can’t we sit still?
Why are my career goals moving targets? Why have I spent the last ten years going nonstop, trying to become someone? ”
George reached for a slice of bread from the basket and swiped it across the oily sauce on his plate. “Because you have gifts that you want to share with the world.”
“Thanks for that, but no.” She counted on her hands.
“Two reasons: One, I have a desperate need to prove myself. Why? I don’t know.
But also because staying busy keeps me from having to sit in my own mess.
Retirement may be the best thing that ever happened to you, because you’re being forced to sit with yourself, to get to know yourself.
You’ve been stripped of your biggest excuse for not being present.
Sure, find something new to do. But don’t find it from a place of desperation. That’s all I’m saying.”
George grunted and mulled over what she’d said. Part of him resisted her advice, maybe because she was so much younger, and even more to the point, he was the one who was supposed to give her advice. But a bigger part of him knew that she’d hit the bull’s-eye.
He rested his elbows on the table and waited for her to look at him, then: “You have it figured out, don’t you?”
“Far from it.”
He stared into the eyes of this woman that he and Faith had created. “Thank you. You give me hope.”
Two days after his latest scheme took hold, Aroldo prepared to approach the opera singer. He’d gotten pretty good at stakeouts and knew the man left his house at exactly two every day, likely going to lunch. He was methodical about it.
Aroldo had gone by the bookstore to run his idea by Sandy, but once again, she hadn’t been in a talkative mood. She wasn’t exactly mean, but he could tell she had other things on her mind. He had spoken to Moira, though, and she loved the idea, said it was the sweetest thing she’d ever heard.