Don't Sing at the Table (12 page)

Viola said, “There's a person behind this play. My granddaughter. Right over there.” She pointed at me, I shivered in my Madonna fishnets.

The man shrugged.

“I don't know how you sleep at night.” She shouted as the man got into his car. Then she turned to me.

“The nerve.”

“Gram, you can't take on every person that hates my play. Did you understand it?”

“It was in plain English, wasn't it?”

“Yes it was. But did you like it?”

Viola fumbled for the car keys. “You're not going to write about our family, are you?”

“Of course not,” I lied. And it's a good lie I've kept ever since.

Viola came to all my plays and cabaret shows. She enjoyed the backstage stories of romances and breakups. She was content for everyone to be free, and find happiness—happy for everyone but me. Viola wanted me to toe the line. Her advice to me in those days sounded a lot like the dialogue from the old movies I watched in revival marathons at the Thalia, the very same ones she enjoyed as a girl when they first premiered.

Nobody ends up in the gutter being picky.

When she wasn't sounding like Norma Shearer in a 1930s melodrama, Viola tried other tactics, including fear. She hounded me:

• Does he make your life better?

• How does he treat his mother?

• Can't you find a nice Italian boy?

• Earn the veil you wear on your wedding day.

• See that white runner? It means the bride is a virgin. (Really, Gram? How did the runner people know the bride was a virgin? Or for that matter—the groom?)

• Once you do his laundry, you're married. You might as well have the benefits if you're going to do the chores.

“I didn't know
anything
when I got married,” Viola told me, directly referring to the sexual relations of mankind.

“How could that be possible? You saw reproduction and birth on the farm.”

“I didn't think
people
did those things,” she said.

The truth is, if Lucy liked the operatic version of True Love, Viola liked the Hollywood version: shiny cars, big promises, fancy clothes, seven-course dinners, flutes of fine champagne, dancing to an orchestra and pitching woo under a paper moon. People in the movies looked divine, probably smelled like peppermint, and were rich, rich, rich. If only life was like the movies.

A woman should have her dream.

“I hope you find a man like my husband.” Viola said to me.

When Viola spoke of her husband, it was with a sense of awe. She couldn't quite believe that Michael Anthony Trigiani had fallen in love with her, even though she had loads of self-confidence and the 1920s version of guts:
moxie
. My grandfather was a catch, and he shared her passion for the good life in the modern age. He admired her ambition, but was also the voice of reason. Often, when I talk to folks who knew my grandparents, they tell me that Viola had the drive, and that my grandfather softened her edges.

My grandfather wasn't a big talker, and he didn't compliment or gush, as some of her prior suitors had done, so she didn't know where she stood with him. Years before she died, I found a small book that she had written in—it contained markings of her piecework in the mill, and a written account of the night her mother died. But there were also some entries about my grandfather. On one page, my strong, independent, fearless grandmother wrote, “Does he love me? What will the answer be?”

Viola offered up all her best attributes to my grandfather: her ambition, good looks, and charm. She also had a dream for his bright future, and saw a way that she could help him achieve it. She sensed that, married to her, he would excel. And he did, becoming a local politician and serving on the board of directors of the local bank. Viola, it turned out, was not only a blouse maker; she was in the aspiration business. In the best marriages, both parties are in the aspiration business, and when you climb, you climb together, and higher.

Choose wisely.

Both of my grandmothers spoke highly of their husbands, and through their eyes, I thought the world of them too.

They taught me what to look for in a man: from Viola, I learned to look for gentleness, and from Lucy, devotion.

Think of Saint Francis de Sales, who said, “Nothing is as strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as real strength.”

Carlo called Lucy (Lucia) “Cia” (chee-uh). Every morning of their married life, he brought a cup of hot black coffee to her in bed. Now, he wasn't the best coffee maker in the world, but Lucy never let on that the brew was lacking. Instead, she told me the story for what it was: a man truly loves you when he does the little things, consistently and with love. Your life should be better for entering a partnership with the person you love. She was not talking about money, but the sense of security that comes from being treated well and with respect.

My grandmothers warned me about making the wrong choice in a mate, because they knew, as carefully as you might choose, you might just end up with a man who disappoints you.

Speak with kindness.

It starts in the way we
talk
to one another. In my home, I follow Lucy's lead when it comes to arguments. There is no name-calling allowed. No shouting at one another. We have disagreements, but we try and talk things through. As the congratulatory telegram on Viola's wedding day read:
It isn't enough to wear a wedding band; the gold has to be polished every single day.
I was married with Viola's ring to remind me to stay the course. As for Lucy, and her lost ring, it bothered me that it was never found so I sent her a gold band with three love knots bought with my first paycheck as an office temp. She wore it every day, and my mom returned it to me upon her death.

There are no men on the bus to Atlantic City.

While I knew my grandfather Michael, although not nearly long enough, most of my memories of Viola were after she was a widow.

Even in her later years, Viola never believed that she'd lost her mojo with men. When she was pulled over for a speeding ticket when she was around seventy, I was in the car. A handsome young state trooper came to the window, and she proceeded to try and flirt her way out of the ticket.

When he went back to his squad car to check her license, I said, “Are you kidding?” And she looked at me through her glasses and said, “What?” And I said, “Gram, he's maybe thirty. It's not working.” She stiffened in the car seat. “It is
so
working.”

I leaned back in the passenger seat and cringed. When the cop returned with her license, he handed it to her through the window and said, “You can go.” She tucked that license into her wallet smugly. Her back straightened, she craned her neck up to check her lipstick in the rearview mirror. I couldn't take this delusion for another second. I felt like I was on a grocery run for chips and vodka with Gloria Swanson in
Sunset Boulevard
. “He let you off because you're a grandmother, not because you're hot.”

Viola looked straight ahead and said, “That's what
you
think.”

Later on in her life, she told me that the old magic was no longer necessary. When Viola took day trips on the bus to Atlantic City with her friends, it was an all-girl production. They had a ball, telling stories and laughing about the old days.

“Gram, how great you have your girlfriends. Who needs a man anyhow?”

“You
have
to get married,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because it doesn't last. We've all outlived our husbands. Some of us have been widows longer than we were wives. Go ahead and get married.

Have fun.

Get dressed up.

Go places.

Because someday you'll see. It's over. There are no men on the bus to Atlantic City.”

In-laws

In those days, unless you were very familiar with someone, you called them Mrs. I remember Viola and Lucy used Mrs. when addressing one another, sending cards, or writing letters.

Mrs. Trigiani and Mrs. Bonicelli met only once, in the fall of 1956, when Viola's eldest, Anthony, married Lucy's youngest, Ida (a twin, born one minute after her sister), in South Bend, Indiana, on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, on a Monday, October 29.

Lucy was working on the hem of my mother's wedding gown in a hotel room in the Morris Inn. Viola, fresh off the plane in hat and gloves, swept into the room. Lucy told me that they greeted one another, and that Viola wanted to look at the gown. Lucy declined, telling Viola, You'll see it at the ceremony. Lucy was pleasant about this, but firm. She also told me that Viola was very eager to help with all aspects of the wedding, including any sewing, to which Lucy said, “Mrs. Trigiani, everything is taken care of.”

Viola admitted that she wanted to insert herself into the planning of the wedding. Her eldest son was sacrosanct, and she wanted a blowout that was equal to the adoration she had for him. When I spoke to her about the wedding, she said it was lovely . . . and small. Her husband, however, thought it was the best wedding he had ever attended. He thought it was reverent and appropriate.

Gram preferred more of a high-end version of the Italian sandwich wedding or bash—cookie platters on the table, dolls on the roofs of cars, and three hundred–plus in the church. Hats. Gloves. Tulle. Morning coats. Plumes. A band. Mayhem. This was not my mother's desire, so Viola took a step back, which was not easy for her to do.

Lucy's family was humble and hardworking, no flash, all substance. Viola liked substance
and
flash. Her lofty aspirations were never hidden in deed, conversation, or wardrobe. She believed in climbing higher and never looking down. Her material dreams were a mink coat and a Cadillac, and her spiritual dream was eternal life.

However, here on earth Viola admired wealth. If you were rich, it probably meant that you had done something right. Viola was a proud American capitalist. Lucy, while proud to be an American, maintained the Italian work ethic: it was enough to live and provide for your family.

Viola told me that she didn't know my mother when my father sent a letter telling his parents that he planned to marry her. (Dad filled in the details—that Mom was a librarian in the architecture department, that her brother had been a basketball star there in the 1940s, and so on.) This litany of attributes were not enough to recommend my mother as a good wife for my father, Viola needed more information.

So Viola swung into action to find out everything she could about my mother's family. Viola was a big believer in checking your mate's background prior to marriage. This meant meeting the family, including all the cousins, making inquiries, all the while quietly forming an opinion based upon the facts you gathered.

You were to analyze everything about a potential mate: character, education, height, weight, health history, and prison records (hopefully none!). You were to do as much research on “his people” as possible. After all, marriage was forever, a lifetime lock, so you'd better know who and what you were getting into. I heard her say more than once to a person she had just met, “Where are your people from?” She knew every village, farm, and barn in her family history, and she expected you to know the same about yours. So in her search to find out about the then mysterious Bonicelli family, she went directly to her local priest.

In person.

The priest in Roseto, Pennsylvania, sent a letter to the priest at Saint Joseph's in Chisholm, Minnesota, inquiring about the family, and specifically about the character of my mother. The letter that came back to the rectory in Roseto was succinct and yet carried some detail. Viola told me that the priest in Chisholm said the Bonicellis were of sterling character, and that Mr. Trigiani would be lucky to marry Miss Bonicelli.

Viola was satisfied with the letter (which was sent unbeknownst to my mother, and probably my father), and as the years rolled by, Viola's guarded opinion of the Spada/Bonicelli family changed. It was not lost on me that, years before, Viola's own father had gone to the local priest for the same detective work, with an entirely different result. Priests, it ends up, are often in the intercession business—and not just between the Heavenly Father and the penitent, but also and evidently, between potential mother-in-laws and the women that their sons wish to marry.

Viola and Lucy's differences were obvious in Ektachrome in the costumes they chose to wear on that wedding day. Viola wore an off-the-shoulder, cinch-waisted, full-skirted dress in a shade of blue known then as “cerulean.” Her dramatic statement hat was wide-brimmed, with a fringe of dyed-to-match ostrich plumes, matching gloves, high heels, and clutch. Lucy, in contrast, wore a neutral champagne colored understated dress with a thin belt that she had made for herself in
peau de soie
, a hefty satin with a dull finish. She accessorized the dress with a small black velvet hat, gloves, and black pumps.

The peacock met the dove.

Chapter Eight
The Places You'll Go

Viola lands in Honolulu in 1974. Behind her, the great Mary Farino, her sister-in-law. Viola wears a blouse made in Sonny's mill in Big Stone Gap.

O
ne of the most frequent questions posed to me as a novelist involves budding artists. Parents want to know what to “do” with their artistic child. Are there classes? Lessons? Is there something they can do at home to help them find their way?

The most important thing a parent can do when raising an artist is to take them out into the world and show them things. Travel.

Our family stories have it all: risk, adventure, romance, and intrigue. The places my grandmothers came from were described in stories they told. Eventually I would visit the settings of these stories, and they came alive before me. Small-town life seemed exciting. It felt personal and specific. Even a local visit to a friend's house became more than coffee and cake as some piece of news was shared, sending my imagination off in new directions. The villages in Italy were loaded with secrets. There was ancient history, epic romance, and centuries-old vendettas.

My grandmothers took the time to introduce me to people and show me things. Often I was surprised, and sometimes amazed, but never ever bored by the goings-on of adults in real life.

Their worlds seemed populated by colorful characters: In Chisholm, slim Zeke Salvini, robust Mrs. Jacobson, and Tootsie Ungaro, in hip Bermuda shorts and cat's-eye sunglasses. In Delabole, Viola had an old family friend named Minna, with a thick Italian accent and a life story worthy of a novel; and as fascinating, her sister Helen (Elia), a hairdresser, a total knockout who married for the first and only time in her forties, and was a second mother to her nieces and nephews when she did not have children of her own.

Family was presented to me as a landscape loaded with characters whose lives had surprising twists and turns, and who grew and changed as the stories of their lives played out. With my imagination populated by these fascinating characters and the things that happened to them, all it took was some education and discipline to find my craft. I mimicked their work ethic, imagining myself in a factory, layering words like tasks until the work was done. I took away more than life lessons from their stories; I made a career out of it.

The Places They'd Go

Lucy, once she arrived in the United States, never returned to Italy. She had a severe form of motion sickness, and nearly died on the ship on the way over. Once she was in Hoboken, she only took one more trip of any length, and that was by train from New Jersey to Minnesota after her wedding to Carlo in 1920. She confined the rest of her travel to her children's weddings, which required days tacked on either end to recover.

When I visited Lucy, her world did not seem small to me, even though she did not leave Chisholm. She never seemed confined; in fact, she walked so quickly everywhere, covering so much ground, that it seemed there wasn't anything she couldn't do or anyplace she couldn't go. Information and news flowed freely into 5 West Lake Street. There was a stack of letters to and from her relatives in Italy, to read, reread, and answer. Her family visited her often; her son and his wife and family lived close by; and the door of her shop was open, with customers and friends coming through on a regular basis.

I told Lucy with high hopes that doctors might invent a pill that would cure her, so she could to go home to Italy again. She'd just smile, as if it were a faraway dream. My greatest joy was when I went to Italy and returned to her with details of all I had seen. I could not have given her a greater gift.

A World of Wonder

Viola had big dreams and loved to travel: cars, buses, trains, ships, and airplanes, it didn't matter, she just enjoyed being on the move. My grandfather did not. He traveled the eastern seaboard of the United States, and always by car. As hungry as Viola was to see the world, Michael loved the quiet of the country and his home. I don't think this was ever a problem between them, and in retrospect, my grandfather took delight in her ambition to visit the places she dreamed of. He encouraged her to go.

When my father was a boy, she woke him at 4:00 a.m. and said, “I have a surprise.” She and my grandfather loaded my dad and a picnic basket into the car. By dawn, they were on the outskirts of Philadelphia.

They parked their car behind a sea of trucks and took my father's hand. They wove through the vehicles and climbed a small hill to join a throng of people who had come to watch the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus come to town. My father never forgot the visual of the elephants as they lifted the giant poles to put up the tent. Viola, while she was a strict parent, instilled a sense of wonder in my father. When my father was dying, he recounted that day as one of the best of his life.

Make a big splash.

It also turned out that, wherever she'd go, Viola would make a big splash. Literally. In October 1957 the TWA airplane that carried Viola from Los Angeles, and then to Honolulu, Hawaii, had to make an emergency landing on foam on the runway in Honolulu, akin to the emergency landing made by Captain Chesley Sullenberger in the Hudson River in January 2009. No one was hurt. It was a miracle, the headlines swore.

Viola on the front page of the New York
Daily News.

Viola kisses her rosary in the
Los Angeles Times.

When Viola told the story of this flight, she remembered everything—the passengers, the stewardesses, the skid into the foam, and the inflatable sliding board where she removed her stilettos before sliding down so as not to puncture the plastic.

My grandfather saw her on the evening news that night, and then, in the days that followed on the front pages of newspapers, sent to him from around the country. It turns out that my grandmother led the rosary on the flight, and she told me that even the non-Catholics chimed in, for extra flight insurance of the heavenly kind.

When she was interviewed by a reporter from the
Los Angeles Times
, she was almost giddy with delight at the success of the emergency landing. Viola didn't panic in the face of death; she prayed.

I am required to fly a lot as part of my job, and when I sit down and snap on the seat belt, I look around and wonder if these are the people that I will be with when I die. But then I think of Viola, and make the sign of the cross and leave my stilettos in the luggage—just in case.

Europe after World War II

Viola went to Italy in 1950, visiting her father's village, Godega di Sant'Urbano, for the first time. With her young daughter in tow, they went to Paris and Rome, and flew back through Dublin.

She returned to Italy in 1970 and visited Lucy's hometown, Schilpario. Viola's gesture meant a great deal to me because it showed respect for my mother's family, and also that on some level, she understood that if Lucy could not go home, it would mean something to Lucy's family to hear firsthand how she was.

Viola had not yet entered her mauve years, the days of winding down, when she relaxed into life, laughed more than she cried, and rested more than she worked. Viola still had the old drive and the wanderlust to travel. To extend herself in this way was very special. Viola seemed comfortable with Lucy's people.

She went to Carlo Bonicelli's birthplace in Vilminore. Our cousins made her dinner, and showed her the sights. She was thrilled to meet Pope John XXIII's brother Zaverio, and took a picture with him. It was as if she'd gotten a photo with Clark Gable at the height of his fame; evidently every American tourist that went to Bergamo after 1965 got a photograph with Zaverio Roncalli.

Viola and her friend Betty Doall meet Pope John XXIII's brother, Zaverio, in Sotto Il Monte, Italy, in 1970.

Just go.

Viola's trips were fascinating to me. She stayed hungry for adventure all of her life, and that inspires me to look for it too, and encourage the same in my daughter. Viola traveled a great deal after my grandfather died, and she never made a fuss about it. She'd invite a friend or her sister-in-law along—she never complained if she had to go alone, she just went. Viola missed out on a formal education, so it was her responsibility to fill in the gaps and see the world that, had she stayed in school, she might have read about in books. A trip or two never satisfied her curiosity; she always wanted to see
more.

Tiny Bubbles and a Big Kiss

It seemed Viola would drop anything at home to travel, and she also spent a lot of time planning her trips. Through the years, she was game for getaways to the Bahamas with friends. She returned to Hawaii in the 1970s with a tour, with her sister-in-law Mary Farino as her roommate. This time the plane landed safely, the only compromise to her safety (and virtue) came in the arms of Don Ho.

Viola innocently took her place in the queue when Don Ho called all the grandmothers to the stage and into the spotlight during one of his legendary stage shows. One by one, as the machine belched hundreds of champagne bubbles all over the stage, he took each grandmother separately into his arms with a dip, and in a spotlight kissed her. Viola told me, “Eh. He
really
kissed me.”

Reeling from the kiss, Viola staggered back to her table. When she looked up, she saw that her sister-in-law Mary, behind her on the line, had received her “passionate” kiss too, but instead of returning to the table went back to the end of the line for seconds. Whenever I hear “Tiny Bubbles,” I think about Viola's mini make-out session with the Aloha King, and my great Aunt Mary's do-over.

The Flowered Suitcase

If you love to travel, it's wise to learn how to pack. I still don't have the technique down, but somehow, regardless of the length of a trip, Viola could pack everything she needed into one small canvas suitcase.

Typically there was one nightgown, six count of underwear, three brassieres, one full slip, one pair of stockings, three pairs of footie socks, one pair of bedroom slippers, one set of pumps, one skirt and blouse for church, one pair of slacks, and one additional top. That's
it.
When I marveled at her ability to edit her clothing choices for trips, she said, “Never pack more than you can carry.”