Ospedaletti

I remember when Aerosmith’s Crazy was at the top of the charts. My brother and I were eleven and nine, respectively, and stuck in the room for unaccompanied children at Charles De Gaulle airport watching MTV videos on loop. It was the first time we were going back to Italy without our parents. During the two-hour layover between Paris and Turin, Steven Tyler stepped in like a surrogate father as I tried desperately to pick out the watermelon bubble gum my brother had smooshed into my hair on the flight over from L.A. I’m losing my mind, ‘cause I’m going CRAAAAAAAAAZY. Aerosmith totally got me.

Pleading to the backdrop of whining electric guitars, my brother made all kinds of promises I knew he’d never keep. If I didn’t tell Nonna what really happened when we landed, I could have his desserts for the whole month. “Oh, come on. I’ll do your chores for the rest of the year. I swear!” I kept my mouth shut as he upped the ante, until in his desperation he offered the most valuable promise of all. “Please, Tash,” he leveled with me. “I’ll owe you one.”

My brother has always been an incontestably excellent negotiator, but I was no sucker. This wasn’t the first time in my small life he’d showered me with promises. I knew the chances of him keeping any of them were about as high as me walking away from the entire debacle with all of my hair intact. In the end my acquiescence to his will had less to do with his developing mastery in the art of the deal, and more to do with the fact that I could never stand to see him in pain. I'd I watched him get screamed at, slapped, hosed-off in the backyard, and thrown in the shower to “cool down” one too many times already. So, despite having tortured me for nine hours on the first flight, an allegiance against the wrath of our grownups made us comrades on the second. When we landed in Turin, I walked right up to Nonna with my new Alfalfa haircut, and launched into an elaborate narrative about the inexplicable acts of God that resulted in said haircut involving wild turbulence, innocent mouth-gaping laughter, and other unnecessary details in a story that ultimately starred my brother as the hero.

It was always like that with him and I, as I imagine it must be for most siblings who grew up together so close in age. We were mortal enemies when left to each other, contemplating murder in the first degree, until the moment the adults became involved, and punishment was eminent. Then it was ride or die ‘til the end of days. No one was going to mess with my brother but me, goddamnit!  He was my first best friend, my first opponent, and my first partner in crime. And, boy did we excel in that last role. I mean, lying was easy, you know. Amateur hour. Real Showtime At The Apollo shit. Within the first decade of our lives, we had already graduated with an Associate’s degree in deceitfulness, and moved on to major in the art of appropriation. That first summer in Italy without parents is when we really honed our craft.

Our family used to have an apartment on the Italian Riviera outside of San Remo that Nonna purchased with the money she’d won from the national lottery. We spent the summer of our parent’s divorce with her in the hills of Ospedaletti, memorizing the lyrics to Warren G’s Regulate, and fighting off the brigades of mosquitoes with our invisible gats. In town there was a pedestrian tunnel under the main road that led to Sirena: the pebble beach with a bar that sold everything from grappa to granita. Outside the bar was an outdoor arcade filled with pinball machines and foosball, where kids from L.A. who had met the Red Hot Chili Peppers always got to cut the lines. Down at the shore, outstretched under rows and rows of bright yellow umbrellas, lounged the aging men and women of the Greatest Generation, their skin glistening and overflowing under the Mediterranean sun. 

Wealthier families vacationingin Ospedaletti rented out private cabanas for the summer, but mainly everyone just used the communal changing room. Coming from the neighboring villages and small cities, most folks trusted enough in their fellow man to leave their belongings behind for a day at the beach. But, I guess L.A. and Def Jam had already hardened us because the minute my brother and I stepped foot in that wooden shack, and saw everyone’s stuff just laying there unattended, we went full-tilt West Coast gangsta, giving each other daps, and shit, gassing about all these old fools who were gonna pay for our gelatos all summer long.

One of us would act as lookout while the other plundered, and then we’d switch off. It was the only time in our lives we took turns fairly, already understanding the role resentment played when it comes to snitching. It was good practice, just small-scale stuff at first. Never finding more than a few mille lire here or there, enough for a few pieces of candy, a few turns around the arcade, or one gelato each. We’d consumed our spoils away from the other kids, our nonna, and the various zios and zias that would come up for holiday. Maintaining the rules of appropriation was of the utmost importance: never gloat; never show-off; preserve secrecy at all costs; and above all, avoid questioning. 

Everything was going swimmingly until the day we found venti mille lire in the inside pocket of a navy blue men's jacket. Venti mille lire in 1994 was like ten bucks, and ten bucks was like twenty gelatos! We couldn’t believe our luck. Couldn’t believe the idiot who left it behind as if he wanted us to have it. Couldn’t believe the fireworks of feeling exploding in our small bodies. I’ll never forget that moment. The smell of the ocean drifting through the dampened wooden slats that split the noontime sun in beams across our olive skin. The texture of sea glass I nervously fingered in my palms as I kept watch. My heart racing in my throat. Our eyes locking as he gasped. The folded paper in his right hand. The look of disbelief in his toothsome smile. The sound of sand that crunched beneath our feet as we stamped, and danced in triumph. WE WERE RICH! 

We spent the rest of the afternoon giggling cautiously around the grownups, secretly dreaming up all the things we could buy when they weren’t around, and taking turns holding the treasure. It was my turn to hold it when we got back to the apartment. Nonna ushered me into the downstairs bathroom to wash up before dinner. I carefully folded the bill into a tiny square, and hid it under a bottle of soap on the bathroom counter before turning to the hypnotic task of showering with my sugared daydreams. So enraptured with kinder egg thunderstorms, and Technicolor marshmallow clouds was I that I left our prize under that bottle of soap as I toweled off. I got dressed humming the Kit-Kat jingle, asking the ether to Give Me A Break, and didn’t give the bathroom counter another thought until I heard Nonna screaming Santa Benedetta plus my name, to get my ass downstairs. 

Maleducata! Vergogna! Sei un ladro! Ti dó due sberle! I was in for the worst whopping of my life. A disgrace to my family. I should be ashamed of myself because I was going straight to hell. I fully locked up under the Roman Catholic onslaught, sobbing uncontrollably as I imagined miniature priests with red horns stoking the pyres of the damned underneath my feet. Cowered by a combination of Latin, Italian, and Piemontese, Los Angeles and Nate Dogg had forsaken me in my time of need. I was nothing but a helpless kid far from home, subject to the biblical wrath of my elders. That would have been it for the eternal life of my soul had my brother not run downstairs in his towel, still dripping. When he saw Nonna waving our venti mille lire above my head, and foaming at the mouth in my general direction he stepped right in the middle of us with a quickness that was ages beyond his years. This little dude loc-d up like a true OG, and launched a counterattack of unflinching ferocity. He had an answer, in flawless Italian, for every question she rapidly launched.

The money was his! He found it randomly on the beach while she was having lunch. I didn’t even know he had it at all. He went pee in the downstairs bathroom right before I’d gone in for a shower. He was the one who hid it under the soap bottle because he knew she’d never believe that he’d just found it. She never believed him, and always overreacted, just like she didn’t believe him, and was overreacting right now. How dare she scream at an innocent child, and threaten her with physical violence! This was the 90s, for god’s sake! I was just a small helpless girl, and she was making her only granddaughter cry for no reason! She was such a mean Nonna. She didn’t love us at all. We had travelled all the way from America to spend what little time she had left on this earth with her, and this was how she treated the only grandchildren she would ever have? She was the one who should be ashamed! 

He obliterated her with the last bit, guilt tripping her back to original sin. In the end, not only did she hand back the money, she also apologized to the both of us, weeping and crossing herself as if she were at confession. When we were finally alone in our room, my brother looked at me with the kind of joy one can only acquire through borderline sociopathic self-satisfaction. He asked in annoyed disbelief why I was still crying. “What the fuck? Relax, Tash. We got the money back.”

“I know, Joyo,” I sniffled, utterly confused. “But I broke the rules and got us caught. God, I’m so stupid!”

“Yeah,” he scoffed. “You are.” Then he just shrugged his shoulders, and told me to forget about it. “Besides,” he laughed as he rubbed the alfalfa sprout on the back of my head. “I owed you one.”