After grabbing my shoes from the grass, we were off.
If Rosaria Caffi was Luca Fausti, Maggie Beautiful was the grandmother who took turns on two wheels but needed thick glasses. I moved on from “HOLY MARY” to other unmentionable phrases not even five minutes into the ride. The car hummed and trembled with Maggie Beautiful’s insistent pace. She drove thevehiclelike she wished it were a Ferrari.
I pounded the floorboard with my feet. “Maggie! Slow down!” I closed my eyes and crossed myself. I refused to look over. It was a death drop. “Slow DOWN!”
“Wee,” she said, giggling.
“Wee,” Signore Butta reflected from the backseat.
“See!” I screeched. “Even Signore Butta is afraid!”
“Isnot. He likes it.”
“Mamma Mia!” he sang.
“Why are you going so fast? Don’t you want to see—?” I jerked my thumb out of the window, but the current scene was gone in a flash.
“Not today! And hey, I’m in Italia! When in Italia, do as the Italians!”
We were approaching a curve and she was taking it too fast. A line of Italian cypress trees lined the street, nothing but a dried field beyond. I prayed that we would make it that far. I wasn’t ready to make the trees’ acquaintance. This thing had no seatbelts.
“MAGGIE!”
“OH!” she screamed. “The brakes!” She started speaking rapid Italian as she pumped them up and down with fevered speed.
Just in time, the brakes seemed to hold, and we came to a grinding stop just a hello away from a solid cypress tree.
Both of us were in shock. And what comes after shock? Manic laughter. Maggie Beautiful started first, then me, and a minute or two after, Signore Butta, who really had no idea what we were laughing at but thought it funny anyway. He lit up a cigarette and puffed in between raspyhee hees.
Maggie Beautiful wiped at her eyes, sighing. “Oh! If Brando would have seen that—he would have never sent me here!” She laughed even harder.
I became quiet.
“Hesent you here?”
“Why,ah?” Signore Butta asked on a puff. “Why,ah, this Brrrrandosend you here?”
“Butt out, Butta,” Maggie Beautiful snapped.
He lifted his hands and then scratched at his curls.
“He’s worried about you, doll.”
I ripped the car handle—literally ripped it off its hinges; it wasn’t all that stable—and stormed off into the field. Maggie Beautiful and Signore Butta followed, except he took a detour and went to relieve himself of all the wine. He did so while singing some Italian song.
“He thinks that I’m having an affair, doesn’t he?” I waved my arms around wildly, hardly able to control my anger.
“He never admitted that to me, no.”
“What did he tell you?” I demanded.
“He wanted me to come here, spend some time with you. I thought it was odd too, seeing as he never trusted me around you before. He sounded…desperate. If he thinks that, consider the man dead.”
I waited for her to laugh, to make a joke, but we both knew the truth. He wouldn’t hesitate.
“How could he even…” I said it more so to myself, trying to understand.
Yes, I had been more distant, but only because I was trying to make a home for him! Yes, I was hiding things, but certainly not that!
