Except that on the way back to the hotel, we passed a church where a wedding was going on—or about to go on, anyway. I saw the crowd and assumed it was another sight we should see, but then it turned out to be a lot of tourists like us waiting outside a church with some flower girls and maids of honor, and we realized it was a wedding!
So then Holly said she had to stay to see the bride for luck, since she was getting married too.
So we edged into the church and stood there and waited and it wasn’t long until a sleek beige Mercedes sedan pulled up and the bride, looking incredibly chic in an ivory sheath with a tiny veil got out, beaming and speaking in Italian to the little flower girls who started jumping up and down.
I got some very good photos of the whole thing and wanted to ask her if she wanted me to send her copies (the bride I mean), but I didn’t know the right words in Italian, and besides, by that point her father had come out of the church and lent her his arm, and that’s when Holly and I realized we were standing right in the aisle, with the groom at the front of the church with the priest, trying to see past us to catch a glimpse of his wife-to-be in her gorgeous ivory sheath.
So we scampered out of the way and I looked at Holly and saw tears in her eyes!!!!
I thought she’d been stung by a bee or something so I was like, “Let’s go find some ice!” but it turned out that wasn’t it at all. Holly looked at me all tearfully and went, “I want my father to lead me down the aisle! Only he doesn’t know I’m doing this. And I’m not even going to have an aisle. Because we’re going to get married by some clerk in some office .”
Then she burst into tears right there on some street I can’t remember the name of.
Of course I had no choice but to hustle her as fast as I could to the cafe where we’d said we’d meet Mark for snacks. Only I knew it was my duty as witness/bridesmaid to get her cleaned up before her future husband saw what a psycho he was marrying. Not that he didn’t already know, since Holly cries at the end of every episode of Seventh Heaven she sees, even the reruns, and won’t pick up the phone on Monday nights as a consequence.
But still.
We got a seat right away at the cafe across from the Pantheon—an outdoor table, even. In New York, you practically have to chew off your own foot to get an outdoor table anywhere. Maybe the waiter saw how dire our need was, considering Holly’s tears. Anyway, he sat us under the shade of his restaurant’s big fluttery awning, and I said, “Un verre de vin blanc pour moi et pour mon amie,” forgetting I wasn’t in 11th-grade French, but in Italy.
The waiter totally took it in stride though. “Frizzante?” he asked me.
I had no idea what he was talking about, but remembering I was in Italy and not France, I managed to say Si and not Oui.
My first foreign language exchange! I’d spoken English with the Diet Coke guy and Mr. Gladiator’s pimp. And OK, the exchange hadn’t been in the actual language spoken in this country. But it had still been foreign.
Then the bread basket came, with a little pot of silky white butter, and we dug in, because even when she’s crying, Holly can still eat, which is one of the many reasons I love her.
And I told her how lucky she is her father ISN’T here, since, like her mom, he doesn’t exactly approve of Mark. Which is ridiculous, because Mark is totally perfect husband material, being completely sweet and thoughtful and funny and self-deprecating and totally the opposite of his horrible friend Cal the Modelizer in every way. Plus Mark’s even reasonably good-looking. Oh, and a doctor. With a weekly health column in a New York paper that’s read by millions. What more could the Caputos ask?
A Catholic, apparently.
Sometimes I get so mad at Holly’s parents for what they’re doing to her, I just want to spit.
But then, Mark’s parents are just as bad, in their own way.
“L–like it even matters to us,” Holly sobbed, as the waiter reappeared with two glasses of white wine on a tray. “I mean, I haven’t been to church since I was eighteen! Church was their thing, not mine. And Mark hasn’t set foot in temple since his bar mitzvah. We have no intention of raising our children any particular religion. We’re going to bring up the kids a-religious. And then when they’re old enough, they can decide which religion—if any— they want to belong to.”
I nodded because I had heard this many times before. The wine in the glasses the waiter was putting down in front of us seemed to catch the sun and dance around before my eyes like fool’s gold in the bottom of that stream Laura found on that one episode of Little House on the Prairie .
“Why can’t they just respect that this is the man I love?” Holly asked, picking up her glass and taking a gulp. “And, yes, he’s Jewish. Get over it.”
I sipped my wine too—
And nearly spat it out! Because it wasn’t wine at all! It was champagne!
Only better than champagne! Because the bubbles in champagne usually give me an instant headache.
But these bubbles were tiny and light—barely there at all.
“What is this?” I asked, in wonder, holding my glass up to the light and looking at all the lovely bubbles.
“Frizzante,” Holly said. “Remember? He asked, and you said Si. It’s like…fizzy wine. Don’t you like it?”
“I love it.”
I loved it so much, I had another glass of it. By the time Mark joined us, I was in a VERY good mood.
Fortunately, so was Holly. There was so much people-watching to do in our corner of the piazza that she soon forgot all about the wedding we’d seen, and her yearning for her dad to give her away at her own. Soon we were able to pick out the American tourists as quickly as the Italians obviously could. I don’t mean to say anything negative about my countrymen and women, but hello, the Fab Five have their work cut out for them.
Holly was instantly cheered, as always, by the sight of Mark. He asked for a menu and got one—in English! —and ordered mussels and an antipasto platter, and we sat and ate chunky crumbles of parmesan and fresh tangy olives and buttery slivers of salami and garlicky mussels and had fun watching other suckers get fleeced by the handsome, morose gladiator and his pimp.
Then the shadows started getting longer and Mark checked his Blackberry and said we should be getting back to the hotel to change for dinner. So we got the bill—which Mark insisted on paying—and started back, Mark with arm around Holly’s waist, and her head leaning on his shoulder, her unhappiness from a few hours earlier blissfully forgotten.
And I wished SO HARD that awful Modelizer Cal was with us, so he could see how cute Holly and Mark are together, and how great a couple they are, and what sweet parents they’ll make, and what a crime it would be if they didn’t get married. I mean, how could anyone look at Holly and Mark and think, for even one minute, that marriage is an antiquated institution that ought to be abolished? They are living proof that it works. Just because Modelizer’s wife turned out to be a money-grubbing beeyotch doesn’t mean—
Ooooh! I got an email! On my Blackberry! PLEASE let it be Julio!!!!
___________________________________________
To: Jane Harris <[email protected]>
Fr: Malcolm Weatherly <[email protected]>
Re: Ciao!
Hey, babe! How’s it hang in? So ya there yet? Whaddaya think? Pretty rad, huh? Yeah, I-ty blew my mind when I was there last year for the European Open. Even the freaking coffee tastes better there.
But I don’t get the whole “everything closing from noon to four and lunch and everybody serving nothing but pasta after ten” thing. Bummer if you wake up at one and want a freaking waffle.
But make sure you try one of those bidets. It’ll change your life!
Stay away from those I-ty Latin Lover types. I know how those guys operate. They only want a green card, anyway. Not that you’re not, you know, totally hot.
Aw, gotta go, I’m up next on the half pipe. Luv ya.
Mal
PS Know what? I kinda miss The Dude. Give him a big kiss for me, willya? Oh, you can’t, cause you’re in I– ty. Sorry.
