Christmas in Naples is a Sport I

HE SAID come for Christmas.

I had to think about it, whether or not I would pick up the phone. People lose touch, stay in touch, who even knows? I was living in Paris though American. I mean, from the United States of America, just to specify. Long-winded. I had disappeared to my cousins along with my father when I was thirteen. It had been fifteen years. They knew nothing about what happened. I didn’t even know. I had reached a point in my life though. I better start figuring it out.

I picked up, joyous, apologetic. He wasn’t expecting me to pick up. Why? He had never tried before. No one knows what happened to you? What happened to you? Oh, Franco. It was just crazy, crazy, sincerely, even. He wouldn’t believe it, but why did I do this? This is what I mean. I didn’t make sense in Italian. I could take sudden turns in my discourse not wanting to be closed off. Open and positive, I could hit the breaks. I was resolved. I lived with a lot of guilt especially when it came to family. Disappearing was a theme. Or was it? Confused. Nodding, yes.

Come for Christmas.

Oh, I laughed, my story didn’t go with Christmas, but I wanted to go back. So, go early, I thought, allow ample time.

“DECEMBER,” I began.

“PRIMO,” I laughed.

“OSPETALE…”

(It’s ospedale in Italian.)

Franco Franzese was at the hospital.

“SCUSA MARIA?”

“December 1? I come December…”

“PER,” for, “December.”

I didn’t know the word for month.

“Four weeks makes?”

I couldn’t be polite so I apologized.

“…Si…”

He didn’t understand.

“I don’t speak Italian…”

I didn’t know the word for “anymore.” I started over. He cut me off.

“Maria, tutto okay, si. December…”

“Si? Vero?”

Vero means “true.”

Not speaking the language tickled me, made me bolder.

“Si, Maria, si…”

I repeated it.

“I can come DECEMBER ONE? Settimana UNA, non?”

Number one week.

I gave myself fists for using the feminine appropriately.

“Si, MARIA, si,” he sounded as if we were saying the same thing.

“Okay…perfetto!”

I thanked him. I circled my fist around. “We…”

“Si, si, we’ll spend some time together, this is good, Maria, this is good.”

“Okay…”

He cracked up at my “okay” in an Italian accent.

“Okay…”

I thought I was impersonating them.

“Grazie…”

He trilled the “r” in my name tight and fast and blasted.

“MARIA NorMALE,” etc.

“I am happy,” I said like a mascot.

“Si, also us,” he said.

“Si?”

I was strained.

“Maria, si,” he was confused.

“We all are…”

It was a little hard to believe.

PLEASE, I thought, DO NOT ADOPT ME.