Mothers and Daughters

They ate at the Pappagallo in Bologna, a restaurant that had been heavily touted to them before they left the States. The walls of the room were lined with photographs of American celebrities; apparently every movie queen who’d ever crossed the continent had stopped here to sample the food and pose with the chef. Julia had been advised by the doctor — who had visited her once more in Venice and whose name, as it turned out, was Guidobuono — not to take anything but beverages and very light food for the next few days. She ordered clear broth, spaghetti with butter sauce, and a cup of tea. The waiter looked at her quizzically.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s all.”

The waiter did not shrug his shoulders, but his face clearly indicated that he was shrugging mentally. Three Italian women at the next table turned to look at Julia and her sister, and then went back to their meal. The ladies obviously represented three generations of Italian gourmands. The grandmother was a stout woman with a wide bosom and gray hair tightly wound into a bun at the back of her head. She was dressed in black and was at the moment demolishing a huge bowl of minestrone. The mother was a plumpish woman in her late thirties, wearing her black hair loose, no make-up, a large diamond ring on her left hand. She was struggling to loosen what appeared to be two dozen clams from their shells. The daughter was a girl of sixteen following in the classic footsteps of her grandmother, either clinging to her baby fat or working up a whole new layer of adult adipose. She wore a cotton frock and a bow in her long black hair. She ate with all the finesse of a truck driver, disemboweling the trout on her plate and then stuffing it into her mouth as if she expected il Duce to declare a famine that Sunday. These ladies were eaters, Julia calculated. These ladies had come from a long line of eaters, and their intent was to continue the line indefinitely. They barely spoke to each other. Their eyes were fastened to the diminishing supply of food on their plates, their hands worked busily, their jaws ground, their teeth ripped, their gullets bobbed. Occasionally, they glanced at Julia suspiciously. When the waiter brought Julia’s broth and set it down before her, the three stopped chewing simultaneously. Grandmother, mother, and daughter turned their heads at the same time and looked at Julia’s plate. Then, as one, they turned to the pasta dishes that had been put before them and continued to eat with renewed vigor, as if the sight of Julia’s pathetic fare had strengthened some core of mutual resolve in each of them.

The suspicious glances turned almost hostile as the meal progressed. Julia could feel their hot brown eyes burning across the distance that separated the two tables. The sounds of gluttony continued to rise from the table with the three Italian ladies. Julia, at her own table, barely touched the spaghetti, and then sipped only sparingly at her tea. Her sister, who had ordered a complete lunch, was worried about Julia and did not do justice to the food set before her. The Italian ladies were troubled by Millie’s wastefulness, but they were thoroughly agitated by Julia’s timidity. Didn’t she know where she was? Didn’t she know this was one of the best restaurants in Europe? How could she so ignore its culinary offerings? What were these American women made of, anyway?

They began grumbling among themselves as they ate their pastry and drank their espresso. They grumbled with much raising of eyebrows and pulling of mouths and twirling of expressive fingers. Julia could not hear everything they said, but from what she did hear she understood she herself was the topic of discussion. The hell with them, she thought. There’s no Italian law that states that a recuperating woman has to gorge herself, no matter where she’s eating. When she rose from the table to go to the ladies’ room, she threw a frigid glance at the adjoining table. The Italian ladies followed her progression across the restaurant, deciding she was far too thin because she ate like a bird, shaking their heads in concerted agreement on the paucity of her buttocks.

When she came back to the table, the Italian ladies, all three generations, were beaming at her. Surprised, Julia returned their smiles. The ladies nodded their heads, the smiles widened, bright white teeth showed in their faces, grandmother, mother, daughter, all grinned bright approval.

As they walked to the car, Julia said, “What brought on the change, Millie?”

“What change?”

“At the next table.”

“Oh. They were concerned about you, Julia. Because you weren’t eating.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“So they asked the waiter to inquire. He spoke a little English, and I told him you’d got sick in Venice. Stomach trouble.”

“Did he understand you?”

“Oh yes, very well. I used my hands, of course, but he understood. And he translated into Italian for the ladies. He told them you’d got incinta in Venice. Then they began nodding and smiling. The old lady especially. She’d had trouble with her stomach there, too, apparently.”