That’s Amore
I ended up in Milan the way most guys end up at Pilates. You meet a nice girl, claim to be open-minded, and suddenly find yourself in a strange and foreign place, realizing how inflexible you really are. One day I was single, bopping around on a motorcycle without a care in the world. The next, my new girlfriend was nudging me into the Italian Embassy, on foot, to apply for a visa. “Text me when you are finish,” she said. “I go hairdresser.”
Carolina and I met at the movies in New York. Not through an app or mutual friends, but randomly, at a movie theater, where you usually go to sit in silence with people you already know. I’d gone to see a foreign film at the IFC on Sixth Avenue. Carolina was the foreigner who wrote and directed the film. During the Q&A afterwards, a guy next to me in an NYU sweatshirt said, “Was it difficult to work with a horse?” Carolina said, “To be honest, I wanted a donkey. But all the donkeys were booked. Next question.” She was tall, was beautiful, and had a charming way of dodging a question. An essential quality in any long-term relationship.
Later on she told the audience she’d been doing nothing but press for a year and was completely broke. Perfect, I thought. No way she turns down a free meal. If hunger is the best sauce, poverty is a close second. Sounds conniving, I know, but I’d been single since early COVID. I work remotely and don’t frequent bars or churches, which eliminates 90 percent of where people usually meet. We talked in the lobby about Italian movies and her life back in Milan. She was with another Italian, Lucia, whom she introduced as her “traveling companion.” I wasn’t sure if that meant “girlfriend” but figured I’d take a chance. I suggested dinner. She smiled—at the prospect of a hot meal, I assumed.
“Sure,” she said. “Lucia can come?”
I agreed, even more unsure if they were dating. I went to write my number down on a piece of paper. Lucia pounced.
“Don’t you have a phone?” she asked. “Or are you just trying to be that guy?”
“Trying to be what guy?”
“The guy who writes his number down on paper.”
“That’s a guy?”
“You know exactly what guy that is.”
I handed the paper to Carolina as I turned a bright, pomodoro red. She casually tucked it into her bra, like a floozy in an old Western. A few days later, I picked her up from her hotel on my motorcycle. Usually, bikes scare people. The looming danger—or maybe just the novelty—makes them cautious. Carolina, on the other hand, was nonplussed. She refused a helmet, deftly jumped on, and shouted over the engine as we zoomed down Seventh Ave: “My last boy died on a motor. Like this one. Though a bit nicer.”
I took us to Chelsea to see an art gallery. I had asked my friend Nick, who worked there, to keep it open for us after hours. This proposed private gallery tour was met with a groan. “Lucia said Coney Island is fun. We go there instead?” I explained that Coney Island was an hour away, and we’d just driven here, to the gallery we’d just parked in front of. “Stop mansplaining me,” she snapped. She grumbled but agreed to check it out. Inside, there was an interactive piece that asked visitors to mark their height on the wall. Carolina got on her tiptoes to give herself an extra inch or two. At the time, I found it adorable. In retrospect, this was the first red flag. Someone who tries to lie about their height while they are standing right in front of you is the kind of person to last see you alive before a mysterious boating accident in the Adriatic.
Afterward, we met Lucia for dinner. I’d made a reservation for two in the hopes that Lucia had been thrown from the Cyclone—nothing life-threatening, just a broken rib or foot. Unfortunately, she was fine, waiting for us at Katz’s, eight inches into a pastrami sandwich. “You think I’m a third wheel,” Lucia said, “but this trip is actually my honeymoon. My husband had a work trip. So, really, you are the wheel.”
Sebastien Theroux
After a week of getting run ragged by Lucia, shuttling her to and from every cultural destination from the Met to Marie’s Crisis, I was beat. I hoped to take Carolina out, just the two of us. I ran the idea by Lucia after a romantic three-person stroll along the Hudson. “Dude,” she said, “This is my honeymoon. Imagine what my life is like. Gimme a fuckin’ break.”
At the end of their trip, Carolina asked me to visit Milan “for a couple weeks.” Upon her suggestion, I did what many Americans would do: zoned out while an Olive Garden commercial played in my head. A batch of ziti flying through the air in slow motion. A time lapse of cheese oozing onto goldening garlic bread. A narrator announcing: When you’re here, you’re family.
On the flight over, I pictured myself zooming around on a Ducati, stopping in beautiful piazzas to sip espresso and discuss Tintoretto, suddenly well versed in art history. Instead, I spent the first three months using shampoo as face wash. “Why are you shampooing your face?” is not something you ever want your cool new girlfriend to ask you. But when you move abroad, you regress. Overnight, you’re suddenly unable to read or ask complex questions like “Excuse me, but are these eye drops or vanilla extract?”
My visit to Milan for a “couple weeks” turned into a couple months. Then a couple months became “Why would we go back to New York? You fell with your ass in honey here.” A few months later, we moved in together.
Instead of a villa under the Tuscan sun, we share a one bedroom in Lombardy. The smog is so thick you can blow smoke rings. My knowledge of Italian culture comes from Mafia movies, so I was expecting Carolina to make an incredible Bolognese and be willing to help me hide a gun, no matter how much blood was on it. But that’s a stereotype. I was dealing with a real person. Carolina doesn’t cook. She can’t stand the sight of blood. That’s not to say stereotypes don’t occasionally overlap with reality—I’ve found the hot-blooded-jealousy thing to be spot-on. In my first week in Milan, I said ciao to a random lady at the grocery store. My American accent made her laugh, and she smiled at me. I made it to the frozen foods before Carolina sidled up next to me. “If you ever do that again,” she said, “I will slit your throat.”
Ironically, my family originated in Italy. My great-grandfather was an orphan named Antoine. He arrived in New York with nothing. He subsisted on dandelions pulled from the sidewalks and slept under the statue of Garibaldi in Washington Square Park. As the story goes, he wrote to family back home, telling them he was “staying at the Garibaldi Hotel.” He must have hoped that his harrowing oceanic journey and life of squalor would someday be worthwhile. That his descendants would live happy, prosperous lives in America. Instead, I moved back to Italy because I met someone who doesn’t mind that I sometimes leave chewed Nicorette gum on the bathroom sink, and whose idea of splurging is buying a fresh sixer of socks. My decision would have baffled him.
In the rush of meeting someone new, I somehow missed the part about her being gluten-free and lactose intolerant. The dream of never-ending pizza and bottomless bowls of carbonara died a quick death upon arrival. Gluten—whatever it is—is the essential building block of Italian food. Without it, you’re basically left with anchovies. Our diet consists mainly of crackers and steamed rice. People think of la dolce vita as lazy afternoons drinking wine and eating your face off next to some old buildings. My Dolce Carolina likes to eat corn straight from the can. “It tastes best this way,” she told me once, hunched over the sink like a hyena. “It’s bohemian.” I’m the first person in recorded history to move to Italy and immediately lose 5 pounds. When I pointed out that we never go out to eat, she snapped, “Stop basting my balls, man. You were nerd before me. Now you are Italian stallion.”
I now know the city of Milan well enough to realize when an airport taxi is going the long way to make an extra buck, but I know the language not well enough to do anything about it. I sit in the back seat, fuming like a toddler, unable to use my words. Reading off Google Translate to say, “Hey, buddy, what’s the deal, why didn’t you make that left on Via Montebello?” just doesn’t have the same bite. Carolina, on the other hand, is basically fluent in English, but with a few wobbles here and there.
“I wish my mom wasn’t such a bitch,” she said one day. “That would really hit the spot.”
I explained that hit the spot is usually reserved for good things, like a slice of pizza when you’re hungry, not the feelings of contempt we have for our mothers. “Amore,” she said, “I don’t eat glutens. I’ve told you that million times.”
I’ve come to realize that it’s easier not to correct her. Instead, I try to be encouraging. During our most recent trip to the U.S., a waiter asked Carolina if she wanted anything else. “No, just a rain check.” She beamed, proud of her use of colloquial English, while the guy squinted at her.
“Nobody understands me,” she said later. “Must be my accent.”
“Your accent’s fine,” I said. “You just need to kick the bucket more.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I need to kick the bucket more. It’s the fault of my mother.”
Sebastien Theroux
Carolina’s mom, Eva, is her best friend and archnemesis—her primary source of dread, suspense, anxiety, and love. The feelings are not unfounded. When I first met Eva over dinner, she turned to me and said, unprompted, “When Carolina was a baby, she cried so much I had to lock her on the balcony.” I nodded, wondering if I was being tested in some way. Should I express concern at the thought of my girlfriend being cast outside as a defenseless baby? Was the balcony covered or open to the elements? How long had she been out there?
“I get it,” I said. “I wish we had a balcony.”
Eva perked up. I got the feeling I had earned her respect. Anyone who could commiserate with what she’d endured as a mother was worthy of attention. After we asked our waiter to take a photo, Carolina and I thanked him, as Eva muttered, “You didn’t even look at photo—why are you thanking him?” She always has a point; she just delivers it with a directness that can catch you off guard.
“When Carolina was in college in Paris,” she said later, “I’d visit every month.”
I was relieved to have struck a vein of maternal affection.
“That’s sweet,” I said. “You must really love her.”
“Well,” she said, “I love Paris.”
When we visited my parents in the U.S. for Thanksgiving, Carolina caught COVID on the flight. We narrowed it down to the leg from Frankfurt to Washington, far from Eva’s jurisdiction. Yet, on her worst day, snot dripping down her nose, Carolina turned to me and whispered, “This is the fault of my mother. She did this.” I asked how that was possible.
“Because she is witch,” she said. “She loves to make me sufferance.”
Once we got back to Milan, we went over to her mom’s house to broker a cease-fire. And have dinner. It was like sitting between Stalin and Churchill at Potsdam—technically allies, but a palpable air of suspicion. We spent the evening looking at old family photos. The first thing I noticed were the nudes. Not of Carolina as a youngster, but of her mom in her 20s and 30s. One album, labeled “Kenya, 1983,” had dozens of snaps of Eva naked on a beach. Naked on a boat. Naked in a hotel room, sipping a daiquiri, wearing nothing but a hair tie.
Carolina was sitting between us and holding the album. She kept turning pages at a normal pace. I couldn’t help but think that if the roles were reversed and I stumbled on some old photos of my dad buck naked, with my actual dad hovering over one shoulder and my girlfriend on the other, I might pick up the pace a bit. But Carolina kept plodding along, totally unbothered.
“My mom was hot, no?”
I figured it was an Italian thing and that I was the square, repressed American being squeamish about parental genitalia. So when Carolina paused on an image of her mom spread eagle on a lounge chair, her poolside vulva dominating the foreground, I tried to be upbeat.
“Wow, would you look at that sunset.”
At the sight of her mom feeding a monkey, her breasts just inches from its fangs, I tried to strike an academic tone. “Now, is that a macaque or a rhesus?” I asked. “It can be so hard to tell.”
From there, we moved into the baby photos. The scenes got noticeably more depressing with the arrival of Carolina. Far-flung vacations vanished. The once-perfect rooms were suddenly littered with cheap plastic toys. Her mom finally got dressed, in flowy dresses and parachute pants. “Wow, Mom,” Carolina said. “Pregnancy destroyed your life.”
“Pregnancy was fine. When you came out is when the problems started.”
Sebastien Theroux
After that night, Eva’s and my relationship changed a little bit. For a few weeks, I couldn’t make direct eye contact. To make matters worse, the next time we visited, we spent the night looking at old magazines called Fotoromanzi that her mom had modeled for. Fotoramanzi were basically soap operas, but in print. Basically comic books, but with photos instead of drawings. Speech bubbles appear over the characters’ heads as they go around smoking cigarettes and having affairs.
“Eva, you had a great modeling career,” I said. “Why’d you stop?”
“I got a big billboard,” she said. “A close-up of my face. It was in front of Carolina grandmother house. Someone made drawing of penis on it. When my mother saw, she forbid me from modeling. Such a shame. I looked great.” On the walk home, I asked Carolina if her mom had meant she looked great at that age, or specifically on the billboard with the dick on her face. She grabbed me by the ear and said, “Pay attention, buddy. I brought you into this country—and I can take you out.”
The following week, I got sick as a dog. Since Carolina doesn’t cook, her mom offered to make me dinner. She came over with fresh groceries to make bone broth. Because when you’re here, you’re family. Carolina was running late from a meeting, so we started cooking without her. I figured we might as well be comfortable, so I popped on some music. I didn’t choose “Too Close” by Next; it just happened to be next in the queue.
I suggested we wait for Carolina, but Eva insisted we start eating when the broth was ready. “No, no—you must.” I was weak as a kitten, so when she brought over the broth and laid a napkin on my lap, I didn’t protest. When she spooned up some broth and brought it toward my face, I did what any self-respecting guy would do. I slurped it down.
That’s when Carolina walked in. To find her mom spoon-feeding me to the smooth, rhythmic stylings of Next. Her face was something between horror and astonishment. When that shock passed, she was left with something else. Not anger. But disappointment. How could you do this? Not to me, but to yourself?
“Close the door, amore, you’re letting cold air in,” Eva said, spooning up some more broth. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have stopped it right there. Instead, making eye contact with my girlfriend from across the room, I shrugged, opened wide, and let her mom feed me another steaming spoonful. Eva concluded that my immune system was run down. Maybe I just wasn’t getting enough exercise.
“You should come to Pilates sometime,” she said, dabbing broth from my chin. “I have guest pass.”
There are worse places to end up than Milan, of course. As one friend put it, “Italy’s incredible. The coffee. The food. The culture. But if you need to mail a package? You’re kinda fucked.” Things move at a snail’s pace. Buses run late or not at all. Stores keep odd hours, and the entire country shuts down at lunchtime. But compared with an opioid crisis, school shootings, political division, and people who unironically say “Catch you later, alligator”? Italy’s a utopia. Plus, Eva makes an incredible bone broth.
Besides, I hadn’t had much of a choice. I was pushed into an embassy. Told to get a visa. That she would be waiting at the hairdresser. I just hope that someday it’ll be worth it. That my Italian descendants will be grateful. That one day, sitting in a gorgeous piazza in tuxedo jackets discussing Tintoretto, they’ll explain to their own kids, my grandkids, that their American grandpa made a big sacrifice for them. That he scrimped and saved to hire a lawyer in order to secure a long-term visa. And that right after he paid for it, his delightful, impossible girlfriend turned to him with a nonnegotiable look in her eye and said, “My mom’s diving me up the walls. Let’s go back New York.”
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