The Amazonian was the other Miranda in me. The wild, restless, unsatisfied one, age thirteen and obedient to no one, who heard Bach and Mozart and Brahms and Verdi and wondered how to unlock the secrets of that music, how to devour all the sounds in the universe, wrestle with them, make them hers, and then pour them back out to the world.
I took a quick run over to Mike’s for a double caffe latte refresher and to check my work schedule. I’d asked for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off. Mike had said he’d try to talk another girl into working my shifts but he wasn’t sure he could manage it. The other girl was Belinda, his latest girlfriend. They’d been seeing each other for two months and the bloom of the romance was starting to fade. Belinda was sulking.
Mike had gone to the bank. And other than a customer, she was alone. She slapped the customer’s cappuccino down so hard that the liquid gave a little bounce and slopped out onto the saucer. The guy started to protest but she froze him with a look and walked away.
I was overdue for a short visit to Cold Shanks. Even though it was just a long bus ride away, my life had been so busy that I hadn’t been back since last Christmas.
I needed Belinda badly. I approached her cautiously. “Hi, Belinda,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Prick, prick, prick!”
“Excuse me. Did I miss something?”
I followed Belinda into the kitchen. She began unloading the dishwasher, crashing everything down as hard as possible. She was a redhead, ethereal and nervous, with short, lank, baby-fine hair. Normally, her skin was pale and transparent, but that day, it was bright pink with anger. “I just can’t believe him.”
“What’s he done?” I asked.
“Mr. Smooth, eh? It’s so nuts. Sooo nuts, I can’t believe I’m in the middle of all this.”
“So what’s he done?”
“Well. In the beginning it’s all wining, dining, flowers, jewelry…right?” She caught the gold chain that glittered across her collarbone and fingered it nervously.
“Yeah?”
“And you think, shit, maybe he’s the one, right?”
“Yeah?”
“And then he says, ‘Can you do me a little favor?’”
“Yeah?” I repeated.
“He asks me if I can give him a hand with his granny.” Belinda spat out “granny” as if it were an obscenity.
“Okay,” I said.
“His granny’s an invalid. Prick.”
“I’m not sure I see the problem, Belinda.”
“She lives in the big family home, the one Mike and his brothers and sisters grew up in, right?”
“Yeah?”
“With his mom and dad and one of his sisters who’s married. The sister lives there, too, with her husband and two kids, okay?”
“Yeah?”
“What he means by giving his granny a hand is that I have to spend the night there. On a roll-up cot in the same room. She can’t do most things for herself. He’s asking me to do night duty for an invalid. Help her to the bathroom, wash her, dress her, that kind of thing. I’ve done one week of it and I’m exhausted. As if I didn’t have enough to do. I thought I’d be sleeping with him, not his grandmother. That’s the whole night wasted.”
“Um, you might find this hard to believe, but it’s a test, Belinda. If you do that for his granny, he’s yours.”
Mike had scared off quite a few girlfriends this way.
“I’ll end up doing it for everyone else in his family, too. I just know it. You should hear them criticizing me, bossing me around. Isn’t it enough that I give a hand? But then they all tell me I’m doing it the wrong way. I can’t take it anymore. But that’s not even the worst part,” Belinda went on. A teardrop baubled up and rolled down her cheek. “The old bag doesn’t speak a word of English. She’s been here most of her adult life and she doesn’t speak English. The place is a total zoo.” She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeves.
“It just seems like it now, but you’ll get used to the way Mike’s family does things.”
“No…no. It’s not worth it. I love him but not enough for all that.”
“You’re too alone in all of this. You have no infrastructure. You need infrastructure.”
“Like how?”
“Well…like extra granny-sitters who have no emotional investment. Somebody who gets paid to do it. You need to wear Mike down, threaten him a little, make him realize that he hasn’t got much choice if he wants to keep you. He’s a typical Italian. His philosophy is to get the woman into the cave and then leave her there…to do all the dirty work. But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.”
Belinda was paying attention. “Yeah?”
“You’re washing dishes in Mike’s place. Don’t think it’ll change if you don’t stand up to him. Do the words family business mean anything to you? It means make all the families and their in-laws work like lackies for the greater good of the family, none of whom are having any fun because they’re all working too hard. Make sure you’ve got loads of reserves to step in and help you. And make Mike pay. He’s got the money. He’s been hoarding it since he was two years old.”
Belinda smiled then made pathetic orphan eyes and stared at me imploringly.
I backed up a step and held up my hands. “Oh, hey, wait a minute, Belinda. Don’t look at me like that. I can’t help you. I’m already working overtime.”
“It’s nights. You’re asleep most of the time. Granny takes a sleeping pill.”
I shook my head.
“Ah, c’mon, Miranda. I’m sure you could use the extra money. You’re not doing anything special with your nights, are you? You don’t have a boyfriend…”
“Hold on a second.”
“What? Now you have one?”
I backtracked quickly. “No.”
“I’ll talk to Mike, Miranda. He knows you. He’d never accept a stranger, but he’d accept you.”
She was right.
“It’ll be easy,” she gushed now. “I work your mornings here so you can go to Cold Shanks for a few days, then you do this for me when you get back.”
It was extortion, sort of, but I liked Belinda. And I was already picturing my plane zooming toward Ontario.
I knew a little something about Italian grannies.
During the summer between my second and third years of university, I went on a two-month work-study abroad program to Tuscany. I managed it all on the cheap, had the whole thing planned right down to the last nickel. I’d wanted to visit my father, but the pound was too expensive. Just setting foot in an English airport would have used up all my resources. And I had gigs to hurry back for.
I was primed for the romance of Florence from the minute I arrived. What I’d seen from the taxi window looked promising; medieval stone buildings, huge elegantly carved wooden doorways, outdoor cafés and restaurants with bright Cinzano umbrellas, quaint marketplaces, impossibly chic and gorgeous men. The foreign girls, tourists like me, were easy to spot. They all drifted gauzily around in loose pale cottons, looking arty, as if they’d just stepped off the set of A Room With a View. I quickly learned that Italian women wore tighter, darker clothes not just to look fashionable, but because the streets were narrow, and it was easy to clean the sides of sooty buildings