Free Living in a Foreign Language by Michael Tucker

garlic and a chopped anchovy, then liberally showered with fresh-grated black truffles. That’s it. You should use enough garlic-lacedoil so that there’s a little pool of it left in the bowl when the last al dente strand of pasta has been scarfed down. This you mop up with a piece of traditional unsalted Umbrian bread. Ideally, you should have a little trace of the oil still visible on your chin by the time the
secondi
arrive. This indicates a properly eaten bowl of
strengozzi al tartufo
.
    Grilled lamb was next for me, along with the spinach with garlic and the fried potatoes. Then a salad, some cheese and, finally, grappa. By the third glass of this lethal potion, I felt I had known these people for years. Karen and Martin told a story about how their gas man had backed his delivery truck over the cliff when he’d tried to turn around on their very precarious road. And Bruce became mellower, more loquacious, with each refilling of the grappa glass. He gave an elegant lecture, I believe, on the various species of birds in the Yucatán. JoJo was in deep Italian conversation with Danila about their respective children and the differences between Italian and American kids. And I actually understood them. The more grappa I drank, the better was my comprehension. I felt I was ready to run for the Italian parliament by the time we teetered out of there.
    They all walked me to my car and I carefully made my way up the dark country road and back to the Rustico. Minutes later I fell into the old iron bed that stood on the ancient brick tiles and slept like a migrant worker.

Nine
    W E BOUGHT OUR LITTLE HOUSE IN I TALY in pretty much the same way we’d done everything else in our life together—hand in hand, headlong over the falls in a barrel, and then on the way down looking at each other and wondering whether this was really a good idea.
    We arrived at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport—known to the locals as Fiumicino—on the first of September for a six-week get-acquainted stay in our new, very old house. We had stuffed our suitcases with pots and pans, bed linens, silverware, picture frames—I don’t know why I thought I wouldn’t be able to find cooking implements in Italy, where they have been known to cook every now and then. I guess I wanted the security of my familiar sauté pans, knives and spatulas.
    Our son, Max, had been traveling through Europe with a friend and they met us at the airport. They had just been in Barcelona for a week and Max was eager to check out what his crazy parents were doing. He liked the idea of having a place to crash in Europe. Max is a jazz drummer and hisfriend, Isaac, is a guitarist. They had been checking out the opportunities for jamming in Amsterdam, Paris and Barcelona, where there’s a much wider audience for jazz than there is in the States. With their backpacks, Isaac’s guitar and our excessive luggage we had to trade up for a larger car—a station wagon, which wasn’t really big enough either. It was a stick shift with a propensity to stall coming out of first gear. With severely limited rear vision because of the bags piled up in the back, we coughed and sputtered our way onto the highway and headed north.
    Two hours later, when we turned off the main road, bumped down the little rutted path to our front gate and drove into the Rustico, all the tensions and anxieties that I had been carrying drifted away in the warm breeze that wafted through the olive trees. The boys jumped out of the car and parked themselves at the table under the pergola as if waiting for someone to serve them lunch. Jill went right to the
orto
, the vegetable garden Bruno and Mayes had planted and graciously maintained for us to enjoy. There were still vines of cherry tomatoes, zucchini, beans, hot and sweet peppers,
rucola
and big, bushy bunches of basil.
    I started unloading the car and hauling the luggage into the house. I wrestled with the lock