Free Only in Naples by Katherine Wilson

-
ista
in Italian signals a vocation. So
autista
is a driver,
dentista
a dentist. My all-time favorite word in Italian is the term for the person at the beauty parlor who shampoos:
shampista.
I figured that
egoista
must be someone who was so into their ego that it became a profession (I now know it just means selfish).
    Benedetta and Nino were fighting about her fiancé, Mauro. Benedetta had met Mauro only eight months before, and he had proposed almost immediately. Benedetta had had several previous relationships, all of which had lasted for years. Raffaella told me that three of these boys had become part of the family, and that when Benedetta had broken up with them (it was always she who ended it, always the turquoise eyes), Raffaella had been heartbroken. “They were like sons! And I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye!” When Benedetta dumped Andrea, the last one, Raffaella made her promise that the next man she brought home would be the one that she would marry. It just wasn’t fair to put Raffaella through that again.
    Mauro was a short cardiologist who, unlike almost all of Benedetta’s previous boyfriends, did not hit it off with any member of the family. So for once the tables were turned: In the bedroom it was Nino who was attacking, and Benedetta who was defending her fiancé. The first time Mauro came over, I later learned, he had opened the refrigerator, taken out a little plastic container of soft
stracchino
cheese, found himself a fork, and started eating. The refrigerator of his future in-laws! Without even asking! Where had this guy grown up?
    He used the informal
tu
form for
you
with both Nino and Raffaella. (In English there is only one form for
you
, but in Italian, there are two: the formal
lei
is used when you don’t know someone or you want to show respect, while the informal
tu
shows chumminess. Or friendship. Or
dis
respect. I don’t know! I still don’t know. I
do
know that you have to conjugate all your second-person verbs based on where you think you stand with someone. And often, the move from using
lei
to
tu
in a relationship is scarier than asking someone to the senior prom.)
    The Avallones were not a formal family. They did not stand on ceremony, and were far from judgmental. But really, this guy pushed the limits. Salvatore explained part of the problem when he told me that Mauro was a communist. Wow, I thought. Italian communists open the refrigerator without asking. They have the balls to use the
tu
form with everyone. It was kind of refreshing to see someone who totally disregarded Neapolitan bourgeois social norms (which I was just starting to understand myself).
Insomma,
I liked the guy. He made me look good.
    That is, I liked him until he embarked on an anti-American tirade one evening at dinner that ended with the phrases “capitalist imperialism” and “worse than fascism” and lots of spit on the table. Now I agreed with Nino. You do
not
open the refrigerator in someone else’s apartment without asking.
    While Raffaella kept her reservations about Mauro to herself, Nino did not. That evening everyone in the apartment building heard about Mauro taking his shoes off and filling the Avallones’ apartment with the stench of his smelly feet (with Nino, it always came back to the
puzza,
the peeyew). Benedetta kept countering with
Egoista! Egoista!
I had never been party to such a row in someone else’s home. Part of me was embarrassed and wanted to slip out without making a noise, and another part of me rejoiced in a stunning revelation: families other than mine—even happy, functional families—fought. They didn’t just disagree, with respect and calm voices. Other families had it
out.
    I felt perfectly at home.

    “
Aaayyyed!
The ambassador’s here!” My mother’s West Virginia twang turned my father’s two-letter name into one with three syllables, all diphthonged vowels. It was an early summer evening in the 1980s and my father was doing his laps in our