As I rode my bike home, I replayed the end of the game in my head: my big kick, Davide’s header, Matteo’s breakaway. Yes, my nonno probably would have cheered. In his opinion, soccer was the perfect game, and everyone should spend as much time as possible either playing it or watching it. So “everyone” might even include his granddaughter.
But my grandfather hadn’t come to my game. My nonna would never make a scene, but I had an idea of what happened when Dad picked them up at the train station:
Dad: We must go in a hurry. The soccer game starts soon.
Nonno: Excellent!
Nonna: But Max, you should be at the field already.
Max: Not me. Irene is the one who is playing. Her team is all boys. They all hate her.
Mom: Now that’s not true, Max.
Max: Okay, most of them hate her.
Mom: Massimiliano!
Nonna: I’m sorry, but I cannot go to this game. Who could sit for an hour on a hard bench after passing all those hours on the train?
Nonno: But—
Nonna: Your back hurts you, caro. It is better that we go to the apartment and get some rest.
I reached the gate and pressed our doorbell.
“Sí?” Mom’s voice came from the intercom.
“I’m home,” I said.
Without a word, she buzzed me in. I pushed open the gate and eased my bike through.
A second well-timed buzz greeted me at the dark, heavy, carved wooden door. I crossed the small ceramic-tiled entryway and wrestled my bike down a half flight of stairs to the cantina, the basement, where we had a small storage room.
Tack. Tack. Tack. My cleats clacked against the stairs as I trudged up to the fourth floor. Mom had left the door slightly ajar.
The smell of lemon oil and bleach still lingered in the air from Mom’s heroic cleaning efforts of the past few days. Almost every surface in the house had been mopped, scrubbed, or dusted. Everyone and everything had to be as neat and clean as possible whenever Nonna came to visit.
Even though I had washed my face and hands in the clubhouse sink, I was well below the usual standards. Maybe I should slip into the shower before anyone saw me.
But Nonna stood waiting for me in the hallway, a smile of welcome on her face. Petite, wrinkled, and white-haired, she wore a silk blouse, pressed slacks, and matching chunky gold jewelry at her ears, throat and wrist. Something about the
set of her shoulders made me cringe. “It’s a trap!” a small, panicked voice inside me chanted. “Run away! Run away!”
“Ah. Here you are, Irene. Ciao,” Nonna said.
“Ciao,” I echoed.
She held out her hands and raised her face to mine for the double kiss of welcome, a difficult maneuver if you weren’t sure which way to lean. I had watched Mom bump chins and eyeglasses with people many times. This would be my first attempt ever. As I leaned forward, I caught the scent of lavender. Nonna’s lips touched my left cheek and then my right. I wound up kissing mostly air.
“I have heard your papá tell your mamma that you won your game. Congratulations.” She stepped back, still holding onto my hands.
“Thank you. I must take a shower now.” I tried to edge away.
Nonna did not let go. “No, wait. I have a present for you.”
“Bait! It’s bait!” shrilled that small voice again. “Don’t take it. Run away!” I needed backup. Lots of backup.
“Uh, what about Max?” I asked.
“Max has already opened his. He could not wait.”
He could have waited. But Nonna was not the woman to make him. She couldn’t spoil us enough. A snack? It would not ruin our dinner. Dessert? So what if Max didn’t clean his plate. Bedtime? They can certainly stay up a few more minutes—a few more hours.
I followed her into the study. Not a paper was out of place. Every single stray box had finally been cleared away. And no sign of Nonno or Dad. I was on my own. Nonna plucked her purse and a small package off a neat line of luggage in the corner before continuing out onto the balcony.
She eased herself onto one of the white Adirondack chairs and crossed her legs at the ankles. “Here. Open it.”
I eased off the bow, an elaborate work of art surrounded by a mass of curling ribbons. I pulled a small, green box out of the wrapping paper and flipped it open. Inside, I found a gold herringbone necklace.
“Oh, Nonna,” I breathed. “It’s beautiful. A thousand thanks.”
“It’s nothing. Try it on.”
When I finished fastening the necklace, Nonna handed me a small mirror that she’d pulled out of her purse. I gazed at my reflection. The chain hung from a neck streaked with dirt. Untidy wisps of hair, which had escaped from my ponytail, framed a red face streaked with mud. I quickly handed the mirror back.
“I was not expecting to find you such an elegant, well-educated ragazza when you arrived here last month,” Nonna began. “I bought the necklace for her…for you.”
A great, echoing “but” hung between us. I waited.
“Irene, you know I love you well,” my grandmother began. “I would prefer that it was not necessary to say this to you, my treasure, but your parents have not done it, therefore I must.”
“What, Nonna?” I asked.
“Soccer is not a feminine sport.” She could have been repeating the latest pronouncement from the Pope in Rome.
“In America, sí,” I insisted politely. “As many girls play it as boys.”
“The young women here have good reason not to play it. It is not graceful. No. It is dangerous. It is brutal. You cannot deny it.”
Hmm. Shouting and kicking and bloody noses.
“Ah! We are in agreement,” Nonna said, pouncing on my hesitation. “I can read it in your face. Listen, I know that you are the sporting type, carissima, but there must be something else that would please you. Swimming? Skating?”
I shook my head.
“Volleyball? Basketball?”
My jaw dropped. “Basketball is fine, but soccer no?”
“Basketball and soccer are different,” Nonna said.
Not the way I played. “How?” I asked.
She crossed her arms. “They just are. Mmmm. What about tennis? Would tennis please you? There is a club here. I saw the signs.”
I shook my head again. “No. It’s too expensive.”
Nonna leaned forward, her hands clutching the armrests of her chair. “If you quit soccer, your nonno and I would pay for lessons.”
I had picked the wrong excuse. “No thank you,” I said. “Soccer is my favorite sport. I must continue to play.”
“Your team accepts you?”
I hesitated again. “Some of them.”
“And the rest?”
The rest of them would be cheering my nonna on.
“This is a small town, Irene,” she continued. “Who will be a friend to a—a maschiaccio?”
I grinned. I could tell that Nonna hated to even use the word, much less have her granddaughter actually be such a thing. “Another maschiaccio,” I answered. “She is called Giulia.”
“Another girl plays with you?”
“No. She quit a year ago.”
“Why?” Nonna asked triumphantly.
“There are no teams for girls here. She had no future in soccer. I do.”
“What about the present?” Nonna’s voice rose in frustration. “Has my son taught you nothing of the bella figura?”
“Appearances are everything” was Mom’s rather cynical definition of that Italian concept.
“Does the bella figura mean to stop something you have already started?” I asked.
“If you should not have started it at all, sí.” Nonna pounded her fist on the arm of the chair. “Truly.”
“We do not agree, Nonna. If I stopped now, I would seem stupid and weak. Everyone would say—”
“That you are gracious, gentile, well educated, not afraid to admit a fault,” Nonna cut in. “You are such a charming girl, Irene, until you step onto the field.” She wrinkled her nose and held out the mirror. “Look at yourself now. Dirty. Smelly. Hair like Medusa.”
I stood up. My calves knocked the chair backwards. Impolite words and gestures, both English and Italian, were dancing through my head. I had to leave before one of them escaped, before I pitched the necklace and the box and its beautiful bow off the balcony.
“Grazie, Nonna. You’re right.” I waited just long enough for hope to blossom on her face before adding, “I certainly must take a shower. But no, I will not quit soccer. I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “Povera. It is all the fault of my son. He is mad for the game. If Max had been born five years earlier, we would not be having this discussion.”
I pressed my hand to the bottom of my ribcage and whispered, “That’s not true.”
Or was it? No. I would not—could not—believe that Dad had just been making do with me. He would have coached my teams and kicked the ball around with me in the backyard just the same. I was sure of it.
I stumbled across the balcony and back into the suddenly blurry study.
“Maria Pia!” Nonna called, her tone halfway between a plea and an order. “I’m sorry. Come here, cara.”
Maria Pia was the name of my youngest and most independent-minded aunt, not mine. I would not answer to it. I passed the living room. Dad was describing our view, telling Nonno what he would be able to see if the air was clear. Tall and angular with the same lift to their shoulders, they were as alike as two drops of water.
I snatched a pair of shorts and a flowered shirt off my bed. Nonna had given them to me as a welcoming gift when we arrived in Milan a few weeks ago. Since my grandmother always liked seeing me wear the things she had bought for me, I had laid them out before the game. Now I wanted to grind them under my dirty cleats, crumple them into a ball and shove them into a drawer. After a week or so, the stains would set and never come out.
Instead, I carried them and the golden chain to the bathroom. I would show her. I would be gracious, gentile, well educated, and not afraid to admit a fault. If playing soccer was a fault, well then, I was guilty.
I could have stayed under the stream of hot water all day. There was no tank to empty. Every drop was heated as it flowed rapidly through the riscaldamento. But natural gas was expensive, much more expensive than in the U.S. When most of my anger had swirled down the drain with the water, I reached for a towel.
I wondered what might have happened if Nonna and I had had that conversation about soccer in Milan when we arrived. I might not have been able to stand up to her without the prospect of having to explain to my team why I quit—without having the vision of a wildly celebrating Matteo to stiffen my backbone. I might have wound up with a closet full of tennis outfits, a coach to help me with my backhand, and a determined rationalization that tennis would be a wonderful opportunity for cross-training. I wouldn’t be struggling in a game that I used to dominate. No one would be trying to force me off the tennis court just because I was a girl.
And there was also the real possibility that I might have become an enthusiastic member of the I-Love-Matteo club. I wouldn’t have known any better. And I might have been desperately trying to fit in with Elena’s group instead of being myself with Giulia. No soccer. No Emi. No Giulia.
Over the high-pitched whir of the hair dryer, a knock sounded. I pretended not to hear. A second knock followed, this one more insistent.
“Who’s there?” I asked in Italian.
“Me,” Mom said in English. “Let me in.”
I unlocked the door and pulled it open.
Mom scanned me. “So you decided to get cleaned up before saying hello to your grandma. A good idea.”
“Um, not exactly,” I said, fingering the gold chain that was hanging around my clean neck.
“Oh no.” Mom came in and shut the door. I saw that she was wearing makeup, jewelry, and a silk blouse that Nonna had given her. “I had hoped to catch you before she did. We had a little, uh, discussion before you came home. Your dad told her to leave you alone—that you were his bella, brava calciatrice. That you’d made your decision and stuck with it.”
“Nonna thought I’d be more reasonable.”
“And?”
I sighed. “I wasn’t.”
“What happened?” Mom demanded. Something in her eyes told me that mentioning Nonna’s theory—how Max could have saved me from becoming a maschiaccio if only he had been born a few years earlier—would be a really bad idea. I shook my head.
Mom crossed her arms. “Your father needs to have another talk with your nonna. Or maybe I will. You’re making a real difference here in Merano. You should see the way the little girls on Max’s team watch your every move. You’re their role model.”
“No. It’s okay. Really. I guess I understand how Nonna feels.” Mom looked unconvinced, so I decided to pull out the big guns. “I mean, how would you feel if I told you I wanted to be a cheerleader?”
Mom’s eyes widened. She cleared her throat. “Um, they don’t have those in Italy, do they?”
“No. I mean when we go back to the U.S.”
“You’re just saying this to make a point, right?”
I smiled.
“All right. I won’t say a word about soccer, and neither will your father.”
It was a good plan. Too bad Max and my nonno weren’t in on it.