In Supino, we always started our day with a walk down our street to the Bar Italia for cappuccino. Last year, when my father was with us, we came to the Bar Italia on the first morning and sat outside on the little patio and drank cappuccino. Bob and Dad, who both had a sweet tooth, ate croissants or cornettos, little tubes of flaky pastry filled with cream. But when Bob went to pay, Bianca, the owner, shook her head. As Bob double-checked the bills to be sure he was giving the right amount, my father explained that Bianca wouldn’t accept payment because it was our first day in the village. Bob tried to insist, but my father said, “Think of it as a welcome-home gift.”

By the second day, the news of my father’s return had circulated throughout the village, and after that, people from his past joined us every morning. Old school friends, neighbours, distant relatives, and the curious: they all stopped by to say hello and welcome us back, and inevitably when Bob went to pay, someone else had already done so. My father had an expression I’d heard all my life — “That’s the way it is.” And I came to understand its meaning in Supino. There was no arguing — well, you could if you wanted to, but it wouldn’t make any difference. This is how things are done in Supino and, therefore, “That’s the way it is.”

Today, as we walked to the bar, Bob carried a road map of Italy tucked under his arm. I wanted to drive down to Vietri sul Mare, a small village in southern Italy where the artisans specialized in hand-painted ceramics. I planned to buy some new tiles for the kitchen of our Supino house. Joe had plastered some spare maroon tiles behind the kitchen sink, but he was short a couple so he’d filled the last corner with a few small black-and-white tiles that were left over from a bathroom renovation. “All free,” Joe had pointed out as he polished off the dusty grout.

Like my father, Joe saw no need to spend money for new if you could use what you already had. I was going to buy some bright and beautiful tiles from Vietri sul Mare and figure out how to rationalize the expense to Joe once I had them in hand. I’d stress that the tiles were from my mother’s province of Campania. “Sentiment might override economics just this once,” I told Bob, and he told me I was kidding myself. When I’d mentioned to Rocco, our Toronto travel agent, that we planned to buy some ceramics, he had told us to contact his partner, Pietro, in Supino for directions to Vietri sul Mare. Apparently Pietro had a cousin who owned a shop there.

“Go to the Kennedy Bar on Sunday morning, about 11,” Rocco told us. “Pietro will be there.”

“How will we know him?”

Rocco shrugged, made a circular motion with his hand, like swiftly sweeping crumbs toward himself from an invisible table. “Look around,” he said.

After our cappuccino, and after Bob had spread the map on the metal table and traced the route from Supino to Vietri sul Mare, he said, “It’s almost 11. We’d better head down to the Kennedy Bar and look for Pietro.”

“I think Rocco used the expression around 11, which probably means sometime about noon. We’ll just be standing there for an hour.”

“So, I’ll buy you an ice cream.”

“What’s the word for strawberry?” Bob asked as we stood in front of the ice cream counter at the Kennedy Bar.

A voice from the crowd responded, “Ahh, you speak English,” and a man in a coal-black suit stepped forward and stretched out his hand to shake ours.

“Hello, I’m Bob McLean.”

“And I’m Maria Coletta . . .”

“Ahh, the family of Mezzabotte,” he said, using the family nickname. “How is your father, Maria?”

I stopped, mouth open, frozen. Tears jumped to my eyelids.

Bob said, “He died in December.”

“I’m so sorry. Mi dispiace . . .”

It was as if I was hearing it all again for the first time. The doctors in the emergency room saying, “Sorry, he’s dead.” The ambulance driver telling me, “Sorry.” The nurse, the priest, the orderlies: “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” I was angry at them all, angry at death. I was even angry with this stranger for not knowing.

“I didn’t hear. I’ve been travelling — tours to France, to . . . But excuse me. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Pietro, partner of Rocco, your travel agent.”

Pietro listened to our plan to travel down the Amalfi Coast, nodding his head to everything we said.

“When do you want to go?”

“We thought we’d head down there tomorrow,” I said.

“Impossible. Just this moment I was talking to Franco, who tells me his father-in-law is here from Toronto, so of course, I will take you to Franco’s house for lunch tomorrow.”

“I don’t . . .”

“Don’t worry, Maria. They all speak English.”

“I don’t know Franco —”

“Your cousin Suzy’s husband, Johnny, grew up in that same section of Supino as Franco. They went to school together. There used to be a butcher shop near the corner, right beside the fruit store and . . .”

Later, I said to Bob, “We have to be careful about these invitations. I know Pietro means well, inviting us to his friend’s house to meet his friend’s wife’s father or whatever, but that can easily lead to another invitation to another dinner with some other friend, and before you know it, our vacation will be over and we won’t have had time to do anything but go from one house to another to eat a meal.”

“What’s wrong with that?” said Bob. “We have to eat anyway.”

Bob had grown up in a family of four; his parents ran a little grocery store six days a week and the family had gone out for the traditional roast beef dinner every Sunday night to give his mother a break from cooking. Even after they sold the grocery store on Caledonia Road, moved to the town of Weston, and bought a coffee-roasting plant where Bob had been working for the past three years, they continued to go out for dinner on the weekends. My family never went to a restaurant. On Sunday, we might go to a relative’s house where there’d be a raft of other relatives and we’d all be crammed around tables talking, laughing, and eating. Or some relatives would come to our house.

The first time I invited Bob to come for Sunday dinner, he brought flowers for my mother. We didn’t have a vase; my aunt had to go downstairs to her place and find one, and there was a discussion about whether to cut the ends off the flowers or just put them in the way they were. While that debate was going on in the kitchen, I took Bob into the living room and introduced him around: my dad, my brother, my sister-in-law, my nephew, my sister, my sister’s boyfriend, my cousins . . . Partway around the room, we had to detour around the dining room table, which had been pulled out to its full length and now protruded into the living room like a small peninsula. Bob stuck a couple of fingers underneath his shirt collar and wiggled it a little.

I said, “Don’t worry. You don’t have to remember everyone’s name.”

“Are these all your cousins?” he asked.

“Of course not. These cousins just dropped in on their way up north. Usually there’s only about a dozen of us for dinner. Tonight’s a bit of an exception. Do you have a lot of cousins?”

“I have three,” he said.

“I have about 33.”

The dinner conversation began with counting cousins — did we have 33 or more? — and that led to heated discussions about cousins living in Italy and the States and whether we were including them in the count. We ate my mother’s homemade ravioli and drank Uncle Primo’s homemade wine. The meatballs sparked a lively discussion between my two aunts regarding the addition of ground pork and veal to the ground beef and whether the extra expense was worth it. A third debate took off from there concerning Romano cheese — should it be added to the meatball mixture before cooking or just sprinkled on afterwards?

Then I brought in the salad and my brother taught Bob his “secret method” of cutting a meatball in half and using it to wipe the spaghetti sauce off his plate so that the plate was cleaned for the salad. The salad was already dressed with oil and Uncle Primo’s wine from last year that had turned to vinegar. Bob was asking why we ate our salad after our meal and what were these dark leaves — escarole, we explained. And he missed most of the argument about who made the best wine in the family. I brought in the chocolate cake my mother had made; my sister brought the coffee pot. By the time the plates and cups had been filled and distributed around the table, there were a dozen different conversations going on and I realized Bob had given up trying to keep track and was sitting back, like my dad, just watching.

I went to the McLeans’ house for dinner the following week. We sat in the living room, among freshly polished end tables adorned with starched lace doilies and vases of porcelain flowers. To get to the couch I had to walk across an Indian carpet with visible vacuum marks and see my footsteps once I sat down. Bob’s parents asked me about school. I was in my final year at Weston Collegiate and I started talking about Wuthering Heights. I thought it was going pretty well until I realized they were talking about the movie and I was talking about the book.

At the dinner table, we began with iceberg lettuce quarters in individual wooden bowls. On the table were bottles of salad dressing I’d never heard of before — blue cheese, Thousand Island, and ranch. Then Mr. McLean passed me a plate with a slice of rare roast beef and asked, “Horseradish?”

I had no idea what he was talking about until Bob reached over and offered me a bowl filled with grated something that smelled sharp and looked anemic. “No, thank you,” I said.

Mrs. McLean passed me another bowl containing another pale condiment. “Sour cream? For your baked potato?”

“No, thank you.”

After that, no one spoke; they just ate. Partway through the meal, someone passed a small plate of Wonder Bread slices and a smaller bowl of butter. I thought back to our dinner table with crusty buns, fresh from the Italian bakery, piled on the tablecloth, and one plate per person. Here, there were multiple plates and silverware and everything matched. Our table settings were as diverse as the company who squeezed around the table, talking and laughing. Here, everything was peaceful and orderly. I got so unnerved by the silence that I forgot to eat my foil-wrapped baked potato waiting in its own little wicker basket to the left of my bread-and-butter plate.

“Did you not like your potato?” asked Bob’s mother.

I assured her I had just overlooked it and they sat and waited silently while I ate my potato. Sweat gathered under my armpits, erupted across my forehead, as I forked pieces of a potato the size of P.E.I. into my mouth. For dessert we had a store-bought apple pie. Bob’s mother cut the pie and started putting large slices on the dessert plates. While I was trying to think of a polite way to say I couldn’t eat that much pie, Bob’s father was offering me cream for my coffee, so I said, “No, thank you. Not for me.” As a result, I had no cream and no pie. I was left to choke down bitter black coffee while they ate their pie and drank their coffee with sweet cream.

I never did get used to his family’s quiet Sunday dinners, but Bob enjoyed the boisterous gatherings at my house and my relatives’ homes. He embraced the Italian tradition of celebrating every family occasion with a big meal and a big crowd.

The morning after our meeting with Pietro, we were sitting outside the Bar Italia watching the market-day activities when a man appeared at our table.

“Mr. Bob of Toronto?” asked the stranger. “Buongiorno. Good morning. I’m Franco. Ahh, Maria, your father. Mi dispiace . . . I was knocking on your door and one of your neighbours called out, ‘Bar Italia,’ so here I am. I’m taking you for lunch.”

“I think Pietro’s coming for us later,” I said.

“Change of plans,” said Franco.

“Will you have a coffee?” asked Bob, because it was barely 11 o’clock and way too early for the one o’clock lunch, but Franco declined. He said we had to get going, and since his Fiat was parked half on the road, half on the patio of the bar, we got in immediately.

As we sped off, Franco said he was taking us on a little pre-lunch sightseeing trip to the town of Anagni. “Just a few kilometres away,” he assured us. Bob and I settled back in our seats; we knew that a few Italian kilometres could mean five or could mean 60.

Anagni turned out to be like a lot of the villages in the area — first you had to drive back and forth across the face of the mountain before you reached the town. There were the same cobblestone streets, some too narrow for cars, others stuffed with Fiats and Vespas and stray dogs, the lines of laundry crisscrossing the roadways, the red geraniums tumbling from the window boxes, the market vendors set up in the piazza. We stopped at a cathedral set high on the hillside to enjoy the view.

“Look there,” instructed Franco, “at the base of the mountain. That’s Supino.”

The cathedral itself was closed for repairs, so we couldn’t see the frescoes Franco told us covered the walls and ceilings. Instead we went to a little shop nearby that sold postcards. After we’d admired those, we stepped into the bar next door and had a cappuccino.

“Even though the cathedral is closed,” Franco assured us, “this is one of the finest views of Supino.” As if it was worth the drive to this village, just to admire the place we’d started out from. Then Franco checked his watch. “Time to pick up my daughter. My wife wants me to also pick up a loaf of bread from the bakery.”

We jumped back in the Fiat and just outside of Supino we slowed near the intersection of the four streets, Quattro Strade. Franco pulled into the empty gravel parking lot of a dark, deserted-looking building. No lights and no sign. I could just hear Joe: What you need a sign for? Everybody knows it’s the bakery.

The bakery was an unfinished room containing plaster pails, wheelbarrows, and deserted tubs of water. In the corner three workers were unwrapping their lunches and the fragrance of roasted peppers scented the air. Franco got involved in their discussion of the first figs of the season. The next thing we knew he was holding a glass of wine.

“Vino?” offered one of the workers, but we shook our heads.

“We have to buy bread,” I reminded Franco. “We have to pick up your daughter.”

Franco turned to the workers and gestured with an upturned palm. “Canadese,” he explained, but he downed the wine, shook hands all round, and headed to the door.

We followed Franco into a back room that boasted a wooden floor, rare in Italy, where most floors are marble. There was a highly polished oak bar with wooden barstools, wooden saloon doors, and heavy oak tables with matching chairs. Posters for cowboy movies covered the walls. No bread in sight.

“The owner likes cowboys, especially John Wayne,” Franco explained. “He’s opening a Western-style restaurant serving American hamburgers and hot dogs and beer. Also a karaoke machine. Grand opening in August. How long are you staying, Bob?”

“We’re heading down the coast tomorrow . . .”

“Tomorrow’s the dinner at Alberto’s house. Pietro told me he’s picking you up at seven o’clock. Sharp. Like Canadian time. Alberto’s acquired this North American habit of punctuality.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “We don’t know anyone named Alberto. Why do you think we’re going to his house?”

“Dinner,” explained Franco.

Before I could continue my questions, Franco had opened another door, and we walked into a room heavy with the scent of freshly baked bread. No bakers, no cashier, not even a cash register. Franco stuffed some euros into a battered tin sitting on the windowsill, grabbed two long loaves off the rack, and we roared off to pick up his daughter.

In the schoolyard, children in coloured smocks played among the tranquil grey nuns. Franco’s daughter was dressed in a blue gingham smock with tiny roses embroidered across the bodice. Her black curls bounced as she ran toward us: “Papa, papa.” As we drove to their house, the little girl, Adriana, tucked herself in beside me, resting her head against my arm.

Franco lived just outside of town, where the newer homes had been built on large lots. He pointed out his neighbours’ homes as we drove along: “Your travel agent Rocco’s summer home. The mayor’s house. Pietro’s house.” As we pulled into a driveway paved with interlocking pink stones, Franco added, “Pietro tells me you are a councillor in Toronto, Bob. I’m a councillor here in Supino. You must tell me all about Canadian politics.”

Franco opened the front door of his house with a little flourish and proceeded to give us a tour, with his wife apologizing all the way. Sorry, she hadn’t had time to make fresh pasta, so Franco’s mother had made the fettuccine for today’s lunch; she hoped that was okay. Sorry, the dining room table was being refinished; it stood on a large white drop cloth, drowsy flecks of sawdust still drifting in the warm air — we must eat in the kitchen. Sorry, sorry. She hoped we wouldn’t mind. On the balcony overlooking a ravine we drank sweet vermouth in stubby kitchen glasses. She apologized for them too. Her crystal was packed away until the dining room set was finished. Sorry.

In the garden below, an older man was throwing grain to the chickens. I thought of my father.

My parents had moved next door to us in Toronto, and after my father had turned his backyard into a vegetable garden, he made a suggestion for our yard. “We could put a few chickens back here,” he said. “Make a chicken run and a coop.”

“I don’t think so, Dad,” I said. “You can’t really keep chickens in the city.”

But my father didn’t think in terms of Toronto by-laws; he still used Supinese logic. “Who’s going to know?” he asked.

So, my dad and our 10-year-old son Ken built some chicken coops, attached them to the back of the garage, and fenced an area with chicken wire. There were no blueprints, building permits, or purchased construction materials involved because my dad believed in using whatever materials you already had or could get for free. That’s why there were spare boards and leftover pieces of plywood stored in the garage; that’s why Dad usually had a small ball of twine, a few nails, and his penknife in his pocket.

They started out with three chickens. The hens were all good layers and we usually had two fresh eggs each day. This supply of free eggs might have lasted longer if Ken hadn’t wanted to take the chickens for a walk, as if they were pet dogs, and if my father hadn’t shown Ken how to tie a piece of twine — which he conveniently had in his pocket — into a slipknot and slide it over the chicken’s leg. Ken took the chickens for a walk on our adjoining front lawns so the hens had a good stretch of new ground to peck and scratch, and the neighbours had a good view of “livestock” kept within the city limits. When the letter arrived from the city by-law enforcement office, my father said we should just ignore it, but Bob assured him that we couldn’t, so my father laid out our two options: eat the chickens or move them to my brother’s farm 30 minutes north.

That weekend, Ken and my father dismantled the chicken coops and loaded them into the trunk, tucked the three chickens into a burlap sack, put it on the floor of the back seat, and drove to the farm.

Franco’s wife joined us on the balcony and called down to her father — “Papa!” — and the man turned and lifted his hat. A few minutes later he came out onto the balcony as well. “I’m Giovanni. Call me John. Where do you live in Toronto?”

John and Bob talked about Toronto. John recommended a butcher on St. Clair, near where his family had lived. “Until my daughter married this man here and moved to Supino,” he said, throwing his arm around Franco. “Look at this view. I told my wife we should move to Supino, but she likes the city life. She said, ‘What am I going to do in Supino?’ ‘Same thing you do here,’ I told her, but women want grocery stores and movie theatres and . . .”

We had roast chicken for lunch. I tried not to think about the chickens I’d just seen high-stepping in the yard. When the conversation had reached a lull, I asked, “Why are we invited to Alberto’s house for dinner?”

Before anyone could answer, the mailman tapped at the kitchen shutter and held up a registered letter. Franco’s wife motioned him inside: “You’re late today.”

With a nonchalant shrug, the mailman offered her a paper to sign. Franco’s father-in-law squeezed over to make room at the table, and the mailman hung his bag on the back of the chair and reached for a bun.

“Finally,” said Franco’s wife as she tore open the envelope she’d signed for. “How many weeks have I been waiting for this?” She switched into Italian and her voice grew irritated as she read parts of the letter aloud.

Franco interrupted. “That’s not what it means.”

“Sure it does. It says right here —”

“Let me see.” Franco took the letter; his wife snatched it back. Their voices grew louder.

Meanwhile the mailman was stuffing some chicken slices into a bun. “Put some lettuce,” offered John, passing him the salad bowl. “You want some rapini?” He slid that bowl too toward the mailman, who loaded his bun, lifted his mailbag from the back of the chair, and headed for the door.

“Grazie,” he called, but the couple continued their argument without so much as an arrivederci.

I looked at Bob; maybe we should take our plates out to the balcony and let our hosts settle their fight in private?

Franco’s wife jumped up from the table and jabbed her finger on the letter. “No, it says —”

“That’s not what it means.”

“This is formal Italian. You don’t understand legal terms. All you know is Supinese dialect.”

“Hey, I went to university. Do you think you know more than me just because you went to — ?”

“Of course.”

“Basta.” A sudden slam of Franco’s fist on the tabletop. “That’s enough.”

Franco’s wife turned and ran from the room. The door slammed. Franco raced after her. The door slammed again. Through the kitchen window I watched them running across the street, the letter shaking in Franco’s wife’s hand.

John picked up the wine bottle. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Some disagreement about the translation. The woman across the street is a professore at the university in Rome. She’ll straighten it all out. Vino?”

After we finished our lunch with John, he turned on the element beneath the espresso pot, and when the coffee was gurgling, I poured it into the little cups waiting on the counter. John brought a box of pastries to the table. Thirty minutes passed without any sign of our hosts. John and Bob exchanged business cards and said they’d get together back in Toronto. I began to gather a few dishes, but John said, “Leave them. My daughter will do them when she returns.” A few moments later, when he walked us to the door, he said, “Come again. Anytime.” Our hosts had never returned.

As Bob and I started down the driveway to walk back to the village, Franco yelled out the neighbour’s window, “Ciao. See you tomorrow night at Alberto’s.”

The street was bordered with blood-red poppies hanging their heads in the afternoon heat. “What a commotion over a translation,” I said. “I wish she hadn’t opened the letter while we were there.”

“The professor will settle it,” said Bob.

“And another thing. Who’s Alberto and why are we going there for dinner tomorrow night? I want to go to Vietri.”

“Joe said Alberto’s a senator in Rome. I guess Pietro figures that since I’m on our city council, I’d like to meet Italian politicians.”

“Pietro’s a little pushy. First he tells us we’re having lunch at Franco’s — and we saw what a disaster that was — and now it’s dinner at Alberto’s. How’d he get to be in charge of our vacation?”

“He’s just trying to be helpful. You said yourself that it’s a Supinese tradition.”

“Yes, but that’s family or neighbours, not every Tom, Dick, and Pietro. At this rate, we’ll never get to Vietri.” I stopped to look at the unfamiliar landscape. “Where are we anyway?”

“We’re almost at the Kennedy Bar,” said Bob. “We’ll be home in 20 minutes.” After a few more steps, he said, “You know, we never walked in this section last year when your father was with us. He always headed up any street that led to the mountain where he used to live and where he walked his cow every morning. I guess he was following his old routine.”

My dad always woke up early — when he lived in Supino and walked his cow up the mountain, and later when he worked at Toronto Macaroni and delivered to small Italian grocery stores. He kept the early morning routine even after he retired. Bob was always up early too, because he helped the drivers load up at the coffee company where he worked. So, in Supino, Bob and my father had woken up early and gone out walking, Bob automatically matching his steps to my father’s slower ones.

“What did you two talk about on those morning walks?” I asked Bob.

“Nothing special,” he said. “Your father’s usual stories about his cow and how he walked her up to the mountain each day to graze. One time he pointed out where he’d gone to school, but it looked like someone’s house.”

“It probably was. Was it the school or where his teacher lived?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, but your father didn’t call him his teacher. He called him professore. Said the professore wanted him to stay in school past grade four. Said your father was good in math.”

“Well, he was good in math,” I said. “And he taught himself to read and write in English when he came to Canada. I never asked him if he would have liked to stay in school.”

Like many who have lost a parent, I wish I had asked him that question and so many more.

I looked around once again. “Where are we?”

“Two minutes from the Kennedy Bar,” said Bob.

We stopped at the bar for ice cream because Joe had said, “Figs are ripe. Next time you go to the bar, try the fig ice cream.” Joe was sitting at a table in front of the bar playing Scopa with some friends.

“Where you been?” he asked.

“Lunch,” said Bob, “We’re on our way home.”

“Did you go to the restaurant in the woods?”

“I didn’t know there was a restaurant there.”

“Sure, sure, just past the soccer field,” said Joe, turning to his card-playing friends for confirmation. They all nodded.

“There’s no sign,” I said.

“Sign. Why are you so obsessed with signs, Maria? There is a sign. ‘Calcio.’”

“I meant no sign for the restaurant, unless it’s called ‘soccer’ too.”

“No, it’s Guerrino alla Selvotta. Guerrino is the man’s name — Gary. Alla means ‘at the,’ and Selvotta is the name of the area in Supino where the restaurant’s located. They serve good fish. That’s their specialty.”

The card players were laughing. Was it because I’d expected to see a restaurant sign? Because I thought the restaurant was called Calcio? Or because I believed there was a restaurant in the woods of Supino that specialized in fish?

“Why don’t we take you and Angela there for dinner one night, Joe?” offered Bob.

“How about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow we’re going to Alberto’s.”

“Why you going there?”

In bed that night, I said, “Okay, we’re having dinner at Alberto’s tomorrow night with Franco and Pietro and whoever else is invited. I think you’re right. Pietro arranged it because you’re all politicians. Or because Alberto’s originally from Supino. Maybe Pietro’s introducing us to people he thinks we have things in common with. I don’t know. But on Wednesday, let’s go to Vietri.

“I know you’re going to say that we have lots of time, but two weeks can go by quickly. We have to go to my cousin Guido and Liounna’s house. I don’t want them to feel bad knowing we’re in the village and we haven’t been to see them. Guido’s my oldest cousin in Italy so we really have to get over there soon. And Liounna will want us to come back one day to eat, which is great, but we also have to eat at Joe and Angela’s at least once or they’ll feel bad. We’ve spent a day with Franco. We’re spending another evening at Alberto’s, but we have to be careful. Pietro will ask us if we’ve been here or eaten there, and before we know it, they’ll have organized our whole trip. What do you think?”

But when I looked over, Bob was already asleep.

The next day, we did the typical Supino things: cappuccino at the Bar Italia followed by a browse through the street market. We didn’t need to buy anything, but the bright umbrellas and the fragrance of peaches and the sound of the tea towels as they flapped in the morning breeze beckoned. Even a small village like Supino has its neighbourhoods, but the outdoor market, in the centre of town, brings everyone together, so we often see women standing chatting near a stall, men sitting and talking at the bar, and children skipping here, kicking a soccer ball there. But when the church bells begin to announce 12 o’clock, the crowd reshuffles. Couples meet up at the street corners, shopping bags are redistributed, and children steal one last kick at the soccer ball before running off to join their families, heading back to their own neighbourhoods. As we climbed the hill back to the pisciarello, which is our part of the village, we often walked with a group of neighbours, each one turning off at various laneways or stairways heading home for lunch. “Buon pranzo,” we’d wish each other, which means “Have a good lunch.”

Pietro said he’d pick us up at seven to drive us to Alberto’s house in nearby Frosinone, and the seven o’clock bells were ringing when he knocked at the door. We gathered our things and walked to his car, but he said it was too early to go to Alberto’s for the eight o’clock dinner. Bob and I looked at each other, trying to grasp, once again, this Italian concept of time. We’d been ready for seven even though we didn’t expect Pietro until closer to eight; then he actually arrived at seven, but here he was telling us we were too early.

“We’ll walk down to the bar,” Pietro said, and so we did, saying buona sera to every villager, at every window and street corner, so that by the time we arrived at the Kennedy Bar, everyone had checked out the style of my dress and the cut of Bob’s suit and they knew Pietro was taking us somewhere outside the village. We found Franco at the bar, and we had a drink and discussed whose car we were taking to Enrico’s house.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Who’s Enrico?” I said.

“The mayor,” said Pietro.

We took Franco’s car to the mayor’s house, where we had a tour of his wine cellar and discussed how many bottles of wine to take to Alberto’s. No one seemed concerned that it was now past eight. Enrico insisted Bob and I go in his BMW, so Franco and Pietro followed the mayor’s car to Frosinone.

In 30 minutes, we arrived at a beautiful apartment building. The lobby was cool and elegant, with tropical plants and a winding marble staircase. Alberto’s wife, Simonetta, stood waiting for us on the second floor and led us straight onto the balcony, where she pointed out Supino, the village’s pale lights blinking intermittently on the sloping mountainside.

Alberto soon arrived with a tray of vermouth in thick glasses shaped like gigantic teardrops. After the introductions, with glasses in hand, Alberto proposed a toast: “To Supino!”

Although he was a senator in Rome and lived in the nearby city of Frosinone, Alberto had been born in Supino. He was a gregarious host, leading us to the table, all shiny with silverware, crystal, and candlelight, and as soon as we were seated, he passed the first tray.

“These are polenta squares with different toppings — figs, sausage slices, goat cheese,” explained Alberto. “Are you familiar with polenta, Maria?”

I laughed. “Yes, I like it, thank you. We rarely had it at home because my father was convinced it was food for the pigs. Now cornmeal is a delicacy.”

“Years ago, my grandfather was the doctor in Supino,” said Alberto. “He’s dead now, of course, but I’m sure he would have remembered your father.”

My father had told me that the doctor owned one of only two cars in the village. The other belonged to the parish priest. “Everyone else walked,” my father had said. The doctor also owned some racehorses that he kept at a property up the mountain. “My brother Americo and I used to ride those horses up on the meadow sometimes, even though we weren’t supposed to,” my father remembered. “They were pretty high-strung, a little jumpy, you know, but we held on. Boy, once they got going, those horses could really run. One time we were racing across the field — Americo was in front, but I was gaining on him — when we saw the doctor’s car heading up the road. Americo steered off to some trees. I followed. Americo passed between the trees, and I could still see the horse, but my brother was gone. Then I saw his legs dangling. So I grabbed the tree branch and swung up too.”

Partway through the meal, Alberto said, “Tomorrow I’ll be at your front door at eight a.m. to take you to Rome for the day. Did Pietro tell you? My wife and I will both come. A little sightseeing. Some shopping. Lunch at a trattoria that I know near the Spanish Steps that serves stuffed zucchini blossoms — a Roman delicacy — you’ll love them. The Pantheon, of course. The Coliseum, if you like. The Vatican. I’ll have you back in Supino by 11 in the evening. Perhaps midnight.”

“Thank you,” Bob said, and when I nudged him beneath the table, he added, “We can drive down to the coast on Thursday.”

“Thursday’s the Frosinone market,” I said.

“Oh,” said Alberto’s wife. “Do you like to go to the market? My friend has a nice little stall that sells silk stockings. Would you like me to take you?”

Pietro had said very little throughout the meal but now he spoke up. “Thursday marks the beginning of the activities for the Feast of the Immigrant, signora. City council will want to meet Bob and Maria, our newest residents.” He turned to us. “Come around four.”

“Where?” asked Bob, but I intervened.

“Pietro, please, I appreciate the invitation, but we’re only here for another week and I want to drive down to Vietri sul Mare to buy some tiles for my kitchen.”

“Then, of course, you must go,” said Pietro. “Why not stay in Italy an extra week or two? I can make a call in the morning to extend your return ticket.”

“We can’t stay longer. Bob has his coffee business to look after and I’m attending university classes in the fall.”

“You need at least a month to relax and enjoy,” said Pietro. “I don’t think North Americans really understand vacations. Even if you spent a month in Supino, you’d never see everything there is to see and you expect to come and go in a week.”

Although I knew Pietro was trying to be helpful by arranging our schedule, I don’t think he understood. I was determined to get to Vietri and buy the kitchen tiles.

Before I could respond, Alberto pushed back his chair and said, “Momento.” He went into the kitchen, returning with the same silver tray that had held the vermouth glasses, only now it held a bottle of liqueur and tiny glasses rimmed in gold. “A toast,” he said, as he poured and passed. “To Supino and to Maria’s father — son of Supino.”

Tears scratched the corners of my eyelids. By the time I’d blinked them back, someone had placed a tray of specialty cheeses from the area, coupled with the first figs of the season and a platter of plums on the damask cloth. Then the aroma of espresso wafted out from the kitchen door, so Pietro and Bob were discussing a tour of the coffee roasting plant in Frosinone on Friday.

The next day over a bottle of wine in Joe’s backyard, I explained how I wanted to drive down the coast and everyone else in Supino had other plans for us.

“You don’t like these people?” asked Joe sympathetically.

“No, no, they’re very nice.”

“You didn’t want to visit Rome?”

“Yes, but I had planned —”

“You come to Supino to be in your father’s village and then you don’t want to be here. This makes no sense, Maria. And you worry too much about everything. Where’s Bob? It’s almost time for supper and Angela is making pasta e fagioli. That’s pasta and beans — a Supinese specialty.”

“Yes, I know, Joe, but we can’t spend all our time in Supino just going from one house to another to eat. Soon our holiday will be over and we won’t have actually done anything.”

“That’s no problem, Maria. You just stay longer.”