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Chapter 5: Puccini

            Until the scandal hit the news, I never thought anyone would be interested in my life.  Growing up with King Olive as a father did not seem so out of the ordinary to me, since I was in the middle of it.  After everything collapsed, the press sought me out.  Publishers wooed me.  Friends and slight acquaintances kept asking me questions: What was it like to be in the Salerno family?  Was King Olive a good father?  What really happened?  When my cousin Alberto died last year, I was released from my enforced silence.  And so I begin the story:

            The earliest memory I have of my father is auditory.  We had an African gray parrot named Puccini.  He was a wicked bird who would bite everyone but Father.  I was terrified of Puccini, but my father adored the nasty thing. He tried to teach the bird the aria from La Boheme that begins–“O soave fanciulla, o dolce viso…” That is the first music I can recall.  My father held me on his lap in the rocking chair and sang the same verse over and over.  His deep voice reverberated in my body.  The sound seemed to go directly from his heart space to mine.  He called me his little bird, “mia piccola uccellina.”  I felt completely safe during those times, probably the only time I ever felt safe with my father. 

            I was perhaps four years old when I overheard someone call my father “King Olive.”  I went to my mother and asked her, “Why did that man call Father ‘King Olive?’”

            My mother was a petite woman with black, curly hair.  The only make-up she wore was fire engine red lipstick that left stains on whatever it touched: a wine glass, a cigarette, or my cheek.  At my question, she blew smoke out of her nose in a gray cloud.  “They call your father King Olive because he is the biggest importer of olive oil in the whole country.”

            “What’s importer?”

            My mother took another drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke out the side of her mouth.  “You know Uncle Gio?”

            “Yes.”  I nodded.  Uncle Gio was my father’s brother who lived far away in Italy. 

            “Well, Uncle Gio buys olive oil from the farmers in Italy, and he sends it to your father in big containers.  Then your father’s trucks pick up the olive oil and it gets put into bottles and he sells it to the stores.  That’s being an importer.”

            “Oh.”  The word “importer” was very close to the word “important.”  This made sense to me.  I knew that Salerno Olive Oil was the best.  Father had shown me the bottles of golden-green liquid on the shelves in the supermarket.  I liked the label with the picture of the lady holding a basket of olives.

            Before my mother’s attention could turn away from me, I said, “But Father sells salami and those little cookies, too.”

            “Yes, Teresa, he also imports salami and amaretti.  Now off you go,” she said as the telephone rang.

            My most constant memory of my mother is how she looked when I stood in the doorway of the downstairs office.  She would be sitting at her desk, a cigarette drooping from her mouth.  The telephone would be against her ear and a pencil in her hand.  In those early days, she was the main secretary for Salerno Imports.  As she talked on the phone, the cigarette bounced up and down.  The ash grew longer and longer until it fell off, landing either on the desk or on her lap.  She’d brush it away with a flick of her hand.

            When I turned six years old, my brother was born.  His name was Antonio, like my father, but everyone called him “Junior.”  “He will be my right eye,” Father told the visitors who came bearing blue baby clothes and toy trucks.  Father was transported with joy at the birth of a son, and my world imploded.

            I would hear my father singing to Puccini, while he rocked Junior.  I’d tiptoe into the kitchen and try to climb onto Father’s lap.  He would push me away.  “No, my little bird, you are too big for this.  Go help your mother.”

            He always said that, “Go help your mother,” even if my mother was on the telephone or out shopping.  So I would go sit with Loretta, our housekeeper, and watch her while she cooked or ironed.  I was old enough to know that I couldn’t turn into a boy, so I determined to be the best girl possible to win back my father’s attention.