Short story

She was standing in the cucina dressed in a pretty pink gingham dress. Her man was out back on the porch having a beer with his pals . She was listening to them talk all in dark Italian as she tried to figure out if the pizza margherita she was cooking in the oven for them, or at least her husband, was ready. The aroma was very good. She opened the oven up and took a look. The pizza was bubbling.

She figured she would wait a few more minutes, & have a beer herself in the mean time. From the fridge she grabbed a frosty Heineken and popped the cap off and sat down fixing her dress and crossing her legs, listening to the sounds of the men's voices drifting around in Italiano. She wished she could understand more; alas, it was impossible. She had no patience to study...and Galeazzo wouldnt really speak it to her. He didn't like it, he said. When he was with her he spoke English and he would do that even if his English was bad . Then however with all the friends & the neighbors it was Italian...constantly. In the United States this hadn't been so bad, but then once Galeazzo was back in Italy his English started to get worse instead of better, because he had stopped speaking it so much. This was making her increasingly nervous. She hadn't thought about it. About how she would be entirely left out like this.

Her mother had said it to her! But she had been so excited when Galeazzo wanted to actually marry her and then , 9 months after the marriage, when he said he wanted to go back to Italy and of course take her with him, she had been elated. She was from a small town in the states that had about 6 thousand people in it. She had never even been to a single major Americna city before in her life. And then suddenly there she was making plans to go and live across the Atlantic Ocean with her husband Galeazzo Buonarotta in Italy. It was preposterous. But real! And now here she was in an Italian cucina in the middle of Rome - Rome!- cooking authentic pizza margherita and serving Italian men food. What on earth had happened? It was like a dream really..she sometimes thought...like a dream she had somehow gotten sucked up into. Had she perhaps dreamed of Italy as a child and forgotten it? Had she dreamed of Europe ? She could not remember it. She did not think she ever had. It had all just ...happened so randomly....

She took a long sip of the Heineken and then she stood up to go check the oven again. The pizza was definitely finito now. She pulled it out and then she went to the window (which she knew was called a finestra) and she called for Galeazzo. The second she went there to the window however she saw that someone else had arrived in the backyard , on the porch. It was a woman, an Italian of corse...a girl who looked much younger. Was it one of the other men's wives?

She called out to Galeazzo telling him to come inside.....