I have a passion for donuts. In fact, to this day I consider there to be no greater treat on a Sunday morning than a box full of donuts. It is a craving that comes from my youth when, after the cardboard wafer at 9:00 mass and a bitter 10:00 CCD class, I’d felt I’d earned a little something sweet. Never more so than when my father was late to pick us up. The wait was an agony which I endured by kicking around the gravel playground while my sister stood placidly by the front door talking to no one visible. And since my father was on O’Brien-time and the dogs – the “girls” – needed to go to the park and he to smoke his pipe, he was nearly always late. So it was a relief to see the top of the old Ford Bronco nosing up the hill. Only then were we able to begin the long trip through Holladay with its two interminable street lights and up Apple Blossom Lane toward our home. By the time we reached A la Chappell apartment complex where my grandmother lived the yellow Winchell’s Donuts sign had become as much a beacon as the Holy Grail in a well-known Monty Python skit. But rather than head straight for it, despite the almost physical pull the sign seemed to have, we turned right into A la Chappell.
“After we pick up grandma can we get Winchell’s, Dad?” I would salivate.
“Not today,” was his usual reply. What did he care? He didn’t even like donuts.
Luckily his mother did. Grandma was both a burden and a blessing on Sundays. She was never ready for us. First we had to tear her away from her crossword puzzle and the pile of Sunday morning coupons. She’d have to dress and perhaps redress while I dug in the box of oatmeal for the rings she’d hidden from the nighttime burglars. Then we’d have to navigate s-l-o-w-l-y the narrow stairwell with its protruding handrails that seemed to exist only to ensnare the tubing of her iron lung which trailed behind her like a regressive set of training wheels. But I was happy to help.
Always the good grandson, always looking out for the interests of others, the moment we got in the car I was quick to ask grandma if she had a taste for donuts this fine Sunday morning. My father’s face would contort but too late. He knew damn well his mother had a “weak spot for those chocolate frosted ones.” Subsequently, chocolate frosted became my favorite, too.
Well, some passions never really fade or if they do often resurface later
in life when the comforts of “home” are being redefined. I wasn’t
long in Italy before I had to have a serious talk with myself over the
necessity of my daily routine. I’d been getting it wrong for four
weeks. Yet no matter how often I repeated the correct response, and I
did so each morning as I stood outside the café's window sucking
what I could out of the cool October breeze, my tongue would slip. Yellow
leaves dotted the piazza. Pigeons and old people milled about, but of
each, only a few. Somewhere over burnt-umber roofs was the duomo.
Fashionably dressed women motored by on their Vespas riding sidesaddle
and showing off the summer tans that had yet to fade from their legs.
Yet even to this distraction, I paid little attention.
It was my first trip abroad – I was here to study – but shy
of boning up on Renaissance art and watching the young Roberto Baggio
score goal after goal on his way to fame and stardom, I hadn’t expected
much in the way of change. My existence here was temporary. So naturally,
total transformation caught me – not to mention my parents –
a little off guard. The phone was at my lips. I'm never coming home, I
said. My parents were horrified. What response were they to have? With
one loafer I pushed at the door, but it wouldn't stay closed; there was
just too much of me. My new slacks shimmered flag-like about my calves.
I watched the leaves outside the booth rise and shift in the afternoon
breeze, not yet willing to relinquish the old flip and flutter of the
tree. I bent down, the receiver pinched against my shoulder, to shoehorn
on the second loafer, inadvertently kicking the old pants that were balled
on the floor. The Italians know how to live, I affirmed. In the café
across the walk business men in Armani suits were taking a second espresso
and laughing. I liked their expressions, the way their mouths moved. I
wanted to use the Italian names for everything. Firenze instead
of Florence; pronto when I answered the telephone. No more English!
I declared that first week. From now on, I would do as the Italians do.
I would smell good, and dress better, and wear leather shoes. I would
defy the graffiti scratched so carelessly into the orange paint of the
phone booth as if it were Cy Twombly painting: Yankee go home.
Now I stood outside that very same café wondering if indeed I should. I was making a mockery of myself on a daily basis. And yet, ironically, as the weeks stretched on and my convictions dampened, it was the one creature comfort that I turned to in my loneliness that was the cause of so much agony: the donuts. In Italian, the word for donut is bumbalone. Unfortunately, the word bumbalino, meaning fat little boy, was close enough for that first slip. It wouldn’t have been so bad – the portly proprietor laughed in that generous and forgiving Italian sort of way at my first transposition – had I not continued to make the same mistake every single time I stepped into his shop. Bumbalino, bumbalone, it was understandable, right? Excuse me, I’d begin, my voice growing quieter as my confidence drained, I’d like…a…fat little boy, please. The second time I did it Luigi laughed again and turned to his wife behind him saying something like Ha ha ha, “bumbalino”, he’s gotten it wrong again. His wife laughed too and we were all friends. Niente, es buffo, no? It’s funny. The third time he was sure I was joking. He’d seen me crossing the street and was holding a jelly donut high above the counter as I walked in the front door. He looked like a game show host withholding the simplest of prizes and winking at the camera to the billions watching at home who can themselves answer such an easy question but aren’t exactly on the hook here, are they? Ah, grazie, I said stepping forward boldly to claim my prize, bumbalino, and quickly realizing my error – my heart was visibly pounding through my throat – I pointed at him comically as if of course I knew that he knew I was joking: heh, heh, bumbalone, cierto. And we all had a good laugh. Why wouldn’t we, I was one of them now, right? Even the businessmen taking their espressos laughed: Gli Americani tan stupidi, no?
A smarter person would have taken the hint and never gone back in there. I was a smart person. I wrote the correct answer down on my palm. And still I got it wrong. It was amazing. I could walk confidently across the street, past the phone booth and the Yankee go home graffiti repeating the correct answer – bumbalone bumbalone bumbalone – the entire way and yet, when it came time to speak, my fool tongue would betray me. But I was determined. Language mistakes were a part of travel, no one was immune, most just didn’t flounder as adroitly as I.
By the end of my second week things began to get ugly. No one laughed. Luigi greeted me with folded arms of silent protest and eventually stopped serving me. And I can’t say I blame him. I’d have trouble serving the American pervert who asked for little boys, too.
To my credit, I kept going in there, despite the anguish. I went in there even when I didn’t feel like breakfast because to simply not show up one day would have confirmed to them their worst fears. Instead, I developed a taste for chocolate sconi.