My First Italian Lesson

How to describe Nicoletta, my Italian tutor. Let me count the ways. First of all, she is tiny, shorter than I but with big hair in various shades of blonde. She arrives at my door wearing a fuzzy fur jacket, a hat pulled down closely over her hair, zebra printed gloves with matching scarf and killer spike heels. ( I can’t imagine how she walks on these in our neighborhood’s cobblestoned streets.) She’s carrying a fake Gucci purse with a giant silver toned logo and wearing huge black sunglasses that she doesn’t take off as I lead her up the steps to the living room.

In the living room, the coat comes off as do gloves, hat, scarf but still the sunglasses stay on. She’s wearing a tight black dress showing off a very shapely figure accessorized with lots of costume jewelry—charm bracelets, bangles, long ropes of pearls, a heart-shaped rhinestone pendant and matching dangling earrings. Still the glasses stay on. Finally, she explains. She has just had her eyes done and I realize. looking at her tightly stretched skin and rather astounding lack of wrinkles, that this is not the first procedure she has undergone.

All this is explained to me in rapid Italian with frequent instant translations and accompanied by a full vocabulary of hand gestures. I am charmed and delighted to say the least.

We sit at the dining room table and begin the lesson and she takes off her glasses. Imagine trying to carry on a conversation in a foreign language with a person with two swollen, red-rimmed black eyes. Small white bandages cover the stitches on her eyelids. It’s hard not to keep staring at her face where I notice definite signs of past renovations.

Nicoletta is an excellent teacher, despite the fact that she can barely see. She sternly corrects my pronunciation and insists on my talking Italian to her. C’e molto difficile ma io provo. Halfway into our lesson, Steve comes home and she quickly puts her dark glasses on before turning to greet him. “I have some problem with my eyes,” she says coyly.