Our huge white cloth napkins were also returned to us each night. We got clean napkins every Friday night. Until then your napkin was put in a little paper envelope you wrote your name on when you arrived. If you forgot to put your napkin in its envelope after supper or breakfast, Lucrezia put it in whatever napkin envelope she happened on first at your table. So you might get Janet s napkin at breakfast, all smelling of fish from the night before because she had used it to rub off her hands after eating mussels in garlic-tomato sauce with her fingers. It was one thing to wipe your lips on your own napkins mess, but it kind of made me a little sick, especially at breakfast, when I realized that, because of the pattern of tomato sauce and lipstick or some really big, dried crusty excrescence, I was stuck with somebody else’s napkin. If the girls found they had mine, they got really mad at me because mine was always the dirtiest, they said. They would go “Ugh!” and drop it in front of them on the table and say “ Whose is this?” while they looked at me all disgusted. If I didn’t admit it right away and speak up, then Dad would get mad and say “Get that thing off the table!” I’d have to reach for it, by which time Jennifer might look over from her table and she’d be looking at me all prissy and good like she was saying “ugh” too, then she’d giggle. Mom would see the napkin and say, “You really ought to remember to wash your hands before supper. Look, the napkin’s filthy from you wiping your hands on it!”

The real reason why my napkin would get so used-looking was that at the pensione they served lots of food you ate with your fingers. Mussels, clams, dishes filled with olives, bread dipped in green peppery olive oil, plates of crunchy carrot sticks, celery, and big slices of red and yellow peppers. It was all delicious but a little messy. After you ate, Lucrezia brought out a little silver finger bowl with lukewarm water in it and a slice of lemon floating on the surface. The finger bowl had been sitting in the sunlight all afternoon since Lucrezia filled the finger bowls and sliced the lemons into them late each morning. Thousands of little bubbles always formed in them. They looked like pearls clinging to the bottom. When the bowl was put down, I tapped it to watch all the bubbles rise to the top.