Rachael had come running back out and called to Dad, “She hasn’t paid the bill yet and still has to pack one more bag.” Dad pulled his foot off the stair of the bus, and Janet, who had already gotten on and was sitting down in the back row, rushed to get off the bus before the driver pulled away. When he left he shook his head and then tapped the side of it to show he thought we were all nuts.

When Dad saw him to do this, he ran a little way down the road next to the bus and shook his fist at the driver and gave the bus a big thumping slap with his hand on the side as it pulled into traffic. The people riding on the inside all looked out and started talking to each other about Dad.

Dad walked back to where we were and he was fuming mad. We all sat still. Even Janet didn’t say anything at all.

Dad said, “If we miss our train we’ll miss all the connections, and if we do that we’ll just have to sit on our suitcases in Milano until tomorrow’s train to Switzerland.”

Nobody asked any questions. We knew Dad was telling the truth because we’d spent all our vacation money on the pensione so we wouldn’t have any left for a hotel in Milano.

When Mom came out Dad shouted, “Now you’ve done it!”

“What’s wrong, Ralph?” she asked.

Dad yelled “Wrong!? Wrong!? I’ll tell you what’s wrong! You’ve made us miss the bus to the station! That’s what’s wrong, Elsa!”

“We’ll take the next one, dear.”

Dad yelled out at the top of his lungs, “The next one’s at a quarter to and if, if its on time, exactly on time, we’ll have one and a half minutes to get across the street, up the stairs, across to the platform, and catch our train to Genoa!”

“The Genoa train’s always late, so I’m sure we’ll be fine dear,” Mom said.

Dad said nothing else for a while, but we knew that if they got alone someplace, then Dad would have plenty more to say. When Mom sat down next to Janet on the bus stop bench, Dad turned his back and started to walk up the road toward Portofino as if he was looking for the next bus.

Janet said to Mom in a low voice so Dad wouldn’t hear, “He ran next to the bus and shook his fist at the driver and hit the side.”

Mom shook her head in sorrow and sighed, “Oh dear. Poor Ralph. . . . It’s his working-class background in him coming out. You know he’s only a generation away from a manual laboring family.” Janet nodded and moved closer to Mom on the bench.