“I told you about Strawberry Fields / You know the place where nothing is real.”
– John Lennon
Let’s begin with a dream sequence that finds me sitting at a table in a restaurant in Venice, Italy. In my dream I speak fluent Italian.
Azione!
Across from me is a pretty young woman with dark hair. I know her name is Betty. She is transparent — not fully so, but not fully solid like most people I meet.
“Cosa Ordini?” Betty asks.
I see that I am holding a menu. Betty wants to know what I am going to order.
(For the sake of brevity, I won’t write the Italian I spoke and heard in my dream. I’ll just translate it into English for you. – Gregorio)
“For starters, I think I’ll have a salad with Italian dressing. How cool to have real Italian dressing in Italy!”
Betty fades a little more and offers me a look of pity.
“They don’t pour bottled Italian dressing over salad in Italy,” she says. “That’s just an American thing.”
“Betty, what do you mean, an American thing?” I am confused as to why something called Italian would actually be American.
“It’s branding,” Betty replies, “to make people think they’re eating authentic Italian food. Actually, Italian dressing was invented in Massachusetts, not in Italy, in 1941. Someone named Ken, I think.”
To admonish me a little more, Betty rolls her eyes. I don’t mind because Betty has lovely brown eyes. As soon as I think that thought, though, Betty becomes even more transparent.
“OK, well, I’ll ask for French dressing and put that on my Italian salad.”
Betty’s eyes well up with manufactured tears. I watch the watery beads glide slowly down along her face and then plop onto the tablecloth. They form small, wet triangles.
“French dressing is also an American invention. It doesn’t exist, either. You don’t know the history?”
“Of French dressing? No, I never studied condiments in school. I regret that now.”
“It’s a complicated story,” Betty says. “The first bottle of French dressing was sold sometime in the 1920s or 1930s. No one knows for sure. It was called 1890 French Dressing. According to legend, the recipe was smuggled out of the country during the fall of France.”
“Is that true?” I say, marveling at the courage and sacrifice resistance members endured to liberate a salad dressing recipe.
“What do you think?” Betty says, rolling her lovely dark eyes.
Then Betty does something unexpected. She reaches across the table and takes my hands into hers. Her hands feel cold, lifeless.
“I have to leave soon,” she says, fading into almost nothing. “And before I go, you need to know that you can’t order Russian dressing, either. It was created in New Hampshire around 1900.”
“By a Russian? At least tell me that is true,” I plead.
Betty shakes her head. Manufactured teardrops gently splatter my face.
“What dressing should I put on my salad? What is real?” I say, looking earnestly into her rolling, dark, lovely, manufactured eyes for an answer.
“When the waiter comes, just ask for oil and vinegar. ‘Solo olio e aceto, per favore.'” That’s a real Italian dressing,” Betty says.
Betty has almost completely faded. I can barely make out her hands clutching mine — can barely see her look of pity for me or maybe for the world I will continue to live in when she is gone.
“Betty, before you go,” I say with alarm, “tell me your last name so I can try to find you someday in the White Pages Dream Directory!”
“Crocker,” she says.
A warm, inviting smile, a smile I’ve seen on a box of cake mix, spreads across her face. “Betty Crocker. And I am not real, either.”
