There's a story in my Tuscan family of nobility and forbidden love. It's set in Taranto, Puglia, on Italy's southern heel and involves my daughter's great-great-grandmother. The best known version is told by my husband Marco's uncle, Riccardo, who remembers it being told to him by his elderly Nonna Anna herself. Anna Michela Comasia Maria Calianno. Her long name was a sign of her family's noble status. She was born in Taranto, Puglia, in 1889, into a wealthy, well-educated Tarantine family of physicians, surgeons and landowners. One day, by chance, young Anna answered the door instead of the butler. There was Nicola Cardellicchio, the postman. He came from a poor family of bricklayers and wool spinners, raised by a single mother. "He was no adonis," noted Nonna Anna. Nicola was rather short and stocky, but she liked him immediately. She continued answering the door whenever the postman passed. When Anna's mother, Girolama, noticed her daughter's growing interest in the postman, she forbid her to see him again, threatening to disown her. So Anna did what any lovesick girl would do: she ran away, eloping with Nicola. The couple had nine children in Taranto Mario, Marco's grandfather was born in the middle of the First World War but times were very hard, and they moved north to Torino to look for work. Nonna Anna was perhaps not an instinctive cook. I wondered whether she ever had the possibility to learn how to cook. Her grandchildren, Angela (my mother in law) and Riccardo, remember her only ever making lesso (boiled meat) and these polpette, which became variously known in the family as "sugo di nonna Anna" and, oddly, "amatriciana" (which is actually a different recipe, a chilli-spiked sauce of fried guanciale and tomato to coat pasta). But these polpette plump meat balls, cooked slowly in tomato sauce, a very traditional dish from Puglia were passed down to Anna's daughter in law, Angela's Tuscan mother, Lina, who made them so often for her own family that she in turn taught her daughter in law,... Why did Anna continue answering the door? Pick the correct answer from the following options: A. not enough information B. Because Girolama threatened to disown her C. Because she married Nicola D. Because she liked Nicola
D

(Question)
Rain, the young man is thinking. Of course it would be raining. Not a heavy, cleansing rain that leaves the streets steaming and the neatly sculptured yards lush and fragrant. This is a gray drizzling rain. A rain that makes him think of places like England and Scotland as they appear in those disturbing late night films on cable, the ones in black and white that weren't particularly memorable when they were made and are even less so now. Still, it rains and the air is cool. All he has to shelter him is a think nylon jacket. The jacket is soaked. It feels both chilly and coarse against his skin. His hair hangs in flat and sodden wings, falling into his eyes. It's long in the back, almost to his shoulders, and he thinks that the cars that pass him on the street, the occupants of those cars, might look at him and see only that he is wet and not that he is dirty as well. Can they tell that his hair has been unwashed for days? That his clothes are the same ones he's worn for more than a week? It doesn't matter. He's invisible to them as soon as they pass, taking any assumptions they might make with them. They might just mistake him for one of those hoity-toity college kids, one of those clean limbed and beaming have's who has happened to find himself caught out without his umbrella. He makes a desultory attempt to straighten his shoulders, to lift his eyes from the buckled sidewalk. To look like he might have a purpose or a destination. It doesn't help. He has become the day. He has internalized the environment. He did that years ago, in fact. That's all I can do. Not his words, of course, but he understands them. He is intimately acquainted with his limitations. What is his jacket made out of? Pick the correct answer from the following options: A. Nylon B. Leather C. not enough information D. Denim
(Answer)
A

Dara and Jody sat on the sun-scorched concrete with their backs against the bus shelter. They were sharing an apple, one of those tart green ones, and as Dara took her turn gnashing into it, Jody gagged and vomited up some peel. 'Shit, are you okay?' Dara asked, rubbing Jody's back. 'Um, yeah,' Jody croaked, and started to laugh. 'Just dying of apple peel.' Dara began to laugh too. Looking at the little pile of fruit skin and foam brought on more laughter, and they were both suddenly breathless but unable to cease the spasms of laughter hiccupping up from their stomachs. They had to lean on each other to save falling over, and even the tut-tut tongue-clicking of the old Italian lady having to divert around them on the footpath could barely stop the infinite but elusive humour. The bus droning into the stop enabled them some composure, but once on board just looking at each other was enough to start it up again. This was the coolest day Dara had had in forever. Jody and her had decided to wag school just that morning before rollcall, and despite her anxiety -- this was actually the first time Dara had ever wagged -- she was so, so glad she did. They were both in Year 11, and had only become friends three months earlier. They were from totally different scenes at school, but one maths lesson had changed all that. Jody had borrowed someone's correction fluid -- in fact it was Mr Dickinson, the teacher's correction fluid -- but it was borrowed from someone who'd borrowed it from him. At the end of the lesson Jody was packing her stuff up and didn't know what to do with the bottle of white-out, so she tossed it out the window of the classroom. Dara had seen her do it, and thought it was just so cool. Jody had done it not in the hope of getting attention, because no one was paying attention, they were all packing up their own crap as fast as possible; she'd just done it. the girls decided to get on the bus Pick the correct answer from the following options: A. not enough information B. to go to Los Angeles C. to go to New York D. to run away to Chicago
A