Dark Shimmer (13 page)

“I'd love to see it all, to hear it and smell it and, oh, to taste the food. I get tired of our fancy food.”

“Listen to yourself, Dolce. You chose to enter this life.” His eyes shine—tears. “Do you regret your choice?”

“No! No, I do not.”

“I hope that's true, Dolce. While I'm gone, make no mirrors. Get well. Greet me when I come home. I want my wife back, my beautiful, sweet, plain-talking wife.”

“
G
lass,” I repeat as I walk across the front of the grand hall. “I want glass in every window.” I stop and look back at Antonin.

His mouth twists. “I can get workers to start tomorrow on the facade that faces the Canal Grande.”

“Front and rear.”

“But, Signora”—he spreads his hands—“glass costs….Everyone else still has oiled paper on the rear windows.”

“Do you have to fight me, Antonin?”

“Of course not, Signora. I just wonder if we should wait until…”

“Until Marin comes home? He left yesterday. There's no telling how long he'll be gone. And there's no reason to wait.”

“Can I help?” Agnola comes out of the sewing room with Bianca.

I knew I was speaking too loudly. “Oiled paper on the windows is ugly,” I say. “Don't you agree?”

Agnola looks from me to Antonin. Her eyes plead for him to explain.

“I agree,” says Bianca.

I look right at Agnola. “Not many palaces on the Canal Grande still have oiled paper.”

Agnola nods slowly. “That's true.”

“So,” I say, “glass, all around.”

“No one sees the rear,” says Antonin to Agnola.

“No one sees the rear,” says Agnola to me.

From somewhere deep inside me comes a flame. I cannot see, I cannot talk. I put up a hand in the halt gesture until vision returns. Then I run down the stairs to the kitchen.

Lucia La Rotonda looks at me in surprise.

I scan the counter. There's the knife. My fingers close around the hilt so that the blade points down. I race back up the stairs.

Agnola and Antonin and Bianca look at the knife, dumbfounded. Why can't they understand what I have to do?

I jab at the oiled paper on a long window. The knife's tip bounces off the tough surface, but I'm pressing so hard that my hand keeps going forward, slipping along the hilt onto the blade. It cuts deep into my hand between thumb and fingers. Blood spurts. I transfer the knife to my other hand and jab at the paper. It cracks into sharp, stiff fragments that fall to the floor. I jab at the next window, and the next.

The room is filled with screams.

Someone has grabbed me from behind. Someone else tugs on my wrist with both hands.

“Stop, Mamma.” Bianca's eyes are huge.

What have I done?

I uncurl my fingers and let Bianca take the knife away. I go limp.

Agnola puts her hand on my forehead and presses me against her. “It's all right, Dolce. It's going to be all right.”

We sit weakly on the big chest-bench. Agnola sniffles as she wraps my hand in the white linen that Lucia La Rotonda holds out. Each loop reddens before she can wind the next in place. Finally, the cloth stays white. Agnola holds my bandaged hand, still crying.

They need words.
Please, come to me, words.
“Glass lets us see out,” I say.

“Yes, it does.” Agnola nods at me.

I nod back. “Sometimes I feel smothered. Do you understand?”

Agnola keeps nodding.

“For women locked away inside, glass is the only access to the world.”

“We have balconies,” says Bianca. She sits on the floor with her arms wrapped around my legs. Her chin rests on my knees.

“Only when the weather is good. Why should we be prisoners of the weather?”

“Why should we be prisoners of anything?” says Bianca.

“Exactly. I miss the outdoors.”

“But you didn't have to grab a knife,” says Bianca quietly. “You didn't have to keep stabbing the windows when you cut your hand.”

“I wanted people to know…how much glass matters.”

“You scared us.” Bianca bites her bottom lip.

“Maybe for a moment…I wasn't thinking straight.”

No one speaks.

“I want glass windows,” I say.

“You shall have them, Signora,” says Antonin. His face is ghastly pale.

Lucia La Rotonda looks horrified.

They must think I've gone mad. Have I? The bodice of my dress is blood-spattered, but my hand doesn't hurt. I'm not sure I'm here in this body.

Bianca looks at me with a need sharper than any blade. Agnola cries.

Still, I press on. It has to be done right. “I want crystalline glass on the facade side. The whitest kind, made with kali.”

“Kali?” says Antonin, in a mollifying voice. “Signora, I don't recognize the word.”

“It's an herb from Egypt. It bleaches the glass. It makes it perfectly clear. It makes it the best.”

“You will have the best glass,” says Antonin. “With kali.”

“I want glass in the rear, too. But you can choose what kind.”

Antonin pulls his head back. “It's not my position to choose, Signora.”

I look at him hard. But he's sincere. I've tormented all of them. I am awash with shame. “For the rear, blue-green glass,” I say. “It costs far less.”

“Of course, Signora.”

“This whole floor will light up. Imagine it.” I look from Agnola to Bianca. “Sun sparkling everywhere. You want that, too, don't you?”

Bianca nods.

“Ah! Let's replace this big, old dark furniture with glass! We can be the crystalline palace. Glass table, glass chest-bench.”

“But then everyone will see our linens,” says Agnola.

“We can put flowers inside the chest,” says Bianca. “Bring the outside in to us.”

“Perfect. You, Bianca, you can choose them from the flower monger each morning.” I lift my chin to Antonin. “Have the glass chest-bench built first.”

“Of course, Signora.”

I look at Lucia La Rotonda, and hear my mamma's voice in my head. “For the evening meal tonight, I'd like liver and lungs, please.”

“As you wish, Signora.”

“Serve dried apples for dessert,” says Bianca.

“Yes, little Signorina.”

I gently move Bianca off to the side and stand. “My apologies to you all. It will not happen again. And now I'm going to lie down.”

“Can I sleep with you?” asks Bianca. “I need you, Mamma.”

She's not afraid of me. Good Lord, she's afraid for me, but not of me. How lucky I am. I nod. Then I nod to Agnola. The three of us go into my room and lie with me in the middle. Bianca twines her arm around mine and interlaces her fingers with mine. She is the first to fall asleep; her breathing tells me.

Agnola presses against me, shoulder to hip. Her breathing also is regular, but there's an alertness to it.

“I don't entirely know what happened to me,” I whisper.

“Nor do I,” Agnola whispers back.

“It's as though something else was in charge.”

“Don't say that to anyone, Dolce. Rumor will spread that you're possessed.”

“Maybe I am.”

“I pray not, Dolce. People lose their temper. Sometimes with justification. You are right that transparent glass will expand our world. Maybe it was simply a tantrum born of frustration. Something understandable. Let us both pray that's what happened.”

“I don't know if I am any good at praying. The Lord seems to give whatever He has in mind.”

Agnola kisses my cheek. “Women can live without having babies, Dolce.”

“Can men?”

“Marin has Bianca.”

Agnola finally falls asleep, but I can't.

I didn't lose my temper today. I lost myself.

I
walk the long grand hall feeling weightless, singing to myself. I like this time of year, when the mornings and evenings are cool but the middle of the day yields to the sun. Everything feels good this morning; everything pats my cheeks lovingly. Today will warm like ripe fruit. I'm headed for the music room, where Bianca plays the harp most mornings. She plays like an angel, like the angel she is, a princess angel. I remember Mamma saying harps sound like angels singing. My smile lifts my whole self so much I have the sense I could fly.

I wipe sleep from my eyes and touch my teeth. They feel the slightest bit odd, but maybe that's because I just rubbed them clean. They are pearls now. I run my hands down my arms. My skin is smooth cream. My loose hair curls teasingly around my cheeks. I am happy. I walk with confidence. Marin is not here to see me, but I pretend he watches me. I pretend I am basking in his admiration.

It took the first six years of marriage for us to reach a method of living together, but for the past year we have managed very well. He gathers his books; I don't try to stop him from traveling or from squirreling away in the library when he comes home with new books; he doesn't ask how I pass the time. When we are together, we are simply together—man and wife. We have much to rejoice in.

Crying comes from the music room. Faintly—the door is closed. I slip in.

But it is not Bianca in tears. It is Agnola who kneels on the floor in her fine dress with her back to me. Her shoulders scoop forward. Sobs rack her. I was twelve years old when I witnessed Mella's grief, but the image still cuts me. I kneel beside Agnola.

She pets the body of Ribolin on the marble floor in front of her. The little dog is contorted and stiff. He must have died in pain, hours ago. Tears spring to my eyes.

I kiss Agnola's cheek. “He lived a good, long life.”

She shakes her head.

“The fur around his muzzle is gray. Look.” I am whispering. “Look, Agnolina, little Agnola. And on the top of his head. And his chest. Gray. See the lumps and bumps on his eyelids? There are so many. He lived a long life, Agnola. Very long. And you treated him better than any mistress anywhere. He slept on pillows. He ate from bowls. It was a very good life.”

She turns to me like a child. “He was mine,” she says between sobs. “All mine.”

Animals are like that. Children, too. We think of them as ours.

Without Bianca, I'd be a shell. Hollow. I don't know what I'd do. But even with her, I feel the lack. I know I have to be grateful for her…and I am, I truly am. Still, I remember Franca's words that day years ago: the Lord should have made Bianca a boy. The Lord has been unfair to Marin. And to Agnola; here is a woman who deserves everything and has nothing.

I hug her tight and kiss the top of her head so she can feel it through her thick hair dyed silly pink. “I understand.” I rock her. “You can pick a spot in the courtyard. We'll dig a hole. You and me.”

“And Bianca.”

“We'll dig a hole and Ribolin can rest there forever. You can visit him every day.”
You can talk to him like I talk to myself.

Did I say that or just think it?

Agnola pulls away from me and stands. There are so many things about her that please the soul. She tries to see the best in everyone. She tries so hard. And she loves Bianca, which matters more than anything.

She takes a bit of cloth from inside her sleeve and wipes at her eyes. I stand and tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “Can I fix your hair?”

Her head tilts just the slightest. “Thank you.” She walks out the door into the grand hall and heads toward her room.

I catch her by the arm. “Let's use the mirror here in the hall.”

“But I love my own mirrors.”

“They are beautiful, your silver mirrors. And you keep them polished. But glass is more revealing.”

“Which is what I don't need.”

“You have your charms, Agnola.”

“Only you see them.”

I shake my head. “Give me a chance to bring them out. Just this once.”

Agnola looks mournfully at me, but nods.

And so I set her on a stool in front of Mirror, Marin's wedding gift to me. I pull off the white silk that blinds Mirror, and I allow myself to take one deep, quenching look. This is how Marin sees me….Mirror tells that truth. And,
thank you, Lord,
I am beautiful to him. Marin said it not long ago, on our seventh wedding anniversary, and Mirror repeats it now. I love to hear it inside my head. But I keep Mirror covered so I won't look in it all the time.

I comb Agnola's hair and take my time with every little knot. My hands shake, of course. But her hair welcomes me, tremors and all.

“Why are you combing Aunt Agnola's hair so gently?” Bianca walks past us, already dressed. “You have to dig down to the very bottom to bring out the shine.” She opens a set of doors inward and steps out onto the little balcony. A burst of chilly air comes in. Bianca turns and leans back against the stone railing. At fourteen she's a promise of loveliness to come. She has rouged her lips blood red. She has no need to tighten the middle of her bodice, for her waist is honey dripping from a spoon. Soon it will be hard to hold off suitors.

“You better put on a hat,” calls Agnola.

“I don't care what others think,” says Bianca. “Papà chose a woman who had never owned a hat before. And hats really don't cover anything anyway—everyone can see whether your hair is remarkable or not. Why else would Mamma be fiddling with your hair now, anyway? Hats are a trifle. A stupid convention.”

“I'm thinking of your skin, not your hair. It'll color if you're not careful. Autumn sun is still strong.”

“Besides,” I call, “conventions are precisely that, and not all men are as forgiving as your papà.” Marin is the very definition of forgiving.
Amen to that.

“Your skin was colored by the sun when Papà fell in love with you,” Bianca mutters. But she comes inside anyway, rubbing her cheeks.

Despite her words, I know she prides herself on her white, white skin. I know keeping it white is her way of paying homage to the mamma I have replaced, the one she remembers less with each day, the one who named her after snow. I'm glad she still misses her mamma. We should all miss our dead mammas, or we lose our past. In my youth, it was only Mamma who kept me from being hopeless.

Agnola gives a little shiver. “Close the doors, would you?”

Bianca closes the doors. She comes to stand beside us and looks at our reflections in Mirror. She touches Agnola's sleeve. “You've been crying.”

Agnola's lips tremble.

“Little Ribolin has died,” I say. “Call Antonin, please.”

“Oh.” Bianca picks up Agnola's hand, kisses it, and holds it to her cheek. “I'm so sorry, Aunt Agnola. He was a good pup.”

The pressure between my eyes mounts again. I must hurry as best I can and finish Agnola's hair. “Antonin needs to wrap Ribolin in cloth and carry him to the courtyard for us. A good cloth. That wool I picked out last week. Antonin knows where it is.”

Bianca stares at me. “That cloth came from Firenze, at a high price,” she whispers. I give her a withering look. She nods in chagrin. “A very good pup,” she says to Agnola.

Agnola's crying gets louder.

I flash my eyes at Bianca and silently mouth,
Antonin.
The girl leaves at a run.

I divide Agnola's hair into six locks. I twist them and loop them and fix them into swirls with pearl-tipped pins. So long as my hands move slowly, they are competent. Life in Venezia has taught me well when it comes to styling hair. I can give this gift to Agnola, insignificant as it is.

Agnola watches in Mirror. She will never turn heads, but she looks fine. Her eyes show she knows it. We exchange smiles in Mirror, though hers is still watery. The naked gratitude there catches me off guard. Perhaps this is not such a small gift.

At times like this I feel almost ordinary, almost like everyone else. I press my forehead.
Go away, pain.