The Girl in the Glass (32 page)

When he stood back up, she leaned into him and said something. Her voice was velvet deep. She was definitely an alto. He said something back to her, and she laughed and kissed his cheek.

I swallowed the last of my wine and held up my empty glass as I stood. “I was just leaving, actually.”

“No, no!” Lorenzo said. “Stay!” He turned to his date. “Bianca, this is Marguerite. She is with my publisher.”

Bianca smiled. Professionally whitened and perfectly straight teeth saluted me. “Hallo, Marguerite. Very nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too. But I really should be going.”

I set the glass down on the little table between the chairs. “Wonderful to meet you, Carlo. Thanks for the wine, Renata.”

“I will find you on Friday after I talk to Emilio.” Renata rose from her chair and kissed my cheek good night. “You look tired.”

I never know what to say when someone says I look tired. Thank you? Sorry? Back atcha?

I smiled and said good night to all of them, my gaze lingering on Lorenzo, who looked disappointed that I was leaving.

“I will see you out,” he said. He brought Bianca’s hand to his lips, kissed it, and then peeled himself away from her.

“I’m fine; you don’t have to,” I said, making my way through the open living room to the front door. But he was right behind me.

He put his hand on my arm. “Is everything all right, cara? Did you hear something bad about your father?”

“No. And yes, everything is all right.”

Lorenzo frowned. “But you look sad.”

“I am fine. Thanks.”

Bianca poked her head through the open balcony doors and said something to Lorenzo.

I turned the knob on the door.

“Where are you going tomorrow?” he asked.

To see if I can hear a statue
. “The Pitti Palace.”

“How about you and Sofia come for dinner here afterward?”

“We have supper with Lauro and Pepe tomorrow!” Renata called from the balcony.

“Certo!”
Lorenzo tapped his forehead. “Friday? You and Sofia come Friday?”

“Sure.”

From the balcony I heard laughter. It was starting to rain. Renata, Carlo, and Bianca came inside, smiling and shaking rain out of their hair.

“Buona notte.”
Lorenzo leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.

“Good night.” I stepped out into the foyer and closed the door behind me.

I have long known that death is a robber. The statue of Adonis in torment, the many depictions of the suffering of the Christ, and the frescoes of the Last Judgment have long whispered to me that death steals, and not just a little here and there. It takes everything. And its sweeping hand is expertly skilled. It knows how to accomplish its task.

But when you are five, death seems an ignorant brute who makes terrible mistakes.

Some have wondered why my mother, so shrewd in other matters, did not see what was coming and why she did not flee to Livorno to board a ship for some safer place the minute she got word her sister-in-law Leonora was dead. That is easy. I can answer that in three words. Virginio and me. We were back in Florence. She wouldn’t leave Florence without us.

I didn’t know for a very long time what happened after my parents left for the villa and Virginio and I returned to laughing as we splashed about in the fountain.

All I knew then is that my parents went on a hunting trip into the country. Mama had kissed me good-bye, told me to mind Nurse and not to quarrel with Virginio and to dream of her while I slept. I did. I still do.

My mother died at the villa. Unexpectedly, so the death notifications read, while washing her hair. Nurse, in tears, had to tell Virginio and me that our parents would not be returning to the palace after all. Papa had gone back to Rome. And Mama was in heaven with the angels.

25

We awoke to rain. Sofia said we could either take umbrellas with us on our half-mile walk to the Pitti Palace or she could call for a taxi, but I didn’t mind the gentle sprinkle that would fall on us as we walked the shining streets. I told her I was fine with walking.

She showed me her latest pages as we ate yogurt and toast for breakfast. Sofia’s new chapter was about the four Medici popes. She had struggled with the writing of it. Some of them had not been particularly admirable holy fathers, she said.

Lorenzo stopped over just before we left to tell us we could not have dinner together on Friday either. He had forgotten he had other plans. Could we come for breakfast on Saturday instead? Sofia offered him a cup of coffee and a piece of toast, but he had camera equipment strapped to his body and was clearly late for wherever it was he had to go.

“It’s raining,” I told him.

And he just smiled and said his camera bags had been rained on before.

“Breakfast on Saturday!” he yelled as he took to the stairs.

We watched him descend.

“Shall we?” Sofia asked.

A few minutes later, we stepped out into the rain. As we walked across the Ponte Vecchio, I lingered at the windows of the goldsmiths’ shops. Sofia let me look but told me not to buy there. The jewelry on the bridge is priced for the tourist, she said. And that’s not what I was. She told me she would take me to a few of her favorite stores later to get some things to take home with me.

By the time we were in sight of the massive Pitti Palace, the rain had stopped, and a weak sun was pushing its way through a bank of clouds. I was glad for the patchy sun to brighten my spirits. Lorenzo’s change of plans had irked me a little.

Sofia guided me into the expansive garden from the palace courtyard, past a stone amphitheater behind the palace, and up the hill to a fountain of Neptune. I was anxious to see my statue and she knew it. The garden was beautiful and big and hilly, and had it been any other garden, I would have wanted to take my time strolling about its lawns and landscaping. But my goal was the fountain where Andromeda waited for me. We walked down a sweeping hill, past groves and gardens on either side, down the Viottolone—a grand avenue of cypresses—that would lead us to the Isolotto Basin at the bottom of the decline, and my Andromeda.

“Some of these trees are more than three hundred years old,” Sofia said as we walked.

I mumbled a comment about that being pretty darn ancient for a tree.

Her next question came out of nowhere.

“Are you in love with Lorenzo?”

I turned to her. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious.”

“What makes you ask?” I half laughed.

“I saw the way you looked at him this morning. And the way your face changed when he told you he couldn’t have dinner with us tomorrow. I saw that too. I’m not saying it’s bad if you are.”

“I am not in love with Lorenzo.”

“Okay,” Sofia said.

A couple of seconds of silence passed as we walked under the trees.

“That’s it?” I asked. “Just, ‘Okay’?” Again I laughed, halfheartedly.

“You said you are not,” she said. “I will believe you.”

“I am not in love with Lorenzo.”

“But there is something, yes? Something there. You’re not sure what it is.”

I was ready to disagree with her, but I felt a tingling sensation up and down my spine convincing me she was partially right.

“Maybe. Sort of. I don’t know.”

And she simply nodded, silently inviting me to continue.

“I’m a little mixed up right now. There’s a man who’s incredibly kind to me, and we get along well. And I like him. Then there’s my mother’s new boyfriend who is this perfect guy, and I so want to meet a guy like that. At least I think I do. I … I don’t know.”

“Sometimes it’s not about what we know. It’s about what we are willing to trust.” She was looking at the trees and sky above us when she said this, as if searching for a peephole into heaven from which Nora might be looking down on her as Sofia gave me counsel.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Which one of them would make you the most sad if you had to live your life without him?”

I had no answer to such a question. “I have no idea.”

She pulled her gaze away from the treetops. “Deep down, you probably do. But you are afraid to trust your choice. It’s risky. That’s why it’s about what you are willing to trust.”

I thought about what she had told me about the man she loved, who left her. I chanced the question that rose to my lips.

“Don’t you have regrets about who you decided to trust?”

Sofia took a moment before answering. “I don’t regret loving Thomas. Those were the happiest years of my life.”

I couldn’t help but ask the obvious. “But then he left and handed you the worst years of your life, right?”

She shuddered. “Yes. They were terrible years.” For a moment Sofia
seemed to disappear into a dark corner of her mind. A thin, veil-like shadow fell across her face and a flicker of fear sputtered inside me. I had asked too much.

But then the veil seemed to lift. She inhaled and closed her eyes, recentering her thoughts, it seemed, on what she had learned to lean on.

“But the terrible years didn’t make the wonderful years disappear,” she said. “I still have them.” She looked at me and smiled. “They will always be mine. And the wonderful years are worth having.”

I smiled back at her. “How long did it take for you to figure that out?”

She laughed lightly. “I actually didn’t have to figure it out. Nora had been whispering it to me all along. I had just stopped listening.”

I suddenly hungered to know where Nora had imparted such lofty wisdom, nearly paternal in its beauty. Which statue, which painting, had whispered this to her?

“Where did she tell you this?”

“Everywhere.”

Sofia stopped then and grasped my arm. “It was worth it, Meg. It was worth the risk.”

Sofia said nothing else and we kept walking. I was glad to again be alone with my thoughts. And the reality that Sofia seemed to think lay before me.

Devon, a man I hardly knew, had already chosen my mother over me. How could I even think of him as part of my dilemma? He surely had to be a representation to me of some kind of security that was missing from my life. Gabe, my office confidant, was a kindred soul at the sweetest friendship level; I liked him. But affection for him felt almost obligatory, as if I must feel a romantic attraction toward him because he was single and I was single and we got along so well. Lorenzo. Lorenzo pulled at some deep part of me that even Miles hadn’t been able to rouse. The way I felt when I was near him was new and striking and powerful. But Lorenzo couldn’t possibly
feel the same way about me. He was a product of his intensely romantic culture, one that captivated me and led my foolish heart to believe something that was not meant just for me. Loving him would crush me. In almost the same way as loving my father had left me broken.

But Sofia hadn’t asked me which one I felt most attracted to. She asked which one of them, if he were completely absent from my life, would leave me the most devastated.

I pushed the question away. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. It was too complicated. Or too simple. Either way, I wasn’t ready to ponder what Sofia said I’d already subconsciously decided.

We were at the end of the cypress lane, and before us was the oval basin and Giambologna’s Oceanus fountain. Even before I could clearly make out the other figures in the water, I could see Andromeda’s outstretched arms and Perseus, her rescuer rising from the sea on Pegasus, determined to set her free.

There were a number of people sitting on benches arranged all around the oval, looking at maps, taking pictures, and posing with the statuary in the background. I wanted to shoo them all away. It took effort not to. I wanted to be alone with the statue that was all mine.

“Well?” Sofia asked softly. “Is she the one?”

“Yes.”

We neared the fountain’s edge, and I positioned myself to gaze at Andromeda, many feet away from me, from the vantage point where my great-great-grandfather would have painted her.

Sofia took a few steps back from me, gifting me with the chance to experience finding the statue on more intimate terms.

Andromeda seemed too far away, sitting there in the water, in her weathered-marbled pose. The expression on her face was unfamiliar to me and too hard to distinguish. Water weeds had sprouted up on the rocks she
was chained to, and two ducks perched at her feet like irreverent bystanders. One of them pecked at a feather on its back. Bird droppings had slid down her face, and her knees were yellow-green with furred patches of moss. The outstretched hand that was lifted toward heaven was missing two fingers. More bird droppings littered the other hand that she held across her breast in hopeful anticipation of rescue.