The Smile (11 page)

Silvia looks at me. “I was afraid of that. You don't know, do you? Your father's courting.”

“That's not possible. Mamma just died.”

“Half a year ago.”

Half a year? Lord, I've really lived half a year without her. Everything's jumping around inside me. My mouth goes dry. “Tell me what you know.”

“Valeria's father told my pa: it's a lady from one of them really fancy families. The Rucellai.”

“Caterina di Mariotto Rucellai,” I say slowly, as certainty blooms. I've known it deep inside all along, or I wouldn't remember her name.

“So you do know.”

I shake my head and hold in tears. “She caught his eye at Mamma's funeral. Giuliano saw it. I thought he was crazy. But it's Papà who's crazy.”

“A man has got needs.”

“Don't say that!”

“It's natural, Elisabetta.”

“For an animal. Men don't act like that. It's disrespectful of Mamma's memory. Widowers wait a year at least.”

“To get married, sure. But they start courting the moment they eye the right girl. You know it's true. How do you think so many widowers find a wife exactly at the end of that year? Your father ain't no different from the rest of them.”

“But he should be! Papà should be!”

“Why?”

“Because.” Because Mamma loved him. Because he loved her. But I don't say that—not to Silvia. She doesn't believe in love. I'm grinding that pestle down into the chestnuts harder and faster. “It isn't right.”

“Who are you to say what ain't right?”

I stare at her apoplectic. “Don't take his side.”

“I'm taking yours, you fool. Don't make life so hard, Elisabetta. Let him do what he needs to do. He's still your pa. He still loves you. And that's the truth.”

“I know that.” I do, I do. I just don't want this. Not now. Not yet. Every part of me is flying around the room, bashing into things, all wild and helter-skelter.

“He could pay a prostitute easy. But he ain't doing that. He's taking up with a nice lady. And at least part of why he's doing it is you.”

“Me?”

“He doesn't want you out here alone.” Silvia empties her mortar of flour into the big bowl on the table. She refills it with chestnuts and sits to grind again. “You got to know that. Anyone can see it. And he's made a good choice.”

A good choice? I remember Caterina's animated face at Mamma's funeral. Papà didn't make a choice—she did. “What have you heard about her?”

“Her pockets is ripping with gold.”

“She's young, Silvia. Not much older than me.”

“Good. Maybe she'll last a while.”

“Don't say that. Really. I can't stand it.”

“I'm sorry. It was a dumb thing to say anyways, what with how many women die in childbirth.” Silvia sighs. “Valeria's father said this girl's mother died that way.”

I blink as her words sink in. “Oh, Lord, what if she wants children with him?”

“He could use a son,” says Silvia.

I drop my pestle in the pile of flour and stare at her.

“Don't act daft, Elisabetta. His life has to go on. Just like yours does. Maybe we'll both get lucky and marry and move away and get a chance to see something of the world beyond this piece of land.”

“No. No, Silvia. I don't want him to forget Mamma so soon.”

“He ain't never going to forget her. He's just got to keep going. That girl'll help him.”

“I don't want to put up with a girl in my mother's bed. A girl telling me what to do. It's intolerable. I hate her.”

“Ain't it early to hate her?” says Silvia. “And, anyways, in the meantime you ain't got her. You got me. We got each other. At least for another half year. Let's make the best of it.”

And all the swirling parts of me fall together at last, weighted by the sense of her words. Silvia's unflinching honesty could save anyone. “You're right.”

“Ain't I always?” She smiles.

I'd pinch her for being so self-satisfied if I weren't grateful right now. “I'm not in a rush to leave home, you know. Villa Vignamaggio has so many beauties. You shouldn't be in such a rush, either.”

Silvia pauses in her grinding. “This beauty belongs to you, Elisabetta. Ain't nothing beautiful belong to me.”

An idea comes. Oh, let it work. “Stay here.”

I go upstairs and head for my room. But when I pass Papà's, I suddenly turn back around and go inside it. Mamma's closet is against the inner wall. I stand still and for a moment I feel numb, like on a January day when I've been out in the cold too long.

I open the closet. It's empty. In the dark, I feel around, touching the air to be sure. Mamma's things are gone. I think back to the last time I raced up there to clutch her skirts. It couldn't have been more than ten days ago. So in that period Papà had them whisked away. Well, of course, I tell myself. A man has to supply his bride a new wardrobe. Papà's making room for that.

But he didn't ask me what I might have wanted to keep. Maybe he was trying to protect me in some misguided way. Maybe. Like maybe he's courting Caterina so that I won't have to take care of him in his old age. Maybe that's what he was trying to tell me last night. Maybe he's a mess of good motives and mistaken actions. But that doesn't excuse him. He threw out things I treasured. Pieces of Mamma, gone. I am bereft, as though someone has scraped raw my insides, leaving me as empty as this closet.

I go to my room and open my wedding chest. There are surprises in here I've never looked at. Mamma put them in. And I won't look at them until I marry. But on the very top is something I put in: the sheaf of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci that Giuliano gave me. The horse one is on the bottom, I know. I ease it out.

I carry it downstairs and place it on the dining room table. “Come take a look, Silvia. Brush your hands off on your skirt first.”

Silvia comes over, wiping her hands. She stares at the drawing.

I haven't been able to bear looking at it since the day Giuliano gave it to me. But I look now. In the flickering light cast by the fire, the lines of the drawing seem to move. It is a strange effect— a skinless horse moving.

“I ain't never seen nothing like it,” says Silvia in a whisper. “I didn't know you was capable of such grand drawing.”

“I didn't do it. Leonardo da Vinci did. He's famous. Florence's most famous artist.”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes. But he lives in Milan now. I saw him at Lorenzo de' Medici's funeral.”

“Did he give you this grand thing then?”

“No. Giuliano gave it to me.”

Silvia doesn't speak. She's got the habit of not speaking when I mention Giuliano. I appreciate that. She doesn't press and she doesn't laugh.

“What do you think of it?”

“Well, I don't know. I just feel it. I feel how grand it is.”

“Is it beautiful?”

“It ain't trying to be, is it? It's just saying this is what the horse is. Inside and out.” She taps her right hand quickly up her left arm and across her chest and stops at her heart, letting her hand beat there for a moment. “We're like this horse. Just skin over all that stuff inside. Yeah, Elisabetta. It's beautiful.”

“It's for you,” I say.

“What? But Giuliano gave it to you!”

“So I'm free to do with it what I want. Now something beautiful belongs to you.”

“I don't want you giving me something so grand.” But her eyes stay on the drawing as she speaks.

“It hurts me to look at it, Silvia. It makes me think of Mamma's accident. But it's too wonderful to sell, though it would bring an enormous amount of money. It's a perfect gift for you. My best friend.”

“It ain't my birthday,” she says slowly and softly.

Birthdays. Mine was dreary this year. Papà and I ate quietly, then sat in the garden. We didn't talk about how it was supposed to have been, how it would have been if Mamma hadn't died. We just sat with our arms hooked, missing her, till it finally grew dark. Then we climbed the stairs. He went right to bed. But I changed into my nightdress and went back downstairs and outside to count the stars.

That's when Silvia came over, carrying a bowl of
cinestrata
. It's broth and beaten eggs with Marsala, cinnamon, nutmeg, and enough sugar to make your tongue sweet all night. She sat with me as I ate, then whispered, “
Sogni d'oro
—golden dreams.”

I made
cinestrata
for her on a Sunday in her birth month, too. August. In fact, I made a big meal and invited her father and mother and Cristiano, as well. We had pasta with spinach, and sautéed chicken giblets. It was too hot for such food, really, but I wanted to do something splendid. We waited till late at night to eat, after it had cooled down some. Papà didn't object to sharing a table with Silvia's family, because Papà didn't know. He was in Florence.

I guess he'll be in Florence more and more now.

But Silvia's always here. With me. “You and me,” I say, “we don't need a birthday as an excuse for gifts.”

“I don't have nothing to give in return.”

“Is that the kind of thing a friend says?”

Silvia looks at the drawing. She wipes her hands till I think the skin will come off. Then she touches it just barely. “Thank you,” she whispers. A tear balances at the corner of her eye.

CHAPTER Ten

IT WAS ALREADY THE NEW YEAR
when Papà finally told me he was betrothed. The wedding would be in April. A full month short of the first anniversary of Mamma's death. “No!” I said. “It's a dishonor to Mamma to rush like that.”

But Caterina set the date to coordinate with the annual dove festival in Greve. She has a passion for birds. So Papà wouldn't even discuss a change with her. He didn't want to upset her. He upset me, instead.

He said, “She's only nineteen.”

I said, “I'm only thirteen.”

“You're almost fourteen.”

“She's almost twenty.”

“Betta, my amazing treasure, be reasonable. Let Caterina have her way on the most important day of her life.” He tilted his head slightly and his eyes were gentle.

I wanted to hit him.

I ran and found Silvia and ranted to her. I said, “Birds! She loves birds! She's planning her wedding around the dove festival. That's her excuse for dishonoring the memory of my mother. Can you imagine?”

Silvia shrugged. “Maybe it's homage to the saint she's named after.”

Well, I know the Santa Caterina story, of course. Her father was about to force her into an unwanted marriage when he saw a dove over her head and decided to let her enter a convent to marry God, instead. “Then let her go become a nun.”

Silvia laughed. “At least Caterina loves animals, just like you used to.”

“Used to? I still love animals!”

“You don't go down to the pens anymore. When's the last time you pet any of them other than Uccio?”

“Who has the time? I work every moment of every day. Anyway,” I said, “Caterina doesn't love animals. She loves birds.”

“Birds is animals.”

I wanted to hit her.

 
 
 
It's the twenty-sixth day of April. Papà and Caterina are to be married today, the day after the dove festival. Our entire villa is decorated with gilded cages of doves. The cooing is quite deafening. I'm glad; it will make it hard to hear the musicians.

Caterina has planned everything with the help of her little sister, Camilla. The two of them find the most frivolous things worthy of long discussion; they seem equally mindless. Camilla's the mother of a one-year-old—Bartolomeo, the infant she gave birth to just a little before Mamma died. He's grown into a curly-haired, fat thing who loves milky almond pudding.

I want to hate him like I hate them. But Bartolomeo giggles a lot. He rolls on the floor and crawls after Uccio and pulls tablecloths off, sending things crashing. I watch from afar. I was the one to witness his first steps. His mother and aunt were gabbing away stupidly, all wrapped up in each other, while he pulled himself to standing with the help of a table leg. Then he grinned and took a step toward me. And a second.

“Are you walking, love of my life?” said Camilla, looking over.

Bartolomeo promptly fell on his cushioned bottom and refused to try another step for days. The fine fellow. He's nothing like his spoiled mother and aunt. Silvia was right: they're rich. Extraordinarily, it seems. I suppose that makes it clear that Caterina is not marrying Papà for security. Why, then, is she taking my papà? He's a step down for her in society. And he's not even good-looking.

The Rucellai are known for extravagant weddings. The actual ring ceremony will have no pomp, of course. But Caterina's uncle, the famous Bernardo Rucellai, is sparing no expense on the feast afterward. He even paid for a new fountain in our garden. Most formal gardens have fountains, but ours didn't because a stream runs along the side of the vegetable terraces. Mamma liked it better than an artificial fountain. Natural things are always better. But the Rucellai are too stupid to appreciate natural things. The fountain will be unveiled at the feast. It's outrageous. That was Mamma's garden. Caterina had no right.

Who knows what else Bernardo Rucellai has paid for. The villa is being decorated in our absence—while the family members are away at the ceremony hall.

I ride in the coach with Papà to the hall, these thoughts rankling in me. Cypresses flank the road. The air is redolent of evergreen. It would be the perfect day for a wedding, if it were anyone else's wedding.