Restoration: A Novel (Contemporary / Women's Fiction) (8 page)

Tess swiped her notepad off the worktable and stabbed the
page with her pen.  “Where were we?”

Francesca returned to looking at the monitor and
explaining to Tess how to interpret what was on the screen.

***

By seven o’clock, too much information filled Tess’s brain. 
Francesca was a meticulous mentor, explaining infrared technology in
considerable detail and scouting out every painting in the studio with an
underdrawing so they could scan and review it together.  Francesca’s trained
eye saw things hers didn’t, and when Tess grew visibly frustrated, Francesca
soothed her with encouraging words.

“That is enough for today.”  Francesca slipped off her
bifocals.

Tess slumped forward in her chair.  “I thought I’d never
hear those words.”

“Go home and relax.  You have worked hard today.  Eat a
good meal, take a hot bath, clear your mind and get a good night’s sleep. 
Tomorrow we do some chemistry.  I have set aside two paintings I must run
analysis on.”

“I haven’t mastered this yet.”  Tess gestured to the
infrared camera. 

“I think your mind needs a break from this.  We will come
back to it.  And when we do, you will be surprised with how much your mind has
retained.”

“I hated chemistry in school,” Tess grumbled, walking over
to her worktable to grab her overcoat. 

“Do not fret.  You do not have to master chemistry.  In
Florence, Gisela runs the chemical analysis, but it is good for you to know how
the process works.”

Francesca slipped her bifocals back on and sifted through
some papers on the corner of her worktable until she noticed Tess hovering by
her.  “Yes, Tess.”

“I’m just waiting for you to finish up.  I’ll walk with
you to the door.”

“You go on.  I am a long way from stopping for the day. 
There are project updates and proposals I promised Gianni I would review.”

She grimaced looking at the papers on Francesca’s desk. 
“I kept you from your work.  Francesca, I am so sorry.”

“No, do not be sorry.”  Francesca waved a finger at her. 
“I am happy to help you.  You dream of Florence, and someday you will be
there.  When you are, I will smile for you.  Now go.  Rest.”

Tess’s footsteps echoed through the abandoned studio.  The
only other conservator working had left more than an hour before, and silence
replaced the soft murmuring of a half-dozen conservators toiling patiently over
their projects.  In the dimly lit lobby, she saw Gianni Mazzaro’s closed office
door.  No light shone through the crack at the bottom.  He was gone as well.

She scanned Sharon’s empty desktop.  Before leaving,
Sharon always cleared it, shoving all papers, notepads, pens, and pencils into
her drawers.  And just as she did every night before she left, Sharon dimmed
the lobby lights and locked the front door so any remaining conservators could
work undisturbed.  To any passerby, Mazzaro Brothers was closed.

Tess slipped her key in the dead bolt.  Artificial light
illuminated the sidewalk and street.  She hated this time of year when she came
to work in the dark and left in the dark.  Tess pushed open the door.  A whoosh
of cold air pinched her face.  The mercury dipped with the sun.  This was when
she missed her home in Florida.  She wondered how much farther the mercury
would drop by the time Francesca finished her work.

Shivering, she raised her overcoat’s collar, hoping it
wouldn’t be like this every day; not the cold, but leaving Francesca behind to
wallow through work she’d sacrificed to help  Tess earn an assignment in
Florence.  As she raised the lapels on her jacket and covered her throat with
them, she thought about repaying Francesca in some way.  What could Tess give
her in exchange for knowledge?  Quid pro quo.  She hated feeling indebted. 

She wished there was something she could teach her mentor,
but there was nothing Francesca could learn from Tess.  Hell, Francesca
couldn’t even learn about Tess’s life.

She stepped back into the warm lobby, yanked the door
closed and locked it again.  She bustled through the studio’s entrance, her
footsteps moving fast and hard across the wood flooring. 

Hearing Tess marching in her direction, Francesca looked
up.  “Forget something?” she asked.

“Yes!”  She was still shivering.  “I forgot to tell you
how Raphael inspired me.”

Francesca set down her paperwork and rested her hands in
her lap.

“I forgot to tell you about the exhibit I saw in high
school of artists through the ages who’d painted their interpretations of the
Madonna and Child and the one particular painting Raphael had created.  I
forgot to tell you about the impression that painting had on me, of Mary’s
expression as she gazed upon her child and how I understood in that look how
Raphael had captured love.

“I forgot to tell you it was the most beautiful expression
I’d ever seen and how I thought what a shame it is for babies to grow up and
lose the mother-infant love Raphael captured on canvas.

“I forgot to tell you I don’t think mothers outgrow their
love for their children as they grow, at least not most mothers.  But there are
certain emotions only infants seem to inspire, and it seems by the time we’re
older and we can retain and recall, we don’t remember the time when we were
most vulnerable and our mother’s love was the most pure.  I saw that so clearly
in Raphael’s painting.

“I forgot to tell you this is why I do what I do; so
paintings like Raphael’s can live on.”

When Tess finished spewing her words, the sound of her own
labored breathing filled her ears.  Francesca gazed at her for a moment before
finally saying, “Tomorrow we learn a little about chemistry and a little more
about each other.”

The lunchtime restaurant chatter resembled the continual
hum reverberating from electrical power lines, noticed at first before slowly
fading into white noise in the background.  Francesca dabbed the corner of her
mouth with her napkin and pushed her empty salad plate away.  Tess had hardly
touched her club sandwich.  She’d been too busy recounting the same story she’d
shared with Ben about her mother’s desertion and marriage to Randall Wright,
except it was easier this time.  She didn’t know if that was because of
Francesca or because it was her second retelling.

“Your mother has caused you great pain,” Francesca said at
the end of Tess’s monologue.

“She’s taught me a few things as well.  A person has to be
an individual with boundaries, unlike her.  You can’t tell the difference
between where Wright’s life ends and hers begins.  They’re like one big
organism feeding off of each other.”  Tess shuddered and picked at her potato
salad with her fork.

“Boundaries delineate as well as keep others out.” 

She nodded.  “So I have a few walls.  But if you’d lived
my life, you’d understand.”

“Sometimes it is possible to be so focused on avoiding the
mistakes others have made in their lives that we create a mess of our own.” 
Francesca placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin on the bridge of
her folded hands before continuing. 

“My mother’s parents were very mean people and
uneducated.  They drank too much and cared too little for their children. 
Especially her father, who beat them all: his wife, his children, even the
animals on their small farm were not immune.  It was all my mother could do to
grow up in a hurry and leave home.  She learned to read and write, and she
dreamed of life in the city, far away from her life on that farm.  She was
determined not to live the life of her parents, so as soon as she was able, she
ran away and headed for the city. 

“Indeed, her life was very different from her parents’ but
not necessarily better.”

“Is that it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You started out with a lesson and never finished it.”

“It is not my intention to lecture you.”

“You misunderstood.  Conversations with my sister usually
sound like a lecture and yours like a lesson.  One annoys and one teaches.  I’d
like to hear the rest.”

Francesca chuckled.  “I see.”

“So tell me about her.”

Francesca sighed as she settled back into the memories of
her mother.  “When she left her home, it was not a good time for Italy or her
people.  The war was going on, and the Fascists were in control.  Options for
women were not like they are today and even less so during the war, but she was
determined to be on her own and free of her family. 

“She ended up as a prostitute catering to the Nazi
officers stationed in Rome.  She was a beautiful woman and became the lover of
one of the highest-ranking Nazis there.  For a while, she had a very good
life.  But when the Allies were coming and Mussolini’s hold was slipping, the
people sought revenge on those who they considered enemies of Italy, and that
included those who had collaborated and fraternized with the Nazis and
Fascists.  There were many women like my mother who were hunted down and
killed, strung up like animals.  They could not just kill them; they had to
defile their bodies as well. 

“My mother escaped death but was severely beaten and her
face badly disfigured.

“After the liberation and after she healed and could walk
outside without being remembered for being a traitor, she returned to the only
thing she knew how to do.  Wealthy men no longer found her desirable, so she
sold herself to whoever would pay and for whatever they could pay, oftentimes
exchanging her body for a meal, sometimes beaten by these men, other times
raped.  She lived like an animal.  It was a terrible life. 

“She had a number of abortions, and after a botched one
the nuns found her bleeding in the streets.  They took her in to their convent
and cared for her.  I was born there seven months later.  My mother stayed with
them, cooking, cleaning and doing whatever else they needed.  We lived in a
cottage on the convent grounds.  It is where I grew up.  They were good to her
and to me.  I was their little angel.” 

Francesca smiled at the memory and then chuckled.  “They
were very disappointed I never heard God’s call to become a nun.  When my
mother died, they honored her by burying her in the graveyard where only
Sisters were laid to rest.  I do not know if she was ever truly happy, although
when she died I think she was content. 

“But her life never came close to being what she’d hoped
it would be.  It was not like her parents’ lives at all.  So in one respect she
succeeded, but to what gain?”

“That’s a Shakespearean tragedy,” Tess said.  “Despite
what your mother managed to do with her life, I think I can avoid living my
mother’s life.”

“I hope so.”

“Look, I haven’t allowed someone else to take over my life
like she has.  She calls it love.  I call it possession.”

“Just be careful,” Francesca said with a smile.

“What do you mean?”

“Do not be so consumed protecting yourself that you deny
yourself love.”

“I’m not going to deny myself anything.  I’m also not
going to let anything or anyone control me.  I’m going to be the one calling
the shots; mind over heart, if you will.”

“You are guarding the fort against what might come in.  It
is what is already there, that which is already inside of you that might
escape, I caution you about.  Sometimes there is a special love that comes
along only once, and it is a shame when we let that love escape us.”

“Is Ingrid this love to you?”

“Wisdom is usually born out of learning from one’s own
mistakes.  I have much affection for Ingrid and I love her, yes, but it is
Aletta who I look back on with much love and much regret.”

“Where’s she now?”  Tess asked.

“Where she is, I do not know.  But she lives in my
memories.  That is her permanent address.  We met at the Central Institute for
Restoration in Rome where we were both students.  I did not know then that I
loved women.  She awakened this in me.  At first, I thought it was some strange
infatuation.  During a break in our studies, we traveled to Florence together. 

“It was there, overlooking the city together atop Santa
Maria del Fiore’s cupola, I became aware I was completely and utterly in love
with her.  And to my great amazement, she returned my love.  So you see,
Florence is not only special to you.”

“What happened?”

“When we finished our studies, she wanted me to go away
with her and share our lives together.  I had not thought this far.  The rest
of my life?  Even one month of my life outside of the protection of school,
where we could pass ourselves off as close friends, I could not envision.  It
was terrifying.  It was different back then for women like us, not at all like
it is today.  So I chose convention over love.  Aletta left Rome and me after
graduation.  I never heard from her or saw her again.”

“But you think about her still?”

“Of course,” Francesca said, nodding.  “She is the
centerpiece of my life lived in retrospect.”

“How many years did it take for you to realize you’d made
a mistake?”

“A month.”

“A month!  Is that all?  Why in the world didn’t you go
after her?”

“For the same reason I could not go away with her to begin
with.  My heart ached and I accepted that I would live with regret.”  Francesca
gazed out the window just beyond Tess’s shoulder.  “Every time I went to
Florence I felt her presence as I walked the streets alone imagining her beside
me.  I have attempted to climb the steps of Santa Maria del Fiore many times
since, hoping to recapture that feeling I first experienced looking out over
Florence while she stood beside me, but I  never have  made it back up those
stairs. 

“It broke my heart to think I would gaze upon the city
without her next to me.  My heart yearned for what my mind could not accept, so
I threw myself into my work and told myself I would fall in love again.  And I
did, but no other love ever has made me feel the way she did.”