Sisters of Glass (8 page)

and brushes off the drawings of Vanna.

“These are quite lovely, Maria.

I see why Luca admired them so.”

“You can burn them if you like.

I will pray a thousand prayer beads

for disobeying you.”

“No, my dear.

I think you have been clever

without realizing it.

You may have solved

a great problem for your family,

Maria. Perhaps Luca’s fondness

for Giovanna will prove

to be good
and
profitable.”

NO CHOICE

There is no choice

to make,

and I should rejoice

that I am no longer

torn between the shores

of Murano and Venice,

but somehow it only

makes the sorrow

of leaving my glass home

more great.

I SPY

On our next trip

to the Bembo palazzo

we are led into a great hall.

Portraits and paintings line

the walls. A floor-to-ceiling tapestry

finer than I have ever laid eyes upon

captures the great Venetian victories.

I say to Leona, “You sew very well,”

and point at the grand tapestry.

She eyes me like a peasant child.

“The servants do that work,

instructed by commissioned artists.”

When Leona spins her back to us,

Vanna just places a finger to her lips,

indicating it would be best I keep silent.

Vanna says, “Leona, I noticed

when we walked through the arbor

how your peonies flourish.”

Leona smiles for the first time,

and she is actually quite pretty.

“Yes, the French peonies have been

most magnificent this season.”

I was not sure which one was a peony.

Leona’s garden must contain a thousand

varieties of flowers and all of them gorgeous.

I hear a small rumble behind me

like a little mouse, and I smile for the first time.

So the Bembos are not perfect;

they too have rodents in the parlor.

I investigate further

as we are called to tea

and discover

a pair of very recognizable

boots and two peeping eyes.

The calamity I heard

was no mouse

but belongs to none other

than the man to whom I will be

betrothed, Andrea Bembo.

He half hides behind drapery

and spies upon us ladies.

I find this rather odd,

as Andrea has been most distinguished

up to this point.

But while

Mother and Vanna and Leona

discuss fashion and the marriage

preparations, I just watch to see

if Andrea will stumble and be discovered.

He manages to stay rather well concealed

to the others.

Andrea watches the other ladies

but notes not that I scout him.

I scoot my chair closer

to the window dressing.

He covers himself with it

like a cape, this man

who is twenty years my senior,

as if that will help.

I notice now that his eyes

are upon one particular lady—

Giovanna.

He smiles like a tickled babe.

I know this look well.

It is the look every man

stuns into when he sees and hears Vanna.

I realize slowly

that he has never seen

my sister before.

“Please sing something,”

Leona asks Vanna.

I think I may be sick

directly into my feathered hat,

or worse I may cry.

But Vanna cannot refuse.

And the terrible part

is that Giovanna

remains innocent,

so I cannot be angry at her a smidge.

But I
can
be furious at him,

hideous him, idiot Andrea!

First Luca, now Andrea.

I will have no one,

and Vanna will have them all.

I slump in my chair,

cross my arms over my chest,

kick off my uncomfortable shoes,

and tug at my tightly bound corset—

very unladylike.

Mother nearly growls at me.

And I don’t care.

YOU CAN HAVE THAT BUMBLING BEMBO

On the boat ride home

I tell Mother and Vanna

that Andrea was hiding

behind the curtains like a baby,

and they find it charming.

“He adores you so,

he wants to be in your presence,”

Vanna says.

“Whether or not it is appropriate,

it is certainly sweet,”

Mother adds.

“It is stupid. And besides,

he wants to be near Vanna,

you fools. He wants nothing

to do with me. It is like

she charms snakes

with her voice.” I begin to hiss.

My cruelty shatters Vanna.

“I have only been trying

to help unite our families.

I never mean to harm

anyone with my singing.

You don’t realize how

lucky you are to marry Andrea.

You will have children.

I will have prayer beads, Maria.”

My mother can hardly believe

Vanna has said these words aloud,

and neither can I.

But if Mother has her way,

Vanna’s words will not be true.

NOWHERE TO GO

This is the lonely place.

The cold stone prison,

windowless and damp,

where I live by myself.

No one understands.

Mother has banished me

to my chambers,

but it matters not.

I cannot retreat

to the warmth of the fornica.

I am not wanted there.

Giovanna has been sent

with the batches instead.

INDISCREET

Carlotta’s stew smells rotten

tonight, though I know

it is not.

It is the man seated

at the table’s end

who decays in his chair

and stinks up our supper.

“Will you please pass the loaf?”

Luca asks Vanna in a smiling voice,

his cheeks bloated wide as a stuffed fish.

When she gives him the bread,

he holds her hand too long

and looks at her eyes

as though studying her face.

Vanna’s neck turns the same

shade of pink as those peonies

she so adored in Leona’s garden.

I want to smash my goblet.

I want to harden to glass

and shatter upon the floor.

Does no one else see

this display of indiscretion?

I search the table.

Uncle stuffs his mouth.

Marino reads a pamphlet,

and Paolo distracts himself

with something beyond

the windowpane.

But Mother

grins a wide smile

like a self-satisfied cat

after it snares a rabbit.

Mother has seen what I witnessed,

and she nods

in approval.

MOTHER’S PLAN

Mother calls Giovanna and me

to her chambers.

“As we know, your father decreed

that Maria should marry a nobleman,

and that shall gladly be Signore Bembo,

but your father said nothing of what

was to become of Giovanna.”

She motions for us to kneel down

before her as if she were the cardinal.

“I feel it would be a great disservice

to Giovanna and this family to send her

to the convent as is the tradition

in most families. Yet we have not much

to offer in the way of a dowry for Vanna.

One suitor, however, may be willing

to acquire a somewhat unconventional dowry.

And he appears already to fancy you,

Giovanna.”

I know what Mother is going to say,

but I clasp my hands to the Virgin Mother

in prayer that Mother’s words be pulled back.

“Luca wishes to own the second fornica

outright. He could be given it as a dowry,

and then as he is an orphan

with no living relations to speak of

it would actually remain in our family.”

Giovanna’s face sinks like silt

to the ocean floor.

“But Mother—”

she begins her protest.

Mother raises her hand.

“No, my mind is firm.

Uncle Giova and your brothers agree.”

I barely balance on my knees.

I feel as though my legs will be

swallowed into the floor

surely as my heart.

Mother turns now only to Giovanna.

“We do not propose this plan to Luca yet

but would give him time to grow in fondness

for you, Giovanna. Do you understand?”

Vanna closes her eyes, then tosses back

her mane. I want to rip the golden locks

from her head for the first time.

She nods. “Yes, Mother. I shall do my best.”

CONFLICT

“Maria, why do you mope so?”

Vanna fixes me

with a raised eyebrow.

Her hands are dirty

from preparing a batch

to be made into glass,

but still not one of her hairs

falls out of place.

“You were to brush your hair

and put on your blue gown.”

She touches my cheek

and I coil away.

“Have you been crying?”

“Oh, bite an asp, Vanna!

What do you know?

I am not going to the Bembo palazzo.”

“You are so!” Her pretty little

voice loud as cathedral bells now.

“Why, are you so eager to marry Luca?

Well, it seems you can choose

a husband, dearest sister.

Andrea Bembo or Luca.

Everyone’s eyes, all for you.”

My voice that began as a storm

siphons down to a trickle

as the tears begin to fall.

Giovanna drapes her arm

over my shoulders, her voice

quiet again. “Sister, you are wrong.

The devil himself

is more correct in his thinking.

Andrea will be your betrothed.

He cannot have eyes for me.

Sometimes … Oh, never you mind.”

I want to stop sniffling

in front of her,

but I can’t.

She exhales with exhaust. “And Luca,

he orders me and demands

pincers and jacks, and the batch

is never pure enough.

He never looks me in the eye.

He has no manners.

It is as if he has surmised Mother’s plan

and rebels against it. It is as though

he wishes for me to dislike him.

And then today he asked again

and again after you until I wished

to throw the blocks at him.”

I smile. I cannot stop myself.

“This pleases you.

That I am going to fail my family.

You are a funny girl,”

Vanna says, as she helps me into my dress.

A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER

I can barely huff out my sentences.

“I don’t want you to fail.

Well, I suppose that I do.

But really it is just

that I don’t want you to succeed

with Luca. Did Luca really

ask after me?” I say to Vanna,

and tug at my corset strings.

“I thought that you agreed

to marry Andrea?”

My sister looks at me

as though I am a cloud

obscuring an otherwise blue sky.

“Why are you suddenly going

against the plans?”

Oh, the rains come to my eyes

and rage down upon my face,

and I can’t help but blurt it out.

“I think that I …

that I, well, I care for Luca.”

The clouds have left Vanna’s

head. She smiles.

“So now you finally admit

what I knew all along.”

I nod and snuffle like a child.

“Well, this is a fine mess,”

she says, and mops the tears

from my dress.

Mother arrives like hail,

unexpected and not at all

what we wanted or needed

in terms of a change of weather.

“Girls, our ship

for the Bembo palazzo

has just arrived.”

SORELLA
(SISTER)

How am I supposed to act?

Vanna and I did not have

time to formulate a plan.

Mother has her tidy little notions

tucked in like bed linens,

or so she believes,

though I toss and turn

on my mattress and sweat

the sheets in nightmares.

Leona recites for me, without heart,

the names of her aunts. “Lucretia,

Margaretta, Josephine, Rosaria—
ricordare
her,

she is the one with the twin sons,”

she says, as if I will remember

any of this, as if Leona wants

to call me
sorella
.

Then I spy him again behind

a hydrangea bush.

Does Andrea not have

senatorial business to attend to?

I call out, “Andrea,”

as I should not, but I don’t care,

he should not scrounge in bushes.

At first Andrea thinks to scamper

away like a rat, but then he brushes

off his vest and approaches us.

“Buongiorno,”
he says.

He kisses first my mother’s hand

and then mine, but finally my sister’s.

And it does seem to me that once again

a man grasps Vanna’s palm

tighter than he should, and his lips

linger on her fingers a few seconds

longer than is decorous.

Andrea looks up into her eyes,

and Vanna smiles at him

as though Andrea handed her

a thousand ducats, as though