The Girl in the Glass (38 page)

I did not see my father again. He married his mistress, Vittoria, after the suspicious death of her husband. They fled north when the Vatican heard of the marriage, since Vittoria’s husband had been the pope’s nephew.

The spring I turned fourteen, when word came that my father had died, I brought the letter to Nurse, though she was now in the employ of my uncle Francesco as my cousin Maria’s nurse.

Nurse already knew that my father had died. The letter had come to Francesco first. It was she who suggested to him that Virginio and I be told.

It had been five years since she had stood me in front of my looking glass. As I sat there now with the letter between us, she tipped my head toward the glass in Maria’s room and told me that I was not like fair Andromeda, chained to the rock of my parents’ choices.

In that sad moment of weakness, I told her she was wrong. “But I am,” I told her. “I am chained.”

She grabbed hold of my shoulders. “Outside, it may look that way, but not in here,” she said, and she tapped my chest, where under the folds of my bodice, my troubled heart was beating. And then she pointed to my reflection in the glass. “And not in there.”

30

Renata turned to Emilio and spoke to him words I could not understand. Lorenzo started to translate, but then he got drawn into the heated conversation. Tempers were rising. Even Lorenzo raised his voice. Three sets of arms began waving about my face.

I could do nothing but stand there and listen, hoping to catch a snatch of a word here and there.

“Can somebody please speak in English!” I finally yelled.

The three voices fell silent.

Emilio stepped away and shook his head, apparently not having won any part of the conversation. Lorenzo turned to me.

“Emilio thinks maybe we should call the police. He doesn’t think Sofia is in her right mind. Renata and I think it is too premature for that.”

Emilio rattled off a long sentence of disgruntled words, punching the air with his open hand.

“You should’ve thought of that before you starting shooting bullets into everything she believes in!” Renata said, in English.

Emilio just stared at her.

“I think Marguerite and Emilio and I should do what we said we would do,” Lorenzo said. “We will go see Angelo. We will have him sign the documents. Renata can stay here and wait for Sofia to come home. When we get back, Emilio will go back to Rome. Today. Tomorrow we can help Sofia decide what to do next.”

“I’m for that,” Renata declared.

Emilio muttered something and Renata turned to him and, I assume, told him he had been overruled.

He brushed past us, mumbling words that meant nothing to me and waving to Lorenzo and me to follow him.

“I’ll just get my purse.” I retrieved my purse from Sofia’s guest room and returned to the living room. Lorenzo was waiting for me. Emilio was gone.

“He’s gone to get his car. He had to park a couple blocks away. We will meet him on the street.”

I nodded and then turned to Renata. “Sofia will be all right, won’t she?”

Renata smiled, but there was an edge of nervousness there. “I think she will be fine. Go. I will watch for her.”

I left with Lorenzo.

A few minutes later, I was seated inside Emilio’s silver Fiat and we were making our way to the river’s edge to cross the Arno. It would take us only fifteen minutes or less to get there. Emilio had entered the address into his GPS, and traffic was relatively quiet for a Saturday at lunchtime.

Lorenzo turned to me from his seat in the front. “What will you say?”

I had no idea.

Assuming Angelo still thought I was Natalia, I figured I wouldn’t have to say much.

I have some papers here for you to sign, Angelo
.

And he would sign.

“I don’t know. How do I say ‘Sign these papers, please’?”

“Firmar questi documenti, per favore.”

I repeated the line several times.

“And if he asks why?” Lorenzo said.

I thought for a moment how Angelo himself would answer that question. What reason would explain this compassionate thing we were doing
for a person who would not understand it as compassion? This was something he was familiar with.

A reason that was half truth and half imagination. He would understand that. He would want that.

“I will tell him it’s a present for Sofia. A surprise.”

Lorenzo smiled, a knowing half smile.
“È un regalo per Sofia. Una sorpresa.”

I repeated the three sentences Lorenzo had given me over and over. I asked Lorenzo how to say “You look well today” and “How are you today?” and “Can I get you anything?” I knew I wouldn’t remember all his answers, but I practiced them anyway so that when he whispered them to me, I would be able to repeat them that much quicker.

We pulled up alongside a curb, and Emilio cut the motor. We had arrived.

Emilio handed Lorenzo the sale documents and showed him all the places where Angelo needed to sign.

“I wait,” Emilio said.

It was the only bit of English I would hear from him.

Lorenzo and I got out of the car. While we walked up the steps of the facility, I practiced my phrases.

Inside the lobby an older woman sat behind the reception desk. “I will ask her what room he’s in,” Lorenzo whispered.

He walked confidently up to the desk and spoke to the woman. She nodded sleepily, muttered something, and pointed to the ledger with her pencil. He said something else while he signed the book, and she mumbled,
“Venti quattro.”

Twenty-four.

Lorenzo handed the pen to me, and I signed my name.

“He’s in his room. He just had lunch.”

Our shoes made clacking noises on the tiles as we passed open-doored rooms with gray-headed people sitting in forgotten poses. Some had their TVs on. Some were stretched on their beds ready for a postlunch nap. Some stared from their wheelchairs at the entrances to their rooms as if waiting for someone to collect them.

We stopped a few feet from a door marked 24, and Lorenzo asked me if I was ready. I nodded. He handed me the sale papers.

I edged to the frame of the door and poked my head in. Angelo was standing at his window, looking out over the alley on the other side.

I knocked on the frame. “Angelo?”

He turned slowly and looked at me.

I took one step inside. I could sense Lorenzo hovering near.

“Angelo?” I said again.

He cocked his head slightly.

“Possiamo entrare?”
Lorenzo whispered behind me. I repeated it and Angelo nodded slowly.

“Go in,” Lorenzo whispered. I obeyed and he stepped in behind me. But Angelo’s eyes were on me only. For several seconds he said nothing.

“Che giorno è?”
Angelo said, his intense gaze toward me softening.

“È sabato,”
Lorenzo said, and then I said it too. It is Saturday.

A strange silence rested between us. I took a breath for confidence and then walked close enough to Angelo to kiss him on the cheek. I let my lips linger a little. Lorenzo was close behind me.

When I stepped back, Angelo’s eyes were glistening. “Natalia.”

My voice caught in my throat. I could not speak.

“Chi è quello?”
Angelo tipped his head toward Lorenzo.

I cleared my throat and my voice returned to me. “Lorenzo.”

I waited to see if Angelo would ask who Lorenzo was or why he was there, but he didn’t. He seemed to have trouble remembering what it was he
should ask next. I took his hand and led him to an armchair in the corner of his room. He sat down willingly. I pulled a folding chair from the other side of his dresser and sat next to him. Lorenzo moved in behind me, close.

“Come stai?”
I said. How are you?

He patted my hand as it rested on the arm of his chair. He said something, softly. I waited for Lorenzo to whisper to me what he said.

“He said he can’t find his paintbrushes. Tell him you will find them, but first there are papers to sign.
Li troverò. Ma prima ci sono dei documenti da firmare.”

I struggled with the words, and Lorenzo murmured them in echo. Angelo didn’t seem to notice. I reached for a TV tray just on the other side of his chair and pulled it toward him. I placed the papers on the tray and flattened them. Lorenzo handed me a pen from his shirt pocket and whispered the words,
“Firma, Angelo?”
Sign your name, Angelo?

I handed him the pen.

“Questi non miei,”
he said. These are not mine.

“Sono tuoi. Ecco qui.”
They are yours. Here.

I guided the pen in his hand to the first place he needed to sign.

“Per Sofia,”
I said.

“Sofia.” Angelo stared at the paper.

I looked up at Lorenzo behind me, suddenly wanting different words. “To keep her safe,” I said, barely above a whisper.

“Per tenerla al sicuro.”
The whispered words floated down to me and I repeated them.

Angelo brought a hand, shaking, up to his temple and rubbed it.
“Non dovrebbe essere con lui. È no buono.”
She shouldn’t be with him. He’s no good.

I knew he spoke of Sofia’s long-ago husband. “He will not hurt her anymore,” I whispered to Lorenzo.

“Non le farà più del male.”

This seemed to satisfy Angelo. He put the pen to the paper and began to sign his name; slowly at first, and then it was as if he suddenly remembered how to release his signature from his hand to the pen.

I turned to the second page and pointed to the line he needed to sign. And then the third page. After he dotted the last
i
in his name, he held the pen aloft.
“Abbiamo finito?”
Are we done?

“Si. Finito.”

He sighed then.
“Dove vado adesso?”
Where do I go now?

I looked up at Lorenzo and he shrugged. “Nap?” he mouthed. I nodded.

“Ti vuoi riposare?”
Would you like to rest?

Angelo turned to his window but held his hand out to me. I took it tentatively. He brought it to his lips and kissed it, never taking his eyes off the scene outside his window; cars going by, a nun on a Vespa, a silver-haired woman pushing a shopping cart, a young man walking a dog.

“Non trovo i miei pennelli,”
he said. I cannot find my paintbrushes.

“We have the signatures. Let’s go.” Lorenzo’s whispered tone was gently urgent.

“We just got here,” I said.

“It won’t seem that way to him. And I don’t like this pretending anymore. We have what we need.”

I stood, but Angelo still had my hand in his.

“I know where your paintbrushes are,” I murmured over my shoulder, and Lorenzo fed me the line.

“Io so dove sono i tuoi pennelli.”
I stood and kissed Angelo’s cheek, pulling my hand out from within his.

I reached for the papers and waited to see if he would ask me where the paintbrushes were. But he didn’t. He just nodded and closed his eyes.

“Ciao, Angelo,” I murmured, and he seemed not to hear me.

I put the papers in my purse and we left.

I hadn’t pretended anything. His signature would keep Sofia safe.

And I did know where his paintbrushes were.

Right where he left them.

My dear nurse took ill that winter, and my angels bore her away to heaven. I held on to her words in the years that followed, drawing strength from them and in the beauty that lay all around me, reminding me what the imagination is capable of.

I can imagine my mother wouldn’t have left Florence without me.

I can imagine my father would have been a different man if he had known a different childhood.

I can imagine he had no part in planning what befell my mother.

I can imagine that the last time I saw him, my father touched my wet curls because there was a part of him that knew I wanted him to love me.

I can imagine the beautiful because I’ve seen it, in spite of every terrible thing that has happened.

Tomorrow I marry, and I fear I shall not see Florence again, but I will carry her with me in every beautiful image she bestowed on me.