“Behave?” Insolent and incredulous, Cristofana seems more herself again, which is reassuring, in a way. May feels the surge of resistance in her, the raw energy echoing all around in the dark air of the passage or whatever they’re in, feels her own strength returning.
“At least in public. When it’s over,” May explains, “and the world’s normal again, he’ll want his old family back, or what’s left of it. He’ll want to be proud of you . . . his new family.”
“Is that love, Little Nun?” Cristofana scoffs, and as one, they spit into the dark of the portal. “That which tames us?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I think it is, and what’s wrong with that?”
There is a tearing pain, a violent jolt as Cristofana tries to rise and wrench free again.
May steels herself inside their single body, standing stern. “Just answer me! Why won’t you let yourself love them?”
“I will tell you a story,” threatens the voice in her head, her own voice, a stranger’s. “A story about home.” They settle together, sinking as one, kneeling and swaying like a drunk about to retch. “Once there was a little girl who lived in a little house in Firenze with her little family. So often and so fiercely did this girl beg to sail with her merchant father that he brought her back a magic tapestry, as blank as a summer sky.
“The fabric was fine like spider’s silk, though her father swore it was made by a little worm that spun and spun. It came, he said, from the mysterious Far East, and should the girl hang this panel by her bed, it would give her leave to journey after him to faraway lands.
“It was a band of cloth the length and breadth of a door, as transparent as a window, with the shimmer of water. Anyplace she imagined on that surface, he said, she could visit by only stepping through. ‘Do you see it, uccellino?’ he would say, and the girl did. While he was away across the water, each night before bed, she traveled far and wide, visiting the menageries of exotic princes and sailing on wild seas where men speared great rubbery beasts the size of ships themselves, and she was patient and happy.”
“Cristofana, this isn’t exactly comfortable, you know. Could we have this conversation outside —?”
“Shhh,” hisses the voice they share. “But then the girl’s sister, her only confidant, went away forever to be a bride to Christ.
“Her father was gone for years at sea, and when her mother was murdered in the girl’s own room, where the panel hung in place of her bed curtain, the blood splattered it.
“She lay beaten and broken for hours, this girl, or days, in a pain that sometimes blinded her, and the blood spoke to her.
“Her mother’s ghost came and stood at the foot of the bed, flicking the fabric with long, lacquered nails. ‘Child,’ she said, ‘it is just a curtain cut from an old bolt. Just a piece of dingy cloth. No more and no less. He fooled us both,’ she complained, ‘your father.’”
The voice fades out in a sigh, recovers, flows forceful again.
“When the midwife saved her and took her away to live, the little girl insisted on taking the panel with them.
“The first spell the witch taught her was to bleach away stains.
“Next they steeped the cloth in herbs and potions, boiling it with bone and feathers and ground mirror. They worked the cloth well and washed it, they wrung it and ironed it, and after, it was so fine and strong it never ripped, never wrinkled, only grew softer and stronger until it was ‘like chain mail writ fine,’ said the witch. And like a knight’s armor it would be the girl’s protection, for it would take her anywhere . . . and away from anywhere . . . as the time commanded.
‘Are you sure this time?’ the girl asked.
‘I am sure of time,’ said the witch, who was already ailing then, who had returned the ruby ring and taken to her bed. ‘There is no thing surer.’
“Then she gestured to the cloth, pristine, as blank as her eyes would be within the hour. ‘More study, child. More patience.’
“The girl was afraid to travel, afraid to be invisible, though with the witch gone, she had to learn — and learn well, for it kept her safe — but time passed, and she met a man, named Marco, who bade her rest in the safety of his gaze.”
May stiffens.
“The body is a curious thing,” the voice insists, “vulnerable to sickness, sores, and sloth, flea-bitten and foul, full of every indignity — piss, shit, blood, and ache — and mysterious humors that the physicians balance like accounts, and yet . . . and yet. The girl who had learned to be invisible would rather wear her form freely in the world, be an avid predator, never again prey, and she was never so happy to be alive in her body as when the artist painted her.
“When first he proposed his sittings, the girl squirmed and seethed and willed no man that right — to fix her in his sights and keep her still. She lacked patience with his veils and drapes, and the way he twisted her head on her neck and bade her look this way and bend that. Cramped and bored, she stood often, pacing in circles like a caged animal.
“But his patience worked its spell on her, and she came to trust him. Sometimes still, Marco hums for her”— May feels her head rise involuntarily, eyes seeking a face, a connection —“which none have done since Mamma. Other times he sets Duck at her feet, like an anchor, and the infant clings on her legs, pleading a tune, whence the girl finds herself humming . . . like a mother.
“Thanks to Duck, the girl finds Mamma often in her thoughts now, though for years that ghost was banished.
“Thanks also to the little nun, who advised: Forgive them.
“The girl has forgiven everyone, it seems: Father, for becoming a merchant, for taking to sea for so very long and for leaving her and Mamma to bandits. Her sister, for vanishing into Christ’s tent. She has forgiven Mamma her pride and folly, her love of jewels and ostentation, which drew envy as meat does dogs. She has forgiven the bandits who cut her mother’s throat, beat and abused that mother’s child, and left both for dead, who took all but the clothes on their backs and a ring their bloodlust blinded them to. She has forgiven Mamma for lying blue and swollen on the floor — too far away to reach as the doves from the eaves pecked her eyes — and the old midwife who came and chased the doves away, and wrapped the mother’s body, and set the child’s bones and fed her broth, and ultimately raised the orphan with love and taught her spells and gave her courage, but all for the price of a ruby ring. She has forgiven the old witch for sawing away her mother’s bloated finger before her eyes to secure that ring, and for first begging a child’s permission to do so. She has forgiven the old woman, her savior, for requiring the ring and for dying on the eve of the Pest. She has forgiven her beloved Firenze for coming to resemble Hell. And she has forgiven God for sending a scourge beyond reckoning.
“Last but not least, she has forgiven her insufferable twin — and the artist they delight in in almost equal measure — for reminding her that forgiveness is as much a shade of love as ruby is a shade of red.
“The one soul she has not forgiven, the girl understood, that last time Marco studied her in profile with her gaze fixed on the ruby ring, is herself.”
Feeling her strength returning, their strength, and the pressure to push back, May says, “This too shall pass,” pushing against herself, her conjoined twin, with all her might, pushing, pushing, but not hard enough.
They tumble out onto the stony ground of the alley in a sprawl, Cristofana whole and solid, May in ghost form.
“The best one wins,” her twin croons, brushing pebbles off her hands, grinning her devil’s grin.
Feeling the strength drain out of her, feeling despair rush into every cell her double has just vacated, May sighs, sinking to her spectral knees. “Here we go again.”
“No, bella.” Cristofana laughs, lightly and truly. “You go. Only you. Did I not say? Your Li-um, though he tastes not of honey, is a most excellent scholar, and this night his searching scroll told me that the Pest leaves Florence soon. Any day now, we will be free again, and this city, Marc
o’s bed, is not big enough for both of us. I was only waiting for you to show yourself.”
“How do you know what he tastes like?” May snaps, gesturing wildly. “And what did you say about all . . . this?”
“To Li-um?” His name sounds obscene on her lips. “I told him nothing,” she says with a shrug. “I let him have my body because he professed to need it so much. You starve your men, it seems, and I am left to fill what cups you leave empty.”
“Do you know how lucky you are that I can’t slap you right now?”
“My goal was to be you, was it not? It was what you would have done.”
“Yeah?” May rages. “You think so?”
“I know it.”
“You know shit.”
“Then you must be a fool.”
“I want what powers the portal,” May says, changing the subject, “that panel or whatever it is, to take back with me.”
“This is not possible.”
“Then no deal. I want insurance that you won’t come back.”
“You have my word.”
“Your word is worth exactly nothing.”
“You amuse me, bella. I commend you, but now I must go. My family waits for me.” She smiles her smug smile, her voice serious. “We are all we have.”
Something wounded in her eyes makes May ache. Wouldn’t it be funny, she thinks, if in some twisted way she ended up missing Cristofana, her drama and grandstanding, her stubborn strangeness?
It all happens very quickly — as a sequence of actions, it’s almost anticlimactic — and in the instant before May backs through the portal, with their mirror eyes locked in mutual distrust, she feels an odd blend of grief and fondness. There’s a hot flash of black, like a cosmic zipper closing, and when May juts out her hand, it smacks wall.
Liam is asleep on her bed, a deadweight over the covers, too exhausted even to feel May settle behind with a grateful sigh, spooning without touching him.
“What’s going on here?” It’s barely light out yet, and Gwen’s petite outline fills the doorway. May stiffens, remembering Liam — beside her, snoring in the bed.
Shit.
“And don’t say nothing. He hasn’t eaten in days, which is unheard of, and you . . . May, my God . . . I don’t know what’s up, but staying in bed for over a week and refusing a doctor isn’t OK —”
“Gwen,” Liam croaks under his breath, rolling toward her voice. “Things are kind of complicated with us right now.”
“You’re not pregnant . . . are you?”
“Ma, please. We really need you to stay out of this —”
Gwen cuts him off, her voice craning toward May, who hasn’t had the nerve to turn and face her accuser yet. “May?”
May groans. “God . . . no.” She rolls over as Liam sits upright, shaking the sleep out of his head. “This isn’t what you think. It’s —”
“Hormones,” Li blurts helplessly, shielding his eyes as from too-bright sunlight. “Just hormones —”
If you only knew. May rolls back toward the wall with a sigh.
“Can we talk about this later?” Li adds in a small voice.
“Well, this is awkward. Do we need to get your parents involved, May?”
“No!” they both cry at once, and May rolls over again.
“Please, no,” she says. “It’ll all be fine now — I promise.”
“I should have known this was going to happen,” Gwen laments — and May is surprised to see traces of amusement on her guardian’s face. “I guess I saw it coming.”
Liam stands, rumpled, hiking his sagging jeans up. “Glad somebody did.” He flashes an agonized look at May before escaping down the hall.
When Gwen can’t get them in the same room together after that, when she can’t keep them in a room together, she wants answers.
May doesn’t have any. Liam apparently doesn’t, either.
The day after his mom found them together, at dinner in the restaurant that evening, the first time their eyes met, May knew.
Cristofana wasn’t kidding.
Something had happened. They hooked up — with Cristofana starring as May — and now he wants May to own up, acknowledge it. She can’t, of course, so he’s stopped looking at her that way. He’s stopped looking at her at all.
He trains his eyes away, pulls out his cell again, and starts pretending to e-mail his friends, and May lets him.
Would Li believe her if she told him — tried to tell him — the truth? They’d joked about him running into Cristofana, and it was a good joke, but it wasn’t this, and this wasn’t funny. She could try to explain, but how could he believe it was anything but her lame attempt to elude “emotional responsibility,” as her mom or Gwen might say?
Um, yeah . . . that wasn’t me. It was my double. Good one.
For spite, May daydreams of going back to be with Marco again. She’ll tell him everything . . . about Cristofana, Li, her parents . . . and the beautiful artist won’t understand a word she’s saying. He’ll just look at her with those sorrowful, knowing eyes, and put his hands on her again, and it will be fine. He’ll tell her all about the plague and what it did to him, his family, his world, and she won’t understand, either, and they’ll kiss until their lips are chapped and bruised, and it will be all right.
May wants to feel safe again the way she did when she woke up wrapped in that old blanket, and he was there calmly eating his apple, watching her for just that one night as he had the day they met, that first time in the workshop, before Cristofana stepped into their story and confused everything.
In her defense, May did try to explain one evening, over their dinner of bread and cheese and olives, watching Pippa prance in babbling circles, covered in crumbs. May floated the words she had tried hard to memorize in the future like so many balloons — altro, gemello, attento — but if Marco understood, he didn’t show it, only cleared their wooden plates and led her by the hand to a far wall where canvases were propped. It was the first time he voluntarily shared his work with her, and as he flipped through, pausing at first one and then another, May’s eyes filled with tears.
Perhaps he did know the difference — only she and Cristofana were both phantoms to him, figments of his imagination. If his paintings were any indication, that mental landscape was haunted by every possible demon.
May has tried since not to think about the paintings he showed her, figures frightening and beautiful, of Cristofana nude and stunning, imbued with unimaginable dignity and grace. Had he disguised her? Was that what art did? Or was Cristofana someone else for him completely?
Who had she been for Liam?
May understands that she was lucky to get out of Old Florence alive, to get home again. But Cristofana was just as lucky.
In her quest to avoid Liam and the conversation they aren’t having about the sex they didn’t have (not as far as she’s concerned), May has decided to visit every single art museum and Medici gallery in Florence.
Each morning she kisses Gwen on the back of the head — a slave to her own distraction, Gwen has forgiven them, it seems, and almost never lifts her eyes from her morning newspaper — slips out of the quiet apartment, orders a cappuccino, and sits on the curb, circling a new destination on her guidebook map while pigeons crowd around and peck her backpack.
By the time May determines her day’s route, her coffee is cold and as bitter as bark, but it’s all part of the ritual. The goal is to be outdoors before it gets too hot — and before Liam gets up.
They’ve managed to avoid each other completely for three days, with one or the other begging out sick at dinner.
Their one and only conversation about the hookup was a disaster, all blush and stammer and things unsaid. Whatever Cristofana did to him or let him do to her wasn’t for May to know.
Liam took one look at her and knew things weren’t right. “We could go out for a beer again,” he tried. “Or hike up to Fiesole.”
Silence.
“So it was a mistake.”
It wasn’t really a question, and he looked away as soon as he said it, already resigned, because her eyes must have agreed. Though May wasn’t sure what she was agreeing with or to.
“And you regret it.”
Silence.
Regret what? A sure way to ruin their friendship?
“I get that. I do. But you were pretty enthusiastic at the time —”
May almost snarled then because the words backed up in her throat. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t stand to think about Cristofana touching him the way she, May, had touched Marco. That way. With all that. And she would, too, May thought — with a hypocrite’s fury. Just to spite me.
May didn’t blame Liam, but she did. For being weak enough to fall for it. For not seeing through her selfish double. For not seeing. Not believing his own eyes, and ears, and hands.
How lonely May feels, wandering through palaces and cathedrals every day — and how weirdly, exasperatingly hopeful. Today she’s settled on the Chapel of the Magi in Palazzo Medici Riccardi.
At first the building seems little more than a government office, but when she actually finds her way inside to the chapel, it’s breathtaking. For a good fifteen minutes, May sits half lotus on the floor.
Every inch of the space not given over to intricate mosaics or gilt gold or wooden stalls seems to be frescoed over. The paintings depict a procession of humans and animals winding among white rocks and slender tree trunks. The colors are delicate and dizzying, and in the sky, clouds and birds are hard to separate. Everything, from the castle in the background to the neat olive-tree-lined hills to the elaborate fabric patterns, soft grass, and wavy pageboy hair, tempts you to touch it. A jaguar sits by a man on horseback while a hawk eats its lunch, and everyone seems serene but also purposeful. In a little niche against the back wall is an altarpiece painted on wood; here, set a little apart, is what everyone’s traveling to, the stable of the Holy Family.
Plague in the Mirror Page 18