The Girl in the Glass

by Susan Meissner

  When I was older, I understood that my father was a fabulous idea man but terrible at follow-through. He would see a business for sale, like a little candle store or a sandwich shop, clearly at the end of its rope, and he could vividly imagine hauling it back from the edge of the abyss. But he couldn’t forge his noble ideas into reality, and he didn’t have the money to keep trying. I would think of that night often, whenever I felt cheated out of a simple desire. I grew up wishing the odds weren’t so stacked against people with dreams.

  Whatever it was he wanted money for as we drove home from Disneyland, he wasn’t going to be getting it from Nonna. He would have to stay at the insurance company doing whatever it was claims adjusters did. I didn’t know what he did all day long; I just knew he didn’t like it.

  “It’s none of their business, Ma. When they asked, you could’ve told them that. You could’ve—”

  I didn’t want to hear any more. I closed my eyes again and made a little sound like I was waking up, and my father immediately fell silent.

  “Are we home yet?” I asked sleepily.

  “No, angel. We’re not home.” But he said it quietly, as if not to me.

  The morning after the epic evening at the Melting Pot, I awoke well before my dad was supposed to be there with poppy-seed bagels. And since I hadn’t stayed for dinner with my mother and Devon, nor had I eaten much after I got home cranky and disillusioned, my stomach was growling. I pulled on a pair of sweats and a hoodie, grabbed a Pink Lady from the fruit bowl on the kitchen table, and went for a walk along the beach.

  I knew deep down that it shouldn’t matter that my mother was dating a man thirteen years younger than she was. In the morning chill off the frothing surf, my face warmed as I remembered liking the idea that Mom had set me up with Devon right about the time I realized he was her date, not mine.

  It was dumb to relive those stirrings, and yet I did anyway. I hadn’t been attracted to a guy that quickly in I don’t know how long. It was exhilarating and yet embarrassing since he clearly hadn’t felt the same instant attraction for me. After the walk I came back, showered, and waited for my dad to arrive, which he did, half an hour later than he said he would.

  My father’s blend of mutt American on his dad’s side and Nonna’s pure Florentine heritage had created for him a nice, light-olive-skinned complexion, an average stature, large brown eyes, and curly hair the color of maple syrup. When he married Allison after my mother divorced him, he became a stepfather to her two sons, who were six and eight at the time. I think in the beginning he liked having boys around him, but it seemed to me, from my safe distance, that he learned soon enough those boys had a father whom they loved very much. The difference was those boys spent an equal amount of time with their real father and with Allison. Michael and Ross never called my father Dad or went to him for advice or money or car keys. Michael is married now with a baby. But it doesn’t mean my father is a grandfather. He is Nick to Michael and Ross, and I suppose he will be Nick to their children too. Secretly, I have always been fine with this. When I still lived at home, I was intensely jealous that Allison’s boys got to spend way more time with my dad than I did.

  Even now, as he stood on my porch with a bag of bagels and whatever news he had to tell me, I was still secretly glad that the attachment to his second marriage didn’t extend to the sons. Not that my dad doesn’t care for them—I know he does—but he isn’t their father. They already have one of those.

  “Hey, angel.” He stepped into the cottage and took me into his embrace, a white paper sack sandwiched between us. He smelled like morning air, leather, and the sea. I could smell the Pacific Coast Highway on him.

  “I’m glad you’re here.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was true and not just a nice greeting to extend to him. My arms tightened around him.

  “Sorry it’s been so long.” He pulled away and the bag with the bagels made a crunching sound in protest.

  I reached for the bag. “I made some coffee to go with these, if you’re interested.”

  “Definitely.” He bent to scratch Alex, who was looping himself in and out of my dad’s legs.

  In the kitchen I grabbed two mugs out of the dish drainer with my free hand.

  “I’ll pour the coffee.” My dad reached for the cups, anxious, it seemed, to be doing something.

  “Toasted?” I lifted the bagel bag and he nodded. In the lemon-yellow sunlight dumping into the room from the kitchen window, I saw lines of worry on his face, hidden minutes before. He looked tired as well as anxious.

  “Drive down okay?” I asked.

  “It was perfect.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” I sliced a fat bagel in two and shoved the two halves into my toaster. Released poppy seeds fell to the counter like confetti. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father take the cups to the table. He pulled out a chair and sat down heavily.

  “So how was your week?” he asked nonchalantly, the way you ask someone how they are when you really don’t expect them to say anything other than “Fine.”

  I opened the fridge and pulled out a container of strawberry cream cheese. “Most of it was okay. Yesterday wasn’t that great.”

  I hadn’t thought my answer through. I wouldn’t have minded talking about Miles getting married yesterday, but I didn’t want to tell him about Mom and the boyfriend I’d mistaken for a setup for me.

  But he just said, “Yeah. Fridays can be like that.” He sipped his coffee.

  I said nothing else and waited for the bagels to pop up. The tiny kitchen filled with their fragrance. I heard my dad speak endearments to the cat as I spread the cream cheese and set the bagels on a plate. When I set them down on the table, he smiled at me.

  “Poppy-seed bagels.”

  I smiled back. “Yes.”

  “They’re not your favorite, are they? They’re your mom’s.”

  I shrugged. “I like them too.”

  He laughed and grabbed one. “It didn’t occur to me until after I paid for them that it was your mother who used to ask for them, not you.”

  I reached for the other bagel. “But they’re good. That’s why she likes them. And I was just happy you were coming. I didn’t care.”

  He took a bite and so did I. We chewed in silence. He wiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb, set the bagel down, and inhaled deeply. I could tell he did not want to begin with small talk, so I decided to make it easy for him.

  “So what is it, Dad? Is something up between you and Allison?”

  He looked up quickly, relief and surprise both playing across his face. “Not exactly.” His voice cracked a little; not like mine would if I was on the verge of crying, but more like a splinter in his resolve to keep things from getting too serious.

  “Are you … are you seeing someone else?” I asked.

  When he quickly shook his head, I asked if she was.

  “No. No, it’s nothing like that. It’s … I just … Look, I didn’t come down here to talk about Allison. I really just wanted to tell you I was sorry, Meggie.”

  He took a quick sip of coffee and then looked up at me. Regret etched the contours of his face, and I didn’t know why.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For all of it.” He put the mug down. “Not just the divorce but everything that happened afterward. Actually everything that didn’t happen afterward. I know I wasn’t around much for you. I know I told you I’d take you to Florence. And I know you still want me to. I just could never get that kind of cash together. Allison’s got money. Allison’s always got money, but she’d never … I mean, I’ve already spent money she didn’t want me to spend, so there’s never been any way I could …”

  He broke off, and I immediately felt stupid for assuming the reason my father hadn’t taken me to Florence yet was that he found it easy to postpone. I’ve always known he has a hard time managing his money. I should’ve offered to go dutch long before this. Go dutch to Italy. We could each pay our own way. I actually could’ve
saved up enough for us both to go by now if I had just thought to.

  “It’s okay, Dad. I can start saving up to pay my own way, and then you—”

  He raised his hand. “No. I promised Nonna I’d take you. She’d never forgive me if I let you pay your own way. That’s not happening.”

  I paused for a moment. “But she’s not here, Dad. And I just want us to go.”

  He locked his eyes on mine. “I know you do. I’m working on it. I want you to know that. And I’m thinking it might work out to go this summer.”

  My first thought was that I’d heard that before. There had been a few other times in the last decade he had said we were going. But it sounded different this time. He sounded a bit less sure, which actually made it sound more like he truly meant it.

  “Really?” I finally asked.

  “I think it might work.”

  It was an odd way to say “Yes, let’s take that trip to Florence!” but excitement began to build inside me nonetheless, and I struggled a bit to rein it in.

  “That’s … that’s great!” I said. “When? When do you want to go? July is better than August as far as crowds go. And June’s better than July. That’s what our books say.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” His reply was distant and detached, as if he were only half-listening.

  “What? You think what?” I said.

  He nodded. “The earlier, the better. I’ll get back to you on it. Okay? Can you get away?”

  The summer months were busy at Crowne & Castillo as we prepped for our winter catalog. By August we were taking infant steps toward spring. But I’d convince Geoffrey and Beatriz to let me go. There was no way I was going to miss out on this.

  “Sure,” I said.

  He held my gaze with intensity, as if he wanted to say more but couldn’t or was perhaps at a loss for the right words.

  “I mean it this time. I am working on it,” he finally said.

  “I believe you.” I needed to say it; he needed to hear it.

  He seemed to relax then. And he sat back again in his chair. “Is there anything else I can do for you? Anything at all?”

  His tone was strange, as though he owed me a stack of favors and was itching to pay some of them off. I had never seen my father so mindful of his past. He’d always been attracted to the present moment or the dazzling future. “The past is for the History Channel,” he was fond of saying. “And let them have it. You’ve got today and you’ve got tomorrow. Don’t let go of either one to hang on to the past.”

  Something had changed since the last time I saw him. It worried me a little—this abrupt transformation—even though it seemed like a nice one.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s nothing that you need to worry about, angel. What can I do?”

  I didn’t believe him, but to press the matter would’ve been to perhaps break the spell. His eagerness to please me was endearing. I wanted to give him the absolution he was longing for, but I also knew that for him, it had to be something tangible. I couldn’t just tell him that I had forgiven him.

  I pondered for a moment what I could ask him for that was big enough to let him feel like he had paid a debt but that didn’t cost him any money. It took a couple of seconds, but when I came upon it, I knew it would not only give him what he wanted but also fill an emptiness I had carried since Nonna died.

  “Do you remember the painting of the little girl and the statue?”

  He blinked. “The what?”

  “It was one that Nonna had in her living room. Her grandfather had painted it. Remember? The little girl is reaching for the statue, and the statue is holding out its hand to her.”

  I could see him mentally picturing the placement of the artwork that had been in his mother’s living room. Then he frowned, no doubt trying to remember what became of that painting after Nonna died and he and the aunts emptied the house. I don’t know what my father inherited from my nonna, but I know it wasn’t her art. I never knew what happened to the paintings.

  “That’s really what you want? That’s it?”

  I nodded. “I loved that picture. It was my favorite.”

  He studied me for a moment, brows crinkled. “Why didn’t you say something when she died?”

  A tiny pain sparked inside me. “I was twelve, remember? And no one asked me what I wanted.”

  He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. “I’ll find it.” The resolute tone of his voice surprised me. He picked up his bagel.

  “You will?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “But I take it you don’t know where it is.”

  “I’ll find it, Meggie.” He bit into his bagel and began to chew with purpose. “I think I’ll have another one of these,” he said a second later. And I stood to slice another bagel in two. We didn’t speak of the painting again. Or the promised trip to Florence. He didn’t ask about Mom. I kind of wanted him to and kind of didn’t. He asked about work, if I was dating anyone, and if I ever hear from Miles. I told him work was mostly okay, I wasn’t dating any one person, and that Miles had gotten married the night before.

  He left on his motorcycle half an hour later, saying he needed to get back to LA. He wanted to start looking right away for the painting, starting with talking to his sisters. We hugged good-bye. He assured me that he’d find the painting and that this was the summer I’d see Florence.

  My father was in debt when he married my mother—so I have heard. My grandfather, Cosimo, refused him my mother’s dowry, assuming my father would use it to pay for his careless choices prior to the marriage. I don’t think my grandfather cared much for my father, even though he chose him. The marriage is never about the man. Or the woman. It’s about the binding of families who might otherwise be at war with each other.

  There is a painting that still hangs in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s bedchamber of the Battle of San Romano. I do not like it. I would never hang it in my bedchamber, and I would never paint such a thing myself. Warriors are spearing one another as they battle on horseback. But the horses are the ones who are wounded and dying on the canvas. And they have no quarrel with anyone. They are merely doing as they are told.

  War can come any way. If we let it. If we invite it. Not on land with horses and swords. But in our houses. In our bedrooms. In our hearts.

  7

  It has always filled me with wonder that my father and my aunts sold Nonna’s house when she died. Dad and Allison had a house in Santa Monica, and Therese and Bianca and their husbands had houses nearby too. But it just surprised me that when Nonna died, the house was emptied and everything in it was scattered.

  “It was just a house,” my dad said when I asked him about it once, a long time ago. “In a run-down neighborhood. Who would want it?”

  I told him I would have wanted it, and he laughed and said I only remembered the good things about it.

  My memory of that house is not the neighborhood it stood in. My memory of that house is my grandmother’s presence, the fabric of home and belonging, the feel of arriving at the place where you are safe.

  What’s there to remember if not the good things?

  Dad told me, more than just that one time, that people who are in love with the past only remember what they want to, even if it’s not entirely true.

  Geoffrey says that’s what makes memoirs lousy reading.

  I disagree.

  Remembering what you want about the past, even if it’s not entirely true, keeps you from giving up on the present.

  After my father left the cottage, I felt both full and empty at the same time. I was paradoxically full of hope and empty of expectation. My father’s strange, new regret for past disappointments teased me to believe he was serious this time.

  I wanted to call someone. Gabe. Kara. Lorenzo.

  Somebody.

  I stepped back into the kitchen and stared at the empty bagel plates. Alex meowed at me, and I told him I had no idea what to think.

  I t
ook the plates to the sink. When I turned back to get our mugs, I bumped mine, still half-full, and sent it toppling over. The spilled coffee spread toward the Manila folder I had brought home from the office the night before. I swept it into my arms, and several pages fell out onto the floor. I stepped over the fallen pieces of paper as I grabbed a paper towel. I tossed it onto the coffee puddle and then bent down to get the pages. I turned them over and saw that they were the first few pages of Sofia Borelli’s manuscript. I read the first line, and it stilled me.

  I read the entire first page before I became aware that the paper towel was sodden and cold coffee was slowly dripping onto the floor.

  All That Is Seen

  by Sofia Daniela Borelli

  Florence wakes up golden every morning, even when it is raining. At daybreak the honey-stone and blushing tangerine tiles seem warm to the touch, even in winter, even in a downpour. I have never lived anywhere else. I have never wanted to. I grew up in a flat six blocks from the Duomo, and I live there still. When I was little, I knew I could never be lost on the streets of Florence. The cathedral’s dome and tower rise from the ground like a crown and scepter handed to us by the sun. They are the sky over Florence, and I could always find my way home if I just looked up.