The Girl in the Glass

by Susan Meissner

  Papa said Nora found a way. Perhaps it was through her music. Or maybe art. Or writing. She was Medici, after all. Everyone whose heart is broken will eventually find the one thing that will mend it if they do not shut their eyes. “What happens when you shut your eyes?” I asked. And he smiled and said, “Close your eyes.” So I did. “What do you see?” he said. I laughed and said, “Nothing.” A moment later he said it again. “What do you see?” And again, a moment later. “Papa, I can’t see anything! It’s all dark!” I said finally. And then he said, “Open your eyes.”

  When I did, I saw that he had put a chocolate bar in front of me and a pink rose from the vase on the windowsill behind him. And a shiny five-hundred-lire coin.

  He pushed them toward me. “Shut your eyes to the world of pain, and you also shut your eyes to the world of delight.” I laughed and reached for the chocolate first.

  My mother tsk-tsked him for giving me candy just before supper. But he smiled and told her there were worse things than sweets before a meal.

  I kept that five-hundred-lire coin. Four decades later I still have it. In 2002, Italy went the way of the euro; no one uses lire anymore. I could have turned it in for the cash value of the euro, but I had no desire to do that.

  I didn’t want to ever forget what my papa told me. There have been many times over the years when I might’ve forgotten if I hadn’t had the coin to remind me not to shut my eyes.

  I set the pages down on my lap and just sat there on Sofia’s balcony, looking over the rooftops of Florence, captivated by Sofia’s prose. In my mind’s eye, I could see the chocolate bar, the rose, the coin, and even the little girl who found a way to keep her eyes open though her heart was broken. I was falling in love with Sofia’s book, and it scared me a little how much.

  It was not a travel book.

  It was not even a travel memoir.

  I didn’t know what it was. But I wanted it. I wanted Crowne & Castillo to be the ones to publish it. And I had no idea how to convince Geoffrey and Beatriz to take a chance on it.

  I had to find a way to verify her ancestral claims. She had mentioned that she was a descendent of Gian Gastone de’ Medici, the last grand duke of the Medici dynasty. Sofia said there had been an illegitimate child born to Gian Gastone’s mistress, or one of his mistresses. I was beginning to think all Medici men had multiple mistresses. Which mistress was it? What was her name? And how did Sofia’s family come to learn of their heritage? If I could validate her claim, I knew Beatriz would be more easily convinced.

  I didn’t know if that would change things for Geoffrey.

  Geoffrey.

  Southern California wasn’t awake yet, but soon it would be. Geoffrey would get to the office in a few hours, and he’d see that I wasn’t there. Then he would open his e-mail and discover why.

  I stood up and went back into the flat to shower and dress for the Accademia. I didn’t want to think about what Geoffrey would say. He wouldn’t be furious, since I hardly ever miss a day of work, but he’d be ticked that I had dropped everything because my dad asked me to. The sooner I made headway on Sofia’s book, the sooner I’d have something interesting to report back to Geoffrey that had nothing to do with my dad.

  When I look at Master Michelangelo’s David, I am struck by his sheer and utter completion. There is nothing about the giant-slayer that is undone or masked or hidden, nothing that leaves you pondering. Everything about the shepherd man in the stone is laid bare, shining white as new snow and solid as the ground beneath your feet. No one wonders what David might look like were he to breathe or should blood start flowing to his limbs, because he stands there with air in his lungs and veins pulsing under the marble. You don’t have to imagine anything. He is all there, in naked totality. There is nothing hidden.

  Words skip away from me when I look at David. Indeed, I must look away from that stark completeness where nothing is left to my imagination. If we cannot suppose and dream and wonder, are we not doomed?

  My mother had in the garden of her favorite villa a statue of Adonis. I remember it because it gave me nightmares. In the statue, Adonis is dying, and a wild boar sent by Diana the goddess is tormenting him. Adonis did not love Diana; he loved Venus.

  I told my mother once that I didn’t like that statue and that it scared me. We were approaching the statue as we walked in the garden in the cooling afternoon. “Don’t look at it, then,” she said. “Find something you like to look at, and fix your eyes on that, Nora.”

  I can remember her saying this to me as clearly as if she said it to me yesterday, though I had only just had my fifth birthday. She said it as if it is just a small matter to pull your gaze away from that which frightens you.

  “I feel like it wants me to look at it,” I whispered as we passed the statue, and I simply had to turn my head and peek at it. She followed my gaze, seeming to look at the tormented Adonis for the first time.

  “That doesn’t mean you have to do what it wants,” she said. And she quickened her step so that I had to run to keep up with her. I asked her if it frightened her, and she said it did not. “Figures in stone cannot harm me,” she said.

  But I did not walk past that statue again for a very long time. When I saw it again many years later, my childhood fears had given way to understanding. Statues do not harm, but they can speak to us of what can.

  And better still, they speak to us of what we are capable of overcoming.

  17

  When Sofia returned, I was back on the balcony, refreshed by a shower and clean clothes, and reading again the chapter about Isabella and Nora. A hesitant smile snuck across her face when she found me sipping the last of the coffee and reading the pages. “Do you like it?”

  I recognized the tone of someone unsure of her writing. When I meet prospective authors, I often hear the tiny tremors of self-doubt, which I much prefer over arrogance.

  “I actually like your writing very much,” I said.

  “You do?” Her smile intensified, then quickly sagged. “All of it or just that chapter?” Her gaze dropped to the pages in my hands.

  “I mean all of it.” I set down the pages and the cup of coffee. “But I need to see the rest, of course. And we need to find a way to tie everything together so that it’s less a history book and more a memoir about Florence and what this city meant to you growing up. Does that make sense?”

  Her brows crinkled in doubt. “Yes. No. What do you mean?”

  I wasn’t sure what I meant. But I had a thin idea of what I was trying to say. “Well, it’s like your father and Nora are to you what Florence will be to the rest of us. Your dad can’t be my dad. And none of us will understand Nora like you do. But your Florence can be my Florence. The way you talk about your father is the way you talk about Florence. It comes across that way in your prose. We need to punch up that idea that they are one and the same.”

  She nodded slowly. “Ah, it’s because I am Medici that it comes across that way.”

  And that Medici thing.

  “So, Sofia, if you don’t mind my asking, how can we prove that you’re, you know, a Medici?”

  She blinked. “Prove it?”

  “You know, like do you have family records that show the ancestry? Birth records, baptismal records, things like that.”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’ve just always been told that’s what we were.” I had offended her, but she was too gracious to say it.

  “I don’t doubt you, Sofia. But if we’re going to talk about publishing your book, we need to have this discussion. My publisher has asked that we have it. It’s a valid question, don’t you think?”

  She pulled the corner of her bottom lip into her mouth. “I suppose.”

  “Did your father have a family Bible or family records or anything?”

  “Maybe. I can ask him.”

  I had pictured her father as already being in the nether world of Alzheimer’s the way she described him in her first chapter.

  “Or your uncle in Rome?” />
  She shook her head. “He won’t be any help.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s … he’s different. Grouchy. All the time. It’s … it’s not nice for me to talk about him that way.”

  A cloud seemed to pass over her, and I decided now wasn’t the time to press it. I waited until the moment passed. “Let’s come back to this another time, okay? I want to see David.”

  The veil lifted from her face. “Yes, you do!”

  I stood and gathered the papers and my coffee cup. She reached for them both. “I’ll take those. Did … did you like this chapter? It’s kind of sad, this one.”

  “I did, but yes, it was sad.”

  “I’ve always had a tender place in my heart for Nora. And not just because she speaks to me.” Sofia looked off in the distance, over the cream and salmon rooftops, into the vanishing point off her own balcony. “Papa said it was because I wished for her to have a mama and papa who loved her like mine loved me.” She turned her gaze back to me. “It’s that, but something else too.” Then she shrugged, as if I wouldn’t understand or wouldn’t care. But I did care.

  “What is it? What’s the something else?” I asked.

  She frowned slightly, pondering perhaps how to describe what she meant. “I don’t know why, but I feel that I’m connected to her beyond family ties. I’ve always felt that way. Some of my childhood memories are wrapped in a fog of fear that I can’t quite understand. I remember having terrible nightmares when I was little. But I had the happiest of childhoods, so I don’t know why it is that I would think I have anything in common with Nora Orsini. But I’ve always felt that we were kindred souls. Funny, isn’t it?”

  She smiled thoughtfully and then looked at her watch.

  “We’d better go. We have some walking to do, and you will need to eat something more than bread and oranges. And I have our tickets already for this afternoon, so we will not have to wait.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that not only had she gone to some trouble to get tickets to the Accademia for us but that she had rearranged her entire week to accommodate me.

  “Will your boss be angry that you’re taking off all this time for me? I will feel bad if this is going to be a problem for you.”

  She laughed lightly and touched my arm. “You are sweet. My boss will not be angry with me!”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Oh, I am sure. I am the boss. It’s my company. My father’s and mine. But you are sweet.”

  “Really?” I didn’t mean to sound so surprised. But I was surprised. Sofia had not come across to me as a business owner.

  “Papa started it. We have other guides. Part time, most of them. Many of them students at the university.”

  I excused myself to go inside to put on comfortable shoes—Sofia said we’d be on our feet most of the day—and to grab my purse and camera, though Sofia told me I wouldn’t be allowed to photograph anything inside the Accademia.

  “But don’t be too sad,” she said, as we headed out her door. “Once you’ve seen him, you won’t be satisfied with a picture.”

  A moment later we stepped out onto her street, alive with Monday activity. I drank in the sound of activity and purpose. We turned left on Via Porta Rossa and began walking east; at least I think it was east. Based on where Lorenzo had taken me last night, I imagined the banks of the Arno were a few blocks away on my right.

  “First I take you to the Piazza della Signoria. The fake David is there. When the real one was brought indoors, they put the copy in its place. Many tourists think they have seen Michelangelo’s David when they see that one. But it is like thinking you have seen heaven when you’ve only seen a cloud.”

  Devon had mentioned the name of that piazza. And something about mushrooms. I hadn’t thought about Devon since the day before, but as soon as I tied his name with the piazza we were headed toward, I remembered.

  “My mother’s … A friend of mine mentioned there’s a restaurant in the piazza where you can get ravioli with por … por-something mushrooms,” I said. “He said I had to try it.”

  “Ah, porcini mushrooms. Yes, they are lovely. But the restaurants on the piazza cater to the tourists, Marguerite. None of the locals will pay what they charge.”

  I imagined going home and telling Devon I didn’t eat at the restaurant he recommended. I thought of the money I had in my purse that he gave me. “Can we go anyway? My treat.”

  She smiled at me. “Of course we will go. First we will see fake David. Then you shall have your ravioli with porcini mushrooms.”

  We continued down the narrow street, past golden-stone buildings and little shops and merchants with the wares on tables that faced us. And while we walked, Sofia told me more about the piazza.

  Soon we turned on Via dei Calzaiuoli, and before me was an expansive courtyard filled with camera-toting tourists, locals on their way to somewhere else, and dark-skinned gypsies selling scarves and sunglasses and leather purses. Sofia shooed the gypsies away and grabbed my hand. From the center of the piazza, I could see that it was filled with statues, grand and immense. The courtyard was flanked on one side by a stone building and a soaring clock tower that looked ancient, and I could see the copy of David standing in front of it. To the right was a three-arched canopy of carved stone over a group of statues that Sofia let me take my time gazing at and taking pictures of. Then she pointed to the ancient building.

  “Palazzo Vecchio,” Sofia said. “It means ‘old palace.’ The first stone was laid in 1294. Come. I want you to meet someone.”

  We started to walk past the fake David, but I stopped to take a picture—if nothing else than to compare him to the real one. And I wasn’t the only one. Other tourists were snapping pictures of him. The fake was certainly impressive. If someone came to Florence and couldn’t squeeze in a trip to the Accademia, they would want to at least see this. But I was guessing that if I said as much to Sofia, she would say how can you come to Florence and not see Michelangelo’s David? It would be like visiting Paris and not seeing the Eiffel Tower. Or visiting heaven and not seeing God.

  Sofia waited patiently for me to take the shot, and then she led me to an immense fountain of Neptune. Sofia stopped so I could take a picture.

  “A few years ago, a young man who’d had far too much to drink climbed onto Neptune and smashed the hand to bits,” Sofia said. “It was very sad. Twenty-three private sponsors donated the eleven thousand euro it took to repair it. It had been shattered into thirty pieces. They had to use stainless-steel pins to reconstruct it.”

  “Yikes. I suppose if this statue could talk, he’d say it hurt like the dickens.”

  Sofia smiled at me and leaned in close. “That’s pretty much just how he described it.”

  I spun my head around.

  Sofia’s smile broadened. “Marguerite, I am just kidding.” She laughed and so did I. “It’s only Nora’s voice I hear.” She nodded toward Neptune. “He probably talks to someone else.”

  She pulled me to the bronze statue of a man on a horse, aged by the elements to a shade of creamy green.

  “Here is who I wanted you to meet. Giambologna sculpted this. This is Cosimo I. He was Isabella de’ Medici’s father. Nora’s grandfather. She wouldn’t have remembered him since she was only three when he died. He created the Uffizi and the Boboli Gardens, and he finished the Pitti Palace.” She turned to me. “And of all the Medicis, he and his wife, Eleonora, were one of the few couples that actually loved each other. They had an arranged marriage, you know. But they loved each other. Sometimes it works out.”

  We walked to the southern end of the piazza to a restaurant with umbrellaed tables and waitstaff beckoning.

  “They have porcini mushroom ravioli here,” Sofia told me as we settled into chairs. “It’s quite good. Despite the price.”

  Devon was right.

  Porcini mushrooms are as sweet and soft as marshmallows.

  After our meal, which Sofia refused to let me pay for, we headed back o
ut to the Via dei Calzaiuoli. Sofia told me at lunch we’d be walking past the Duomo and while I would want to stop and gape at it, we would need to keep walking to meet our ticket time to the Accademia. We turned on Via del Corso, which would take us to the backside of the magnificent cathedral so it wouldn’t be as difficult for me to pass by.

  Even so, the moment we rounded the corner and the south side of the Duomo stretched before me—four city blocks long and piercing the sky in a kaleidoscope of pink, white, and green marble—I did stop and gape. Sofia let me. I took a few pictures, lame as they were, for no one can capture the depth and breadth of it—even its backside—with a lens. I hadn’t sensed my nonna’s presence yet, but I felt her when I stood at the edge of the cathedral she said was the most beautiful in the world. Or maybe it was just awe speaking to me, sounding like someone I loved.

  “The long name is the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, the church of Saint Mary of the Flower,” Sofia said, pulling me along. “But everyone calls it the Duomo because of Brunelleschi’s dome. We will come back.”

  Reluctantly, I followed her.

  Less than ten minutes later, we were at the Accademia and waiting for our slot to step inside what looked more like an apartment building than an academy. Sofia told me Cosimo I founded it, and that it was the first drawing school in all of Europe. The lines to get in were thick all around us, and I was infinitely glad Sofia had her connections to get us in.

  Once inside we made our way into the hallway where Michelangelo’s unfinished statues lined the aisle like sentinels, leading to the room that would reveal the statue of David. I had seen pictures of what Michelangelo called the Prisoners, but I was astounded by their tortured poses. Chunky marble monoliths stood erect with torsos of men writhing out of them, half-formed, some with arms or pieces of arms, some with a neck but no head, all of them with their muscles flexed in agony or perhaps defeat, as if someone had poured concrete on them while they begged to be shown mercy.