The Girl in the Glass

by Susan Meissner

  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 wha
t 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.

  31

  Emilio and Lorenzo talked the entire time it took to drive back to the building. I tried to catch a word here and there that I could understand. I knew they were talking about Sofia, perhaps striking some kind of agreement with regard to her care. I heard Emilio say the Italian words for “doctor” and “institution”—they sound nearly like the English words—but I also heard Lorenzo respond with words I didn’t know but that seemed to pacify Emilio. I was anxious for Emilio to get us back to the flat and for him to leave so that Lorenzo could tell me what the future held for Sofia.

  I didn’t want Emilio orchestrating that future and deciding how many delusions Sofia was allowed to have. I didn’t think black-and-white people should be allowed to answer that. They have no experience with fantasy.

  When we got back to the building, Emilio pulled up alongside the curb. He said something to Lorenzo and pointed to the windows above us, specifically Sofia’s living room window. Lorenzo patted Emilio on the shoulder and said something in soothing tones.

  “Approvazione?” Lorenzo said.

  Emilio looked at me and then back to Lorenzo. He nodded.

  Lorenzo said “Grazie” and got out of the car. I followed him. We had barely closed the Fiat’s doors when Emilio zoomed off.

  “What’s he going to do?” I asked as we watched him drive away.

  “He said for now he will allow Renata and me to look for a psychologist here in Florence. If we can get Sofia to agree to see this person, then Emilio will leave the situation alone. Renata will be able to convince her, I think. It’s not healthy that Sofia thinks she goes to work every day.”

  “And what about the sale of the building? What about Sofia’s home? She’s never really lived anywhere else.”

  “Emilio says his buyer is a friend who has wanted this building for years. He will agree to let Sofia stay in her flat and pay a fixed rate for rent with the condition that she can live there as long as she wants. The rent will be taken from the proceeds of the sale. She won’t ever have to write a check.”

  “And Sofia’s book? Does he have conditions about that too?”

  Lorenzo looked at me. “You have conditions about that, cara. You’re the one who will need to decide what to do. He is already certain you will not publish it the way it is.”

  Emilio’s car turned a corner, heading south out of the city toward Rome. Lorenzo and I went inside.

  Minutes later we found Renata sitting in the doorway of their flat with a clear view of Sofia’s front door, tapping away on her laptop.

  Sofia hadn’t returned.

  “It’s only been an hour,” she said, verbally whisking away my worry.

  “Maybe we should go look for her, no?” Lorenzo said.

  I agreed.

  “Where do you think she went?” Renata got up and moved the dining room chair she’d been sitting in back to the table where it belonged.

  “A favorite place?” Lorenzo suggested.

  Renata frowned. “This is Florence! Everywhere is her favorite place!”

  “A place where she feels peaceful, then.”

  “A place where she is used to getting good advice,” I said, as the places she’d taken me to the last five days filled my head. She would go somewhere where Nora’s echoes would be the most prominent, where she’d heard whispered words meant for Medici descendants to hear, words that affirmed who she was. And what she was capable of surviving.

  If I were Sofia, where would I go?

  I was pretty sure I knew.

  Lorenzo turned to me. “Which places, Marguerite? We can split up. The Accademia? The Uffizi, the Duomo, San Lorenzo, the Pitti Palace?”

  “I’ll take the Pitti Palace,” I said. “You split up and take the other places. But don’t go to San Lorenzo. She doesn’t care too much for San Lorenzo. The scumbag proposed to her there.”

  “Let’s go, then.” Renata grabbed her cell phone and wallet from her bag on the kitchen counter.

  As we turned to leave their flat, I thought of something I wanted to bring with me. “You didn’t lock her front door, did you?”

  Renata answered that she hadn’t. Sofia had left without her keys.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I stepped back into Sofia’s flat and made my way to her bedroom, asking the heavens for forgiveness in advance for the snooping I was about to do. Sofia had several jewelry boxes on the kidney-shaped vanity. I opened the first one and scanned its contents. Pendants and beads. And then another one. Earrings and bracelets. And then another one. Brooches and old name badges.

  I turned to her dresser. A mirrored tray held little bottles of perfume and hand lotion. Next to that was a small wooden box inlayed with the design of a lily. I opened it and fingered the trinkets inside. And then I saw it.

  The five-hundred-lire coin.

  I put it in my pants pocket and replaced the lid. A moment later I rejoined Renata and Lorenzo, and we made our way down the stairs to disperse on the street.

  As I walked the half mile to the Pitti Palace, I contemplated what I might say to convince Sofia that all would be well, that nothing had shattered that couldn’t somehow be pieced back together. I was fairly sure I would find her at Nora’s self-portrait. It’s where I would go if I lived where she did and now faced the crumbling of my carefully constructed world.

  It’s what I was already doing.

  As I paid for my ticket inside, I still wasn’t sure what I would say. What would the people I looked up to tell her? All my shades-of-gray people. What would they say?

  My father would tell Sofia to believe what she wanted. It was her life. If she wanted to believe she was a Medici who could hear the wisdom and woes of the ancients, who were we to say she couldn’t?

  Devon, who I barely knew and yet knew, would probably tell her what matters is the relationships you have with the people who love you most.

  Lorenzo would tell her to find a place where she could manage the dreams of her heart and the waking moments of her days. That place existed for every artist. She would find it if she risked a bit of her handhold on the part of her world that was the most dear to her.

  And Gabe would tell her the imagination is boundless, but truth and hope have boundaries we can trust.

  As I walked the echoing halls where Medicis had walked before me, I realized I could only know these things because they were what I also had needed to hear.

  When we walk away from the canvas of our imaginations to live in the world of ache and wonder and beauty and sorrow, what do we take with us from the edges of the painting?

  Everything we brought to it.

  I found Sofia kneeling on the tiled floor, her body up against the wall in the posture of the weary. She sat with her eyes on the brown-eyed girl with paintbrushes in her hand. A couple in front of a painting nearby were staring at her and whispering. I walked past them and then knelt to sit beside her on the ancient ground of her ancestors.

  “Hi,” I murmured.

  No response. I went on, praying for wisdom.

  “When I was little, my grandmother would take care of me on those weekends my parents spent trying to glue their marriage back together. I used to sit in front of her painting of Andromeda. You know, I fell in love with Florence looking at that painting. It seemed like a place where anything was possible. Ev
ery kid needs to believe there’s a magic place like that. Even when I got off the plane a week ago, I still believed it was.”

  She turned her head slowly to look at me. “And now you don’t?”

  I trained my eyes to the painting, searching for words to express what I had come to realize. “No. I still do. Magic influences how we see reality, makes us step back in wonder. That can happen anywhere, Sofia. And I’m really glad it does.”

  She was quiet for several seconds. Then she spoke.

  “Emilio told me my father lied to me about many things. That I am not a Medici. That there’s a reason there are no baby pictures of me.”

  “Sofia—”

  She faced me. “Papa told me my baby pictures were stolen. He said a thief came into our flat and took all my baby things. Papa said the thief was probably a desperate father who needed my baby clothes and toys and books. He didn’t want the pictures, of course, but thieves don’t have time to sort through what they can use and what they can’t.”

  “I … I suppose they don’t.”

  “There was no thief, Meg. Thieves take money and jewelry and silver. They don’t take toys and baby clothes. Only a child would believe that.”

  “But—”

  “There was no thief.”

  Sofia turned her head to gaze up at Nora. She was quiet for several seconds. In the moments of silence, her eyes grew misty. She shook her head gently. “For the longest time, I thought … something wasn’t quite right with me. A woman appeared in my dreams and in my memory. A mother.” Sofia’s voice tapered to a whisper. “And … and there was a man. A father. I remember being afraid of that man. I remember this mother had bruises. I remember her sad face. I remember hiding in a museum. And I remember the day she kissed me and told me she’d be right back.”

  Again Sofia turned to face me, her eyes imploring me to listen. “I’ve always remembered those things, Meg. And I have never known what to do with them. They didn’t fit anywhere in my mind. Who remembers a different mother? A different father? I couldn’t ask my papa or my mama about it. I was afraid they would think that I didn’t love them or that something was wrong with me. I thought something was wrong with me! I had such terrible nightmares for such a long time. But they gradually eased away when Papa told me that if I let her, the beauty of Florence would speak healing to me.”