by Hazel Gaynor
“Did you meet Margaret, too?” Madeleine asked, following my own line of thinking. “We don’t know much about her. Violet doesn’t talk about her often.”
“Violet was never far from Margaret’s side. The two of them were inseparable. Wherever Violet and I went, Margaret came, too. They were the best of friends. It is a shame things changed between them.”
He stood up suddenly and rummaged in a drawer before pulling something out and placing it in my hands.
“This is how I remember Violet,” he said.
I stared at a painting of a beautiful young woman, the Doge’s Palace and the Grand Canal caught in a golden sunset behind her.
“This is Violet? She’s beautiful.”
“You painted this?” Madeleine asked as she peered at the painting.
He nodded. “I painted her more than any other woman. She was my muse. My musa. My Lucrezia.”
“Did you paint Margaret as well?” I asked, charmed by him and his lilting accent.
“There wasn’t time. Margaret returned to America as planned. She was a gifted violinist and had a place to study music with a respected tutor. Violet chose to remain in Venice. We spent a wonderful summer together before her mother insisted she return home. She asked me to go with her, but I was a young fool with an art degree to complete and a family I couldn’t bear to leave. I had to stay in Italy.” At this he took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, smoothing the silvery whiskers of his mustache. “I have questioned that decision many times over the years, when things became hard, but we choose the life we’re destined to lead, don’t we. And there are good things and bad, no matter the course.”
His words hung in the air: we choose the life we’re destined to lead, don’t we. He spoke with such wisdom, such gentle honesty.
“I only wish I’d had more time with your grandmother,” he continued. “But I’m just an old man, speaking in hindsight.”
The room fell silent. For once, I wished Madeleine would ask a question, but she was as spellbound as I was.
Matthias leaned forward suddenly, reaching for both of our hands. “Violet wrote to me after she’d returned to America, and a couple of times after the birth.”
“Birth?” we asked in unison.
He nodded. “Your grandmother returned home carrying my child, a little girl.”
My mouth fell open.
I looked at Madeleine, whose eyes were wide with surprise. Had Violet raised the baby, or had she given it up for adoption? If she’d kept the baby . . . we both understood what it meant.
Matthias stood up and disappeared briefly into a side room, returning a minute or so later.
“Here,” he said, holding out a faded old envelope. “You can read the letter she sent to me.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Isn’t it very private?”
He nodded. “It’s part of your family now. Please. Read it. Then you will understand.”
I took the envelope from him and pulled out a sheet of paper.
Veneto, East Hampton
May 1891
My dearest Mattie,
I wasn’t sure how to tell you this, or whether I should, but I believe you have a right to know.
I had a child, Mattie. Our child. A daughter. I named her Celestine, after the woman in the painting we both admired. She was made with such love and passion and it feels unbearable to think she may never know you. I wish you could see her, hold her, smell the almond-sweet scent of her hair. She is my greatest masterpiece and I would not change a thing about her.
I expect nothing of you, Mattie. I understand your reasons for staying in Italy, truly, I do. What we had was perfect, and I’d like to preserve it in my heart just as it was.
I cannot give up my home, and family, and neither can you. I only wish for you to know about Celestine, to know what we made together. Society may gossip and stare and know the truth about her father, and my sister may accuse me of bringing our family name into disrepute, but when I look at my dear little girl, I cannot regret it. Not for one moment.
Perhaps we will see each other again one day, you and I? Perhaps our story was only ever meant to be fleeting. And I am thankful for what we had, and for what we have been given.
As you always told me the Italians say, it isn’t goodbye, but arrivederci. “Until we meet again.”
Violet
Matthias’s eyes filled with tears as the weight of Violet’s words reached out to us, and we understood.
“Your mother is my daughter,” he said. “And you, dearest girls, are my beautiful grandchildren.”
Maddie
I stared at Matthias Morelli, moments ago a stranger, and now a man whose life was suddenly such a significant part of my own. Was there a family resemblance in those wide eyes and aquiline nose? Did I recognize our mother’s cheekbones and artful brow?
He was our grandfather. Our mother’s father. We had Italian blood. Italian family! I thought about Grandpa Frank. Did he know? And what about Mother. Had Violet told her the truth about her birth, and if so, had she ever wanted to travel to Italy to meet her real father?
I had so many questions.
I swallowed hard and looked at Clara. She looked as stunned as I felt.
“You are shocked, I can see,” Matthias said when he noticed our expressions. “You already have a grandfather. I know. Violet married a very good man. She wrote to me, told me how happy she was to marry Frank Bell. He raised and loved your mother as his own child. Not all men would do that.”
I pictured Grandpa Frank, the man I’d known and loved as my grandfather. Violet had said he was the love of her life, and that she’d cherished every minute of the years they’d spent together. And I believed it, even now, after this revelation about the summer of passion she’d shared with Matthias. And yet my mind still reeled from the discovery.
Hours passed as Matthias told us as much as he could remember. He asked us to share stories of Violet, too, and to tell him about our travels over the last few weeks.
“It’s very good, very kind what you’re doing for your grandmother,” he said. “I’m sure Margaret will enjoy meeting you. She and Violet were such good friends when I knew them. I’m only sorry you will leave Venice so soon.” His voice was full of regret. He looked at us both in turn, taking us in, trying to make sense of us in the same way we were trying to make sense of him. “Would you stop by again? Tomorrow, for coffee, perhaps? I’d like to show you the gallery properly. And the other paintings of your grandmother.”
Clara leaned forward. “There are others?”
He chuckled and nodded. “Many more. I became—how would you say—obsessed!”
We exchanged kisses on each cheek, the Italian way, and promised to return the next day.
We’d hardly closed the door behind us when I blurted out, “Can you believe this, Clara? Our strict, straitlaced mother is the love child of a brilliant Italian artist!”
Clara shook her head. “I can’t believe it. What a life Violet had! It must have scandalized the entire family. Imagine being pregnant and unmarried. It must have been so awful for her.”
“There must be more to the story,” I said, always interested in digging deeper. “On Margaret’s side. Perhaps she was envious. Perhaps she secretly loved Matthias, too.”
“You’ve always got the journalist’s nose, don’t you?” Clara said with a smile.
“Things are never as black and white as they seem. There’s usually another side to the story, sometimes many sides. Anyway, life is interesting. We can definitely say that.”
We talked the whole way through dinner that evening, musing aloud about what life would have been like had Violet married Matthias. We would have been Italian, not American, and who knew how our lives might have looked.
“A love affair, an illegitimate child, an estranged sister. I wouldn’t have guessed any of it,” Clara said as we returned to our hotel suite.
“I wonder if Father knew he’d married a woman who was half Ital
ian? He was always so proudly American.” I sat on the edge of the sofa and kicked off my shoes. “I wish he’d shared more with us, about his life. Though I guess I always had trouble talking with him. Less talking, really. More like shouting.”
To my surprise, Clara sat beside me and covered my hands with hers. “He loved you, you know, despite your disagreements and differences,” she said earnestly. “I think he was hard on you because he saw your talents. He only wanted the best for you. For us both.”
I stared at her hands on mine. She used to be affectionate with me, and I with her, but we’d been so at odds with each other I’d almost forgotten what it was like. It was nice, and in that moment not only did I miss Father, but I realized how much I missed this—this closeness with my sister.
“Thank you,” I replied softly, squeezing Clara’s hand. “I wish I could have had more time with him. Made him proud of me.”
“He was proud of you. He just had trouble saying it.” She paused for a moment as she made her way to the bathroom, turning in the doorway. “I’m proud of you, too.”
I made a face of mock horror. “Could you repeat that, please? I must have misheard.”
She snatched a tube of lipstick from the counter and threw it at me.
I laughed and scooted beneath the covers just in time.
As Clara attended to her protracted toilette, I turned on the bedside lamp and reached for my notebook to record the day’s incredible events, but as I put pen to paper, a thought flickered through my head, and I paused. I wondered when the editor at the New York Herald Tribune would receive my article, and whether Mr. McDougal would consider it worthy enough to print. If the article ran, Charles would be sure to see it—that was certainly my intention—but Clara would be furious with me for writing a scathing article about her future husband. It would undoubtedly cause bad feeling between us, but in the end, I wasn’t sorry I’d written the article, or that it had been sent. There was a truth that needed to be told about Charles Hancock, even if he was marrying my sister.
I returned my gaze to the blank page, but the words wouldn’t come. How could I document the events of the day? How could I adequately express how it felt to discover that my family was not what I’d thought it was?
I flipped idly through the pages, reading my entries from previous days, reliving the memories of our trip so far with a smile on my lips, until I saw his name, and my smile faded: Daniel winning at poker. Daniel’s suggestion of a pen name. Daniel helping Clara on the hot air balloon. He was peppered throughout the entire journey.
I still couldn’t believe he was nothing but a hired hand, paid to spy on us, and that all of the conversations and lovely afternoons Clara and I had spent with him were a lie. But rather than be furious, I felt a twinge of sadness. I assumed he’d returned to New York now that the truth was out, but as I uncapped my pen and wrote the date and location at the top of the page, part of me hoped I was wrong.
A knock at the door broke the silence.
“I’ll get it,” Clara called as she finally emerged from the bathroom.
A moment later, she poked her head into my bedroom. She held a note in her hand.
“What is it?” I asked, sitting up taller in the bed.
“It’s Edward,” she said, her cheeks flushed. “He’s asked me to meet him for lunch tomorrow.”
Clara
Violet once told me there are moments in life when we can take a leap into the unknown or turn back toward the familiar. Discovering that she’d had a child out of wedlock, and had taken that leap herself, gave me the courage to take my own.
I woke early and reread Edward’s letter. His words affected me deeply. My reaction to them stirred a memory of the dizzy anticipation I’d felt when I’d first met Charles: a light-headedness, a sense of longing to be with him. Yet now when I thought about Charles, it was with a sense of hesitation and uncertainty that went far beyond any bride-to-be jitters. It was Edward who set my pulse racing, and it wasn’t just the words in his letter, or the moment we’d shared in his gallery the morning before I’d departed; there were other moments—a glance, a pause, a shared appreciation of a new piece of art, the suggestion of something else, something more, waiting to be said or done.
As I’d left the gallery that last morning, Edward had encouraged me to use the trip to explore new techniques and styles. “Don’t be confined by what you think you ought to be doing, Clara. Our best work comes when we set our imagination free.” His words spoke to me now. What I ought to be doing was looking forward to my wedding. What I ought to be doing was writing a few lines to Charles to tell him how much I missed him and loved him. But what I ought to be doing and what I was doing were increasingly becoming very different things. Of course, the proper thing to do would be to send a telegram to Edward’s hotel to explain that I wouldn’t be able to meet him after all. But for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be proper or do the proper thing. I wanted to do the unexpected thing, the brave and exciting thing. I wanted to take a leap.
Flustered and indecisive, I changed my dress three times and my shoes twice and I fussed and fiddled with a head of hair that insisted on acting like an obstinate child.
“Good luck,” Madeleine offered when I was finally ready to go. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” she added. “Act as a chaperone?”
“I need to do this alone,” I replied. “Besides, two’s company.”
“And three’s a crowd.” She offered an encouraging smile. “Good for you. I’m going to take Matthias up on his invitation to take me for the best coffee in Venice.”
“Send him my regards. I won’t be long. I’ll be back by midafternoon.”
I picked up my gloves and closed the door behind me.
If only it could be as simple as I’d made it sound.
* * *
I WALKED WITH uncertain steps toward the Rialto Bridge, where Edward had asked me to meet him, every stride tugging at my conscience. I’d set off much too early and slowed my steps. Not wishing to appear too eager, or to arrive before Edward, I stopped for a while and watched the gondolas slip beneath an arched stone bridge. The gentle roll of the water below was soothing. I envied its ability to wend and weave in whichever direction it wanted to go, rather than following expectation and convention.
As the wake of a passing vaporetto calmed, I caught my reflection and was reminded of something Violet had said as I’d prepared to leave for this trip. “There are two versions of every woman, Clara: the version we present to the world with a polite smile, and the real version, the one we conceal from others and show only to ourselves when we look in the mirror.” I wondered which version of myself I would take back home, to America.
As a distant church clock chimed noon, I continued on my way, my pulse racing, my heart pounding. I’d thought about Edward so often since leaving America. I’d replayed, over and over, our last exchange on the dockside in New York City, and imagined him in his gallery admiring a new piece, his head tilted slightly to one side as he ran his hands through his hair, sending it this way and that. He was so vivid, so real in my mind that when I looked up and saw him leaning against a lamppost without a care in the world, I had to stop and take a breath. The twists and turns of fate that had led us both to this beautiful city at the same time were about to be unraveled.
I paused. His back was to me, so he hadn’t yet seen me. I could still turn and walk away, or I could continue and let fate decide how things would play out.
I thought of Nellie’s pocket watch: Never turn back.
I stepped forward.
When I was close enough for him to hear, I coughed. “Buongiorno, signor.”
He turned around, a smile spreading across his face as his eyes settled on mine.
“Buongiorno, signorina.”
We stood in silence, each of us searching for the next thing to say until his smile broke into a quiet laugh.
“I’m afraid that’s the extent of my Italian,” he said. �
��Apart from bella. You look radiant, Clara. Truly.”
I smiled, suddenly shy to be in his company, away from the usual limitations of the art gallery and our roles as tutor and student, and without a wife and fiancé waiting for us to return.
“Don’t worry,” I replied, letting his compliment pass. “Venetians speak exceptionally good English. It makes one feel ashamed, to be honest. They also have wonderful coffee and the best gelato in Italy.”
“Well, we must have both, immediately. What better way for two friends to spend an afternoon.”
Friends.
Given our respective relationship situations, it was all we ever could be, but was it enough?
My initial reservations about meeting Edward soon dissipated, and my conscience quieted as we chatted animatedly over coffee. I told him about our journey so far, our time in Paris and on the Orient Express, my joy in painting the miniature portraits for the Wainwright girls, and our newly discovered grandfather.
“He and Violet had a passionate love affair while she was in Venice, but she returned to America, and he stayed in Venice, and they never saw each other again,” I explained.
Edward was more charmed by the story than shocked. “And yet, after all those years apart, Violet still cared for him enough to send you both to meet him. He must have meant a lot to her,” he said.
“He really did. It’s very romantic, isn’t it.”
As I stirred sugar into a second cup of coffee, Edward reached for my hand.
“I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you, Clara. I wasn’t sure how you would respond to my letter. I just . . . well, I couldn’t bear to see you leave without saying what I did, and since I was coming here . . .”
His skin was warm against mine and prompted a rush of heat up my neck. Instinctively, I pulled my hand away, then apologized, then apologized for apologizing.
Edward smiled gently. “I should apologize, not you. I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable. It’s just, you look so happy, Clara. You look . . .” He paused as he fished about for the right word. “You look so alive. And this city! Look at it!” He leaned forward. “Doesn’t it make you want to be reckless?”