by Anne Fortier
“Lovely,” said Janice, slurping ribollita soup, elbows on the table, her brief sadness long since evaporated, “no wonder old Birdie didn’t feel like coming back here.”
“I still don’t believe it,” I muttered, poking at my food. Watching Janice eat was enough to relieve me of my appetite, to say nothing of the surprises she had brought with her. “If he really killed Mom and Dad, why didn’t he kill us, too?”
“You know,” said Janice, “sometimes I thought he was going to. Seriously. He had that serial-killer look in his eyes.”
“Maybe,” I suggested, “he felt guilty about what he had done—”
“Or maybe,” Janice cut me off, “he knew that he needed us—or at least you—in order to get Mom’s box from Mister Macaroni.”
“I suppose,” I said, trying to apply logic where logic was not enough, “he could have been the one hiring Bruno Carrera to follow me?”
“Well, obviously!”—Janice rolled her eyes—“and you can be damn sure he is puppeteering your little toyboy as well.”
I shot her a glare that she didn’t even seem to notice. “I hope you’re not referring to Alessandro?”
“Mmm, Alessandro …” She savored his name as if it was a chocolate caramel. “I gotta give it to you, Jules, he was worth waiting for. Too bad he’s already in bed with Birdie.”
“You are disgusting,” I said, not allowing her to upset me, “and you’re wrong.”
“Really?” Janice didn’t like being wrong. “Then explain to me why he broke into your hotel room?”
“What?”
“Oh, yes—” She took her sweet time dipping the last slice of bread in olive oil. “That night when I saved you from Gumshoe Bruno, and you ended up three sheets to the wind with the artmeister … Alessandro was having one helluva party in your room. You don’t believe me?” She reached into her pocket, only too happy to oblige my suspicion. “Then check this out.”
Pulling out her cell phone, she showed me a series of bleary photos of someone climbing up to my balcony. It was hard to tell whether it was really Alessandro, but Janice insisted that it was, and I had known her long enough to identify those rare twitches around her mouth as honesty.
“Sorry,” she said, looking almost as if she meant it, “I know this is blowing your little fantasy, but I thought you’d like to know your Pooh is not just in it for the honey.”
I flung the phone back at her without knowing what to say. There had been too much to absorb in the last few hours, and I had definitely reached my saturation point. First Romeo … dead and buried. Then Umberto … reborn as Luciano Salimbeni. And now Alessandro …
“Don’t look at me like that!” hissed Janice, usurping the moral high ground with habitual dexterity. “I’m doing you a favor! Imagine if you’d gone ahead and fallen for this guy, only to discover that he was after the family jewels all along.”
“Why don’t you do me another favor,” I said, leaning back in my chair to get as far away from her point as possible, “and explain how you found me in the first place? And what’s up with that stupid Romeo act?”
“Not a word of thanks! Story of my life!” Janice reached into her pocket once more. “If it hadn’t been for me chasing Bruno away, you could have been dead now. But see if you care. Nag, nag, nag!” She tossed a letter across the table, narrowly missing the dipping bowl. “Here. See for yourself. This is the real letter from the real Aunt Rose, handed to me by the real Mr. Gallagher. Make sure you inhale. It’s all she left for us.”
As she lit up her once-a-week cigarette, hands shaking, I brushed a few crumbs from the letter and took it out of the envelope. It consisted of eight sheets of paper, all of them covered in Aunt Rose’s own handwriting, and if the date was correct, she had left it with Mr. Gallagher several years ago.
This is what it read:
My dearest girls,
You have often asked me about your mother, and I have never told you the truth. It was for your own good. I was afraid that if you knew what she was like, you would want to be just like her. But I do not wish to take it with me to the grave, so here they are, all the things I was afraid to tell you.
You know that Diane came to live with me when her parents and little brother died. But I never told you how they died. It was very sad, and a great shock for her, and I think she never got over it. It was a car accident in terrible holiday traffic, and Diane told me that they were having an argument, and that it was her fault for fighting with her brother. It was Christmas Eve. I think she never forgave herself. She would never open her presents. She was a very religious girl, much more than her old aunt, especially at Christmas. I wish I could have helped her, but in those days people did not run to doctors all the time.
Her great interest was genealogy. She believed that our family was descended from Italian nobility through the female line, and she told me that, before she died, my mother had told her a great secret. I thought it was very strange that my mother would tell her granddaughter something she never told me or Maria, her own daughters, and I never believed a word of it, but Diane was so stubborn and kept saying that we were descended from Shakespeare’s Juliet, and that there was a curse on our bloodline. She also said that was why poor Jim and I never had children, and why her parents and brother had to die. I never encouraged her when she talked like that, I just let her talk. After she died I kept thinking that I should have done something to help her, but that is too late now.
Poor Jim and I tried to make Diane finish her degree, but she was too restless. Before we knew it, she was off to Europe with her backpack, and the next thing I know she writes that she is getting married to some Italian professor. I did not go to the wedding. Poor Jim was very ill at the time, and after he died I did not feel like traveling. Now I regret that. Diane was all alone, having twins, and then after that, there was a terrible house fire that killed her husband, so I never even met him, poor soul.
I wrote many letters to her telling her to come home, but Diane did not want to, stubborn creature that she was, bless her heart. She had bought a house of her own, and she kept saying that she wanted to continue her husband’s research. She told me over the phone that he had spent all his life looking for a family treasure that could stop the curse, but I did not believe a word of it. I told her that it was very foolish to marry back into your own family, even if it was a very distant connection, but she said that she had to, because she had the Tolomei genes from her mother and grandmother, but he had the Tolomei name, and the two must go together. It was all very strange, if you ask me. You two were baptized in Siena with the names Giulietta and Giannozza Tolomei. Your mother said the names were a family tradition.
I tried very hard to make her come home, just for a visit I said, and we had even bought tickets. But she was so busy with her research, and she kept saying that she was very close to finding the treasure, and that she had to see a man about an old ring. One morning I received a call from a police officer in Siena, who told me that there had been a dreadful accident, and that your poor mother was dead. He told me that you two were with your godparents, but that you were likely in danger, and that I must come and get you right away. When I arrived to pick you up, the police asked me if Diane had ever mentioned a man called Luciano Salimbeni, and this made me very afraid. They wanted me to stay for a hearing, but I was so afraid that I took you to the airport right away and flew home, without even waiting for the adoption papers to go through. I changed your names, too. I called Giulietta Julie, and Giannozza Janice. And instead of Tolomei, I gave you my name, Jacobs. I did not want some crazy Italian to come looking for you, or say that they wanted to adopt you. I even hired Umberto to protect you and keep an eye out for that Luciano Salimbeni. Fortunately, we never heard anything about him again.
I do not know much about what Diane was doing those years alone in Siena. But I think she found something very valuable, and that she left it behind in Siena, for you to find. I hope that if you ever find it, you will share it equal
ly. She also owned a house, and I believe her husband was wealthy. If there is anything of value left for you in Siena, perhaps you will take care of dear Umberto, too?
It is very painful for me to say this, but I am not as rich as you think. I have been living on poor Jim’s pension, but when I die, there will be nothing left for you two, just debt. Maybe I should have told you, but I was never good with these things.
I wish I knew more about Diane’s treasure. She talked about it sometimes, but I did not listen. I thought it was just one of her crazy stories. But there is a man in the bank in Palazzo Tolomei who may be able to help you. I cannot for the life of me remember his name. He was your mother’s financial advisor, and I think he was fairly young, so maybe he is still alive.
If you decide to go, just remember that there are people in Siena who believe in the same stories your mother believed in. I wish I had paid attention when she told me all that. Do not tell anyone your real names, except the man in the bank. Maybe he can help you find the house. I would like you to go together. Diane would have wanted that. We should have gone years ago, but I was afraid something would happen to you.
Now you know that I left nothing for you to live on. But I hope that with this letter, at least you have a chance of finding what your mother left behind. I met with Mr. Gallagher this morning. I really should not have lived this long, there will be nothing left, not even the memories, because I never wanted you to know them. I was always afraid that you would run off like Diane and get yourselves into trouble. Now I know that you will find trouble wherever you are. I know what it means, the look in your eyes. Your mother had it, too. And I want you to know that I pray for you every day.
Umberto knows where the funeral instructions are kept.
God bless your innocent hearts!
Much love, Aunt Rose
[ V.III ]
Is there no pity sitting in the clouds
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
…
Siena, A.D. 1340
TRAPPED IN HER ROOM at the very top of the Tolomei tower, Giulietta knew nothing of what was going on in the city below. She had been kept there ever since the day of Tebaldo’s funeral, and no one had been allowed to visit her. The window shutters had been nailed in place by one of the Tolomei guards, and food was delivered through a slit in the door, but that hardly mattered, since—for the longest time—she took none of it.
For the first few hours of her imprisonment, she had implored whoever could hear her through the door to let her out. “Kindest aunt!” she had begged, her teary cheek against the door, “please do not treat me this way! Remember whose daughter I am! … Dear cousins? Can you hear me?” But when no one had dared to respond, she had begun yelling at the guards instead, cursing them for obeying the orders of a devil in the guise of man.
When no one responded with a single word, she eventually lost her spirit. Weak with grief, she lay on her bed with a sheet over her head, unable to think of anything but Romeo’s molested body and her own inability to prevent his grisly death. Only now did fearful servants come to the door to offer food and drink, but Giulietta refused it all, even water, in the hope of expediting her own demise and following her lover to Paradise before he got too far ahead.
Her only duty left in life, she felt, was to pen a secret letter to her sister Giannozza. It was meant as a goodbye note, but in the end it became just one letter out of many, written by the light of a candle stump and hidden under a loose floorboard with all the others. To think, she wrote, that she had once been so intrigued by this world and everyone in it; now she understood that Friar Lorenzo had been right all along. “The mortal world is a world of dust,” he used to say. “Everywhere you step it crumbles away right beneath your foot, and if you do not walk carefully, you will fall over the edge and into limbo.” This limbo was where she must surely be right now, thought Giulietta—the abyss from which no prayers could be heard.
GIANNOZZA, SHE KNEW, was no stranger to this sort of misery. For all his novel ideas that his daughters should be able to read and write, their father had been an old-fashioned man when it came to marriage. Daughters, to him, were emissaries that could be sent out to build alliances with important people in foreign places, and so when his wife’s cousin—a nobleman with a large estate north of Rome—had expressed an interest in closer ties with the Tolomeis, he had informed Giulietta that she would have to go. She was, after all, four minutes older than her sister, Giannozza, and it is the duty of the eldest to go first.
Hearing this news, the sisters had spent many days in tears at the prospect of being torn apart and settled at such a distance from each other. But their father was unbending, and their mother even more so—after all, the groom was her cousin and no stranger—and in the end the girls had approached their parents with a humble proposal.
“Father,” Giannozza had said, as she was the only one bold enough to speak her mind, “Giulietta is honored that you have such plans for her, but she begs you to consider whether it might not be better to send me instead. The truth is, her heart was always bent on the convent, and she fears she would not make a very happy bride to anyone other than Christ. I, on the other hand, have no objection to an earthly marriage; in fact, I believe I should rather like to run a house on my own. And so we were wondering”—now, for the first time, Giannozza had eyed their mother as well, hoping for her aquiescence—“whether you would consider dispatching us both together—me as a bride, and Giulietta as a novice at a nearby convent. That way, we can see each other whenever we wish, and you will not have to worry about our well-being.”
Seeing that Giulietta was so against the idea of marriage, their father finally agreed to let Giannozza take her place. But when it came to the other half of the plan, he remained dismissive. “If Giulietta will not marry now,” he had said, seated behind his large desk, arms crossed, as his women stood before him in supplication, “she will marry later, when she grows out of this … nonsense.” He had shaken his head, angry at this interference in his affairs. “I should never have taught you girls to read! I suspect you have been reading the Bible behind my back—that is enough to fill a girl’s head with folly!”
“But Father—”
Only now had their mother stepped forward, eyes ablaze. “Shame on you,” she had hissed at her daughters, “for putting your father in this situation! We are not poor, and yet you ask him to behave as if we were! You both have dowries large enough to tempt a prince! But we have been selective. Many have come calling for you, Giulietta, but your father has turned them all away, because he knew we could do better. And now you want him to rejoice in seeing you as a nun? … As if we did not have the means and connections for you to marry? Shame on you for putting your own selfish desires before the dignity of your family!”
And so Giannozza had been married to a man she had never seen before, and had spent her wedding night with a groom thrice her age, who had the eyes of her mother but the hands of a stranger. When she said goodbye to her family the next morning—to leave her home forever with her new husband—she had clung to them all one by one, without a word, her lips pressed tightly together to prevent herself from cursing her parents.
The words came later, in endless letters from her new home, addressed not to Giulietta directly, but to their friend, Friar Lorenzo, that he might deliver her missives in stealth, when he had Giulietta in confession in the chapel. These were letters that could never be forgotten, letters that must haunt the reader forever, and Giulietta would often allude to them in her own writing, such as when she agreed with her sister that “there are, indeed, as you say, men in this world who thrive on evil, men who live only to see others suffer.” But she would always encourage Giannozza to look at the positive side of things—her husband was old and sickly, and would surely die while she was still young, and even though she was not allowed out of doors, at least the view from her castle was magnificent—and would even go as far as to point out that “contrary to what you say
, my dearest, there is some pleasure to be found in the company of men. They are not all rotten through and through.”
In her farewell letter to Giannozza, however, composed in her prison cell the day after Tebaldo’s funeral, Giulietta could no longer speak so bravely in favor of the future. “You were right,” she wrote simply, “and I was wrong. When life hurts more than death, it is not worth living.”
AND SO SHE HAD decided to die, and to refuse all nourishment until her body gave in, setting her soul free to reunite with Romeo. But on the third day of her hunger strike—her lips parched and her head throbbing—a new thought began to haunt her, namely, the question of where exactly in Paradise she would have to go in order to find him. It was obviously a vast place—it had to be—and there was no saying whether the two of them would be sent to the same region. In fact, she rather feared they would not.
While she might not be perfectly blameless in the eyes of God, she was still an innocent maid; Romeo, on the other hand, had undoubtedly left behind a long trail of mischief. Furthermore, there had been no funerary rites and no prayers said over his body, and so it was even doubtful whether he would go to Paradise at all. Perhaps he was doomed to wander around as a ghost, wounded and bloody, until—if ever—some kind Samaritan took pity on him and finally put his body to rest.
Giulietta sat up in bed with a gasp. If she died now, who was to make sure Romeo was properly buried? Leave it to the Tolomeis to discover the body next time there was a family funeral—in all likelihood her own—and they would most certainly give it anything but peace. No, she thought, reaching out for the water at last, her weak fingers barely able to grasp the cup, she would have to stay alive until she had spoken with Friar Lorenzo and explained the situation to him.
Where on earth was the monk? In her misery, Giulietta had not wanted to speak to anyone, not even her old friend, and it had been a relief that he had never come to see her. But now—her heart set on a plan she could not possibly execute on her own—she was furious with him for not being at her side. Only later, after wolfing down every scrap of food she could find in the room, did it occur to her that her uncle Tolomei might have prohibited the monk’s visits altogether, in an attempt at preventing him from spreading reports of her misery.
