Libby tried to absorb this. “Are you trying to tell me,” asked Libby slowly, “that Viola is not Gilbert’s daughter?”
“I wish!” laughed the Countess. “No, she is his to a T. To perfection. There is no doubt at all about that.”
“But the mother—”
“Have you really never noticed?” asked the Countess. “You’ve never seen a resemblance to some other woman—perhaps in the eyes? Or the bright gold of the hair, especially?”
The woman’s face and figure flashed into her mind as if it had been waiting silently all along, half-hidden by the lace of a shawl, tangled in shadow. And now, here it was. Nothing could be more obvious. “Madame Merle,” Libby said softly.
“Monsieur Merle had passed away years earlier,” said the Countess. “It would have been very inconvenient for Clara. Impossible to explain away. But Osmond’s wife had recently died, and she was such a quiet little thing, no one knew the details. It was easy to say Viola was his. What would have brought shame to Clara Merle brought a kind of cachet to my brother. The noble widower, raising his lovely young daughter alone . . .”
Libby rose shakily to her feet. “I see.” Her breath came very shallowly.
“There it is,” said the Countess. “I’ve wanted to speak. I was afraid you would hate me. And Gilbert warned me. I knew I would be banished. But it doesn’t really matter, does it?” She looked at her sister-in-law for a long time, and neither woman spoke.
“Thank you for telling me,” murmured Libby at last.
The Countess rose to her feet as well. “I’m sorry. You’ve had a terrible shock, I see. I thought perhaps you suspected—”
“One would think. But I have been that stupid.”
The Countess crossed to her sister-in-law. Her fingers were bony and covered with jeweled rings. “Anyone can be tricked. It is easy to be fooled, if others are determined to deceive you. Now will you free yourself at last?” asked the Countess. “Will you free yourself—and my niece?”
“Viola!” exclaimed Libby, like a drowning person catching sight of the lost shore. “I must go to her.”
In the end there was not much Libby needed to take. Not much belonged to her. She left her wedding rings in a dish by the door. She had the sense, at every hour of each day, that she was reeling on the face of the earth, and she had no clear plan, no idea of where to go once she left the convent with her stepdaughter. She could not imagine returning to Northern Ireland, absent of her uncle and cousin. She could not somehow picture Viola in Rochester. Nor could they spend their lives wandering up and down the wide world, running from Osmond. He would be sure to pursue them.
She saw no one but the Italian lawyers, who still gave no clear answers, or rather, whose answers changed every day; she spoke so seldom that her own voice felt unfamiliar when she stopped at the corner osteria to pay for a sandwich and a bottle of mineral water. She said a few hurried words to the women who worked at her charity in the center of the city—she wrote out a large check and then left, leaving the secretary clucking in sympathy and dismay. She would continue to send checks. But she had no intention of ever returning to Rome.
She rented a car, a convertible. It had been years since she’d driven herself anywhere. She had in the car a small advertisement she had torn from the local paper, and she stopped only for that one errand, in the beach town of Ostia. Once back on the road, the ruins of Ostia lay spread out before her in alternating white sunshine and avocado-colored shadows. She had no idea that such a place even existed, so close to Rome. Everyone knew the Coliseum, of course, but these Ostia ruins were nearly as vast, and just as ancient, with crumbling stairs leading to nowhere.
There was a cardboard box on the passenger side of the car, near her feet, and inside the box, a small blanket. In the trunk of the convertible sat two suitcases filled with Viola’s favorite items of clothing, in all the gayest colors; also her drawing things. She carried Viola’s music and her silver flute in its black case. Libby drove through mountains, and when she came to the border guard in France, she showed her passport.
She stopped for the night in a small hotel near the convent. The cardboard box sat on the rug near the bed. She simply lay in the dark drifting further away from sleep, sometimes with her eyes closed and sometimes with her eyes open. Each time she turned her head she encountered her own face reflected in the hotel window. She looked younger and stranger to herself, as if she had returned to childhood. Her eyes, in particular, appeared to be wide and burning against the landscape framed in darkness. She waited for the white morning to come, for the first sunlight to burn off the mists of dawn. She half expected the ghost of Lazarus to appear to her again, but he did not.
The pupils had not yet breakfasted when she arrived at the convent so she was asked to wait in a large, chilly parlor while they had finished their meal. One of the sisters took the cardboard box from Libby’s arms and, exclaiming over it, stored it for her in another room. Then the Mother Superior bustled in.
“Your visit will do her good,” said Mother Catherine. “She speaks of you often.” The nun led Libby toward the parlor, down a sequence of long white halls. All of them were bare and clean; but so, thought Libby, are the great prisons.
Mother Catherine gestured toward the parlor door. Something in her expression held Libby where she stood. “It is not good for the girl to be locked away from the world,” the nun said. “We do everything we can to make her comfortable, but still . . . she waits, every day, for a letter from her father.” Libby waited for more. The woman’s arms were crossed, her hands hidden inside her sleeves. She nodded as if in agreement to something Libby had not said. Then she reached forward and turned the handle of the doorknob on the parlor. “You are not her only visitor,” Mother Catherine said, and practically pushed Libby through the door.
Inside, the parlor was furnished with brand-new furniture that appeared to be old; with wax flowers under glass domes and a series of religious engravings hung on the walls. The room was dominated by a large wooden crucifix. But that was not what claimed Libby’s attention. At the far end of the room sat a familiar figure, swinging one high-heeled shoe. Libby had known they might meet, yet she was not prepared for the shock of the encounter. It took her breath away. Madame Merle rose smoothly to her feet, but Libby made a gesture that caused her to sink back down. Something else in Libby’s expression made the other woman go pale to the roots of her hair. Her crooked mouth quivered.
“I was on my way back to Paris,” Madame Merle said. Her voice sounded high and artificial. “Viola is looking well. I like the way they dress the girls here. It’s very elegant and simple. Of course,” she added, “I am only here for a short visit, to provide a little distraction.”
“I should think you’d wish to provide more than that,” said Libby.
The two women looked at each other. Everything was said in that silence.
Madame Merle bowed her head. “I was sorry about Lazarus,” she went on. “I should have sent you a card, or a note.”
Libby said nothing.
“He did you a great service—I wonder if you ever knew how great.”
“He was my friend,” said Libby.
“Yes, but one service was above even that. I wonder that you never guessed. Your cousin made you a wealthy woman.”
“My uncle did that,” protested Libby, looking away. She found herself gazing at the large wooden crucifix on the wall.
“It was your uncle’s money but your cousin’s idea. Ah, the sum was large! Very large indeed. It gave you that extra luster that made you a brilliant match. At bottom, Lazarus was your benefactor. Think of that! You see, you owe it all to him.”
Libby said, “I believe it is you I had to thank.”
Madame Merle flushed. She said, “I know you are unhappy. But I am more miserable still.”
“I believe you,” said Libby. After a moment she added, “I would like never to see you again.”
“I will go away,” said Clara Merle. “It
’s time. Perhaps to South Africa.”
“That should be almost far enough.” Libby crossed the room, opened the door, and stepped out into the fresh air.
Libby found the young nun and took what she needed from the cardboard box she had brought with her all the way from Italy. It made all the nuns smile, the sight of her carrying the box’s occupant. She was not above bribery. It didn’t matter. She could wait. She would be cunning, and attentive. She would do whatever was required. Holding a flute case in one arm, and cradling the beautiful, tiny tortoiseshell kitten in the other, Libby stood outside Viola’s door and waited to be admitted. She had within her now at last the key to patience.
Author’s Note
This novel is an homage to one of my favorite books: Henry James’s classic Portrait of a Lady, brought from the nineteenth century forward, with various changes, into the mid-twentieth. Many of my book’s bright spots owe a debt to the master; its flaws are all my own.
About the Author
Photo © 2015 Jonathan Cohen
The author of more than thirty books for adults and young readers, Liz Rosenberg has published three bestselling novels, including The Laws of Gravity and The Moonlight Palace. She has also written five books of poems, among them 2008’s Demon Love, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and After Great Grief, forthcoming from the Provincetown Arts Press. Her poems have been heard on NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion. Rosenberg’s books for young readers have won numerous awards and honors and have been featured on the PBS television show Reading Rainbow. A former Fulbright Fellowship recipient, Rosenberg teaches English at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where she earned the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. She lives in Binghamton with her daughter, Lily, and a shih tzu named Sophie. Although she has homes in New York and North Chatham, Massachusetts, her heart is still in Ireland.
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