The Girl in the Glass

by Susan Meissner

  I am a tour guide, just like my father was. Six days a week, I stroll along the downtown sidewalks and piazzas with my pink polka-dot parasol, leading groups of tourists on an excursion of an art lover’s paradise. I have stood before Michelangelo’s David six thousand times, and he still woos me. I know every molecule of his fair body. And I daresay he knows mine. He is in my blood.

  I am a Medici. History books say the last of my family, childless Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, died in 1743. But she was not really the last Medici. She was simply the last of the ruling dynasty. Dear Diana, the Princess of Wales—may she rest in peace—had the blood of Medici women in her veins, as many people no doubt do, only most do not know it. What you do not know, you cannot embrace.

  Anna was not the last, and perhaps I am not the last either. But I am the last in my family who knows what I know. I’ve no brothers or sisters, and my beloved papa, who taught me how to listen for the echoes of the Florence of old, is disappearing into the folds of his mind a little more each day. Soon it will only be me who hears the echoes of my ancestors.

  My family ruled Florence for three hundred years, and as patrons of the arts, we gave the world da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Botticelli, to name only a few. The Medicis were bankers who ruled like royalty, but they were not kings and queens. And while they loved the arts, most were not artists. Beauty spoke to them, and they understood its language even though they did not speak it themselves.

  We Medici have always been at home in Florence. We may have traveled the length of Italy from its northern alpine mountains to the pebbled coast of Naples, but we always came home to Florence. She lured us back each time. I tell the people on my tours that once you have been to Florence, one of two things will happen to you. You will leave with her fragrance in your very skin and bones where it will haunt or delight you forever, or you will not leave.

  Florence, my father told me long ago, is like a dance. It is more than streets and buildings and a steady river; it’s a presence you feel, a rhythm you fall in step with. My parents loved to dance. And they did not need records or a band or the radio. My father hummed the music they swayed to—the music of Florence. When I was especially little, I would wake from nightmarish images that would flee the moment I opened my eyes. And in my wailing, my father would come to me and soothe me with these tunes that had no words. They were the songs of the city, he said. He told me to listen very carefully, and I would hear the music in the air and in the paint and in the marble, and the music would chase the bad dreams away. If I listened very carefully, he said, I could hear the beauty all around me and I would know that in Florence I would always be safe.

  But when I began to hear it, I was six, and it wasn’t music I heard, but a voice, soft and sweet, whispering to me within the paintings and sculptures. Papa was surprised, I think, when I told him that I heard words and not music. But he told me it was because I was Medici, like him, that I could hear it, and he asked me if hearing it made me feel happy and safe inside. When I said yes, the surprised look on his face went away. I asked him if he could hear the whispers. And he said the whispers were meant only for me. I wanted my mother to hear what I could hear. But she was not Medici. When I told her I wished she could hear the statues and paintings, she just smiled at me with tears pooling, as if she knew her eyes and ears were not meant for it.

  My father told me that to speak of such things to anyone but my mother and him would be to set a boundary stone between me and everyone else and I would be alone. He told me when angels come to earth with messages for us from God, they do not speak of how beautiful heaven is because if they did, it would make us languish for it, unsatisfied, all our earthly days.

  And so I have kept the dearest charms of my city close to my heart, all these years, just as he told me to. But we Medici are mortal. Soon there will only be me. And then when I am gone, there will be no one who knows what I know, so I will share all of it with you in these pages. I do not care if it means I set a boundary stone between you and me. I do not fear the specter of solitude. I am surrounded by beauty at every turn. I do not know what it is to be lost. And I do not know what it is like to be alone.

  I have a story to tell you. It is a story of Florence and a Medici princess that time has all but forgotten.

  Hers is the voice I hear in the statues and paintings all around me. Her name was Francesca Eleonora Orsini.

  But everyone called her Nora.

  The slow, steady dripping of the coffee onto the kitchen floor coaxed me out of Sofia’s memoir, pulling me back to my ordinary Saturday. I set the pages down on the counter, grabbed another paper towel, and cleaned up the mess. I was anxious to read the rest of the pages I had printed and was strangely disappointed that Lorenzo had only sent me the first two chapters.

  As I tossed the paper towels in the trash, the doorbell rang, and with some irritation I went to answer it.

  My mother stood at the threshold with a potted bromeliad in her hands. She was wearing a lime-green-and-white striped shirt and white capris, hoop earrings, and new white Keds. Her hair wasn’t pulled back into its usual Saturday pileup but hung curled and sprayed into place. Red Orchid by Oscar de la Renta wafted about her.

  She held the plant aloft. “I got this at the farmers’ market. It was the last one. Thought you would like it.”

  I opened the screen door for her. “He’s already gone, Mom.”

  She frowned and stepped inside. “That’s not why I’m here.”

  The door closed behind us, and she turned to face me. “So you’re telling me he left already? What kind of visit is that?”

  “I thought you said that’s not why you’re here.”

  She stepped into the kitchen and set the plant down on the tiled counter, next to the toaster. Poppy seeds were scattered about, and she stared at them. Then she turned to me. “It’s not. I thought we needed to talk. About last night. Devon thinks maybe I owe you an apology.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes.” She walked over to my sink and washed her hands, rubbing at a smudge of potting soil on her knuckle with vigor. “I actually think you owe me one, too, but he doesn’t think so. But then again, he didn’t hear what you said in the ladies’ room.”

  She applied more soap and rubbed harder. “He said it wasn’t fair that I didn’t tell you I was dating someone and then to have sprung it on you with him sitting right there was a bit inconsiderate. I guess I see his point.” She turned off the water and scrutinized my dishtowel hanging off the drainer. “May I have a clean towel?”

  I opened a drawer, pulled out a folded towel, and handed it to her.

  “He said it was probably a shock for you to see me with a date,” she went on. “Especially one younger than me, when I really haven’t dated anyone in years. I don’t even know how long it’s been—”

  “It was. A shock, I mean.” You’ve no idea how much of a shock it was. “And I am sorry if I offended Devon—”

  “Oh heavens. You didn’t offend him. He’s on your side.” She folded the towel neatly and hung it over the oven door handle.

  “My side?”

  “You know what I mean. He’s not offended. He feels bad for you that you weren’t given a heads-up. He’s very thoughtful toward other people, Meg. It’s the first thing I noticed about him.”

  The rest of Sofia’s pages were resting near my arm, calling to me, but I pulled out a kitchen chair. “You want to sit?”

  She ignored my question. “Are you still mad at me?”

  “I’m not mad. And I’m sorry for what I said about your age. And his.”

  She paused a moment. “And what about what you said about me and your father? How do you feel about that?”

  It seemed like the kitchen was still warm from my father’s remorse and kindheartedness, and now here was my mother standing in the dregs of it, asking me how I felt about what had happened between them. “I don’t know how I feel about what I said.”

  “Well, I know how I feel about it.
I’m stunned that you still think, after all these years, that it’s my fault your father and I divorced. You still blame me for it. Even now, as an adult, when you know darn well what he did to me. To us.”

  I folded myself into the chair I had pulled out for her. It’s amazing, really, how powerful childhood memories are, especially those that involve your parents. You don’t realize how small your world is when you are a child. Your parents are your east and west, your sun and moon. In an instant I can summon the memory of how I felt when my parents’ marriage ended and my entire universe shifted. I looked up at her.

  “I don’t blame you for what happened to your marriage, but it wasn’t just your marriage that ended, Mom. Your divorce ended my family. You took me away from Dad, brought me here to live, and I hardly ever saw him anymore. And then Nonna died, and it was like everything that I knew had been torn away from underneath me.”

  A single tear formed in the corner of each of my mother’s eyes. One of them oozed out and slid down her cheek. “It’s not my fault your father had an affair. And it’s not my fault Nonna died and you were here when it happened instead of there. He had an affair, Meg. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “It wasn’t my fault either, but the results were the same as if it was. My family disappeared.”

  She flicked the tears away. “Why are we even talking about this? It was almost twenty years ago. Is it because I am finally dating someone? You can’t handle me dating someone?”

  I thought back to the few times my mother dated after the divorce. The first time was four or five years after the divorce. The second was another four or five years after that. Neither relationship lasted longer than five or six months. I tried to remember how I felt when I met those men. One had been a sixth-grade teacher with enormous teeth, and the other had been the choir director at church, an older man whose wife had died of cancer a few years earlier. I couldn’t remember feeling about those men what I was feeling now.

  But this much I knew. The divorce was ancient history to her, but not to me. “Look, I know you are way over the divorce. Of course you should be dating. I’m very sorry I somehow made you feel like I didn’t want you to be happy. I understand that Dad hasn’t been your husband in a lot of years and you’re beyond ready to move on. And I know you don’t love him anymore. But he’s still my dad. And I do love him.”

  She stared at me for a moment. Then she pulled out the other chair and slowly sank down into it. It was the same chair Dad had sat in.

  “Where is all this coming from? What has he told you? Why was he here?” Her voice was gentle, sad almost.

  I shrugged. “He wanted to apologize for all the years he wasn’t around. I think he feels bad about the time we didn’t have together while I was growing up. Not just because of the divorce but because he didn’t make the effort to see me as much as his stepsons’ father saw his kids. I think he’s realized he and I missed out on a lot. He wanted to apologize.”

  My mother seemed to need a second to process this. “Apologize. He came down here to apologize?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he said he was sorry, and then he left?”

  I pondered for a moment how much I wanted to tell her. I doubted she would even remember Nonna’s painting of the little girl and the statue. She would definitely remember the promised trip to Florence, though. And then it just spilled out. “He told me it’s looking good for us to go to Florence this year.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Florence. He’s finally taking you to Florence.”

  “I said he told me it’s looking good for us to go this year. That means we might go.”

  Up the eyebrows rose, as if she’d thought of something startling and unimaginable. “Is he sick? Is he dying of cancer or something?”

  That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. But it suddenly seemed remotely possible. I could see someone with a terminal disease wanting to put things in order before leaving the planet; except I really wanted my dad’s contrition to be based on something more noble than just his own mortality. That would make it all about him. Only about him. I refused to consider it.

  “He’s not sick, Mom! He just wants to set a few things right. Can’t a man do that?”

  “Sure he can,” she said slowly. We were quiet for a moment.

  She finally broke the silence. “When are you going?”

  “He said he’s working on it. I told him the earlier in the summer, the smaller the crowds will be.” Again, silence.

  “Well,” she finally said. “I hope he comes through for you, Meg. I really do.”

  I said nothing.

  She cleared her throat as if to clear away the topic. “Devon would like to have coffee with you sometime—just so you can get to know him. Just you and him. He feels you deserve that. And you can say whatever you want because I won’t be there.”

  “That’s not necessary.” I energetically shook my head for emphasis.

  “But he would like to.”

  “But it’s not necessary.”

  Hurt registered in her eyes. “You won’t even give him a chance? Aren’t you doing what you are accusing me of doing all those years ago? Making me pay the consequences of your decision? I like him, Meg. I really do. He won’t continue to date me if he thinks it will harm my relationship with you.”

  “He doesn’t need my approval!”

  “You can’t say what other people need or don’t need.”

  “All right, all right. I will meet him for coffee.”

  Her face melted into a smile of relief. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I can give him your e-mail address?”

  I nodded.

  She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Thank you,” she murmured. “This means a lot to me.”

  “All right.”

  “I know you think he’s too young for me, but when you get to be my age, things like that just aren’t as important.”

  “But he’s not your age. Only you are. And I have to say this isn’t like you, Mom.”

  She sat back in her chair. “And I have to say this isn’t like you. I would think you’d be glad for me. You are always telling me I never take any chances, that I’ve never done anything spontaneous or reckless.”

  “I wasn’t daring you to.”

  “It’s just thirteen years’ difference, Meg. Lighten up.”

  It seemed at that moment that the scaffolding of my little universe was all akimbo. My father and mother were shifting roles before my very eyes. He was morphing into someone who almost came off attentive and responsible, and she was shaking off years of caution the way a wet dog sheds water after a bath.

  My mother pointed to the little white bag sitting by my toaster. “Are there poppy-seed bagels in there?”

  I rose to toast her one. Sofia’s pages were at my elbow as I spread cream cheese on my mother’s bagel. I could see one phrase that peeked from the edge of the folder: My parents loved to dance.

  My mother married my father at the villa at Poggio a Caiano where the summer heat was not so severe. There was fine food and madrigals and poetry readings, but it was not the celebration that was her sister Lucrezia’s wedding a few months earlier. It was not necessary to impress the Orsini family.

  I have seen the dishes on which my parents’ wedding feast was served. The borders are etched with Orsini roses and mythical creatures. In the center is the Orsini coat of arms, a shield with a rose above diagonal lines. Whenever I see roses, I think of these dishes. I don’t know where they are now.

  There is also a lovely portrait of my mother in her wedding dress that I’ve not seen in many years. It was a beautiful dress. A lacy collar, pearls at her neck, a beautiful netting of jewels on her head, darkest blue velvet bodice and skirt trimmed with gold trim and ermine, and shining white damask sleeves. There is a little dog anxious to be in the painting, and her hand is gently resting on its tawny fur. She holds a flower in the other hand.

  I believe my uncle Francesco
stowed this painting away somewhere, or perhaps he sold it. Or destroyed it. There were many nights after it was taken down that I would huddle in front of the place where it hung and I would whisper things to her in the blank space. I wish I knew where that painting was. I would ask Francesco, but he is dead, and my uncle Ferdinando doesn’t know where it is. He has said he will look for it, but I worry that he will not. It’s not important to him. Ferdinando doesn’t need reminders of the day my mother wore that dress. He was there. Ferdinando doesn’t have devastating moments when he forgets—even just for seconds—what she looked like.

  8

  The first thing I did after my mother left was toss my cell phone onto my bed where I wouldn’t hear it, and then I went out to my munchkin-sized patio with Sofia’s pages. I wanted to lose myself in Florence more than ever. Alex followed me. I sat down on a wicker chair, its faded daisy chair pad still clammy from the morning marine layer. I didn’t care. Alex jumped into my lap, and I began to read.

  When I begin my tours, I tell my guests to close their eyes and whisper the lovely word “renaissance.” Isn’t it the most elegant word in all the world? Renaissance. A time of renewal. Even those who do not know what renaissance means know something beautiful began when this word replaced the Dark Ages. And when God gave the world the Renaissance artists, He gave us artistic genius the likes of which have not been seen since.

  Renaissance is a French word with a lovely meaning. It means to be reborn. It is a word with hope infused in every letter. It assures us that what has fallen into pieces can be made whole, what has sagged into ugliness can be made beautiful again, what has died can have life breathed into it once more. My father told me I should never forget this and I never have.

  It is widely known that there were many in the Medici family who rocked heaven with immoral, even diabolical, schemes. The Medici were often unjust and unfaithful: they killed, they harmed, they betrayed. And yet their passion for beauty and elegance funded the greatest creations outside the hand of God.