It was one of the few Italian words I knew. So I said it.
“Si.”
This filled him with such pleasure. He smiled at me. Patted my hand again. And said more. I’ve no idea what it was. None of the words were words I knew. But I had clearly made him happy by saying yes.
A few minutes later, Sofia returned with a cup of coffee on a saucer. He thanked her and sipped from it.
“I’ll try again,” she said to me. She knelt down and said something to him. He shook his head. She repeated what she had said. And this time he just said no.
Sofia hesitated a moment before standing. “I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere with him today. I’m sorry, Marguerite. Some days he is in a fog. Today is a foggy day.”
She pulled up a third chair and sat with him for a while longer. I assume Sofia was trying to make small talk with him, but he just kept looking at me and saying things to me that Sofia didn’t want to translate. When his coffee was done, he handed the cup to Sofia and said something to her this time.
She took the cup. “He says he needs to get back to work.”
But Angelo made no move. He just sat there looking straight ahead, as if the place where he worked were inside his brain.
Sofia leaned down and kissed him, murmuring a good-bye. When she stepped away from him, he looked at me, said something, and pointed to his cheek. He wanted a kiss from me too.
“You don’t have to,” Sofia said.
But Angelo was looking at me with a sheen of serenity on his face, fully expecting a kiss from the woman he thought was his wife. I leaned in and touched his papery-skinned face with my lips.
“Arrivederci, mie belle ragazze,” he said. Good-bye, my beautiful girls.
We didn’t say much to each other as we waited for the bus. Sofia seemed sad and somewhat surprised by her father’s condition. She apologized for him, and I told her not to worry about it.
When we were on the bus back to her flat, Sofia asked what Beatriz and Geoffrey would say about us not having had any luck with her father.
“We’ll have to do some research on our own. There are websites to help with ancestry searches. And city records. And there’s your uncle.”
She shook her head. “He won’t help me. He doesn’t like me.”
“What do you mean?” I couldn’t imagine anyone not liking Sofia.
“I don’t know. He just never has.” She rested her head against the glass window of the bus.
“Do he and your father not get along?”
She shrugged. “Emilio doesn’t get along with anybody. He won’t help me.”
“Maybe he would help me,” I suggested.
Sofia shook her head. She said nothing else, and I let the matter go.
For the moment.
We got back to the flat at four thirty. Sofia said she had things she needed to do at the travel office and asked if I would be okay on my own for a while. I wondered if perhaps she needed to be alone. I told her I’d be fine. I had e-mails to take care of.
And I reminded her I was having dinner with Renata and Lorenzo that evening. She visibly relaxed when I said this.
The afternoon had been hard for her.
When you are young, you do not know the way of men with women. But when you are nine years, maybe ten, you begin to wonder when you see lovers embrace, or you hear a coarse joke and you don’t know why you blush. Sometimes you hear someone whisper something about your parents, and you are struggling to remember what they were like as husband and wife, and you hear a name that your mind stumbles over because you don’t know how that name fits in the equation.
Nurse explained as delicately as she could what transpired between my mother and Troilo Orsini when I began to voice my questions.
Nurse had to explain everything to me with regard to men and women; no one else did. When I asked her why my mother took Troilo into her bedchamber when she wasn’t supposed to, Nurse said my mother didn’t know what it was like to be denied what she wanted. And when I asked Nurse if my father took another woman into his bedchamber, she told me plainly, because she said I needed to know, that my father had many women in his bedchamber.
My cousin Maria and I had been taught the Ten Commandments from our earliest days with our tutors. When Nurse told me this, I thought this was why people whispered around me and gave me sideways glances and wrinkled their brows in consternation when I was near. “They didn’t keep their promises,” I remember saying.
And Nurse shook her head. “No,” she said. “They didn’t.”
22
Lorenzo came for me a few minutes before eight. I had been able to take care of my e-mails while Sofia was at the travel office, including an update for Geoffrey and Beatriz and one for my mother. There was still no word from my father, and Alex was apparently missing me. I doubt that Findlay’s cat was truly pining for my companionship. That was just my mom’s way of communicating that all was well at home but that she was concerned for me. She didn’t mention Devon, but why would she? I kept forgetting it was only Tuesday. I had only been gone for four days.
The last e-mail I answered before Lorenzo rang for me was from Gabe. He just wanted me to know he was thinking of me and he hoped I was having a good time. And he told me to be sure I had some Illy coffee while I was there. I made a mental note to bring some back for him.
Lorenzo’s greeting was as effusive as ever, as if he hadn’t seen me in years. His kisses on both cheeks warmed me and made me feel regal.
We said good-bye to Sofia, who was making an omelet for herself and humming. It was nice to see she had apparently recovered from the visit to her father.
We crossed the landing to the other flat, and Lorenzo opened his front door, calling out to his sister that I was there. Renata shouted back something from a back room, cheerful but loud.
In the four years I’ve worked with the DiSantis brother-sister team, I’ve never been able to become as close to Renata as I have to her brother. Most of my phone calls, even the editorial ones that deal with the writing, I have with Lorenzo, though he leaves most of the writing to her. I asked Lorenzo once if Renata didn’t like working with me because she always deferred to him on the phone calls. He had seemed surprised by my question.
“She knows I like talking with you,” he had said. “And she trusts you and me to decide what is best for the books. She likes you very much, cara. If she didn’t, she’d be on the phone all the time making you squirm.”
Lorenzo poured us each a glass of wine, and he led me out to the balcony. The night air was a little chilly, and I had left the only sweater I brought in Sofia’s flat. I shivered, and Lorenzo’s arm was at once around me. To keep me warm, of course; that is all. But his closeness felt wonderful and dangerous.
He called out something to Renata, still inside the flat. And she shouted back an answer. Then he held his glass toward me.
“Salute.” He touched his glass to mine.
“Mazel tov,” I replied, and he tossed his head back and laughed.
He sipped his wine and I sipped mine. It wasn’t the same bottle as last night’s. This one was sweeter, but not overly so. I tasted blackberries and leather on my tongue.
“And how was your third day in Florence?” he asked.
“Sensory overload, like the first one and the second one. We went to the Uffizi.”
“Ah. I should’ve told you to look with just one eye.” He winked and took another sip.
His closeness was keeping me warm, but it was also keeping me distracted from the loveliness of the evening. I wondered if he knew he had that effect on women. Maybe he did. Or maybe I was the one with the heightened sense of awareness, not him. He was just being accommodating. Like with last night’s kiss.
I didn’t have to contemplate it for long. Renata soon joined us on the balcony, sweeping past the doors with urgency that made the gauzy curtains flounce like waves on the ocean. She had a glass of wine too and a shawl in her arms. She looked just like her head shot on t
he back cover of their books. Shining hair, expertly tinted with reddish highlights, smoky eye shadow and lots of it. Voluminous eyelashes, perfectly arched eyebrows, flawless skin, gleaming lips, sparkling gold jewelry. She wore a honey-brown silk blouse and creamy-white pants. A spicy fragrance wafted about her as she pulled me out of Lorenzo’s one-armed embrace to kiss me on both cheeks.
She said something in Italian. And then quickly switched to English; hers was a little bumpy compared to Lorenzo’s and Sofia’s. The extra a’s at the end of every word made me smile.
“How do you like Firenze, Meg? After all these years, you finally come. See, she has been waiting for you!”
“It’s everything I thought it would be.” It was a nice thing to say about the city I knew Lorenzo and Renata loved, but as soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t merely a polite answer. I felt at home here, just as I always imagined I would.
“Here. Lorenzo said you need this.” She handed me the shawl. It smelled sweetly of a past day’s spray of perfume.
“Oh. Thanks. That’s very kind.”
“You keep it while you’re here. Nighttime is sometimes chilly in the spring. You come in the summer, and you’ll wish never to see a shawl again.”
The shawl felt warm and soft over my shoulders, and I thanked her again.
Renata sat down on one of the chairs and put her feet up on the little table between them. Her taupe leather stilettos would probably cost three hundred dollars in the States.
“Sit!” she said. “Drink first. Then we’ll eat. My treat.”
I took a seat on the sofa, and Lorenzo sat down beside me. She asked me what I had seen of the city, and I told her the sites Sofia had taken me to so far.
Renata nodded, mentally checking off the landmarks in her head, it seemed. “And the Boboli Gardens and the Pitti Palace? When will you see these?”
“Sunday.”
“Good, good. The Boboli Gardens are very beautiful in the spring. Too hot in the summer.”
“Renata does not care for the heat,” Lorenzo said. “She wilts like a flower. Complains like a squeaky door.”
Renata shot back a reply in Italian and Lorenzo laughed.
She turned to me. “So how goes the book?”
I told her that Sofia had some more writing to do but it was looking good that we might be able to publish it if we could clear a few more hurdles.
Renata’s lovely eyebrows crinkled. “What?”
“She thought you meant Sofia’s book,” Lorenzo said to his sister, coming to my aid.
Renata said something in Italian back to Lorenzo; probably, “Why would I ask about Sofia’s book?” Or maybe “Sofia’s writing a book?” Or “What the heck is Meg talking about?”
“Sorry. Wrong book. Of course you meant your book,” I said, practically stumbling on the words to get them out. “It’s going well. Right on schedule.”
“You talked to Beatriz about the photo for the cover? We don’t want Venezia on the front. Not the Venice one. That is not the best one for the front.”
“I’m working on it,” I said. “Geoffrey and Beatriz both like the one of Venice. A lot. It’s really a nice photo.”
“But it’s not the one we want,” Renata said, calmly and easily, as if I had already managed to change Beatriz’s and Geoffrey’s minds. She sipped her wine and waited for me to nod that I had indeed done just that.
“I’m working on it,” I said again.
Lorenzo said something to her, and she said something back.
“So what is this with Sofia’s book?” Renata asked.
I wasn’t sure how much Renata knew about Sofia and her book. I turned to Lorenzo for some affirmation and he nodded. I answered as if she knew plenty. “The writing part is going well. We have a couple of snags, though.”
She turned to Lorenzo, and I heard her say the English word “snags” surrounded by a clutch of Italian words.
He smiled at me and answered in English, bless him. “Snags are like little troubles.”
Renata faced me. “What little troubles?”
“Well, there are the parts about the talking paintings and statues. Beatriz and Geoffrey aren’t sure if their readership can handle that. They’ve never published anything quite so—”
“Odd.” Renata tipped her glass toward me. “Sofia told me once she hears them speak. Like there’s a ghost inside them. It is odd.”
“Yes. Odd.”
“Odd is sometimes good. Odd is sometimes what sells a book, no?”
Renata had a point. Odd can sell a book. Odd can tank a book. I half-nodded in half agreement.
“What other little troubles?” Renata continued.
“Well, Beatriz and Geoffrey want to authenticate Sofia’s claim that she’s of the Medici line. We might need to do some digging.”
“What?” Renata’s face was a blank stare.
I looked at Lorenzo. He rubbed his stubbled chin in thought. I knew Sofia hadn’t told very many people she was a Medici. I just figured if Lorenzo knew, then Renata did. But it was obvious she didn’t.
“Oops,” I whispered.
Lorenzo shook his head gently as if to say it wasn’t that big a deal. He turned to his sister. “Sofia says her family is in the Medici bloodline. Direct descendant.”
“Verità?” Renata looked from Lorenzo to me and then back to her brother. “Why has she and her papa not told anyone?”
Lorenzo shrugged. “I don’t know. Sofia only just shared this with me. When I read her first chapters before I sent them to Marguerite; that is the first I heard of it.”
“It’s why she says she can hear some of the paintings and statues talking to her,” I said. “It’s because she’s a Medici. She hears a Medici ancestor inside them: Nora Orsini.”
“Who is Nora Orsini?”
“Isabella de’ Medici’s daughter. Isabella.” Lorenzo drew a finger across his neck.
“Oh, her.” Renata appeared to ruminate on that for a moment. “So what is the little trouble with that?”
“We need to authenticate her claim that she’s a Medici. Geoffrey and Beatriz want me to get the records that prove it.”
Renata frowned slightly. “Why? So they will believe she hears statues? That’s what will make them believe she hears statues?”
“Do you believe she hears statues?” I asked.
Renata shrugged. “I like thinking she does. Don’t you?”
I hesitated before nodding. “Yes. I do.” I did.
“I think Beatriz and Geoffrey find it compelling that Sofia is a Medici,” Lorenzo chimed in. “It is a selling point. Right, cara?”
Of course it was a selling point. “Yes. Yes it is.”
“And Sofia doesn’t have proof?” Renata asked.
“No. And we went to see her father today, and he … he won’t be able to be of much help. He’s not … He won’t be of much help. I think we’re going to have to do the digging on our own with city records and ancestry websites.”
“What about Emilio? Why doesn’t she just ask him?”
“I asked her about her uncle. She said he won’t help her.”
Again, Renata’s lovely eyebrows puckered. “Of course he will help her. Why wouldn’t he help her? He is family. If Sofia is a Medici, then so is he.”
“Sofia told me that he doesn’t like her. That he doesn’t like anybody. And she said he wouldn’t help me either.”
Renata set her empty wineglass down on the table by her feet. “Sofia is like a little child sometimes. Emilio is not like her father. But that does not mean he does not care for her. He is not all smiles and sunshine, but that does not mean he doesn’t like her. He is a businessman. He likes solitude. He doesn’t need people the way Sofia does.”
I was taken aback by how much Renata seemed to know about Sofia’s uncle. She must have read my surprise on my face.
“I dealt with Emilio when Lorenzo and I wanted to take out the wall between the kitchen and the living room. He handles all of that, you know. The m
anagement of the building. I never got the—what do you call it?—impression he does not like his niece. He just does not need closeness. Not important to him. I think he would help you.”
Hope began to percolate in me. I really didn’t want to have to spend hours on Italian websites that I could barely read trying to piece together Sofia’s family ancestry. But I didn’t know how to convince Sofia we should give her uncle a try. And I couldn’t call him myself unless he knew English. I said as much to Renata.
“He speaks only a little English,” she answered but then quickly followed with, “Want me to call him for you? I have his number in Rome.”
“Yes!” I answered, without hesitation.
“You should ask Sofia first,” Lorenzo said. We looked at him, and he took a sip of wine.
“Why?” said Renata. “Sofia is a child about this. If Meg asks and Sofia says no, what then? Meg can’t have me ask? Stupid. That is stupid. Besides, I will ask Emilio. Not Meg. This will be between me and Emilio.”
“I think you should ask.”
Renata frowned at him. “And what if she says no?”
Lorenzo shrugged. He had no good answer.
“I really need to get to the bottom of this, Lorenzo,” I said. “I’m not asking Emilio for any dark family secrets, just if he knows how we can verify that his family is in the Medici line. That’s all.”
“This is silly. I will call him right now.” Renata stood and sailed back into the flat. Lorenzo and I followed her.
She pulled her cell phone out of a leather purse on the dining table, scrolled through her contacts, and landed on the one she wanted. She held the phone to her ear.
I looked at Lorenzo. He looked unconvinced that Renata should be doing what she was doing. But he said nothing.
A moment later Renata spoke into her phone. She was leaving a message. I don’t know what she was saying, but I heard the word Medici and the word Sofia.
“Ciao.” Renata slipped the phone back into the purse and then slung it over her shoulder. “Had to leave a message. Maybe he will call back while we eat. Let’s go. I’m hungry.”
The Girl in the Glass Page 19
