The Girl in the Glass (17 page)

When they came close to us, Papa stood and I wiped my eyes. The couple looked down at me, eyebrows arched, thinking perhaps I had just been scolded for running in the museum. They asked Papa if another artist had begun
The Annunciation
and da Vinci just finished it, because that is what they had heard. Papa told them yes, it’s believed da Vinci’s mentor, Verrocchio, began the painting and instructed da Vinci to complete it as part of his training. They said, “Oh.” And they glanced at the painting and walked away.

They did not see the vanishing point. They did not see where the horizon meets the ground, where a moment in time meets the rest of eternity. If they had stayed longer than five seconds, my father
might’ve told them to look for it. He might’ve even told them, by the way, that da Vinci’s contribution to another painting, the
Baptism of Christ
, was so magnificent, it was rumored that this very same Verrocchio threatened to stop painting.

When they were gone, I asked Papa why they walked away so quickly. He said it happens all the time and not to let it bother me.

But it did bother me. And he kissed my head and said, “That’s because of who you are.”

Da Vinci once said, “Perspective is the rein and rudder of painting.” That sad couple walked away, oblivious that the painting wished to take them somewhere.

You don’t have to be a Medici to understand a painting is never just about who painted it. It’s also what you see when you look at it.

When I take people to visit the Basilica di San Lorenzo, I sense within me, still, after all these years, a tug of melancholy. The basilica is the burial place of most of the Medici family.

It is older than the Medici family itself. Historians say it was consecrated in the fourth century after Christ, but it has been rebuilt many times. History tends to be hard on the church. The one we see today is mostly the work of Brunelleschi in the fifteenth century.

The Medici Chapels at the Sagrestia Nuova, the New Sacristy, are showcased by Michelangelo’s tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici—watched over by the statues
Night
and
Day
—and the tomb of his brother, Lorenzo the Magnificent—graced with
Dusk
and
Dawn
. People ask me why
Dawn
and
Night
are female and
Dusk
and
Day
are male. Their genders were assigned to them based on Italian nouns, but there is more to it than that. I will tell you in a moment what Nora told me.

Giuliano de’ Medici was brutally assassinated in 1478 in front of parishioners celebrating the Mass at the Duomo. Right there in the cathedral, by murderers masquerading as comrades. The Pazzi Rebellion was designed to send both Medici brothers, bloody and dead, to their Maker. Whenever there is a family in power, there is always another family that wants to take its place. Lorenzo, who was very fond of his brother, narrowly escaped.

The Medici fortunes dwindled under the rule of Lorenzo the Magnificent, just one of the reasons he is not my favorite ancestor. He was most certainly unfaithful to his wife, though when she died of tuberculosis, he wrote of his great sorrow. Still, Lorenzo funded the school that Michelangelo attended as a young apprentice and was patron to Botticelli, whose work I love. And Lorenzo was a poet, though an odd one. He would write lovely poems of devotion to God and then dreadful parodies that my parents would not let me read. Here is a bit of the poem of his I like best:

I saw my Lady by a purling brook

With laughing maidens, where green branches twined;

O never since that primal, passionate look

Have I beheld her face so soft and kind

(Sonnet 1)

It is most likely my favorite because it was my papa’s favorite. He would recite the whole piece to my mother while she washed dishes, and he would pretend the sink was the brook and I was the laughing maiden. I had to be told what a purling brook was, because I thought, of course, it was pearling brook,
and I asked my papa how the oysters got there since oysters are only in the sea. Then he told me purling is a way of describing a brook that twirls and twists, like a dance. The tiny loops along the edge of lacy braid are its purling. Knitters know what purling is. That image seemed prettier to me than a pearl and sweeter than an oyster. A pearl is a lovely thing, but an oyster is not. Sometimes pretty things got lost in oyster-stink. A lacy braid never does.

The statue known as
Night
, my tour people are always quick to note, is supposed to be sleeping, but she looks like she is having anguished nightmares.
Day
does not appear to be enjoying the blessings of another day on earth either. They are both in postures that, were you to attempt to mimic them, would have you quickly experiencing muscle spasms and other little agonies.

Turn your eye to
Dusk
and
Dawn
, and you will see that
Dawn
, beautiful in feminine form, wears the face of grief.
Dusk
, with his relaxed, partially finished face, sits cross-legged with his chin dipped to his chest, as if there is nothing he can do to change what the next day will bring.

Despite their muscular anatomy and marbled austerity, the four faces appear robbed of peace and strength.

In the agony of my grief at the loss of my mother and my marriage, Nora whispered to me that
Night
and
Dawn
, as female, reveal our guaranteed mortality. They are life-givers only during the time their bodies can create and sustain life. Resigned
Day
and
Dusk
know they cannot change that fact. But, Nora told me, do not forget that the day that ends at nightfall is given back to you on the morrow. You get it back. And you keep getting it back, so it is up to you to decide what you will do with it.

The bong of the aircraft’s intercom pulled me from a strange place of sleep. We were about to land at Charles de Gaulle where I would have two hours to convince myself it was not the middle of the night but two thirty in the afternoon. I forced myself to eat a roast beef sandwich during the layover, even though what I really wanted was a bowl of Cheerios. I found the gate for my connecting Air France flight, pulled out my laptop, and checked my e-mail again, relieved to see a response from Lorenzo. He had written his answer in a hurry on his phone, but he told me he and Renata were in town, he was thrilled that I was coming, and he wanted me to call when I got there. He included his cell phone number. There was no new e-mail from Sofia. I put my laptop away and let my head fall forward to rest. Twenty minutes later when my flight began to board, a young Indian woman with a scarlet drop on her forehead woke me and gestured that our flight was boarding. I thanked her and made my way onto the plane. Just two more hours and I’d be there.

I gave in to another nap on the flight from Paris to Florence. It seemed I had no sooner buckled myself into my seat than I was being told we were beginning our descent into Florence. I didn’t have a window seat this time, and I couldn’t see much. But the day was turning amber as we made our approach, and I itched to see more.

The line through customs seemed to take far too long. As I waited, I tried texting my dad that I had arrived, but the message failed. Then I even tried calling him, but I got a voice message that the person I was trying to reach was unavailable. Finally I was on my way to baggage claim. Big-city airports differ only in the choice of tile on the floor, names of the coffee shops inside the terminal, and the language of the relaxed-voice announcer
over the loudspeakers. I sped toward baggage claim, eager to meet up with my father and get outside.

But I didn’t see him in baggage claim.

People run late
, I told myself.
It’s Italy. Give him a minute
.

I retrieved my suitcase and searched the sea of faces for my father. All around me reunions and meet-ups were taking place with hugs and handshakes, double kisses on cheeks, and happy, loud greetings. A few people stared at me, wondering perhaps who I was looking for. One gentleman, older than me, with his shirt half-tucked into frayed pants and carrying a single duffel bag, asked me something in rapid Italian. He smiled at me, and then his gaze traveled down my body.

“No Italiano,”
I said as I moved away from him.

I checked my phone. I walked up and down the baggage claim area. I checked my phone again. Outside, the day was giving over to night. Inside, my excitement was giving over to panic.

I was alone in Florence.

And my dad wasn’t coming for me.

My favorite of Master da Vinci’s paintings is
The Annunciation
. It has always been my favorite. There is such calm beauty in the brush strokes; you could hardly know that the angel bending to the Virgin Mother is giving her news that will change her life. The Virgin’s face is so serene. Surely she knew the hard road that she was to walk as one betrothed yet pregnant. Surely she knew she could be stoned for being with child and not yet married.

Her life would forever be tied to scandal.

The looks she had to endure. The sneers. The unkind words. The whispers of some and the derisive comments of others.

Surely she knew what lay before her.

It was a kindness that the Virgin was sent an angel to prepare her for what was to come.

Sometimes I wonder what I would have done if I had known beforehand what would befall me. But then I remember that the Virgin simply did as she was asked. Knowing what was to come, she was equipped for the assignment she was given. It did not afford her a choice of changing it.

14

I remember getting separated from my parents just once when I was little. I was six and we were at an outdoor shopping mall in LA. There were little kiosks in between the stores, and at one of them, a woman was selling silk butterflies the size of dinner plates. They sparkled as if they were made of pixie dust, and the breeze caught their gauzy wings, coaxing them into gentle movement on the pitched sides of her sandwich-board displays.

I stopped to look at them, transfixed by their elegance and enormity. My parents, deep into a conversation that had them both ticked at each other and which neither could remember later, didn’t realize I was no longer at their side. They kept walking into a press of other shoppers, declaring their differences, while I stood as one enchanted, unaware that minutes later I would be alone.

When a child realizes she is lost, the first emotion that rises is panic that this is the beginning of a nightmarish life forevermore without parents. I remember the swell of fear rising up from my stomach, the speed with which tears formed at my eyes, and the quirky assessment that the beautiful butterflies were malevolent creatures who’d connived with evil forces to steal my parents from me. My mother had told me if I ever got lost and I couldn’t find a policeman, to look for a mother with little kids. She told me I could probably trust a mother with little kids to help me, but I probably couldn’t trust anyone else.