I see Mam so clearly, the way she sits at her desk, her long legs swung off to one side of the chair. With infinite care, she wraps layers of old newspaper around a vibrantly colored vase. For weeks, whenever she’d walked by the shop on Via Battisti she had stopped to gaze at the beautiful glass from Murano, drawn to the brilliant azure and ruby and honey-gold. She could scarcely afford such things, but she’d recently received a letter from her sister Cecil in America announcing that Cecil’s daughter Agnes had run off and married a playwright, a man she had known only a few months. Good for her—a literary man, she’d said to Daddy. Then—Well, if I can’t have that vase, Agnes can have it.
I sit cross-legged on the floor, sketching my mother—the strong nose, the small chin, the concentrated brow, the dark hair rolled up loosely at the nape of her neck. I draw her long, slender fingers tying a great bow on the wedding present. The ends of the ribbon fly upwards from the bow, cascading around the edges of the page.
Mam sets the vase, now a swollen mummy, into a box cushioned with paper. She picks up Cecil’s letter again.
Dearest Sister,
I write with rather astounding news. I cannot say whether it is good news or not! It seems that our Agnes has gotten married. Teddy and I were not at the wedding—no one was there, in fact—a minister in Provincetown seems to have married the happy couple in his parlor.
The young man’s name is Eugene O’Neill—we know little about him, only that he writes plays. Agnes—who never to our knowledge has had any interest in the theatre—tells us that two of his plays were produced last fall and were well received. She is convinced that she has married a great playwright! That may be true, of course, but I can’t help wondering if Agnes will be supporting him with her stories. . . .
Cecil writes on, philosophizing in her hazy way about marriage, child-rearing, choices one makes. Had she and Teddy been too bohemian themselves? Perhaps in some ways. Then again no, she didn’t really think that was possible. They had wanted their girls to be “free spirits”—and they had succeeded—this was a good thing, wasn’t it?
Dear, dear Margery—do keep your Pamela close by you!
That is how Cecil ends her letter.
Do keep your Pamela close by you. I’ve often wondered about that. What did she mean, exactly? Did she regret her permissive parenting? Was it a real warning, or just a random thought—a bit of Cecil’s ironic humor? Did Mam take it to heart? I think she did worry about me, awfully. And she did keep me close, always. Or . . . perhaps it was the other way around.
My portrait is almost finished: Mam’s head bent over her work, her ankles crossed, her Indian peasant skirt just hitting the tops of her laced shoes. At her feet I sketch in a cat, one paw on a wedding bell. On the bottom of the page I write, in my very precise handwriting, Mam and the Wedding Bell, Turin.
I fling my board aside and jump up. Where is Miss Betts, anyway? I run upstairs to find the cat.
? ? ?
It’s Cecco who spies the soldier approaching our apartment.
“Mam! A soldier!”
Cecco gets to the door first, with Mam and me close behind. Outside, an officer stands holding a box of dark wood.
“For Miss Pamela Bianco, with the compliments of Commandante Gabriele d’Annunzio.”
Cecco looks as though he’s just seen Napoleon on our doorstep. He stands rigid, staring, until the officer disappears from sight.
The heavy teak box is ancient, and decorated with finely carved fighting stags. Inside, there is a letter for me.
You are Italy’s treasure . . . I am a poet, I worship beauty . . . you are beauty, you must always remember this.
He asks me to keep all future correspondence from him in this box, a box that had been in his family for hundreds of years.
Later when I watch Daddy read that letter, I almost turn away, afraid he may weep from joy. Even Mam is awestruck.
The letter means little to me. But the box—I do love the box. I run my finger over the smooth wood, over the majestic stags with their great curling horns.
I have done nothing, but overnight, I am famous.
Photographs of my drawings are reproduced in Italian newspapers and all over Europe. Art critics fall in love with my pictures. The public adores me, their ardor enflamed to great heights by d’Annunzio, whose poem declares that I am “this wonderful child whose name is like the name of a new flower.”
Pamela: honey, sweetness. Bianco: white. White honey blossom.
I love it, the idea of being a flower, and I dance about the house, bending and blowing about in imaginary winds.
Daddy is thrilled by all the attention. In his euphoria he takes me in his arms and swings me up, crowing. Now you are famous . . . now all Italians are happy to claim you as one of their children! As he holds me aloft, I see myself reflected in his eyes. A prize. A child of gold.
I laugh with pleasure. I don’t really give two figs about d’Annunzio or being famous. I certainly don’t care about the critics or even all the people of Italy. But I have pleased my father greatly. For me, there is no greater joy.
margery
Perhaps I should have let her talk this morning.
Turin, the beginning of it all. That’s what she meant this morning when she started on about her childhood ending, and I cut her off.
I’ve rationalized it all a thousand times. Could it have made any difference if Francesco had listened to me? Who is to say that things would have gone any better for Pamela—for any of us—if I had succeeded? It’s quite possible that all it would have accomplished is a terrible rift in our marriage. An irreparable one.
I’m glad that I let it go.
Of course it stays in her mind. I understand. What child forgets the sight of her father falling to his knees in front of her mother? She understood some of what had happened, in the way children do. That her parents had disagreed, that they had somehow reconciled. She was blind to the consequences, of course, but now that she’s an adult . . . surely she sees the whole picture? Does she want me to say it should have gone differently, that it would have been better for her?
Well, if she wants to return to that time, I will listen.
In the long run, though, did it matter at all?
I think what’s true is that I could have done all the insisting in the world, but there’s every chance that Pamela would have done what her father wanted anyway, thinking to please him. Perhaps I failed my daughter, giving in the way I did. But I tell myself this: that if Pamela had to choose to follow her mother down one path or her father down another . . . well, I may have been her sun and her moon and her stars, but her father was God, and off she would have trotted.
pamela
It wasn’t long after the exhibition at the Circolo degli Artisti that Daddy gathered us together. He had an announcement to make, he said. He’d made some plans.
Daddy often made “announcements.” We were all used to his sudden enthusiasms, ideas that were really commands, and most of the time we were quite happy to go along. Come! Angelo has lent us his boat—we shall have a picnic! Margery—I’ve found some fabric you will like, you need a new skirt—it’s beautiful, so many different colored threads running through it—come see!
But this . . . well, this was quite different.