Daddy said that he was going to London, to arrange another exhibition of my work. But, he said, he’d made other plans for me.
He told me that I would be going to San Remo to live by the sea. He was very clear, very emphatic. He’d made all the arrangements. I was to stay with one of his artist friends, Vittorio Petrella da Bologna, to whom he’d given strict instructions: Vittorio should make no attempt to coach me, but simply to see to it that I was provided with all the right materials. In San Remo, I’d be exposed to new landscapes, new people. It was a magnificent opportunity for me, Daddy said. And I would be well cared for—Vittorio’s wife, Sophia, would watch over me. His friends would treat me as their own child. They had no children of their own, he said, as if it was obvious they’d love to borrow one of his.
Daddy’s speech was greeted with silence. He looked at me, beaming.
“It will be wonderful, Pamela . . . the flowers, the sea, the people! You are happy to go to such a beautiful place…?”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think what to say.
My mother was distraught. This had hit her too fast. It wasn’t like the time Daddy had sent off my drawings to the art gallery, when she’d had time to process what had happened. Now she seemed, for the first time I could remember, truly angry.
“Francesco, I know what we agreed, that you’d be in charge, but this . . . this is too much. It’s—”
“Can you not see this for what it is, Margery? Such a great chance for her. . . .”
“I see that it would be a wonderful opportunity, perhaps in a year or two . . . but Pamela’s simply too young!”
“It’s a few hours from here, not China. You won’t be far away. If Pamela needs you, you can go to her.”
“Let her stay here with me, Francesco . . . for heaven’s sake, you know she’ll draw all day on her own, she doesn’t need Vittorio to watch over her.”
“If she stays here, yes . . . as you say, she will draw as she always has. But that is not what she should be doing. Now she must see new things, try new things.”
There was silence.
Tell him I don’t need to try new things, Mam.
When she did speak her voice was quiet.
“You seem to forget, Francesco, she’s only eleven. She really should be with her mother. . . .”
Daddy’s voice went quieter still, signaling the end of the discussion.
“It’s only for a little while. A month or so. It’s the best thing for her, Margery. You will see.”
Mam was quiet for days.
Cecco and I whispered to each other our hope that our father would give in just to see Mam happy again. But the mood in our home stayed somber.
Each day it was worse. I hated everything about the situation—the idea of leaving my family to stay with strangers, the palpable tension between my parents—but most of all I hated the thought that would not leave me alone, that pounded like a heavy drumbeat in my brain: all this trouble is because of me.
I was miserable. But I said nothing.
Daddy had made plans, and I knew that that was that.
In the end, Mam capitulated. She brightened, became her old self. She told me that she realized, now, that it was probably the best thing after all, that she’d been selfish to want to keep me for herself. She would write me lots and lots of letters, and she expected lots and lots in return. I was a lucky girl, she said. She wished she were the one going off to the seashore.
The night before I left, Daddy came to my room and sat by my bedside. He assured me over and over that it would be a great adventure, that I would have such lovely times and draw such beautiful things.
“And—oh! You must take this!” Daddy sprang up and lifted the little sketch off the wall above my bed. Picasso’s goat.
He tucked the picture among the clothes in my trunk. “It will go to San Remo with you, it will bring you luck. And inspiration!”
He kissed my forehead.
margery
If I went in to her now, tried to talk, would it be too late? Would she turn her face to the wall? Is it all beginning again, the cycle? Sometimes she can slide down so fast there’s no hope of catching her. That nonstop talking today, that feverish look of hers—if it’s the beginning, then. . . .
I’m being silly. Exaggerating. I mustn’t jump to conclusions.
Yet a terrible fear runs through me. It doesn’t surface often, but when it does it’s always the same. The sharp tingling running up my back, as if a million pincered insects were attacking my spine all at once.
Pamela was what—twenty-two? Twenty-three?
Not so very long ago, really.
It was Sara, Pamela’s sculptress friend from the Whitney Club, who put the idea into my head. Not that I blame her. She meant well when she came to see me that wintry day years ago. She was quite apologetic. And quite distressed. She said she wasn’t at all sure if she should mention it, but she knew that Pamela was . . . fragile was the word she used, and she thought somehow I ought to know. She’d seen something disturbing, she said. Pamela standing on a curb near Gramercy Park, the northeast corner of 20th and Park, she thought it was. Perhaps it was 19th Street, it didn’t really matter. Snow was falling. Sara was across the avenue, heading south. She thought Pamela seemed to be waiting for something or someone. And then a taxi came hurtling down the street and Pamela didn’t flag it but stepped in front of it—she sort of seemed to march in front of it, was how Sara put it—and there was the squeal of brakes and the cab swerved away just in time. Some people helped Pamela back to the curb.
I never mentioned it, not even to Francesco.
I am sure Sara meant well, but there’s every chance she misconstrued what she saw. Still, a thing like that, the image it forms . . . it will not leave you.
pamela
The white-washed house in San Remo was nestled high on a hillside far from the sea but close enough that, when the wind was right, I could breathe the salt air that freshened the citrus and rose scents. It was a pretty, three-sided villa with a roof of red tiles. The inner walls formed a square horseshoe edging a garden courtyard lush with fruit trees and overflowing flowerbeds. Inside, the house was cool and dark.
The da Bolognas were kind enough, but we talked little. At home, with my family, I chattered endlessly, but in the outside world I was withdrawn, never comfortable conversing with strangers. And most likely Vittorio and Sophia had no idea about what to say to an eleven-year-old girl.