He promptly returned to the gallery with the drawings— and me—and let the gallery owner know that this young girl, my daughter, is the artist. She made several of the drawings, in fact—see this one? And this?—when she was only seven or eight years old. I nodded agreement, and smiled at the astonished owner. He murmured apologies and assurances that most certainly the committee would agree to show my work.
At the time, I thought I understood what had happened. I thought that it was simply the one thing, that Daddy hadn’t talked to Mam about it, that he’d just gone off on his own. I couldn’t see the truth, that everything had changed in that instant. Daddy’s crime was not a simple one. It would set our world on edge, spinning off out of control. And Mam had seen it from the beginning.
The consequences for me . . . well, I never considered them at all. Years later—the hospital . . . the kind doctor, Henry—I saw the truth.
margery
I suppose it was all set in motion as long ago as that, the night Picasso came to dinner. Pamela’s future. Our future. I had tried to hold Francesco back, and he had acquiesced, but what difference did it make? Pablo saw the drawing. He asked questions, studied the way Pamela drew.
Francesco and I had discussed our daughter often enough, it’s not that we didn’t know that our child was unusual. That a little girl who slept with her drawing board, who panicked if she couldn’t find it, was not an average child. Yet—who was to say, things change, and I thought it was possible that in a year or two she’d move on to something else. Perhaps become obsessed with dancing or writing poetry or playing the flute.
How many times did I say to Francesco, We must wait, she must decide for herself when she is ready?
But he did not see it that way at all, he was all for striking while the iron was hot. He did not want to miss a chance. I couldn’t stop him.
Or did not. When Francesco wanted to send Pamela away to San Remo after the exhibition in Turin, I said no. I said she was too young to be without her family.
After a while, though, I came round, said it was fine, that I’d been wrong to stand in her way.
And there was Pamela, running headlong into fame, on the heels of her father.
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Francesco came to me the night before Pamela left to stay with his artist friend in San Remo, all pleased.
“I told her to take Picasso’s goat, Margery.”
He put his hands on either side of my face, made me look at him.
“Margery, cara, I put the little goat in her case and told her it would bring her good luck. She gave me her big smile—she’s fine now. I could see it—she’s happy to be going. You don’t have to worry about her any more.”
He wrapped his arms around me and pressed me to him, and I decided to believe him.
I woke in the night, remembering his words.
I put the little goat in her case and told her it would bring her good luck. . . .
Perhaps he’s right, I thought. Perhaps he’s been right all along. Pamela will be fine.
Well. All that was a hundred years ago. I must stop this. Focus on what’s happening now.
Pamela is thirty-seven and in her old room, and I wonder, is there anything I can do? I cannot think what. Urge her to paint again, tell her she really must try? If the large paintings seem daunting, could she not at least begin the process, sketch her ideas? Start on a small scale? But it’s ridiculous of me to suggest such a thing. She is the artist, she’ll begin when she’s ready. Or when Francesco convinces her. It’s not my affair. There’s nothing I can do. I can’t fix a thing.
Well, I can fix some tea.
Perhaps it will help, ease this headache I seem to have developed.
Strange, I never get headaches.
pamela
Why do I keep it up? All this if business.
My thoughts get me nowhere, just a circle over and over, like a toy train.
The same story repeats itself. But I’ve changed it. Daddy, in Turin. He’s on his way to the bookstore. He sees the posters advertising for young artists. He makes up his mind. He buys a new portfolio, puts a dozen of my pictures inside. Confidently, he heads to the Circolo degli Artisti. And this is where it changes, near the beginning. Daddy slows as he nears the gallery. He is hearing my mother’s voice. Wait, Francesco. Let her decide for herself. He comes to a stop, holds the portfolio out as if asking it a question. He looks pained. He sighs, but then makes a brisk turn, a neat about-face as if he were still in the military, and marches home. He returns my drawings to the closet. The boy, the messenger from the gallery, never knocks at the door. Mam and I make grissini torinese, and when Daddy comes home from the book-shop he laughs and hugs us both and stuffs himself with warm bread. I draw, play with the cat, run out to meet Cecco when he comes home from school.
But after that—how would the story go then?
Would I find fame on my own? In my own time, as Mam predicted? Would it have worked that way?
Is that what I would have wanted?
I don’t know. I cannot know. I only know what actually happens: Daddy brings my pictures to the gallery, and a few weeks later when I wave to Signora Campanaro in the courtyard my heart feels leaden.
It is the day of the exhibition.
We breakfast on boiled eggs and raisin toast. I study my brother as he butters his third piece of toast and feel a tug, a sadness. He is twelve—we are little more than a year apart—and we have perhaps been unusually close. I have known for long time that at the end of summer he’ll be off to England, to boarding school. But I cannot imagine this. I do not believe he will really go away.
I think for the millionth time how like Mam he is. Steady, cheerful. He resembles her, too, with his dark hair and slender build. And his eyes—the kindness in his eyes. It is not just an impression given.
Once, when we were very small and living in Paris, Uncle Angelo sent Cecco some money for his birthday. Everyone had an idea of what he might buy. A puzzle. A wooden train. A packet of the almond torrone that he loved. A few days later he handed me a small package. Colored pencils! He said he’d heard me wishing aloud about how I wanted to draw with color, not just charcoal and pencil.
And later, in Turin, it was his idea to write the letters to the soldiers. The war was on, and Daddy was away, a captain in the Italian army. It was a hard winter for us. We were never warm enough. We shut all the doors and lived in one room of the apartment. There was little to eat. Mam made us calico bags to keep our bread rations in. She gave English lessons to earn a bit of extra money.
In the springtime, it was better. We hiked up San Vito to pick flowers and filled baskets with violets and primroses. We tied up handfuls with string to give to the wounded men at the British Military Hospital. I see my brother’s face, alight as he thought of his plan. “Can we write notes to them, too, Mam?”
And so we cut little squares of paper and wrote a few words on each. I do hope you will be quite strong soon. We hope you will be home before long. I know you are a brave soldier and will soon be well. We hid the notes inside the bunches of flowers.
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