We were in a hurry.
Daddy strode over the cobbled piazza and I danced at his side, the ribbons on my braids bouncing and fluttering like butterflies. I tried to make a game of it, skipping to the staccato of my father’s boots as they struck the stones. We were on our way to the gallery where my drawings were hung for the world to see.
I wasn’t eager to go to the exhibition. I had no idea what to expect. Would it be crowded and noisy? Would people ask me a lot of questions? What if they didn’t like my drawings?
As Daddy and I neared the gallery, it was not just nervousness about me, about my art, that I was feeling. There was something else, something that worried me most of all—would Gabriele d’Annunzio be there? I hoped more than anything that he would, though it wasn’t for myself that I hoped, it was just that Daddy cared so very much. Mam had tried to warn him. Oh, Francesco, don’t get your hopes up, you really mustn’t count on it, she had said more than once.
Daddy slowed down and stopped at a storefront to check his reflection. Turning slightly sideways, he gave a little tug on his cream-colored suit jacket, and rearranged his fedora a centimeter or two. He needn’t have bothered, he was always impeccable.
The shop we stood in front of sold candy and gelato, and the window was full of gay decorations. The centerpiece of the display was a doll, perched atop a silver box and loosely dressed in a long white tunic with huge buttons. Pierrot, the clown. Daddy pulled me in front of him, his hands on my shoulders. We stared at ourselves; Pierrot stared at us.
“So, Pamela,” Daddy said to my image in the glass, “very soon now the people of Turin will discover the treasure we have kept buried in our house. They will be very surprised, don’t you think?”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to think. I knew Daddy wasn’t really talking to me at all. He cocked his head, contemplating the doll.
“What do you think, Pedrolino?” Daddy laughed.
We turned away. We’d moved along just a step or two when Daddy twirled around as if something had caught his eye.
“Ah, did you see that, Pamela? He saluted us—it is the best of luck!”
We laughed together, then. It was good to believe that it might be true.
margery
And so we were off to New Preston, Connecticut. I packed up Pamela and Lorenzo, and we took a train to Waterbury. Jerry, a local farmer who looked after Merryall when it was deserted, met us at the station in his old black Ford pickup truck. I told Pamela to ride up front with Jerry, and I settled down with Lorenzo into the back on a pile of horse blankets. I knew he’d think it a lark to bounce around the back of the truck and watch the world go by—automobiles, birds, trees. We rode along miles and miles of dirt road. It was a glorious day. The hills glowed yellow-green in the sunlight. Puffs of clouds moved across an aqua sky, casting their fleeting shadows across the countryside.
Merryall. How fond I am of the place, an old farmhouse stretching itself out in the middle of a stone-strewn field like a contented cat. It isn’t derelict, exactly, just a bit . . . neglected. That sort of thing doesn’t bother Cecil and Teddy. No one seems to notice if the white clapboard is in need of paint, or that most of the shutters have come loose and hang drunkenly off the windows. Once when Francesco offered to nail up the shutters, Teddy looked at him quizzically. Oh . . . the shutters? There’s something wrong with the shutters?
Inside, things are much the same. There’s all the charm of creaking floorboards and low-beamed ceilings, but no time or money’s been wasted on furnishing the house. A bed and dresser for the bedrooms. Cupboards with no doors in the kitchen. And in the living room, one of Aunt Agnes’s old horsehair settees, a low painted table, all chipped and gouged, and several plain wood chairs that look like rejects from the town meeting hall. And so it was the perfect retreat for us. I didn’t have to worry about Lorenzo ruining anything. Any spilling or banging he did simply added another bit of character to the place.
Most of the time—and we were almost a year at Merryall— Lorenzo and I were on our own. Pamela seemed to be eternally napping. Or eternally distracted.
One afternoon I was outdoors reading in the shade while Lorenzo played in the field. I heard his voice calling me, high and shrill, and when I went to him he pointed to a small, dead animal lying in the meadow. The creature was not very much bigger than a mouse, soft and rounded and silver-gray. His tiny paws were almost translucent, his face just a ball of fur with a pinkish, pointed nose. I picked him up and sat down on the grass with Lorenzo and I told him the story of the time his mother and her brother—Uncle Cecco—had found a mole in Hampstead Heath.
We were living in Golder’s Green, then, such a peaceful place in those days, with only the occasional horse-drawn carriage rumbling by. I let the children roam free. Of course, most of the time they headed for the heath. Cecco came home one day, cradling something in his cap, Pamela at his heels. Cecco held out his cap for me to see. He has no eyes, Mam! What is he? I explained that he did have eyes of a sort, tiny slits, really. Still, all moles are blind, you know, I told them. They were quite impressed with themselves for having found such an exotic creature. They buried the poor thing in the backyard, and wrote a poem for his gravestone. I could still remember the poem, and recited it for Lorenzo.
In this dark hole
Lies Mr. Mole
He died of fright
Because he had no sight.
In the kitchen I folded over an old cloth napkin to make a bed for the little animal, and let Lorenzo carry him as we went to find his mother. The boy was bright as a Christmas ornament in his excitement. I thought surely this was something that would awaken Pamela, penetrate through the fog, encourage her to share more of her childhood with her boy. But she just nodded as we talked. I was frustrated.
“You do remember, darling, that time you and Cecco brought home the mole?” She said, “Oh, yes, I remember. . . .” But she very much looked as though she didn’t.