In those days Pamela fulfilled her motherly duties mainly by worrying. Not the usual things, like is Lorenzo eating enough or should he be wearing a sunhat. She worried obsessively, and I could not reassure her, no matter what I said, about intruders, about Lorenzo being kidnapped. It was absurd, yet there was a grain of reason behind it. The Lindbergh baby was kidnapped just months before Lorenzo was born. It had stunned us all, naturally, everyone was horrified, and terribly, terribly sad. But Pamela was beyond all that, she was deeply traumatized. Her fears, far from subsiding, were acute now that Lorenzo was the same age as the Lindbergh boy, almost two. I have to admit he did look a bit like him, too, chubby and red-cheeked, with thick curling hair.
The idea that an evil person might enter our house at night tormented Pamela, and at bedtime she’d always ask, “Did you lock the doors, Mam?” I assured her I had, but still she’d go round checking. She set rows of pebbles on all the windowsills thinking we would hear them falling when the prowler tried to get through, and she insisted that not one window should be left open at night.
But I cannot bear to sleep without fresh air. I would pile the pebbles on my dresser, careful to rearrange them on the sill first thing when I woke.
margery
At last Pamela emerged from the darkness. We stayed on at Merryall for a while, and she felt well enough to take on a commission—illustrations for a new edition of The Little Mermaid.
When I was a child I was entranced by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. I must have read The Little Mermaid a thousand times. Though I knew it almost by heart, one day, while Pamela and Lorenzo were shopping in town, I thought I’d read the story again.
When I came to a certain passage, I stopped reading. Or, I should say, I read the same lines over and over.
As the days passed, she loved the prince more fondly, and he loved her as he would love a little child, but it never came into his head to make her his wife. . . .
These lines struck me as they never had before. Would Pamela dwell on these words? It seems such a trivial thing, but I was terrified. It was just the sort of thing that could set her back, this tale of a girl who does everything for love, sacrifices everything. But she never wins the one she loves. She is of a different world. She is made quite differently.
But it wasn’t Robert I worried about when I read the story. I prayed that, after all this time, Pamela was not still thinking of Diccon.
She does hold on to things so.
What really worries me, and I cannot say it aloud, is . . . well, I fear that Pamela will never find love. It plagues me, this fear. What if she never does find a man to adore her, respect her? To balance her?
So, there it is. We can’t talk about it, of course. But I feel she just . . . cannot judge people. She is too fragile for this world. Perhaps I am being unfair, too dramatic. But Pamela does seem to me awfully like a flesh-and-blood version of Hans Christian Andersen’s little mermaid—both such tender and sensitive creatures, pinning their hopes on the impossible.
I try to be optimistic, yet I can’t dispel the image of Pamela as an old woman, alone, puttering about in a daze. To imagine that my daughter could live all her life and never, ever know what it is to truly love a man, to have him love her back. . . .
My heart splinters to think it could be so.
Pamela fears it, too, she has said as much. And I have denied it utterly. I have lied to her. Oh, darling, of course it will happen! You just never know when . . . you must be patient. You’re still a young woman, for heaven’s sake.
pamela
We were almost there.
I felt Daddy’s excitement as we walked up to the gallery, felt his apprehension as he raised his hand to the door. All my worries about the exhibition were now telescoped into one: Would Gabriele d’Annunzio show up? Would he?
Tinkling bells announced us as Daddy pushed on the gallery door, but, over the low buzz in the interior, our entrance went unnoticed. People were milling about, some holding glasses of wine. Once in a while, the sharp voices of very small children flew up over the hum of the crowd.
I looked around, anxious, praying that Gabriele d’Annunzio might magically appear. But in my heart I was sure he wouldn’t. It didn’t seem possible. My father had written him about the exhibition, but there had been no response. I thought that was not very much of a surprise—d’Annunzio was the most famous, the most revered man in Italy. Why should he want to come to see my drawings?
In his youth, Gabriele had been an acclaimed poet. Later, he wrote plays, stories, and novels in a style so beautiful the critics fought each other to find the most ecstatic praise. All Italians were obsessed by Gabriele d’Annunzio. Often I’d overhear snippets at the butcher’s or on the street corner. My parents discussed him over dinner. Women fought each other over him—if you wanted to follow his love life, you had only to pick up a newspaper.
Now the Great War had just come to an end, and Gabriele had returned from the front a hero, a fearless poet warrior. He’d fought heroically on land and on sea, but it was his exploits as a daredevil pilot that riveted the country. Once, to avoid enemy fire, he flew to the unthinkable altitude of 14,000 feet—it was seventeen degrees below zero! From his plane he dropped tricolor flags and thousands of messages, messages he had written himself to lift the spirits of the Italian soldiers. Daddy had kept one in the breast pocket of his uniform and showed it to us proudly when he came home from the war. It was tattered and dirty, but you could still read the words.
Courage, brothers! Courage and fortitude!
I tell you, I swear to you, my brothers, our victory is certain!
Courage! Constancy! The dawn of your joy is imminent.
From the heights of heaven, on the wings of Italy, I
throw you this pledge, this message from my heart. . . .
Cecco was enthralled. He idolized the hero. For weeks he worked on making a model of d’Annunzio’s biplane. He worried over the painting, getting the lettering right. I offered to help, but he wanted to do it himself. In the end, it was perfect. Cecco had managed to fit d’Annunzio’s motto—The Lion Roars Again—in small print on the side of the plane. Blue tongues of fire shot through the words, surrounded by seven gold stars.
This famous man came into my father’s bookstore on occasion, and Daddy had been helpful in finding some rare books of poetry for him. Most likely, Daddy regarded Gabriele d’Annunzio as a friend. After all, they both loved art and language and poetry and beautiful books. They had both served Italy in the war. And Daddy was always quick to become intimate with people.
In any event, my father had written to Gabriele, an invitation to see my work, and enclosed a picture I had made when I was seven—a pen-and-ink drawing of two girls sitting back-to-back on a large stone, naked, flowers strung round their waists. Gabriele had not written back.
? ? ?
In the gallery, my drawings filled the back wall. When I first saw them, I was mesmerized. It was as if I had never seen them before. In a sense, that was true. I drew hundreds of pictures, shoved piles of them under my bed. Sometimes Mam would pull out the lot. No use having them collect dust, she’d say. I thought for a long time that she threw them out. It didn’t matter to me. Each day I drew new things, and it was only the newest picture that held my interest. As soon as it was finished, I’d toss it aside, eager to begin the next.