Chapter Twenty

AFTER THE MIDWIFE HAS COME BACK TO GIVE MAMA A DECOCTION that will dry up her milk, Zia Beatrice visits. Vini is grateful beyond words to see with what gentleness her normally loud and boisterous aunt treats her sister.

“Look at you, ’Tonia,” Zia tells Antonia. “You are a vision! When Vini told me the news,” she squeezes her niece’s hand, then sits beside the bed, “I just had to come.”

Vini’s mother is still smiling, still filled with that strange, unbending joy, but she wears a new look for her older sister. It is hope, Vini thinks. Hope that someone, almost as important to her as Prospero, will witness, will seal her triumph with approval.

Antonia clasps the puppet tight, but turns so that Zia can see its face. “What do you think, ’Trice?” she asks. “Is he not even handsomer than his father?”

Zia looks at the doll and, like Prospero when Vini told him the baby had died, she closes her eyes. She turns just for an instant, and Vini can see her brush away the tears. When she turns back, she kisses Antonia on the forehead and says exactly the right thing, the truest thing she can: “You have worked so hard, my sweet sister. You deserve the most beautiful bambino in all the world.”

 

When she is able to leave her bed, Vini’s mother takes the wooden prince everywhere. If she eats supper in the sitting room, she dines at a small table by the window with the puppet’s cradle beside her. If she takes the afternoon air on her balcony, the puppet comes, too, swathed in blankets for fear it will catch a chill.

But without a visit from Prospero, Antonia is an imitation of happiness, a pitiful dream that haunts the house. And the studio, too. Even when Vini escapes for a few hours to the bottega, she hears in her head the lullaby her mother croons to the wooden baby. Sees the patient Madonna’s grace with which Mama changes its swaddling clothes or puts it to breast.

Every night, Vini sits at the foot of the bed, hoping Antonia is better, hoping the mother she has treasured this past year has been restored to her. But she has not. “Si, Mama,” Vini says. “He is a good child. He never cries.” “Si, Mama, I will help you bathe him.” “No, I do not think he has lost weight.”

One day, when her mother is sorting through the tiny gowns they have sewed and put away, Vini is entrusted with the puppet’s care. Holding it as she always does, like a real baby, she studies the silly smile, the splayed fingers. What sort of love could transform this frozen toy into a flesh-and-blood child? Vini has used paints and canvas to imitate life. Sculptors work with stone or clay. But Mama has only her dream, her bone-deep, terrible need to please Prospero. It is clear she would rock the air, sing to her empty arms, to keep her wished-for son alive.

Antonia is still bent over the chest of baby linens. When will this sad game end? Vini has held this puppet, dressed it in a dozen different gowns, given it pretend baths, kissed it, even changed its diapers. Wait, the midwife says. Wait. She will mend, Zia promises. She will be herself again. But when?

Vini is angry. Angry at her own impatience. At her inadequate love. At the wooden toy whose strings dangle across her lap, who will never wake or cry or soil the diapers wrapped around its jointed legs.

She glances again at her mother; Antonia’s back is still turned to her, she is still folding and sorting. Frustrated, failing God’s test, Vini gives one of the puppet’s strings a cruel yank. Its arms jerk up as if it has been surprised. Vini pulls again, tearing the hateful strings, first from one hand, then from the other.

Quickly, she unwraps the swaddling, pulls the string off each of the puppet’s feet. She stuffs them all under her belt, and later, in the kitchen, she throws them into the fire. They catch instantly and burn away without a trace.

 

If the nights alone with her mother and her puppet brother have been hard, the hardest is yet to come. After six days of confinement, Antonia decides she can wait no longer. “I am feeling so much better,” she tells Vini. “Your father must be growing impatient.” She ties her shawl around her and slips the puppet into the sling it makes. “I will take supper downstairs tonight so he can see his son at last.” Bent on her own destruction, she walks to the mirror and begins plaiting her hair.

“Perhaps you should wait until you are stronger, Mama.” Vini imagines her father tearing the puppet from Antonia’s arms. Look, look, he will say. What do your eyes tell you, woman? This is a toy, a scrap of wood! “Maybe tomorrow would be best.”

“No, Love. It is high time Prospero Fontana met his heir.” Her mother opens the wardrobe. “We should choose my dress, no? And you must tell Silvana to cook something he likes. Lamb, do you think?” Her eyes are burning, her voice charged with excitement. A bird flinging herself at the arrow, she can hardly wait to see the one person sure to break her heart.

After she has told Silvana about supper, Vini goes to the studio. If it were not for Paolo, she would have nowhere to turn. Though they have had very little time by themselves, the mere sight of him sets her at ease, anchors her. When she walks into the studio, she no longer pretends to look anywhere else first. His smile and his calm, sturdy affection shine like a beacon from across the room. How differently she sees him now than when he was her bumbling, blushing Pony!

“Paolito,” she tells him, while Prospero and the stable boys are packing a scaffold to take to Imola, “Mama is no better.” She would like to touch his hand, to have his warm fingers close on hers. “I miss her so much.” She breathes in the comfort of his nearness. “Before the baby, I prayed for her body. Now I pray for her mind.”

“The midwife told you it would take time, no?”

“Yes, but I am so afraid for her. She is awake, but she is dreaming.” One of the apprentices looks up from his drawing board and sees Paolo and Vini together; he puts his hands on his chest and makes a stupid, lovesick face. But Vini glares at him until he looks away.

“Your father is afraid, too.” Paolo wipes his hands on his shop apron, as if he were going to take her hand, but he does not.

“Afraid?”

“Si, Little One. If only you could have watched him after Betta came to the shop, the day the baby . . .” He pauses, his eyes full of apology for saying what he must. “The day the baby was lost.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was crazed. He did the work of three or four men that day. It was the same when you were sick.”

Vini pictures Papa’s stiff jaw, the rigid mask of his face beside her bed. “Are you sure?” All his talk of perspective, of proportion, when she hungered for smiles and fond words.

“I was there, Little One. I saw it for myself” Paolo shakes his head remembering. “He worked so that he would not have to think.”

Perhaps there is a sorrow of men, Vini decides, a sorrow she cannot understand.

“He stayed in the studio so he would not have to look at what was happening in the house . . .”

And then Prospero is back; talk all over the room stops. The students sit straighter, hoping II Maestro will smell their industry. But over her drawing board, Vini watches her father. And wonders.

 

As soon as he is seated that night, Papa notices the third place set at the table. He says nothing, only accepts a cup of wine from Silvana and takes a long, considered sip.

Vini waits until the old servant is back in the kitchen, until Prospero has finished, leaned back, avoiding the extra plate. Her mother, it is clear, is not the only one who refuses to see what she does not want to.

“Mama will be joining us, Padre.” She tries to keep her tone even, betraying neither hope nor fear. “She is feeling much better.” It must be said. It must be told: “She wants to show you the baby.”

His dark brows nearly meet. “Your mother is still persuaded that stick of pine is a babe?”

Vini finds her hands in her lap. “Si.”

“And you want me to feed this delusion, I presume?” He has lost the collegial tone he has begun to use with her in the shop. Now he speaks in the familiar voice of all the suppers Vini can remember—stern, mocking. “Perhaps we should take the marionette to church tomorrow? Invite our friends to a baptism?”

“Mama needs time, that is all.”

“Time?”

“I was blind for weeks, Papa.” She wants to touch his arm, but knows he will only pull away. “Mama will open her eyes soon. She will see the baby is a puppet. But for now she needs to see with her heart.”

“And what does she see, pray tell?” Prospero reaches for the cup he has put down, takes another sip. “What does she see when she looks at that pathetic wooden doll?”

How can he understand? Look first with your eyes, garzoni. “She does not see a puppet, Father. She sees the gift she has prayed to give you.” Use them like hands, figli. Caress every curve, every comer. “She sees her love for you made flesh. She sees all your fondest hopes realized at last.”

“This is nonsense that must not be indulged, Daughter.” He is the padre of her childhood, the unreachable arbiter. “This is a weak woman’s fancy.”

“No, Papa. It is a strong woman’s dream.” Some use paint; some use clay; Mama has used her body and her boundless love.

“I will not involve myself in this travesty.” When he discusses perspective and hue, Father is calm, self-assured. But now his face is angry, trapped. Vini sees the hint of fear she saw on the stairs the evening he almost visited Mama. “I will not take part in your puppet show.”

“You will.” She has not planned to say this. She has planned to honor his pride, his pain.

“What?” Prospero’s anger is cut short by surprise. In all her fifteen years, Vini has never challenged him before. She has painted behind his back. She has talked Paolo into representing her work as his own. But she has never defied Father to his face. She has never given him an order.

“You will help Mama, Papa.” She does not study her hands now but looks at him, eye to eye. “Because if you do not do this for her, I will never paint again.” Eye to eye. “And if I cannot paint, there will be no Fontana in your studio.”

He says nothing, only stares. Can he know how much this costs her? Can he know that if she does not paint, she will turn gnarled and stunted like a plant without sun? She may marry. She may have babes of her own. She may sew and dance and wear fine clothes to church. But she will never again go where she needs to go, be who she must be.

It is not a time you could count, even if you were standing under the tower clock. It happens faster than a breath, than a hope. Father sees it in her face. He measures her love: he knows Vini is prepared to give up the career she has begun. And he knows it will be the hardest thing she has ever done.

Then Mama appears at the door. Her hair is swept back and braided twice around her head. She is dressed in green silk with lace panels at the bodice and skirt. Her earrings and the strand of pearls at her throat glow with a dim luster, dwarfed by the light in her eyes.

It is not a light that shines out, so much as it draws everything else in. Vini and her father cannot turn away from Antonia once she steps into the room. They cannot take their eyes from her lovliness, her breathtaking motherhood.

She carries the puppet, dressed in a white gown, to Prospero. She stands before him and waits, as if she is making an offering in church. Father rises slowly from his seat. Like a sleepwalker, he holds out his arms and Mama sets the puppet in them.

Papa cradles the wooden prince as awkwardly as he would a real child, his eyes fixed on his wife’s face. In his own countenance, Vini sees wonder and, even more, a sort of timid reverence. He, too, is in church. Finally Antonia’s joy, her relentless light, vanquishes him; he swallows, turns away from her, stares instead at the puppet.

“He will be baptized Prospero, of course,” Mama says. “But I hope you will let us call him ’Pero.”

Father continues to look into the painted smile. “I think . . .”

“He has your eyes, no?”

“He is—”

“And if he has your hands,” Antonia says, “he can be a famous painter.”

When Papa looks at Vini, before he turns back to the doll, she sees the shine in his eyes. If someone had asked her before today, she would have told them that Prospero Fontana never cries.

“He is a handsome child.” Father says the words slowly, haltingly, as if he were just learning to speak. “Whatever his future, he is fortunate indeed to have such a mother.” Again he turns to look at Vini. If he were not holding the puppet, she knows he would brush away the tears that threaten to spill down his face. “And such a sister.”

If he had crushed Mama, had waved away her dream, Vini would have done as she promised; she would have laid down her brush. But, oh, sweet Lord who knows our hearts, the relief that floods her now makes the room lose its substance, makes the moment thin and swell like the skin of a bubble, opening, opening. She will paint again.

Father hands the tiny figure in its long gown back to Antonia, and then he does just what Vini has imagined. Roughly, as if he is wiping away the sweat of a workday, he dabs at his eyes. “I think it unlikely,” he tells his wife, “that our son could match our daughter’s talent.” He turns to Vini again, wearing the same look he wore the day her sight returned, the same stunned gratitude. “Or her heart.”

“You are right, of course.” Mother hugs her babe close. “Perhaps our son will be a scholar, then.” She stares fondly at the wooden face. “Or he may practice the art of healing.” Her lip trembles as she looks up from the toy. “The world is so full of suffering, my dear.”

There is that stern expression again, that shadow of fear, before Prospero speaks. But then, gingerly, he slips his arm around his wife’s waist. “Come, let us sit down, ’Tonia.” He helps her to the table as Silvana and Betta hurry in from the kitchen to set the cradle on the floor.

Dizzy with revelation, Vini studies the faces before her. At the head of the table sits her father, her teacher, her colleague, her benefactor. You have said it, Papa. Now you have proved it. You believe in me, and that feels like grace.

Across from Vini sits her mother, blessed with a wisdom Prospero’s apprentices will never learn. You have taught me so much, Mama. Even when I did not listen.

Papa finishes the rolled mutton and cabbage, eating self-consciously, careful not to find fault. Antonia watches him the whole time, gently rocking the cradle between them. And in this movement, the steady, slow back-and-forth, Vini sees the simple shape of love.

As if she understands, Antonia turns to Vini. “I hope we will tend the flowers this summer,” she says, her cheeks flushed like a child’s. For a moment her eyes find the hands in her lap, but now she is smiling again at her daughter. It is not the haunted smile she has worn for days, but the sweet, open look Vini remembers from their secret garden. “Just the two of us, eh?”

“Oh, yes, Mama!” Vini’s fork stays where it is. She is too full to take a single bite. “We will not forget your flowers!” Her mother will get well, she knows that now. She wishes she could tell Papa. She wants to put a finger on the place where his brows meet, wants to smooth away that fierce line.

But perhaps he already knows. Because now Prospero Fontana lifts his glass to make a toast. “Let us drink to art,” he says. He nods at Vini, then at Antonia. “And to life.”

 

 

 

 

She dreamed she was the princess puppet again, but instead of a gown she wore Bradamante’s shining armor. It made a satisfactory clinking sound whenever she walked.

She had just taken off her gloves and was admiring her own white hands, brilliant as lilies, when the prince, beside her, clutched one to his chest, holding it fast with a kiss. Next to him, the duke and duchess, who had tired of chasing each other around the stage, stood still, their arms entwined. The duke began to declaim, loudly and persuasively, about something, though when she woke, she could not remember a single word he had said. Behind them, an old serving woman with no teeth laughed uproariously whenever he paused for breath.

It occurred to Princess Bradamante that her dragon was missing, and though the others were too busy listening to the duke’s speech to notice, she was delighted when a small creature with a spiked tail and wings came scuttling toward her from behind the curtains. He was now the size of a lapdog, but she recognized the dragon as soon as he roared to be picked up and then scrubbed her nose with his rough tongue.

She was surprised to observe, after she set him down, that the tiny dragon was balanced on his hind legs, with no one controlling his dance. But what amazed her more, what made her sob with joy, was to find that she could raise her own white hand, could wiggle her lily fingers, without any strings at all.