39

Elizabeth Browning’s friend Miss Blagden is a spiritualist who holds regular séances at her villa. I am enthralled by Elizabeth’s belief in the spirit world, and have engaged her in endless discussions about it, while Robert and Nathaniel rolled their eyes and attempted to explain away the unexplainable. Sadly, the Brownings cannot be here today because they have decided to summer in France. Elizabeth would have enjoyed Miss Blagden’s sessions with us and would have offered explanations to make her pronouncements coherent and plausible. Without Elizabeth, we are left a bit bewildered.

Nathaniel watches alone, outside the circle, standing with crossed arms and a frown, as Ada holds a pen and, at Miss Blagden’s instructions, attempts to act as a medium for the spirit who has joined us. The last thing I see before the curtains are drawn are Una’s large and watchful eyes gazing in at us from the courtyard. She wished to stay and observe, but I told her the séance might scare her. She reminded me that she slept next to a skull before I forced her to remove it and fears nothing, but I still banished her to watch over the younger children while we dabble in the supernatural.

As we adults sit in the heat and the half dark, hoping for the touch of our loved ones from beyond the grave, one of the ladies shrieks, “Something grabbed my skirts!”

Suddenly all of those seated at the table experience the terrible thrill of a thing disturbing our persons. I jump in my seat and brush the feeling away, wondering whether it is the power of persuasion tingling my legs, or an actual ghost.

“It is the spirit of a child,” says Miss Blagden. “The hands are small.”

Several of the ladies, who must think it could be one of their little lost babes, turn and dab their eyes with kerchiefs, while I shudder at the thought. Before long, icy chills tickle the tendrils on the back of my neck. I turn and look over my shoulder, but there is no one there. Oh, how glad I am that Una and the other children are frolicking in the garden, for they would be frightened if I had let them stay! My eyes catch Nathaniel’s where he stands in a veil of shadows. I wish I could see what he is thinking, though I suspect I know. He surely thinks this is all nonsense.

Ada’s hands flit across the paper, and Miss Blagden uses the light of a candle to read the words aloud.

Sophichen.

I gasp, as does Nathaniel. This is the way my mother used to refer to me many years ago. Ada could not know. I begin to tremble, and tears well in my eyes.

Next Ada writes, “Infeliz de mí.”

My Cuba Journal! To see with the eyes given me—the eyes of hope.

Nathaniel looks perplexed, as though he remembers the words but cannot place where he has seen them. By the savior, my joy has turned to fear. What will be written? Is this Fernando? Has he died? Or is the spirit in our midst Mother? As if in answer to my thoughts, Ada begins to scribble with more speed, and I am certain it is Mother.

“Write it. Lift the veil.”

“Write what?” I say. I have been writing in journals about our travels, but am I to publish them as I did the Cuba Journal, or am I to write something else?

I know how Nathaniel disapproves of women exposing their inmost souls on the page, so he would surely insist the opposite. There is whispered chatter all around me, but I ignore it. I am thirsty for my mother’s counsel.

“Please,” I say, addressing Ada’s pen without care for how silly I must appear. “What do you mean?”

I am desperate to know more, but the pen remains still.

I think of my loved ones—my father, brothers, Louisa. I begin to cry.

“Are you all together?” I say. “Mother, are you with Father? George? Please!”

Some of the women weep with me, and Miss Blagden rubs my back. I hear the door close, and see that Nathaniel has gone. He will probably scold me later for allowing something he sees as a farce to distress me so. My soul feels rent in two; I wish to follow him, but I must have more interaction with Mother. My head begins to throb and my dress sticks to my back from the heat. I am parched for water, but I utter my questions without ceasing. I must have more! But the pen is still and Ada is exhausted. There are murmurings of disappointment among us, especially because I am the only soul who received communication.

“There, now, Sophia,” Miss Blagden says, patting my hand. “We will try again another time.”

I nod, but my heart screams, No! We are running out of time. We are already planning our return to Rome in the fall, and I feel the desperation of the journey’s end beginning to weigh upon me. If I could, I would live forever in Italy, in eternal communion with the masters of art and in the very presence of history. My entire life has been leading to this place in time—it is as if I inhabit the sketches and paintings I created all of those years ago, and I cannot bear the thought of leaving them.

I flinch from the light when the curtains are opened, and I am disoriented and weak. My husband has left me, so I have no arm to hold. I feel my way out of the room, leaning on the backs of chairs and moldings, until I am finally outside in the garden. The air fills my lungs with freshness, and I begin to feel better, but I will not be restored until I have conversed with Nathaniel and received his loving assurances.

I hurry forward, taking the turns along the garden paths, wondering where he and the children have gone so fast. The sounds of a rushing fountain and faraway convent bell cover my calls to Nathaniel, and I do not want to further project my voice, because it might frighten them. After a few more turns, I am relieved to finally behold the objects of my search. I think I will let them know I am here, but the pretty scene they make stops me on the cobbled stone. Una has her arm through Nathaniel’s and the two study a fountain where a forlorn marble nymph leaks water into a basin through a cracked urn. The mosses have kindly adorned her form so that a father and his daughter may look upon her together without blushing. Julian and Rose chase butterflies on a nearby knoll.

I cannot enjoy the scene entirely, however, for my family is separate from me—almost farther away than my deceased family. They look like figures on a canvas, hung on a wall, part of a world I cannot inhabit.

This is our last week in Florence, and we make one final visit to the Uffizi.

I stand before Dolci’s Magdalene for a long time until Nathaniel comes to me and touches my shoulder.

“Shall we go on ahead without you?” he asks.

I do not answer for a moment. The woman’s look of supplication is captured as perfectly as that on the Magdalene I cleaned all those years ago.

“Seeing her like this,” I say, “it is as if not a day has passed since I beheld the stained painting in Cuba.”

“Italy has a way of doing that,” he says. “The past crowds out the present.”

“Is that why this summer has felt like a dream? I thought it was just the morning mists on the Val d’Arno. The exquisite happiness. The days suspended in time.”

He reaches up to smooth the hair on my forehead, and I am touched by his tender gesture.

“You speak poetry that would please even the Brownings,” he says. “There is a piece of me that wishes to remain here, except for a restlessness that has begun. I tire of naps and séances, and I feel a building of words and a rising of story that cannot be fully accessed here in this garden of earthly delights. All I can manage are fragments I shall use for further creation.”

He kisses my hand, but the place he has touched feels colder instead of warmer. I know that when the weather cools, so does my love, for that is when he writes. I manage a tight smile.

“Do go on,” I say through pursed lips. “I want to stay and attempt a sketch so I might have a basis for creation as you will, to occupy my Roman winter.”

He holds my gaze for a moment, but when he understands my tension and feels my bitterness, he leaves me.

I will not allow any frustrations during the coming weeks to spoil this time in heaven, so I disperse my dark thoughts and find a bench. I reach into my bag to pull out a pad and pencil, but when I press the tip to the page, it has no point. I open the bag to see whether I have a penknife, but it is not there, so I must suffer with the blank page and hope my memory supplies what I need.

We sit in the tower of the Villa Montauto for the last time, absorbing as much splendor from the rich night as we can. The moon wanes but it still possesses some of the glory of its recent fullness, even illuminating the faraway tower where Galileo spent so many evenings. He would be riveted by what we see, for a comet has been making its lonely, blazing path through the sky for weeks. It has been growing in brightness, and behind it is a tail like a flaming feather.

“Where is it going, Mama?” asks Julian.

“On its way to crash into fiery communion with some massive star, I hope.”

“You wish it destroyed?” asks Una.

“No, love, only to be a part of some greater glory, and not to travel alone.”

“But it has such magnificence on its own,” says Una. “If it were part of another celestial body, it would be forgotten, or at the very least unnoticed.”

“No,” says Nathaniel, pulling my hand into his. “It would be enhanced and add to a greater light.”

This is the way he repairs me without touching the wound, so I feel no sting from the pain, only the relief of the healing. I do not know whether I am the comet or if he is, but it does not matter. Our communion is what is sacred.

As we climb aboard the carriage piled high with trunks the next day, endless travelers on this earth, Nathaniel and I look back at our beloved abode. The persistent morning mist shrouds the villa, save the tower, which stands with dignity over the scene. I imagine our Hawthorne ghosts on the summit as we were last night, and emotion rises in me at the thought that our summer in Florence is receding and we will never have it again. Our children grow older and time marches forward, so we must engrave these days in our memories, or write them on pages with inadequate words, or sketch them on paper that will never capture the full flavor of the first living of them.

But I remind myself that this year has been richer and fuller than any before it, and since the day I first saw my love, the years have grown in blessings in ways I could not have imagined. I will look with hope toward a future that continues to beckon, and I will blaze forward, burning these moments on my heart so that I may live them eternally.