MI DISPIACE (I’M SORRY)
I snatch back the sketchbook and run.
I might have left black marks
upon the floor, I exited so quickly.
I will not permit Luca the satisfaction
of my foolish brimming eyes.
What did I expect, everyone loves Vanna.
In my stomach a black crow
caws its wicked claws out for sisterly
vengeance, but before I reach
our chambers the crow has been
digested. It is not Vanna’s fault
that Luca prefers her. She did not even
ask me to draw a sketch of her.
Her beauty is crystal,
and I am clay.
The foolishness is all my own
for even thinking he would ever care for me.
I know now why Father
willed me to a senator;
no one else
would have me.
“Maria!” The voice nets me like a fish.
I hide no tears from Mother.
“What is in your hands?”
I give up the sketchbook.
I give it all up.
I tell her about my visits
to see Luca
and my foolish feelings for him.
I kneel beside her
and clutch her legs
and let the tears torrent
and the apologies stream
out of my unclogged mouth.
Mother listens with no scolding.
She cradles my head
and wipes my tears
with her thumb.
Though I am crumbling
Mother’s arms form
a moat around me.
“Mother, please don’t tell anyone
about my feelings for Luca.”
“Of course not, sweet Maria.”
She leafs through my sketchbook
and brushes off the drawings of Vanna.
“These are quite lovely, Maria.
I see why Luca admired them so.”
“You can burn them if you like.
I will pray a thousand prayer beads
for disobeying you.”
“No, my dear.
I think you have been clever
without realizing it.
You may have solved
a great problem for your family,
Maria. Perhaps Luca’s fondness
for Giovanna will prove
to be good and profitable.”
NO CHOICE
There is no choice
to make,
and I should rejoice
that I am no longer
torn between the shores
of Murano and Venice,
but somehow it only
makes the sorrow
of leaving my glass home
more great.
I SPY
On our next trip
to the Bembo palazzo
we are led into a great hall.
Portraits and paintings line
the walls. A floor-to-ceiling tapestry
finer than I have ever laid eyes upon
captures the great Venetian victories.
I say to Leona, “You sew very well,”
and point at the grand tapestry.
She eyes me like a peasant child.
“The servants do that work,
instructed by commissioned artists.”
When Leona spins her back to us,
Vanna just places a finger to her lips,
indicating it would be best I keep silent.
Vanna says, “Leona, I noticed
when we walked through the arbor
how your peonies flourish.”
Leona smiles for the first time,
and she is actually quite pretty.
“Yes, the French peonies have been
most magnificent this season.”
I was not sure which one was a peony.
Leona’s garden must contain a thousand
varieties of flowers and all of them gorgeous.
I hear a small rumble behind me
like a little mouse, and I smile for the first time.
So the Bembos are not perfect;
they too have rodents in the parlor.
I investigate further
as we are called to tea
and discover
a pair of very recognizable
boots and two peeping eyes.
The calamity I heard
was no mouse
than the man to whom I will be
betrothed, Andrea Bembo.
He half hides behind drapery
and spies upon us ladies.
I find this rather odd,
as Andrea has been most distinguished
up to this point.
But while
Mother and Vanna and Leona
discuss fashion and the marriage
preparations, I just watch to see
if Andrea will stumble and be discovered.
He manages to stay rather well concealed
to the others.
Andrea watches the other ladies
but notes not that I scout him.
I scoot my chair closer
to the window dressing.
He covers himself with it
like a cape, this man
who is twenty years my senior,
as if that will help.
I notice now that his eyes
are upon one particular lady—
Giovanna.
He smiles like a tickled babe.
I know this look well.
It is the look every man
stuns into when he sees and hears Vanna.
I realize slowly
that he has never seen
my sister before.
“Please sing something,”
Leona asks Vanna.
I think I may be sick
directly into my feathered hat,
or worse I may cry.
But Vanna cannot refuse.
And the terrible part
is that Giovanna
remains innocent,
so I cannot be angry at her a smidge.
But I can be furious at him,
hideous him, idiot Andrea!
First Luca, now Andrea.
I will have no one,
and Vanna will have them all.
I slump in my chair,
cross my arms over my chest,
kick off my uncomfortable shoes,
and tug at my tightly bound corset—
very unladylike.
Mother nearly growls at me.
And I don’t care.
YOU CAN HAVE THAT BUMBLING BEMBO
On the boat ride home
I tell Mother and Vanna
that Andrea was hiding
behind the curtains like a baby,
and they find it charming.
“He adores you so,
he wants to be in your presence,”
Vanna says.
“Whether or not it is appropriate,
it is certainly sweet,”
Mother adds.
“It is stupid. And besides,
he wants to be near Vanna,
you fools. He wants nothing
to do with me. It is like
she charms snakes
with her voice.” I begin to hiss.
My cruelty shatters Vanna.
“I have only been trying
to help unite our families.
I never mean to harm
anyone with my singing.
You don’t realize how
lucky you are to marry Andrea.
You will have children.
I will have prayer beads, Maria.”
My mother can hardly believe
Vanna has said these words aloud,
and neither can I.
But if Mother has her
way,
Vanna’s words will not be true.
NOWHERE TO GO
This is the lonely place.
The cold stone prison,
windowless and damp,
where I live by myself.
No one understands.
Mother has banished me
to my chambers,
but it matters not.
I cannot retreat
to the warmth of the fornica.
I am not wanted there.
Giovanna has been sent
with the batches instead.
INDISCREET
Carlotta’s stew smells rotten
tonight, though I know
it is not.
It is the man seated
at the table’s end
who decays in his chair
and stinks up our supper.
“Will you please pass the loaf?”
Luca asks Vanna in a smiling voice,
his cheeks bloated wide as a stuffed fish.
When she gives him the bread,
he holds her hand too long
and looks at her eyes
as though studying her face.
Vanna’s neck turns the same
shade of pink as those peonies
she so adored in Leona’s garden.
I want to smash my goblet.
I want to harden to glass
and shatter upon the floor.
Does no one else see
this display of indiscretion?
I search the table.
Uncle stuffs his mouth.
Marino reads a pamphlet,
and Paolo distracts himself
with something beyond
the windowpane.
But Mother
grins a wide smile
like a self-satisfied cat
after it snares a rabbit.
Mother has seen what I witnessed,
and she nods
in approval.
MOTHER’S PLAN
Mother calls Giovanna and me
to her chambers.
“As we know, your father decreed
that Maria should marry a nobleman,
and that shall gladly be Signore Bembo,
but your father said nothing of what
was to become of Giovanna.”
She motions for us to kneel down
before her as if she were the cardinal.
“I feel it would be a great disservice
to Giovanna and this family to send her
to the convent as is the tradition
in most families. Yet we have not much
to offer in the way of a dowry for Vanna.
One suitor, however, may be willing
to acquire a somewhat unconventional dowry.
And he appears already to fancy you,
Giovanna.”
I know what Mother is going to say,
but I clasp my hands to the Virgin Mother
in prayer that Mother’s words be pulled back.
“Luca wishes to own the second fornica
outright. He could be given it as a dowry,
and then as he is an orphan
with no living relations to speak of
it would actually remain in our family.”
Giovanna’s face sinks like silt
to the ocean floor.
“But Mother—”
she begins her protest.
Mother raises her hand.
“No, my mind is firm.
Uncle Giova and your brothers agree.”
I barely balance on my knees.
I feel as though my legs will be
swallowed into the floor
surely as my heart.
Mother turns now only to Giovanna.
“We do not propose this plan to Luca yet
but would give him time to grow in fondness
for you, Giovanna. Do you understand?”
Vanna closes her eyes, then tosses back
her mane. I want to rip the golden locks
from her head for the first time.
She nods. “Yes, Mother. I shall do my best.”
CONFLICT
“Maria, why do you mope so?”
Vanna fixes me
with a raised eyebrow.
Her hands are dirty
from preparing a batch
to be made into glass,
but still not one of her hairs
falls out of place.
“You were to brush your hair
and put on your blue gown.”
She touches my cheek
and I coil away.
“Have you been crying?”
“Oh, bite an asp, Vanna!
What do you know?
I am not going to the Bembo palazzo.”
“You are so!” Her pretty little
voice loud as cathedral bells now.
“Why, are you so eager to marry Luca?
Well, it seems you can choose
a husband, dearest sister.
Andrea Bembo or Luca.
Everyone’s eyes, all for you.”
My voice that began as a storm
siphons down to a trickle
as the tears begin to fall.
Giovanna drapes her arm
over my shoulders, her voice
quiet again. “Sister, you are wrong.
The devil himself
is more correct in his thinking.
Andrea will be your betrothed.
He cannot have eyes for me.
Sometimes … Oh, never you mind.”
I want to stop sniffling
in front of her,
but I can’t.
She exhales with exhaust. “And Luca,
he orders me and demands
pincers and jacks, and the batch
is never pure enough.
He never looks me in the eye.
He has no manners.
It is as if he has surmised Mother’s plan
and rebels against it. It is as though
he wishes for me to dislike him.
And then today he asked again
and again after you until I wished
to throw the blocks at him.”
I smile. I cannot stop myself.
“This pleases you.
That I am going to fail my family.
You are a funny girl,”
Vanna says, as she helps me into my dress.
A CHANGE IN THE WEATHER
I can barely huff out my sentences.
“I don’t want you to fail.
Well, I suppose that I do.
But really it is just
that I don’t want you to succeed
with Luca. Did Luca really
ask after me?” I say to Vanna,
and tug at my corset strings.
“I thought that you agreed
to marry Andrea?”
My sister looks at me
as though I am a cloud
obscuring an otherwise blue sky.
“Why are you suddenly going
against the plans?”
Oh, the rains come to my eyes
and rage down upon my face,
and I can’t help but blurt it out.
“I think that I …
that I, well, I care for Luca.”
The clouds have left Vanna’s
head. She smiles.
“So now you finally admit
what I knew all along.”
I nod and snuffle like a child.
“Well, this is a fine mess,”
she says, and mops the tears
from my dress.
Mother arrives like hail,
unexpected and not at all
what we wanted or needed
in terms of a change of weather.
“Girls, our ship
for the Bembo palazzo
has just arrived.”
SORELLA (SISTER)
How am I supposed to
act?
Vanna and I did not have
time to formulate a plan.
Mother has her tidy little notions
tucked in like bed linens,
or so she believes,
though I toss and turn
on my mattress and sweat
the sheets in nightmares.
Leona recites for me, without heart,
the names of her aunts. “Lucretia,
Margaretta, Josephine, Rosaria—ricordare her,
she is the one with the twin sons,”
she says, as if I will remember
any of this, as if Leona wants
to call me sorella.
Then I spy him again behind
a hydrangea bush.
Does Andrea not have
senatorial business to attend to?
I call out, “Andrea,”
as I should not, but I don’t care,
he should not scrounge in bushes.
At first Andrea thinks to scamper
away like a rat, but then he brushes
off his vest and approaches us.
“Buongiorno,” he says.
He kisses first my mother’s hand
and then mine, but finally my sister’s.
And it does seem to me that once again
a man grasps Vanna’s palm
tighter than he should, and his lips
linger on her fingers a few seconds
longer than is decorous.
Andrea looks up into her eyes,
and Vanna smiles at him
as though Andrea handed her
a thousand ducats, as though
something magical has passed
between them.
“We are planning the seating
arrangements for the betrothal
ceremony and processional.”
Leona’s lips curl up like a gondola
in the presence of her brother.
She also is taken in by his apparent charm—
a man stumbling from a bush?