Free The Girl in the Glass by Susan Meissner

A lacy collar, pearls at her neck, a beautiful netting of jewels on her head, darkest blue velvet bodice and skirt trimmed with gold trim and ermine, and shining white damask sleeves. There is a little dog anxious to be in the painting, and her hand is gently resting on its tawny fur. She holds a flower in the other hand.
    I believe my uncle Francesco stowed this painting away somewhere, or perhaps he sold it. Or destroyed it. There were many nights after it was taken down that I would huddle in front of the place where it hung and I would whisper things to her in the blank space. I wish I knew where that painting was. I would ask Francesco, but he is dead, and my uncle Ferdinando doesn’t know where it is. He has said he will look for it, but I worrythat he will not. It’s not important to him. Ferdinando doesn’t need reminders of the day my mother wore that dress. He was there. Ferdinando doesn’t have devastating moments when he forgets—even just for seconds—what she looked like.

8

    The first thing I did after my mother left was toss my cell phone onto my bed where I wouldn’t hear it, and then I went out to my munchkin-sized patio with Sofia’s pages. I wanted to lose myself in Florence more than ever. Alex followed me. I sat down on a wicker chair, its faded daisy chair pad still clammy from the morning marine layer. I didn’t care. Alex jumped into my lap, and I began to read.
When I begin my tours, I tell my guests to close their eyes and whisper the lovely word “renaissance.” Isn’t it the most elegant word in all the world? Renaissance. A time of renewal. Even those who do not know what renaissance means know something beautiful began when this word replaced the Dark Ages. And when God gave the world the Renaissance artists, He gave us artistic genius the likes of which have not been seen since.
Renaissance is a French word with a lovely meaning. It means to be reborn. It is a word with hope infused in every letter. It assures us that what has fallen into pieces can be made whole, what has sagged into ugliness can be made beautiful again, what has died can have life breathed into it once more. My father told me I should never forget this and I never have.
It is widely known that there were many in the Medici family who rocked heaven with immoral, even diabolical, schemes. The Medici were often unjust and unfaithful: they killed, they harmed,they betrayed. And yet their passion for beauty and elegance funded the greatest creations outside the hand of God.
Beauty tamed them as it tames us all, Nora has assured me, if only for the moment.
Nora was the granddaughter of Cosimo I, the first grand duke of Tuscany. Her mother, whose life story is a sad one for another telling, was Isabella de’ Medici. When Nora was born, Michelangelo and da Vinci and the other great ones had already come and gone. Nora lived in the echo of their accomplishments, and those echoes kept her from caving in to despair. For, you see, she did not lead the happiest of lives.
I think this is why it is her voice I hear. It is her young woman’s voice that emanates from the stone and canvases; that part of her she left in Florence when she married and moved away. She knew sadness here as I have known sadness, but she also found Florence eager to heal the wounds suffered while in her embrace, just as I did.
Florence was established by Julius Caesar as a settlement for his veteran soldiers. It was named Florentia, which means “flourishing,” for a reason.
We are not meant to languish here. Even if our situation flattens us. In Florence we are meant to find that which will empower us to live in the caress of what we can imagine. This is what Nora has whispered to me.
It is not a ghost I speak of. It is not a dead Nora who speaks to me. The Nora who died in her sixties in a convent, I do not know her. The Nora who speaks to me is the young woman who had not yet left Florence for good. The one who speaks to me is the one who still