Marie stopped dead in her tracks, feeling the rough marble stones under her soft shoes. Just what the doctor had ordered for her, this journey to Firenze.
“Aloysius, honey,” Marie said. “Look at this painting.”
Aloysius continued to stride forward. “This way, Marie, to the Piazza della Republica. Lunch will be served at the hotel. We don’t want to be late.”
Let him have his promenade, she’d admire the painting in the Duomo – so delicate, a faded red rose and its translucent green leaves, like an angelic cherub about to claim its wings and fly to Heaven. But Marie looked closer, the pinkish red petals about to fall off, the dark brown leaves surrounding the petals signaling the flower’s demise. Not an angelic cherub at all – rather, a wispy soprano long past her prime.
She turned to look at the marble fresco of the Madonna and child, and thought about the baby she wanted to have, a little girl, when Aloysius finished at the Politecnico di Torino and he returned to her in Philadelphia – a whirlwind, these four weeks in la bella Firenze. She’d go back in two days. Four months, he told her, and he’d be returning to their home town.
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