Bellagrand: A Novel Read online

  Are you sure you want to do this? she had asked him three days earlier when they were in bed with the covers over their heads, whispering as if they were hiding from God.

  Never been more sure.

  Are you sure about that?

  What are you worried about?

  That you’re being impulsive. That you’re being rash.

  I am being rashly impulsive. That doesn’t make my answer any less true.

  What about your family?

  What about them? He paused. What about your family?

  Gina shrugged. Is it too impetuous? she asked. Are we being fools?

  Fools for love.

  Is it wise?

  No, it’s supremely foolish.

  She asked if he sometimes thought it might be wiser for them to part.

  You are mad.

  Am I?

  You are the greatest of all created things. The sweetest of all breathing women. You are exclamatory. If being naked were the fashion, you would be the best dressed woman in the United States. You are my dream, my soul, my life. Teach me to say it in Italian.

  Mio diletto.

  The other thing.

  Tu sei il mio sogno, la mia anima, la mia vita.

  La mia vita, Harry repeated. Why do even sweet nothings sound better in Italian?

  Because it’s the language of love. She smiled, stretching out her willing, impatient body to him. Italiano è la lingua dell’amore.

  He touched her warm bare stomach with his fingertips. Do you know what the language of love is? He kissed her stomach with his moist and ravenous mouth. Love. Thou hast ravished my heart.

  Tu mi hai rapito il cuore.

  And now she was waiting and fretting, and suddenly it started to rain. It had been sunny a moment earlier.

  When she was truly soaked, for she hadn’t brought an umbrella—why would she, it had been a cloudless day when she woke up—that’s when he showed up. He looked stressed, harried. But when he saw her he beamed with his whole tailored being. He had brought an umbrella.

  That’s Boston, he said and kissed her, holding the black umbrella over her white dress.

  Look, she said, when his lips ceased, my dress is wet with rain.

  He touched it with delight.

  I have daisies in my hair.

  He touched the daisies with delight. They’re a little wilted after the downpour, he said. But you’re glowing.

  Did you bring the rings?

  I forgot.

  She knew he was joking. We have no witnesses, she said.

  That’s what happens when you elope. No one can bear witness to the secret truth.

  She shivered all the while, but the smile didn’t leave her face.

  Arm in arm they walked down the flowered paths to Beacon Street. She was trying not to hurry. She didn’t want to miss their train, but she didn’t want to hurry a second of this day. It would be gone soon enough. Already so much of this day felt too rushed. Marry in haste, repent at leisure. What an idiotic saying. Why did she have to think of it just then? Their love wasn’t in haste, was it? The love that consumed her since she set foot in the New World. Amore il mio unico.

  What will your father say? she asked. Oh! I shudder when I think of him.

  Harry stopped walking. He pulled her to him, held her around the waist, held her close. Propriety be damned. They were about to be married. But even married people didn’t hold each other so intimately in public. It was like a photograph amid red roses of limbs in a rumpled bed.

  My father will be upset no question, Harry said. He gave her another squeeze. He kissed her deeply. But I’m his only son. He’ll have to get over it, won’t he? They resumed walking, her arm threaded through his. The rain had stopped, the clouds vanished. It had poured just long enough to soak her.

  But will he get over it?

  Absolutely, Harry said. Let me tell you about my father. He is easily embarrassed by personal troubles, petty squabbles, little conflicts. You know how some people are squeamish about blood? My father is squeamish about melodrama. He kissed her silk-gloved hand. I see you’re still worried, darling. Do you want me to tell you a little story while we’re panting our way up to City Hall to make you feel better?

  If you can walk uphill and tell comforting little stories at the same time, then yes.

  Do you remember Billingsworth?

  Remember? Harry, he still comes to Lawrence once a month to look over the books for Salvo’s restaurants.

  Ah. Of course. Well, one year he and my father were having a conversation about the budget allowances for the household for the coming year.

  When was this?

  They do this every year, but, in my story, it’s the early 1890s. They were going over the list of expenditures, and Billingsworth, as he’s always done in the past, set aside a certain sum for my mother’s household expenses.

  My father stared at the ledger line. Billingsworth said, what is it, sir? Not enough? I can increase it if you wish; it won’t be any trouble. My father blurted out to the man, Billingsworth, I’m so sorry, what an oversight on my part. He looked Billingsworth in the eye and said, Frances passed away. I can’t believe I haven’t told you. Please forgive my moral failing.

  Harry emitted a short laugh, amused as he related the story to Gina.

  How do you know this?

  Billingsworth told me. It’s the only time I’ve seen him do an animated spot-on impression of my father, of anyone, really. Complete with the jab in the forehead, the slapping, the tutting, the intonation.

  Oh, Harry.

  So Billingsworth said to my father, I’m ever so sorry, sir. Please accept my most sincere condolences, my deepest sympathies. Where is she being laid to rest? I’d like to send a bouquet, if I may. When did this terrible thing happen?

  And my father, without missing a beat, said, six months ago.

  Flabbergasted, Gina stared at Harry. Harry nodded. I told you. Our banker, our accountant, our family’s chief financial officer, our business manager, the only man my father sees every single day of his life, was not informed of my mother’s death for six months. Harry brought Gina’s stunned hand to his lips. So don’t worry, he said. If that could be swept under the rug, this most certainly will be.

  He turned to her when they were breathless at the top of Beacon Street, near the side door of City Hall.

  I want just one success in my life, he said, and that is to win you. I would walk with you soaked up a mountain of mud tireless and full of boundless joy as long as I walked it with you.

  She stood pressed against him in the city clerk’s office, in front of the justice of the peace, with a small bouquet of red roses in her hands and a ring on her finger. The stenographer and the prosecutor’s secretary agreed to witness their vows. The justice made a little speech about uniting them in matrimony, about the commitment they were making to each other, about marriage being a journey, not a destination. Ironic, because it certainly felt like a destination to Gina. The journey had been just to get there.

  I now introduce you to the world for the first time, the justice said, as Mr. and Mrs. Harold and Jane Barrington.

  Then they were kissing and kissing. He held her to him, and she wasn’t going to be the first to pull away. Her dress, still damp with rain, her hair curling extravagantly after being wet, her hands moist inside the silk gloves—she felt as if she were being spun around, as if on a merry-go-round, as if in a waltz.

  Her eyes were closed to shut out the words of the justice of the peace to Harry. “Have you promised yourself to any other bride?”

  “I have not, Your Honor.”

  Have you promised yourself to any other bride?

  I have not, Your Honor.

  Why of all things should she hone in on these thirteen words, the ones that stuck in her craw, as round and round they went, swirling like a small-cell hurricane. Was it a bad omen for newly wedded bliss to lie to an officer of the law?

  The train to Chicago was interminable. They booked
a private sleeper car. It was the only thing that saved her small-town Sicilian honor. She tried to stay quieter than the high-pitched caterwaul of the wheels against the rail, quieter than the intermittent ejaculation of the hissing steam engine. Their wedding night of consummated pyre was spread across a thousand miles and six states.

  Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible was what the justice of the peace had said, quoting Thomas à Kempis.

  Why did the quote that was meant to strengthen them only weaken her?

  Six

  ARMS WRAPPED AROUND HERSELF, Gina walked beside the Lawrence canals and the Merrimack River until it got dark, and then went home. She was half-hoping Harry wouldn’t be home; he often wasn’t. But no such luck.

  There he was on their porch, sitting, smoking. She walked past him, thought of saying something, thought better of it, and quietly went inside. Because it was Saturday night, Mimoo had somehow gotten herself together and gone to the bingo hall on Essex. The dinner dishes were still piled in the sink. Gina filled it up with water, dropped in a dollop of soap, and rolled up her long sleeves, made of black crepe as if she were a widow.

  She heard him come in, shut the door, pace back and forth behind her. She heard his voice. “You know, I used to think Rose Hawthorne placed entirely too much importance on her father’s favorite theme—sin. But now I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps what was required was more emphasis, not less. In any case, the lesson, weak or strong, seems to have been lost on you.”

  He didn’t ask her a question, so she didn’t reply. Her hands nearly broke the porcelain cup she was washing. She was afraid his words were true. Insufficient emphasis, lost lessons, lack of remorse.

  “Tell me,” he said, with fake calm, “how does that man of all the men out there jibe with your political awakening? Have you told him you’re a feminist and an anarchist?”

  “An armchair anarchist,” she said. “In your derisive words. I won’t go to jail for it.” She continued to wash the dishes.

  “You’ve never met a more free-market rationalist, a more anti-free-love traditionalist than him. Everything he believes, you pretend to me is anathema to you. I always thought you and I were of the same mind on these things, but perhaps I’m the one being pretended to.”

  “Perhaps you are.”

  He fell mute.

  Her gaze was on the dishes. She struggled not to sigh. Not to cry.

  He came up behind her, too close, not close enough.

  “Did you do it to punish me?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She squeezed shut her eyes.

  “You explain nothing,” Harry said, breathing hotly into the back of her head. “You just shop and cook and lie down with me.”

  “And work. Like a good wife.”

  “No one can accuse you of anything but. All in a day’s work, in a day’s life. But I need you to explain one thing to me.”

  She opened her eyes and swilled the plates in the soapy water. She heard him struggling with his words.

  “Why didn’t you just go with him?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Stop it!”

  She was afraid he was going to shake her until the confessions tumbled out.

  “Tell me. Why didn’t you?”

  She heaved out her sadness. “I didn’t want to.”

  He heaved out a breath. “When? Then? Or now?”

  “Harry, please.”

  “I’m asking you a fucking question. Then or now?”

  “Then.”

  He exhaled his heartbreak behind her, right into her hair. She shut her eyes again, her hands hanging limply in the dishwater, her squared shoulders rounding.

  “And now?”

  Ben got married. He married Ingersol in Panama. Gina wanted to scream, to sob, to weep. Rose had told her that, and then Gina lost her baby.

  “Then and now,” she replied, her voice a vapor.

  “Why don’t you tell me I left you alone too long?”

  “You left me alone too long.”

  “Why don’t you tell me I’m not the man you thought I was.”

  She said nothing.

  “Nothing more you will say?”

  “There is nothing to say.” Her head was lowered, as if she were praying, confessing, repenting.

  “Tell me you don’t love me,” Harry whispered.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Ti amo.”

  He staggered away. “I wish I’d never come back,” he said in a groan. “I wish I didn’t get paroled early for good behavior.”

  “Not early enough,” said Gina.

  “Why did I work so hard for it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Why struggle for good behavior in prison . . .”

  “So I could come back to you!”

  She raised her hand. The back of her hand was to him, as her back was to him. She wouldn’t even turn around. “You didn’t let me finish. Why struggle for good behavior in prison when there is no such compunction in your free life?”

  “You’re lecturing me about good behavior?”

  “I haven’t said a word to you, ever.”

  “Who can find a virtuous wife?” he asked desolately.

  “A virtuous husband, that’s who,” she replied, never turning from the sink. She had the sheaf of letters to Harry from Reed and Haywood, from Elizabeth Flynn and Mary Vorse, forwarded from the prison after Harry had been released, letters opened and read by Gina, now lying deep in the closet, below her ice skates. She didn’t know how he could have missed them. That’s how she knew that Mary Vorse corresponded with her husband in ways that seemed too politically intimate, as if she were replying to his own intimate thoughts. She didn’t have Harry’s letters. Not to Mary Vorse, not to herself. He did not write to his wife, only to the woman who in her replies quoted Shelley. And my heart ever gazes on the depth of thy deep mysteries, Mary had written to Gina’s husband.

  They stopped talking. The tank was empty. They had run out of all fueling words. Gina finished cleaning up. Harry threw away the newspapers. Mimoo was still not home. Gina couldn’t go to sleep until she helped her mother get ready for bed, and wished Mimoo could come home from bingo a little earlier just once.

  Upstairs, she lay next to Harry for a few minutes listening to him breathe, hard and broken. “I thought we were so strong that nothing could touch us,” he said.

  “Oh God. We are. Mi dispiace. Forgive me, marito . . .” With exhaustion she reached for him.

  He jumped out of bed. Both his hands were up as if either to surrender or to shove her away. “Not a word more about it. Especially in our bed. I know I accused you of not explaining anything. Believe me, that’s but a small mercy. We can do one of two things, you and I. We can talk about it and then part for good. And perhaps that’s best and maybe it’s what you want. You tell me. Or we can walk on and pretend it never happened. Pretend there’s nothing to talk about, as if it doesn’t exist between us. Those are our two choices. Rather, those are your two choices. What will it be?”

  “Do you want to part with me?”

  He blinked. His hands were still up. “You know I can’t,” he whispered, clawing at his chest as if he wished to rend it open like a cloak. “You are my only Calais.”

  Gina opened her arms. “As you are mine.”

  He came back to bed.

  They walked on.

  Except . . .

  Gina had to stop working at Rose’s Home, reluctantly, regretfully. Harry couldn’t take it. He said nothing but she could tell it was impossible. She couldn’t explain it to Rose, but Rose understood everything.

  “You know what my father said about regret?” Rose said when Gina went one last time to say goodbye. “About choosing a path you later think has led you astray? He said there was a fatality to it, a feeling so irresistible it had the force of doom, which invariably compelled hu
man beings—you, your husband—to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event had given the color to your lifetime; and the more irresistibly you returned to that spot, the darker the tinge that saddened it.” She kissed Gina’s crying face. “Every single thing in this world,” Rose said, “is marble and mud, my darling child. The only thing you can do is make the best of it.”

  Chapter 6

  TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

  One

  YOU WANT TO GO where?”

  “Russia, I told you.”

  “But why?” It had begun as a normal Sunday afternoon. She had been about to start on an early dinner. It was April, and warm out. She had been thinking they could eat outside. Maybe amble down to the Common to see if the ducks had hatched more babies.

  “Gina, have you been reading the papers? Or even the magazine I work for? Russia is about to have a bona fide revolution!”