“Don’t make fun. Tell me what you think.”
“I told you, I have no opinion.”
“Don’t sound so intellectual about it. Like you’re looking at a painting.”
“Not even something as emotional as a painting.”
“Do you ever bring Alice here?”
“Oh, dear heavens. She’d leave me for good if I did. All this talk about rights of man and exploitation of the natural resources. Why in the world would I bring Alice here? She sells lumber. I don’t even know why you came. That was not a question.” Harry grimaced impatiently. They were near the remains of the food, his mind already wandering to the cheese and bread before him. He handed Esther a buffet plate, taking one himself.
“I came,” Esther said, “because I was curious about your and Ben’s intellectual pursuits.”
“Oh, for sure.”
“How was I to know they weren’t intellectual?”
“Because you came to this shindy, that’s how. Look, there’s Ellen and Josephine. Wait, let’s refill our plates. You know once we start listening, they won’t stop talking.”
“Where’s Ben?” Ellen asked, coming up to them. Josephine had lagged behind. “Did he already leave to take the girls home?”
“No, not home,” Esther corrected Ellen. “To the train station.”
Ellen began to speak but suddenly ran off to say goodbye to someone. Harry and Esther turned to each other, his mouth full of cheese and the finest Boston lager.
“Why aren’t you eating?” he asked.
“Not very hungry for some reason,” said Esther. “Ben’s mother hasn’t changed in all the time we’ve known her.”
“People don’t change, Esther,” said Harry. “Leaves change.”
Ellen returned just in time for Esther to glance at her pocket watch and say, “Ben should be coming back any minute. It’s been well over an hour.”
Ellen shook her head. “He isn’t coming back soon. I told you, he’s on the train with them.”
Harry continued to chew.
“He’s what?” Esther said in a stunned voice.
“Ben is a gentleman,” said Ellen, and Harry wasn’t sure if she meant it proudly or snidely. “He is hardly going to put two young girls on an evening train by themselves.”
Esther slowly turned to her brother. “Harry, is that true? He is taking the train all the way to Lawrence? But why?”
“I suppose to make sure they get home safely.”
“And then he takes the train all the way back?”
“He doesn’t stay overnight in Lawrence if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
“I wouldn’t presume. How often does he do this?”
“Every time they come.”
“Which is how often?”
“Every week, I guess, wouldn’t you say, Ellen?”
“Yes. Verity is dedicated to our cause.”
Esther made a sound of inflamed derision. “Why anyone would want to ride back at midnight on a train by himself is beyond me.”
“What do you mean by himself?” said Ellen. “Harry goes with him.”
There was a long silence. Harry said nothing. Esther said nothing.
On the way home, they didn’t speak a single word.
8
The train was monstrously delayed. A tree had fallen across the tracks, and the train didn’t move for over an hour while the workmen removed the trunk and branches from the rails. By midnight, a very concerned Mrs. Dunne left her intoxicated husband on the couch and paid money she couldn’t spare to take a carriage to Summer Street, where she woke a deeply sleeping Mimoo and Pippa and a half-asleep Salvo, to ask if they had seen her daughter.
Salvo was most unsettled by this. He thought the girls were at Verity’s house. Mrs. Dunne explained that she worked until eleven.
“Well, where is your husband? Isn’t he watching over them?”
That Mrs. Dunne could not explain. He is home, she said, but he is asleep.
Tensely the adults waited out the minutes. No one dared give voice to the preposterous proposition that the mission work may have been a ruse.
“There is a very good explanation,” said Mrs. Dunne in a weakening voice. “After all, my Verity wants to become a nun.”
The Attavianos didn’t speak. No one wanted to point out to Mrs. Dunne that Gina did not want to become a nun, not even a bad one.
After half an hour, Salvo realized they were waiting at the wrong house. If Verity and Gina came back, they’d be at the Dunnes’. Piling in, they took a carriage to Ashbury Street, where they discovered Verity and Gina asleep in Verity’s bed. Not wanting to cause a scandal late at night and wake the neighbors, they waited impatiently until the next day, when Verity, confronted by the wrath of her mother and the Reverend Mother, remorsefully admitted the duplicity of their arranged Thursday nights.
The girl confessed to everything except Ben and Harry. She had the good sense to talk about the League of Anti-Imperialists and economic conditions in Colombia and Costa Rica, and the Americans fighting the Filipinos at Luzon, and growing coffee and other tropical beans, and John Quincy Adams and Gina’s mangled efforts at profundity, but not about the two young men they met up with every Thursday.
Stupefied by the depths of Gina’s calculated deception and drawing a simple mathematical line between tropical winds and Ben Shaw, Salvo and Mimoo were at a loss as to what to do. Their baby was in the gravest danger, yet they both worked too long a day to give Gina the kind of chaperoning she required, which was constant. Sensing trouble by the breathfuls and needing divine intervention, they dragged a bucking Gina to Reverend Mother Grace at Notre Dame Catholic high school. Notre Dame was run by the nuns at St. Mary’s who were generally well disposed toward Gina for her work at the mission—except for Reverend Mother.
Mother Grace was a tiny woman with a penetrating black-eyed gaze and a booming voice that resounded through the stone walls of the abbey. It was a voice that made you stand at attention even when you weren’t asked. The Attavianos stood at attention. The throaty timber reflected the indelicacy of her questions.
“You think she needs a chaperone?” When they didn’t answer, the nun tutted disapprovingly. “Let me explain something to you, Mrs. Attaviano, and I hope your daughter is listening, though I cannot be sure. Morally speaking, the only chaperone a young girl of good character requires is her own sense of decency and pride. She who possesses these qualities doesn’t need a chaperone—ever. She who lacks them …” The nun laughed lightly. “Argus himself couldn’t chaperone her.”
Salvo and Mimoo had now been reduced to silence. Gina thought this was a terrible start. Nothing could go well from such a grim beginning. And who was Argus?
“Your daughter doesn’t need a chaperone,” Mother Grace flatly stated. “Do you know what she needs? An education.”
Mimoo opened her mouth. Weakly Salvo nodded his head. Fervently Gina shook hers. Mother Grace ignored them all. “Why isn’t she in school?” the nun demanded. “You want to know what’s wrong, how she can be put on the right road? With an education, that’s how. A girl of fourteen—”
“Fifteen,” Gina interjected.
Mother Grace stared her down. “Excuse me. I was addressing your mother. A girl of fifteen should not be working.”
“Many girls do work,” Mimoo limply defended. “And we need the money.”
Mother Grace opened her hands in front of her. “Well then, what more is there to discuss, Mrs. Attaviano? It sounds as if you’ve already made your decision.”
Mimoo hurried with an explanation. “What I meant to say is … she is barely working.”
“That is also a problem. She is barely working and not going to school? The devil dances in an empty pocket. Only a full-time education will save her.”
“From what?” asked Gina.
Salvo stabbed her with his finger. Mimoo crossed herself. Mother Grace sat silently and watched the three of them. “Can you quit your job, Mrs. Attaviano, and devote all your tim
e to watching your daughter? Making sure she is at the factory when she says she is, walking her from the mill to the mission? Collecting her when she has done her work with us? Can your son?” They did not answer the nun. “I didn’t think so. That is not the normal order of things. You must work, your son must work, and your daughter must receive academic instruction—in writing, in arithmetic, in reading English, in history, in theology. And clearly also in rules of acceptable behavior.”
Gina glared at her mother accusingly. After a loud “Hail Mary,” Mother Grace asked to speak to Gina alone. Despite Gina’s vehemently shaking head, Mimoo and Salvo speedily departed—ran was a more accurate description.
Gina hung her head as the door closed and the nun in front of her sat and counted her rosaries. After she had finished praying, the nun sat quietly. “Well?” she finally said. “Your mother and brother have left. There is no need to be coy. Tell me your plan.”
Gina was now required to speak. But her plan was to circumnavigate every question about to be asked of her. She would make like the vessels that sailed all the way around the South American continent. She said nothing.
“By your silence, I take it to mean you haven’t got one?”
It was best in all circumstances not to speak.
“I know you would prefer to avoid the responsibilities that come from being a charge under adult care,” Mother Grace said. “But you can’t. You can’t make your own decisions. You know how I know? Because you thought it would be a good idea to take the train by yourself to Boston in the middle of the night.”
“It wasn’t the middle of the night, Reverend Mother. There was a problem with—”
“Please stop. The only problem was with your behavior, your actions. I don’t know what you have been taught in Italy; I hazard not much, but here in your adopted country the rules of propriety that all modest young ladies are required to exhibit dictate without exception that you cannot be on the train by yourself at midnight.”
“I wasn’t by myself.”
“Verity Dunne doesn’t count. She is also a young lady.”
Gina clamped her teeth together. She suspected that one of the other rules of behavior in this unfathomable country dictated also, without exception, that she could not be on the train at midnight with a young unattached gentleman. Or two.
“I’m sorry, Reverend Mother,” she repeated. “The train was delayed.”
“The train was not delayed, my child. The train exposed your flagrant impropriety so that it could be corrected. The train did its job. Now your guardians have to do theirs.”
Gina’s lip was twisted as she hopped from reply to reply inside her head.
“You lied to the woman who gave you life and to your brother,” said Mother Grace. “How does it feel, Gina, to lie to the ones who love you most? Does that make you feel more holy—or less? What about tempting your new and impressionable friend into lying to her parents to cover up for your behavior? Taking advantage of your friend’s affection for you, and of her weaknesses, does that make you feel more dignified? Or less?”
What was the proper response to this? Absolutely no response at all. Somewhere inside, shame tickled the back of Gina’s throat. But her tongue was dried up with fear. What if she couldn’t go back to Boston again!
Mother Grace squinted, staring at Gina more closely. “You’re quite an enterprising little soul, aren’t you? You’ve got mysteries inside that motivate you. My words are barely registering. Well, never mind. I’m not going to waste my breath further.”
“Verity is against the impending war with Spain,” Gina suddenly blurted out. “She didn’t accompany me to the Anti-Imperialist League. I accompanied her.”
Mother Grace calmly studied a red-in-the-face Gina. “Tell me,” she asked, “in your opinion, is it or is it not a sin to lie to an ordained servant of God in an abbey of our Lord?”
Gina swallowed down the fear and the remorse and looked away from Mother Grace’s black-eyed gaze.
“The war will or won’t happen with or without Verity’s participation in an anti-war organization,” said Mother Grace. “But you know what definitely won’t happen without your participation? The rest of your life.”
“I understand, Reverend Mother. I’m trying to participate.”
“Your father, God rest his soul, wanted you to come to America. For what purpose, do you think?”
“He wanted me to make my own choices.”
“Are you making them now?”
“Yes, Reverend Mother.”
“Are you making the right choices?”
Gina kept quiet. She thought she was.
“Are you interested in life in the church?”
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes, most ardently, but not as … I don’t think I’m cut out to commit myself fully to the Church, Reverend Mother,” she admitted. “I don’t have the requisite traits.”
“What traits are those? Honesty? Humility? Modesty?” She stared down at Gina’s shoes and ankles, which were both clearly visible below the satin hem of her gray linen dress. “Do you love God?”
“Most fervently. But …”
“There is a but after that?”
Why was the Reverend Mother pressing so hard?
“What is it? Do you want to be married? Do you want a family?”
“Something like that,” Gina said vaguely. She didn’t want a family in the least. Marriage was not on her mind—children even less. But she couldn’t explain her actual plans to a nun. She couldn’t speak aloud about the other Love that was not the Agape love her mother had taught her about, the selfless love meant for your family and for God. She wished this conversation were over.
“I will work harder, Reverend Mother. It will be as you wish.”
“It’s not work you need.”
“I won’t be deceitful anymore. I won’t use my friends. I’ll do as you wish.”
“Not as I wish. As the path of your own life necessitates. What kind of person do you want to be?”
“An American woman,” Gina whispered. “An American young lady.”
Mother Grace nodded almost approvingly. “Very good. Do you think American women, urban Boston ladies, scrape the skin off their fingers disentangling wool? Do you think their hands look like your hands, abraded, roughened by hard work, calloused, bruised? Could anyone kiss the hand of a working wool-sorter like you, Gina, a gentleman inviting you to your first dance? Or, do you think the young ladies, such as you hope to be, read books, adhere to firm manners, learn the piano?”
“I can only do now what I can do,” Gina said grimly, squeezing her hands into fists and hiding them behind her back. “I’m hoping the rest of it might follow.”
“That depends on you, Gina Attaviano. You are on a journey. You started in Italy. Now you are here. Where will you end up? That part is up to you.”
Gina knew where she wanted to end up.
She desperately didn’t want to be trapped in a school. The Catholics would never let her go. Service in the Church was for life. She would never help Salvo save money to make his dream happen, even if he himself seemed to be so far from it. She’d never buy herself silk or velvet. She’d never dress like a lady, dance with Harry, maybe … somehow …
The agonizing conflict played out in her soul and on her face. Mother Grace sat and waited. Her fingers counted out the rosaries, her lips moved in the silence.
“Reverend Mother,” Gina said in one last beseeching attempt, “may I speak freely?”
“You mean you haven’t been?”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but on the one hand you tell me it’s my journey and I must decide, yet on the other inform me I really don’t have a choice at all. I want to work, Reverend Mother. I don’t want to go to school.” She wasn’t going to remain a wool-sorter for life. She would get promoted to the mending room.
“Do you feel it’s the right choice?”
“I need to work, yes. I need to help the mission, help my mother …?
??
“You didn’t answer me. You do this quite often.”
“Education has to be chosen freely,” Gina said. “Like faith. I’ll answer you—it’s not what I want. Education, I mean,” she clarified. “I want to make my own money, I want to help my brother open his restaurant. I want to live on my own.”
“Women do not live on their own,” said Mother Grace with finality. “Or you will remain in a textile mill the rest of your life, working sixty hours a week. Nothing will raise your income level. Without education there can and will be no advancement. You will be like your cousin Angela.”
“But she is happy!” Gina exclaimed.
“You don’t want more for yourself?”
This was so hard for Gina. Her father had wanted more for her. But her father didn’t care if she wore rags. She cared. “Angela has money, she can buy herself things,” Gina explained. “She helps her aunt, donates clothes, buys toys for the children at the orphanage.”
“Can you buy yourself what you want most in the world, child?” Mother Grace asked.
In a stone silent room, Gina had to admit that she could not.
The nun persisted. “If you had the best job in the world, if you were a successful businesswoman, wealthy like Andrew Carnegie, could you buy what you want most in the world?”
Gina was silent. “Am I supposed to answer that question?”
“You are if there is an answer.”
“Yes, Reverend Mother,” said Gina. “I do believe that money can buy freedom.”
“Is freedom what you want most?”
“Freedom to do what I want, yes,” Gina averred.
“Choice is not a virtue,” said Mother Grace. “You’re misunderstanding what I’m telling you. You’re misunderstanding freedom. There is absolutely no virtue in making a choice. Only in making the right one.”
“But it must be one freely taken!”
“Yes, a freely taken right choice!”
“The right one for me.”
“Oh, so it’s a personal opinion now, virtue.” Mother Grace sighed. “Gina, you are fifteen years old. You are not old enough to make these decisions for yourself. You’re not old enough to protect yourself; you’re not old enough to support yourself. And without an education you will never achieve the latter. So right now, I’m afraid it’s time for Compline for me and time to comply for you. You’ve taken up my entire prayer hour. And I sense that you’re still very far from understanding. No matter. We will give you the tools, and you can later decide if you will use them. Your mother has made her wishes clear. She wants you protected and educated. You will go to Notre Dame six days a week. You may still volunteer a few hours at the mission after school if it doesn’t interfere with your studies and your chapel work. It can be part of your overall curriculum. But your studies must and will come first.”