Chapter Sixteen
VIOLET CATASTROPHE
1
HE waited for her at Evans with an exorbitant bouquet of roses from six until eight-thirty when she finally showed up on Archer’s arm, laughing delicately at something he said. Harry had no plan to deal with Archer. His stinging rebuke to Gina came in the form of his throwing the ocean of flowers at her feet.
She was the one who came to visit him at the economics faculty lounge—not even that day but the following, an eternity away from his hurt and his flowers.
“Don’t be upset with me, Harry,” she said. “I don’t know your intentions.”
“I thought I made them clear in Portsmouth,” he said, leading her down the stairs and outside. Awkwardly they stood in front of the white colonial building on the green lawn, while down the road the horses and the trolley cars clomped by.
“Did you?” she said, and he didn’t know what she meant and didn’t press to find out.
“Is Archer competing for your affections?” he asked, afraid to look her in the eye lest she see his enslavement there.
“Is that what you’re doing, competing?”
“You tell me.”
“I’m just hedging my bets,” Gina said. “After you’re done with me and have moved on your merry way, I don’t want to be left holding only your bouquet of roses.”
“Who said I’m moving on?”
“Aren’t you?”
Not that night—unless you called the Ambassador suite at the opulent Hotel Vendome moving on.
Archer was still hanging around her at the bookstore, near the counter, near the register. He wasn’t buying, he was loitering. The presence of the malevolent interloper grated on Harry, and this was also something he wasn’t familiar with, the feeling of acute hostility like a poisonous worm inside him. He wished for Archer to be struck down with malaria. Was dengue fever something Ben could bring with him in a bottle when he came back?
“You have to tell me what you want,” Harry said.
“Why don’t you tell me what you want?”
“I think it’s obvious.” It was all he could do, not to fall on his knees every time he saw her.
“Isn’t it obvious with me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a panting farmer hanging around me when you come to see me.”
“You just hide them better.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing.
Where are you going to take me today? she asked, when it was May, then June, warm and hotter, when the coats came off her shoulders, and flowers and feathers went in her hair. Her dresses got lighter, and her sleeves got shorter, and now when they strolled from Simmons across the Fenway and down to the Charles, where they sauntered like lovers down the secluded promenade, he could watch her wrists in public, adorned with silver bracelets. He wanted to buy her gold bracelets and diamond rings and kiss the hands and wrists that wore them just as he kissed her feet and ankles. He brought her gifts in small red velvet boxes, and then would find Archer staring during an anarcho-syndicalist symposium; when she applauded, Harry’s 18-karat gold bracelets jangled on her elongated elegant wrists and Archer gaped at them.
Harry wanted to challenge the man to a duel and kill him. He wanted Gina to tell him never to come near her again. He took her in his car up to Revere where they ate in a tiny secluded dining room and then retired upstairs to the bed and breakfast, which he rented by the week though he could only bring her there a few afternoons, and on Saturday nights.
His father said nothing, but in his peripheral vision Harry had begun to notice a certain reticence in Herman on Sunday afternoons, a certain incommodious reluctance to tease. It almost seemed as if the more abandon in Harry’s secret life, the more restraint in his father. Harry was not one to initiate conflict; he was content as long as his father said nothing.
And Herman said nothing.
Harry remained preoccupied with trying to figure out how, if not to kill Archer, at least to move him permanently out of the picture.
“What do I have to do to stop him from coming to see you?” Harry asked her one late Wednesday afternoon deep in bed. Soon he had to be going; in another world he had his customary dinner plans with Irma and Alice, but in this world the windows opened onto a small private garden, and the air smelled of the nearby sea. Harry was suspended, imprisoned. Plum Island was a ferry ride away. Perhaps they could take the ferry there. There could be a storm, and they would be trapped with no way back to the mainland. He spent an inordinate amount of time dreaming of an enforced imprisonment, with no way back, no route of escape and no chance of anyone finding them. Why was that so enormously appealing?
“Do you not know?” she said.
“I really don’t.”
“Why do we come all the way to Revere?”
“It’s not far. I thought you’d like the drive.” He pulsed the tips of his fingers against her moist mouth. He couldn’t stop touching her. “Do you know what a violet catastrophe is?” His lips found her clavicles, his hands turned her over, his mouth traced the nape of her neck, the blades of her shoulders, the small of her back.
“No. But sometimes I think I might like to stay in Boston again.”
“But not right now …”
“No.” A small anguished breath. “Not right now.”
The next week they went back to the Vendome in Boston. Harry registered himself under a pen name, as if he were a writer, and paid for the night by cash like a thief. He had told Billingsworth he was buying gifts for his friends, and wanted easy access to plenty of money. This is what he said. But he craved the intimacy of the anonymous white room in a tiny town with the floor-to-ceiling windows and ocean light to illuminate her.
I need to stay here overnight with you again, he whispered to her. It was a Monday.
Last time, I got into so much trouble. I have one more year left of school. I don’t want to be kicked out.
Of course not.
Tell me what a violet catastrophe is, she murmured. It sounds frightening.
In classical physics it’s when an idealized physical body will emit radiation with infinite power.
She moaned.
They were fused into one another, in a time crucible.
They went to Revere in the afternoons she didn’t work and he didn’t teach. Sometimes when they wanted a gulp of salt air, they went out for short walks to the pier, or to the antique shops on Main Street. She liked so many things; she displayed infectious girlish delight in the simplest of pleasures. And also in the most complicated.
He wanted to give her one of everything. He told her that once, whispered it to her in a flame, and she laughed and said, like what, a child?
He pulled away. “You want me to be the father of your child?”
I’m just teasing you.
He wanted to buy her one of everything.
You can’t buy me that antique table, Harry. I have nowhere to put it. I’m not allowed to have my own furniture at Evans.
He bought it for her anyway. She took it home for her mother.
So now my gifts of passion go to Mimoo?
He bought her a bench she had sat on for a single moment and said was nice. He bought her hats and lady purses, silk gloves and diamond necklaces.
And yet, despite the ritual adoration in Revere, every Monday and Wednesday, unfailingly, Archer was at the bookstore come six o’clock when Gina finished work.
One particular Thursday, Archer asked her to go with him to see Eugene Debs speak.
“I’d love to,” she said (and this after an unbridled rainy Wednesday afternoon they had barely lived through together!), “but he’s been sold out for weeks.”
Archer waved a set of tickets in front of her with a self-satisfied grin. She clapped, Harry’s bracelets jangling. “How exciting!” she said, and turned to Harry. “You want to come too? Debs is amazing. He’s going to be president of the United States someday, just wait and see.”
“
Um, I only have two tickets, Jane,” said Archer. “One for you, one for me.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” Harry said. “I wouldn’t be able to come anyway to hear his fine eloquence.”
To her credit, Jane looked disappointed.
“And the reason I can’t come,” he continued, “is because Ben’s Aunt Effie is very sick. Remember her, Gina? Josephine Shaw Lowell. She’s been unconscious the last few days. We’re afraid she’s close to the end. I was thinking of going to visit her.”
Gina’s demeanor changed. “I didn’t know she was sick,” she said, coming around the counter. “Of course I remember her. She is such a fine lady. What happened?”
When she heard that Effie was in Back Bay and the nurses were hopeless, she said, “Harry, I know someone who can help her. We should go tonight. Especially if we want Rose to make a house call.”
“Go where? And who is Rose?” Did they want Rose to make a house call?
Gina told Archer she would not be going with him to see Debs, much to Archer’s annoyance and Harry’s satisfaction. He was using Ben’s critically ill aunt as bait. Was that truly wicked, or just a little bit so? Well, why not? Damnable Archer was trying to use the oratorically excellent Eugene Debs as bait.
“Where are we headed?” They were on their way to his Runabout.
“Concord.”
That’s another thing he had that the athletic clown didn’t have. A Runabout. And his father had already ordered for him the coveted American Mercedes, the first Benz to be built directly in the States—
“My friend Rose,” said Gina, “helps people like your aunt.”
“And how do you know a Rose from Concord?”
“I worked for her for three summers, as part of the Sacred Heart Sodality. She opened several homes for the terminally sick, and the girls from St. Mary’s took turns going to Concord to help her. I still take a train out there every once in a while if I have the time. Not often enough. She is always short-staffed.”
“Oh.” Harry fell quiet. “Is Rose a Catholic?”
“I believe she is. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know. Ben’s aunt isn’t.”
“Rose wasn’t once either.”
“What was she before?”
“A Unitarian, I think. A Puritan?” Gina smiled. “She converted with her husband a few years ago, and when he died, she became a nun.”
“Her husband put her off men for life?”
“Maybe he was irreplaceable.”
Harry wouldn’t entertain such a thought. “I don’t know about this, Gia,” he said.
“What are you worried about? Either Josephine believes or not. The rest is irrelevant.”
“Right, that’s what I mean. I have a feeling she might not believe.”
They were nearly in Concord when they had this conversation.
“Look, Rose is a Dominican nun and she helps sick people,” Gina said. “She helps them because of her faith. Who do you think helps sick people? Nonbelievers?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“Okay. Either Effie wants help or she doesn’t. Rose will visit. Effie will decide.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Gina studied the map. It was still light out, dusky. But then Harry had to know. “How does your Emma Goldman square with Jesus?”
Gina looked up from her map and eyed him warily. “I spend no time squaring that circle,” she said. “Emma is Emma. And Jesus is Jesus.”
“But you idolize her.”
“I think she is an incredible woman, yes. I think Effie is an incredible woman. But wait till you meet Rose. So what? I don’t have to agree with everything. I can pick and choose.”
“Pick and choose anarchy?”
“Why not.” She turned to the side. “Emma talks only about the life of man on earth, how best to achieve his fullest potential.”
“She is aggressively atheist.”
Gina shrugged. “I ignore that part. I leave to Emma the things that are Emma’s.”
“Is that a quote from something?” he asked, and that’s when she turned back to him.
“Harry,” she said, “for all your elite education, you sure do have holes in the things you know. Have you never read the New Testament?”
“Why, have you?”
“Oh, Harry.”
What did that mean, Oh Harry? In Concord, when they stopped at a train crossing, he took her hand, kissed it, turned it over, kissed the inside of her wrist, left his lips on her, closed his eyes, inhaled her. The car ride was both too short and too long. It was too much of one thing and not enough of another.
“You’re just upset because of Archer,” she said.
“If you know that, why do you keep upsetting me?”
“What am I supposed to say to him? He doesn’t know about you and me.”
“So tell him.”
“What do I say?”
Harry was silent.
“That’s what I thought.” She pulled her hand away from him. “Train’s passed,” she said, turning her head to look out of the car.
She directed him to Lexington Road. They drove by a Ridge House guesthouse, which Harry made note of, just in case, before stopping at a yellow-washed, gabled Victorian with three pink chimneys, a covered wraparound porch and a rambling fence around the overgrown property. The plaque by the gate instead of a house number read simply “The Wayside.”
Harry parked the car and stared at the plaque for a moment …
“The Wayside?” He turned to Gina. “The Alcott sisters’ home?”
She pointed down the road to the nearby brown house. “That’s theirs now.”
“So who lives here?”
“Rose.”
“Isn’t this where Nathaniel Hawthorne lived?”
“Not for many years. Harriett Stone lives here now. She’s known as Margaret Sidney, the children’s book author.”
“I thought you said Rose lives here?”
“Harriett lets her stay here when Rose is in the Boston area. She spends a lot of her time in New York—”
“Wait, this isn’t—” Harry broke off. “Rose Hawthorne?”
Gina nodded.
“Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter?”
She nodded again. “His youngest.”
“She is a Dominican nun?”
“Yes, it was quite a big controversy when she and her husband publicly converted.”
“For the love of God, Gina!”
If Harry was flummoxed in the car, he became completely tongue-tied when they were let into a neat, dimly lit house, where a smiling, bright-faced woman in nun’s vestments and black habit rushed out into the entry hall and hugged Gina like she was her prodigal daughter.
“Rose, this is Harry,” Gina said, pulling him forward.
He muttered something about very much enjoying her father’s seminal works—none of which he could name at this crucial moment, of course. He thought Rose’s eyes were too sharp, too smart to be a nun. She seemed to understand too much of the secular world.
“Thank you,” she said, eyeing him, rolling the rosary beads between her fingers. “So you’re Harry.”
He gaped at Gina, who turned her back to him, and whispered a quiet explanation to the nun.
The Scarlet Letter, that was one. The Blithedale Romance and The House of the Seven Gables two others … Damn the brain. What did she mean, So you’re Harry?
Rose was a small woman, and after looking up and listening to his tall, lithe lover, all the while patting Gina’s face and arms, Rose came over to Harry. They were still standing in the vestibule. “My father wrote many wonderful things, didn’t he?” she said. “I wish he were alive to write more. I was thirteen when he died.”
“I lost my mother when I was thirteen,” said Harry.
She studied him intently as if they shared a vital bond. “That’s a lot of pain for a boy to carry, losing his mother.”
“Yes.”
She made the sign of the cross on him. “S
hall we go visit dear Josephine, her whole life a servant of God and man?” She put on her cloak and bonnet and took with her a small Bible lying on a shelf by the mirror. “But please don’t drive too fast,” she said. “I’m not used to these horseless carriages. Everybody keeps telling me they’re the future. I prefer a bicycle.”
“I should think it would take a few hours to get by bicycle from Wayside to Water Street in New York,” said Harry.
Rose laughed. “He’s funny, Gina,” she said. “Very good.” As if it were Gina’s doing that he was funny!
In the car, Rose climbed into the passenger seat, while Gina tried to arrange herself in the mother-in-law seat which faced outwards to the road and was nothing but a tiny saddle. She had to fold her gazelle limbs in and was virtually crouching.
Harry took one look at her and gave her his hand. “Come,” he said, pulling her up. “You can squeeze in with Rose and me in the front.” Was he being chivalrous, or was he just afraid of sitting by himself with Nathaniel’s daughter? What if she spotted holes in him too with her keen Hawthorne eye?
Concord was less than twenty miles from Boston. On the way, Rose told stories of Josephine’s tireless work for the women of New York for the last twenty years. Her National Consumers League had made the workplace a much safer place to be for men and women. “She is the main reason there are no sweatshops in New York anymore,” Rose said. “The women live longer, work fewer hours, get more pay for the hours they work.” She also created the House of Refuge for Women, Rose said, which gave young wayward girls some useful skills and got them off the streets. Harry wanted to see his friend Ben, yell to him, Benjamin, do you hear this, Nathaniel’s daughter loves your Aunt Effie.
He asked her how she knew so much about Josephine.
“I live in New York for much of the year,” Rose said. “And you can’t live in New York and not know about Josephine Lowell. But tell me about yourself, Harry. Gina tells me you’re a professor of economics?”