Gina pulled up her shoulders as she pressed herself against his arm. They had left the Fenway behind and come out to the Charles, ambling lazily down the embankment. “She will be fine.” She paused. “Eventually.”
“What about when we tell them we aren’t going to have any children?”
“This is what a modern marriage looks like,” Gina said. “I will explain to them. They wanted me to be an American lady? Here I am.”
Harry remained unconvinced.
Gina said she was certain that when Salvo and Mimoo learned that she had married Harry, and was now going to be a Harvard professor’s wife and live in Cambridge while he became a doctor and taught economics and she finished her degree, they would feel that in leaving Italy Alessandro’s dreams for his two remaining children had been fully realized. One was a successful restaurant owner, the other a professor’s wife with her own degree. “That’s such a fine thing to be.” Gina was delighted and cheerful. It was warm, it was summer, she was a newlywed, her soul was filled with bliss, she told him.
“The only dark spot on it is for Alice,” she said.
But even the prickling guilt of that couldn’t keep her sad for long. She couldn’t wait to get back home, to tell her mother, her brother, Angela, Verity, Mother Grace, all her friends at the mission the wonderful news; she wanted to celebrate with her family, and then, “in due time,” to celebrate with his. She told him she had come from a long tradition of extravagant weddings, revelries that went on for days, food to feed half a county, drink to quench the thirst of the same.
Harry, exhausted, worn out by the disorder of the day, looked at her askance as she talked of dancing and feasts.
“That is not our tradition,” he told her.
“I know that’s not true. I read the details about your wedding in the Observer. Five hundred guests, Harry?”
“Seven hundred.” Harry couldn’t make her understand, nor did he want to. He wanted to be wrong, and found her infectious joy charming and more attractive than his own sour pessimism.
He told her they would wait and see. He smiled to let her believe she would be right and not he.
“In the meantime, we have to go eat and sleep somewhere,” he said. “Where to now, my darling bride?”
They hadn’t expected the harsh strength of his father’s reaction; they hadn’t planned for such a contingency.
She said, let’s go back to the Vendome. We love it so. But he had taken out cash for Chicago and it was almost gone. He didn’t want to spend the last of it on a lavish hotel. There would be time for that. But now wasn’t the time.
“Can we stay with your friend Vanderveer?” she said. “I’m dying to meet him. He sounds positively heavenly.”
Harry didn’t deny Vanderveer’s sublime gifts, but didn’t think the Beck Hall residence assistants would look too kindly on a married couple staying in Vanderveer’s triple suite.
It was dark by the time they finally made their way on foot to North Street station. And because they had nowhere else to go, and were tired and hungry, they went to the only place they knew for sure would take them.
They went to Lawrence.
A week went by. Then two. Then a month. In August the letters started coming.
To Harry Barrington
Dear Harry,
Father has asked me to write to you again to let you know that since you haven’t come to collect your personal things, they have been packed up by Louis and placed in crates. We are awaiting your instructions as to their disposition.
This is all I can say. Except … Ben did not lose his job—despite your best efforts. Even in this you couldn’t succeed.
Yours truly,
Esther
To Harry Barrington
Dear Harry,
A man has only one thing to barter with and that is his good name. You were my friend, and I had the highest regard for you. I know that you have been calling on me, and I wanted to write to you to make my feelings clear. When I heard about what you did, it made me sick, I wanted to go and Daniel Boone it. I didn’t know you were a double-crossing snake. Goat shepherds behave more honorably than you. A man can be brilliant yet an imbecile about getting along with others. That is you. You relate poorly to people and the secret of a good life is fairly simple: because of this, you will always have a conflict-ridden life instead of a pleasant one, and if success comes to you at all, it will come at a heavy price. Please stop calling on me. I have no interest in seeing you or being introduced to your bride. C.J. Bullock signs on in sentiment to this letter.
Yours truly,
Professor Vanderveer Custis IV
To Harold Barrington
Dear Harry,
Thank you for coming in a few weeks ago and speaking to me and to the Chair of the English Department, Professor Kittredge.
We have reviewed your record and after careful consideration we regret to inform you that we cannot offer you a teaching position in either department at this time.
It is of great concern to us that for reasons you did not elaborate on, you have decided to abandon your promising doctoral dissertation. I would have been glad to give you more time, if needed, you were so close to the end. It is unfortunate and inexplicable.
However, in light of what you and I talked about in April, and given the problems we discussed with the form and content of your teaching methods, it seems best that you find yourself another line of work. Professor Kittredge and I have no doubt that you will be successful in your chosen endeavor, and we wish you best of luck and every success in the future.
Yours truly,
Thomas Carver, Chairman of the Political Science Department
To Salvatore Attaviano
Dear Mr. Attaviano,
This is to advise you that you are currently in default of your uncollateralized loan agreement dated March 15, 1900, which expressly stated you could not be more than thirty days late with any payment. In carefully reviewing your payment record, it has come to the attention of this bank that you were sixty days delinquent in December of 1902, and another thirty days in December 1904, and sixty days in June of this year, 1905. You have failed to repay the bank the interest and penalties inherent in your late payments. As you are now in default, you have thirty days in which to secure a new collateralized loan and convert your existing mortgage with us into a new account with another bank. Alternatively of course, you are welcome to pay off your loan in full.
Please give this matter your full attention, as in ninety days, legal proceedings for the recovery of the debt will commence against you. As we also hold the mortgage paper on your two restaurants, please be advised that we will apply any accrued value in your properties to satisfy the unsecured debt you have with us before we authorize the transfer of your debt instrument to another lienholder.
Yours sincerely,
Gordon Billingsworth
To Harold Barrington
Dear Harold,
I was hoping that good old-fashioned pride would stop you from making a scene such as I overheard yesterday afternoon, but you never seem to subvert my expectations, no matter how low they are. Perhaps this is what you’re learning from the Italians, how to behave in public.
Clearly our conversation back in July has flown into one of your ears and out the other, so let me reiterate some of the highlights of the last morning we spent together, so that we can avoid this unseemly contact in the future. I’m going to have to insist on the last part.
Esther had sent you a note about your personal belongings some weeks back. Though we had packed them up for you, you chose not to come for them; hence they’ve all been donated to charity.
I am somewhat though not extremely surprised you stopped working on your doctorate when you were so close to completion. You’ve again left me in the awkward position of trying to explain your inexcusable actions to the Dean of Students and the Department Chair. I cited temporary insanity; it seemed as fine a reason as any.
Regarding your brother-in-law, whose pl
ight is clearly what brought you to my house in such a fit of ill-temper: five years ago I gave him preferential rates and preferential treatment because of you. I loaned him an exorbitant amount of money to help you. I didn’t hold him in any regard whatever, then or now, but as you can imagine, now I have no interest in supporting either you or your new family. I have no interest in continuing any business relationship with him or you. As you have exercised your prerogatives, I have exercised mine. You said to me you didn’t care about anything peripheral. I will choose to take you at your word.
I overheard you shouting something about trusts. I don’t know what you mean. My half of the family business was yours and your sister’s, the family money was yours and your sister’s. There was never a need for a trust from me—you simply had access to everything, at all times. That was your life.
Now you have access to nothing, at all times. That is also your life.
You have shown me by your black contempt for the fruits of my profound labors that you do not consider being my son as carrying with it any sort of obligations whatsoever. As your mentor Eugene Debs says, “Every capitalist is your enemy.” This is plainly what I am to you.
Demands are so always so disempowering, Harold, because they require someone else to respond.
Empower yourself. If you or your brethren would like a loan, I suggest you go to a bank and apply for one, like everyone else. You want money? Get yourself a job, like everyone else. But my doors are closed to you. Permanently.
Very truly,
Herman Barrington
5
She is putting fresh flowers in all the vases while he watches her. She arranges them all, going from room to room, even placing some in the porch to welcome visitors. The sun is shining on Summer Street, and he sits at the small table trying to figure out what to do with his day. Everyone else is working, and they are alone. He wants to go to the library, but she wants to go horseback riding, and then she wants to rent a boat and go for an afternoon ride down the Merrimack and afterward she wants to go up north before it gets too cold, maybe to Maine; she’s heard there are some beautiful islands off the coast where they could maybe rent a room and catch some lobster, and pick berries, and get marooned by a storm that would close the ferry service. She giggles as she imagines this out loud, musing half in English, half in Italian, stepping away from the vases with the blue and yellow lupines, cocking her head this way and that, to appraise the arrangement better. She squints, she smiles.
Now that they’re married, she leaves her hair down when it’s just the two of them, and strolls around the house in a sheer day-dress that leaves nothing to the imagination and makes it difficult for him to string coherent thoughts together. To watch her like this is to believe in all the miracles of the universe. To touch her is to believe in God. She doesn’t seem worried about anything. Though perhaps if she knew about the peril to Salvo’s business, a letter Harry instantly intercepted and hid, trying to decide what to do—and if she knew about the letter from Harvard and, most important, the letter from his father, which stated that despite his new bride’s fetching cheeriness and divine disposition, there would be no trips to remote and blissful isles because there was no more money, perhaps if she knew about these things, she too might sit like a gray cloud at the table, hiding missives in her fists; she might even stop arranging the flowers. In paradiso, she says, there are always fresh flowers, because they represent all the beauty of temporal life—gorgeous, yet fleeting.
Are we in paradise?
Of course, mio amante, she sings to him.
When she is not decorating the gates of Eden with flowers, she is packing to move to Cambridge before the new semester starts. Expelled from one place, from another. Where is left for them?
He loves to watch her, even when he has too many things to say, like now. She chatters about things he can’t explain away, and she in her sheer dresses and glowing skin and coffee tresses is the epitome of hope and joy, feelings he has had a dearth of, and barely knew he had a dearth of until he met her. He doesn’t know how to tell her about anything. He doesn’t want to upset her for even a moment. She hums so sweetly about the possibilities of youth.
Finally she notices how long he has been sitting there watching her. She walks up to him at the table and kneels on the floor between his legs, to be closer to him.
“Why do you worry so much, my husband?” she says, looking up at him. “Why can’t you believe, like me, that it’s all going to work out? How can it not? We were meant to be together, Harry, you know that. We are fated, you and I.”
“You are fate,” he says, bending down to kiss her upturned mouth, her sweet lips. She always smells of vanilla and mint leaves. She smells and tastes like no one else. “You are the Moirae, weaving and spinning the cloth that is my life.” Caressing her face, he thinks a moment. He doesn’t want to admit to her that he remains troubled by the introduction into Rose Hawthorne’s world, by the things the nun has said to him.
“What if your Rose is right?” he asks, gazing at her, his palms leaning on her shoulders. “There’s been a conflagration, Gia. So many things have gone into the bonfire, just as Rose’s father wrote. Many of the things you say you deeply want.”
Gina shakes her head. “I have the one true thing I want. He is sitting at my table like a sad fish, looking all glum.”
“I’ve thrown it all into the fire,” Harry says. “All the bottles and the war chests and the books and the spirits. I’ve kept one item that you once gave me, one scarlet thing, and one small note my mother left behind for me, also a scarlet thing. But that is all.”
“Are friends and death in the blaze too? Trees and the ocean and mornings?”
He nods. “Everything.”
She shakes her head. “You didn’t hear Rose correctly, and you haven’t read her father’s story. That’s not the meaning of it. In ‘Earth’s Holocaust,’ it’s actually the opposite.”
“Perhaps I should read it then, before I draw analogies,” he mutters.
“If you burn the earth itself to a cinder,” she says, “none of it matters, because you haven’t burned down the only thing of consequence.”
“Which is?”
“Your human heart,” says Gina, squeezing him, kissing his hands. “And you know what’s in mine?”
He knows. But she tells him anyway. “When I am dead and opened,” she whispers, “you shall find Harry lying in my heart.”
But Harry is not being truthful with Gina. He has read Hawthorne’s indelicate story. And it is she who has misunderstood it, not he. For, without also burning down the human heart in the apocalypse, Hawthorne wrote, forth from it will reissue all the shapes of wrong and misery.
“There will be days and summers with you like this,” she exclaims. “We are so blessed. And it will only get better.”
Harry nods, smiles, but doesn’t speak.
O, take my word for it, it will be the old world yet!
About the Author
Paullina Simons was born in Leningrad and emigrated to the United States in 1973. She lives close to New York, with her husband and most of her children. Go to her website, www.paullinasimons.com, for more information on her novels.
By the same author
FICTION
Tully
Red Leaves
Eleven Hours
The Girl in Times Square
Road to Paradise
A Song in the Daylight
The Bronze Horseman Trilogy
The Bronze Horseman
Tatiana and Alexander
The Summer Garden
NON FICTION
Tatiana’s Table
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
Copyright © Paullina Simons 2012
Paullina Simons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9780007305582
EPub Edition © October 2012 ISBN: 9780007484034
Version 1
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