Ah. “No. Or yes? Of course we do.”
She didn’t ask, but Ben told her anyway. “I have a three-year commitment. But don’t tell the wife. She thinks we’re here for only one more semester.”
“The Spanish don’t understand the Italians, don’t worry,” said Gina. “But your wife, she can tell time, no?”
Ben laughed. “Only by the sun.”
“So. No worries then. No sun in Boston until the spring.”
“Right.” His voice was almost even. “No sun in the winter.”
Gina was poured out like water. How was she even breathing? She glanced around for a back of a chair to grab on to. “I’m not used to these heels,” she said, swaying. “I’m having trouble standing in them. I’ve been barefoot for so long.”
“I heard you had a child.”
“Yes. A son.”
“Congratulations. I have three girls.”
“I heard. Your wife said. Congratulations, too.”
“Is he here with you?”
Head jerk from side to side. “He’s too little. Plenty of time for funerals in his future.”
“What’s his name?”
“Alexander.”
“Alessandro,” said Ben. “Is he a good boy?”
“Very good.” Please, to change the subject! “Your mother seems well.”
“And why not? Women have the vote, men can’t drink, we’re not at war . . .”
“And her son is back.”
Ben smiled. “That, too. How is your mother?”
Tears sprang to the puppet’s eyes. Ben leaned forward, said what?—and Ingersol came back, sparing the puppet a weeping response.
Putting his hand on his wife’s back, Ben stepped away. “You all right, Inge?”
“Yes, of course, I’m fine, darling.” She smiled at Gina and down at Esther. “I do not know if you two have children, but at the end, it is so difficult to move around. I do not know what I do without Benny.”
Benny. Gina smiled like it was drawn on.
Leaning down, Ben kissed Esther on the cheek, rumpled her shoulder a little. “Buck up, Est. Hey, come on now. What did I say?”
“You said buck up.”
“Are you bucking? Up?”
Esther almost smiled.
“Herman would’ve been proud of you,” Ben continued. “Look how many people came. Seems like all of Boston is here. You’ve sent him off so well. Like he deserved. He was a great man. You’ve outdone yourself.” Ben kissed her temple. “Also the food is excellent. Better than at your wedding.”
Esther laughed. “That’s what I shoot for. That the funerals are more memorable than the weddings.”
Ben laughed with her. “Like I said. Outdone yourself.” He motioned to the food station. “We’re going to get some more before we go.”
Esther patted his arm. “All you want, Ben.”
“But then we’ll head out, all right? Ingersol is tired.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll see you next week. I’ll stop by on Friday after my seminar. Do you want me to bring some more of that apple cake from Crimson’s you said you liked?”
“That’ll be fine.”
After Ben and Ingersol walked away, Gina sat down by Esther’s side and downed the drink that was next to her. It was strong and revolting, and not even hers. Suddenly she stood, excused herself to Esther, and hurried inside the big house, tripping over her skirt, running down the grand hallway and into the parlor room. She stood at the bay window by the side curtain watching Ben’s back as he helped his wife into the car. He had another car now, a nicer one. Shiny. Cream colored. After he shut Ingersol’s door, he straightened up and turned to glance back at the house. His eyes searched the windows, as if looking for her. Not knowing what to do, Gina hid herself halfway behind the sheer white curtain. But Ben saw her. He smiled and lifted his hand in a wave. She lifted hers. He walked around the hood of his car, got in, and drove away. Gina fanned her trembling palm against the glass pane. Addio, il mio ex amante.
Four
AFTER THE GUESTS HAD LEFT, and the servants all gone to bed, Gina and Esther sat in Herman’s study, and to commemorate him sipped his finest brandy out of his crystal goblets. Except for the honeyed wild-guava juice from Cuban rivers and the diluted mojitos, Gina hated the taste of hard liquor. She drank tonight to keep Esther company.
Esther had been tense, silent, clipped with everyone, especially Gina, but even with Rosa. Well, who wouldn’t be, Gina reasoned, on the day you buried your father. Esther had never moved out of her childhood home, not even when she married Elmore. They had lived here with Herman until Elmore left with the Red Cross during the war.
The house was quiet except for the crackling of the wood on the fire. Finally Esther spoke. “Once this liquor is gone, it’s gone,” she said. “Father bought this bottle on the day I was born, his first child. He told me we would open it when I turned eighteen, and then we would drink from it to commemorate other momentous events in my life.” She lifted up the bottle to show Gina how full it still was. “We drank on my eighteenth birthday. We drank when Harry got engaged to Alice. When I got married. We had several drinks when your son was born. And one week ago my father sat where you are sitting tonight, and he and I drank quite a lot of it. He said to me, no use saving it, Esther. Might as well enjoy the finest brandy that money can buy.” She lifted the bottle higher. “And yet look how full it still is.”
Gina bowed her head. “Herman’s advice is spot on. Long ago my mother bought herself a dinner service for four of good china. She said we would use it on special occasions. She had the set for twenty years. We ate off it exactly once.”
“When was that?”
Gina paused. “When I brought Harry home after we got married.”
“Fascinating,” Esther said. “So in your house that was seen as cause for celebration.”
Gina wanted to kick herself. She swallowed. “What a long time ago these things were. Seems like someone else’s life in many ways.”
“Many things were a long time ago,” said Esther. “Then again, some of the things you did a long time ago are continuing to cost me dearly in the present, aren’t they.” It wasn’t a question.
Kick. Herself. And hard. Thinly Gina smiled. “You must be tired, Esther. Can I help you upstairs? It’s been such a difficult day. I remember when my father d—”
“It’s so glib of you to dismiss the past as the past,” Esther interrupted. “But how far away can it be, really, when at my father’s funeral, which is today, the son he gave life to yesterday is not present? Pray do tell.”
“Oh, Esther,” said Gina, “that has nothing to do with me. He’s not free to come and go. I begged him to talk to Janke again. But you know what a militant she is. She wasn’t going to let him return to Boston, of all places.”
“How hard did he try?”
“He tried.” Gina chewed her lip. “I begged him to try again.”
“Did you?” Esther paused. “Like you begged him to marry you?”
“What?” Gina’s hands became unsteady. She hoped it was because of the brandy. “Of course not. I didn’t beg—” No, there was no use defending that. Carefully she placed her goblet on the small table near her chair. No point holding it. What if she dropped it accidentally? Then where would they be? “Esther, what’s the matter? Why would you want to talk about that, today of all days?”
“Because my brother isn’t here, today of all days.”
“It’s awful. I’m sorry. I know how you feel . . .”
“Do you? Do you really have any idea? Somehow, I don’t believe you do.”
“Of course, Esther.” Gina frowned slightly as she stared at her sister-in-law. “You know I lost my father, too. And I wasn’t nearing fifty. I was only fourteen. I was still a child.”
“Yes, Gina, you keep reminding me you were only a child when many things happened,” Esther said. “Many things that all have you as the common denominator, things that changed
the course of my life, my father’s life, my brother’s life.” Esther took a breath. “And Ben’s life.”
“Ben?” Gina wanted to sprint from the room. Oh no. That’s what this was about. “Esther, don’t blame me for Ben. Please.” Gina stared to the left of Esther’s face. “Blame me for your brother, fine, but . . .”
“He went to Panama to get away from you.”
“What?” What was happening? Color drained from Gina’s face. All she could do was shake her head.
Esther nodded hers. “Yes. Oh, yes. Do you want me to count how many times you made him run for his life? Three.” To Gina’s horror, Esther held up one finger. “The first time was back in 1900. After he found out about Harry helping you in secret with Salvo’s restaurants. He up and left.”
Gina was shaking her head so vigorously, she was becoming dizzy. “Esther, I was fifteen—I had no idea about anything.”
“Oh, you had an idea about some things.”
“He was always going to go.” Flyers! Lemonade! Signatures! Petitions!
“Was he? How do you know? I thought you had no idea about anything?”
“I know because he used to talk about nothing but Panama.”
“To whom? To you? To an immigrant Sicilian bambina who didn’t speak four words of English?”
“Please, Esther . . .”
Esther held up two fingers. “Two—the year you and Harry snuck out of the house for your secret nuptials. Have you noticed—everything my brother did with you was in secret? Everything. Yes, don’t even get me started on Harry and you. But Ben had come back to Boston to be his best man—for his actual wedding, the real wedding—and he didn’t want to return to Panama. He was having work trouble. I was very close to persuading him to stay for good. But the minute he found out about you and Harry and your rendezvous with the justice of the peace, he was off.” Esther’s voice was measured, contained. She was speaking deliberately and clearly. She was loud and ice-cold. She was frightening.
Gina opened her hands. “Esther, I didn’t even see Ben when Harry and I got married. I hadn’t seen Ben at that point in five years.”
“Ben couldn’t face Harry—because of you. No one could after what happened. But Ben couldn’t fake it, couldn’t be friends with Harry like before. Because of you.”
Gina stared sideways into her cognac glass. She wished she liked the drink more, so she could have a ladleful not a thimble, to not hear quite so well, to become diffuse like a vapor, to vanish. That’s what she wanted. To vanish.
How fresh the burns still were. But Gina had her own wounds to deal with, her own sharp disappointments. She thought Bellagrand had healed them, made the ragged things smooth like satin. Certainly for her. Who could remember old burns when every morning she woke up, and the breeze came through her balcony doors, and the sun rose on the ocean, on her marble house? There was no mud, only marble. There was no pain when she spent her days on the lawn playing bricks and mortar, and hide-and-seek. She had a boat named Gia, her own dock, two ovens. She mastered the culinary arts of her home country and her adopted country, she drank heady wine and never lost all the baby weight, she was dark like a Sicilian urchin running around in sackcloth, barefoot and in bliss, and her husband whispered to her in the night and at noontime, tu sei tutta bella. Mi amica, tu sei tutta bella. Harry had learned well the Song of Songs in the Romance language. All his edges had been silked off. He wasn’t sandpaper. He was glorious. He read, ate her food, swam, fixed boats, planted trees, built playhouses for Alexander, and loved her. Bellagrand.
All the other B’s in her life she had almost forgotten. Belpasso. Boston. Ben.
What Esther brought to the surface tonight was the other Gina—not the current one, who wanted nothing more, all apologies to her beloved papa, but to forget where she came from.
“Please, Esther,” she said. “I’m sorry. Forgive me for your brother. But you see us now, you’ve seen us in Bellagrand. Your brother and I . . . from the beginning, Harry and I had a great love.”
“Do you even know what love is?”
Gina sat up straighter, terrified not so much by the incongruous question, but by Esther’s brutal intensity. “What are you talking about?” she asked tremulously, shaking from distress. “Of course I do—”
Esther held up three fingers.
Groaning, Gina put up her palms as if in surrender. “Please, Esther,” she whispered. “Ferma!”
“You used him,” Esther said, slamming her empty goblet on the wooden table. “You used Ben when you were young, when you say you didn’t know any better, and you used him again when you were older and knew very well what you were doing. You took him and wrung him out. To escape you, he had to run for the third time from this continent.” Esther’s hands were in balls, her long polished nails digging into her clenched palms. “In 1914,” she said, “when the cursed canal finally opened, I was so happy when he came back! We were always close, and I needed him so much when Elmore left for Europe, and when my poor husband got sick and died. I don’t know why he had to die. He was a decent man and deserved a longer life. But through everything, Ben was so good to me. As always. So comforting. Suddenly, with barely a notice, he up and left again—back to Panama. Wouldn’t even stay for Christmas. I begged him to stay. I thought he was done with Panama for good. He had promised me he wouldn’t leave again. And yet, he fled! And it wasn’t until today, when I saw him with you, that I finally realized why. He fled you.”
The tips of Gina’s fingers were numb. It was unbearably loud in Herman’s dark and quiet study. “No, Esther.”
“Once—when you were supposedly a child—you used him to get to Harry,” Esther said in a gutted voice. “Did you also use him to get back at Harry? When my brother was in prison, reading books, becoming a radical, you were left alone. You were relatively young. Considered yourself quite fetching, didn’t you? Oh, yes, the Sicilian swoon! Gina this and Gina that. And your husband was never with you. Thought the universe owed you a little bit, didn’t you?”
“None of what you’re saying is true. God owes me nothing. It is I who . . .”
“So you chewed him up, and when you were done, you spat him out like stale gum. Him, the best man I know!” Esther cried.
Gina squeezed her hands together in entreaty, in prayer. “Esther, what are you talking about? How could I have used Ben for anything? Harry didn’t stay home, did he? If what you say is true, then my efforts were futile, no?”
“Yes, your efforts were futile,” Esther said. “Because your charms are limited, and they didn’t work on my brother. But what I say is true.”
“No. It’s not true.”
“If it weren’t for you, Ben never would’ve left.”
“But he was meant to go! The Panama Canal needed to be built.”
“Not in 1915 it didn’t!”
Gina slumped against the chair. She would have gotten up and fled herself, except she knew her flaccid legs would betray her.
Esther, her eyes glazed over by half-a-century-old brandy, leaned forward, narrowed her gaze at Gina, bitter pupils pinpointed like tips of swords, like her words, which she almost didn’t slur. “You wouldn’t look at him,” Esther whispered agonizingly. “You couldn’t look at him! He kept trying to catch your eye when his wife stepped away. And you wouldn’t oblige him. He tilted his head! And you wouldn’t return his gaze. You looked at his tie! At his shirt, at the grass, at your glass, at anything, but his face. There was nothing friendly about your talk with him this afternoon. That’s not how friends behave. That’s how old lovers behave. He carries a torch with your name on it, and you looked away because you couldn’t bear to see him waving it still burning into your shameless face.”
“Esther, you’ve had too much to drink.” Gina was gasping.
“That changes nothing.”
“You’re wrong.”
Esther shook her head. “About this? Never.”
“I’m sorry you’re upset with me. But today is the day your fathe
r was buried. Why do you bring up these other things?”
“Because my brother is not here! My father’s only son is not here!”
Esther cried. Gina cried.
Feeling that she owed Esther something, a word, a hint of confession, a breath of honesty, Gina lowered her head in heavy remorse. “Esther,” she quietly said, “supposing for one moment that what you’re accusing me of is true, wouldn’t you then have your answer as to why your brother isn’t here?”
Esther was dry-heaving. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” she said in a voice filled with shards of glass. “That’s supposed to make me understand, make me forgive you, perhaps? That you broke not only Ben’s heart, not only my heart, my father’s heart, and Alice’s heart, but that you also broke my brother’s heart?”
“Esther, don’t say that!”
“The instant you came off that boat, the second your life intersected with ours, you have caused all of us nothing but misery!”
Gina was dry-heaving herself. “Esther, how can you say that . . . what about Alexander, what about Bellagrand . . .”
Esther wept. “Yes, yes, yes. I know how bitterly my heart is divided. You give Alexander with one hand, but what do you take away with the other? After my mother died, my brother and my father were all I had. You destroyed that, our small family, our broken but bonded unit. You have rent apart my father and my brother for most of their adult lives—and mine. You separated father and son. Think about that. You took my father’s Alexander away from him! And now it’s too late. All the years, they’re gone, gone. You divided this house, just so you could have what you want. And then! because that wasn’t enough for you, you took Ben!” Esther covered her face, screamed into her palms. “I don’t know how I can look at you, how I can talk to you. You have ruined me. Look at me.”
Gina couldn’t speak. Esther, she mouthed, repenting at the ineffable altar of someone else’s suffering, please forgive me . . .
“You took him from my life, and from Harry’s life. Has Harry ever had a friend like Ben? No. Never. And you, like a feebleminded child, advised me to sell my mother’s jewelry. You said you understood things. Oh my God. You understand nothing!” Esther threw up her hands, and brought them down like a mortally wounded bird falling inconsolable from the sky. “Don’t you understand that Ben is the love of my life?” she said. “I have loved him since I was fifteen years old, since the day Harry first brought him home. He put a smile on my face then, and he has never stopped. Secret, yes, unrequited, yes, but my deepest longing, the deepest desire of my heart. And you’ve killed that for me, too. My family, my brother, my beloved. What’s left, Gina Attaviano?” said Esther wretchedly. “Would you like my house? Rosa? What else is there for you to take from me, to cart away in your fancy suitcase bought with my dead mother’s money?”