Bellagrand: A Novel (25 page)

Gina swallowed her pride and her fear and went to Barrington.

Chapter 7

B
ELLAGRAND

One

I
T WAS AN ICY
New England day, and black frozen mud covered the road and the sidewalks.

Gina took a train to Barrington on a late Tuesday afternoon after she had called in sick to Wood Mill but still dragged herself to St. Vincent’s for a few hours to help them mend and sort their donations for the busy Christmas season.

At first she walked in the wrong direction from the Barrington train station, studying the map. It took her a while to find Cherry Street. All these years she had imagined Barrington as a smaller, fancier Lawrence, but it was nothing remotely like Lawrence. It was a hilly, whitewashed tiny town with a pristine cobblestoned main street, two white spire churches bookending the winding avenue, quaint little shops with color-coordinated awnings, and multiflashing Christmas lights strung from end to end. It was nested in the up and down hills and woods near Arlington Heights and Winchester, and if one drove too fast in a four-cylinder Model T, one could easily miss it.

Barrington was smaller than Concord, smaller than Hampton, smaller even than Revere. It was like a precious storybook oil painting. There was something intimate about it, as if the painting wasn’t meant for sale or for the eyes of the general public. If Gina were an artist and lived in New Guinea or the Philippines and dreamed about what small-town America might look like, and imagined the most idyllic scene, this is what she would paint. But it still wouldn’t do the place justice, wouldn’t show her what she saw now with wide-open eyes: the red-glow sign on the bakery window blinking the words in a red circle,
fresh hot donuts
. Gina didn’t know what a donut was, but she was sure it was something exquisite because it smelled so good as she walked by slowly despite the wind and the rain.

Meandering, her heart aching, eventually she found Cherry Street and the expansive white colonial with sober black shutters. For a few minutes Gina stood in the sleet gazing at it. She could not believe that this was the house from which her husband came, where he was born and raised. She had never known anyone who lived in a home of such stature. In Belpasso, her mother cleaned houses for the wealthy dons, and her father made house calls to groom them, but the Attavianos remained stubbornly on the outside of that life. They may have had a dinghy on the ocean, but they were not
of
the ocean. Seeing this house, Gina at last fully understood that Harold Barrington, born 1877, class of Harvard 1900, a master’s in economics, an almost Ph.D. in economic theory, son of Herman Barrington, merchant, industrialist, investor, builder, son of Frances Barrington, the socialite Daughter of the Revolution, a direct descendant of Robert Treat Paine, a Founding Father, her husband Harry, a
Mayflower
pilgrim, once had been profoundly of the ocean.

It took Gina a while to get up the nerve to creak open the iron gate and walk up the brick path to the front door. After she knocked too softly, why did she stand and pray that no one was home?

The red door opened. An attractive plump brunette in her thirties appraised her. “May I help you? Are you collecting for the Sodality? I was expecting you. Let me get my purse.”

“No, wait—” Gina stammered. “I’m . . . Mrs. . . . Ba . . . I’m Ja . . . could I speak to Esther Barrington, please? Is she, um, in?”

The woman frowned. “I don’t know if she is in. Who, may I say, is calling?”

“Gina Barrington.”

The woman’s entire demeanor changed. She stepped away. “Wait here.”

The door closed. Five agonizing minutes floated by like icebergs. The door opened again. “I’m sorry,” the plump woman said. “But Mrs. Barrington is
not
in.”

“Please . . .” whispered Gina, her voice breaking, her hand reaching out. “I desperately need her help. It’s about her brother . . .”

The woman blinked. “Wait here.” The door slammed.

Another five minutes, her cheeks turning red from the cold.

The red door opened.

In front of Gina stood Esther. Gina hadn’t seen Esther since running into her in the church basement in 1906, and she had aged considerably. Gina tried not to have her own face show the acknowledgment of time’s merciless march upon Harry’s sister. At forty-five, Esther looked much older than Harry despite his numerous stints in prison, which aged mortal men. Her lifelong thinness, once an elegant charm, now gave her a look of schoolmarmy, bony severity. Her hair had gone completely gray, her pale lined face had not a trace of makeup on it. With her sharp straight nose, chiseled cheeks and chin, and pronounced brows, she looked like a wizened flightless bird. She resembled Harry only in the eyes and the mouth. The eyes were deep-set and gray like his, and the mouth had the same dry sardonic twist to it, as if both brother and sister were constantly keeping caustic comments from tripping off their silver tongues. As always, Esther was impeccably dressed, in a two-piece fine-cloth twill black suit, gray stockings, and sharp, smart-heeled, closed-toe black pumps. The two tall women stood silent, warily eyeing each other, Gina vanquished, Esther cold. Her voice was harsh when she spoke. “What is it you want?”

“Esther . . . may I come in for a few minutes?”

“What you have to say can’t be said at the open door?”

“No,” said Gina. “It can’t.”

Reluctantly, Esther pulled the door open. Gina stepped into a wide grand hall with a twenty-foot ceiling and a long-chain crystal chandelier. Everything was decorated, put away, shined, dusted. Heavy-framed oil paintings adorned the walls. It was warm. Through the door on Esther’s right, Gina could see a reflection of a flickering amber flame, perhaps a fire.

They stood in the resounding hall. Esther sighed. “May I take your coat?”

“Yes, please.” Gina handed Esther her velvet bonnet and the gray wool coat she had made herself. Under the coat she wore her finest olive green wool serge dress. It wasn’t the quality of Esther’s, but it was sophisticated and well made. Gina always received compliments when she wore it, and so she wore it today.

Esther stood with Gina’s coat in her hands until the woman who had opened the door came back to the hall. “Rosa,” said Esther, “this is Gina Barrington, Harry’s wife. This is Rosa, my lady’s maid.”

“Oh,” said Rosa, her mouth pursed, “nice to meet you,” in a tone meant to convey that meeting Gina was the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

“Likewise,” said Gina.

The three women stood. Esther sighed again. “Would you like some tea?”

“Yes, please.”

Esther gestured to Rosa to go get on with it, but quickly. She showed Gina into the parlor room, where indeed there was a fire, and tall slender floor lamps, all lighted, and a wall full of books. A Persian rug covered the wide-plank parquet, cream-colored, comfortable Edwardian couches faced each other. Gina sank down at the edge of one. Esther sat primly across from her.

“Rosa will be here in a moment with the tea,” Esther said. “But in the meantime, would you like to tell me what this impromptu visit is about?”

Gripping her hands together so tightly it caused her pain, Gina, through her distorted mouth, told Esther everything. In the middle of her squalid account, she started to cry, though she had tried really hard not to.

In the middle of it, Rosa entered with a tray of tea and biscuits. Gina wiped her face with her hand.

“Rosa, can you please get a handkerchief for . . .” Esther stopped. She clearly didn’t know what to call Gina, preferring to call her nothing. “She doesn’t seem to be able to locate her own.”

The handkerchief with the Barrington family crest on it was helpful, and while Gina wiped her face with it and blew her nose, Rosa critically poured the tea and arranged the biscuits. Gina stopped speaking until she was done and gone.

“Well, thank you for coming to see us. I’ve heard you out,” Esther said calmly, as if they weren’t talking about her only brother. “But I don’t know what it is you want me to do.”

“My child needs his father.”

“His father has been convicted by a court of law. What can I possibly do about that?”

Gina’s fingers were cracking under the tension. She wanted to drink something hot, but couldn’t pick up her cup of tea. “His sentencing is in less than two weeks,” she said feebly. “I know his father—your father—is a respected member of the community. He knows people, doesn’t he? He knows judges, the district attorney. Maybe he can do something. Talk to the prosecutor? Maybe there can be clemency?”

“For a felony?” Esther shook her head. “Only an outgoing president of the United States can issue a clemency, and Mr. Wilson is not due to leave office for another two years. Besides I’m not sure my brother would warrant a pardon from him.”

“Perhaps your father can help work out a plea deal?”

“That’s done before a conviction, not after.”

“Maybe there is some way Mr. Barrington could intercede on behalf of his son, vouch for him?”

“Vouch for what?” asked Esther. “How can our father vouch for him? Harry is an incorrigible recidivist.”

“Perhaps Harry could be paroled? Probationed?”

“He is about to be sentenced to a mandatory ten years without parole!” Esther exclaimed. “Isn’t that what you just told me?”

“I don’t know what I told you, Esther,” Gina whispered. “I don’t know anything anymore.” The two women sat in the parlor room. The wood crackled in the fire. Gina finally picked up her cup of tea and drank from it.

“Why did you decide to have a baby now?” Esther asked. “You’ve been married for so long. You must be past your child-bearing years. What are you now, nearly forty?”

“I’m thirty-four.”

“Ah.” Esther nodded. “Yes, how could I forget. You’re seven years younger than my brother.”

“Yes.”

“When he and Ben Shaw first met you, when you came to this country, you were just fourteen years old, isn’t that right?”

“I was a month away from fifteen.”

“So what I said was correct. You were fourteen years of age.”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“Indeed,” said Esther, appraising her. “Indeed.”

Gina wasn’t meeting Esther’s piercing gaze. She was holding her warm teacup.

“Why now?”

Gina stirred the sugar at the bottom of her tea. The shaking spoon jangled against the porcelain. “When we first got married, we didn’t want children. Then we thought we had plenty of time. And when we wanted to, we couldn’t.
I
couldn’t.” Gina didn’t look at Esther. “We tried.”

Esther was silent. Gina couldn’t see her expression. Was it sympathy or contempt? “But you knew he was in the middle of a trial that could put him away for many years,” Esther said. “Why didn’t you wait at least until the jury finished deliberating?”

“That would have been prudent,” said Gina. “We hadn’t planned it.”

“Have you or my brother planned a single thing in your life?”

“I don’t know,” said Gina. “I guess the answer to that is no.” The tea was barely warm. She wanted a sweet biscuit, but didn’t think it was ladylike to chew and cry at the same time. Esther herself wasn’t drinking or eating.

Tears fell from Gina’s eyes into her teacup. “I just want to give life to this one baby,” she whispered. “I can’t work anymore because when I’m rushing, carrying things, up and down, I start to bleed. This is my last chance, I know it. Please Esther. I don’t know if you have any children . . .”

Esther groaned under her breath, and in that brief anguished sound, Gina suddenly heard the parallel years, years with money and a husband, with a paid-for house, and yet agony still, suffering still. She hadn’t even asked how Esther had been, how she and her husband, the Red Cross medic, had managed through the war. Esther was wearing black. There was no wedding band on her finger, but that meant little. There was no wedding band on Gina’s finger either. Gina dried her face, ashamed of her self-absorption.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” Esther said in a captured-bird stilted voice. “But thank you for coming to see us. I can’t imagine it was easy.”

“No.”

“I wish you all the best with this pregnancy, and I mean that sincerely. I wish there were something I could do. But there is nothing. My father has not been well lately, he’s had to restrict his numerous business activities on doctor’s orders. He doesn’t have the kind of influence you ascribe to him, the power to bend a judge to commute my brother’s conviction.”

Gina was quiet. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Positive.” Esther paused. “I can offer you some money . . .”

Gina shot up, knees faulty, legs liquid. She felt unsteady, like all the blood had rushed to her head. “No, no.” She put up her hands in stark refusal. “I really must run. I’ve imposed on you terribly with my visit. I truly apologize. I won’t keep you a moment longer.”

“Wait.” Esther got up herself, much slower. “Did my brother send you?”

“No. He doesn’t even know I’m pregnant.”

“Because it would be just like him. To send you. All his life he could never face up to anything . . .”

“Oh, you’re quite wrong about him,” said Gina. “Maybe he was like that before, but now . . . he is stalwart. Yes, he faces up to things. He’s accepted that he’s done wrong, he is remorseful, but completely ready for his sentence. He is strong.”

The women stood facing each other in the front hall.

Gina clenched her fists for strength.

“Esther, forgive me for barging in on you like this. And ask your father to forgive me. Forgive
us
. I know what Harry did . . . back then . . . was judged harshly by his family, because what he did was unforgivable. We loved each other very much, though that’s not an excuse for bad behavior.” She almost added how glad she was that Alice had found happiness in Texas, but remembered just in time that it was Ben who had told her this, and she didn’t think it was a good idea to divulge that part to Esther. She was certain that Esther would not take kindly to learning that Ben of all people had been coming around, while Harry was in prison, to tell Gina things. “You’ve been very kind to listen to me,” she said instead. “Please don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine. Really. We’ll figure it out. Could you get my coat?”