Bellagrand: A Novel (28 page)

“House arrest? What does that mean? Like
your
house?”

“That can and will
never
happen,” said Herman.

“Exactly. So where then? My house in Lawrence?”

Herman shook his head. “Lawrence is perceived as the nexus of the worst kind of trouble—social, political, financial. It is at the root of all discontent and upheaval. You will not be allowed to return there in the foreseeable future.”

“So where then?” Harry asked, exasperated.

“The terms of your house arrest and probation are not easy. Any violation during the three-year period, any at all, and you’re back in prison for the remainder of your ten-year sentence. This means no demonstrations, no strikes, no protests, no assaults on the police, no writing for new radical magazines, no joining communist labor parties, no incitement, no slogans, no political books, no meetings, public or private, no telegrams or cables to Russia, probably best not even to wear red, just to be on the safe side.”

Harry sat motionless. “Please can I choose the lady instead of the tiger?”

“Oh, most certainly,” Herman replied. “The District Attorney of Boston, in coordination with Mitchell Palmer, the Attorney General of the United States, has offered me to send you permanently to Russia, since that’s clearly where you want to be. Did you try to get a visa to go there for the revolution? They’re offering you safe passage. They’re working on commissioning a ship, perhaps the
Buford
, to deport you and a legion of your seditious compatriots. Palmer told me to tell you, you can bunk with Emma Goldman. When she leaves prison next year that’s precisely where she is heading: Russia. They’ve reserved a special place for her on this ocean liner.”

“Father, are you joking with me?”

“Have you known me to be a joker, Harry?”

“No, but this seems preposterous. Is this a real thing?”

“Palmer is very keen on making it happen, on making it real. As I just told you, he is looking into the mighty
Buford
. It’s anchored in New York Harbor, ready to steam out. A few months, I’d say. Six maybe.”

They sat.

“Will Gina come with me?” asked Harry.

“No,” Esther replied. “Gina is due in May. She is not going to get on a ship in her condition or with a brand-new infant and be deported anywhere. That’s lunacy.”

Harry looked up at the clock in sour resignation. Time was ticking away. “Where is this proposed house arrest to be?” His shoulders slumped.

“I had to offer the judge a place for your exile he would deem acceptable, away from Boston, from New York, from all urban or industrial centers where you could get into trouble. Away from coal mines and factories and textile mills.”

Harry waited silently.

“I offered him Bellagrand.”

Harry sat.

Esther sat.

Herman sat.

“I don’t know what you just said.”

“In her will,” said Herman, “your mother left you the only piece of property that belonged solely to her. She stipulated that it be placed in irrevocable trust, to be managed by me, but to become yours upon my death. Since inconveniently for you I am still alive, ownership can’t yet transfer to you.” Herman paused, having difficulty continuing. “Bellagrand has been unoccupied since your mother’s death, but will be made available for your use should you choose to accept the terms of your conditional release.”

“My mother left me a
house
?” Harry glanced at Esther, astonished. It was all he could do to sit straight, to not fall down.

“Don’t look at
me
, Harry,” his sister said. “She just left me her jewelry. I knew nothing about a house until a few days ago when Father told me.”

“I don’t know what I’m more shocked by—her leaving me a house or you not telling me,” Harry said to his father. “What house? Why didn’t you ever say anything? She died twenty-eight years ago. Why would you keep this from me all this time?”

“You’re asking the wrong questions, Harry,” said Herman. “And you know the answers to some of them. For the last thirteen years, you and I have had no contact. So I couldn’t have possibly told you. And before that, I didn’t feel you were ready to hear it. What you should be asking, or thinking about,” he continued, “is why your mother, after everything that transpired between her and me, did not leave her beloved Bellagrand to you outright.”

“All right, Dad,” said Esther, placing a calming hand on her father’s arm.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Harry. “Why
beloved
Bellagrand? I’ve never heard of this place.”

Herman withdrew his arm from his daughter’s hold. Esther had no power to calm a cat. “What I’m saying is, it should tell you volumes about the confidence your mother had in your decision-making abilities.”

“I see. So after all these years you come to visit me in prison to make
more
conflict?”

“Dad, please!” That was Esther, voice rising shrilly to calm the seas.

“It’s fine, Esther,” said Herman. “Harry, I’m following your mother’s wishes, not my own.”

“You’ve made that abundantly clear.”

“She wanted you to use the property for a rightful purpose. This seems as rightful a purpose as there is.”

Weakened, depleted, Harry fought the impulse to squeeze his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to look at his family. “I’m supposed to stay for three years in some place I’ve never heard of? Where did Mother get this house from, anyway?”

Herman was mute. Not like he wouldn’t say. Like he couldn’t say.

“Henry Flagler,” Esther quietly replied for him.

“Oh my God!” Harry exclaimed. “Bellagrand is the
Florida
house?”

“Jupiter Island house to be precise.”

Now all three of them sat lost in the fog of their black understanding. “She left
that
to me?” Harry covered his face, losing control of his fake-calm demeanor. He groaned. “Why punish
me
? Why torment
me
?” He struggled to pull himself together. “No. I might as well stay here. Why trade one cell for another? Why trade this for
that
? What, I don’t have enough misery?”

“Your wife is having a
baby
!” Esther hissed like a locomotive.

“Do you really
need
to keep reminding him of that, Esther?” Herman banged his fist on the table. “Why does he keep acting like someone who doesn’t know?”

“Or doesn’t care.”

Harry shrugged, tapping out his tension with anxious and impatient fingers. He glanced up again at the merciless hands of the clock, wishing desperately this visit would be over and he could go back to his cell. Better no visitors than this. Better anything than this. The
Buford
was preferable, infinitely. Gina’s short-lived pregnancies had kept him from moving to New York, from leaving Lawrence, from going to Russia with John Reed, from pursuing his political future. And now the worst thing imaginable. He felt like he was being strangled.

Esther was staring at him coldly, glancing at Herman, looking down into her white hands.

“Daughter,” Herman said, “are you wondering why we bother?”

“I’m no longer wondering. I don’t know what to say.”

Harry waved to them. “The man you’re speaking about as if he doesn’t exist is right here.”

“We know where you are,” said Herman. “In a jail cell, pursuing your political future.”

“Okay. Yes,” Harry said. “Because unlike this, it’s some kind of
honor
being released into your dead mother’s den of shame riding the shallow wake of your wife’s fleeting pregnancy.” He didn’t look at anyone, his father most of all.

Hawthorne was right
, Harry thought.
What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s own self!

Big Bill was right, too. A man could never become great when he kept taking a woman, any woman, even one as compelling as Gina, into consideration about his path in life.

“Harry,” Esther breathed out. “When did you become so callous?”

“Esther, when did you become so bourgeois?”

“We were born to the same parents.”

“That’s the
one
good thing about America,” Harry snapped. “No one is limited to the station of one’s birth.”

Herman stood up, straightened out the best he could, and slowly took hold of his umbrella, which he used as his cane in public. He was thin like his umbrella. “And you are certainly a fine example of the American dream, son,” he said. “How does he do this? I’m absolutely drained. Come, Esther. His wife is downstairs waiting to see him.”

“Not a lot of time left for her,” Harry said, glancing at the clock.

“There’s not been a lot of time for her all these years while you’ve been radicalizing yourself into prison. Come, Esther!”

Harry had five minutes with Gina before the visiting hours ended. The first minute they didn’t know what to say.

“Are you angry?” she asked.

“No.” He sighed. “How are you feeling?”

“Not too bad. You?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Again
, he wanted to add, but didn’t. “Last time you came you looked so sick. I thought you had the flu.”

She bowed her head. “I wanted to tell you but you were so full of anger about the war . . .” She shrugged. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“This is what you want? To leave Boston, your life here, all your friends, and spend three years cooped up in a
house
?”

“Many of my friends have died. And who said
I’m
going to be cooped up?” She tried to smile. “
I’m
not under house arrest.” She paused. “What choice do we have? It’s a way out of this. I
do
want that.”

“What about your brother?”

“He can come visit.”

“It sounds like hell to me, frankly. Utter torture.”

Gina’s lip trembled. “I’m going to have a baby,” she whispered.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Harry.

Gina’s hands shook as she stood up, supporting herself against the table. “What is it about you,” she said, “that you bend in half all the people who love you?”

He stood up, but couldn’t think straight.

“Time, Barrington!” Roy yelled. “Wrap it up!”

Gina picked up her purse. “Harry, you tell me what you’d like to do. Stay here? Have me live with Esther? I’ll do as you wish. I don’t want to spring you from prison, if this is where you’d prefer to spend the next ten years of your life. Or perhaps Russia? Deportation? While there is still time, just give the word. The
Buford
is waiting. Bellagrand is supposed to be deliverance, not submission. Should I tell your father to forget the whole thing?”

“Stop being so Italian and melodramatic. I said I was sorry.”

“Yes, and meant it.”

“Look, I’m just dreaming of a time when you and I will once again see eye to eye on the important things. Like before. Remember?”

“Well, that’s just it. You’ve always been
such
a dreamer, Harry.”

“It’s what you used to say you loved best about me.”

“Must have been a long time ago,” she said, turning away. “Perhaps it was when you and I saw eye to eye on the important things.”

“Barrington, time!”

“Look, I want to get out, I do,” he said.

“I’m sure.”

“For the third time, I’m
sorry
—”

She left, she didn’t even turn around. She barely managed to square her shoulders so he wouldn’t see her cry. She was too proud to let him see the heartbreak in her humbled spine.

Seven

WHEN GINA WAS PACKING
up their Lawrence house, throwing out twenty years of life, hoping she was leaving and never coming back, she found a letter Harry had written to her in June of 1905, barely three weeks before they were married.

My dearest Gia,

I’m writing you this letter as you slumber curled up on your side in front of me. We haven’t even parted, yet I’m sitting here watching you, missing you unbearably already, because I know what’s coming in such a short while. You will go your way, and I will go mine, if only for this Wednesday. I wish you knew how desperately I don’t want to spend a moment apart from you. I feel physical anguish as I write this, knowing how soon we will have to part.

These stolen Wednesday afternoons are not enough for me. Crawling to you on Thursdays just to watch you for two hours sell books to strangers is not enough for me.

I want nothing in my life as much as you. You are the whole reason for my breathing, for opening my eyes every morning. I can exhale because I know there is a chance I might see you this day if only for a few moments. You must be studying so hard into the late hours of night to fall asleep this soundly in the middle of the day, in the middle of our precious stolen afternoon. We’ve gotten it all backward, my heart. You should be studying in the middle of the day and staying awake into the witching hours with me. Look at this—I’m even jealous of your studying.

I will confess, I am jealous of every single thing you do that does not include me. I’m on the rack of jealousy about everything you lay your exquisite eyes upon that’s not me.

Has anyone ever told you that you are a beautiful girl?

You are a vision to look at, you are a Raphael work of art, a rare Caravaggio. If you saw what I see now, you would know that what I want to say is, you are a Modigliani singularis, but I don’t want to make you blush, even in your sweet repose.

I hope you will not show this letter to anyone; how could I ever look them in the eye after these romantic ramblings, all the more awkward because they’re so keenly heartfelt.

But you are the muse to my every insipid utterance.

Soon you will open your eyes, your mouth—O Lord, deliver me from this madness!

I can’t imagine anyone feeling this way about anyone.

Can I write something and have you promise you won’t laugh
when you read it? I want to say that no one has ever loved as much as I adore you, as much as I worship you. You have taken me by fiercest storm. You’ve left me nothing of my former self, my former life. I cannot imagine a day that doesn’t have you
in it. No, it’s more than that. I reject a life in which I do not lay my
eyes upon you, every day. My arms upon you, my hands upon
you. My mouth upon you.