Bellagrand: A Novel (32 page)

She walked up to him, stood in front of him, tired, unsmiling, her brown eyes exhausted pools of disappointed affection.

His hand reached up and touched her hip, pulled on the sashes of her robe. “Open,” he whispered. “I want to see.”

“See what? You’ve seen everything.”

“I want to see the baby,” he said.

She didn’t protest, but neither did she put down the hairbrush. Harry thought at any moment she might hit him over the head with it. He unraveled the silk tassels and pulled her robe partly open. She stood in front of him naked like he’d never seen her before, enlarged, softened, with a swollen belly protruding in a half moon circle. His palms fanned over it. The belly felt taut, not soft, half a watermelon under velvet skin. Leaning forward, he kissed it, kissed above her belly button, kissed below the belly button, and lingered there, his hands on her hips tightening in an insistent vise. He raised his eyes. Her breasts had tripled in size, her nipples dark and large.

He groaned under his breath, as if he didn’t quite want her to hear his need for her, his hands encircling her hips, moving her closer.

“How many months are you?” he asked hoarsely, gliding up and cupping her breasts. They used to fit molded into his hands. But no more. His breath was short.

“Almost five.”

“Have we gotten this far before?” Pulling up in the chair, he fondled her abundantly. He kissed the underside of her breasts.

“Not this far.”

His open impatient mouth closed around her hardened nipples.

She moaned, and dropped the brush. Ah. Finally.

Standing up he kissed her deeply, slipping the robe off her, pressing her bare body to his clothed body, his crazy hands wrapping around her back.

“You’re completely dressed,
marito,
” she whispered.

“And you’re completely naked.” He laid her down on their sprawling bed, stood over her, touching her ankles, looking at her. Slowly her arms lifted above her head. “You have become a different woman,” he whispered, leaning over her, kissing her nipples, wishing he could undress himself without letting go of her.

“No, just a pregnant woman,” she said, reaching for him, her head arching back, her eyes closing, her mouth parting, her thighs also.

He gazed at her for another mad moment, and went to close the balcony doors.

“What are you doing,” she moaned. “I wanted them open.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, kneeling on the bed between her legs. His spread-out hands palmed her thighs.

“Oh, yes, you’re right.” She shuddered before he laid the smallest kiss on her. She grabbed hold of his head. “Close the balcony doors, yes, yes.”

“They’re closed, my wife
,
” he whispered, lowering his head and his ravenous mouth upon her, oh, the bliss, the swell, the adulation.
Tu mi hai rapito il cuore
.

Tu sei tutta bella
, Harry whispered to her the words she once taught him.
Mia perfetta.

Ho fame,
she kept repeating over and over.
Ho fame.

Me too, he whispered. O God, me too. Starving. Famished.

She cried and cried. On top of her, he had his lips on her throat so he could feel her sobbing, her nipples so red and raw, she would fly from the bed at the barest intimation of his mouth leaning down to suck them. Gina, Gina . . .

Piango, piango.

Tell me what you want.

Prega non si smettere.

Am I ever stopping?

Into his neck, his head, his face, his heart, against his stomach, her maddening mouth was outrage in the night, and yet
pianse
, even when he was in her mouth and losing his sanity, no, it was long lost, hurled twenty years ago into the mysteries of ancient volcanoes. He perspired like never before, he
had
to open the balcony doors or they would both suffocate.

He opened the balcony doors.

They still suffocated.

Did you miss me? he whispered to her in the dark, cradled inside her. They were both wet like they lived in the womb.

I can’t live without you, she whispered back, moaning. Did you miss me?

He pressed his face and his mouth between her shoulder blades in reply.

Non smettere, non smettere mai . . .

Am I stopping?

They lay together, panting, trying to catch a parched breath.

Gina held his face between her hands. Harry, she whispered. There is love in every room in this house.

There is love in this room.

It was a labor of love that built it, whispered Gina.

I don’t want to talk about it. Please.

Look at the colors of Bellagrand. White, like a bride, like innocence, white like the sand, the distant shores, the horizon at dawn. White, for innocence, for romance, for thrall sublime.

I don’t see it, and don’t want to see it, he said, bending over her throat, kissing her clavicles, her nipples, her heart.

You’re blind.

Not quite blind, he whispered, gazing into her face.

Her lips found his lips. He closed his eyes.

Do you know what I regret?

She lay on their bed, tremulous, listening, receiving, waiting for more.

That I have only one pair of eyes to look at you with.

She moaned and opened her enveloping arms to him.

That I have only one pair of ears to hear you with.

She curved into his grasping hands.

That I have only one pair of hands to touch you with.

She was rocking from side to side, pulling him to her, onto her, please please . . .

That I have only one mouth to kiss you with.

So kiss me, kiss me, put your mouth on me, adore me . . .

That I have only one tongue to taste you with.

He had to close the doors to the balcony again, her ecstasy echoing down the dark rippled waters.

That I have only one—

Oh Harry . . .

Here and there and everywhere, relentless, endless.

And still she cried.

Don’t cry,
amica mia, innamorata
, he whispered, his breath heavy, his own heart opening and closing like a prayer book.
Non piangere
.

And yet …
lei piange.

I’m sorry
,
he lamented to her
in the moments of respite between the chaos of the hurricane. I’m sorry I’m not the man you thought I was
.

You
are
the man I thought you were. I’m sorry I was weak and wrong.
Mi dispiace. Perdonami
.

It’s done, it’s gone. Will you forgive me for my foolishness?

I can’t remember any.

I’m going to try harder. Though sometimes, like when the awful thing happened between us, I become dreadfully afraid that I am simply not equal to the task, that I will never be quite worthy of your love. This is what I fear most. And it is when I fear this that I behave the worst. Sometimes I don’t know how to help us become what we both once dreamed we would be.

Never fear,
delitto mio
. We are what we dreamed. Half apart, but whole together.

Yes. Half apart, but whole together. They lay on their sides, belly to belly. Please, don’t ever leave me.

I will never leave you.
Non ti lascero mai
.

Promise me.

I already did. I married you. That was my promise.

She fell asleep with Harry’s palm over their baby.

He remained awake, alive, sweltering, craving her again, needing her again. But she was curled up on her side, her hands under her cheek like a child.

For a long time afterward he lay next to her, listening to her breathe, his caressing hands on her, marveling at her silken skin and the bloom of her body, at her rounded hips and the dip of her widening waist. His face was pressed into the thick mane of her wild disheveled hair.

You want to know what else I regret, he murmured to her, breathed to her when he knew she was asleep and not listening.

I regret I have only one heart to love you with.

I regret I have only one brief life to love you.

Chapter 10

M
OLASSES

One

T
HEIR LAUGHTER THREATENED
to disturb the ducks in the pool. They were alone on the patio, on a long wooden bench at the breakfast table, Gina perched on Harry’s lap, telling him to behave, and he wasn’t behaving in the least, but was still trying to explain to her things she didn’t care a whit about. “Do you want me to get Fernando over here? He’ll tell you.”

“No! He’ll arrest you for indecency. Your present morning condition is not suitable for the public.” She squeezed him.

“I want him to set you right. Molasses is
not
bait for fish,” he said. “Where do you get your kooky ideas from? It’s human food.”

As Gina had requested, Rosa and Fernando brought home a wooden bench, but Harry didn’t approve of its rudimentary craftsmanship. “I should build you a proper bench,” he had said. “Show you how it’s really done.”

Esther had laughed at that when she heard. “
You
are going to build a bench? Do you even know what a hammer is? What nails are?”

“Har-de-har-har,” said Harry. “You forget, oh, mocking sibling, that you and I have the same father. And he taught me things too.”

“I can’t imagine you remember a single thing our father has taught you,” said Esther, and Gina crossed herself again at
Our Father,
and they groaned loudly, but when they turned, there was Cuban Catholic Fernando, also crossing himself, and they groaned even louder.

Fernando had been wrong: there were no bookstores in Spanish City, but he drove the women down to Palm Beach one afternoon where they had a long lunch at the Breakers and then went shopping and even bought appropriate books for Harry in Palm Beach Gardens. So now Harry had books to read, none of them on the naughty list.

Bellagrand was slowly settled by its inhabitants. Gina and Esther opened the pool, hired a cook and a housekeeper. Emilio and Carmela, a married couple in their fifties, hardly spoke, and Gina soon discovered why. They barely spoke English. This made it difficult for Gina to tell them what to cook and what to buy. They brought home unacceptable canned goods and ketchup. They bought the wrong kind of fish. They found linens that weren’t soft and loose muslin dresses for Gina that looked like burlap sacks, and then seemed silently offended when Gina wouldn’t wear them. And a few days ago, after she had asked them to buy her some maple syrup, like the kind they sold at every market in Lawrence, they brought home something called blackstrap molasses, which looked like tar and tasted like (sweet) tar and for which Gina wanted to fire them, the molasses being the last straw.

“I don’t want it in our house, Harry! They use it in cattle feed.”

“Who is
they
? And how do you know anything about molasses?”

“My brother works for Purity Distillers. He says it’s disgusting. I don’t want our baby around it.”

Harry laughed. “We have over four months until the baby comes, and it probably won’t be crawling the minute it leaves your womb, so we’re safe for a month or so, I figure.”

“Who is this
it
you keep referring to?”

Harry tickled her. “In Cuba, Fernando makes rum from molasses. He’ll make some for us here. Wouldn’t you like that?” He kissed her bare shoulder.

“What is this rum?” The
ron ponche
of Christmases past but a distant memory.

“Believe me, once he gives you a taste, you’ll never forget.”

Her arms wrapping around his neck, Gina lifted his face to hers and stared happily into his laughing eyes, blue with bliss this morning. Lowering her voice, she murmured, “Oh, but
cuore mio,
I don’t need molasses from Fernando when you keep letting me taste so many delicious things.”

He jumped up, nearly knocking her over, and pulled her behind him to the spiral staircase that led upstairs to their bedroom.

At the bottom of the stairs stood a flagrantly disapproving Esther, groomed and starched like a prim iron statue, in a heavy cotton twill suit and black oxfords, her arms folded.

“Your parole officer is here for your first meeting,” she said. “That’s where you’re headed, right? To the front door?”

“Of course, Esther. Where else could we be headed?”

Like two kids caught out, they stood holding hands trying not to laugh in front of his sister.

Two

MARGARET JANKE HAD
a pinched face and distrusting slits for eyes. To Harry she seemed to be preoccupied and unobservant until she said, “Mr. Barrington, I see from the selective reading material on your barely unpacked shelves that you’re still interested in socialist revolutionary literature?”

Harry said nothing. Lenin’s enrapturing pamphlet, newly translated and published, “The Soviets at Work” was on his malachite table. “I didn’t realize—is that
also
a crime? To read?”

“Not at all. Just as long as you understand that you are not allowed to write about it, to send out letters or pamphlets about it, to contribute articles or editorials in the local paper, to send in freelance advertisements in support of it, to be in contact with anyone associated with the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Communist Labor Party, First International, or any other radical organizations I have not thought of and have not mentioned. You are not allowed to write letters to anyone in Russia or to speak to your former comrades on the telephone. It goes without saying that you are not allowed to march, protest, or demonstrate for this or any other cause.”

“If it goes without saying,” Harry said, “then why are you saying it?”

“I’m simply making manifest the letter of the law under which you have gained your provisional freedom.”

He made a deliberately blank face in response. “Is this what freedom looks like, Officer Janke?” he said. “Being guarded by Cubans day and night and having you in my house every Monday?”

“Yes, Mr. Barrington, this is what freedom looks like for
you
. Now, in front of me I hold a document signed by you that says you understand that you have done wrong and are sorry for your past actions. Is that true?”

“It is true that you hold this document in your hands, yes.”

“The document also says,” she went on, unprovoked, “that after your incarceration is over, you agree to look for gainful employment so you can materially contribute to the well-being of your wife and family. Do you agree with that part?”

“Who am I to argue? But tell me, Officer Janke, before I look for gainful employment, am I allowed to go swimming?”

“In your own backyard? Certainly.”

“Well, the ducks are using my pool at the moment. What about at my property across the street, in the ocean?”

Janke hesitated. “If it’s on your own beach frontage, then yes.”

“Am I allowed to walk on the beach?”

“If it’s on your own frontage . . .”

“So I can pace back and forth,” said Harry, “across forty feet, just like I did in my jail cell at the Correctional?”

“I doubt you had forty feet there,” she returned, “and it’s more like a hundred and forty here, but yes.”

“Gotcha. So—a matter of degree. One more question. Am I allowed to take my boat out?”

She glanced down the lawn to the dock and the newly scrubbed white boat, bobbing at anchor. “That might be all right, but only if Fernando goes with you.”

“Oh?” Harry exclaimed. “So is that the condition? If Fernando comes with me, I can venture out? Just in the boat, Officer Janke, or by car also? For example, if I can go in the boat forty miles south to Palm Beach, can I go in the car three miles west to Spanish City?”

“No, you cannot travel anywhere by car.”

“Can I take the boat to the market? What about to the carnival across the water? Maybe to Miami? If Fernando comes with me, may I travel there by boat? My wife and I have never been to Key West. In fact, she and I have never had a proper wedding holiday. We went to Chicago for a few days, but it rained the whole time. So if Fernando comes on the boat with us and stays with my wife and me in our little cabin, can we sail to Key West for our belated wedding holiday?”

Janke shot up and started collecting her papers.

“We’re done, Mr. Barrington.”

Trying not to laugh, Harry folded his arms and stretched out his legs under the table. “I thought we might be, Officer Janke. I’ll see you next Monday? Perhaps we can meet at your house instead. Do you live near the water? Because Fernando can take me to you. By boat, of course.”

“Good day.”

“And a good day to you, too.”

After she stormed out, Gina sauntered into the kitchen from the butler’s pantry where she had been hiding and listening. “She is going to make your house arrest ten years if you don’t stop it,” she said. “Why do you torture her?”

“I can’t remember the last time I had that much fun.” Harry caught her by the wrist and pulled her to him, enveloping her in his arms. “Wait, I think I do remember . . . where were we, before the gendarme interrupted us?”

“You were spinning molasses tales about some treacly, syrupy thing you think I should put in my mouth.”

“I don’t understand,” they heard Esther’s voice from the hall talking to someone who couldn’t be heard. “What if something is terribly wrong?” Silence. “What else could explain it? It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, and they haven’t come back downstairs. What on earth could they be doing in there?” Pause. “Until two o’clock in the
afternoon
? Impossible! It’s indecent. We had plans today.” Another pause. “No, something must be wrong. Fernando, Rosa, we have to break down the door.” Loud banging. “Harry! Gina! Open up. Are you in there?”

Harry swung open the door, barely dressed in slacks and an unbuttoned white shirt. His hair was a mess, he was unshaven and barefoot. He looked as if he had thrown on the clothes five seconds before appearing at the door. Gina couldn’t be seen.

“Esther,” he said. “Can you ask Emilio to bring Gina some coffee, me some lemonade, some sandwiches, and maybe a little fruit. Also, two glasses and the remainder of the red wine from last night. We are not feeling well. We’ve taken to our bed. We’ll come downstairs when we’re feeling better. Not today, and perhaps not even tomorrow. Please, Esther, ask Emilio to keep those sandwiches coming. Leave them by the door on a tray.”

Three

SHE WAS SITTING ON
top of him with her starched mesh petticoat spread out in a fan over him and the bed. “Why do you like the petticoats now,
marito
?” she asked. “Our whole marriage you’ve been telling me how you do not care for them.”

“Yes, but back then,” he said, “in the days I no longer remember, you didn’t wear the petticoats like you do now—with nothing underneath.” He pulled down the silk chemise off her shoulders. Her breasts spilled out.

“How do you know,” she murmured, “that I had anything on underneath even then?”

They both groaned. His hands reached for her, his mouth reached for her.

There was a loud knock on the bedroom door.

Harry threw a pillow over his face in frustration.

“Harry? Can I speak to you please? It’s very important. Harry? Are you in there? Open the door.”

“I’ll be down in a few minutes, Esther!”

“How many?”

Harry rumbled Gina so her breasts shook and swayed into his face. “Fifteen,” he said.

“Twenty,” whispered Gina, filling his mouth with her nipples.

There was an odd commotion in the kitchen when Harry finally stumbled downstairs an hour later. Esther was on the telephone, ignoring him, Rosa was frantically cleaning the spotless limestone floor even though it wasn’t her job. A local newspaper lay spread out on the table.

“What’s the fuss?” Harry asked. Upstairs with Gina had been so peaceful. All he wanted was to bring her a cup of Colombian coffee (courtesy of the Panama Canal, which is why Harry never touched the stuff), a sweet cake, some jam, then lie by her side and read the paper. “Rosa, hasn’t Emilio made any coffee yet?”

“Where is she?” Esther said as soon as she got off the telephone and rushed toward Harry.

He backed away. “Who? Carmela?”

“Your wife! Where is she?”

“Upstairs, why—”

Esther shoved the newspaper in front of him and pointed to a small article on the front page.

Harry paled.

“HUGE MOLASSES EXPLOSION IN BOSTON’S NORTH END. 21 DEAD. 150 HURT.” He read on. A two-and-a-half-million-gallon cast-iron tank exploded in the middle of an unseasonably warm afternoon, sending a molasses wave through the North End traveling at forty miles per hour. Buildings were crushed, trains derailed, horses and human beings submerged in the black viscous goo. It exploded without warning and poured out onto the streets in a matter of minutes. Purity and its parent company, Industrial Alcohol, which owned the molasses plant, were blaming the anarchists. The article vaguely stated “the North End,” but did not detail the exact location of the damage.

“Esther,” Harry said. “Call Father immediately.”

“Who do you think I was just on the telephone with? He knows nothing.”

“Is he all right?”

“Yes, yes. He didn’t go into Boston that morning.”

“Call Clarence, call Darryl, ask them to find out exactly where it happened.”

“What does it matter? Doesn’t Salvo work during the day? He would have been at the plant in the afternoon!” Esther started pacing the kitchen.

“Just call Clarence, Esther.”

Tea and coffee forgotten, jam, cake, love.

Esther called everyone she knew. The accident had happened right across the street from Salvo’s Charter Street apartment. That was one of the reasons he liked working at Purity; he rolled out of bed and was at work in minutes.

“No use scaring your wife until we know something concrete,” Esther said when she replaced the receiver.

“But my God, Esther . . .”

“I know. Last thing she needs. God, I pray he’s all right.”

“Has anyone seen or heard from him?”

“And how would I find this out?” Esther was shrill. “Maybe I could call his place of employment, see if he showed up for work?”