Bellagrand: A Novel (33 page)

“No need for sarcasm, sister,” said Harry. “Call Clarence back. Ask him to drive down to the North End and find a Flaminio Gallerani on Salem Street. He’s a taxi driver and is always parked there, waiting for fares. Salvo and he are good friends.”

“How do you know this? I thought you and Salvo haven’t spoken in years?”

“I’m not deaf. I’ve heard my wife talking to her mother.”

“How would Clarence even find this . . . this Flaminio?”

“Tell him to look for the most flamboyant Italian on the block. Everybody knows him. Gina told me—”

“Gina told me what?” said Gina coming into the kitchen. “No coffee?”

The conversation ended instantly as they distracted her with rolls and preserves. They threw away the papers so she wouldn’t catch sight of the bad news, and busied themselves with frantic activities.

For three miserable days, they busied themselves and threw away the newspapers. Every time the telephone rang, Esther set Olympic records dashing to it.

Gina couldn’t help but notice. “Who is she expecting a call from?” she whispered to Rosa. “A paramour?”

“That must be it, though she won’t tell me,” said Rosa. “Come, Gina, eat. I prepared fresh fruit, some oatmeal. Emilio will make you a nice lunch when he and Carmela return from the market. You’ve got to start gaining some weight.”

“Gaining? I barely fit into my clothes. I’m almost ready to wear the potato sacks you and Carmela bought me. I want her to buy me the cotton twill I asked for. I need to make myself a dress.”

“I’m sure she’s getting it today.”

Each time Esther got off the telephone, she looked ashen and unwell.

“If it
is
a paramour,” Gina said wisely to Rosa, “I sense trouble in paradise.”

No one could find Salvo. Harry thought it was a good sign, if neither Purity, nor the nearby hospitals could locate him.

Clarence finally called with news. Unfortunately they found Flaminio. He had died of his burns from the molasses. Clarence only added to their collective panic with details of the devastation. “Like a tsunami!” Clarence told Esther. “It flowed twenty feet high, a black death tidal wave through the streets! The fire station is gone, whole avenues are gone, the horses were like flies, the dogs . . .”

They sat with their heads in their hands.

They
had
to tell her. Yet if they told her, they were afraid she’d lose the baby.

“It’s her brother, Harry. We can’t tell her.”

“Esther, we have to,” said Harry.

“There’s nothing she can do about it.”

“We don’t know anything,” Harry said. “We can tell her
that
, can’t we?”

“No!” said Esther and Rosa.

“Now listen to me.” Harry banged the table for emphasis. “I have done a lot of things that have made my wife unhappy. I’m fortunate that she places a certain
gravitas
on the institution of marriage. Calls it a sacrament or something. But this conspiracy to deceive, I think it’s grounds for divorce, even in Sicily.”

“She will lose her baby!” Esther said. “Is that what you want?”

“God! When did
you
become so Italian? A little restraint, please.” He stood up and walked out.

One evening the three of them had come back into the kitchen after hotly discussing Gina outside only to find her on the telephone. She was speaking in Italian, and they couldn’t understand a word. Watching her carefully, Harry sat and listened to her cry softly and exclaim loudly. After she hung up, she sat by them at the table.

“Why are you all staring at me like that?” she asked.

“Gina, dear, who was that you were talking to?” asked Esther in her most casual voice.

“Esther, why are you clutching the table? To my brother, why?”

Loud gasps of relief. Then they told her.

She gaped at them. “Is this what’s been going on the last few days?”

They nodded. Gina rolled her eyes. “Harry, I warned you molasses was trouble, and you didn’t believe me.”

“I believe you now.”

“You should have told me right away. I would have found him in five minutes and spared you the panic, you nervous Nellies.”

“Where was he?”

Gina told them that Salvo had gone out on the town with a woman from Back Bay the night before the explosion. He was still with her the following morning, and was too hungover to go to work.

“I don’t know what to say,” said Harry. “Salvo’s wanton ways saved his life. I really can’t fathom the lesson one is supposed to learn from that.”

“First, stay away from molasses,” said Gina. “And second, I keep telling my brother that women are going to be either his salvation or his undoing.” She smiled.

Harry smiled too. “And what does he say in reply? Why can’t they be both?”

“Exactly.”

Everyone relaxed. The tension left the kitchen.

“But how did you find him?” Esther asked. “I had Clarence driving around for days looking everywhere.”

Smiling, Gina patted Esther’s hand. “He’s my brother,” she said. “I know where to look for him. Wouldn’t you know where to look for your brother?”

“In prison?”

“You’re correct, Esther,” Harry returned, happily easing into the paper he could read out in the open for the first time in days. “That’s where I am.”

“Stop,” said Gina, pinching Harry and sidling closer to him. “Unfortunately Salvo is now out of a job.”

For a moment they were silent, blinking at each other. “Is your silence fraught with meaning?” Harry shrugged. “So ask him to come down here.” He patted her hand. “I don’t mind.”

“I asked him,” Gina said. “Apparently
he
still minds.”

“So I get credit for offering without actually having to do anything? Perfect.”

“Harry,” Esther said, “call him yourself. Don’t have Gina do your dirty work. Don’t be so inflexible. It’s time to let bygones be bygones.”

“Inflexible?” said Harry. “Bygones? Am I the one who refuses to come down here where it’s safe, even though I barely escaped death by treacle?”

“Harry is right for once, Esther,” Gina said, pinching him again. “Salvo is a mule. He has the nerve to tell me it’s not safe
here
. He says we have hurricanes.”

“It’s called rain and wind.” Harry returned to his
Palm Beach
Gazette
. “How many serious hurricanes have there been in the last ten years? None. And how many molasses disasters in Boston? I rest my case.”

Four

RIGHT AFTER THEY LEARNED
that Salvo was alive and well, Esther packed up and apologetically announced she had decided to go back to Boston. “I don’t feel right leaving Father for this long,” she said to them on the last evening before she left. Supper was long finished and put away, Rosa had gone upstairs, and it was just the three of them in the very late evening on the stone patio. The fire had almost gone out, the wine was almost gone. It was time for everyone to head upstairs, the train was leaving at dawn the following day. Yet they sat and lingered.

The night was quiet, muggy, warm. The air smelled deeply of salt water.

“What if Father had been down in the North End?” Esther asked. “He goes there frequently during the week. He still keeps an eye on the properties he’s retained. He could’ve been there.”

“But tell me, Esther,” said Harry, “what could you have done about it if he were? Carried him in your arms across Salem Street?”

Esther put her arm around her brother, kissing him on the head. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I promise I’ll be back when the baby is born. I know you’re going to miss me.” She smiled. “But you have your wife. And Father has no one.”

Gina poured Esther and Harry the last of the wine. They raised their glasses. After they languished for a few more quiet minutes, Gina took what she saw as the last opportunity to ask the brother and sister about some of the unspeakable things. She was afraid that once Esther left, she would never find out.

“So tell me,” she began haltingly, “why did Henry Flagler build this house for your mother?”

Harry glanced at his sister. “You want to take that one, Esther?”

“Not really,” Esther said.

When they didn’t elaborate, Gina prodded further. “Did he love her?”

“How would we know?”

“Perhaps he did,” said Harry. “You said so yourself, Gia.”

“Yes. This house is a labor of love.
Un travaglio d’amore.
”

“There you go.”

“Was he married when he built it?”

Esther and Harry looked at each other, wine in their hands.

“Was
he
married?” Esther asked. “Yes. No? Perhaps he was married. He might’ve been between wife number two and wife number three. Or wife number three and wife number four. Or not. We don’t know how he had time to build Bellagrand when he was busy building the five-hundred-forty-room Ponce De Leon Hotel in St. Augustine during the same period. Perhaps that’s why it took so long,” she added. “Years. He was busy doing other things.”

“We don’t know if
he
was married,” Harry added, “but you know who definitely
was
married? Our mother. To our father.”

Gina crossed herself. Harry and Esther didn’t comment on it this time, looking as if they might want to make a sign of the cross themselves. “Yes,” she said. “I see how that might be awkward. But did your mother know Flagler was building it for her? Or did he build it and present it?”

“Oh, she knew,” said Harry.

“She helped him build it, we think,” Esther said. “She was down here often.”

“Esther is being polite,” Harry said. “She must have moved down here. Because we barely saw her. When I was eleven or twelve, I don’t think I saw her once in six months.”

“You were away in boarding school,” Esther said. “
I
saw her.”

“You were also away in boarding school.”

“Yes, but I saw her. I didn’t
not
see her for six months, is what I mean. You’re exaggerating.”

“Maybe. It seemed a long time between mother sightings is what I mean.”

“It takes a while even now to get from here to Boston by train. Back then it was easily a week each way. It was a difficult trip to make on your own.”

“Yes,” Harry said. “And Mother hardly made it. She stayed here.”

Watching him, Gina was thoughtful. “How did she explain it to your father?” she asked. “Being gone for months at a time?”

“She was just gone.”

“Harry, you’re not being fair,” said Esther. “She wasn’t gone.”

“No?”

“There’s gone and there is
gone
.” Esther’s voice was barely audible.

Harry put down his glass. “Gia, we went sideways and I forgot your question. Oh, yes. How did she explain? I’d like to say that she probably didn’t have to. Father was so busy with his work he might not have noticed she’d gone missing.”

“Harry!”

“Do I jest?”

“Don’t listen, Gina. Of course Father noticed. And she told her children where she was. She told us she was working on something special for us in Florida.” Esther waved her hand to the darkened house. “A new summer home. Initially she and Father traveled down here together to look at investment properties. Mother stayed by the sea, while Father worked. So at first her absence seemed stamped with Father’s approval.”

“Yes,” said Harry, “but soon Father stopped coming down here, and Mother stayed on.”

“How long did this go on?” Gina swallowed. “Her, um, staying on?”

Esther and Harry sat. “A few years, right, Esther?”

“At least.” Esther looked into her empty wineglass, turned it upside down.

“The cheap truth of it,” Harry said, “is that Esther and I didn’t
know
anything.”

Esther shook her head. “You were too young. I felt something wasn’t quite . . . in order. I kept asking Father, and he kept repeating that Mother was being delayed. That’s how he put it.”

“That’s what they called it at the end of the last century,” said Harry. “
Delayed
.”

“And then one day she was back,” said Esther. “Just like that.”

“After being gone almost an entire year,” added Harry. “We asked her if the place was ready for us, and she said there were problems, and she had to give up on it.”

“Yes, but then she took us to Cape Cod,” said Esther. “Do you remember?”

“I remember,” Harry said. “We went clamming on the beach at Truro.”

“Yes.”

“I never heard the word
Florida
spoken again,” Harry said. “Not until Father came to see me in Concord.”

“Me neither,” said Esther. “Harry, can you believe he took her back?”

Harry’s hands clenched. Gina’s heart constricted.

“
Once
,” Harry said, “I had found it unfathomable.”

He didn’t look at Gina, or at his sister. Gina hurried on before Esther thought too long or hard about it. “How many years was this before her death?”

There was no color in the exotic orchids, no sighting of the swallows, or sunset in the sky. There were no fishermen or rum-runners, no conch shells, shanty roofs, mangrove woods. There was just darkness, a flickering candle on the table, and the pungent smell of brackish water. A deepening night with dull lights across the bay.

“Six months,” Esther finally replied.

“Was it that long?” said Harry. “Seemed shorter.”

“The beach at Truro was in August. She died in December.”

“Like I said. Barely a season between.”

Gina inhaled and waited, the sadness inside her multiplying. She counted out the times the nightingale sang, the times the crickets chirped. Esther sat like a stoic, pin-straight like a gravestone, staring at the abyss of the water, and Harry was sloping forward, elbows on his knees, eyes to the ground. Gina squeezed together her intertwined fingers. Minutes passed. “How did she die?”

It was Harry who answered her. “She drowned in the Mystic River.”

Dio mio, abbi pietà.
Gina crossed herself, mouthed inaudibly in Italian. “Drowned . . . accidentally?”

“Yes, why not?” Harry said, not glancing up.

“Yes,” Esther echoed. “If you overlook the concrete slab tied in a sack around her neck.”