Bellagrand: A Novel (42 page)

“Yes, but everything you mention was built on the backs of slogging workers!
That’s
always been my only point.”

“Who pays the workers?”

“This entire American civilization is built on Mimoo’s back and Gina’s back, while all the profits go into the pockets of people who don’t work on the railroad tracks.”

“Profits into the pockets of people like Henry Flagler?” Herman spoke the name almost without flinching or pausing. “What profit did Flagler see from this house? He built it over thirty years ago, invested his own money, used the finest materials, as you can see by the slate under your feet and the marble in your bathroom, paid the architects and the electricians their wages, and then—what? The house cost money, Harry. Flagler, I, we reached into our pockets plenty, and sometimes we didn’t make a nickel.” Herman smiled warmly. “In fact, the only one who appears to have reaped
any
profit from Flagler’s very private capital expenditure is
you
.” Herman sat back. “Must gall you a little, doesn’t it, my son?”

Harry stood up from the table, exasperated by his father’s good humor. “I just want Gina and Fernando to be paid better. Is that so unreasonable?”

“Without capital first and revenue second, there are no wages. Gina can’t get paid. Neither can Fernando.”

“The state also has capital.” Harry went to pour himself a whiskey from the bar.

“Where does the state get money from?”

A balky Harry didn’t answer.

“I’m asking, Harry,” persisted Herman. “Where does the state get the money to build something like Bellagrand?”

“The same place Flagler got it from.”

“Savings, then? Returns on risky ventures all over the Eastern seaboard?”

“Why not?”

“In other words,
profits
?”

“It wouldn’t be profits, Father, if the state held the purse strings.” Harry downed his whiskey and poured another. “Rather, it would be profits that were distributed evenly among the people who built this house.”

“Well, first of all, to build this house back in 1890, workers had to be paid then, yet there is no profit on the house to this day. But let’s say Flagler sold it instead of just giving it to Mrs. X.” No one at the table acknowledged who this Mrs. X might have been. “Let’s say he needed the money, and he sold it. If the profits from that sale were distributed between the painters and the door hangers, where would the capital to build Whitehall after Bellagrand come from?”

“How is that my concern? Who cares about Whitehall?”

“Not me by any stretch,” Herman said, “but salaried workers built Whitehall, too. Where did the capital to build Bellagrand come from? If Flagler gave away the profits he made on the railroads and the oil, there would be no Bellagrand. No reinvestment, or construction, or development. There would be no Palm Beach, no St. Augustine, no Miami, no Port of Key West. No wages, no profits, no business. No investment equals no future.”

“You’re just arguing yourself into a corner here,” Harry said.

“
I’m
arguing myself into a corner?”

“Yes! There would be plenty of other money.”

“From where?”

“Russia has money,” Harry said. “They’re doing right now, this moment, what you say can’t be done.
They’re
doing it.”

“Harry, Russia repudiated
all
of its foreign debt. They called it illegitimate. Imagine if any other government or business was run like that. That’s one way they have capital. The other way is, they have taken over, by force, what private businesses have built with private funds. They appropriated property and real estate—land, farms, factories—that belonged to the Russian people, the same way they appropriated borrowed foreign money and called it their own. There’s another word for what they did both in Russia and abroad.” Herman stared pointedly at Harry. “It escapes me right now.”

“Say what you like, Father, against Russia,” Harry said, “but private capital is a poisonous thing, Bellagrand notwithstanding and besides the point.”

“We started with Bellagrand,” Herman said gently, “and now it’s besides the point?”

“Russia is still in the middle of a civil war! After they’re victorious and the rest of the world has left them alone, let’s watch them awhile and see what happens. Let’s reserve our judgment until we see their grand experiment played out. They have capital now, however acquired, they own the means of production. Let’s watch them industrialize, collectivize, organize. Until we see what happens to the Russian economy under the new command structure, nothing you can say, no fake facts you can throw at me will make me believe otherwise. I know what the truth is going to be. The question is, why don’t you?”

Herman struggled up from the table. “Dear boy,” he said. “But without the capitalists to demonize, who would you rob?”

And to Gina he uttered a worrying quote before he kissed her hand goodnight and headed upstairs: “
No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true
.”

“What did your father mean by that, Harry?” Gina asked later as they got into bed.

“I think he was talking about himself, Gia.”

She shook her head. “He must believe you’re hiding something.”

“I’m an open book. Come here. I’ll show you what my page is open to.”

Yet despite all the objection-making and paternal concern Herman had for Harry’s future, like birds of winter that flew south to stay, they all lived together in the great big house and fished and ate and swam and went to Spanish City. Herman, Alexander, and Harry built benches together and gardens, swimming platforms, koi ponds, and toy chests. The adults took the child to Alligator Joe’s gator farm on the Jungle Trail, where they had a lunch of oysters while Alligator Joe showed the fearless, fascinated Alexander his largest gators. In the mornings, Herman went off with Salvo and Alexander to show houses and to get a glimpse of how the other beautiful people lived. Afterward they met up with Gina and Esther and drove down to Palm Beach where they sat outside at the Breakers and had lunch in the briny air by the ocean. Herman and Salvo took Alexander swimming in the barely there waves of the Atlantic, while Gina and Esther sat and watched until it started to rain. Alexander showed Herman and Harry and Salvo how to catch a tree-climbing crab. He climbed a moss oak himself, and Salvo had to go get him, though he did offer the rescue duties to Esther, who politely declined, because she was wearing a skirt, she said, and it wouldn’t be proper.

For Alexander’s second birthday, they had soft-shell crabs, shrimp and steak shish kebabs, and a strawberry cake with whipped cream. Herman taught Alexander how to build a fire and how to swim in the large pool on that lit-up birthday night. Herman stood close to him in the water, hands outstretched, and Alexander kept pushing him away, yelling, I can do it, Gampa, I can
do
it.

“Do you want to hear my Rose Hawthorne thought for the day?” Gina said to Harry. They were sitting on the evening patio, in a wooden swing, intertwined around each other, drinking Cuban rum and Coke, watching Herman and Alexander frolic under the stars and the lights. Slowly a sloop drifted by, adorned with festive sparkles, festive people. The music pounded out the beats of Gina’s calm and blissful heart.
In the morning, in the evening, ain’t we got fun . . .

“Oh, the Rose sayings are back, are they?” Harry smiled. “I wondered when they would rear their heads. Dad! Catch him!” He jumped up, hands outstretched. Alexander had vaulted off the diving board into the deep end without a flotation device.

Everything was fine. He sat back down.

Gina nuzzled him with kisses.

“What’s that for?”

“You just called him Dad. I could cry.”

Harry stared unblinking at the two shadows, large and small, in the pool’s limpid waters. “What’s the Rose quote?”

“
Our creator would never have made such lovely days and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal
.”

Alexander cried for two days after Herman left in June to go back to Boston.

Chapter 13

T
HE
W
ISDOM OF
A
LEXANDER
P
OPE

One

I
N THE FALL OF
1921, a few weeks before he and Esther were scheduled to return south for the winter, Herman called to speak to Harry. But Harry was out on the boat with Salvo, and so it was Gina who talked to her father-in-law for a few minutes and then gave the telephone to a jumping-jack Alexander.

“Gampa, where you?”

“What a good question, dear one. Where are
you
?”

Alexander giggled. “Here. You come soon?”

“Another good question. I would like to very much.”

“Mama says you come soon.”

“I’m going to try, sunshine boy.”

“Me growing gators, Gampa!”

“That is exciting.
Real
gators?”

Alexander laughed. “Silly Gampa. Of
course
.”

“Wonderful. What are you going to do with them when they’ve grown?”

“Have gator farm like Alligator Joe.”

“Marvelous.”

“We sell them. We be Alligator Alexander and Gampa.”

“Grand idea! But I want to be Alligator Gampa. You can be just plain Alexander.”

The boy laughed. “Bye! I love you!”

Herman tried to say something else, but Alexander had already dropped the earpiece and bounced like a ball outside.

“Sorry, Herman,” Gina said, picking up the receiver. “We’re still working on our manners. Do you want me to give Harry a message?”

There was a pause. “I called to say hello, that’s all,” said Herman. “Tell Harry, the world is young.”

When Harry and Salvo returned with their tremendous fish catch, both in long dirty boots, perspiring, brown, happy, and Gina told Harry while he was still in the boat that Herman had called, he dropped the netting with the fish, jumped to the dock, and without another word hurried to the house.

Gina ran after him. “Harry, wait! Not in your boots! Please. He sounded okay. He didn’t say it was urgent.”

“Do you know how many times in my life my father has called me
just
to say hello?” Harry said, dialing the Barrington number. “Once. This time.”

No one picked up at the house. When Harry finally got hold of Esther hours later, Herman had already died.

Two

THE HUSBAND AND WIFE
sat outside in the sunny late October morning. Harry drank his coffee, the fingers holding the cup slightly unsteady. Alexander was nearby, digging a large hole with a small spade. Gina was watching her son. Harry was reading the paper.

“Can you believe it?” he said. “Big Bill skipped bail.”

She turned her gaze to Harry. “Bail? I thought he was in prison for twenty years.”

“No, he was out pending appeal. Which was denied. So he ran.”

“Ran where?”

“Russia, of course! Where else, Canada?”

“Oh, good riddance.” Gina pointed. “Harry, look at your son.” The boy was running back and forth, a pail on his head, the spade held out in front of him. He was making odd noises, too, like the spade was popping.

“Alexander, what are you doing?”

“Me shoot bad guys, Daddy!”

Harry and Gina exchanged a look. “Why is there a pail on your head?”

“It my helmet, silly bunnies!”

Harry got up from the table, walked down to the water, took the pail off Alexander, straightened out his white-and-blue sailor suit, kissed him. “Don’t get too messy, bud. Your mother just dressed you for the day. Where did you learn to do that?”

“What?”

“Run and shoot your spade with a pail on your head.”

“Me don’t know,” the boy said.

“Did you see a picture?”

“What picture?”

“How do you know what a gun is?”

“
Zio
Salvo took me to house. There was one on wall.”

“One what?”

“
Zio
Salvo said long rifle. It was
so
big, Daddy!”

Harry waved him away.

“Tell your brother I don’t want Alexander going with him to show houses anymore,” he said to Gina when he came back to the table. “It’s ridiculous to take a child with you to strangers’ homes. A rifle is the least of what you could accidentally see.”

“Oh, it’s fine. Alexander loves going. Salvo says the little guy is good for business.” She changed the subject. “We should get ready and head down to the Seminole Courthouse. Appeal Janke’s decision. She is being completely unreasonable.”

He shook his head. “I’m not appealing it.”

“Harry, be serious.”

“I am. I don’t want to rock the boat. I’m so close to the end, Gina. Four months to go.” He was firm. “No.
You
go. Besides, someone has to stay with Alexander.”

“Harry, don’t joke. Salvo will stay with him.”

Harry raised his eyebrows, nodding toward Alexander, the pail back on his head. The boy was flat down in the grass, dragging his torso and legs behind him, shooting from the ground.

“How is
that
Salvo’s doing?” Gina wanted to know. “I’ve never in my life seen my brother drag his body along the ground. Alexander! Stop it! You’re getting filthy!”

“No matter,” Harry continued. “I’ll stay. Otherwise, what will he think, both his parents gone? He’s never been without us. Even if she let us go, we’d have to take him with us. And then what? I’m sure everyone’s going back to the house after the burial.” He shook his head. “I’m not doing it to him. He’s not old enough.”

“Harry . . .”

“Gina, you heard Janke. We did ask. She said no. Specifically no to Boston.”

“It’s immoral of her,” Gina said. “She let you go to the church for the baptism.”

“Yes, twenty minutes’ drive. Not quite the same as returning to Boston.”

“
Marito
! You can’t
not
go to your father’s funeral.”

Harry opened his hands to say,
This is how things are.
“You can be my emissary. Represent us both. Tell everyone I’m stuck here for four more months.”

She wanted to ask what he meant by
stuck
—on the grass under the palm trees. She wanted to ask what he meant by four
more
months. As in,
only
four? “It’s your father.”

“I don’t want to risk an appeal for nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” She frowned at him.

“I mean, to appeal and fail. Or, to go and have a problem.” He shook his head. “I’m so close. And you heard her—reluctant though she was, she’s going to recommend reduced probation because I’ve been good.”

“You want me to go to your father’s funeral by myself?” Gina was aghast.

“Or don’t go, if you don’t feel comfortable. Stay here. Everyone will understand.” But he didn’t look at her when he said it, didn’t look up from the paper. “Can you believe, though, about Big Bill? To Russia!”

Gina was not sure everyone would understand.

Tentatively, she tried again. “Harry . . . you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I do. I wonder how he did it, evaded the authorities. That’s not easy.”

“I mean . . . about your father.”

Harry didn’t raise his eyes from the newspaper. “Isn’t it obvious,” he said, his voice breaking, “that I
don’t
want to talk about it?”

Gina couldn’t imagine both of them not showing up. She went by herself.

Three

IN BOSTON, ESTHER,
looking older for her grief, greeted Gina at the door, glanced down the walkway to Clarence’s car, back to Gina, and said, “He didn’t come?”

“Janke—” was the only word Gina managed to utter, before Esther abruptly turned on her heels and walked away from her down the hall. After that she didn’t bring up Harry’s absence.

On the day of the funeral, with Rosa and Gina flanking her, Esther was impeccably composed in black crepe. A veil covered her face. She walked stiffly, barely spoke, but kept herself together through the funeral service and burial, through the condolences and speeches. The repast was organized and catered at Herman’s house, just as Harry had surmised. “My father would’ve wanted that,” Esther said. “All his friends and family—
most
of his friends and family—coming to his home to have a bash in his honor. I don’t know how we’ll fit everyone. There must be four hundred people attending.”

At the packed church Gina was alarmed to see Ben sitting in one of the back pews. She stumbled, tripping over the edge of the carpet, and walked right past him, her face to the altar, not looking left or right. She hadn’t expected to see him. On one side of him sat his mother, Ellen Shaw, whom Gina had not seen in many years, and on the other, a Spanish-looking woman, no doubt his wife.

At the end of the service, an unusually fidgety Gina stood on the condolence line next to Esther, dreading the inevitable encounter, but thanking God that with the number of people in front and behind, it would be blessedly brief.

They were waiting for the pallbearers to carry the casket to the hearse for the drive to the cemetery when Ben, his mother, and the Spanish woman stepped up to Esther.

She spent longer with Ben than with anyone else. He hugged her, patted her back, kissed her. They talked quietly to each other. He held her hands. Ben was salt-and-pepper gray now. He looked older, a little stockier. But he smiled the same, was animated as before. He was still Ben. He pulled forward the woman next to him, then his mother. Gina continued to stare straight ahead, only in the periphery of her rapidly blinking gaze noting the nodding, the handshaking, the quiet introductions. She tightened her mouth in what she hoped was a polite and indifferent smile.

Ben was in front of her. He opened his mouth to say something, and she blurted, “Thank you!” before he could speak.

“Um—you’re welcome?”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” But that wasn’t the proper response.

“No, I’m sorry for
your
loss,” said Ben.

Mercifully he moved down the line to Harry’s three imposing cousins, their wives, and their four or five dozen half-grown children. The Spanish woman walked by Gina with a nod. She was uncomfortably pregnant.

Ellen Shaw stepped in front of her. “Gina! What a surprise. It has been such a long time.”

She shook Ellen’s hand. “I’m sorry for your loss,” Gina repeated. “Thank you. Thank you for coming.”

Ellen was gray, little, round, frailer than Gina remembered her, less forceful. “You look well.” Ellen smiled. “Ravishing as ever. Florida is good to you? How is Harry?”

“Oh, fine. Well, no. He’s upset, of course, and regrets he can’t be—he’s with—”

“Mother!” Ben called, coming toward them and taking his mother by the arm. “A condolence line is not a receiving line. I trust you are aware of the difference?” He pulled Ellen away from Gina with a fleeting apologetic glance.

“When did
he
come back?” Gina whispered, leaning into Esther. She felt she had to say something.

“Last July,” Esther replied, leaning away.

It had been many years since Gina saw him last. Here, at the white-steepled Methodist church in Barrington, in a rush of people, all of them adult and grown, men, women, black suits, black dresses, black hats and bags, dark umbrellas, white flowers, everything was proper, proper. Yet just a blink away—Harry, Ben, and Gina stand on Essex Street together, also in a rush of people. She dresses in what she can to look flirty and pretty, to be the kind of young girl that those two boys might notice, especially the other one, the one who doesn’t speak, who just stares at her with his colorless eyes to make her imagine all manner of stormy seas under the placid glass. They hawk bananas and hand out flyers to promote ditch digging in Central America, and she serves lemonade with too much sugar so that when those Boston boys drink it, they’ll think it’s sweet, and will like it because she made it.

Another blink away—they teeter on blades, just Ben and Gina. They glide in white circles deep in the valley of Fairyland.

It had been seven years since the black-ice night ponds. Six years since his hat came off for the farewell bow at the foot of her Lawrence porch. Twenty-two years since the sickly sweet lemonade, summer laughing, flyers for Panama.

Gina fixed her lipstick, tucked in the loose strands of her pulled-back hair, adjusted her crepe black hat, straightened her spine, and, blinking rapidly, climbed into the black limousine with Esther to take them to Herman’s house.

During the repast, she avoided Ben. But not handily enough. With a drink in one hand and the Spanish woman on the other arm, he finally strolled across the stone patio to Esther and Gina, sitting away from the crowd. Everyone else was eating, drinking, talking, socializing. Esther wanted no part of it. And Gina was happy to sit by her sister-in-law’s side, to keep her company. She didn’t know anyone, and no one knew her, except for Ellen, who had left early, and Harry’s cousins, who’d heard of her, but had never met her. She might as well have been Esther’s lady-in-waiting, like Rosa. When people approached and offered condolences, Esther nodded, and Gina patted her back. Would you like a handkerchief, Esther? No, thank you. A drink? No, thank you. Something to eat? No, thank you. When the people moved on, Gina moved her hand away from Esther’s back and stopped with the questions.

The afternoon waned and cooled, the guests slowly filtered out.

Now it was Ben’s turn to socialize with them. Gina put on her blank face, her formal smile when she saw them approaching. It was October, the blazing month, and for a few days in Boston before the snows, the crisp chill air was filled with the pungent smell of decaying sugar maple leaves and summers past.

After the soft repeat of sympathy, Ben said—to Esther? to Gina?—“I wanted to introduce you properly to my wife.” He prodded the woman forward and smiled. “This is Ingersol.”

Esther and Gina sprang up like wooden string dolls. They shook hands and nodded, smiled without prodding, turned their heads this way and that, said how do you do, and so nice to meet you, how do you like Boston, yes, isn’t it pretty, this time of year especially so.