Bellagrand: A Novel (44 page)

“Ben couldn’t face Harry—because of you. No one could after what happened. But Ben couldn’t fake it, couldn’t be friends with Harry like before. Because of you.”

Gina stared sideways into her cognac glass. She wished she liked the drink more, so she could have a ladleful not a thimble, to not hear quite so well, to become diffuse like a vapor, to vanish. That’s what she wanted. To vanish.

How fresh the burns still were. But Gina had her own wounds to deal with, her own sharp disappointments. She thought Bellagrand had healed them, made the ragged things smooth like satin. Certainly for her. Who could remember old burns when every morning she woke up, and the breeze came through her balcony doors, and the sun rose on the ocean, on her marble house? There was no mud, only marble. There was no pain when she spent her days on the lawn playing bricks and mortar, and hide-and-seek. She had a boat named
Gia
, her own dock, two ovens. She mastered the culinary arts of her home country and her adopted country, she drank heady wine and never lost all the baby weight, she was dark like a Sicilian urchin running around in sackcloth, barefoot and in bliss, and her husband whispered to her in the night and at noontime,
tu sei tutta bella
.
Mi amica, tu sei tutta bella
. Harry had learned well the Song of Songs
in the Romance language. All his edges had been silked off. He wasn’t sandpaper. He was glorious. He read, ate her food, swam, fixed boats, planted trees, built playhouses for Alexander, and loved her.
Bellagrand
.

All the other B’s in her life she had almost forgotten. Belpasso. Boston. Ben.

What Esther brought to the surface tonight was the other Gina—not the current one, who wanted nothing more, all apologies to her beloved papa, but to forget where she came from.

“Please, Esther,” she said. “I’m sorry. Forgive me for your brother. But you see us now, you’ve seen us in Bellagrand. Your brother and I . . . from the beginning, Harry and I had a great love.”

“Do you even
know
what love is?”

Gina sat up straighter, terrified not so much by the incongruous question, but by Esther’s brutal intensity. “What are you talking about?” she asked tremulously, shaking from distress. “Of course I do—”

Esther held up three fingers.

Groaning, Gina put up her palms as if in surrender. “Please, Esther,” she whispered. “
Ferma!
”

“You used him,” Esther said, slamming her empty goblet on the wooden table. “You used Ben when you were young, when you say you didn’t know any better, and you used him again when you were older and knew very well what you were doing. You took him and wrung him out. To escape
you
, he had to run for the third time from this continent.” Esther’s hands were in balls, her long polished nails digging into her clenched palms. “In 1914,” she said, “when the cursed canal finally opened, I was so happy when he came back! We were always close, and I needed him so much when Elmore left for Europe, and when my poor husband got sick and died. I don’t know why he had to die. He was a decent man and deserved a longer life. But through everything, Ben was so good to me. As always. So comforting. Suddenly, with barely a notice, he up and left again—back to Panama. Wouldn’t even stay for Christmas. I begged him to stay. I thought he was done with Panama for good. He had promised me he wouldn’t leave again. And yet, he fled! And it wasn’t until today, when I saw him with you, that I finally realized why. He fled
you
.”

The tips of Gina’s fingers were numb. It was unbearably loud in Herman’s dark and quiet study. “No, Esther.”

“Once—when you were supposedly a child—you used him to get
to
Harry,” Esther said in a gutted voice. “Did you also use him to get
back
at Harry? When my brother was in prison, reading books, becoming a radical, you were left alone. You were relatively young. Considered yourself quite fetching, didn’t you? Oh, yes, the Sicilian swoon! Gina this and Gina that. And your husband was never with you. Thought the universe owed you a little bit, didn’t you?”

“None of what you’re saying is true. God owes me nothing. It is
I
who . . .”

“So you chewed him up, and when you were done, you spat him out like stale gum. Him, the best man I know!” Esther cried.

Gina squeezed her hands together in entreaty, in prayer. “Esther, what are you talking about? How could I have used Ben for anything? Harry didn’t
stay
home, did he? If what you say is true, then my efforts were futile, no?”

“Yes, your efforts
were
futile,” Esther said. “Because your charms are limited, and they didn’t work on my brother. But what I say is true.”

“No. It’s not true.”

“If it weren’t for you, Ben never would’ve left.”

“But he was meant to go! The Panama Canal needed to be built.”

“Not in 1915 it didn’t!”

Gina slumped against the chair. She would have gotten up and fled herself, except she knew her flaccid legs would betray her.

Esther, her eyes glazed over by half-a-century-old brandy, leaned forward, narrowed her gaze at Gina, bitter pupils pinpointed like tips of swords, like her words, which she almost didn’t slur. “You wouldn’t look at him,” Esther whispered agonizingly. “You
couldn’t
look at him! He kept trying to catch your eye when his wife stepped away. And you wouldn’t oblige him. He tilted his head! And you wouldn’t return his gaze. You looked at his tie! At his shirt, at the grass, at your glass, at anything, but his face. There was
nothing
friendly about your talk with him this afternoon. That’s not how friends behave. That’s how old lovers behave. He carries a torch with your name on it, and you looked away because you couldn’t bear to see him waving it still burning into your shameless face.”

“Esther, you’ve had too much to drink.” Gina was gasping.

“That changes nothing.”

“You’re wrong.”

Esther shook her head. “About this? Never.”

“I’m sorry you’re upset with me. But today is the day your father was buried. Why do you bring up these other things?”

“Because my brother is not here! My father’s only son is not here!”

Esther cried. Gina cried.

Feeling that she owed Esther something, a word, a hint of confession, a breath of honesty, Gina lowered her head in heavy remorse. “Esther,” she quietly said, “supposing for one moment that what you’re accusing me of is true, wouldn’t you then have your answer as to why your brother isn’t here?”

Esther was dry-heaving. “That’s supposed to make me feel
better
?” she said in a voice filled with shards of glass. “That’s supposed to make me
understand
, make me forgive you, perhaps? That you broke not only Ben’s heart, not only my heart, my father’s heart, and Alice’s heart, but that you also broke my brother’s heart?”

“Esther, don’t say that!”

“The instant you came off that boat, the second your life intersected with ours, you have caused all of us
nothing
but misery!”

Gina was dry-heaving herself. “Esther, how can you say that . . . what about Alexander, what about Bellagrand . . .”

Esther wept. “Yes, yes, yes. I know how bitterly my heart is divided. You give Alexander with one hand, but what do you take away with the other? After my mother died, my brother and my father were all I had. You destroyed that, our small family, our broken but bonded unit. You have rent apart my father and my brother for most of their adult lives—and mine. You separated father and son. Think about that. You took my father’s Alexander away from him! And now it’s too late. All the years, they’re gone, gone. You divided this house, just so you could have what you want. And
then
! because that wasn’t
enough
for you, you took Ben!” Esther covered her face, screamed into her palms. “I don’t know how I can look at you, how I can talk to you. You have ruined me. Look at me.”

Gina couldn’t speak.
Esther
, she mouthed, repenting at the ineffable altar of someone else’s suffering,
please forgive me . . .

“You took him from my life, and from Harry’s life. Has Harry ever had a friend like Ben? No. Never. And you, like a feebleminded child, advised me to sell my mother’s jewelry. You said you understood things. Oh my God. You understand
nothing
!” Esther threw up her hands, and brought them down like a mortally wounded bird falling inconsolable from the sky. “Don’t you
understand
that Ben is the love of my life?” she said. “I have loved him since I was fifteen years old, since the day Harry first brought him home. He put a smile on my face then, and he has never stopped. Secret, yes, unrequited, yes, but my deepest longing, the deepest desire of my heart. And you’ve killed that for me, too. My family, my brother, my beloved. What’s left, Gina Attaviano?” said Esther wretchedly. “Would you like my house? Rosa? What else is there for you to take from me, to cart away in your fancy suitcase bought with my dead mother’s money?”

That’s how it ended, the forlorn day Harry’s father was buried. Esther sat collapsed and alone in a chair by the fire, bereaved, hollowed out, with Gina unable to find a word of solace for her husband’s sister except
mi dispiace
.

Five

HARRY WAS ON THE GRASS
by the pool when Fernando brought her home from the train station. Incongruously he was teaching Alexander how to box. At first Gina thought they were dancing, but no. Arms flying out, they were circling each other, one tiny, one large, like two shirtless warriors, skinny and dark, Alexander especially. She’d been gone two weeks, and yet the boy seemed older, taller. He leaped in lion strides to his mother. “Mama, Mama, where you went? Me missed you.” Harry wasn’t far behind.

“I went to Boston on Mommy business,” she said, squeezing his tanned skinny body, kissing his face. “I brought you back a model of a sloop. Maybe you and your dad can build it?”

“Maybe.” He wriggled out of her arms. “Daddy teach me to box. Watch, Mama.” He put up his fists.

“Hold on, buddy,” said Harry, his steadying hand on the boy’s head. “Let me talk to your mom for a minute.” They hugged, they kissed. He poured her some lemonade. “I tried to make it like yours,” he said, “but mine is not sweet enough, though I had dropped a pound of sugar into it. How much sugar do you put in it?”

“More,” she said.

“Well?” He studied her face. “How was it?”

After five days on the train, Gina hoped her face was unreadable, a wan blank. “Not good.” She paused. “Did you call your sister?”

“Yes. She didn’t come to the telephone.”

“Mmm.”

“What? Rosa said she wasn’t feeling well.”

“Quite.” What equivocation! But what else could Gina say? She couldn’t speak about what had passed between her and Esther.

Harry scooted his chair closer to hers. “Why do
you
look upset?” His hands rested on her legs. “Something happen?”

“I’m not upset,
amore mio
. I’m exhausted. Happy to be back.” Tilting her head to the sun, she closed her eyes.

He was quiet. “Anyone I know at the funeral?”

She didn’t look at him. “Probably everyone you know.”

Silence from Harry.

“Yes, Ben was there.” Is that what he had been waiting for? “With his very pregnant wife. Baby number four. Hoping for a boy, I think.”

“Ah.” Gina heard the chair scrape against the patio as he got up. “He brought his wife? Esther must have been pleased.”

“Esther was upset at many things at your father’s funeral, mostly the two obvious ones. You should try calling her again.”

“I’ve called her twice a day for a week. Rosa keeps saying she is not well enough to come to the telephone. Did anything happen?” He paused. “I mean anything else?”

Still bleeding from her saber-toothed evening with Esther, Gina shook her head. She feared that every word out of Esther’s twisted mouth had been true. There was no part of it she could relate to Harry. Except, “You should have come,
marito
.”

“I’m not allowed to leave this house. Why does everyone keep forgetting that?” He stopped speaking, and when she opened her eyes, he was gone, already down by the docks with Alexander. Slowly she walked down to her men. She was tired, whole-body tired, but she wanted to be awake, go swimming, catch a fish. Silently she stood.

“Watch and learn, Alexander.” Harry was circling his son. “Jab is this. A hook is that. Come on, show me you know the difference.”

Alexander rushed up to his father and jabbed him in the ribs with his little fist. “That was a hook, Dad,” he said.

Harry rubbed his sore side. “No, son. That was an uppercut.” He ruffled the boy’s hair. “I’m going to need ten minutes to recuperate.”

“Okay. Me look at my baby gators.”

Harry and Gina sat on the bench by the dock, staring at the water and at Alexander, immersed in the reptile pond up to his elbows.

“I sort of wish he was joking, don’t you?” said Gina.

“Wait until they’re no longer baby gators.”

“
Divertente. Grazie.”
She smiled the benign smile of the one being comforted. “I didn’t know you knew how to box,
caro
.”

“Roy taught me. You learn some crazy shit in prison.”

She could imagine.

“Do you want to take the boat out?” he asked.

“Yes, very much. After a bath and a nap.”

“I can help you with both of those.” His hands reached for her arms, for her neck.

They mulled over what to do with their son in the middle of his napless afternoon. “When’s the reading of the will?” Gina asked.

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. Two weeks. But what does it have to do with me?”

“What do you mean?”

He placed his hand on her hand, leaned over, and kissed her fondly. “I love you. In two weeks, you will know what I mean. Alexander! Hey, bud, would you like to have a nap? Mom and Dad are going to have one.” He kissed her again. “A sleepless one.”

Esther did not call before, during, or after the reading of the will. It was opened and read, and the details of it appeared in
The Boston Globe
, which was delivered by subscription a full week later. Aside from the
Palm Beach Gazette
, that’s how they had read the news for three years. On a seven-day delay. Herman Barrington left half of his estate to Esther, as well as his main property in Barrington, his secondary property in Newburyport, all his cars, his two boats, and all his material possessions. One quarter he bequeathed to the cardiac unit at Boston Memorial Hospital, which had kept him alive an additional decade, gave it in memory of Elmore Lassiter, Esther’s husband and a cardiologist. The rest he distributed between the various charities supported by Esther’s foundation. Herman stipulated that until such time as the boy didn’t need it anymore, Esther would provide for Alexander’s education, and only his education. To Harry he left nothing. He didn’t even mention a son by name, as if he didn’t have one. The only reference that might have alluded to Harry was the cryptic coda: “
Blessed are those who expect nothing, for they shall never be disappointed. That is the ninth beatitude
.”