Bellagrand: A Novel (45 page)

“Is that for you?” Gina asked. “The last part?”

Without reply Harry poured himself the last of the fresh-squeezed orange juice.

“It is!” she exclaimed, remembering. “It’s from before. When we first met, you and”—she decided not to say Ben’s name out loud—“how you bickered over the meaning of those words. Oh, Harry.” What had she done? What had they done?

He smiled. His gray eyes were clear, not occluded. He seemed at ease, perhaps at false ease, but she couldn’t be sure. “Gia, I’m not upset,” he said, “precisely because of Alexander Pope and his ninth beatitude.” He took out a knife to cut some more oranges. “I know my father.” It was a while before he spoke again. She watched him use the hand juicer to squeeze out the orange halves. “I expected nothing. I deserved nothing. I’m not disappointed.”

“Why do you say you deserved nothing? You’re his only son.”

Harry waved her away. “You are so Sicilian.”

“This isn’t Sicilian. This is fathers and sons.” She stood away from the counter, and from him.

“Not this father and son.” He was busy with the oranges, as if he weren’t paying attention.

“But I don’t understand.” She started pacing the kitchen. “You were getting along so well. He was happy.” She wrung her hands.

He eyed her affectionately, his own hands covered with pulp. “Gia . . . you’re so adorably overwrought.”

“What about your legacy?”

“What legacy? The business our family had built and my father expanded was given to Uncle Hank’s sons. They’re in charge of it now. How do you think my father felt about that? That his brother had sons who carried on with the century-old family business, while he had a son who sat in prison? He and I couldn’t even talk about it. Oh, sure, we talked of other things. Sheds and chairs, Alexander’s gators and boats. John Reed. This house. But that’s all secondary, isn’t it, to the heart of the matter. Which is—I turned my back on my father. That’s how he felt, and there is no getting around that. He behaved exactly as I thought he would.” Harry nodded. “I respect him for that. I would’ve been ashamed to receive profit from the fruits of his lifelong labors, after I had been so dismissive of his work.” He sounded nonchalant and remorseless. Gina wanted to call Esther and demand to know why she didn’t hold her brother to account for anything. Why was a woman the only one blamed, never the man?

“My father knew my apathy to his money,” Harry went on, “and then my antipathy. I always let him know it.” He threw away the scraped-out orange halves. “I’m hungry. Can you make us some eggs? Maybe a frittata?”

Dejected, she trudged to the cabinet to get out the pans. “Will your sister help you?”

“She won’t even take my calls.”

“You should have gone to the funeral, Harry,” Gina repeated, a refrain of shame.

“I think it was too late to change the will by then, don’t you?” Harry said. “Father was already dead.”

“That’s not funny.”

They stood without moving. They stared into each other’s faces.

From across the kitchen Harry spoke to her. “Gina, you pay a price for where you stand. I keep telling you, but you refuse to listen. You and I made our bed long ago. We picked our place. We said we would not live my life, nor your life, but a new life.”

“We certainly didn’t live your life.” She lowered her head. “Until now.” Though they had lived plenty of hers. “But you grew up with something that I never had.”

“Which is?”

Gina tried to define it. What was it that his rejected wealth gave him—in one word? “Freedom,” she said.

“You mean slavery,” he said.

One of them had to move out from the impasse. It was always her. “I guess it depends where you stand when you cast that vote.”

“I suppose so.”

She knew he said it to end the discussion, not to give her opinion weight. Frowning, she stepped back into the ring. “But Harry, slavery is what you called my having to work every day to pay the rent and feed us. Remember that?”

He frowned in response, back in the ring himself. “So?”

“How can both opposites be defined by you as one and the same? I worked to eat. You refused that life. But you didn’t have to work at all, except at what you wished. And you refused that life, too. How can both be slavery? Besides these two choices, what else is there?”

He stood and was silent, except for a sharp, knowing shrug. Why did Gina feel it wasn’t because he didn’t have an answer, but because he had an answer he didn’t want to share with her?

She waited for him to speak, and when he didn’t, she opened her mouth and spoke. “Until recently I didn’t even know what it was that you took completely for granted. What you had turned your back on.”

“My back may have been turned, but what was my face looking at?” He pointed to her.

“I don’t know if we had thought it through.” Her shoulders slumped.

“I want to say two things in response. One, I hope you didn’t marry me for my money.”

“I would have been a fool to.”

“Indeed. And two, don’t fret so much. We have not been left with nothing. This isn’t like before.” He opened his hands to the lawn and the sky and the gleaming waters. “We have everything we need. This is where we stand, the price of our marriage. To live in paradise by the sea. And soon I’ll be free.”

“Yes,” she whispered, gulping for air. Why did her throat suddenly constrict, why did she find it hard to breathe? Free or in slavery?

Chapter 14

S
PANISH
C
ITY

One

H
ARRY BARRINGTON, I CAN’T
believe I’m saying this, but I’m proud of you.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying it either. Would you like some wine to celebrate?”

“I’m working, so no. But you go ahead.”

“You want me to drink alone? Nice. Do they allow you to have orange juice on the job?” He poured her a glass. “We have the groves right here, out back.”

She drank and praised it. “Delicious. So fresh. I’m going to be truthful, Mr. Barrington. I didn’t think you’d be able to do it.”

“Grow oranges? It’s not that difficult.”

“Stick it out. Keep to the program. Behave yourself. Alter your thinking.”

“Perhaps less truthful might be a better approach?”

“I really thought you were going to fail. I expected you to fail.”

“Um—I’m sorry I let you down?”

“You surprised me.”

“Pleasantly, I hope.”

“No question. I’m sure your family is relieved.”

“I hope so. I don’t think they wanted me to fail.”

“Oh, I didn’t
want
you to fail. I just expected you would.”

“O ye of little faith.” He smiled.

“Well, never mind that. Here we are. The moment you’ve been working for. And you really have worked hard. You were exemplary. You were upfront with me, you broke no laws.”

“That you
know
of.” He kept a straight face.

“You were always here, where you were supposed to be, and even when I made unannounced visits, you welcomed me.”

“You were the entirety of my social circle, Officer Janke. Frequently your visits were the highlight of my week.”

“Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re joking with me, Mr. Barrington.”

“I would never joke about a thing like that.”

“Well, good. Because I enjoyed getting to know you, and getting to know your family.”

“And they you. My brother-in-law Salvatore especially.”

“Really?” Janke leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I must admit something to you—I’ve never liked him. But please don’t say anything.”

“I would never.”

“He seems shifty to me.”

“You don’t say.”

“Unlike you. With you, what I see is what I get. I wasn’t so sure in the beginning. But I am now.” She closed her book. “There are many decisions before you,” she said. “Big decisions. After all, now that you can go anywhere, and do anything, you have to decide where you want to go and what you want to do.”

“You are right, that is a big decision indeed.”

“But a rewarding one. On the one hand you can be like that brother-in-law of yours, jumping like a bean from one rock to another . . .”

“Yes.”

“Or you can be like your father—a rock until the end, for other people to jump on.”

“People other than me.”

“Or you can be somewhere in between.”

“A new thing perhaps?” Harry smiled.

“Yes! A new thing.” She got up to leave. “Just remember: without work, man has no meaning. Life has no meaning.” She collected her papers. “So what’s the first thing you’re going to do as a free man?”

He rolled his eyes. “Apparently I have plans to take my wife and son to the market. For three years they’ve been telling me what I’ve been missing.”

“They’re right, it’s wonderful. You’ll enjoy it. If you go next week, it’ll be better. A carnival is rolling into town for a few days. Your son will like that.”

“Perhaps we’ll go again. Because I don’t think that boy can wait for anything.”

They both glanced outside on the lawn, where mother and son were playing volleyball, or as it was called in the Barrington house, go-in-the-bushes-and-get-the-ball.

“Please be careful. Keep to yourself. Stay away from trouble. Probation doesn’t mean you can do what you like.”

“Of course not.”

“Probation means you are no longer bound by the walls of this house. You can go where you please. Except to Communist Party headquarters.”

“And who’d want to go there?”

“Exactly.” They shook hands. “You’re going to do well,” said Janke. “Whatever you choose to take up, I’m certain you will be very successful at it.”

“Why, because of the way I’ve navigated the terms of my prison sentence, Officer Janke?”

“Precisely, Mr. Barrington. You learned to live inside the box. That’s very important for all adult men to learn. Just look at your brother-in-law for the other example.”

“He’s not an adult yet, that’s why. Goodbye, Inspector Javert.”

“You’ve called me that several times over the years, Mr. Barrington. You do know that’s not my name, correct?”

“Yes, Margaret,” said a smiling Harry. He opened the heavy front door to let her out. “I hate to admit it, but I’m going to miss you. Your little pronouncements, your hectoring nature, your prim coda. I don’t meet someone like you every day.”

“Well, perhaps then, we can arrange for you to keep seeing me, Jean Valjean.” She walked down the marble steps, with a jaunty backward wave.

Harry laughed. “So you
are
human!” he exclaimed. “All these years, I wasn’t sure.”

And so for the first time in three years, the three of them piled into their Packard. Gina drove them across the water to Tequesta, where they parked and strolled among the friendly folk, while Alexander ran ahead through the market in the waterside park. They could barely keep up. At the produce stalls, the vendors all knew him; they gave him mangoes, and candy, and cakes, and toys. He returned to his parents with arms full of things, which he dumped at their feet.

“Is this how it always is?” Harry asked. “He just sprints by and they give him things?”

“Well, just look at him,” Gina said, a vision herself, elegant and chestnut-haired in her flowing frock, her lady’s silk hat, her arm through Harry’s.

“I know what he looks like. But why do
they
care?”

Gina squeezed Harry’s arm. “You don’t want other people to notice your boy,
mio amore
?”

“I don’t know why they would, that’s all. Alexander! Not so far ahead! Stay close.”

With amusement Gina notes Harry’s peevish expression. Alexander hugs a woman Harry doesn’t know. Harry frowns. This woman, like the boy is
her
boy, gives him a truck and crayons and a chocolate bar. Harry frowns. He asks if there is anyone, anyone at all, whom Alexander doesn’t instantly take to. Gina replies there is not. She can’t drum into him the concept of strangers. Harry says churlishly that to Alexander every stranger is a friend whose name he doesn’t yet know.

“I find it delightful,” she says.

“You would,” says Harry. “Because you put him on a purple pedestal the day he was born, and since that day, the rest of us live at his feet.”

“And this upsets you why?”

“Look!”

Alexander runs and jumps into the arms of a flashy man in a smart suit. Harry frowns, opens his mouth, is about to yell when—

“Oh, hello, Salvo.”

It was Salvo’s jewelry-adorned neck Alexander was hanging off like a marmoset. In 1922, Salvo had become almost unrecognizable. Having made wagonloads of money off his real estate commissions, enough for three cars, a brand-new house, a boat, and a minority interest in the recently opened Cuban–Italian restaurant, Salvo walked around the Tequesta grounds like he was part owner of the entire town, not just a little dive off the docks. He didn’t look or act like the man who merely supplied the money and the expertise in making pizza, while someone else counted the profits and rolled the dough. He looked like a man in control of everything, including his destiny.

Gina bought Alexander and herself some ice cream. The men abstained. The four of them strolled under the moss oaks along the overgrown tropical paths near the marina.

“So how does it feel, my brother?” Salvo asked Harry, slapping his back. “To be free to walk among us, hordes and commoners?”

“Overrated.”

Salvo laughed.

“Come on, Alexander, get down,” Harry said. “You’re dripping ice cream on Uncle Salvo’s nice suit.”

“I don’t mind.” Salvo abundantly kissed his sticky nephew. “Right, crackerjack? You’re the only boy related to me by blood. Drip your messes on me. I carry two extra white shirts in my car for just this purpose.”

Alexander stuck his ice cream cone into Salvo’s cheek, laughed, and kissed the cheek through the creamy spot of ice cream. “Do you want me to do that to you, too, Daddy?”

“No, thank you, son.”

Gina’s smile didn’t leave her face as she watched the three men she loved most.

The sky is cloudless blue, the sun super bright, even in February. It’s all so simple, so easy. Gina walks on and watches it all, a watercolor onto which rain is falling.

Two

JANKE WAS GONE
from their life a month before Harry broached things.

They were down by the dock around his mosaic table, eating waffles and strawberries, the quiet water balmy and beautiful. Fernando was somewhere unseen playing “La Bruja”
on his Spanish guitar. He played it for Gina because he knew she liked it. Now that Harry was a free man, Fernando came off Herman’s security payroll, but Harry and Gina decided to keep him on as their driver (and troubadour), and invited him to live in the mews rent-free. Gina was so relieved when Fernando agreed. Alexander loved him and his Spanish strings. She didn’t want one more person to vanish unmarked from her boy’s life. Although Esther hadn’t made it through Christmas before she called to speak to Alexander. “I told you, she wouldn’t be able to stay angry for long,” Harry said. “She can’t be apart from that boy. He is our secret weapon.”

Do we need a weapon? Gina wanted to ask.

Having finished his breakfast, Harry was threading worms on hooks, ready to go fishing with Alexander. “So what do you think?” he asked her. “What should we do?”

“We?” She smiled. “Salvo promised to come for lunch. I’m going to make quesadillas and mend half of Alexander’s wardrobe. We swim. We live. Just like before.”

“I meant us. What is our plan for life, for you and me, for Alexander?”

“Do we have to have a plan?”

“That’s like asking do we have to have a future.”

“Well,
mio marito
,” Gina said, “you were telling Janke for three years how you were getting yourself ready for this moment, so that when it came you’d be ready.” She smiled at him lovingly. “Are you ready?”

“Are you?”

A moment drifted by. “Let’s open a bookstore,” she said. “The town is sorely in need of one.”

“
That
town is in need of a bookstore?” Harry made a face. “Do they even know how to read?”

“Oh, nice,” she said. “Since when did you become such a bourgeois snob? I thought you were one of the people. Go be one of them. Sell them oranges and books.”

“You want
me
to open and run a business.” He sounded incredulous.

“A
bookstore
, Harry. The best kind of business besides a pizza joint.”

Harry shook his head.

“You’d rather work for someone else?”

“That also doesn’t please me. I don’t like to take orders.”

“Everyone has to take orders from someone,
amore
mio
. Even the communists take orders.”

“I can’t be a communist, I’m on probation.” They stared at each other. “I’m joking.” He strummed the fishing lines like guitar strings. “Where’s your sense of humor?”

“I don’t know why you’re against a bookstore,” Gina said. “It’ll just be you and me. You won’t have to hire anyone else, so you won’t exploit them. Just me.” She smiled. “And I want to be exploited.”

“Okay, it’s still the middle of the morning. Don’t get naughty. Though . . .” He put down the hooks and the lines, leaned over and kissed her, kissed her so deeply that the small metal chair tipped backward. She yelped.

“But back to the bookstore,” he said, straightening her out, “if we’re even a little bit successful, we’ll have to hire someone else, won’t we?”

“Oh, Harry,
caro mio
. We’ll make absolutely sure we’re not successful. We’ll vow right now not to make a single dollar in profit on our little shop of books.”

He carried his fishing lines to the dock. “I won’t be taunted by you.”

She followed him. “I’m not taunting,
delitto
. I’m teasing.”

“Well, all your teasing dreams are premised on our staying in Bellagrand.”

When he glanced back at her, she had paled.

“I’m not taunting,
delitta
,” he said. “I’m teasing.”

They stopped talking about everything but Alexander and what food to eat. March windswept silently into April. Ever warmer, the days remained blessedly dry. She wondered what Harry was waiting for, until one morning she overheard him on the telephone with his sister, saying, “Well,
how
soon? It’s been months. What’s taking so long?” There was silence while Esther spoke. “How long is this damn probate going to last?”

He was waiting for the deed to be transferred from the trust into his own name. Gina watched his back as she cut up the lemons for lemonade. But why? What did
that
matter to how they lived?

After he got off the telephone, she wanted to ask, but he became buried in a newspaper. She glanced at what he was so absorbed in. The Germans and the Russians had made a secret deal flouting the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations. Both foreign ministers said it was just an economic development agreement. Everyone knew it was code for a military alliance.

“Why are you asking Esther about the probate?”

“Just curious.” He wouldn’t lift his head.

She wanted to swipe the paper from him. For days on end he wouldn’t get his nose out of it. He read it like other people read the Bible.

“What do you want me to tell you?” he said, pushing her elbow slightly away from his head. “Right now I might want to be left alone.” The Allied nations were uniting against Russia: no diplomatic recognition until it paid off the debt it repudiated four years earlier.