Unto the Sons (70 page)

In her isolation as the mistress of the castle, and captive in her wheelchair as her husband moved freely through the town, Mary Mattison watched the Italians digging ditches and laying pipe around the malfunctioning front fountain; they seemed to her grimier than the dirt they wallowed in, and they apparently thought nothing of urinating in broad daylight. The Italian gardeners, though better paid than the common laborers, appeared no more trustworthy. With infuriated amazement, Mrs. Mattison would see them pretend to be devotedly clipping hedges around the service entrance
just
as the delivery truck arrived, loaded with household supplies; and as the unsuspecting driver was knocking on the kitchen door waiting for the butler or the cook to unlock it, the Italians would swiftly move in under the canvas covering of the vehicle and take everything they could, concealing it in their shirts or in their large refuse sacks. There was nothing they would not steal: bottles of seltzer, rolls of toilet paper, cans of floor wax, boxes of dressmaker’s pins, candles, flypaper, and the doctor’s favorite foamy bath oil from Cologne even though none of these Italians owned a bathtub—or so she assumed from the looks of them.

Irked as she was, Mrs. Mattison was slow in complaining to the superintendent or to the police about these offenses, but not out of any compassion for the lowly Italians. Nor was she trying to preserve the domestic tranquillity she knew the doctor wanted and deserved once he returned from a busy day at the office (this was also why she had avoided mentioning the liaisons of his son Royal with the woman on Highland Avenue). No, Mary Mattison’s delay in this situation was entirely self-centered and explainable with one word: fear. She feared that harm would come to her if she informed against the Italians. She was virtually surrounded by Italians, and she suspected that if she induced the police or the superintendent to take action against the gardeners, her role as informant would leak out sooner or later and she would be vulnerable to their vendettas. She may not have known any Italians before coming to Ambler, but she certainly knew about Italian vendettas. Newspapers had long been writing about the grudge crimes of Italian gangmen in Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and elsewhere; and there was no reason to assume that there were not some gang members in Ambler, a few vicious schemers who would contrive to deal with her in any number of subtle and sinister ways.

One day she read that humble Italian-born laborers in America were also capable of committing great atrocities: A factory worker named Sacco and a fish peddler named Vanzetti had been arrested on charges of shooting the paymaster in a shoe factory in New England and running off with fifteen thousand dollars. While both claimed to be innocent men who had come to America to earn a decent living, they were identified as anarchists. It was no wonder the United States government was now limiting the number of newcomers to Ellis Island, especially those from places in southern Europe like Italy. But it was already too late to halt their flow into Ambler.

More than half of the Keasbey & Mattison factory employees, the construction workers, and the castle crew under William Devine were Italian by birth or heritage. Fortunately for Mary Mattison, her husband did not permit any Italians to live on the castle grounds, or to rent homes near Trinity Memorial Church or elsewhere close to the Mattisons’ private estate. The row of spired and turreted mansions on Lindenwold Terrace, beyond the north gate of the castle, was occupied by people whom the doctor himself had screened and accepted as desirable neighbors. Originally these mansions were intended for his top executives (before he decided he did not want any); and so now the residences were the domiciles of his son Royal and his family, and certain socially prominent Pennsylvanians who did not work for the doctor but who attended his Episcopal church, or who offered compatible company and useful connections.

Southwest of the castle’s front gate, beyond the Bethlehem Turnpike, which edged past the lawn of Trinity Memorial Church, were rows of three-story stone houses with spires and finials, which were rented out to native-born American white-collar workers and plant superintendents of Keasbey & Mattison (including the commuting sales representative of whose wife Royal Mattison was fond); and farther downhill were rows of less decorative dwellings for foremen and favored workers, who might be of Quaker background, or with roots in Germany, England, Ireland, or Scandinavia.

Still farther downhill, along the other side of the railroad tracks, close to the factories, were the simple stone row houses and frame buildings occupied by the Italians. Dr. Mattison had named one of the streets there in honor of General Garibaldi, thinking it would instill some ethnic pride in the Italian quarter; but soon the street sign had been pulled down, and Devine heard from a workman that some of the Italians were less than worshipful of Garibaldi. What the Italians
did
worship, as Mrs. Mattison
could see through her powerful lenses, was the statue of the brown-robed monk that they carried around their neighborhood on their shoulders on feast days and other holidays, when they would also pin dollar bills on the long ribbons attached to the figure; and often they dressed their children in brown-hooded robes with rope belts in imitation of the saint. Not Mrs. Mattison alone, but the majority of non-Italian Ambler residents, thought that the display of a holy statue festooned with money was in poor taste and quite primitive; and she was not surprised to learn that the Italians were not encouraged by the town’s Irish Catholics to attend Mass at Saint Anthony’s—which was why the Italians had built Saint Joseph’s, a short walk from where they lived.

On Sundays, the one day the plant was closed, Mrs. Mattison would sometimes watch the Italian women going to Mass with their children, while the men strolled in an open field near the church, arm in arm, walking in circles. Rising in the background behind the tracks were the high-peaked factory buildings with their smokestacks, and a white cliff composed of asbestos waste. She had no idea how many Italians resided in this area, for she had heard that a goodly number had entered the United States illegally and borrowed the work cards of registered Italian employees to clock time on the night shift, later sharing the proceeds with their countrymen. But on Sundays it did not matter to her how many Italians were assembled in Ambler, for they were all at a safe distance. On Mondays, however, the five forty-five a.m. steam whistle alerted them for work; and at daybreak, as the dogs barked, she knew that the gardeners and other laborers had arrived at the castle.

Devine was always at the service gate with the guards to meet them, to count them and check their identity papers before allowing them to proceed back to the barns where their tools and overalls were kept. He would then drive around the estate in one of the doctor’s locomobiles to check on what the other workmen were doing, and by seven-fifty sharp he would be in the pantry to inform the butler that the doctor’s limousine was waiting to take him to the office. Mrs. Mattison and the doctor had completed breakfast in the dining room by this time, and, as a parting gesture of affection, the doctor himself would carry her in his arms up the staircase to her studio in the turret—where, until the doctor’s return for lunch, she would spend the morning reading, writing letters, crocheting, and observing the activities and foibles of God’s creatures below.

Only the squirrels—graceful and quick, always alert, never lazy—met with her constant approval. She could watch them for hours and
did
, focusing in on them through her glasses as they climbed up and down trees,
and scampered across the lawn and around the fountains in tireless pursuit of whatever morsels of nourishment sustained their energy; although there were hundreds of them, of different colors and sizes, she never once saw them fighting among themselves, or disturbing the doctor’s flower beds, or rummaging through the trashcans in the backyard like the pilfering Italian gardeners. One day she had caught the gardeners pulling out some of the doctor’s discarded clothing, including his long johns and the stained top hat that he used to wear to the opera and that, at her urging, he had finally replaced; the old hat had a frayed brim and its crown was coming loose, and she was glad to see it go—except
now
it was back again, on the head of a little Italian gardener! With the hat down over his ears, he was strutting around the yard to the amusement of his friends—and to such resentment on her part that she came very close to contacting Devine. What most offended her was the gardener’s increasing brazenness the longer he wore the hat. No doubt encouraged by the roars of approval he was getting, he suddenly had the temerity to try to imitate Dr. Mattison! He pushed the hat up on his head and tilted it to one side, as the doctor had worn it, and he moved with exaggeratedly long strides, his hands clasped behind his back, as the doctor did while walking. This rude little Italian was mimicking the very man who was saving him from poverty!

So angry that her hands shook, Mary Mattison picked up the phone on her desk, but she had difficulty dialing Devine’s number, even though it consisted of only two digits. And then when she did dial it, and had heard the phone ring once, she suddenly hung up. She was frustrated and confused. What good could come of reporting this to Devine? What could he do except scold the Italian, and then reclaim the top hat and the long johns and whatever else they stole, and then what could he do with it? Burn it? Burn it with the leaves that were piled high in the backyard and were torched twice weekly by these very same Italians? Who could be sure they wouldn’t let the fire get out of control?

Removing her hand from the phone that rested next to her binoculars, Mary wondered, not for the first time, whether it was in anyone’s best interest for her to be seeing so much. Was it her duty to spy for her husband, to serve as his second pair of eyes so that he, or his superintendent, could deal with the indiscretions that transpired in his absence? If, on the other hand, he did not rely on her for added vigilance, why then did he give her the binoculars?

Mary Mattison’s main pleasure nonetheless remained watching the squirrels, which became her favorite, though distant, companions through the summer of 1920, when she was unable to be in Newport. She could
identify many of them individually by their stripes and varying patches of color, by the length of their bodies, the shape of their tails and ears. Many had long, beautiful ears. But there was one reddish squirrel that had a uniquely high tuft of hair on the tip of each ear. Nearly all had eyes like tiny bright round buttons, but a few had eyes that were almond-shaped and more deeply set. Some had extremely bushy tails; some tails were more black than gray, or were chestnut red, or a blend of all three. Some squirrels were striped along the bottom of their bodies, while others were uniform in color. Their claws varied in shape; they ran in different ways; one squirrel had a permanently injured left front foot but seemed as swift as the others, covering three feet per second at full speed—which was attained whenever a stone landed nearby, hurled by some heartless Italian. Some squirrels lived entirely in the trees, others spent all their time on the ground, and on hot summer days Mary observed a number of baby squirrels with their mothers cooling off at the base of a fountain, just within reach of the soft spray.

Two hawks flew over the castle one afternoon, and Mary nervously watched them circling over the lawn, high above the trees—and as she focused on a branch where two of her favorite squirrels had been resting, she noticed the animals flatten out their bodies along the horizontal extension of wood. Within seconds, as she continued to watch, the squirrels seemed to blend in with the branch so completely that she could no longer clearly see them. The hawks soon flew away.

With the arrival of autumn, Mary had given names to many of the squirrels, and, although she was at first reluctant to admit it to her husband, she knew she wanted to be more of a factor in their lives. This was odd coming from a woman who before her accident had not had the slightest interest in wildlife; nor had she been attached to pets as a girl. She loathed the doctor’s watchdogs, although she never said so, and during her brief healthy period as Mrs. Mattison she never once ventured back to see the farm animals. Nevertheless, she now loved squirrels. She admired the sense of responsibility they took in storing food away for the winter, and their nurturing manner with their young, and the fact that they did no damage to the estate’s property. Eager to contribute to their welfare in the harsh months ahead, she asked the doctor at breakfast one morning if he would order the construction of a community of houses for squirrels, sturdy little domiciles that would offer greater protection against the icy rain and snow of winter.

The doctor thought it was a grand idea. At once he consulted with Devine, who in turn brought in Bothwell, the architect, who drew a
sketch of a squirrel house that the doctor, of course, later changed. Knowing no reason why squirrels might not share his fondness for Gothic architecture, the doctor added spirals and finials to Bothwell’s functional concepts; and by mid-January 1921, with snow predicted for one weekend, fifty houses were completed, each three feet high, two feet wide, four feet deep; at least half of them were two-storied, all had floors covered with leaves and twigs, and in the corners were piled nuts and grain. All the houses were painted a brown-toned green that blended in with the estate’s landscaping and tree branches. No fewer than twenty Italians contributed to their construction under Devine’s guidance; they followed him around to put each house in a spot specified on a map Mrs. Mattison had given him.

Mrs. Mattison watched through her binoculars as each house was placed in a certain fringe area of the lawn that she knew to be favored habitually by a number of squirrels she had in mind; and she had been equally precise in pointing out what branches of what trees should serve as the locations for the higher dwellings. She wished she could have been personally in command of this project, for when Devine was not paying strict attention, the Italians did things their own way; they dug a foundation for a house not in the spot that
she
had chosen but rather in one that
they
preferred, where, she assumed, the dirt was softer. And they were equally careless in the trees, nailing the houses to the most convenient branches rather than to the higher ones, where she knew her more altitudinal pets would feel more at home. Often she watched screaming as the workers deviated from her map, but none knew of her anger—nor, she hoped, was any of them aware that she was spying on them.