Bellagrand

Now it’s really time for her to go. His hand squeezes into a fist.

So what words of wisdom does our holy Rose have for me this week?

Gina puts on her hat, ties the silk ribbons under her chin. He doesn’t take his eyes off her.

There can be art and love, Rose says, but art and economics are mutually exclusive.

Harry nods, as if he approves. But not economics and war, he says. Because millions of boys are about to be slaughtered for economics. Perhaps someone will draw a picture of the carnage. Then they can call it art.

She turns to leave. He turns to leave. At the door she turns to glance at him one last time. He has already turned. She sees his eyes on her, profound, somber, unwilling to let her go. She raises her gloved fingers to her lips and blows him a lingering kiss. He disappears through the steel-reinforced door. Slowly she leaves too, flagellating herself with another thing Rose said: Those whose hands are pure don’t need to glove them.

Because the pumpkin farm and the corn maze await.

Four

WHILE THE SUGAR MAPLES in Concord looked as if they were on fire under the sun, and Gina finished her Saturday duties at the Wayside, she changed into a slim, embroidered, above the ankle, rust-colored crepe day dress with a lace collar. It had a black velvet belt and silk appliqué. Her nails were painted a rust color also. Her wavy hair was piled expertly, fake-casually atop her head. She put on gold hoop earrings and wore bracelets on her wrists. She covered herself with a wool cape and walked out through the gate and into the street where Ben was waiting.

They went for an evening walk into town, where they found a small restaurant with hay bales at its doors. They walked in like a gentleman and a lady. He held the door open for her, took her cape, her hat, her gloves. Gina could not remember the last time she and Harry had the money to go out together for an evening. She didn’t want to remember.

It couldn’t be true, she thought, as the server pulled her chair away from the table to allow her to sit, that since Harry’s all-consuming, life-transforming pursuit of her back in 1905, she had not been to a restaurant for dinner? She pressed her lips together to banish the memory and the tears of self-pity that weren’t far behind.

There was candlelight and fine china. Voices were hushed and the laughter delicate. She wanted to tell Ben that no Italian she knew spoke so low and laughed so daintily, but didn’t. When they ordered, she spoke so low, and when he made a joke, she laughed so daintily. During aperitifs Ben asked her why she kept herself in such check. “That’s not how I remember you.”

“I’m grown up now.”

“Yes, but you were a girl on fire when I knew you. Where is the Sicilian?”

She didn’t reply. She didn’t want to tell him how hard she worked on herself to hide the Sicilian parts—the loud boisterous voice, the flailing gesticulations, the instant emotions, the lilting accent—lest they expose her to all the world as an immigrant. She didn’t want to tell Ben how desperately she wished to be not an immigrant, but like the girls she envied, the girls from Harry and Ben’s world.

Girls like Alice.

The way Ben knowingly blinked at her, it was as if he already knew.

“You’ve become so proper, why?”

She said nothing.

“You want to be like the girl he left behind, the girl he left—for you?”

She flushed. “It’s not like that.”

“What is it like then?”

“Not like that.”

“So explain it to me, like I explained the Culebra Cut to you.”

“I’m just grown up, that’s all. Sicily is the child part of me.”

He shook his head. “You’ve taken deportment and speech lessons. You’ve learned how to dress, how to laugh, how to speak. You did it all to hide who you are.”

“Harry doesn’t much care for the loud Italian,” Gina told Ben. “For the flashes of my Old World self.” Except for the times he wanted nothing from her but her Sicilian flame. Oh God! Could there be one exchange this entire evening, just a merciful one, when she wasn’t recalling her husband after every sentence?

“I feel as if I should go visit him,” Ben said. “It seems wrong not to. We were such good friends. I want him to know there are no hard feelings. Do you think I should?”

“It might make him feel worse,” she said. “Point up the stark contrast between your freedom and his incarceration.”

“That’s true. But not to visit him even once …”

She agreed. “His mood is not great. It won’t be like your old times.”

“Few things are. And, why should he be in a swell mood? He’s in prison.” Ben sighed as they sipped their wine and buttered their bread. “What’s he reading nowadays? Maybe I can get you a book to take to him.”

“If it’s in Russian, then yes.”