Children of Liberty Read online

  “Gia! Harry!” He was standing at the reins waving from the open carriage. “Mi dispiace! I’m sorry I’m so late.”

  After a minute or two of Gina’s stifled awkwardness and dusting off the hem of her dress, Salvo pulled up, stopping the horse near them. “I got my friend Alanzo to lend me his carriage for an hour. I gave him money for the taverna.” Harry by that time had moved a whole person away. As they climbed in, they told Salvo almost everything that happened: they had ordered the stone, waited for him, started walking, then Gina twisted her ankle.

  “My sister? Impossible! The girl skipped barefoot into the crater of Mount Etna. You don’t trip on pebbles, Gia.”

  “A little sprain, not too bad.” They were already sitting in the carriage, Salvo between them with the reins, chatting excitedly about the granite and the restaurants, and the complimentary glass of wine he was going to serve his first patrons.

  The joy had been so fleeting. Did they talk in the carriage? Perhaps, so as not to alarm Salvo, she continued to tell Harry about her home town, that the volcanic eruptions had changed the course of the Belpasso River, drying it up, and it had disappeared. Most of the people moved out of town to nearby Catania, which was by the sea and safer. Perhaps she told Harry that her father made violins in his spare time. Even though he didn’t play, he built them and sold them to the rich Sicilians, and got quite a reputation for his quality work, being paid handsomely for his labor. The barbershop paid their bills, but the violins were supposed to get them to America. But no quantity of violins or his reputation as the best barber could diminish living under the ash cloud, the constant rumbling, steam, smoke, pumice flying through the air. Alessandro hated the pine trees, the columns of gas, of volcanic ash. All he dreamed about was one day living in a safe place, free from acts of random terror like the death of his first-born son. Perhaps Gina told Harry this. What is more likely is that he and Salvo talked about Belpasso and violins and Catania, while Gina sat nursing her ankle, her lungs too full to exhale. There will be another time like this, she repeated in a prayer, in a dream to herself. We will get another chance, more dazzling than this one. Somehow there will be time for a kiss for me to fall from your lips, with time left over to spare.

  Chapter Twelve

  TULIPS

  1

  IN late June Harry graduated from Harvard. Herman threw him a lavish party at which impeccably dressed and well-behaved people drank and congratulated each other on the fine results of an expensive education, while Harry—as usual slightly unshaven, but elegant in his light gray frockcoat, its broad lapels faced with black silk, a starched white shirt, a white waistcoat and lacquer-shined black patent shoes—ambled from circle to circle on the lawn, shaking hands and nimbly deflecting questions about his future. It was an unseasonably balmy Saturday, and the tables were set out on the Barrington lawn under the white entertainment tent.

  Herman complained to Louis that they should have rented a bigger tent. At first Louis pretended he hadn’t heard. “We didn’t realize so many people would be coming, sir,” he eventually said.

  “Oh, so you did hear, Jones,” said Herman. “Then why are so many here? Did we not invite them?”

  “Not all of them. Harry has many friends, and they all brought their families.”

  “Harry was required to give you a guest list three weeks ago.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He didn’t give you a guest list?”

  “No, sir.”

  Herman sighed and scanned around the unfamiliar laughing faces. “Well, what am I going to do? Yell at our boy on his graduation day?”

  “That would not be fitting or proper,” said Louis.

  Herman took a drink from his hands. “Indeed, Jones, indeed. No trouble today. Just festivities.”

  “I think that’s wise.”

  Under the violin strains of Baroque fugues and partitas from a live string quartet, the hundred and fifty invited guests and the hundred uninvited crowded around the white linen tables, crammed together under the refreshment canopy, eating chilled lobster salad and grilled cod straight from the sea that morning. Herman watched Ben and Harry happily natter a short distance away. Harry was spread out in a chair looking up at Ben, who was standing in front of him gesticulating. Harry was drinking and grinning. Herman overheard the separate notes of a singular topic of their conversation. Ellen came over to him with a drink in hand and together they watched their sons for a few minutes.

  “We did well, Ellen, don’t you think?” Herman said. “All things considered.”

  She shrugged but the pride was clear on her face. “Your Harry is a wonderful boy. He believes in all the right things.”

  “Your Ben is a wonderful boy,” said Herman. “He does all the right things.”

  “Do you sometimes think, Herman,” Ellen said, “that God, with his perverse sense of irony, switched our children on us?”

  Herman put his arm around the much shorter Ellen. “I think he gave us exactly the children we deserve.”

  Alice, sitting by Harry’s side, was trying to tease Ben out of speaking. It wasn’t working. Ben, having graduated himself, though without the attendant extravagant fanfare, continued to regale the bored and the uninitiated with stories of Costa Rican bananas and mosquitoes that would be kept away with nets and sprays.

  “Alice is a lovely girl, isn’t she?” Ellen said to Herman. “You must be quite pleased she chose your son.”

  Herman shrugged. “It’s not for me to be pleased, is it?” he said, ambling away with Ellen to a table full of grown-ups discussing the successful end of the Spanish-American War.

  “Bananas kept away with nets and sprays?” Harry was asking Ben. Over a plate of cod and celery salad, they again became engaged in a cheerful “discussion” about digging a fifty-mile-long ditch through the continent instead of sailing 2,700 miles around Cape Horn. After the war, the treaty with Panama and the looming possibility of building the canal was the topic of fascination for polite Bostonians on this Saturday afternoon.

  Harry, dressed in finery but his crimson Harvard tie already loosened, was in a good mood and game to pass the time. “Ben,” he said, pretending to be serious, “better to go around Cape Horn? The expense of the new ships you’d need to build will more than offset the expense of traveling around Cape Horn while continuing to use the vessels already on hand, and with sailors who’ve made the trip, know their ship, live on the boat.”

  “Harry is right, Ben,” said Orville, not realizing Harry was teasing. “Every country in the world will have to update its fleet. Do you have any idea how much that would cost?” But he rubbed his hands together, as if already anticipating the increase in lumber sales for the new ocean liners.

  “It’s a temporary expense, Mr. Porter,” Ben explained patiently to Orville, glaring at a silently amused Harry. “After the new ships are built, what do you think will be cheaper, quicker and better—for the world economy and international trade—to continue to lose men to disease borne out of spending too long at sea, or to travel a few miles through a canal?”

  “But the expense, Benjamin,” said Alice, “the expense alone! Wouldn’t it be prohibitive?” She was a vision today, dressed especially nicely for the party and for Harry, from neck to foot in thin, delicate cream-colored lace, in a sweeping skirt over a white silk drop-skirt with an ecru silk fringe. She sat by his elbow and every few minutes spooned some more lobster onto his plate.

  “Alice, what about losing the men at sea?” Ben pressed on, sitting down. “What about the economic boon to a small fishing country named Panama? They’ve been fighting for their independence from the Colombians for ten years now. Are you saying it’s all for naught?”

  “Why does my son,” Ellen wanted to know, coming over and placing a maternal arm around Ben’s suited shoulders, “so love the idea of exerting American imperial power to intervene in another country’s affairs?”

  “Mother, how is it imperial power when we side with the rebels?”
Ben was in good humor and kissed his mother’s hand.

  Leaning down, she kissed his cheek. “You’re siding with them on their soil, aren’t you?”

  “They’ve asked us to!” He pulled up a chair next to him so she could sit.

  Slightly intoxicated, she spilled the champagne on her hands. “Did the Filipinos also ask you to fight a war in which they are the prize?”

  “Um, Mother, keep to the subject, please,” Ben said. “We are talking about Panama.”

  “Oh, Benjamin, please, can we talk about something else?” That was Alice, squeezing Harry’s hand.

  “Hear, hear,” seconded Orville. “Let’s talk about Harry.”

  Harry groaned dramatically, and everyone laughed.

  “Harry, tell us—”

  Esther interrupted. “No, no, enough about Harry. This day isn’t all about him.” Her gray eyes twinkled. “I’d like to find out more about Panama,” she said, pulling her chair closer to Ben. She was elegant and attractive in her embroidered, lace-covered robin blue party dress. “Please continue, Ben. You were saying?”

  Ben smiled at Esther, but his mother, flanking him on the other side, was the one who spoke first. “Yes, Ben, explain to Esther why America is so intent on extending its tentacles wherever and whenever it sees fit.” She spoke so sharply for someone who was round and merry.

  “Mother, while you allow Louis to refill your glass, will you please allow me the possibility that the canal could be an unmitigated good?”

  Elmore instantly disagreed—on medical grounds. Standing behind Esther’s chair, he said he was still concerned about the mosquitoes. “It’s the small children that suffer most, Benjamin. In South America, in Africa, they’re the ones that die first from malaria.”

  “Oh, can we please not talk about death at a party,” said Irma. “Orville, come with me.” She pulled on her husband’s arm. “Let the young ones talk. We belong at another table. Herman was looking for us. Ellen, come with us?”

  No one moved, not even Orville at the behest of his wife.

  “Elmore, with all due respect,” said Ben, “the children are not going to be building the canal. The Chinese are.”

  “Are they worth sacrificing?”

  “Well, there are an awful lot of them, Elmore,” Ellen said agreeably.

  “And it’s the Americans that will bring the nets and the spray,” said Ben with a smile. “So because of our work on the canal, the South American children will live longer.” Ben smiled at his mother. “Mother, darling, you might not care about the Chinese, but you do care about the children?”

  “What about the Chinese children?” That was Harry. “Would they cancel each other out?”

  “Oh, Harry, don’t tease!” exclaimed Alice, teasing. “I know you don’t care about the Chinese or children!” Louis had brought an extra chair and they finally all managed to squeeze around one inadequate table, as the servers refilled their plates with lobster and their goblets with champagne.

  “Yes, Harry, Alice is right. But tell us what you do care about,” said Orville.

  “Your daughter for one,” answered Harry, lifting Alice’s hand to kiss it.

  Alice seemed to like that much better.

  “What is the test of your devotion?”

  “Father, don’t start!”

  Orville wouldn’t let up. “Come on, you’ve been ducking the question like a politician for three years, today especially.”

  “I’m not ducking. I’m ignoring.” Harry grinned.

  “Now that you’re a graduate, you must answer straight.”

  “Why?”

  Orville rolled on. “We all know, indubitably, what Ben is going to be doing. But what are you going to be doing?” He smiled rotundly, patting his daughter’s back. She blushed and tittered, and so did Irma. “Orville,” the mother whispered. “Come on, all in due course.”

  “Daddy! Ignore him, Harry darling, please.”

  “I’m doing that ably, dear.”

  But everyone could tell, Alice didn’t want Harry to ignore him. She wanted Harry to talk about nothing else.

  “Ladies, gentlemen, please,” Harry said, with a slight sitting bow toward Alice and her parents. “Could we agree, just for today—one party at a time?” Everyone remembered it was his graduation day, and the subject was almost changed. The servers came around again, pouring wine, serving shrimp and potato salad. There was clinking, another toast, loud laughter, another political conversation from an adjacent table wafting in on the wings of the breeze. But Alice’s father, having had too much champagne, would not be so easily denied. “You know, son, you can always come and work for me,” Orville said.

  “Why yes, Harry, what a splendid idea.” Ben grinned mischievously. “You can wash your own hands, so to speak, by producing the paper you need to print all the books you read.”

  “Exactly!” Orville carried on. “Though mine is not quite that end-product business. But we can always expand in the future. Look, I understand you not wanting to work for your old man. So come and work for me. Alice can teach you the business. I run the largest lumber supply company in New England.”

  “Sir,” said Harry. “I have known you and your daughter for a long time. I’m well aware what a fine company you’ve built.” Yet he still did not answer the question! They all sat joyfully under the canopy and waited.

  “Don’t worry, Alice dear,” Harry finally said. “I’m not going to go to Panama with Ben, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  “Who said anything about Ben going to Panama?” exclaimed Esther.

  Elmore glanced at Esther peculiarly. “He’s been talking about nothing else,” he said slowly. “Have you not been paying attention?”

  “I’d rather you go to Panama, Harry, than do nothing,” Alice’s father shot back amiably.

  Alice gasped. “Daddy! Don’t listen to him, Harry.”

  “Who said I will do nothing?” Harry became five degrees less cheerful.

  Herman must have been listening from the nearby table where they had been discussing electoral politics. Clearly Orville had got Herman’s short hairs up because he pushed back his chair, slid his wineglass to the side, stood up, sauntered over and leaned in between Harry and Ben. “Oh, you don’t need to worry about Harry anymore, Orville, old boy,” Herman said. “Harry is plenty busy. He is expanding into real estate. Right in his old man’s footsteps. Isn’t that right, son?” He patted Harry’s shoulder.

  Harry muttered something unintelligible in reply, leaned away and raised his hand to his father to quiet him, to remind him of something very important, a promise he had made. It was like crystal falling on the marble floor in slow motion. You reached out to catch it, just a moment behind it, a moment too late.

  Harry saw the cliff edge the conversation was hurtling toward. But maybe it was a mistake to hold his father, who had had a little too much liquor, to promises made when he was sober. For once Herman was relaxed because it was a good day, and it wasn’t every day your only son graduated from Harvard second in his class; it wasn’t every day your son gave a salutary speech in front of six hundred Harvard graduates. On this day, Herman allowed himself a moment to be proud. And in that moment of punctured pride, he had plumb forgot that he had promised his son to say nothing. So he continued, “Harry started small, but from what my business manager Gray Billingsworth tells me, he is going to be very successful. When Billingsworth gets excited about a venture, you know it’s going to be the next Standard Oil.”

  “Billingsworth told me we weren’t investing in oil, Father,” said Harry, belatedly attempting to derail him.

  “I’m being metaphorical, son,” an undeterred Herman said.

  “What venture?” asked Orville.

  “Yes, what venture is this?” echoed Ben, still grinning in his innocence. “Harry hasn’t said a word to me about it.”

  The reminder of Ben’s white ignorance was too subtle to stop Herman. “My Harry has invested in not one but two restaurants i
n Lawrence!”

  It was as if Harry’s hand flew out to catch the precious gem falling into the abyss. For him the silence lasted long enough for all the crystalline ions, molecules, atoms, lovingly arranged, divinely ordered, to plummet into the rock quarry, shattering and spinning into chaos in front of Harry’s helpless eyes.

  “I know, I know,” Herman said when he chanced upon Ben’s glassy stare. “Ben, I thought the same thing. Lawrence! Loony, right?”

  “Yes,” Ben said dully. “Crackers.”

  “But the textile union contracts were signed in relative peace, the town is prospering, and apparently the Italian man we’ve helped has conjured up some kind of a Neapolitan bread and cheese product that’s setting the profits on fire. They call it pizza or something, right Harry?”

  “Right, Father.” Harry was palming his cut-glass flute. All the bubbles had fizzled out of the celebration potion.

  “They have lines out the door on the weekends.” Herman laughed with satisfaction. “Billingsworth thinks if they keep it up, they’ll pay us our ten-year note five years early. And he is the most pessimistic man I know.”

  “Darling!” said Alice, grabbing Harry’s cold hand. “That is so exciting! I had no idea you were doing something so wonderful. Why did you keep that a secret from me?” She didn’t let him answer. “But what made you go all the way to Lawrence? You could have opened four restaurants in North End.”

  Harry couldn’t miss a beat, not a single one, and so he didn’t. “I didn’t open them, Alice,” he said slowly. “I just loaned them money.”

  “But how do you know anyone in Lawrence?”

  “Ben and I told you about that Italian family we met last year.”

  “I don’t remember at all. What Italian family?” She scrunched up her little nose. “I don’t trust the Italians. The few I’ve met have not been nice.”

  “Well, these ones seemed like a nice enough bunch, right Ben?”

  Pointed silence greeted Harry instead of Ben’s easy reply.