Bellagrand Read online

  “But the war ended! How can there still be sedition?”

  “All right, my legal scholar daughter. Your brother committed his crimes when the war had not ended.”

  “You have to do something quick, Daddy. He is going to panic. She hasn’t been to see him in weeks.”

  “So tell her to go and see him.”

  “And it’s Christmas!”

  “All the more reason to go.”

  “She doesn’t know what to say to him.”

  “What does that have to do with me,” Herman thundered, “that she doesn’t know what to say to her own husband?”

  They turned their heads to the door, and there was Gina standing in the entryway watching them.

  “I am a terrible inconvenience,” she said.

  “Come in,” said Herman, “sit down with us, have a drink. Esther, ring for Rosa, tell her to bring some more scones and jam.” He turned to his daughter-in-law. “You’re not the inconvenience here, Gina. This Sunday ask Clarence to drive you to Concord. Go visit him before Christmas. Bring him a small gift. Tell him you’re expecting. Don’t say anything else because there is a good chance I can’t fix it.”

  But before Sunday there was a breakthrough of sorts, a small step forward. As always, when something was given, something had to be taken away. When Gina heard what was being proposed, she said she could not face Harry on her own. Herman and Esther reluctantly agreed to accompany her to Concord.

  Six

  ON SUNDAY ROY WENT into cell number 26694 and told Harry to get up.

  “Has she come back?” was the first thing Harry asked when he saw Roy. That’s the first thing he had been saying to Roy for four Sundays in a row since the last time he had seen her. He jumped down from his bunk.

  Roy shook his head. Before Roy opened his mouth, Harry was already back in his bunk, his face turned to the wall. Roy started shaking him. “Get up, I said!”

  “Forget it. Leave me alone.” Harry closed his eyes.

  “I don’t know what you done to make that lovely woman so cross with you that she stopped visiting you in jail during Christmas season, only you knows that, you and God, but get up because you has new visitors. I has to dress you and shave you.”

  Harry turned to Roy. “What visitors?” He didn’t get up. “As in plural? Who?”

  “Do I know who? I do simple math, I count two, one of them is not your wife because I would know her anywhere, but I suggest you hurry or hours will be over. Don’t make me regret I let you keep your light on so late. What could you possibly be reading? I bet it wasn’t my Bible.”

  “I bet you’re right,” Harry said, closing the book he had fallen asleep on and reaching for his toothbrush. It was Ovid’s Metamorphoses. What a perfect accompaniment to his current isolation. Sentencing for some reason postponed until after Christmas, the holiday in prison, in a cell by himself, alienated from everyone and everything. And Gina vanished through the haze. If Harry felt terror, he did not want to show it to his guard.

  He got ready and clean in minutes.

  In the visiting room behind a low partition of glass his father and his sister sat composed in the visitors’ chairs. When Harry saw them, his knees buckled. Not because it was a shock to see them, whom he hadn’t seen in over thirteen years, though it was that also. His knees gave out because he knew they were here for only one reason—to bring him bad news. Last time Gina had visited she looked like cold death. It was no secret that the flu was knocking them down in the cities and villages by the hundreds of thousands, that the flu was chiefly responsible for the sudden end to a world war. When Roy, holding Harry steady by his elbow, helped him into the metal chair, Harry couldn’t speak because he feared the worst.

  “Hello, Harry,” said Esther.

  “Is she all right?” was the only thing Harry could say.

  Esther blinked as if just realizing what he must have been thinking about their inexplicable appearance. “Oh, yes, yes,” she said quickly. “Gina is fine.”

  He relaxed just a little, but still gripped the metal chair rails. “She’s not sick?”

  “She was. She’s better now.”

  Exhaling relief, Harry focused on his sister. He couldn’t look at his father. He was afraid he would cry. He tightened his mouth and steeled his spine against the hard chair.

  “Are you all right? How is everything? No one got sick?”

  “No, we were lucky. Not out of the woods yet, though. What about here?”

  Harry shrugged. “Eh. On the floor below me twenty out of thirty men died. But on our floor we only lost one. So . . . how’s what’s-his- name . . . Elmore?”

  “What?” Esther paled, glancing sideways at her impassive father. Her hands clasped the edge of the table and then fell into her lap. “Elmore died in France, Harry.” She frowned. “He went there with the Red Cross. He died in 1915. Typhus.”

  “I’m very sorry.” Harry’s mouth twisted. “I didn’t know.”

  “How could you not? I asked Ben to tell you.”

  Now it was Harry’s turn to frown. “How did you know I saw Ben?”

  “He told us he was picking you up when you got out in 1915.”

  “Ah.” Harry nodded. “That part he told you. Good.”

  “As opposed to what other part?”

  “Nothing. Where is he now? Still back in Panama?” Harry almost added I hope but stopped himself.

  Esther nodded. “He married his longtime sweetheart in 1916. He invited me to his wedding. In Panama,” she said, shaking her disillusioned head. “As you can imagine, I politely declined. He has children now. Three girls. We write. He sends me photographs of his family. Would you like me to bring some with me next time I come?”

  “No, thank you.” Harry took the deepest breath. Finally he turned his eyes to his father. “Hello, Father.”

  “Hello, son.”

  They both blinked, were both silent. Harry had been right. Herman did have tears in his eyes.

  “How’ve you been?”

  “Can’t complain.”

  “How is the business?”

  “Good. I had to retire from active construction. The advancing years didn’t permit me to keep to my punishing schedule.” Herman’s hands lay folded on the table. “I sold my half of the business to my brother. He passed away five years ago. His three sons now run it, very successfully, I might add.”

  Harry nodded, without comment, for he couldn’t find anything to say and couldn’t bear to say anything.

  “So where’s my wife?” he asked when he found his voice to speak again. “I figure her disappearance has something to do with your appearance.”

  “She’s been staying with us,” Esther said.

  “Why?”

  “She needed our help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “She is expecting.”

  “Expecting what?” And then Harry exhaled, pushing back against the chair. For a few difficult moments he had to hastily think back to a time when that would’ve been possible. They had so few opportunities for successful conjugation. It seemed as if all there had been in the last months were fights and arrests. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up, if I were you,” he said at last.

  Herman and Esther became grim, appraising him with condemnation.

  “She doesn’t . . . we’ve had some trouble.” Harry turned to Esther. “Do you have children?”

  “I haven’t been blessed with any, no,” she replied quietly. “But your wife is almost four months along.”

  Harry tried to hide his skeptical face. He showed them his poker face instead, his inscrutable face. He didn’t want to tell them that he and Gina had gotten to this point time and again only to be bitterly disappointed. He changed the subject. “Why was my sentencing postponed? Did you have something to do with that?”

  “Yes,” said Herman.

  “Father postponed the sentencing,” Esther said, “to give himself time to talk to the judge.”

  “Why would Father need to
talk to the judge?”

  Herman and Esther were silent.

  “Father?”

  “He has persuaded the judge to commute your sentence!” Esther said in a thrilled breath. “It’s nothing less than a Christmas miracle.”

  “Really?” Harry sat back. “How in the world did you manage to do that? In September the judge told me that even if the DA recommended a shorter sentence, he wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Yes, Judge Rosen is not happy with you,” said Herman. “I traded in every bit of goodwill I ever had anywhere with anyone. Never mind. It’s the result that’s important.”

  “Does this mean I’m free?”

  “Uh—not quite.”

  “Ah,” said Harry.

  “You’re under house arrest until 1922 and then on probation until 1925.”

  “House arrest? What does that mean? Like your house?”

  “That can and will never happen,” said Herman.

  “Exactly. So where then? My house in Lawrence?”

  Herman shook his head. “Lawrence is perceived as the nexus of the worst kind of trouble—social, political, financial. It is at the root of all discontent and upheaval. You will not be allowed to return there in the foreseeable future.”

  “So where then?” Harry asked, exasperated.

  “The terms of your house arrest and probation are not easy. Any violation during the three-year period, any at all, and you’re back in prison for the remainder of your ten-year sentence. This means no demonstrations, no strikes, no protests, no assaults on the police, no writing for new radical magazines, no joining communist labor parties, no incitement, no slogans, no political books, no meetings, public or private, no telegrams or cables to Russia, probably best not even to wear red, just to be on the safe side.”

  Harry sat motionless. “Please can I choose the lady instead of the tiger?”

  “Oh, most certainly,” Herman replied. “The District Attorney of Boston, in coordination with Mitchell Palmer, the Attorney General of the United States, has offered me to send you permanently to Russia, since that’s clearly where you want to be. Did you try to get a visa to go there for the revolution? They’re offering you safe passage. They’re working on commissioning a ship, perhaps the Buford, to deport you and a legion of your seditious compatriots. Palmer told me to tell you, you can bunk with Emma Goldman. When she leaves prison next year that’s precisely where she is heading: Russia. They’ve reserved a special place for her on this ocean liner.”

  “Father, are you joking with me?”

  “Have you known me to be a joker, Harry?”

  “No, but this seems preposterous. Is this a real thing?”

  “Palmer is very keen on making it happen, on making it real. As I just told you, he is looking into the mighty Buford. It’s anchored in New York Harbor, ready to steam out. A few months, I’d say. Six maybe.”

  They sat.

  “Will Gina come with me?” asked Harry.

  “No,” Esther replied. “Gina is due in May. She is not going to get on a ship in her condition or with a brand-new infant and be deported anywhere. That’s lunacy.”

  Harry looked up at the clock in sour resignation. Time was ticking away. “Where is this proposed house arrest to be?” His shoulders slumped.

  “I had to offer the judge a place for your exile he would deem acceptable, away from Boston, from New York, from all urban or industrial centers where you could get into trouble. Away from coal mines and factories and textile mills.”

  Harry waited silently.

  “I offered him Bellagrand.”

  Harry sat.

  Esther sat.

  Herman sat.

  “I don’t know what you just said.”

  “In her will,” said Herman, “your mother left you the only piece of property that belonged solely to her. She stipulated that it be placed in irrevocable trust, to be managed by me, but to become yours upon my death. Since inconveniently for you I am still alive, ownership can’t yet transfer to you.” Herman paused, having difficulty continuing. “Bellagrand has been unoccupied since your mother’s death, but will be made available for your use should you choose to accept the terms of your conditional release.”

  “My mother left me a house?” Harry glanced at Esther, astonished. It was all he could do to sit straight, to not fall down.

  “Don’t look at me, Harry,” his sister said. “She just left me her jewelry. I knew nothing about a house until a few days ago when Father told me.”

  “I don’t know what I’m more shocked by—her leaving me a house or you not telling me,” Harry said to his father. “What house? Why didn’t you ever say anything? She died twenty-eight years ago. Why would you keep this from me all this time?”

  “You’re asking the wrong questions, Harry,” said Herman. “And you know the answers to some of them. For the last thirteen years, you and I have had no contact. So I couldn’t have possibly told you. And before that, I didn’t feel you were ready to hear it. What you should be asking, or thinking about,” he continued, “is why your mother, after everything that transpired between her and me, did not leave her beloved Bellagrand to you outright.”

  “All right, Dad,” said Esther, placing a calming hand on her father’s arm.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Harry. “Why beloved Bellagrand? I’ve never heard of this place.”

  Herman withdrew his arm from his daughter’s hold. Esther had no power to calm a cat. “What I’m saying is, it should tell you volumes about the confidence your mother had in your decision-making abilities.”

  “I see. So after all these years you come to visit me in prison to make more conflict?”

  “Dad, please!” That was Esther, voice rising shrilly to calm the seas.

  “It’s fine, Esther,” said Herman. “Harry, I’m following your mother’s wishes, not my own.”

  “You’ve made that abundantly clear.”

  “She wanted you to use the property for a rightful purpose. This seems as rightful a purpose as there is.”

  Weakened, depleted, Harry fought the impulse to squeeze his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to look at his family. “I’m supposed to stay for three years in some place I’ve never heard of? Where did Mother get this house from, anyway?”

  Herman was mute. Not like he wouldn’t say. Like he couldn’t say.

  “Henry Flagler,” Esther quietly replied for him.

  “Oh my God!” Harry exclaimed. “Bellagrand is the Florida house?”

  “Jupiter Island house to be precise.”

  Now all three of them sat lost in the fog of their black understanding. “She left that to me?” Harry covered his face, losing control of his fake-calm demeanor. He groaned. “Why punish me? Why torment me?” He struggled to pull himself together. “No. I might as well stay here. Why trade one cell for another? Why trade this for that? What, I don’t have enough misery?”

  “Your wife is having a baby!” Esther hissed like a locomotive.

  “Do you really need to keep reminding him of that, Esther?” Herman banged his fist on the table. “Why does he keep acting like someone who doesn’t know?”

  “Or doesn’t care.”

  Harry shrugged, tapping out his tension with anxious and impatient fingers. He glanced up again at the merciless hands of the clock, wishing desperately this visit would be over and he could go back to his cell. Better no visitors than this. Better anything than this. The Buford was preferable, infinitely. Gina’s short-lived pregnancies had kept him from moving to New York, from leaving Lawrence, from going to Russia with John Reed, from pursuing his political future. And now the worst thing imaginable. He felt like he was being strangled.

  Esther was staring at him coldly, glancing at Herman, looking down into her white hands.

  “Daughter,” Herman said, “are you wondering why we bother?”

  “I’m no longer wondering. I don’t know what to say.”

  Harry waved to them. “The man you�
�re speaking about as if he doesn’t exist is right here.”

  “We know where you are,” said Herman. “In a jail cell, pursuing your political future.”

  “Okay. Yes,” Harry said. “Because unlike this, it’s some kind of honor being released into your dead mother’s den of shame riding the shallow wake of your wife’s fleeting pregnancy.” He didn’t look at anyone, his father most of all.

  Hawthorne was right, Harry thought. What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s own self!

  Big Bill was right, too. A man could never become great when he kept taking a woman, any woman, even one as compelling as Gina, into consideration about his path in life.

  “Harry,” Esther breathed out. “When did you become so callous?”

  “Esther, when did you become so bourgeois?”

  “We were born to the same parents.”

  “That’s the one good thing about America,” Harry snapped. “No one is limited to the station of one’s birth.”

  Herman stood up, straightened out the best he could, and slowly took hold of his umbrella, which he used as his cane in public. He was thin like his umbrella. “And you are certainly a fine example of the American dream, son,” he said. “How does he do this? I’m absolutely drained. Come, Esther. His wife is downstairs waiting to see him.”

  “Not a lot of time left for her,” Harry said, glancing at the clock.

  “There’s not been a lot of time for her all these years while you’ve been radicalizing yourself into prison. Come, Esther!”

  Harry had five minutes with Gina before the visiting hours ended. The first minute they didn’t know what to say.

  “Are you angry?” she asked.

  “No.” He sighed. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not too bad. You?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Again, he wanted to add, but didn’t. “Last time you came you looked so sick. I thought you had the flu.”

  She bowed her head. “I wanted to tell you but you were so full of anger about the war . . .” She shrugged. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”