1
“DARLING, I picked out two hymns, but I thought you could select a couple yourself and we’d narrow it to your favorite and my favorite?”
“What hymns?” They were standing inside the Algonquin Club ballroom looking at the arrangements of tables. Rather, Alice was looking. Harry was there in body only.
“Yes. I don’t know what your favorites are.”
He pretended to think. “How about ‘Are You Washed in the Blood’?”
She pretended to be aghast. “Harry! You’re joking, right?”
“Why?” he said with a straight face.
“For our wedding?”
“Oh.” He thought. “How about ‘Till the Storm Passes By’?”
She gave him a quizzical look.
“‘In the Hour of Trial’?”
“If you’re not going to be serious . . .”
“I gave you three suggestions and you don’t like any of them.”
“I picked ‘The Voice that Breathed over Eden’ and ‘Oh Perfect Love.’” She took his hand.
He forced his mouth into a smile. “See how easy that was? We’ll go with your choices then.”
A beaming Alice moved on to the guest list. “The District Attorney, the Honorable Mr. Pritchard, should sit at the table close to us in the center, don’t you agree?”
“Who? Oh. I suppose.”
“And you said earlier you might have found two extra ushers?”
“I said that?”
“Yes. Remember I told you I have twelve bridesmaids, but you have only ten ushers?”
He tried to remember. “I told you, you had to cut two of your maids loose. Ten is tops, Alice. No more will fit in the church.”
“They stand behind us.” She giggled. “Silly. We can fit fifty.”
“Heaven forfend.”
“I can’t cut two of my friends. They’ll be very upset.”
“And I can’t, as a last-minute invitation, suddenly ask two men to attend a wedding. Everyone else was invited eighteen months ago.” He lowered his head in shame.
She sighed. “I know, darling. We’ve been planning this a long time. We’re almost home.”
“Tell two of the ones you like least,” he said, “that you’ll buy them a new dress as recompense. And they’ll still be invited to the reception.”
“I don’t know. I’ll see.” She chewed her lip. “Did you remember to order your gifts for the ushers?”
Now it was his turn to chew his lip. “No.”
“Harry! You’re running out of time. Do you know what you’re going to get them?”
“No.”
“Oh my goodness.”
“What? I suppose you already have the bridesmaids’ gifts?”
“The gifts for the rehearsal and the wedding. Of course. Weeks ago. My maid of honor Belinda gets a pearl brooch. Very fancy. How about a humidor?”
“For Belinda?”
“For your ushers, silly boy.”
“What’s a humidor?”
“Harry! What are you going to get for Ben?”
“A mosquito net?”
They stood as if at an impasse in the middle of the vast room with floor-to-ceiling windows.
“I thought we could sit under a shower cascade of white and crimson roses?” Alice said, pointing. “Wouldn’t that be lovely? Over our bridal table?”
“Yes, if you like.”
She squeezed his hand. “Did you get me something beautiful?”
“Did I get you something beautiful?” he repeated. “Like what?”
She tutted. “You are such a joker,” she said. “Maybe you should try for a career at a carnival instead of a college. Have you decided where Ben and Mr. Veer should take you for your bachelor evening?”
“When Ben gets here, he can decide. Or the Dutchman will choose, but Ben won’t like it.”
“Oh no, Harry, I really hope you’re joking this time. You know you had to reserve a place weeks ago. Ben couldn’t do that from Panama. You’re joking, right?”
“Of course, dear.” He walked around the tables, in a haze.
“We will have a Viennese dessert hour at midnight,” Alice cooed. “The chef will make Bananas Foster on the spot. Ben will be pleased.”
“Why would Ben care?”
“Um—because of the bananas?”
“Oh.”
“Harry, what’s wrong with you today?”
“Today? Nothing.” A grimace contorted his lips. “So much to think about. Why Viennese hour? Don’t we have a bridal cake ten feet high?”
“Because it’s beautiful at midnight to have a buffet of sweets with the violin quartet serenading us.” Lightly she grazed his cheek. “Don’t worry, darling,” she murmured. “Oh, and about the flowers . . . I thought of having not just ferns and palms at the church, but also Japanese maples and Himalayan blackberries, tied with ivory satin ribbons, and then to cap it off, lilies of the field!—to symbolize our humility,” she explained. “And white sweet peas. Sarah said sweet peas smell terrific—the Book of Life began with the man and woman in the garden full of flowers . . .”
“And ended with the Revelations,” Harry said blackly.
“What?” Alice frowned. “Oh, before I forget, please don’t forget to invite George Lyman to your bachelor evening. Because my friend Clara is hoping he will get the hint and follow suit, right after us. Oh, darling, I don’t know what I’m more excited about, the wedding itself or our twomonth-long wedding trip to Europe.” She lowered her voice and looked around before she proceeded. “Or perhaps just the wedding night?”
Harry, who was touching the white linens on the tables, stared grimly at her. “Hold on about the wedding night a moment,” he said, also lowering his voice. “We are having a wedding to which five hundred people, including the Governor of Massachusetts, are coming, and you stand here and talk about humility? Perhaps the lesson of the lilies is lost on you, Alice.”
Color drained from her cheeks as she searched his closed and cold face. “The Archbishop of Boston is going to marry us,” she said in a tremulous voice. “You think that’s too much?”
2
Harry was rushing, late for an appointment and then the train to Chicago, when Louis knocked on his door.
“I can’t right now, Louis. Whatever it is, it’s going to have to wait.” He still didn’t have his tie on or his belt. He was taking a surreptitious bag with him, and didn’t want Louis to see it. He pushed it with his foot behind him and stepped forward toward the open door.
“All right, sir. But you have a visitor downstairs.”
“I don’t have time for a visitor, Louis. I just told you. I am egregiously late. Who is it?”
Louis’s eyes were twinkling. Harry bolted past his semiretired butler and took the stairs three at a time.
In the parlor room, Ben waited.
Harry must have looked shocked to find Ben at his house. Even as they hugged, Ben laughed. “Harry, why are you looking at me as if you’ve seen a ghost? I’m Ben. Benjamin Shaw. Remember? Your best friend.”
“How could I forget?”
“Also your best man. You remember that part too?”
“Also hard to forget.” Like the assembly line full of robots that Henry Ford was foolishly trying to string together, Harry repeated key sounds to try to pretend there was logic in his speech pattern, all to cover his terrible confusion.
“Why do you look as if I’ve drained your blood? Where’s your sister? Is she happy I’m back?”
“Happier than she has any right to be.”
“We should all go have lunch. I’m starved.”
“Ben, I . . . I’m so sorry. We have so much to catch up on . . .”
“I’ll say.” Ben was thinner, tremendously tanned. His drawn face was now framed by a trimmed and neat beard. He still looked happy, but older too, and hardened, like he had gained wisdom through experience.
“You don’t look as if you’ve had malaria.”
“That’s because you didn’t see me when I had malaria. Though I will admit, I looked better than you do right now.”
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m not contagious, if that’s what you mean. Esther!” Ben called happily up the stairs.
“She’s not here. She had to . . .” Harry looked around in desperation. His sister could save him. “Esther!”
“She is not here, sir,” Louis said. “She went to town to buy a new purse for the wedding.”
“Esther needs a purse for the wedding?” said Ben. “I find this peculiar.”
“Many things are strange, you’re right.” Harry cracked his knuckles tensely. “But Ben, right now I’ve got an appointment that I simply can’t skip. I never would’ve made it had I known you were coming.”
“Old friend, what do you mean? You knew I was coming. I sent you a telegram, telling you I’d be arriving on the 25th of June. Which is today. And you sent me one back saying you would meet me at the Freedom Docks. Do you remember?”
Harry did not remember. He didn’t want to admit to Ben that upon receiving his telegram, he promptly sent Clarence to compose a reply. Clarence did as he was told, but the downside of delegating this sort of thing meant that Harry had no knowledge of what he had agreed to.
Right now he was painfully aware of the date. And of the train bound for Chicago in two short hours.
“Have you ever known me to pay attention to dates, times?” Harry smiled, pacing like a restless stallion about to be let loose in the wild. “Please have lunch with my sister. You’ll make her day. She’s been waiting and waiting.”
“No, she hasn’t.” Ben laughed. “Why do you always make up stories?”
“I’ll be back in a while, and then we’ll catch up good and proper. Are you staying with your mother?”
“My mother is living with another man.”
“Doesn’t answer my question, but yes. She is seeing Tobias. I met him a few weeks ago. Quite argumentative.”
“For you to say that, he must be unbearable.”
“Quite.”
“She’s living with him in the upstairs room, and downstairs, my poor Aunt Effie has taken over the entire floor.”
Harry’s gaze clouded. Not noticing, Ben proceeded. “There is no room for me. Mother tells me I can sleep on the floor of their bedroom. I told her I had yellow fever and was terribly contagious. I was hoping you’d let me bunk here. Can Louis help?”
“We’d love to have you. Esther will be delighted. Louis will fix you up, talk to him. But loudly. Now . . . I must run. Forgive me?”
“Don’t think twice about it. How is teaching?”
“Great!”
“How is Alice?”
“Excellent.”
“Esther? Still married to that medical moron?”
“The head of surgical obstetrics who is upstairs putting on his socks and listening to your every word? Yes.”
“How little I care for his title or his presence.” Ben grinned. “Though I wish he weren’t here. I don’t want to hear him taking me to the woodshed about Panama and the mosquito hunters.”
“Don’t worry, he won’t. He’s never here.”
At that moment, Esther walked in through the front door carrying five large bags. Harry groaned with naked frustration.
“Ben!” She dropped all the bags onto the hall floor.
“Esther!” He opened his arms.
They embraced like old friends. Esther patted Ben’s back gently, and held on to him, for an extra moment or two. They kissed on both cheeks, stood and grinned at each other. Harry tiptoed past them on his way upstairs.
“You’ve gotten quite thin,” Ben said. “Is it because you’ve stopped eating bananas?”
“That must be it. And you’ve gotten very tanned. I barely recognize you.”
“I have no choice, standing all day long in mud under the sun.”
She still held his hands. “I’m so happy you’re back. Are you hungry?”
“I haven’t eaten properly since the day I left.” He smiled to let her know it was only partly true. She smiled back to let him know she knew. Food problems for the Panama Canal workers were legendary.
“Come with me, Benjamin. I’ll have Bernard make us some lunch.”
In his coat and hat, Harry, with a bag in hand, was squeezing past them in the hall.
“Esther, you look rather splendid,” Ben was saying. “Like aristocracy. Marriage agrees with you.”
“Does it? But you look so thin, Ben. It must be terrible down there. Why do you insist—”
“Esther, the man is starving,” Harry called to her from the door. “Stop nattering and feed him.”
Absent-mindedly Esther glanced at her brother. “Where are you off to again?”
“To see a man about a horse.” He tipped his hat. “See you two later.”
“Your friend just came five thousand miles!” She turned to Ben. “He is never home anymore. And I mean never.”
“Harry,” Ben called after him, “you’ll be back for dinner? We have many things to discuss . . .”
Harry did not answer. He was afraid it was going to rain in Chicago, and had brought down a raincoat, carelessly throwing it over the umbrella stand, where it still draped, waiting for him. He was also out of words. He bolted out the door, in his best suit and shiniest shoes.
“Why are you taking a raincoat?” Esther called after him. “It’s a beautiful day.”
“Is it a beautiful day everywhere?” Harry called back, running down the steps to the street.
3
Esther wanted to sit in the formal dining room, just the two of them, but Ben insisted on the casual family dining area overlooking the back garden. Louis served them cold shrimp salad, asparagus with Hollandaise, mustard chicken, white wine, bread, butter, and a plum tart for dessert. Ben barely spoke for the first ten minutes, eating voraciously while Esther watched him.
“I’m sorry I missed your wedding,” Ben said. He swallowed his food, and smiled. “Perhaps if you would’ve made me best man, I would’ve come, like now.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” said Esther, waving off Louis and herself pouring Ben more wine and serving him more shrimp salad. “It was fine. It wasn’t the ostentatious pageant you’re about to witness.”
“Did you go on a wedding trip too?”
“We did, but only to New Hampshire. Elmore had to be back for work. We had two weeks.”
Ben shook his head. “Well, your brother, as always, couldn’t have picked a worse time to get hitched, let me tell you. Our entire Panama operation is hanging by the bitterest thread, and I just found out my boss and staunchest ally, chief engineer John Wallace has handed his resignation to Roosevelt—while I was en route. What a nightmare.”
“Resignation! Oh, no. Why?”
“I keep writing to you why. The whole thing is a complete shambles, that’s why. It’s barely held together with spit on paper. Everybody is always sick, there is no good food, sanitation is non-existent and the trains run on broken rails. Now that we’re actually down there . . .” Ben looked skeptical. “And if I feel this way, me, the biggest proponent of the Panama experiment—I’m telling you, Est, the Americans are going to have another civil war over this, and this one is going to be worse than the last one. It’s a good thing Elmore isn’t here.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I know I’m going to catch hell for it from him.”
“But Ben, you didn’t have that many illusions, did you?” said Esther. “All you did was study this for the Isthmian Commission before you went. You knew the terrain wasn’t going to welcome your little digging experiment.”
“Did I know about the mountains, and the lakes? Did I know about the river that needs to be crossed fourteen times if we’re to build a sea-level canal? I think that’s why my dear friend finally has had it. Roosevelt was demanding results—let the dirt fly and all.” Ben scoffed. “Let the dirt fly indeed. We’re digging, digging, and we know the railroad is too old to sustain the millions of pounds of excavated spoils, and the river keeps flooding, and the mountains keep sliding into the ditches we’ve just dug . . . Wallace finally threw up his hands.”
“Have you?” Esther said quietly.
“What?” Ben blinked with exasperation. “Not yet. But only because I’m like my mother—a stubborn mule. I’m going to lose my job. You’ll see.”
She hid her excitement. “Because you came here for Harry?”
“No. Because I’m one of the few who is telling the president we can’t build a sea-level canal.”
“What?” Esther sat puzzled. “What other kind is there? A flying canal?”
“You’re funny.”
“You’re the only one who thinks so.”
“That’s why they’re bringing in John Stevens. He’s a civilian, not Army Corps like we really need, but he cut his teeth on the Great Northern Railroad, he knows what he’s doing. He says we can’t build a sea-level canal either.” Ben rolled his eyes and laughed lightly. “Poor Stevens hasn’t even arrived yet, and is already having a fist-fight via telegrams with Congress, with the Army Corps and with the president himself about the best way to build the canal. Mr. President prefers detonations through shale. It yields visible though impermanent results.”
“When do you think you’ll know if you lost your job?”
“But Stevens asked him,” Ben continued, “do you want to build the canal in ten years or fifty? Because that’s what’s at stake. Do you want to spend two hundred million dollars or four billion? Because that’s what’s also at stake.” Ben shrugged. “I give poor Stevens a year, two at most.”
“Ben,” she was concentrating, “what are you talking about? How can you build a canal that’s not sea-level?”
“You’re absolutely right.” Ben spaced his hands on the table, three feet apart, palms down. “But what do you do when the left side”—he raised his left hand eight inches off the table—“is that much higher than the right side?”
“Sea-level is not level?”
“Correct. The Pacific has more salt. So it’s less dense. It has stronger currents. So it’s higher on that end and lower on the Atlantic side. The canal would have to be built much wider than we’re planning, to accommodate the changes in the water flow. But there are mountains and a lake in our way.”
“Ben . . . it sounds insurmountable,” said Esther. “You know, I’m sure the Army Corps will transfer you back. There is so much you can do around here.”
In a familial amused gesture, Ben patted Esther’s constricted fist. “Est, you want me to leave too? Stevens will have no one left to help him. I’m the guy on the ground, the guy who’s been there from the starting gun of American involvement. I can’t quit now. Not when doom and failure are so close. Who will they blame when it all turns to dross?” He squeezed her fist. “Tell me about Harry. How has he been?”
“Good,” Esther said. “Except . . . well, listen, it’s hard to judge a man by the last two months of his life before a wedding. You know Harry. He has to think about everything for five years before he undertakes a project. He’s like your Panama.”
“What, he thinks the marriage is happening too fast? Too spur of the moment?”
“I don’t know what he thinks. Probably he’d prefer to have finished with his doctorate.”
“I thought he was! His deadline was in May, wasn’t it?”
“He missed it,” Esther said. “And asked for a July extension. But now it hangs over him. He’s been working too hard and just seems . . . distracted by the details, what can I say?”
“So where was he running off to?”
“Who knows? He’s been doing that a lot. Shopping for gifts? Last-minute things?”
“I’ve never known Harry to buy anything for anyone,” Ben said. “Louis buys.”
“Louis has not been buying,” said Esther.
They had finished eating, and were sitting at the table at right angles to each other, their conversation waning. Ben said he was getting tired and perhaps if Louis made up a bed for him, he could have a nap before Harry returned.
Esther rang for Louis. “I’m happy to see you, Ben,” she said. “Harry’s really missed you.”
“Yes, so much so that he bolts the day I arrive and even worse, makes friends with a Dutchman.”
“Yes, well.” Esther pursed her lips. “Vanderveer Custis is an acquired taste. I hope you will enjoy his company.”
“Acquired taste like Elmore?” Ben said, lowering his voice. “You don’t have to whisper, Ben,” said Esther. “Elmore is at the hospital.”
“Oh, good.” They both laughed. “You’ve been married now, what, two years?”
“Almost.”
“Are you and Elmore planning to start a family?” Ben smiled. “I would like to become Uncle Ben to a little Esther.”
“What about to a little Elmore?” said Esther.
“That would be quite insufferable,” Ben said.
Esther smiled at first and then, very carefully, she shrugged. Her shoulders sank inward almost imperceptibly were it not for her words underlining her body language. “Man proposes, but God disposes,” she said. “We haven’t been blessed yet with a family. Though let’s make a pact: when you become Uncle Ben, you’ll have to move back home.”
He took her hand. “Our pledge is iron-clad,” he said. “I’ll get sacked long before that. When I make my report to the president advising our solution to the sea-level canal, he’ll come to Panama and detonate me himself.”
Esther couldn’t hide her delight with him. “What is your solution? Paving the canal with bananas?”
“Close. Building three concrete dams through which the ships are raised”—he smiled broadly—“and then lowered.”
“Like a river dam? Ben, that’s cracked. You can’t do it.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Louis entered the room, received his instructions, and promptly left to prepare Ben’s quarters. “Will your father allow me to invite Mr. Vanderveer Custis for dinner tonight?” Ben asked. “He and I should go over our plans for the bachelor evening. Harry won’t mind if we discuss it in front of him?”
“I think it would greatly amuse him,” said Esther. “I’ll see if we can contact Mr. Custis through the English Department. Go rest, Ben, please. Harry will be back in an hour or two.”
4
“I never cease to marvel at the beauty of this church,” said Irma as they stood in the entrance to the enormous St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline and admired the pews and the altar. “Look at the opal glass windows, the stained glass stations of the cross. It’s stunning.” She glanced lovingly at her tense and distant daughter. “And you in white silk with a tulle veil, and a bow of white taffeta, holding a spray of crimson roses, why the whole thing will be like a painting!”
“Mother, could you please not change the subject? I’ve just told you, we have a serious problem.” Alice clicked her heels in unison with her tongue as she walked down the center aisle counting the pews. “Harry has to see this, Mother. I need to bring him here immediately.”
“There is nothing to do,” said Irma, her consoling hand out. “Don’t be upset. We’ll fit everybody in as best we—”
“I don’t know how we’re going to do it!” Alice interrupted. “We have seating for five hundred and seven hundred are coming!”
“Alice, dear, you’re getting yourself in a lather over nothing. They’ll wait in the narthex. We’ll open the doors.”
“Mother!”
“What do you propose? We can’t change the venue of the church at this late date. Everyone is coming here.”
Alice folded her arms, and paced up and down the aisle. “Maybe we can remove some of the ferns, here and there, and take out these giant planters of lilies,” she said. “Harry was right. They’re completely unnecessary.”
“The flowers are what people will remember.”
“Well, perhaps we should have only invited the flowers,” retorted Alice. “Because the entire church will be turned into an arboretum and there is nowhere for human beings to sit.”
“Five hundred human beings will sit.”
“If we throw away fifteen rows of flowers, we can fit another hundred.”
“We can’t throw away the flowers, child!”
“Oh, please. Of course we can. Let’s put the flowers in the Algonquin. And in our house. We have seventy-five people coming for the wedding breakfast. Let’s positively suffocate them with flowers. We’ll give planters away as gifts.”
“Darling . . . the church must be decorated with flowers,” Irma Porter exclaimed. “It’s not a wedding without the flowers. This is your Garden of Eden, darling.”
“I’ll be holding a bouquet, Mother,” Alice said in a no-nonsense voice. “So will my bridesmaids. And let’s give Harry an extra large boutonniere made from some of the flowers that are taking up all this precious room. Let’s go and talk to the priest about it. Oh!” she lamented. “I wish Harry could help me. He’d know what to do.”
The mother and daughter proceeded to the rectory.
“I haven’t seen him around this whole week,” said Irma. “Where has he been? He didn’t even come for Wednesday dinner as usual.”
“I know,” said Alice. “To be frank, I haven’t seen him either. Or heard from him. I think he is trying to finish his doctoral thesis before our wedding trip.”
“I thought he was presenting that a few weeks ago?”
“He was, but he couldn’t finish. He said he had too much on his mind—because of the wedding. He can hardly be doing doctoral work when we are soon sailing to Europe.” Her whole face flushed with anticipation. “I wish we didn’t have to come back so soon. Two months is not long enough, don’t you think? We’ll barely be able to spend two weeks in Italy.”
“It’ll be wonderful just as it is,” said Irma. “The less time in Italy, the better.”
“Oh, Mummy.” Alice took her mother’s hand while they waited for the priest. She tutted, suddenly remembering something else. “The string quartet maestro asked me if I wanted to keep them for the Viennese hour at midnight. But we’ll already have a symphony band playing. I don’t know if the quartet might not be nicer, though, at that hour of night.”
“Ask Harry about that. Don’t make this decision on your own.”
“I tried, Mother! Yesterday Belinda, Alyssa, Clara and I all called on him in the late afternoon.”
“And?”
“He wasn’t home! Esther and Ben were there and Esther said he was out. But she said it oddly. I asked if I should wait. She thought about it for ten minutes and then said, I don’t think so. Not no. But I don’t think so.”
“So what did you do?”
“We waited a little bit. They were quite hospitable and funny. Mr. Barrington came home, and we had a wonderful evening. He is such a nice man.”
“Yes.” Irma’s face was expressionless.
“At dinner Ben entertained my friends and Esther by making everybody laugh. Then he and Elmore got into a tremendous fiery discussion about Panama to the delight of all, especially Mr. Barrington. Elmore called Ben a ditchdigger. Ben called Elmore a mosquito-hunter! We didn’t leave until nine in the evening.”
“What—and Harry didn’t show up all that time?”
There was just the slightest pause.
“No.”
“And no one spoke of it?”
“Not a word! As if he didn’t live at the house. No one even mentioned his name.”
“So what did you talk about at dinner? Besides Panama.”
“The wedding of course! We’ve been talking about nothing else for two years.”
“The wedding without mentioning Harry? That’s quite a feat.”
“Well, we mentioned him in his role as the bridegroom. As in, how much of the bridegroom’s tuxedo and morning coat should be white? Should his waistcoat also be white? Could Ben make sure Harry’s patent leather shoes are shined the night before? Has he picked up his silk black hat? And what does the bridegroom think of the ‘Strains of Lohengrin Wedding March’ instead of Mendelssohn’s?”
“All without mentioning Harry’s name?”
“Yes! And no one said, oh, look at the time, I wonder where Harry is. Mr. Barrington regaled us with stories about the people who were traveling from all corners of the globe to see his son get married. Colonel MacKenzie, Mr. Barrington’s personal friend is arriving all the way from California. And Judge Blackhouse, who apparently never goes to these things, is an honored guest. So is Supreme Court Justice Wendell Holmes. Mother, he asked me to play something on their piano. He said Esther hadn’t played in a long time. It was a little out of tune, their Kimball, but I played ‘Consolations,’ and made only one tiny mistake. When I finished and turned around, Esther had tears in her eyes. Even Mr. Barrington looked a little misty.” She straightened her spine. “Well, why not? It’s a beautiful piece, Mother. So that helped pass the time. At one point, Rosa had to step outside for something and when she returned through the front door, Esther and Ben jumped nearly to the ceiling. When they saw it was just the housemaid, they sat back down like someone dropped potato sacks on their heads.”
Irma was pensive. “Were they waiting for Harry?”
“I don’t know. I found the whole thing unnerving. And as you see, without him we don’t have answers to a dozen questions.”
“Well, of course. You’re having to make all the decisions.”
“Yes!” Alice said, overburdened. “But he told me last week that he thought loin of pork and lobster Newburg was too much, and didn’t go together. Yet he didn’t come up with anything else. I told him, propose something else. You know what he suggested? Lasagna!”
Mother and daughter made an exasperated interlocution. “He will never stop with his jokes, will he?” said Irma. “Not even at a time like this.”
“I know, Mother, I know. The other week we were going over the colors of the flowers and he asked why the roses had to be crimson. I told him, Harry, because of Harvard, remember? And he said, yes, but in a tone that made me uncertain he actually did remember. So, as a joke, I asked him if he’d prefer pinks and yellow organdies instead? And he said, why not?”
Irma steadied her anxious daughter. “Don’t worry, darling. It’s good he is letting you decide. Believe me, you need that in a marriage. You want him to be malleable, to do the important things how you like, not as he likes.”
Alice agreed half-heartedly. “At least he’s bought me a wedding present—finally. God, I thought he’d never get it done.”
“How wonderful! How do you know this?”
“Because I couldn’t take the suspense anymore. You know how I hate surprises. And to be perfectly honest,” she said sheepishly, “I was a tiny bit afraid he’d forgotten. So I asked Billingsworth. I begged him to divulge. And he told me that Harry had apparently bought an exquisite gold and diamond watch and a diamond necklace!”
The mother and daughter couldn’t speak for a moment, in their excitement. “So when he finally takes the leap, he really goes overboard,” said Irma.
“Doesn’t he just, Mother! Oh, I really wish he could help me decide on these flowers.”
Irma took her daughter by the hand and led her back inside the church hall. “We’ll tell the priest we want to bring in more pews, darling, and remove the flowers as you suggested. I fully believe, the more people in the holy place to witness your triumph the better.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” She kissed her mother in gratitude. “Oh!” Alice exclaimed. “What a brilliant spectacle it will be!”
5
In Chicago they stayed at the Palmer House on Monroe Street. The convention was for three days in the middle of the week, and they had bought tickets well in advance. Two hundred anarchists, socialists, radical trade unionists, opponents of the American Federation of Labor and Harry and Gina gathered in Chicago for one of the seminal events in the history of the trade union movement—the foundation of IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World—though Harry and Gina never left their hotel, barely left their hotel bed.
The Palmer House, destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire mere days after it opened in 1871 had been restored to its original opulence. Everything in that hotel from the lobby upwards was rebuilt on the grandest of scales. Harry told Gina the hotel was the outcry of romance in the fight against the drudgery of daily life. “So we can forget our life for just a few minutes, and rejoice here as if there is nothing else.”
“But Harry,” said Gina, in his arms, “there is nothing else.”
“There isn’t much,” he said, locked inside himself in a compartment that was becoming smaller and smaller. The lobbies had to get grander to obviate the airless quarters inside him, like steerage berths on a sinking ship. The guesthouses just weren’t doing it any more.
It rained for three days in Chicago while the collectivist anarchists butted heads with the insurrectionary anarchists, and the anarcho-communists dueled with the anarchosyndicalists. “Direct action” man Big Bill Haywood made an uneasy alliance with “ballot box” guy Eugene Debs while radical Lucy Parsons bitterly and publicly fought with revolutionary Tom Haggerton. Meanwhile Harry and Gina spent the rainy days allied in bed, smelted together, caught in their own insurrectionist downpour and venturing to the door to pick up the room service and the newspaper to read all about it. Italy, Iberia, Innsbruck were dots on the maps of their bodies that they kept connecting, drawing over with the piercing needs of their protracted couplings.
“Gia, do you care if I’m rich or poor?”
“Makes no difference to me.”
“But all things being equal . . .”
“I’d like to wear a white hat and live in a house with two staircases.”
“So you do mind. But what if I have nothing?”
“You have everything. It’s I who’ve got nothing. Except you.”
“What if there is nothing else but me?”
“That’s all I want. It’s all I ever wanted.”
She wasn’t answering his questions even though she was pretending to. She was giving him what she thought he wanted.
“Your father, was he poor?”
“Yes. But we always had enough. No more, no less.”
“But what about his violins?”
“He built them only for America. We never touched the violin money.”
“Until you buried him with it.”
“But what a funeral he had. We carried him through the streets of Belpasso and the procession after him, three hundred people, all wept. The bells rang for him in ten churches.”
“He was an amazing man by the sound of it.”
“Yes, and careful with his money.” She kissed Harry’s neck, nuzzling him. “My father was a great proponent of having only one of what you needed. He wasn’t concerned about having two combs, two belts, two handkerchiefs when only one would do. He had one pair of scissors for twenty years.”
“I have never met a man like that. I wish I could have known him.”
“Me too. But I learned from him, my darling. I’ll be careful with our money. You’ll see.”
“I don’t want children, Gina.”
“Lord, of course not. Children? Nor me. Progressive women don’t have children nowadays. It’s just not done. You know what Emma says about children: they’re souldestroying.”
“I’m serious.”
“I’m more serious.”
“Other people’s children are nearly intolerable.”
“Why qualify intolerable?”
“Quite right. But also I know women who suddenly mold their whole being around the new life that is forming.”
“That would not be me, darling. I’m here to change the world.”
“Children can’t be the reason for your whole existence!”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Nor should they be.”
“Harry, we are speaking the same language.”
He saw her then, really saw her, her open Italian face, the shining black-brown eyes, the ready smile. “But you said you love me,” he said.
“You are what I love most in life.”
“If it weren’t for me, would you want to have children?”
“Never,” she said, adamant and fierce. “I didn’t come to America to tie myself to babies. I’m my father’s daughter. I have a lot to prove.” Gina smiled. “We’re too young. We will never be young like this. I want to have just us, Harry. I want to get my degree, I want to work, to travel. Do you know I’ve never been anywhere but Lawrence and Boston?” She giggled. “And Italy, of course. But there is so much I haven’t seen. So much I haven’t done. I want it all.” She held his hand, lying happily in his arms. “I want it all with you.”
He was pensive, pondering. “But Gia,” he said with puzzlement. “What if I wanted children?”
“But you just said you didn’t.”
“But say I did. What if I told you I wanted children?”
She drew rings on his chest with her graceful fingers. “I would want what you want,” she said at last. “That’s the truth. Left to my own desires, I wouldn’t have children. But if that’s what you wanted, then I’d want to make you happy. Perché ti amo.” She stared at him in the big bed in Chicago while down the street the anarcho-syndicalists were drumming out their historical grievances, making speeches, rousing crowds. “Il mio cuore,” she said, “isn’t that what love is? Trying to make happy the ones you love?”
“I don’t know what it is,” said Harry. “I suppose we’re about to find out.”