Chapter Eight

THE REWARDS OF MISSION WORK

ELLEN Shaw came from too illustrious a family. She was the youngest by far of four daughters and one son, born to Francis and Sarah Shaw. Her grandfather had been a hard-working merchant who made enough money so his family didn’t have to. They lived off his labor on the family estate in Roxbury, Massachusetts, then sold it, divided the money and moved to New York to pursue their separate whimsies—all except Ellen’s brother Robert, who, as soon as the war broke out, joined the Union Army. When he was getting slaughtered at Fort Wagner, Ellen was barely out of diapers.

Ellen was the runt of the family in every way including the physical. She was an afterthought, was raised like an afterthought, and behaved like an afterthought. After her brother was martyred fighting the Confederates in the 54th Regiment and Josephine founded the New York Consumers’ League and campaigned for raising wages and working conditions of women in New York, Ellen decided that maybe if she was outrageous, her family might notice her. So she was most outrageous—and no one batted an eye. She rebelled against tradition the only way she knew how, by pretending she held it in contempt.

When she was barely eighteen, she became pregnant by a man in a dance club who was out on furlough and had to return to prison after the long weekend. Finally, a much-desired scandal. Ellen was left with an impossible choice. She could quickly get involved with another man and pretend the child was his, or give the baby up for adoption. She opted for neither. She left New York to spare her family the continued humiliation, moved back to Boston, rented an apartment in Back Bay and became a single mother.

After a few months she realized that single motherhood was not as romantic as she had envisioned. The baby demanded all her time without any division of labor. She wanted to go out but there was no one to leave the child with. After six months, she came home to Staten Island to drop off her son for a visit with widowed Josephine while she went up to Canada, to the Niagara Falls. It was eleven years before Ben Shaw saw his mother again.

For over a decade he was passed like a parcel among the sisters, and finally Josephine, with whom he stayed the most, had had enough and traveled up to Boston to find Ellen.

They found her living happily in a lush Back Bay house that belonged to the family of her second husband who was now deceased. It turned out he was more of a common-law husband, and she and his family had been in court for years in their attempt to force her out of their home.

Josephine may have been judgmental of her younger sister’s vagabond ways, but Ben, who had been living under strict scrutiny of his busybody aunts, took one glimpse of his mother’s free life and decided he wanted it too. Ellen tried to explain to her son that freedom came only with lack of responsibility, and the relationship between freedom and responsibility was, tragically, inversely proportional. He begged to stay with her anyway, and she finally gave in on the condition that he call her Ellen and not let any of her potential suitors know that he was her child and not her nephew.

Josephine offered to pay the rent on a new residence so that Ben wouldn’t have to pack up and move every time Ellen found herself a new beau. Ben couldn’t explain to his aunt that that was the part he found most appealing. He had been a content and smiling boy, having been raised by three loving aunts and grown up with a gaggle of cousins. Suddenly he was thrust into only-child loneliness of living among adults. But Ellen had discovered some latent maternal talents, and while hardly formidable, they were nonetheless sufficient to learn how to cook and to be home at a reasonable hour on some evenings.

Young Ben was too often left to his own devices, however, and he started to engage in behavior that bordered on and then crossed over into the illegal—which made it all the more difficult for Ellen to pretend that parenting involved little more than cooking a plate of food for a twelve-yearold three times a week.

With the situation between them spiraling out of control, one fine Saturday afternoon on State Street Ben tried to deprive a certain Herman Barrington of his wallet in full view of a constable and an astonished Harry Barrington out for a stroll with his father. Ben was promptly seized and arrested. Had it not been for Harry’s intervention, Ben Shaw surely would’ve been held in juvenile detention until he was eighteen. As it was, Harry recognized a boy shouting for help when he saw one. He was one of those boys himself.

After the unexpected death of his mother, Harry had chafed and bucked against his older sister’s control and his father’s sudden preoccupation with his business. His misgivings and abundant loneliness turned him inward to himself, and outward to books. He managed to find something to do that consumed him, but had turned him even more away from other people.

The urchin boy stealing twenty dollars from his father’s leather wallet was a revelation to Harry. He persuaded his father to drop the charges and then invited the boy over for dinner. Ben stayed overnight and returned the following weekend. And the following.

It worked out well for everyone. Ellen and the Barringtons divided custody of Ben. Ellen had him during the week so he could go to school, and on the weekends he stayed in Barrington. He had Louis set him a sleeping cot in the corner of Harry’s bedroom, refusing a room of his own. When it came time to apply to the prestigious and expensive Andover preparatory academy, Herman Barrington didn’t even need to be convinced to offer to pay. Two years later, he delighted in telling everyone that Ben was admitted to Harvard on his own merits and received a full scholarship.

“Could it be, Father,” Harry would say, “that the Harvard Admissions Board by rules of simple deduction knows my name is Barrington and you’re one of the largest contributing endowment members, while Ben’s name is Shaw, nephew of a man who just happened to be a martyr and a war hero, not to mention an honored Porcellian? Perhaps if we told them my last name was Shaw instead, I could get a scholarship also.”

For the first few years at Harvard, Ben flitted from one ephemeral passion to the next, getting excited about chemistry, economics, business, mathematics, only last year settling on engineering—while Harry, straight and narrow, was interested in nothing but philosophy and history.

“Are you majoring in philosophy to upset me, son?” Herman would sometimes ask. “Because it doesn’t.”

“Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with you, Father.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Ellen, a frequent guest at the Barrington home, upon hearing this said to Herman, “No, Herman, yours is a very good boy, but how do you explain that my son wants to build a fruit farm in Central America as a stepping stone for taking over the world, while his mother advocates demilitarized isolation?”

“Believe it or not,” Ben said, “it has nothing to do with you, Mother.”

“I also don’t believe it.”

 

2

 

“Are you coming on Thursday?” Ben asked Harry.

“Coming where?” They were walking briskly across the Yard to Memorial Hall for lunch, Ben from Applied Mechanics, Harry from Ethics of Social Questions.

“To my mother’s League meeting.”

“I wasn’t planning on it, why?”

“Do you remember Verity?”

“No. But why do you answer a question with a question?” Semester had started a week ago and Harry wasn’t crazy about one of his courses with Professor Royce: Fundamental Problems of Theoretical Philosophy. He was thinking of dropping it, but Royce was good friends with his father, and Harry didn’t want it to seem as if he was dropping the class because he didn’t want Royce to make weekly reports to Herman about Harry’s progress.

“Come on. You remember.”

“All right, so what?”

“Verity is quite interested in my mother’s Anti-Imperialism.”

“Is she?”

“Why the surprise? Yes, she is. So much so that she came to Old South last week.”

Harry stopped walking. “Verity came to a League meeting?”

“In this you are precisely correct.”

Harry contemplated a moment. “Who was the guest speaker?”

“Is that important? W.E.B. Du Bois.”

“Ah.” They resumed their steady pace down the winding path. “She must be fond of him.”

“I don’t know. He’s against miscegenation laws. The League women will not invite him back. He called all the women racists.” Ben cleared his throat. “But do you know what’s more important than how Verity feels about Du Bois?”

“I can’t imagine that anything could be. Don’t dawdle at the gate, Ben, it’s not considerate. Come on, push on through.” He prodded his friend through the narrow iron opening.

“Who Verity came with.” Ben’s whole face was alight. Harry shook his head. His hat fell off; he had to catch it. “I thought we were over this.”

“You also thought my canal obsession was a passing fancy.”

“One of those things must be true.”

“That’s a logical fallacy. They’re both false.”

They walked inside the mobbed and noisy Memorial Hall, ordered chicken soup and pork with potatoes, paid and sat down. It took them a while to find two seats together.

“I forgot to ask—weren’t you waiting on the Porcellian decision this week?”

“I was, but don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not. You don’t change the subject. What did they say?”

“Ben,” Harry said in between hungry bites. “All other too-obvious-and-not-worth-pointing-out—again—dangers aside, your mother wants you to stop coming to her anticanal meetings. Have you not noticed? She fears you will disrupt things.”

“What did they say?”

“They said no,” said Harry. “They said I’d be a better fit at one of the other final clubs.” He paused. “What? It’s fine. I don’t much care. Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“You know I don’t care,” Harry said. “I just don’t want him to lord another thing over my head. That’s really the only reason I wanted in. So I’d stop hearing it from him. But now it’s done.”

Ben gave Harry a long blink of regret and sympathy and swallowed his food. “How do you know this about my mother?”

“Know what? Oh. Two weeks ago at afternoon tea she told my father, who told my sister, who told me.”

Ben shrugged. “Ignorance of facts heavily influences my mother’s position. The canal is an economic enterprise. It can and will square with her pacifist organization. She just doesn’t know it.”

“Yes, because you’re the only smart one in the room.”

“I thought you were the only smart one in the room?” Ben grinned.

“This is indeed so.” Harry tried not to smile. “But what about Panama fighting Colombia for its independence even as we speak?”

“So? Let them fight.”

“Why are we siding with the Panamanians?”

“Is that a real question? We’ve been through this. Because we’re at war with Spain over its untrammeled colonization policy in places precisely like Colombia. And second, because we can’t build a canal through Colombia. Perhaps a geography course is in order before you graduate from the most prestigious university in the United States.”

Now Harry laughed. “Perhaps a common sense course for you! The women, led by your own mother, are going to hang you from the rafters.”

“My mother has never been particularly fond of me. Her conformist bastion needs a dissenting voice. They can’t just have a group of yah-sayers at Old South. The Tea Party began there for God’s sake! It’s a rebel debate hall. I’m going to find an opportunity to inform them that their pacifism and my canal are not mutually exclusive.”

“I want to be there for that one.”

“You will be.”

“Metaphorically speaking,” said Harry.

“However you meant it.”

Harry adamantly shook his head and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “No. I really can’t,” he said, standing up. “I’m carrying a full load this semester. I’ve got a Metaphysical seminar, Labor Questions in Light of Ethical Theory, Socialism and Communism with Cummins and he is very tough. He told me I’m not reading enough every night. Can you imagine?” They cleaned up their trays, shouted greeting and parting words to their classmates, and started out. “And Alice has roped me into another charity extravaganza besides. You and gangly Verity are going to have to draw in the tanned Italian fly by yourselves.”

Ben took Harry’s arm. They had been walking through Harvard Yard, and now stopped so Ben could be more persuasive. “Harry, listen to me . . .”

“I will not, and grabbing my arm is not going to persuade me.”

“We cross the prairie as of old, the Pilgrims crossed the sea, to make the west, as they the east, the Homestead of the Free!”

“Poetry also won’t work.”

“Harry, not five minutes ago cows grazed in the Boston Common! Now look at our city. How do you think it got this way? Counting houses, markets, factories, your father helped build this town . . .”

“Please don’t bring my father into this.”

“Hide, leather, merchant fleet, textbooks, smell your city, Harry!”

“Manure, trash, you’re right.”

“No! Molasses and bananas. Coffee, newspaper print, books on the streets. All hallmarks of civilization.”

“All somehow without a canal.”

“But the rest of the world isn’t so lucky. With the canal, civilization will come to all.”

“Because of the canal?”

“Yes! They will bring us bananas; we will bring them lobsters and shoes.”

“And this is why I have to come with you on Thursday?”

“You have to come with me because you’re my friend.”

“Benjamin, I am your friend, but I’m not supposed to be marrying you. Alice, bless her, demands I attend some charity ball this Thursday. I wasn’t joking about that.”

“Charity ball or the world’s greatest fruit industry created and expanded right here in Boston?”

Harry tried a different tack. “What about Gail from Grays? Just two months ago, she was on your arm and you were dreaming about Truro together.”

“You’re imagining things. I walked her from Grays to Gore Hall once. She mentioned her family used to go clamming in Truro. From this you draw lifelong commitment?”

Harry sighed. “Is that what we’re talking about here? Lifelong commitment?”

“First things first.” Ben smiled widely.

“Honest to all that is holy, this is the most insane I’ve seen you. Tell me,” Harry said as they quickened their step on the way to University Hall, “is it Panama or the girl?”

Ben didn’t reply. Harry wondered if Ben himself knew the answer.

 

3

 

Verity Dunne had never been to Boston before she became friends with Gina. She and her two younger sisters had been born and raised by two Irish parents in Lawrence. Her father was a day laborer and her mother a textile mill worker, among other things, and they had once taken their children north to Hampton, and east to Salem, but not south. Last week had been her first train ride, her first outing. Though she was three years older than Gina and ostensibly Gina’s chaperone, she seemed substantially younger, and lacked Gina’s passion for the big city. Her excited curiosity was slightly tempered by her anxiety.

Gina got Mimoo to agree to let her occasionally stay overnight at Verity’s because they worked late at St. Vincent’s and started their day early. Verity went to St. Mary’s School for Girls while Gina walked to Pacific Mill.

After a few exemplary overnights, Gina and Verity gained parental trust, and Gina decided the time was right to take the 5:15 train to Boston. Gina knew what Mimoo and Salvo and Pippa didn’t know and Angela had long forgotten, which was that Verity’s mother worked two night jobs besides her day job at the mill—as an undertaker’s assistant four days a week and as a caretaker to a blind gentleman the other three. The reason she worked two more jobs was because her husband was sporadically employed at best. The reason her husband was sporadically employed was that he tended to come in late to work and get fired. And the reason he tended to come in late to work was that he was a drunk, and spent most of his nights passed out on the couch. Naturally the family kept this grubby fact of their daily life in strict confidence. Verity’s two younger sisters stayed with their grandmother in Methuen during the week, while Verity was responsible, diligent, hard-working, and largely on her own. As long as Verity came home before her mother walked in the door at 11:10 p.m., she could do as she liked. Gina knew this, and had learned to exploit it. As a result Gina was the first person to gain Verity’s trust. Verity could barely stop spilling out the details of her sad life to a sympathetic and receptive Gina. Everyone got what they wanted: Verity a sorely needed friend, and Gina a narrow passage out of the trapped existence of a fifteen-year-old Catholic Italian immigrant.

Latching gladly onto Gina and allowing herself to be swayed without much persuasion, only fear sometimes spoke to Verity’s timid heart, fear of getting caught, of getting into trouble, of facing the righteous wrath of the adults—but the excitement of getting a little dolled up and going to Boston by train—by themselves—was so exhilarating that fear became nothing more than fuel on the fire of her freshly minted independence.

The girls, of course, had no proper clothes to wear to Boston; for most of her adolescence Verity wore lumpy dresses, slightly let out, patched up with fabric as she grew, and Gina fared even worse. She had come with a trunk full of peasant clothes that she now wouldn’t be caught in a nunnery wearing. The few dollars she made working all went to the new house fund. The Attavianos, with Pippa and Angela, had just weeks earlier moved out of the crummy row house to Summer Street, right off the Common, where they had found a simple but charming folk Victorian for rent. They rented almost the entire house, upstairs and downstairs. A walkway through a small front garden, eight steps up to the deep porch, a living room and dining room combination, with a kitchen stove off to the side, three bedrooms upstairs and a coal room and washing facilities down in the basement. It was a mansion! It even had a small overgrown backyard. In the attic lived Rita, a widow. Mimoo liked her.

So the family had more room, but also greater expenses. Every cent they earned went into the kitty to pay the rent, utilities and food. There was nothing left for Gina’s shoes, or a new hat, nothing even for material for a dress. But back in Belpasso, Gina had learned how to spin from Rafaela, the old blind herder down the road whose goats she milked and whose sheep she sheared, and she became so swift that each year she won awards as the fastest handspinner in town under the age of twenty. She considered it a wasted talent, until she got to Lawrence.

She could have instantly got work on the mechanical lightning-fast spinning machines at the mills, but to sit long hours in a stifling, humid room year round for slave pay held surprisingly little appeal for Gina. Instead she offered St. Vincent’s sisters her services to card and spin the scraps of poor quality wool she brought home. The nuns found her a medium-sized, beat-up wooden spindle and distaff and a pair of carding paddles with half their teeth missing and put her in the small backroom they used for storage. In poor light, racing to keep the wool from drying out and matting, Gina teased, combed and disentangled the raw fleece, twisting it into rovings that could be drafted and spun. Compared to carding, spinning the wool into yarn took almost no time at all. Carding would’ve taken even less time had she not had to wash the fleece so thoroughly. Leaving a little of the natural sheep lanolin in the wool made it more elastic, easier to work with and had the extra benefit of keeping her hands soft. Rafaela’s hands had been like a baby’s bottom. Alas, Gina’s hands were still like sandpaper.

After she had sold a hundred and fifty skeins of undyed yarn for a 100% profit at Saturday’s bazaar and made five dollars, the nuns took up a collection in church on Sunday and bought Gina a used, large one-thread hand- spinner that rested on the floor. She wanted a two-thread spinning wheel but that cost a hundred dollars. It would take them two years to collect that kind of money. Some of the sisters volunteered to help her card the wool, and though they weren’t very thorough, afterward Gina’s cones of yarn appeared much faster. What began as a volunteer side job developed into hours of backbreaking work. She couldn’t bring home enough free wool to spin.

Eventually she took three of the nuns with her to Washington and met with Percy Clark, her floor manager, asking him, with full intercession from the divine sisters, if he would like to donate some of the more unusable scraps for the mission at St. Vincent’s to help the poor of Lawrence. “Everything can be used,” Percy said. “There is no such thing as unusable. Except for the breech pile, but you don’t want that.” Gina didn’t want to admit that that indeed was what they had been using. He offered Gina—but only if she sorted and washed it herself on her own time, not the company’s—ten pounds a week of head fleece, or grade four out of eight. The nuns were delighted. Gina, too. Now she could leave a little lanolin in the wool—grade four was softer, and the spun yarn was better and sold for a penny more. The money they raised went for doctor’s bills or to women with children whose husbands were infirm or unemployed or dead, or whose houses burned down—a frequent occurrence with all the open flames from candles and kerosene lamps and fireplaces.

Gina was no fool. True, she offered her services to St. Vincent’s for free, but the one thing she asked for in return was the proceeds from one hank for every five she sold. The sisters readily agreed. Now Gina had virtually unlimited supplies of wool to work with. She became blazingly fast. As she spun the wool ever thinner—parsing a pound into sixteen skeins, then twenty-two, then, if she was supremely careful, thirty—she dreamed about the spinning machine, and how much yarn she could draft and sell once the nuns acquired one for her, and how much more money she could earn. She had plans to set up her own industry. The more delicate her yarn, the more she charged for it. She started dreaming of ways to dye it cheaply, so she could charge four pennies, six, even eight, instead of two or three like now. In the meantime, with the few dollars she eked out, Gina bought a couple of yards of moss green cotton, and some white and black lace and sewed herself a pretty day dress. One more week of non-stop work purchased her a hat to go with it and a taffeta ribbon to tie up her hair. Dio vi benedica, Rafaela. You learn something every place you look.

 

When her mother saw her in the new dress, there was a scandal and she was forbidden to wear it. “Your skirt is too fitted,” said Mimoo.

“No, Mimoo, you’re mistaken. I’ve gained weight. And there is no let in the silk. Lend me money to buy some more fabric, I’ll sew myself a looser skirt.”

“You haven’t gained weight,” said Mimoo, who had. What was clearly white, Gina shook her head and called it black. “I have, I have.”

“Aside from being too slim, it’s shamelessly short,” said Mimoo. The hem barely covered the middle part of her two-inch heel.

“My skirt is exactly one inch off the ground,” said Gina.

Mimoo and Angela flung open Harper’s Bazaar magazine to prove to Gina beyond any argument that all respectable women’s skirts dragged on the ground half a foot at least.

Gina refused. She made a cogent, articulate, rational argument that fell entirely on deaf ears. First she said she was not a woman. Second, that she never wore skirts that long in Italy. Her mother pointed out, correctly, that they were no longer in Italy.

Gina then applied the inconvenience argument. Long skirts made it impossible to go up and down stairs, to go down the street without tripping, to carry anything—to be independent. Mimoo and Angela, with Pippa joining in, pointed out that all other young girls and young women, all women in fact in Lawrence, Boston, Andover, Lowell and everywhere else in the New World somehow managed.

She followed with the ignorance argument. “Mimoo, you and Pippa don’t know what you’re talking about. Mine is called a walking dress. Or a rainy day dress. All the ladies in Boston wear them, and they are by definition more comfortable to walk in.”

In desperation Gina pulled out the life and death argument. Long skirts, whose hems constantly swept across the filthy ground, picked up disease from the dirt, the garbage, from the horse manure left on the streets. It was a health hazard—it could cause infections, skin conditions, blood poisoning, tuberculosis, pneumonia, typhus, diphtheria, death!

“Oh, isn’t she just an amphitheater of tragedy!”

“Yes, she’s a regular La Bohème!”

“Mimoo!” yelled Gina. “They let horses decompose on the streets! You want my skirt to roll across horse remains?”

“Don’t go where the horses decompose. And don’t yell at your mother.”

“You want me to drag my skirts across the carcass that has been left there for days, sometimes weeks?” Gina asked, just as loudly. “You think that’s better than keeping my hem one inch above ground?”

“All I know,” Mimoo said loftily, “and Pippa and Angela agree with me, is no one is supposed to see your shoes when you’re a young lady. That’s how it’s done in this country. That’s how you’re going to do it. You do know, don’t you, what kind of women keep their skirts that short?”

Gina didn’t ask and wasn’t offered more information. Railing privately against the insanity, she sewed a five-inch velvet panel into the waist of her dress with the too slim skirt now covering her shoes by three inches, and carried the heft of the dress in her hands so she could rush to the train without falling.

 

4

 

They got to North Station at twenty minutes to seven and had to hurry to miss the first introductions at seven o’clock. They were going to take the subway (“The first subway built in the United States was built right here in Boston”), but even Gina was uncertain as to how the subway that she kept reading about worked. You went down below ground, and there was a train there, and it took you several stops to your destination? But what if you got on a train going the wrong way? What if you had to pull a lever to stop and forgot to pull it in time, how could you get back? And there was something about riding an underground trolley that was terrifying. The girls were curious, but not that curious. The above-ground trolley cars also confounded them. Which one stopped near Old South? In the end they walked to Washington Street; they knew how to do that.

It was still light out and warm. The color of the leaves had barely started deepening. Gina slowed down her stride, to breathe the air fragrant with life, with molasses, sausages, olives, cigarette smoke, horses, the hot metal from the trolley car rails, the leather from the briefcases men carried, rotting fruit, all of it in one breathtaking, breathless inhale of the heart. If she could live in Boston and never leave, and be carried feet first out of this magnificent sprawl, with all its congestion and chaos, she would be carried out happy. She would live even then, when she was dead!

“Isn’t it glorious, Verity?” she exclaimed, dragging her friend down Nashua Street, holding an open map in front of them. “Isn’t it simply glorious?”

Verity’s squeezed-together expression made her look as if she had swallowed vinegared cabbage. “We’re going to get into so much trouble.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Gina, truth will out. You know this.”

“We’re learning about life.”

“A little less learning might do us good.”

“Did you know,” Gina said, “that when King James was asked by the Pilgrims for permission to sail to the New World, he said to them, ‘What profit might arise by this?’ and they told him there was fishing on the shores of this new and blooming England, to which he let them go free, replying, ‘So God save my soul! ’Tis an honest trade. ’Twas the Apostles’ own calling.’”

Verity’s eyes were round as plates. “How do you know this?”

“Because while you were staring out the window on the train, I was busy brushing up on my Boston history.” Gina tapped a book she brought with her: A Short History of New England.

“Why?”

“What if we’re required to converse with smart people? I don’t want to appear stupid.” What if I have a chance to converse with Harry? He wasn’t there last week, but perhaps tonight . . .

“Isn’t it better not to be stupid?”

“Verity, Verity.” Gina pulled her friend by the arm. “Don’t you know anything? Forma segue la funzione.”

“I have no idea what you just said. And why would anyone at an anti-colonialism meeting ask you about King James?”

“Just in case, I also brought and read the pamphlet Ben gave me about the League. Come on, don’t dawdle.”

“How do you even know a word like dawdle,” Verity muttered, speeding up slightly. Gina was almost running. “You’ve been in this country five minutes.”

“I’ve been reading English aloud. And Papa started teaching me English when I was four years old,” Gina replied. “He taught me well, no?”

“Hmm,” the gawky girl grumbled. “Too well.”

The Old South Meeting House was crammed to the rafters with people, just like the week before. There wasn’t enough seating by half—not even in the organ loft and the choir galleries. The girls entered through Milk Street and squeezed in under the pillars of the balcony toward the back, standing against the wall, peering over the shoulders of the men and women in front of them. Gina searched for Ben. Verity whispered, pointing to the pulpit, “Hey, isn’t that the gentleman from last week?”

Gina looked across the pews to the wineglass-shaped rostrum. A handsome Negro man dandily dressed in a beautiful black hat stood inside it speaking, his voice passionately rising and falling. “I have no idea,” she said. “Who is that?”

“Girls!” a voice next to them whispered excitedly. It was Ben—with Harry. Eureka! They had just walked in themselves. Now Gina didn’t feel so self-conscious. But before they could say a word of greeting, they were promptly shushed by a row of disapproving women. Gina surreptitiously glanced at Harry. He looked as distracted as she, and carried a heavy school bag. Had he just come from university? Perhaps he had been at the library, studying. His suit was less pressed around the knees and elbows, as if he’d been sitting at a table, learning smart things about the world. She imagined him reading, a lamp on the table lighting the pages, sitting by himself in a quiet wood-paneled library, writing things down with his quill pen, looking off into the distance, thinking about the things he had just read.

Leaning over to Ben, Harry said a cryptic, “I thought they weren’t going to invite him back?”

“He’s packing the hall, isn’t he?” Ben whispered back and was promptly shushed again by a stern backbencher.

Acutely aware of the passing of time, Gina fidgeted, was restless. She kept adjusting her hat, the ribbons in her blouse, flattening the front of her already flat skirt, twisting the silver bracelets she had “borrowed” a month ago from Angela and not returned. The carbon microphone kept cutting in and out; the acoustics of the new technology were still terrible, the sound of the man’s voice bouncing in fragments off the ivory walls.

As he spoke, people clapped, hollered, even whistled. Women stood up and cheered. Some booed. They behaved as if they could hear the man with the shiny black cane, could understand what he was saying. Gina glanced over at Verity. The girl was entranced.

The train back was 8:45. Gina didn’t know why the meeting had to drag on so long. She suspected that the dapper man on the podium, talking in front of an ample crowd, loved the sound of his own voice.

She thought it would never ever be over, but finally it was. Now the four of them could turn to each other. Ben moved to stand next to Gina. “How was your train ride?”

“It was good, thank you. The walk was even more pleasant.”

“Walk? Why didn’t you take the subway?”

“You think we should?”

“No,” said Harry, who had appeared not to be listening. “Young women should not take the subway unaccompanied.”

Her heart skipped, raced, swirled in exclamation points. He was listening! He heard! And he was being protective! He didn’t want them to go into the dungeons by themselves! Was he offering to accompany them, perhaps? Oh!

Once again Gina’s reverie was interrupted by real life. Ellen Shaw sought out her son, though she went straight to Harry, kissing him on both cheeks. “Harry, dear, it’s so nice of you to join us.” She turned to Ben. “You see? Your friend is on our side.”

“You know it, Mrs. Shaw.”

“Stop sucking up to my mother, Harry,” Ben said, giving Ellen a kiss. “It won’t do you any good.”

“Oh, so now he’s speaking up,” said Ellen. “Did you notice, Harry, how quiet my son remained when I had asked if anyone had anything else to add?”

“I didn’t think your lively crowd was receptive enough to listen to me,” Ben said, in mock-defense.

“Yes, this crowd of meek women. Yet they were perfectly comfortable with a man who called us all, again, backward racists for refusing to support his fight against racial injustice.”

Ben stepped forward. “Mother, you remember Verity and Gina.”

Ellen waved a curt hello. “Yes, of course. How are you, young ladies? What did you think of our esteemed speaker? How did he compare to last week?”

“Oh, I thought he was marvelous again!” Verity exclaimed. “So passionate and eloquent!”

“What about you, Gina?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Me too. I thought he was. Marvelous. And eloquent.”

Ellen waited. Verity was not coming to the rescue. Gina had no idea what the man had said, what position he staked, what country he was protesting American involvement in. She didn’t even know who the man was and had forgotten to look at the program for a profile on this evening’s speaker.

Not wanting to embarrass herself in front of Harry, who must have thought her already foolish and young, after chewing her lip for a few seconds the best she could do was recite a quote she had almost memorized on the train ride in. “Well, it’s like your Thomas Jefferson said,” Gina began, after repeatedly clearing her dry throat. “America does not go a-bread in search of sea monsters to destroy. If America kept getting herself involved in continued wars of interest and greed, they would, um, they would . . . burp her color and take her standard of freedom. Her fundamental, um . . . princes would defensively charge from liberty to force. She might well become the, uh, doctor of the world. Certainly she couldn’t be the ruler of her own spirits.”

She said this solemnly, righteously, exactingly, correcting herself as she spoke, scouring her visual memory for the words she remembered seeing on the page. And now, she kept her gaze solely on Ellen, afraid to see the expression in Harry’s eyes.

Verity stared at her with incredulity. Gina couldn’t miss Ben’s delighted grin. Was Harry also delighted? She couldn’t check, not even for a second. “Well said, Gina,” Ben complimented her. “Perfect. I think you may have meant John Quincy Adams, though.”

She saw Harry elbow him.

“You may be right,” Gina allowed. “Though Thomas Jefferson also said some smart things.” She hoped getting the name mixed up was the only infelicity she had made.

“Nothing as smart as that, child,” Ellen said to Gina, taking her son’s arm. “Though what that has to do with tonight’s speaker, William Du Bois, I’ll be damned if I know. Ben, can I steal you away for just a moment? I’d like you to meet Jane Adams, no relation, I think. She is one of our newest members. Do you know we have almost twenty-five thousand members?”

“Yes, and they all seem to be here tonight, Mother. Maybe next week you can bring some extra chairs. Excuse me, Gina, excuse me, Verity.”

“No, no, Verity, come with us. I want you to meet Mrs. Adams also. She is quite a prominent lady in today’s circles. She didn’t care much for Mr. Du Bois. You’ll enjoy meeting her.”

“Oh, but I liked him and what he said enormously,” Verity clucked, flattered, hurrying off with them.

Gina and Harry were left alone.

She squeezed her hands together. He squeezed his hat and his book. She smiled politely. He smiled politely back. He was crumpled again, his hair swept every which way without benefit of a brush. His face had light stubble shadow, his suit was less than fresh, less than pressed. She didn’t know what to say. “So what are you reading these days?” she asked, pointing. She tried not to look directly at him; she didn’t want to be perceived as staring and was afraid he would see the confusion in her eyes, the slow blink when she laid her eyes on him. Could she help it that she found him so tremulously appealing, despite his laconic nature, his aloof demeanor, his lack of interest in her? Or perhaps because of all those things? It didn’t matter. She wanted to believe his lack of interest was fake, and so she did.

He showed her the book he was holding. “The Man without a Country? Still? Weren’t you carrying it two months ago when you came to the docks?”

Harry frowned slightly. “How do you remember that?”

“You left it on our table after dinner.”

“That’s where I left it!”

“Well, yes. But I gave it back to you the next morning.”

“Oh. Must’ve misplaced it again.” He clucked at himself. “Sometimes I can’t keep track of my things.”

She filed that away. “You like this book very much?”

“I’m doing my senior thesis on it.”

What was a thesis? “I read it the same evening you left it,” she told him. “I read it the best I could.”

“Well, that’s very good. Did you like it?”

“I think so. I tried to understand it.”

“It’s not hard. It’s not Shakespeare.”

Gina had heard of Shakespeare. “No, of course not,” she said wisely. “But then, what is?”

“Well, quite right. Milton perhaps?”

Gina had never heard of Milton. “Yes, yes,” she agreed, looking very solemn. “Close, but not quite. But back to Philip Nolan,” she continued. “To me he was a sad man to turn his back on his country.”

“But look how he paid for it.”

She nodded. “He paid for it with a terrible price. Yes, a terrible price. It is a good story.”

“One of the best,” said Harry, putting his hand on his heart and raising his voice a little. “‘I wish I may never hear of the United States again!’”

“He was granted his wish.”

“Yes, he was. He never set foot on American soil again.”

“That’s what I mean. That is very sad,” Gina said. “I love my Italy. I hope to see it again someday.”

“And why not?” said Harry. “You can go back any time you want.”

“I have to work a long time, and get my citizenship first. Then we’ll see.”

They both looked down, Gina at her hands—they were scabbed and hurting from working with the wool. Slowly she put them behind her back and made an intense mental note to spend her money on nothing else until she bought herself a pair of lady’s gloves.

“So have you started school?”

“I can’t work and go to school at the same time.”

“I thought work was only part-time?”

If he knew how much time she spent carding and drafting and selling the yarn, he would understand.

“Why not go to school and work?” said Verity, who had returned with Ben. “I do.”

Verity always intervened at the wrong time. “But also, I help my mother clean houses on weekends,” Gina continued, citing family obligations. “And I sew for Aunt Pippa. We are very busy. But you are writing your book report just on this Philip Nolan?” She continued to speak to him as if Verity and Ben were not there.

“No. I compare him to Ben’s uncle Robert, the honorable colonel. One man dies for his country; the other man renounces it.”

“But then he learns.”

“By that time it’s too late,” said Harry. “He says at the end, ‘Behind all these men, behind officers and governments, there is the country herself, your Country. You belong to her as you belong to your own mother.’”

Ben groaned. “Oh no! You found a poor innocent child to listen to your caterwauling on Nolan?” He pointed out the exit door to Gina. “Go. Please. Save yourself. Trust me, if he thinks he’s found a sympathetic ear, he’ll never stop talking. Believe me, I know. I’ve been hearing about this Nolan character for nine years. I’m no longer sympathetic. Listen,” Ben continued as he led her away, Verity and Harry following close behind. “My mother is arranging some light refreshments, some bread and wine,” he said. “Would you and Verity care to join us?”

Gina glanced pleadingly at Verity, who, temptation written all over her face, shook her head. They could not get home after eleven, they simply couldn’t.

“You know we can’t, Gina,” Verity said, just as pleadingly. “In fact, we need to get going if we’re to catch the 8:45. We have a twenty-five minute walk.”

“No, no,” said Ben, clearly disappointed. “We won’t hear of it. It’s dark and late. We’ll get you a carriage. Right, Harry?”

“Verity, please?” Gina said. “Please? We’ll only stay for fifteen minutes.”

“No.” Verity glared at her. “We. Have. To. Catch. The. Train.”

Gina frantically chewed her lip. Bread and wine with Harry! In this historic place. The only thing that stopped her from sending Verity home on her own was fear for the future. If Verity balked next Thursday and refused to come or to cover for her, then Gina’s secret trips to Boston would end. To save her Thursday nights, she reluctantly agreed to leave with Verity.

Gina was lucky that Verity was such a willing participant in this blatant deception. Angela would have been a harder convert. Verity, on the other hand, lapped up the talk on the Philippines, Spain, Central America, China and Japan, while Gina drummed her fingers, chewed her nails, waiting for the interminable meetings to be over so she could have a minute at the end of one evening a week with Harry.

 

5

 

Alice and her mother were walking down Commonwealth Avenue, parasols over their heads and their skirts hitched up so as not to drag along the ground. What Alice was trying to do was escape from her mother, who was deeply irritating her this morning, but who wouldn’t relent and wouldn’t slow down, feisty both in gait and provocation.

“Mother, I don’t know what to tell you,” Alice said, out of breath. Of all the days for her carriage to break one of its wheel spokes. They had been so close to her destination, nearly at Massachusetts and Commonwealth. “I’m very late for my ten o’clock piano lesson because of our unfortunate mishap, and then I have a charity recital at noon at which I’m playing Lizst and you know how much trouble I have with his Consolations 3. And you heard Daddy yesterday, didn’t you? You were listening to your own husband? There was a walkout at one of our mills in Andover two days ago. Fifteen men demanded twice their salary and then just up and quit. So now we have lumber being delivered and dumped outside the gates and no one to operate the forklifts or the saws. I have to write up a ‘Help Wanted’ advertisement immediately and telegraph it to the Andover Gazette, so we can get it in the paper by tomorrow and have some men show up to be interviewed on Wednesday. Am I going to my riding lesson this afternoon? No. Am I seeing Belinda for afternoon tea? No. Am I cutting the ribbon on the new infectious ward for small children at City Hospital? No.” Now Alice was really out of breath. “These are the important matters, Mummy. Not what you’re . . .”

“All I’m saying,” said Irma calmly, not out of breath and keeping up with her daughter while twirling her own parasol to keep out the cold bright sunshine, “is I don’t understand why you’ve asked him four times to come with you to the charity dance and he has refused to.”

“Mother, he hasn’t refused!”

“He promised a month ago he would come, and then the day of the dance he bowed out. And he hasn’t come since.”

“He can’t come to a dance every week, Mummy.”

“He hasn’t come to any.”

“Okay. Thursdays he is busy. At night he goes with Ben to Mrs. Shaw’s League meetings.”

“One Thursday he can’t come with you?”

Alice was almost running. “We went to the theater last Saturday night. We had a wonderful evening.”

“It wasn’t to raise money for a children’s library.”

“No. It was just to have fun—which we did.” Alice wouldn’t even glance sideways at her mother. “Why do you constantly make mountains out of—”

“I’m going to say something this Sunday, I really am.”

Alice stopped walking. She put down her parasol and turned to Irma. “Mother, I’m talking to you like an adult to an adult. You have your life, you have Daddy, you have your friends, your clubs, all your hobbies. Please don’t ruin my life. Don’t do anything, anything, to scare him away. You know how skittish he can be. I can’t believe I have to explain it to you. Why do you care so much?”

“Because it’s not proper, that’s why! All the other ladies know he is your steady. And you’re dancing with strangers. It’s just not done.”

“I don’t dance with just him even when he does come!”

“Yes, but at least he is present. He is there. There was a dressage competition last week. Why didn’t he come to cheer you on?”

“I didn’t need him to be there, Mother.” They resumed walking, though a little slower. Alice was spent from fighting. “I won without him. And he is in his last year at Harvard. You know how hard he works.”

“He has time to go with Ben on Thursday nights, doesn’t he?”

“He is allowed to have friends, or would you like to inform him that he must spend every second of his spare time with me?”

“I have a good mind to say a few things to him this Sunday.”

“Mother, I will forbid you to come to his father’s house,” said Alice. “All his father does is embarrass him. You want to be that person too? We are trying to get him to be your son-in-law one day. You think humiliating him in front of his father is the way to go about that?”

“Clearly for one reason or another,” Irma declared, “he won’t make up his mind.”

“All right, but . . . let’s give him until graduation. Let him concentrate on his studies; I know we don’t think much of them, but you know how important they are to him. I don’t want to be a shrew before he even asks Daddy for my hand. I’d like to wait until just after. Would that be okay with you? And maybe you can wait to be a shrew until just after also? All right, Mother? A plan?”

“You’re being impolite to your mother,” Irma said.

“I do apologize,” Alice said. “But please, Mummy, stop talking.”

They got to the corner of Commonwealth and Dartmouth. “Consolations are waiting for me,” Alice said. “My recital is at noon at Copley Hall. I’ll see you there.”

Without waiting for a reply, she kissed her mother on both cheeks, gave her a little squeeze and walked up the stairs and inside, taking care at all costs not to slam the front door behind her.

 

6

 

Salvo had been having a hard time finding steady work and it grated on him. Every morning he got up at six not knowing if he would find work that day or make money—and all the while his mother cleaned the Prospect Hill houses and his sister somehow did a load of nothing yet always brought home money. Money, bags of uncombed wool, paper cones. Cotton thread, linen. She sewed skirts and sold skeins and made money! Even her English was progressing.

It’s not that Salvo didn’t try. He got hired for a shoveling project for two weeks, but he and a dozen men worked so hard that they were done in eight days and were released without so much as a bonus or a handshake for a job well done.

He spent a few days painting, another day or two pretending he could pass as a cabinet maker—just like Gina pretended she could be a wool sorter. He fooled the glaziers into keeping him for nearly a month, but this morning he was taking a train to nearby Andover because he had read in the local paper that a sawmill was hiring twenty men and paid well. If it didn’t pan out, he would have to find restaurant work. It was all he wanted to do anyway. Having a steady trickle of cash was better than this hardscrabble subsistence. He wasn’t able to save anything for his dream, and to make matters worse, his baby sister was giving Mimoo money every week, sewing skirts for herself to wear and even putting a few dimes into the glass jar on which she had painted the words SALVO’S DREAM. She was infuriating.

At the sawmill gates, Salvo found himself standing with forty other men, all stronger than him, bigger than him—and clearly more experienced, the way he overheard them talking about board feet and mitred edges, running measurements, lathe lumber and panels. Hundreds of logs were piled two stories high and a block wide on the ground near the gates. They clearly needed help.

“How many spots are there?” he asked a relatively friendlylooking man standing to his right. The man instantly became less friendly. “Just eighteen,” he grumbled, stepping away. “Eighteen experienced men.”

They’re going to need more than eighteen men to move all that lumber, Salvo thought, anxiously hoping that would be true.

It was a woman who unlocked and opened the gates and came out to inspect them as if they were bat blanks or carving stock. They all tried to hide their shock, including Salvo. It was a drizzling misty Wednesday, and she was dressed for the weather, in high rain boots, a long dark overcoat, a wide brim hat. But her hair under the black hat was nearly white, her face pale, and her eyes very blue. She covered herself but Salvo could tell she was donna molto attraente, there was no hiding it. He pushed himself to the front of the crowd, moved his cap jauntily off his face, and stood still, hoping she’d notice him.

He shouldn’t have pushed. He just angered the other men, and the bella donna asked them all to stand in one line anyway, walking up and down, appraising them. In a refined, high-class voice she informed them that she wasn’t looking for boomers, or short-termers who worked and then quit. She was looking for good, hard-working men who wished to be compensated well for loyalty and long hours. She asked those who thought that sawmill work was nothing more than snoose and mulligans to turn and walk away. No one moved, even though Salvo knew for a fact some of the men were definitely in it for the short term: the sawmill was hard work in bad weather. He wasn’t going to snitch on them—unless she didn’t pick him.

The woman was all business and unsmiling, and he heard some of the men muttering uncomplimentary things when she walked by without selecting them. When she came to Salvo, he cocked his head, looked at her a half-second too long and smiled politely. She frowned at first, stood quietly, then crooked her finger at him. Now he really heard some choice words from the men she had not picked. He flipped them the bird as he sauntered through the gates, following her inside the yard.

On the job he learned quickly. That had always been his number one skill. Maybe not as quick as his sister, but enough to blend in and not look too green. Mainly he had to listen to someone else and then follow along like a semi-trained monkey. At first he was put on a job that required barely any skill at all: cutting off the branches. Salvo limbed with aplomb. But once he was moved to decking, or sorting the tremendous logs by species, size, and end use, his day got harder and he made mistakes. It all looked like wood to him, he couldn’t tell the difference between the bark of a pine and a fir, or between a maple and an oak. How his sister could fake knowing the difference between soft wool and extra soft wool, he would never know. His boss saw he was struggling and moved him over to debarking, which was tedious but simple. At the end of the long day they lined him up as the off-bearer for the head sawyer. Establishing a jovial rapport with the man, Salvo asked casually about the blonde woman who had hired him.

“She is no one,” said Don McKay. “Absolutely no one. No one for you to ever think about, ask about, no one for you to even glance at.”

“I’m just asking a polite question,” said Salvo. “Can’t I get a polite answer?”

“Mind your own fucking business, that’s my polite answer,” McKay said. “You want me to get less polite? Because I can, and I will.” McKay paused. “Just keep your head down and work and don’t think and don’t ask. Capito?”

It was his friend Bario who told him as it neared closing time that the woman was the owner’s daughter, and the one unspoken rule at her father’s mills was that no worker was allowed to even acknowledge her presence. “It’s a sackable offense,” said Bario, as if it weren’t clear.

Salvo had worked like a brute and by the time the train brought him back to Lawrence, it was so late that his dinner had gone cold. He ate it anyway. Gina was not home. She had been staying with Verity a few nights a week.

Salvo slept like a thick piece of lumber, and the next morning was back at the yard early. He wanted to make a good impression on the fine-looking owner’s daughter. But he saw her only briefly that day, and from a distance. She had overseen another large shipment that had come into the yard, hired ten more men, and disappeared. It didn’t matter. His charm with the fair sex was legendary around Belpasso, or as Gina called it, “famigerato.” Salvo would keep his head down, work hard, and wait for an opportunity to present itself.

 

7

 

“You know my name means truth?” Verity said to Gina, watching her change into new garments at St. Vincent’s before they boarded the train on Thursday.

“Really?” said Gina, putting on a flared skirt and a white cotton lace blouse. “I thought your name meant friendship.”

Usually the boys got there early and saved them a seat. But on this Thursday in early November when the temperature had dropped and the leaves had all gone, Gina and Verity not only had to sneak in the side door but had to stand the entire meeting because Harry and Ben did not save them a seat. The girls stood for over an hour, listening to the evils of going to war with Spain and the massive protest demonstration the League was organizing just before Thanksgiving right in front of Old South, on the site of the Boston Massacre. Gina listened with only half an ear, because she was too busy wondering about the prim woman sitting between Harry and Ben, with her elaborate hat and proper purse. Gina watched her in profile, her straight nose, her refined demeanor. At first she found the woman’s extravagant hat amusing; it was so dramatic and perched so high on one side that it blocked the view of people for three rows behind her. But then Gina’s mood darkened. The woman seemed too familiar with both Harry and Ben. Gina touched her own hat, which had cost her twenty skeins, a wide brim hat with a short crown, neither silk nor fancy. She wished she could take it off.

At last the torture was over and the meeting adjourned. Gina waited anxiously for the two men to make their way to them, but they didn’t. Instead they walked forward to the podium to speak to Ellen and a group of women. The high-hatted woman went with them, and was obviously quite familiar with Ellen also. Gina stood silently at the back, observing it all with a darkened gaze.

“Let’s go say hello,” said Verity, who had no ulterior motives. “The meeting ran so long, we’re going to have to get going. The train is in less than forty-five minutes.”

“How are you always so mindful of the time?” Gina muttered. Clearly she didn’t think this was a virtue.

“Someone has to be. Or we’d never get anywhere.” Verity pulled on Gina’s reluctant white sleeve. “Come on, let’s go, say hello, goodbye, and be on our way.”

“We can’t leave yet,” whispered Gina. “We just got here.” Verity had to nearly drag her to the front of the hall.

“Oh, hello,” Ben said formally, as if it were completely normal that he didn’t come to say hello, or save them a seat. It seemed fake, put on. The woman in the billowing hat decorously but instantly swirled around to see who Ben was speaking to. Gina thought that was quite impressive of easygoing Ben to engineer such a swift response in someone who a second earlier seemed to be paying no attention whatsoever to him. The woman had been talking to Ellen and a group of other women and couldn’t immediately disengage herself. The only thing she did was to focus her eyes unblinkingly on Gina. Suddenly Gina felt keenly the poverty of the third-grade cotton fabric which comprised her lacy smock. The woman was dressed in finest gabardine.

Harry was more reserved than usual, barely even nodding in greeting.

“Sorry we couldn’t save you a seat,” Ben said. “You must be exhausted. We were late ourselves. Esther, Harry’s sister, is here with us.”

Gina’s face broke into a relieved smile. “Oh,” she said, trying not to sound high-pitched and thrilled. “It’s your sister.”

Harry nodded. “It’s my sister.”

Presently the sister came over. Harry calmly introduced them. But he was always calm, and this time Gina couldn’t interpret it. “You’re Harry’s sister,” she said smiling, sticking out her gloved hand. “So nice to finally meet you.” She was proud of her black silk gloves. They cost her seventeen cents and had only two previous owners. And they hid her hideous hands from Esther who Gina was certain had never in her life touched unclean raw wool with plant matter in it.

Esther nodded to her, glancing disdainfully, but did not shake Gina’s proffered hand. It must be a breach of etiquette. Young girls didn’t offer their hands to adults. Esther wore a dark navy pintucked suit, plain with a bit of lace, but custom tailored and exquisitely pressed. Though she had been sitting down, she didn’t have a wrinkle on her clothes. Stepping between Ben and Gina, Esther spoke to the girls as if from a great height. “You two are interested in imperialism?” Her voice was skeptical. Gina didn’t want to wear her clothes like Esther, stiff and severe. She wanted to dress for elegance, for flair. But oh, did she love the expensive fabric.

“Anti-imperialism,” Gina corrected her. “But yes, very much so.”

Esther said nothing in reply; not a hair on her eyebrow moved. From behind Esther, Ben grinned at Gina. Esther, her manners impeccable, remained supercilious, eyeing Verity, intensely eyeing Gina and the impassive Harry. “You have an accent,” she said.

“Not me,” Verity said. “I was born here.”

But Esther was not speaking to Verity.

“Yes. I am from Italy,” said Gina.

“Where in Italy?”

“Sicily. It’s down south—”

“I know where Sicily is,” said Esther. “Do you live in one of my father’s apartments?”

“No,” Gina said. “We stayed for one night only.”

“And now?”

“We live in Lawrence.”

“Lawrence,” Esther said. “I don’t know where that is. And who is we?”

“My mother, my brother.”

Verity pulled on her. “We need to go, Gina. The train.”

“Oh yes,” echoed Esther. “You don’t want to miss your train.”

Ellen came over. “Hello girls. Where were you two hiding tonight? I was looking for you. I’m having a small reception. Nothing fancy. Ben’s Aunt Josephine is here. Will you join us for a few minutes?”

“We’d love to, Mrs. Shaw,” said Verity. “But you know we have to catch the 8:45.”

“Oh, for shame. Not even for a few minutes? We have fresh lobster as a treat.”

“Ellen, they probably need to hurry,” said Esther. “Do they even have trains to Lawrence this late at night?” She shrugged. “I have never traveled by train. I wouldn’t know.”

“I hadn’t either,” exclaimed Verity. “Until Gina started bringing me to Boston. They do have trains—and even a subway that runs late.”

“A subway. You don’t say.”

“Harry,” Ben said. “Why don’t you stay here with your sister. Eat some lobster. Placate my mother.”

“Nothing will placate her,” said Harry. “Not after you just told her you’re continuing to work for Mr. Preston, also known as the devil incarnate.”

“I know. But do your best. She likes you. Est, I’ll see you later. Girls, shall we go?”

Moving away, Esther took Harry’s arm.

“It was nice to meet you, Esther,” Gina called after her. Esther did not reply.

“Goodbye, Harry.”

“Yes, good evening,” said Harry.

Esther turned around—to watch Ben walk out of the meeting hall between the two girls.

 

“Who does that impertinent child think she is, calling me Esther,” Esther fumed to Harry. “Like we’re old friends. These immigrants have no manners, none whatsoever. Why didn’t you tell her to call me Miss Barrington?”

Harry shrugged. “I was using my manners, Esther. I didn’t want to embarrass her by correcting her. Also, they call us Harry and Ben. I didn’t want to age you.”

Pivoting slightly away, Esther continued to complain. “It’s simply scandalous. Why, I don’t think that girl was wearing a corset.”

“Perhaps,” offered Harry after a considered pause, “she wasn’t wearing one because she doesn’t need one.”

They made their way to the food tables. As they took their plates, Esther spoke. “That’s the girl, isn’t it?”

“What girl?”

“The girl Ben keeps talking about.”

“When does Ben talk about a girl? In between bananas?”

“Yes, every Sunday since August. The immigrant girl from Lawrence.”

“I don’t remember,” Harry said. “And I thought you’d never heard of Lawrence?”

“Don’t be obtuse.”

“Not me. I honestly don’t pay attention, you know I don’t.”

“Oh, you pay plenty of attention—just to the wrong things.” Esther critically cleared her throat. “She seems worryingly young.”

“Worryingly? I have no opinion.”

“Is she in school?”

“I know nothing.” In the vast and spacious great hall, the crowds thinned out. Harry wanted to get himself a drink. He asked Esther what she wanted.

She waved him off. “I wonder if they go to school.”

“Esther, a drink?”

“I don’t know. A glass of sherry. Is she pretty?”

He left without replying and in a few minutes brought his sister some white wine. “They didn’t have sherry. Who is pretty?”

“Harry, why are you being so unpleasantly dense?”

“Not deliberately. I’m hungry, cranky, and thirsty, not necessarily in that order.” He drank down a glass of beer. “Less thirsty now. But the lobster is all gone. I had an eight o’clock class this morning in Faustian Philosophy, or Kantian Cryptology, or Darwinian Dialectics, I don’t remember anymore. Last night I was studying for my Socialism and Communism exam until three in the morning . . .”

“Oh, you’re not actually taking such a ghastly course, are you?”

“That’s amusing. And this was after going to a charity function with Alice and only narrowly escaping joining her in a ten-mile-long trail ride. What was your question?”

“Is she pretty?”

“She is barely out of grammar school. I couldn’t tell you.”

“Has she even had any schooling at all? And are you protesting?”

“Yes, Esther, she is the most beautiful elementary school girl I’ve ever seen. I don’t know why she is interested in politics and not beauty pageants.”

“Don’t make fun. Tell me what you think.”

“I told you, I have no opinion.”

“Don’t sound so intellectual about it. Like you’re looking at a painting.”

“Not even something as emotional as a painting.”

“Do you ever bring Alice here?”

“Oh, dear heavens. She’d leave me for good if I did. All this talk about rights of man and exploitation of the natural resources. Why in the world would I bring Alice here? She sells lumber. I don’t even know why you came. That was not a question.” Harry grimaced impatiently. They were near the remains of the food, his mind already wandering to the cheese and bread before him. He handed Esther a buffet plate, taking one himself.

“I came,” Esther said, “because I was curious about your and Ben’s intellectual pursuits.”

“Oh, for sure.”

“How was I to know they weren’t intellectual?”

“Because you came to this shindy, that’s how. Look, there’s Ellen and Josephine. Wait, let’s refill our plates. You know once we start listening, they won’t stop talking.”

“Where’s Ben?” Ellen asked, coming up to them. Josephine had lagged behind. “Did he already leave to take the girls home?”

“No, not home,” Esther corrected Ellen. “To the train station.”

Ellen began to speak but suddenly ran off to say goodbye to someone. Harry and Esther turned to each other, his mouth full of cheese and the finest Boston lager.

“Why aren’t you eating?” he asked.

“Not very hungry for some reason,” said Esther. “Ben’s mother hasn’t changed in all the time we’ve known her.”

“People don’t change, Esther,” said Harry. “Leaves change.”

Ellen returned just in time for Esther to glance at her pocket watch and say, “Ben should be coming back any minute. It’s been well over an hour.”

Ellen shook her head. “He isn’t coming back soon. I told you, he’s on the train with them.”

Harry continued to chew.

“He’s what?” Esther said in a stunned voice.

“Ben is a gentleman,” said Ellen, and Harry wasn’t sure if she meant it proudly or snidely. “He is hardly going to put two young girls on an evening train by themselves.”

Esther slowly turned to her brother. “Harry, is that true? He is taking the train all the way to Lawrence? But why?”

“I suppose to make sure they get home safely.”

“And then he takes the train all the way back?”

“He doesn’t stay overnight in Lawrence if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

“I wouldn’t presume. How often does he do this?”

“Every time they come.”

“Which is how often?”

“Every week, I guess, wouldn’t you say, Ellen?”

“Yes. Verity is dedicated to our cause.”

Esther made a sound of inflamed derision. “Why anyone would want to ride back at midnight on a train by himself is beyond me.”

“What do you mean by himself?” said Ellen. “Harry goes with him.”

There was a long silence. Harry said nothing. Esther said nothing.

On the way home, they didn’t speak a single word.

 

8

 

The train was monstrously delayed. A tree had fallen across the tracks, and the train didn’t move for over an hour while the workmen removed the trunk and branches from the rails. By midnight, a very concerned Mrs. Dunne left her intoxicated husband on the couch and paid money she couldn’t spare to take a carriage to Summer Street, where she woke a deeply sleeping Mimoo and Pippa and a halfasleep Salvo, to ask if they had seen her daughter.

Salvo was most unsettled by this. He thought the girls were at Verity’s house. Mrs. Dunne explained that she worked until eleven.

“Well, where is your husband? Isn’t he watching over them?”

That Mrs. Dunne could not explain. He is home, she said, but he is asleep.

Tensely the adults waited out the minutes. No one dared give voice to the preposterous proposition that the mission work may have been a ruse.

“There is a very good explanation,” said Mrs. Dunne in a weakening voice. “After all, my Verity wants to become a nun.”

The Attavianos didn’t speak. No one wanted to point out to Mrs. Dunne that Gina did not want to become a nun, not even a bad one.

After half an hour, Salvo realized they were waiting at the wrong house. If Verity and Gina came back, they’d be at the Dunnes’. Piling in, they took a carriage to Ashbury Street, where they discovered Verity and Gina asleep in Verity’s bed. Not wanting to cause a scandal late at night and wake the neighbors, they waited impatiently until the next day, when Verity, confronted by the wrath of her mother and the Reverend Mother, remorsefully admitted the duplicity of their arranged Thursday nights.

The girl confessed to everything except Ben and Harry. She had the good sense to talk about the League of AntiImperialists and economic conditions in Colombia and Costa Rica, and the Americans fighting the Filipinos at Luzon, and growing coffee and other tropical beans, and John Quincy Adams and Gina’s mangled efforts at profundity, but not about the two young men they met up with every Thursday.

Stupefied by the depths of Gina’s calculated deception and drawing a simple mathematical line between tropical winds and Ben Shaw, Salvo and Mimoo were at a loss as to what to do. Their baby was in the gravest danger, yet they both worked too long a day to give Gina the kind of chaperoning she required, which was constant. Sensing trouble by the breathfuls and needing divine intervention, they dragged a bucking Gina to Reverend Mother Grace at Notre Dame Catholic high school. Notre Dame was run by the nuns at St. Mary’s who were generally well disposed toward Gina for her work at the mission—except for Reverend Mother.

Mother Grace was a tiny woman with a penetrating black-eyed gaze and a booming voice that resounded through the stone walls of the abbey. It was a voice that made you stand at attention even when you weren’t asked. The Attavianos stood at attention. The throaty timber reflected the indelicacy of her questions.

“You think she needs a chaperone?” When they didn’t answer, the nun tutted disapprovingly. “Let me explain something to you, Mrs. Attaviano, and I hope your daughter is listening, though I cannot be sure. Morally speaking, the only chaperone a young girl of good character requires is her own sense of decency and pride. She who possesses these qualities doesn’t need a chaperone—ever. She who lacks them . . .” The nun laughed lightly. “Argus himself couldn’t chaperone her.”

Salvo and Mimoo had now been reduced to silence. Gina thought this was a terrible start. Nothing could go well from such a grim beginning. And who was Argus?

“Your daughter doesn’t need a chaperone,” Mother Grace flatly stated. “Do you know what she needs? An education.”

Mimoo opened her mouth. Weakly Salvo nodded his head. Fervently Gina shook hers. Mother Grace ignored them all. “Why isn’t she in school?” the nun demanded. “You want to know what’s wrong, how she can be put on the right road? With an education, that’s how. A girl of fourteen—”

“Fifteen,” Gina interjected.

Mother Grace stared her down. “Excuse me. I was addressing your mother. A girl of fifteen should not be working.”

“Many girls do work,” Mimoo limply defended. “And we need the money.”

Mother Grace opened her hands in front of her. “Well then, what more is there to discuss, Mrs. Attaviano? It sounds as if you’ve already made your decision.”

Mimoo hurried with an explanation. “What I meant to say is . . . she is barely working.”

“That is also a problem. She is barely working and not going to school? The devil dances in an empty pocket. Only a full-time education will save her.”

“From what?” asked Gina.

Salvo stabbed her with his finger. Mimoo crossed herself. Mother Grace sat silently and watched the three of them. “Can you quit your job, Mrs. Attaviano, and devote all your time to watching your daughter? Making sure she is at the factory when she says she is, walking her from the mill to the mission? Collecting her when she has done her work with us? Can your son?” They did not answer the nun. “I didn’t think so. That is not the normal order of things. You must work, your son must work, and your daughter must receive academic instruction—in writing, in arithmetic, in reading English, in history, in theology. And clearly also in rules of acceptable behavior.”

Gina glared at her mother accusingly. After a loud “Hail Mary,” Mother Grace asked to speak to Gina alone. Despite Gina’s vehemently shaking head, Mimoo and Salvo speedily departed—ran was a more accurate description.

Gina hung her head as the door closed and the nun in front of her sat and counted her rosaries. After she had finished praying, the nun sat quietly. “Well?” she finally said. “Your mother and brother have left. There is no need to be coy. Tell me your plan.”

Gina was now required to speak. But her plan was to circumnavigate every question about to be asked of her. She would make like the vessels that sailed all the way around the South American continent. She said nothing.

“By your silence, I take it to mean you haven’t got one?”

It was best in all circumstances not to speak.

“I know you would prefer to avoid the responsibilities that come from being a charge under adult care,” Mother Grace said. “But you can’t. You can’t make your own decisions. You know how I know? Because you thought it would be a good idea to take the train by yourself to Boston in the middle of the night.”

“It wasn’t the middle of the night, Reverend Mother. There was a problem with—”

“Please stop. The only problem was with your behavior, your actions. I don’t know what you have been taught in Italy; I hazard not much, but here in your adopted country the rules of propriety that all modest young ladies are required to exhibit dictate without exception that you cannot be on the train by yourself at midnight.”

“I wasn’t by myself.”

“Verity Dunne doesn’t count. She is also a young lady.”

Gina clamped her teeth together. She suspected that one of the other rules of behavior in this unfathomable country dictated also, without exception, that she could not be on the train at midnight with a young unattached gentleman. Or two.

“I’m sorry, Reverend Mother,” she repeated. “The train was delayed.”

“The train was not delayed, my child. The train exposed your flagrant impropriety so that it could be corrected. The train did its job. Now your guardians have to do theirs.”

Gina’s lip was twisted as she hopped from reply to reply inside her head.

“You lied to the woman who gave you life and to your brother,” said Mother Grace. “How does it feel, Gina, to lie to the ones who love you most? Does that make you feel more holy—or less? What about tempting your new and impressionable friend into lying to her parents to cover up for your behavior? Taking advantage of your friend’s affection for you, and of her weaknesses, does that make you feel more dignified? Or less?”

What was the proper response to this? Absolutely no response at all. Somewhere inside, shame tickled the back of Gina’s throat. But her tongue was dried up with fear. What if she couldn’t go back to Boston again!

Mother Grace squinted, staring at Gina more closely. “You’re quite an enterprising little soul, aren’t you? You’ve got mysteries inside that motivate you. My words are barely registering. Well, never mind. I’m not going to waste my breath further.”

“Verity is against the impending war with Spain,” Gina suddenly blurted out. “She didn’t accompany me to the Anti-Imperialist League. I accompanied her.”

Mother Grace calmly studied a red-in-the-face Gina. “Tell me,” she asked, “in your opinion, is it or is it not a sin to lie to an ordained servant of God in an abbey of our Lord?”

Gina swallowed down the fear and the remorse and looked away from Mother Grace’s black-eyed gaze.

“The war will or won’t happen with or without Verity’s participation in an anti-war organization,” said Mother Grace. “But you know what definitely won’t happen without your participation? The rest of your life.”

“I understand, Reverend Mother. I’m trying to participate.”

“Your father, God rest his soul, wanted you to come to America. For what purpose, do you think?”

“He wanted me to make my own choices.”

“Are you making them now?”

“Yes, Reverend Mother.”

“Are you making the right choices?”

Gina kept quiet. She thought she was.

“Are you interested in life in the church?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes, most ardently, but not as . . . I don’t think I’m cut out to commit myself fully to the Church, Reverend Mother,” she admitted. “I don’t have the requisite traits.”

“What traits are those? Honesty? Humility? Modesty?” She stared down at Gina’s shoes and ankles, which were both clearly visible below the satin hem of her gray linen dress. “Do you love God?”

“Most fervently. But . . .”

“There is a but after that?”

Why was the Reverend Mother pressing so hard? “What is it? Do you want to be married? Do you want a family?”

“Something like that,” Gina said vaguely. She didn’t want a family in the least. Marriage was not on her mind—children even less. But she couldn’t explain her actual plans to a nun. She couldn’t speak aloud about the other Love that was not the Agape love her mother had taught her about, the selfless love meant for your family and for God. She wished this conversation were over.

“I will work harder, Reverend Mother. It will be as you wish.”

“It’s not work you need.”

“I won’t be deceitful anymore. I won’t use my friends. I’ll do as you wish.”

“Not as I wish. As the path of your own life necessitates. What kind of person do you want to be?”

“An American woman,” Gina whispered. “An American young lady.”

Mother Grace nodded almost approvingly. “Very good. Do you think American women, urban Boston ladies, scrape the skin off their fingers disentangling wool? Do you think their hands look like your hands, abraded, roughened by hard work, calloused, bruised? Could anyone kiss the hand of a working wool-sorter like you, Gina, a gentleman inviting you to your first dance? Or, do you think the young ladies, such as you hope to be, read books, adhere to firm manners, learn the piano?”

“I can only do now what I can do,” Gina said grimly, squeezing her hands into fists and hiding them behind her back. “I’m hoping the rest of it might follow.”

“That depends on you, Gina Attaviano. You are on a journey. You started in Italy. Now you are here. Where will you end up? That part is up to you.”

Gina knew where she wanted to end up.

She desperately didn’t want to be trapped in a school. The Catholics would never let her go. Service in the Church was for life. She would never help Salvo save money to make his dream happen, even if he himself seemed to be so far from it. She’d never buy herself silk or velvet. She’d never dress like a lady, dance with Harry, maybe . . . somehow . . .

The agonizing conflict played out in her soul and on her face. Mother Grace sat and waited. Her fingers counted out the rosaries, her lips moved in the silence.

“Reverend Mother,” Gina said in one last beseeching attempt, “may I speak freely?”

“You mean you haven’t been?”

“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but on the one hand you tell me it’s my journey and I must decide, yet on the other inform me I really don’t have a choice at all. I want to work, Reverend Mother. I don’t want to go to school.” She wasn’t going to remain a wool-sorter for life. She would get promoted to the mending room.

“Do you feel it’s the right choice?”

“I need to work, yes. I need to help the mission, help my mother . . .”

“You didn’t answer me. You do this quite often.”

“Education has to be chosen freely,” Gina said. “Like faith. I’ll answer you—it’s not what I want. Education, I mean,” she clarified. “I want to make my own money, I want to help my brother open his restaurant. I want to live on my own.”

“Women do not live on their own,” said Mother Grace with finality. “Or you will remain in a textile mill the rest of your life, working sixty hours a week. Nothing will raise your income level. Without education there can and will be no advancement. You will be like your cousin Angela.”

“But she is happy!” Gina exclaimed.

“You don’t want more for yourself?”

This was so hard for Gina. Her father had wanted more for her. But her father didn’t care if she wore rags. She cared. “Angela has money, she can buy herself things,” Gina explained. “She helps her aunt, donates clothes, buys toys for the children at the orphanage.”

“Can you buy yourself what you want most in the world, child?” Mother Grace asked.

In a stone silent room, Gina had to admit that she could not.

The nun persisted. “If you had the best job in the world, if you were a successful businesswoman, wealthy like Andrew Carnegie, could you buy what you want most in the world?”

Gina was silent. “Am I supposed to answer that question?”

“You are if there is an answer.”

“Yes, Reverend Mother,” said Gina. “I do believe that money can buy freedom.”

“Is freedom what you want most?”

“Freedom to do what I want, yes,” Gina averred.

“Choice is not a virtue,” said Mother Grace. “You’re misunderstanding what I’m telling you. You’re misunderstanding freedom. There is absolutely no virtue in making a choice. Only in making the right one.”

“But it must be one freely taken!”

“Yes, a freely taken right choice!”

“The right one for me.”

“Oh, so it’s a personal opinion now, virtue.” Mother Grace sighed. “Gina, you are fifteen years old. You are not old enough to make these decisions for yourself. You’re not old enough to protect yourself; you’re not old enough to support yourself. And without an education you will never achieve the latter. So right now, I’m afraid it’s time for Compline for me and time to comply for you. You’ve taken up my entire prayer hour. And I sense that you’re still very far from understanding. No matter. We will give you the tools, and you can later decide if you will use them. Your mother has made her wishes clear. She wants you protected and educated. You will go to Notre Dame six days a week. You may still volunteer a few hours at the mission after school if it doesn’t interfere with your studies and your chapel work. It can be part of your overall curriculum. But your studies must and will come first.”

“Please, Reverend Mother,” Gina said, trembling. It was a nightmare. “I have a part-time job at Washington . . . that’s where I get the wool to help the church.”

Mother Grace bowed her head. “Somehow,” she said gently, “this church and this town’s poor managed to survive for fifty years without your wool, and we’re going to try to do so again. I’m not saying we won’t miss it.”

“Reverend Mother, please, I will work hard . . .”

“Yes, at school,” said Mother Grace. “Who is your manager at Washington? Is it Percy Clark? He is a parishioner at this church and I can intercede with him personally, ask if he would continue to make his generous donation to the mission. After all, he is not making it for you, is he, Gina?”

Gina protested bitterly to her mother, shouted and cried, all to no avail. Her wool-sorting job over, her Thursday trips to Boston over, her budding friendship with Verity nearly over, resentment for her mother rampant, the vagaries of fate that caused that awful tree to fall across the rail tracks and ruin all her plans, all of it threatening to burst out of her with every breath, Gina gritted her teeth and started attending classes at the Notre Dame school for girls. She bided her time, pretended to listen, sang at church services, cleaned the nave and the narthex, carried candles and rosaries. Twice a week after school, she still walked over to Washington and with tears in her eyes received Percy’s gifts of fourth-grade wool. While she was praying by rote and spinning in her spare time, in her rich and pulsing inner life, Gina feverishly twisted a gossamer thread of a new plan, audacious in its scope, brazen and fearless, but one that might, just might, allow her to spend time with Harry—without Ben and without Verity.