Children of Liberty. Paullina Simons
don’t live in it.”
“Salvo!” That was Mimoo. She sat down heavily in the chair in the living room and took Pippa’s hands. “This is very good and kind of you, Pippa,” she said. “We’ll be fine.”
“Of course we will be,” Pippa said. “As soon as you find work, we will look for a bigger place, perhaps a proper house, like they have over by the Common.”
“I like being close to work, Aunt Pippa,” Angela said.
“You can stay here. Why do you have to come?”
They bickered but all squeezed in: the four women piled into the bedroom, with Gina and Angela on the floor, while Salvo took the couch in the living room.
“Salvo is not complaining, Pippa,” Mimoo said. “He’s just in a bad mood.”
“He’s been in a bad mood for a year,” said Gina. “What’s your excuse now, Salvo?”
“I need an excuse?” He spread out on the couch with the small window ten feet from him. “In Belpasso, I had my own room, my own space. Now I’m next to the dining-room table.”
“Gina, if you want, you can stay with Verity,” Angela said. “She lives a few blocks from here, across the river on Ashbury. Her parents have a little house. She said you could stay with her.”
“How would Gina staying somewhere else help me?” Salvo snapped.
“It’s not all about you, Salvo,” Gina said.
“No, it’s all about you, Gina.”
“Stop it, you two,” said Mimoo. “Maybe Gina should stay with Verity.”
“No,” he said. “The family stays together.”
“Fighting every minute?”
“Together.”
“Cheer up, Salvo,” Angela said, pinching him. “You’ll get work, we’ll find a bigger place. In the meantime, upstairs there is a young lady I can introduce you to. She’s nineteen but not blonde. She’s not blonde or Italian.” Angela tickled him, kissed him. “I’m just joking with you. Come on, it’s not so bad. You can take her out for ice cream. Gina, you want some ice cream?”
“How often do the trains run?” Gina asked suddenly.
Angela was momentarily rendered speechless. “Trains run where?”
“Anywhere. Say, to Boston?”
“Gina!” That was Mimoo. “Don’t even think about trains or Boston. You are not allowed to go to Boston.”
“I’m just asking a question, Mimoo. I’m allowed to ask questions, no?”
“No!”
“I don’t know about trains,” Angela said. “I don’t go to Boston.”
“You don’t go to Boston?” Now it was Gina’s turn to be speechless.
“Not since the day we came. And Verity has never in her life been. Why do you need a train to Boston?”
“I don’t. Just curious.”
Salvo elbowed her. “No,” he said. “Not even curious.”
“You leave me alone.” She moved away.
“Gina,” said Mimoo, “stop your lollygagging and help me unpack the trunks. We need fresh clothes. Train to Boston—ignore her, Angela. It’s dinnertime soon.”
Dinnertime! Gina couldn’t believe it. On top of all its other sins, Lawrence swallowed time.
They unpacked as best they could and helped with supper. They had spaghetti with tomato sauce and clams, “caught fresh yesterday!” The bread was good, as was the homemade Buffalo mozzarella, though Salvo later, and privately, pointed out to Gina that his mozzarella was much better and Gina pointed out to Salvo that the two rooms they had stayed in yesterday were much bigger.
After three glasses of wine, Mimoo began to cry about Alessandro and Antonio, and Gina took that as a cue to leave the table, because she knew that once her mother started, her mother would not stop. She went into the bedroom and lay down on the blankets on the floor. She didn’t even look out the window because there was nothing to see except the alley behind Canal Street.
But when she closed her eyes, she heard the bagpipes and the barrel organ and the wedding mandolins, saw the beautiful people in their urban haze, riding uphill in cable cars and trolley cars, and a busker with a harmonica on the jammed city street, who played and sang. On her first disillusioned night in her new home town, Gina fell asleep to the memory of the singing man, yearning that someone someday might want to win her heart like the pretty girl had won the heart of the lonely musician.
“Since we met I’ve known no repose, she’s dearer to me than the world’s brightest star, and my one wish has been that someday I may win the heart of my wild Irish Rose …”
Chapter Six
A SUNDAY IN A SMALL TOWN
“BARRINGTON is the heart of the American way of life,” Ben Shaw would add after he had introduced his friend Harry as the son of the man who founded and built a town entire. It was the way he had introduced him to Alice, a few years back, whom they both wanted to impress and were even more impressed when she wasn’t, and it was the way he had introduced him to Gina, whom they both wanted to impress and were even more impressed when she was.
And what a small town Barrington was. By train or stagecoach, close to Boston, the thriving hub of the Northeast, Barrington nested in sloping oaks and bushy maples on hilly roads. From the top of the town square on a clear night you could see Boston’s downtown lights twinkling in the distance. This Sunday the deep green of the trees and the startling white of the houses and the church steeples were sleek with fog and rain. Herman Barrington could’ve built his homestead anywhere, on a thousand acres with a mile-long winding driveway, like his brother Henry, but he chose instead to live four blocks from Main Street, in a stately but traditional colonial estate right off the sidewalk, from which passersby could glance into his bay windows. And when the family and their friends gathered in the drawing room or the library, sipping their drinks, fire crackling, amiably chatting, they could also see all the way down the wet and winding street.
This Sunday afternoon, as every other, Esther Barrington waited with her brother in the library, adjacent to the drawing room. Harry only pretended to wait. He was reading. The fire was on, their drinks were at their sides. She sat in the wingback, staring out the window.
“Is that staring out the window longingly?” asked Harry from the Chesterfield without raising his head. “Waiting for Alice, are we?”
Esther primly folded her arms. “I will not be mocked by you.”
“No?” He smiled.
“Oh, you’re brave now.”
“I’m not that brave.”
“Harry, I need to speak with you.”
“No.”
“You have to stand up to him.”
“No.”
“Ben and I can’t keep defending you.”
“You call what you do defending?”
“Don’t let him talk to you like that—and in front of Alice!”
“She finds him charming.”
“She finds everyone charming. That’s her gift. And soon she won’t. He’s planning to put you into quite a spot during dinner.”
“Just during dinner?”
“I’m