Children of Liberty

by Paullina Simons

  “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.

  Part Two

  THE OBJECTION MAKER

  Il y a une femme dans toutes les affaires;

  aussitôt qu’on me fait un rapport, je dis:

  ‘Cherchez la femme.’

  (There is a woman in every case;

  as soon as they bring me a report, I say,

  ‘Look for the woman.’)

  Alexander Dumas

  Chapter Nine

  THE NATIVES AND THE PILGRIMS

  1

  HARRY noticed that recently things had been uncharacteristically tense. Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday and Esther was helping Bernard cook a comforting meal, using their mother’s precious recipes passed down the centuries from Stephen Hopkins who was the great-great-grandfather of Robert Treat Paine, who was the great-great-grandfather of Frances Paine Barrington. Hopkins wasn’t just an early settler. He was the early settler. Esther and Bernard brined the turkey, made leek and bacon stuffing, jellied cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, corn and cabbage. They made three different varieties of pie, all Frances Barrington perfections: pumpkin, apple, and cherry, Harry’s personal favorite. The whole day was usually relaxed and pleasant, even if by the end of the evening, Alice’s parents had had a little too much brandy, but this didn’t upset Harry, because they were not mean, just tearfully sentimental, telling him how he was “already” part of their family, and how fond their beloved Alice was of him.

  His Uncle Henry would come with his three strapping sons and dutiful and church-mouse-quiet Aunt Ruth. Harry liked his cousins, but had more in common with the mahogany umbrella stand. Until they left, usually blessedly early (because Aunt Ruth was prone to awful migraines, and was it any wonder?), the conversation around the dinner table revolved around nothing but the recounting, in tortuous detail, of the ignominy of losing the annual Regatta race to Yale eleven out of the last thirteen years. Last June was the first time Harvard had won in seven years, and judging from the celebration around Boston you’d think they’d won the Hundred Years War. All the Barringtons had gone down to New Haven for the sacred twenty-minute event and then talked about it non-stop for the next four months—all except Harry who afterward wished only to puncture his eardrums with rusty nails.

  Ben and Esther usually played Parcheesi or got Herman and Ellen to make up a foursome for bridge. Ellen drank happily and socially with Herman, engaging him on all manner of lively topics, from the price of paper to the reasons for the decline of civilization, on which they heartily yet agreeably disagreed.

  But this Thanksgiving, there didn’t seem to be much of any of that—no maudlin protestations of love from the Porters, no Parcheesi between Ben and Esther, and no relaxed banter between Ellen and Herman. And no Uncle Henry. Aunt Ruth had had a minor stroke and could not venture out in public.

  This Thanksgiving, Elmore came instead of Uncle Henry, bringing his own parents and grandparents. Harry would’ve liked to blame the tension on Elmore and his lack of compatibility with his sister, but he suspected the awkwardness of the celebration had little to do with the medical student. Two weeks before Thanksgiving, over Sunday lunch in front of everyone, Esther for some odd reason pressed Harry and Ben on extending a Thanksgiving invitation to their new friends in Lawrence.

  “What new friends in Lawrence?” Alice instantly piped in.

  “Harry, you haven’t told Alice about your friends from Lawrence?”

  “I don’t have any friends from Lawrence.” He stared into his roast potatoes.

  “It is custom,” Esther proceeded mildly, “in our country, to welcome newcomers by sharing our holiday table with them. Remember the story of Grandpa Stephen? The Pilgrims and the Indians? He walked off the Mayflower, the first immigrant, if you will, and the Indians didn’t scalp him, no, they gave him corn. That’s the true Thanksgiving tradition. We are the original immigrants, Harry. We feel an affinity with the newcomers. Now we’ve become the natives. But if not the immigrants at the table of the natives, then who?”

  “Good question,” said Herman. “Well said, daughter. Who are these people? And will we have the room? Jones? How many are you thinking of inviting, Harry? My brother is not coming, but Elmore is bringing his parents and grandparents.”

  “We have a banquet-sized dining room, Father,” said Esther. She seemed to be pressing the point rather humorlessly. “Besides, Elmore is not an immigrant. Thanksgiving doesn’t quite apply to him.”

  “Perhaps,” Herman suggested, “you’re taking the Indian-native thing too literally. We don’t actually have to invite the immigrants.”

  “I think Ben and Harry might like to.”

  Harry saw doomsday up ahead. But Ben, deaf to nuance, lit up. “Why, what a fabulous idea!”

  “Ben,” said Harry. “Your mother is coming. She said she might bring your Aunt Josephine.”

  “Really?” Herman exclaimed. “Jones, did you hear that? Are you counting?”

  “No, sir.” Louis was standing by the door, not paying any attention.

  “I’m thrilled your aunt can join us, Ben,” said Herman. “I like her enormously. She’s got so much sense. But now we really won’t have room.” He shrugged, his mouth curling upward in an ironic smile. “We’ll have to set out the immigrant table in our breakfast room. I’m not sure that will be in keeping with the spirit of the holiday though. What do you think, Esther?”

  “I’ll invite them regardless,” said Ben, barely able to contain his excitement. “We’ll figure it out.”

  The girls had stopped coming on Thursday evenings, so Ben dragged Harry all the way to Summer Street, and called on the Attavianos on a Wednesday evening a week before Thanksgiving. Harry thought it was a terrible idea and said so to an utterly undeterred Ben. “I haven’t seen her in weeks,” Ben said. “I just want to say hello. What if she got in trouble after her train was late?”

  “What if?”

  Gina was there, but was not allowed to speak, or even permitted to leave her room, though she did come down the stairs and stood, surreptitiously pressed against the landing wall, watching the two young men, with their hats in their hands and their coats still on—not being asked to sit down, not offered a cup of tea. This noticeably deflated Ben. Gina couldn’t tell them what was wrong, though her eyes tried to speak all the things she could not say.

  After Ben�
��s awkward invitation, Mimoo and Salvo stared at him with such hatred and disbelief, as if they had misunderstood and he had come to invite them not to Harry’s house for a feast but to spend eternity in hell.

  “Oh, that would be so wonderf—” Gina began from the stairs. At the frontline, Salvo whipped around to shut her up with a glare and then turned to Ben and Harry. “Thank you,” he finally managed to utter. “But unfortunately we won’t be able to make it. We have plans to start our own traditions with our family and friends here in our new home.” Salvo said nothing after that, and even Mimoo, who was usually polite to guests, didn’t invite them to stay for a drink, or have a morsel of the delectable cheesecake that had recently come out of the oven and was cooling on the stove.

  Gina was prevented from speaking a word to them, ushered upstairs before she could.

  On the train back, Harry was unapologetically caustic. “So I couldn’t tell, would they rather sit down for turkey with you and me, or … eat week-old fish? Mulled cider in Barrington or drink a gallon of salt water?”

  “Why were they being like that? It’s foolish. It’s not reasonable.”

  “Benjamin, you’re smitten with their fifteen-year-old daughter! Who is the one with no sense?”

  “I have been nothing but respectful and proper.”

  “And foolish.”

  “They don’t know how I feel.”

  “Oh yes, because you’ve kept it well hidden. Did you see Salvo’s expression? He wanted to strike you dead with the power of his hatred alone. He seemed shocked it wasn’t working.”

  Ben tutted, tapping on the darkened window as the hiss and release of steam from the caboose car drowned out his irritated words for a few moments.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Ben repeated. “Would you be so unreasonable if I were to inquire after Esther?”

  Harry turned to Ben, his gray eyes unblinkingly focused on his friend. “Try me,” he said. “Inquire.”

  Ben nodded. “Exactly! Why can’t Salvo be like you?”

  “For one I’m not Sicilian. They disembowel you in Italy for dishonoring their females.”

  “I’m not dishonoring, I’m honoring!”

  “Please. You don’t fool Salvo. You don’t fool me.” Harry wanted to add, you don’t even fool my sister.

  “They’re not in Italy now.” Ben took his hat and placed it over his chest, as if he were putting his heart into it. A minute went by in silence. Suddenly Ben said, “You could’ve helped me a little.” His tone was accusing.

  “Helped you how? I came with you, didn’t I?”

  “You just stood like a pillar and didn’t say a word. You let me drown out there and you didn’t come to my rescue.”

  “Did you see the look on their faces? On her face?” Harry said. “She must have gotten into such trouble after the train was late. I was reacting to that. I didn’t know what to say.”

  “What have I done?” said Ben. “What do I do?” He looked crestfallen.

  “Benjamin, what do you do? Ashley, from Apley Court. She has had her eye on you since Hydrostatics and Integral Calculus. Why do you think she’s taking Dynamics of a Rigid Body?”

  “Stop joking. This isn’t funny.”

  “Forget the fifteen-year-old. Trust me, there is no future there.”

  “I’m not even sure I want a future,” Ben said, turning to stare out the dark window at his mirrored reflection. “Perhaps I would like ten minutes now.”

  “And you wonder why Salvo wants you dead.”

  2

  So here it was, Thanksgiving, and no one was happy. Only Elmore was oblivious to the undercurrents. He spent most of the reception hour regaling Esther with his knowledge of the advances in modern radiology treatments. Harry thought that men who courted women sure had some peculiar ideas about what women found enticing. Esther, while remaining silent, looked like she wanted to poke out her eyes (or his?) with knitting needles. Herman spent the time in the drawing room with Ellen and Josephine Shaw Lowell and the Porters. Josephine looked nothing like Ellen: she was tall, commanding, wore matronly clothes appropriate for a widow, and had her hair parted in the middle and wrapped into a severe bun that pulled the skin of her face back and made her expressionless. She didn’t smile or frown, her skin so taut. She just loomed above her animated petite and round sister, pleasantly dressed and perfumed, nodding at Josephine in reverential agreement. Ben, clearly sick of Harry’s company, endeavored to make Harry sick of his by talking non-stop about Panama. “I will sign any petition,” said Harry, “I will give any amount of money, I will go to any demonstration, if only you will stop.”

  “Would you prefer to be over there?” Ben pointed to his mother, on the other side of the room, who was loudly accusing Herman of approving the war with Spain only because he was a man. That paid diminishing returns with Herman who in return demanded of Ellen how she would like her pacifist namby-pamby ideas dismissed solely because she was a woman.

  “I want to be like Louis,” said Harry to Ben, pointing to his butler who had walked into the drawing room and now stood like a statue with his hands by his sides. “Blessedly deaf.”

  “If only,” Louis said, announcing that dinner was served.

  Before they took their first bite of turkey, Herman, who couldn’t let it go, who couldn’t let anything go, asked Harry to give his opinion on the war. And give it Harry did, agreeing with Ellen and Josephine that indeed it was a terrible idea.

  There was vocal reprobation around the table. Even Orville came down on Harry, and he usually stayed away from politics. “That’s unbecoming, Harry,” Orville said. “A man has to be for war.”

  “That just proves our point!” Ellen exclaimed. “Right, Josephine?”

  “I don’t know how I feel about your long-term prospects with my daughter,” Orville continued, “knowing you side with women about matters of war.”

  That stopped the conversation like a derailed train. Stopped the clinking of forks, the pouring of drinks. It was as if everything was still for a moment. Aside from the challenging insult, it was a moment in which nearly everyone at the table—Herman, Harry, Esther, a mortified Alice, Orville, Irma, Louis with a serving dish of mashed potatoes, Ellen, Ben and even Josephine—remembered a small detail: Harry had yet to ask for Alice’s hand.

  “Um, can you pass the salt, Father,” Harry asked, reaching over. “And the gravy, too, please.”

  “Here, darling,” said Alice, handing him the gravy ladle, her hand slightly trembling. “I have one here.” Harry saw it, and gently patted her laced-up forearm, giving her a calming smile, as if to say, don’t worry about a thing, my skin is too thick to care. She visibly relaxed.

  Elmore was oblivious to all undercurrents. “Did you know Walter Reed is performing medical experiments in Cuba?” he said, ever the doctor in training. “Inducing yellow fever in dozens of unwilling subjects to prove that mosquitoes carry the plague that’s decimating the tropics. Fortunately none of them have died.”

  “The mosquitoes?” said Harry.

  “The unwilling subjects,” appended Elmore.

  “So far,” said Ellen. “But do you know what thousands have died from? Imperialism.”

  “Mother, please,” said Ben. “It’s Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “What, people don’t die on Thanksgiving? It’s not a holiday in Puerto Rico, son.”

  “Your mother is quite right, Benjamin,” said Josephine. “Eat your turnips.” Josephine still thought of Ben as eleven years old, because that’s how old he was when he stopped living with her.

  “Yellow fever and malaria are the scourges of the tropics,” Elmore went on, ignoring the songs of war, beating the disease drum.

  “You know what the scourge of the tropics is?” said Ellen. “Imperialism.”

  Ben emitted a gurgling sound of throaty frustration.

  Leaning to him, Harry lowered his voice. “See, now you know how I feel when you go on ceaselessly about your stupid canal.”

  “M
other, stop,” Ben repeated. “Goodness, you’d think it was a Thursday night!”

  “Actually it is, son. It’s Thanksgiving.” Everyone laughed and the tension lifted for a moment. “The U.S. forces are down in China,” Ellen said to Ben, “allied against the Chinese who hate foreign intervention.”

  “China is not the tropics, Mother.”

  “In Cuba we are promising them intervention,” Ellen pressed on, banging the plate with her fork, “to preserve what we call ‘independence.’ That’s just another word for colonialism.”

  “No, it isn’t.” That was Herman. “What about our protection of individual liberty?”

  “Another name for colonialism.”

  “Oh, Ellen, no. Come on.” That was Josephine, the politically active feminist and philanthropist, the purveyor of all things anti-imperialist and even she was saying that Ben’s mother was stepping over the line. Ben glared at his mother from across the table with gleeful satisfaction.

  Ellen cheerfully ignored him. “Is there anywhere in the world we won’t go to protect our interests?” she asked, undeterred. “Cuba, Puerto Rico, China, Panama …”

  “Mother, leave my Panama out of this.”

  “Costa Rica …”

  “Her too.”

  “Son, please.”

  “Mother, no matter what you think, we are going to sign a treaty with Britain to allow us to build a canal in Panama.”