Bellagrand

by Paullina Simons

  Suddenly a sea change. Herman and Henry divided their business interests and went their separate ways. Flagler died in 1913, by far the wealthiest man in the United States and one of the wealthiest in the world. Herman did not attend Flagler’s lavishly attended funeral.

  Flagler built homes on the coastal flats between the waterway and the ocean, a few of them modest, some of them like the Louvre. He built one hotel, then another. He built one palace, then another. He lost the one wife who had brought him to Florida, married another, then another. He loved women, and for the last woman he married he built the most ostentatious home of all, Whitehall, a magnificent private dwelling, erected in the open landscaped grounds between two bodies of water, where everyone could see it.

  But a decade before Whitehall, Henry Flagler built a much smaller, more humble house.

  Harry stopped speaking. The train sped on. Gina waited. She turned from the window toward him. “Is that where the fairy tale ends? At Bellagrand?”

  “That’s where the fairy tale ends,” he said. “At Bellagrand.”

  Chapter 9

  THE BLUE ROOM

  One

  AFTER THE TRAIN DROPPED them off in Spanish City, a man named Fernando, waiting at the wheel of an Oldsmobile Tourister, took them across the rickety bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway to the strip of land where the sun both rose and set, a narrow sea-level sand barrier called Jupiter Island. Gina rode shotgun with Fernando. He was a short, cheerful-looking Cuban of indeterminate age who perhaps colored his thick black hair. He had a mustache like a con man, an old hat to go with the ’stache, was dressed neatly but like a servant, in handed-down glad rags, a halfway decent suit, and spit-shined shoes. He spoke with an accent, smiled at Gina widely with uneven teeth, and understood every word she said. Except for the words she spoke to him in Italian. Those he didn’t understand at all.

  Harry wasn’t friendly to him, but then Harry wasn’t friendly to anybody lately, especially Gina. It didn’t matter. They didn’t come to Florida to relight the extinguished flame. He came to Florida to hide, and she came to Florida to have a baby. To her right, past the shrub and the dunes, was the Atlantic Ocean, and to the left nothing but mossy wilderness.

  Or so she thought.

  She could barely tell there was a driveway on the left, yet Fernando turned in and stopped the car. The entry between the trees was concealed by weeds and overgrown reeds, hidden by the dune grasses and palms, by the moss oaks with their ominous hanging webs and a creaking tall wrought-iron gate.

  “Fernando,” Gina said, “you made a mistake. There is nothing here.”

  “I don’t make mistakes, señora. You will see.”

  Past the opened gate, the dirt road wound through the coconut palm grove. The grounds were not landscaped, but like the jungle.

  At the end of the road stood Bellagrand.

  Gina gaped at it from the open window of the Tourister.

  “Harry,” she mouthed. “I thought you said it was humble.”

  “Humble because you can’t see it from the road,” he said. “Humble compared to Whitehall.”

  It was a white stucco house, with white-framed windows and white marble Doric columns spanning the marble portico. The front of it faced the rising sun.

  Squinting into the brightness, Gina stepped out of the car. White benches in front, white urns, elaborate vases and planters lined the white stone circular drive where the horses must have stopped once because off to the side were the mews and the stable, and every wooden board on that mews and stable was painted white. In the center of the drive was a fountain sculpture of a naked woman, demurely covering her bottom half with a draped cloth, but only pretending to cover her large stone breasts. Who was that? Her husband would know. He fancied himself a man who knew everything.

  “Harry, who is the fountain a sculpture of?”

  He barely glanced at it. “If it’s not working, can it be properly called a fountain?”

  “It is working, señor. I turn it on for you when I get you unpacked and settled.”

  “Who is it, Harry?”

  “Aphrodite,” Harry replied. “Goddess of love, beauty, sexuality. That’s an interesting sculpture for my mother to have left me, don’t you think?”

  “Simmer down, Harry,” Esther said. “She didn’t leave you the sculpture. She left you the house. Now are you going to get out of the car and get yourself acquainted?”

  “At the last possible minute,” he replied, not looking outside.

  Gina turned away from him and walked toward the house.

  Stately and sprawling, with a slightly crackled grandeur of standing proud but long abandoned, Bellagrand had colonial pretensions but was really a southern mansion with Spanish overtones. Gina could not believe her eyes. The sun was blazingly strong, and she was afraid that if she blinked the house would become what she most feared: a mirage.

  She needed to be helped up the steps of the portico—by Rosa. Harry, who had finally climbed out of the car, wandered off. An impressed Rosa clucked loudly, expressing verbally what Gina could not.

  She overheard Esther say to Harry, “And there I was all these years thinking you got a raw deal when I received Mother’s jewelry and you got nothing.”

  “Does it make you feel better to know for certain, dear sister,” said Harry, “that I got the rawest deal of all?”

  Past the African blackwood double doors that felt immovably heavy was a cavernous hall and vast rooms, nearly empty of furniture. Harry went through first, disappearing to the left. “Harry,” Gina called to him, her vibrato bouncing from stone to stone, Harry, arry, arry, eeee . . .

  He reappeared in the Great Hall. “When are you and Rosa leaving?” he inquired of Esther.

  “Marito!” Gina said. “Don’t be rude.”

  Esther was amused. “We haven’t thought about leaving,” she said. “Have we, Rosa?”

  “Madam, we thought about not leaving,” said Rosa.

  “Perhaps when the child is two?” Esther suggested.

  Harry looked horrified. “Impossible,” he said, shaking his head. “You may come back when it’s born, but you can’t stay here for the next five months. We’ll all go mad. You are not part of my house arrest, are you? Did I miss this condition in the fine print?”

  “We’ll never find them in this house,” Gina said. “Let them stay.”

  Esther’s gaze didn’t waver. “Harry, we’re all joking. You think I would leave my ailing father for months while I live with you, of all people?”

  He looked slightly abashed. “Our father,” he corrected her, but Esther leveled him with a look that said, oh, yes, sure, you haven’t so much as breathed his way for fourteen years, and suddenly it’s our father.

  Gina crossed herself. Harry, Esther, and Rosa stared at her imponderably.

  “You said Our Father,” Gina explained. “Padre Nostro. I crossed myself just in case.”

  The three Protestant Bostonians did not soften their critical gazes at her impenetrable Catholic strangeness.

  The library had a masculine feel, but was all white, except for the walnut floors and the mahogany bookshelves. Otherwise, the couches, chairs, lamps, curtains were all white. In the corner by the window stood a dark green marble round table. Harry sat down at it and said this was where he was going to read and work. He put his palms out on the marble.

  “It’s not marble,” said Esther. “If I know anything, I know my semi-precious minerals. This is malachite.”

  “It’s nice.”

  “It’s from the Ural Mountains in Russia.”

  “That’s all I need to know. It’s mine.”

  They left him to his malachite and wandered over to the Grand Ballroom with the six crystal chandeliers each as large as Gina’s former kitchen. The ballroom had ten tall windows, four doors. The floors were dark walnut. Esther said she had never seen walnut floors in any house, because walnut was prohibitively expensive to build with. They were glossy, near-black.

 
; “What, Father’s North End immigrant tenements aren’t built with walnut?” asked Harry, who had caught up with them.

  “Maybe you can teach Harry to dance on this floor,” Esther went on, as if her brother hadn’t spoken.

  “He knows how,” Gina said. “He just chooses not to.”

  They found a billiards room and a drawing room.

  In the drawing room stood an old Steinway Artcase Model B grand piano. Gina didn’t know how to play it, and Esther had forgotten. After they took off the white sheet, Esther pressed the E and the D on the treble clef. The E next to the middle C wasn’t working. “Perhaps we can avoid the songs and scales with E in them,” Esther said. “So almost all of Chopin would be out. He loved E Major.”

  The limestone kitchen was open to the dining and sitting areas, making it seem like one enormous room. The room spanned the entire back of the house and was visible from all the rooms in the front. At one end of the kitchen was a large area that seemed to serve no purpose except to have floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors overlooking the great expanse of lawn and the gleaming blue of the wide water. A white boat bobbed, tied to a long wooden dock. Gina held on to the counter. “The kitchen alone is bigger than our entire folk Victorian,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Harry. “It is but a humble hunting lodge, as I foretold. Where’s our modest Hall of Mirrors, I do wonder? Did we miss that? Oh, Fernando,” he called out, “perhaps you can retire to the King’s Grand Apartments upstairs?”

  “Where is that, señor?”

  “Just to the left of the Opera Room.”

  “Harry, stop it,” said Gina. “He doesn’t know you’re teasing.”

  “I’m not teasing,” said Harry. “I’m mocking. Big difference.”

  “I will not sleep upstairs, señor. I will sleep in the guest mews outside, as instructed by your father.”

  “He instructed my prison guard,” Harry whispered to Gina.

  “Stop it.”

  “Why else would Fernando need to position himself at the only exit?”

  “Is that why you’re not nice to him?”

  “I’m nice. I’m precisely myself.” But he wasn’t.

  The house smelled musty, but Gina had expected worse from a home uninhabited for nearly thirty years. They flung open the doors and the windows to air the place. She went up to Harry near the French doors that led to the lawn. “Harry, just look at all this.”

  He looked significantly less impressed than she.

  “This may be nothing to you,” she said. “But I’m not a lady of the house in a place like this. I’m the lady’s maid.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Gina,” Harry said. “No reason you can’t be both.”

  She turned to walk away from him. He took her wrist. He hadn’t touched her since his release from the Correctional. When he touched her, she didn’t pull away. “Yes?” She lowered her voice.

  “One question,” he said. “Would you like to take your tea in the mural drawing room or the marble one?”

  Now she pulled away.

  “Esther, dear,” Harry said to his sister. “What, no swimming pool?”

  Near the open doors, Esther pointed to the left of the flagstone patio. “You don’t see?”

  “Oh, yes, I see now. What, no tennis court?”

  Esther pointed to the right.

  “Of course. How silly of me.”

  “This place is a touch larger than the prison cells you’ve been spending so much time in,” Esther said.

  Harry tapped hard on his temple. “My freedom is here,” he told her. “I’ve traded a small cell for a larger one, that’s all.” He shrugged dismissively. “It’s got a banquet hall. So what? It’s still prison.”

  Esther and Rosa ignored Harry and met up with Gina on the veranda. On all sides it was covered by a thin-mesh gauze net. Gina inspected the screens, wondering why they were here and if she could remove them so she could sit in the open and gaze unobstructed at the water.

  “Apparently you can’t remove the screens,” Esther said. “Or you’ll be eaten by insects. Fernando calls this the lanai. Right, Fernando?”

  Fernando nodded. “Across the water is Tequesta,” he said, pointing. “It’s an Indian name, but Cubans live there now. That’s where my family lives. We call it Spanish City. We buy everything you need there.”

  “Books on the revolution?” asked Harry from behind them.

  “Lots of books, señor. You tell me what you like, I buy it.”

  “No revolutionary books for my brother, Fernando,” said Esther. “He’s all revolutioned out. But tomorrow we will need your help. We have to hire a housekeeper and a cook. Maybe a valet, too. And a maid for Gina.”

  “I don’t need a valet,” said Harry. “I have been putting on my own socks for forty years. I can do it for another three.”

  “I don’t need a maid,” said Gina. “I am the maid. I would like to buy a sewing machine, Fernando. Can we do that? And I don’t need a cook. I’ll cook. I’ll make Italian food for my husband. He used to like Italian food.”

  “I haven’t had it in so long,” said Harry, “I forgot what it is.”

  They exchanged a faint glance of hot distant hunger.

  Fernando disagreed. “You do need a cook, señora. You need somebody to shop for you. You cannot go yourself to the market, buy food, prepare, cook, clean. Look at the size of this house. It is too much for you in your condition.”

  “How do you think I’ve been living all these years?”

  “You have not lived in a house like this, Gina,” Esther said.

  “Were you with child all those years, señora?”

  “The Cuban is right,” Esther said. “You are going to have to learn to live differently now. Without a sewing machine.”

  “But I like sewing,” Gina said. “I want to make some summer dresses to wear. And I like going to the market. You must have a very good one here, Fernando. Lots of fresh vegetables and fruit, I imagine.”

  “Oh, yes! We have the most delicious tropical fruit. Mango, pineapples, guavas. Plantains. We have lots of bananas.”

  Gina flinched. Esther flinched. They stared at each other, puzzled and frowning, Esther especially, fully noting Gina’s tremor. They said nothing, as if it hadn’t happened. Ben was the one who had introduced them all to bananas, over twenty years ago when he first worked for the United Fruit Company and had become entranced by Central America. The bananas had been first. Then came the Panama Canal.

  “Bananas, oh, wonderful!” Harry exclaimed, coming back to the kitchen. “I can’t wait. Please, can I come with you, too, Fernando?” he asked, sitting down on the limestone floor, and smiling up at them. “I’d like to pick out my own fruit. Tell me, these bananas of which you speak, are they imported from Panama?”

  “All right, enough, Harry,” Gina said sotto voce.

  “Yes, Harry,” Esther said, looking at Gina even more puzzled. “Enough.”

  “I think the other fruit is grown locally, señor,” Fernando replied. “But yes, the bananas come from Panama and Costa Rica.”

  “Of course they do.”

  “They get here very fast, before they ripen. The new port in Key West welcomes the ships from Panama and the new railroad that runs from there all the way up the coast brings them to us.”

  “How very convenient.”

  “Do you know,” Fernando said, “that the man who built the railroad is the same man who also built this house? His name is Henry Flagler.” He nodded, proudly as if he himself had built these things. “It is true. Don’t look so surprised, señor. It is a little-known fact. Local history, a special service I provide.” He smiled happily.

  Harry, his own mocking grin stretched from ear to ear, opened wide his hands to his flummoxed wife and sister. “Bellagrand is a gift that just keeps on giving, isn’t it, ladies?”

  Gina and Esther stood like marble columns.

  “I wish you could come to the market with me, señor. You would be amazed.
”

  “Believe me, I’m already plenty amazed, Fernando. As are my women. Look, you’ve stunned them into silence. Not an easy feat, my friend.”

  “Fernando, no matter how much Harry jokes,” Esther said, recovering her voice, “he is not to leave this house.”

  “Who is joking?”

  “I know my duties, Mrs. Barrington. Do not worry.”

  “Gia,” Harry called to his wife. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

  She had dropped out of the conversation entirely. She was examining the butler’s pantry, impressed with its many cabinets and drawers. She opened the cabinets. White china stared out. Crystal glasses. Silverware. Serving dishes. She realized she was hungry. Maybe instead of idly chatting they could eat soon. Was there any food in this house? Or just china?

  “Harry, you know the limits,” Esther was telling him. “You can’t leave the house for any reason. Fernando works for the Florida Department of Corrections. He knows the rules better than you. Your probation officer will visit you this Monday to introduce herself and she’ll explain the rest to you. She’ll be making scheduled weekly visits, but also dropping by unannounced.”

  “Like in the middle of the night?” Harry asked. Lightly his eyes twinkled at Esther.

  Lightly her eyes twinkled back. “Don’t be impossible,” she said. “I know that’s a Herculean feat, but can you try?”

  “Fernando,” Gina said, returning to the kitchen. “What can we do to help you get us settled? Because I’d like to eat soon.”

  Quickly Fernando excused himself to go fetch their suitcases from the Tourister. Gina motioned to Harry to go help him. Harry ignored her. She continued to verbally press him about helping Fernando, until even Esther shushed her, unperturbed that Fernando and Rosa were carrying five trunks upstairs all by themselves. That’s when it occurred to Gina that she could not internalize even this simplest of all rules of etiquette: the servants served. They were paid for fetching suitcases and cooking and going to the market. Harry, raised with his father’s money, simply sat on the floor. Gina began to understand a few things about her husband. He didn’t get up in their Summer Street house either. He spent thirteen years sitting. Because she was the servant.