Children of Liberty
Page 11
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.
“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 f
orklifts 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.”