Children of Liberty

by Paullina Simons

  One time Salvo put some tomatoes on the toasted bread. Harry liked it. Another day Salvo cooked the tomatoes, made them softer, added more garlic, a little olive oil, some basil leaves. He spread it on the bread, put mozzarella and Parmesan on top and grilled it in a hot oven. Harry said it was the best thing he had ever tasted, and ate half a loaf to show he meant it. “Honestly, Salvo,” said Harry, “I don’t think you should have anything else on your menu. This crispy, doughy Sicilian tomato and mozzarella bread is your ticket to untold riches. Serve only this with red wine.”

  From behind Harry, Gina stared at her brother whose face was stretched in a satisfied grin from ear to ear. Even Salvo melted a little bit after that.

  “But what should we call it?” Harry mused. “We could advertise it: ‘Come to Antonio’s, home of the original …’ original what?”

  Salvo shrugged. “In Sicily, a simpler version of this was known as the dish of the poor people.”

  “Oh, incorrect—this is the food of kings, Salvo,” said Harry. “What did they call it?”

  “Pizza Margherita.”

  “Fantastic. Pizza Margherita. Sublime. You are going to be a millionaire, Salvo. Welcome to America.”

  After Harry left that evening, the Attavianos took back every single thing they said about him. They praised him at the table, calling him their saving angel, while Gina lay on her bed upstairs with the door open, hearing their voices from below, basking in the stinging bliss that was her present life.

  5

  They couldn’t find a carriage to take them back from the Riverview Stone Quarry. The one that brought them there left an hour ago, and it was at least two miles down the Merrimack River road to town. They had gone to the quarry late Saturday afternoon after she was done with the market to pick out granite for their cooking surfaces. Salvo insisted. To make the best dough, he said, the kneading surface had to remain cool at all times. There was nothing cooler than igneous rock, Salvo and Gina said, knowing something about this, having lived in the penumbra of hissing magma. Billingsworth needed two Saturdays to be convinced to spend the money on granite. Even Harry joined the chorus of the persuaders.

  Salvo was supposed to come with them, but he must have gotten delayed. Either that or there was a God who performed miracles big and small all day long. Salvo worked as a day laborer on Saturdays, and had been digging and planting in the Lawrence Common. It must have been divine intervention, Gina thought, as they chose a suitable stone, the color of light tea with black specks and Harry signed off on it, because her brother would never otherwise have left her alone with Harry, even in a quarry.

  They waited for him outside the gates for twenty minutes.

  “The restaurants are opening next week,” Harry said. “I think your brother is going to have to stop working his other jobs. Or he surely won’t keep this one.”

  “He knows,” Gina said, looking around the dusty quarry. “We just need a little bit to tide us over until the business starts earning. It’s been tough since he lost his job at the lumber mill.”

  Harry turned to her, but slowly. “I didn’t know there was a lumber mill in Lawrence,” he said.

  “Oh, there isn’t. And I meant a sawmill, I think. I don’t really know the difference. He went by train to Andover to work in one.”

  “Andover, really.” Harry studied his feet while Gina put her hand over her eyes to squint down the sunny road for signs of her brother. There weren’t any. Grazie a Dio. “So what happened? Why did he get sacked?”

  “Oh, he didn’t,” said Gina. “He quit. He said they were insufferably rude to him.”

  “He left because they were rude?”

  “I didn’t say it was a good decision,” Gina said. “But that’s why he’s been working so much lately, making up for those lost wages.”

  “I’ll be sure not to be rude to him,” said Harry.

  As if you could be, Gina thought. “It was a woman who insulted him. Salvo will take almost anything, but he hates it when women disrespect him. Gets his blood right up.”

  Harry pulled his hat lower over his face, as if to keep the dust out of his eyes. “I’m sure it doesn’t happen very often,” he muttered.

  “Almost never. He is so charming and courteous to women, my brother.”

  They waited another five or ten minutes. She didn’t know what Harry was thinking, but she was praying so loud it might as well have been out loud. Please don’t show up, Salvo, please don’t show up.

  “How are we going to get back?” Harry finally asked when he got tired of standing in one place.

  “I don’t mind walking,” said Gina.

  “Really?” He looked over her diaphanous sunny pink dress, the heels on the Mary Janes he wasn’t supposed to see. “It’s quite a way.”

  “I don’t mind.” Her hair was up in a bun, the chestnut curls covered by a narrow-brimmed hat she had found donated at the mission, and “borrowed” until later that evening. She felt like a vision and hoped she looked it.

  So they walked, in silence. She tried to make chit-chat, but her throat was too dry. On their right the peaceful wide Merrimack River flowed languidly to Newburyport. The sun was shining; the leaves had come in; it was late afternoon—cool and crisp, a beautiful day. She was happy to walk saying nothing, so happy just to keep in step, not too fast, but not too slow either; the pace made small talk unnecessary, and she didn’t know the etiquette for it. Should she begin it, or should he? Should he defer to her? But if she is very young—as she is—should he still defer to her? She walked on, wishing for uneven road, a boulder here, perhaps a tree trunk there, fallen across their way. He walked a good respectable foot away from her; they weren’t strolling together, they walked side by side down a path.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  He had been asking her something, but she was so absorbed in her own thoughts, she forgot to listen to him. “I beg your pardon?”

  He smiled. “A penny for your thoughts,” he said.

  “I don’t know this expression,” she said. “Are you offering me money?”

  “Only in a figurative sense. To ask what you were thinking.”

  “I don’t really know,” she lied. “How is your friend Ben? I haven’t asked after him in a while.”

  “Is that what you were thinking about? Ben?” He paused. “Or that you haven’t asked after him in a while?”

  Gina didn’t know whether to blush or giggle. Desperately she tried not to do both.

  “He’s fine,” Harry went on, not noticing or pretending not to notice her discomfort. “I hardly see him. He lives in a different dorm from me this year, and he is taking the most difficult courses. Methods in Mathematical Physics, Railroad Engineering, Field Seminar in Bridges and Buildings. He is either out or immersed in the books.”

  Gina wanted to ask Harry to say hello to Ben, but what if Harry hadn’t told Ben he had been helping her and Salvo with the restaurants? She didn’t want to put him in an awkward spot.

  “What does he want to do after he graduates?”

  Harry opened his hands. “Do you even need to ask? He inhales bananas and exhales Panama. He has no other life.”

  Gina felt better. She had once half thought Ben might have been sweet on her, and was happy to know it wasn’t the case, that his excitements lay elsewhere. She smiled into her shoes. Of course she had sewn the lawn dress just a little too short (“I ran out of fabric, Mimoo!”) and her cream shoes (that she also “borrowed” for the afternoon from a donation box at St. Vincent’s) peeked out from under the hem. Harry was right, it was too dusty and dirty on the road for this dress. But when else could she wear it, except to church on Sundays and now? She felt like a princess on palace grounds.

  “The granite you picked is very fine,” Harry said. “Salvo will be sorry he missed choosing it.”

  “Excuse me again. What were you saying?” Very slightly she pulled the shawl down from her shoulders to expose her arms. She was hot under the wool covering, breathless whi
le walking.

  “Whatever you’re thinking about must be very good,” said Harry.

  “No really, almost nothing.” She had been searching the road up ahead for a crevice, a large rock, a pothole, something she could “accidentally” trip on, so maybe he could grab her bare elbow to steady her. Her heart was beating so fast, she couldn’t possibly pay attention to the conversation and search for a boulder at the same time!

  “So are you almost—?”

  “So what was Belpasso—?”

  “I’m sorry, you were saying?”

  “No, excuse me. Ladies first.”

  He called her a lady! How could she talk after that? Pothole, pothole, where are you? “I just wanted to know if you’re excited to be graduating? Must be exciting!”

  “Excited or not,” he said, taking off his bowler hat and wiping his brow, “the cap and gown have been ordered. It’s warm, isn’t it?”

  “So warm.” The shawl slipped down a little lower, almost at her wrists now. “Aren’t you happy?”

  “Happy, yes. Why? Oh, you mean to graduate?” He shrugged. “We don’t get too excited about things in my family.”

  “Not even about Philip Nolan?”

  Harry rolled his eyes. “He’s behind me, thank goodness. I’ve spent too long with him. Relieved to be done.” He turned to her. “How are the nuns treating you? Are you giving them trouble?”

  “Me? No. Why do you say that?”

  He smiled lightly. “Your mother told me last week they keep complaining to her about you.”

  Gina, not a blusher, felt herself turning red. Last thing she wanted was to be portrayed as a troublemaker. “It’s their job to complain.”

  “I bet they don’t complain about Verity.”

  “She’s going to be a nun!” Gina exclaimed. “What’s there to complain about?”

  And then suddenly the air was not crisp anymore but thick with his unasked but low-hanging, follow-up question: Are you going to be a nun, too, Gina? His manners prevented him from asking it, and yet the fact that he didn’t ask made the silence between them all the more stark. He didn’t dare ask, because her answer—of course I’m not—might prompt another response from him, or perhaps a comment, both of which were flagrantly inappropriate. I don’t think you would make a very good nun, Gina, he might say. Or she might tell him she wouldn’t make a very good nun. To which he would agree, or disagree. It was an impossible conversation! Even inside her thirsty head, it was ablaze with indecency. That is why Salvo was suddenly needed with a horse and cart. Because sometimes simple questions resulted in this kind of screaming muteness. Gina focused hard on the small stones under her feet.

  Casually he cleared his throat, moving a little closer to her. “Gina?”

  She shook off her anxious musings. “Excuse me, what did you say?”

  A smirk returned to his face. “So what’s Belpasso like? Like this?”

  She nodded, relieved and grateful. “The outskirts yes, a bit like this. Rural. But the little town itself is stone and stucco. A mercantile town. It has to be stone because it has to withstand Etna’s eruptions. Otherwise wood huts would burn to the ground every few years. Stone is sturdier.” She chuckled. “There is a very tall stone wall, built on one side of the volcano between the mountain and the town. It’s kind of funny. It was built to keep the lava away. As if it could.”

  “Like the Great Wall of China?”

  “The what of China?”

  “The Great Wall of China.”

  “Oh. Did they build it against volcanoes too?”

  Now it was Harry who chuckled. “I don’t think China has volcanoes. I think they built it to keep out the Mongolian hordes.”

  In horror Gina thought Harry said to keep out the Mongolian whores. That seemed very much out of character for him, and she was at a loss as to how to respond. How frayed with disaster this whole small talk was! Every syllable something wrong came out. Once again she entered into an obsessive loop of teenage uncertainty that kept her not only from replying to him, but this time also from paying attention to the road in front of her. Quite inadvertently she tripped over a rock and lurched forward. Harry, his reflexes rising to the occasion, caught her in mid-fall, grabbing her by her bare arm, around the front of her waist, around the shoulder. The shawl had fallen to the ground, but he kept Gina from falling, though not from twisting her ankle. She hobbled forward, swooned slightly, became light-headed.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I’m so silly. Very sorry.”

  He was still holding her, looking around for a place to sit her down. “Nothing to be sorry about. Are you all right? How is your limb?”

  That reminded Gina that men were not supposed to refer to women’s parts by their actual names. Arms, legs. They weren’t supposed to know women had those. They called them limbs.

  “Yes,” she said faintly, “my, um, limb is fine.” He was still holding on to her.

  He sat her down on a pile of broken stones. She leaned against the short wall that separated the dirt road from the river. He squatted down on the ground next to her, afternoon suit and all. Her ankle was throbbing.

  “It hurts?”

  “Not too bad,” she said, twinging.

  His gray eyes became bluer, clearer, more amused. “Okay, you can’t tell me again you don’t know what you were thinking. That would be the third time. I simply won’t believe you. So cough it up. What were you thinking?”

  What could she do? She told him the almost truth. “I didn’t know that word you said. So I was trying to figure it out from the meaning and tripped.”

  “What word?”

  Gina couldn’t very well repeat it! What if he did say whores? How mortifying that would be if she actually heard him correctly. “When you said, um, the Chinese built the wall to keep the Mongolian, um, something out.”

  “The hordes?”

  “Oh!” She was so relieved. “I didn’t hear the d the first time. What does hordes mean?”

  Harry laughed. He flung his head back, closed his eyes, and laughed as if he had been with his best friend Ben, and they had just shared the most remarkable of jokes.

  Gina sat on the rocks next to him, looking down at him, slightly below her, smiling uncertainly, not knowing what she had said that was so amusing, or what to do, but when he finally stopped laughing and straightened up, gazing at her, still with a smile on his lips, she became even more discomfited. Because she could almost read that expression on the normally dispassionate Harry’s face. It was the enchanted face of her father when she did or said something that made him sweep her up and cover her with kisses. Before the sweeping and the kissing, there was that expression of—there was no other good way to describe it—tenderness. Affection. Love. Tenerezza. Affetto. Amore. Gia, Papa would say, you funny funny girl.

  That was the look somber, impenetrable Harry had on his face at that moment.

  Bewildered, throbbing ankle forgotten, heart pumping wildly, Gina tottered sideways, nearly falling off the rock. He reached out to steady her, taking her arm, looking up, leaning in. “Gia,” he said. “Why are you so funny?”

  She babbled incoherently; she didn’t think he really wanted a reply. In the silent milliseconds of him taking hold of her upper arm and leaning in, if someone had seen them just then, from the outside, an observer perhaps, passing by, or Salvo on his way to chaperone his sister, or the Almighty Himself, he would have seen a young man besotted and an eager young girl terrified. The moment Gina most desperately yearned for came, and she wasn’t ready for it. Came and went, and she could do nothing but act her age and retreat without rejoicing. Her assured bravado left her. It was so sudden, so unexpected. He laughed, and just like that his manner changed. I’ve been funny before, so why now? She didn’t see herself from the outside in, and so forgot about the sheer young dress in the joyous summer color, forgot about her petite ladylike hat with the flowers and feathers, forgot about the strands of her unruly hair that escaped the chignon and curled downwa
rd, draping her face, forgot about her blossoming Italian lips that Rinaldo in Belpasso followed her around town for, pining and wailing like a lovestruck Romeo until she acquiesced out of smoky curiosity and kissed him. She forgot about all that now because Harry wasn’t a weak Italian boy, he was a young American man, he didn’t pine and he didn’t wail; yet he fixated on her for those lightning eternal seconds as if the very next thing he was going to do was lean forward another three inches and kiss her madly. His head was already tilted. Her lips were already parted.

  Instead he blinked, and came out of the trance. Springing to his feet, he gave her his hand to pull her up. His hand was warm, and hers was too. She struggled longer than necessary to allow him to hold it for a little longer.

  “What do you think? Can you walk?” His palm cupped her elbow.

  She took a step and wobbled—but not because of the pain.

  “Not good?” he said cautiously. “Want me to take a look? If you’ve really hurt yourself, it’ll swell up right away. We’ll know.”

  “What good will that do us?” she asked. “It’s a mile to town.”

  “I’ll have to leave you, go get us a carriage,” he said, pausing. He was still holding on to her. “Or I could carry you.”

  There was the briefest still-life of intense gray eye meeting baffled brown without another syllable uttered or a motion made because they both heard the unmistakable clomp of a horse, and Salvo’s voice, calling for them from a not far enough distance.