Entanglements

by Rachel McMillan

  There was something safe and measured about an Equilateral Triangle. It was a language Nic spoke. One he knew as a familiar world. Not the new world he entered yesterday with an heiress and her drowsy chaperone.

  “Mr. Ricci. A successful day I presume?”

  “Father Francisco!” Nic always smiled when the priest was near. He did so much to sew up the community in the neighbourhood. For Nic, too. He so quickly found him a position at a boy’s school when his father was ill and in hospital.

  “I know you must be exhausted after your day of teaching and there is your father to tend to. But if I assured you that Mrs. Leoni was bringing him his supper, would you be kind enough to accompany Sister Aurora this evening? She is giving a small musical treat for our charity benefactresses.”

  “With pleasure, Father. As long as my father is taken care of.”

  Father Francisco appraised Nic a moment. Squeezed his shoulder. “You are storing a mighty reward in heaven, my son.” He tilted his chin proudly.

  Nic laughed awkwardly. “Do you think the holy sisters might spare me a sandwich?” Nic patted his stomach. “Geometry is an absolute trial on an empty stomach and I would be satisfied with an earthly reward right now.”

  Nic played familiar hymns with guarded solemnity. The sister then performed a small repertoire of popular romance ditties like Swanee and Mandy. After playing Schubert for Miss Hunnisett, Nic’s fingers easily navigated Gershwin, Berlin and other Tin Pan Alley composers for a voice sweet and airy.

  After the final lingering chord, he bowed to the resounding appreciation of the attendees who made a beeline for him to shake his hand and fawn.

  “What a good son you are,” chirped Mrs. Russo. “My Marco left the day after he turned 17. Chasing some skirt named Angelica.”

  “Oh, Mr. Ricci, you have turned into such a fine musician.” Mrs. Columbo leaned up on all of her five-foot frame and pinched his cheek. Nic’s ears reddened.

  Mrs. Bianchi, never as forward as the other ladies from the charity drives and bazaars, spoke softly as she pressed a tin of baking in his hand. “There is more where that came from, my dear boy.”

  Nic smiled and parted through the enthusiastic crowd hoping at any moment they would turn their attention on the star of the night, Sister Aurora, instead of their obvious attempts at pairing him with their daughters.

  “My father comes first.” Nic said more than once. “I must take care of him.”

  He hoped this would quell their enthusiasm. It just led to more cheek-squeezing and baked goods.

  “Mr. Ricci.” A voice not rimmed with the cadence of his ancestors broke through the crowd.

  “Widow Barclay!” He smiled at the chaperone he had met the day before. “How are you? Did you enjoy the musical programme?” He wondered if she had dozed through it. She certainly had no trouble sleeping through the rehearsal yesterday, even when the movement called for fortissimo.

  “I did, Mr. Ricci.”

  Nic smiled. “I am glad. I suppose I will be seeing you again shortly.”

  Widow Barclay nodded. “Mr. Ricci, I know that we have just met but may I ask a favor?”

  “Of course. If I can.”

  “Miss Hunnisett is very dear to me. As you can see she is not… well…she is rather a unique young woman is she not?”

  Nic recalled a moment where Esther Hunnisett had muttered something about her fiancé bearing the likeness to a Canadian muskrat under her breath. “Yes. Unique. That is one word.”

  “I am going to request that your rehearsals be expanded beyond their usual hour. But she cannot know that I have requested this.”

  “But why? She is a marvellous singer and truly I don’t think she needs as much time as we have been given.”

  “Exactly.”

  Nic puzzled. “Well, I cannot charge you for extra time for a singer who does not need it.”

  “But you will accept the extra amount I will pay.” It was not a request.

  “Widow Barclay, I also have an infirm father to care for and I teach math four days a week and …”

  “We will make it seem like it is Esther’s idea.”

  “I’m confused. If we are extending the rehearsal time and she doesn’t need the practice then what are we to do?”

  Widow Barclay smiled. “That is for you to decide, Mr. Ricci. Perhaps you might play a game.”

  Mozart was on the phonograph and Thomas Weatherton was oafishly dissecting every movement of Cosi fan Tutte through the film of Ralph Von Witterhorn.

  Esther, sipping wine, wondered how anyone, Weatherton or Witterhorn, could sift all of the joy and passion and life out of something with a few dull interpretations. And then, as Thomas refilled a barely-touched wine glass to the brink, her wonder turned to the ease and availability of spirits in her father’s house.

  While the country was in a spirit-free prohibition.

  She was aware of the world enough to know men with money and power would never truly be without the substance they desired as the nation pledged dry. But, her house, especially of late, seemed a rather free-flowing fountain of high quality liquor in her father’s house of late.

  “Thomas, I am quite fine without any more wine, thank you.” Esther could usually only take a sip or two before feeling sleepy and ringing for tea.

  “Esther, my darling, this is high quality and I want you to relax.” He looked at the phonograph, mimed conducting a few bars in the air several beats off the music’s measure.

  Esther held the amber liquid up to the light of the chandelier in her father’s grand drawing room. “Thomas, where does it all come from?”

  “Grapes, my love.”

  “Don’t patronize me. We outlawed spirits and yet they are plentiful here.”

  Thomas was disengaging the lid of a bubbled glass decanter, pouring port liberally into a glass. “You’re not one of those tee-totallers, are you?”

  “No. But I am wondering if it is quite… legal to have this much liquor. Surely…”

  “Darling, the law is in place for people who abuse it. Debauched ruffians by the docks who abuse it and cause riots. Italians. Irish. That sort.”

  Esther’s cheeks flushed. She thought of Nic Ricci’s long hands tripping over the piano keys and his kind smile. Mr. Ricci had better manners than Thomas. Sure, Thomas was well-bred to act a certain way but every movement and sentence was underscored with arrogance.

  “And my father?” She pointed upward, indicating the second floor bedroom where Paul Hunnisett was dressing for dinner.

  “Your father reaps a lot of what his decision has sewn, my love.” Thomas seized Esther’s hand and kissed her palm with a sensation akin to a seal flopping on the sand. “What is mine is his. As it is yours. My connections, my wealth.”

  Several moments and Von Witterhorn observations later, dinner was announced and Esther was ushered to a gleaming table as rigid as a starched Sunday collar complete with equally stiff conversation about stocks and trades. Through courses of consommé and roe, beef and parsnips, Esther imagined she was back in a dusty rehearsal hall opening her throat so that notes she made vibrated over creaky floorboards.

  Neither her father or Thomas asked about her day or her music. Esther had long been a nothing but a point of a lopsided-triangle: necessary to determine the shape but with little of the even angle of the other essential vertices.

  Neither asked about her rehearsals, so she stabbed through one of their sentences and told them anyways.

  “Turns out the North End rehearsal pianist you found me is wonderful, Thomas.”

  “Very well, sweet.”

  “You just don’t know how important it is that this night go off well, Thomas. If your friends are entertained, perhaps I can do similar performances when we move. Or even come back for a weekend or two.”

  Thomas cocked his head, studied her under the chandelier light. “Esther, this is a perfectly acceptable hobby and a wonderful opportunity for me to show you off as the beauty you are. The Hunnisett
heiress given a second chance at life. But you will be so busy with the children and playing hostess to our guests that I cannot see this being more than an amusing whim now and then.”

  Esther looked to her father. “Don’t you think, father, that my continued performance could help the Hunnisett name thrive and be remembered? It’s what mother would have wanted.”

  Esther’s father didn’t look up from trailing a pea around his plate. “You have no need of being a Hunnisett or proudly carrying the Hunnisett name at all now, my dear. It is far more important that you be a Weatherton.”

  Esther took her time with her lemon ice and asked the maid to deliver tea to the study. She tried to concentrate on her novel but kept drifting to Thomas’s open briefcase on the settee near the window. It was rare he left any of his paperwork or business around their house.

  Satisfied that she could hear Thomas and her father deep in conversation and brandy in the study across the foyer, she risked a peek. Her father was selling her to Thomas for these facts and figures and shouldn’t she at least know what her going price was?

  Inside, she looked at the numbers and dollar signs: the cogs of the wheel of fortune that would spin her away. She wasn’t schooled in business, but she did notice a few things were off. For example, while shipments of meats, cheeses, sundries and textiles had several red marks beside them, a ledger bearing high quantities of No. 7 F showed a great surplus. The contrast between the listed expected profit and the actual profit was staggering.

  No. 7 F. Esther took a moment to carefully fan the papers out. She recognized the number from a bottle her father kept on a shelf in the library. Esther heard the study door open and quickly returned the contents to the briefcase. She scooted back to her chair, sat poised with a cup of tea and thumbed through her book as Thomas pressed a sloppy kiss on her ear, collected his case and bid her goodnight.

  5

  It was on a whim that Nic brought the second-hand chess board from the St. Stephen’s rectory to the dusty rehearsal space. He was still a little confused by his conversation with Widow Barclay but he wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to spend more time with Esther. Over the past handful of rehearsals, he had become even more delighted by her. She had a wonderful sense of humor, was buoyant and energetic and sang like an angel. Truly, she didn’t need any more rehearsal time. Yet, she always wanted to practice. Nic determined this was something ingrained from a life of aiming for perfection. At least, at first. Then he listened more carefully to the way she spoke of her fiancé and what undercut her flippant and humorous tones. Their time cloistered in the dusty North End space was her escape. The more he listened to her, the more he understood what Widow Barclay was attempting to do: give her a reprieve.

  He introduced the chess board while Widow Barclay snored in the corner. He didn’t know what she did outside of being Miss Hunnisett’s companion but he figured it required a great deal of energy and sleeplessness. Perhaps her request on Esther’s behalf was for her own comfort and release as well.

  “Miss Hunnisett,” Nic said as Esther’s pitch perfect note of Liszt faded through the dusty air. “I think if you sing anymore today you will make yourself hoarse.”

  “Surely you don’t mean for us to end our rehearsal early?” Her voice was panicked. “Come, there must be…” she scrambled through sheet music.

  “No. I don’t mean that.” He looked emphatically in Widow Barclay’s direction. “Wouldn’t want to disturb a very good nap. I thought you might care for a chess match. The first day you came you compared chess to Mozart and if I am not being too forward, I would love to play with you.”

  Esther’s smile dazzled and Nic felt a funny flip in his heart. “I would love to, Mr. Ricci.”

  While Esther set up the board on a squat side table, Nic scoured the dark musty space for suitable seating. Deciding on two milk crates in relative working order, he turned them upside down and scraped them across the floor. When Esther moved to help him she grabbed the same side he did and their fingers met over the end. Nic startled as if singed. There was something in that touch. She noticed it too, eyes widening, slowly disengaging her fingers.

  “I don’t want you to get a splinter.” He said softly.

  “I don’t either.” She finally broke their eye contact, fanned her skirts beneath her and settled.

  “This is perfect!” she mused.

  All Nic saw was a haphazard board and overturned milk crates. “It suits its purpose.”

  “Shall we toss a coin to see who begins?”

  Esther forgot. Sitting on a milk crate in a hideous room mulling over her next move she forgot. For brief, shining moments she was no longer fettered by Thomas’s proposal. The ostentatious prison of her upstate Rutherford House a distant horizon. She was so grateful for his suggestion she almost burst. But not so grateful that she would relinquish the game. No. Esther had let Thomas win too many times. She would show her gratitude to Mr. Ricci by playing at his level (which was quite good). She would thank him by being a worthy and equal opponent.

  And so they played.

  Esther won. Nic won. They laughed. And life, at least for a little while, was music.

  She counted the seconds until their next match, at home as she began packing. Her efforts saw to the transference of her clothes, jewelry and belongings to the Rutherford Estate of which she would soon be mistress. Thomas arrived for dinner most every night now and she imagined what it might be like to look up at Nic Ricci in the chair he occupied. In addition to his obvious attempts to impress her with his knowledge of the estate they would inhabit, he interspersed Von Witterhorn quotes. It was so important, he told her, that they be able to converse easily with each other in public. So that other couples would envy their natural rapport. Thomas and her father were thick as thieves at the table. Discussing shipments and peering over ledgers and manifests, they were completely oblivious to Esther moving the oblong curve of her soup spoon over in her bowl. Esther tried to bow to Thomas’s ever increasing demands on her time and presence but noticed his temper was shorter and often flared. One evening, when she joshed him about a second serving of brandy, he roughly thumbed her cheek and chin jostling her gaze up to meet his in reprimand. Esther, sure that the movement would leave a bruise, blinked surprised tears and looked to her father for support. Finding none, she smoothed her skirts and watched as Thomas slipped back into his usual snobbish veneer. It seemed the more time he spent in Esther’s company, the more he learned about her and the more he was willing to bend her to his expectation of how she should behave.

  But when she was in the rehearsal space, looking over the piano at Nic, she was seen. Truly and wholly seen. He had a preternatural anticipation of her next note. Often, they locked eyes over the piano, Esther’s expression as surprised as Nic’s that their interpretation of the notes and sounds so closely connected.

  Widow Barclay snoozed over her knitting and Esther let her guard down. For those brief hours she was no longer a woman bound to a future not of her choosing. She was just Esther. Esther as she was always meant to be. She didn’t distill her thoughts or choose careful words. She sang and she played.

  She learned Nic loved his father and that his mother’s passing almost broke his heart. Nic described the Molasses Factory disaster in vivid detail, closing his eyes as he recalled the screams and carnage of a horrible day. He devoted everything to his father. He talked about his math students and the nuns who made him sandwiches and Mrs. Leoni’s cannoli. Any barricade of social restriction dissolved with two bars of eighth notes on a rustily-tuned piano.

  Esther liked the way the lone bulb over the piano flirted with his black hair. She liked the way his fingers riffed up a scale before he settled into the preliminary bars of her next number.

  Mostly, she liked that he didn’t treat her as anything but an equal when they sat on either side of the chess board.

  Never before. Never ever before had Nic Ricci talked as comfortably with another living soul as he did with Esther. Of c
ourse, there was his dad. But, his dad didn’t meet his eyes straight on in a twinkly blue. His dad didn’t make him swallow three times a moment and tug at his collar. This was something different. This was something new. This was a woman. Everyone had chided him about romance. Now, he found it in easy conversation and wistfully interpreted song. Romance. At first, Nic resisted. Attraction to a beautiful girl who would be tugged from his world in a manner of weeks was a waste of his time. He had no right to dwell upon an affianced woman. No right at all. But then she would sparkle and warm to a theme. Or she would tilt her head, hand poised with a pawn ready to make another move and say something he had been thinking for a long while.

  Nic watched the middling light spin her intricate hair gold and a slight smile part her lips as she maneuvered a tactic on the board that would put her ahead of him.

  “Your move,” she said.

  Esther didn’t need to rehearse anymore. Not truly. The event was still weeks away and she was in tremendous voice. She could sing the songs inside out in perfect memorization. It was a shame she had become so used to Nic accompanying her, guiding her through tempos and keys, flourishing fortissimo and times and softly scaling back at others so that her sweet vibrato could reach the back of the old, dusty hall.

  There came a moment in the third week of their thrice weekly hours together when something shifted. Widow Barclay snored softly, the rambling trolley trundled past the splotched and murky windows and Esther recognized that the warmth surging through her was not just music or chess or affinity or banter. It was something much deeper. It was a feeling stirring solidly and surely down from the tip of her toes. It was something akin to a feeling she only got when listening to Verdi on the phonograph or re-reading Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. It was familiar and wistful at once. It made her nostalgic for something she was sure she had never experienced. It was as if Nic was a part of the sphere of her life from before she knew he existed and forevermore. Even when she was tucked away at the Rutherford Estate, these moments with him were ingrained in familiar chords and keys. Were deep in the curves and carvings of chess pieces. He was a part of the fabric of her life now.