The Way of Beauty

by Camille Di Maio

  And a grief so devastating that a word for it didn’t even exist in the English language: mothers who lost sons.

  Angelo’s determination would come at a price.

  He was heading directly into unspeakable danger.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Pearl was set to leave only a week later for Albany to assist the National American Woman Suffrage Association with their efforts to gain votes for women in New York. The surprisingly progressive western states had been embracing it as one by one they granted rights long before the eastern states. Vera shared Pearl’s enthusiasm for Jeannette Pickering Rankin recently being elected as the first female representative to the United States Congress, out of Montana. Montana! Could New York not have done the same sooner? The time for a united push for nationwide successes had never been so imminent.

  Pearl talked about suffrage on a big stage. What it would mean for women across the world.

  Especially in the absence of Angelo, Vera found herself easily swept up again in the optimism that Pearl exuded. Pearl came to her grandmother’s house every evening to join them for dinner. Afterward they would lay out big rolls of paper across the vast mahogany table and paint signs and banners that Pearl could take to Albany with her.

  Their conversations revolved mostly around what the future held. Sometimes in relation to the world, the war, and women. But occasionally Vera felt that Pearl’s questions were more pointed. What did Vera particularly see for herself in the future?

  Maybe that was just the question of a friend. But Vera had the sense that Pearl was interrogating her. That made no sense. Vera’s only plans were immediate—care for her father. Care for Will. Save some money. The larger stage was not hers to consider for the moment, when there were more pressing needs right in this house.

  That first week flew by. Vater seemed to settle in remarkably well. How could he not? Every comfort was provided for him, and he found much solace in the rooftop greenhouse. Vera worked out a routine with Will, with whom it was like starting over. The boy didn’t remember her from three years ago—he’d been so little then, so she could hardly have expected more. And maybe it was better this way. If she had caused him any heartache then, he did not seem to associate it with the Vera he was getting to know now.

  On the occasions that Vera could visit with others in the working class—be it the scullery maids here in this house or the wives of the merchants at the markets—she found that they held similar ambitions to herself. The idea of a woman in office was of little consequence compared with what it would take to put a meal on the table. But Pearl’s forecast was intriguing. And Vera did her part to promote it in the small ways that she was able.

  She was pleased with the inroads she made in encouraging these women to attend rallies and persuade their husbands to vote on their behalf. It was nothing on the scale of Pearl’s work, and she often voiced this to her friend, but Pearl insisted that every conversation was of unimaginable importance.

  Pearl made Vera feel like a vital piece of the cause, even if she didn’t feel this way herself.

  So much had happened in the short time since she’d arrived, and now it was already time to say goodbye to Pearl as she left for the capital.

  With her father taking a nap and William in school, Vera was free to see Pearl off at the train station. But Angelo’s train to Norfolk was scheduled to leave only two hours later, and she could only assume that he would be there to see his wife off.

  The idea terrified her.

  Twice she’d declined Pearl’s invitation, but Pearl was strangely insistent that a goodbye at the house wasn’t enough.

  How could Vera refuse the friend who had been so good to her?

  No, she must go. And if she were honest, maybe seeing Angelo would put her heart at rest. After all, it had been three whole years. She was twenty-one years old now. Much could have changed.

  As she approached the station, she looked up at the eagles and asked them to wish her luck.

  And then, as if wishing could breathe matter into itself, there he was.

  Angelo stood near the entrance to Platform 13W, the rays through the windows encircling him as if they had been designed to do so. He wore a smart-looking uniform of the richest deep blue with a white rope collar and white cap. At first he was looking at the departure board, but when he turned and saw Vera, her heart seemed to stop. If she had thought him handsome before, it was nothing compared with the vision in front of her. Whether it was the sight of him looking so official or the accumulation of dreams over the lost time, her feelings for him came back in a rush as if not a second had passed since she’d shared that room with him.

  “You angel,” Pearl said to Vera as she approached them from the ladies’ lounge. “What a darling you are for coming to see us off.”

  Vera smiled, but inside she trembled at the oddness of being here with them both. And she had yet to meet Angelo’s eyes. “Of course I wouldn’t miss being here. How could I not come say goodbye to my dear friends?”

  Pearl continued. “Be a love, will you, and keep Angelo company while I run off to check on my ticket.” And with no obvious perception of the tumultuous emotions that Vera could feel pass around the three of them, Pearl glided over to the ticket counter.

  Vera was alone with Angelo. Her heart raced at a pace that seemed dangerous. Would he be angry? Tender? Or worse—would he look at her with love in his eyes, something she wasn’t sure she could withstand even with three years of distance?

  “Vera,” he said. One word. Two syllables. A thousand unspoken sentiments.

  “Yes.” Beat. Beat. Beat.

  “It’s been—it’s been a long time.”

  “Yes.”

  “You left us.”

  “Yes.”

  He stepped forward and whispered in a broken voice, “I’ve missed you desperately.”

  Vera felt a wave of tears accumulate. She put a tissue up against her eyes. But she could not speak. As agonizing as it had been to be away, it was worse to stand this close to him and ache for something that couldn’t be.

  “Please understand. I lost my best friend when you disappeared. Could we have not worked out some way to go back to being us? Angelo and Kid?”

  Kid ceased to exist when you got married.

  “I’m afraid not, Angelo. There’s no way I could go back to being that little girl.”

  “Ah, she speaks.” Angelo stepped closer. “How I’ve missed your voice. And everything else about you, Vera. You have to know that.”

  Vera felt the heat that rose from his skin and enveloped her. His uniform did not help things. He looked fully like the man he was. His jaw was angular. And even though he had clearly shaved this morning, his dark Italian roots cast a shadow across his face that added to the look and made her knees feel unstable.

  “I—I do know.”

  Vera saw Pearl making her way back through the crowd toward them, and she felt guilt though she’d done nothing wrong. Angelo placed a hand on her arm. “My train does not leave for two hours. Have lunch with me. Please, Vera. Have lunch with a sailor who will surely see war. Because what if we never have that chance again?”

  She looked at him at last and said words that had no meaning. “I can’t.”

  “There you are,” said Pearl, flushed. “You’d think all of Manhattan was taking the train today. I’m off, dears.”

  They’d only just reconnected, and now Vera was saying goodbye again to the two friends she cherished most. Why must things always change? She wanted just a little more time with both of them.

  Pearl took Vera’s hands in her own. “A truer friend I cannot imagine. Thank you for taking care of Will. I know that you two will pick up where you left off. In fact, I think he always favored you anyway. You were better with him than I was. I don’t suppose I was designed to be the doting mother. But you—you are a natural. I hope that life brings you your own children someday. Until then, you’ll have your hands full with your father and my boy. I’ll see yo
u in a few months, and I’ll send lots of postcards.”

  Why did this goodbye feel like so much more than Pearl’s simple words implied?

  “You take care of yourself,” said Vera. She pulled Pearl into an embrace and held on to her. She swelled with pride over all that her friend was setting out to do. “I was not designed to change the world, as you were, but if I can help in this little corner of it, I’m happy to do so. I’ll read your postcards to Will and make sure he knows that his mother loves him.”

  “That’s all I can hope for.”

  Pearl stepped away and turned to her husband, transferring her hands to his. Vera once again felt like a trespasser, but it seemed her lot to be the tagalong with those two, as if fate had destined her for that position. They’d slipped into old habits. Maybe that meant it was supposed to be this way.

  “Please forget that I ever called this a folly,” said Pearl. “You know I pray for your safety and want you to return to all of us as soon as possible.”

  “I will do everything I can,” Angelo responded. “We’ll both be fighting the good fight.”

  “You’re a good man, Angelo Bellavia.”

  Vera expected them to kiss the way a husband and wife should have during such a momentous goodbye, but when she glanced away, she saw their reflection in a glass door, and Pearl merely gave him a quick peck on the cheek before picking up her baggage.

  “And goodbye to you, my friend,” said Pearl. In the European fashion, she placed a light kiss on each of Vera’s cheeks, then pressed a note into her palm. “This is for you,” she whispered.

  What would Pearl need to say in a letter? Something she hadn’t been able to say in person?

  Before Vera could respond, Pearl was off, disappearing into the arch under the platform. Angelo turned to the departure board, which was being updated with track numbers.

  The letter in her hand felt heavy, its unknown words weighing it down as Vera imagined what Pearl would want to say to her. Last words at a departure held almost as much meaning as those on a deathbed—only the most precious and precise of reflections could be expressed in such a moment.

  She opened the page and shielded it with her coat.

  Vera, it began. I know about you and Angelo.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Lunch, then?” Angelo asked Vera as she tried to read more of Pearl’s note. But she’d not gotten past that first terrible line. She stuffed it into her coat pocket. Her pulse raced at the thought of what her friend might be thinking before she left on such an important pursuit.

  But if Pearl knew, why had she been so kind as to make a wonderful arrangement for Vera and her father? Why would she leave her son in Vera’s care? Was she so desperate for someone to turn to that even a near Judas would suffice?

  Or had she only now found out, somehow, after the fact, and the letter was a dressing-down of someone she now regretted trusting?

  “Vera, are you okay? You seem like you’re lost in thought.” Angelo’s words cut through her worries and were at once welcome and abhorrent to her.

  She’d hoped that three years away would have dulled any reaction she felt to him. But it had almost the opposite effect. Their absence had concentrated all the love she felt into one overwhelming sensation.

  This was a mistake. She shouldn’t have accepted Pearl’s generosity, no matter what it meant for Vater. And she shouldn’t have come to the train station.

  “Yes, I’m all right.” She still wouldn’t meet his eyes, fearing that they would empty her of any shred of distance she would attempt to place between them. She thought about slipping away to powder her nose—a chance to go somewhere and finish the letter before facing him. But before she could excuse herself, Angelo took her hand and led her toward the station café. Her hand disappeared into his, but it was not the tender gesture of two people in love. It was a tether to keep them from losing each other in the throng. Still, she felt protected by his grasp.

  And she had not felt protected in such a very long time.

  The clamor of commuters echoed through the iron-and-glass canopy that made up the top of Penn Station, their only separation from the endless blue above. For the first time, Vera felt claustrophobic within its walls. As if the ceiling were imprisoning her instead of sending her eyes skyward. Her heart rattled in her chest, vacillating between guilt, love, and the magnitude of seeing, touching Angelo for the first time in so long.

  “Here we are, darling.”

  Darling! The word stung her ears, piercing the veneer that put a glaze of friendship over their past feelings. Her first thought was to be indignant on behalf of Pearl. Her second was that she had not been spoken to with such an endearment for as long as she could remember. Even her father had stopped calling her prinzessin.

  Could one so starved be found guilty for accepting a morsel tossed her way? Was it wrong to taste the crumb while rejecting the whole cake?

  She chastised herself once again for allowing herself to slip back into their lives. Factory work was brutal. Making the steps to leave her father at a hospital more brutal still. But at least there she knew her duty and followed it. These tugs-of-war did not exist when survival was the only goal to be attained.

  Love? It was a luxury. And she had not been born into luxury.

  Angelo looked right and left and pulled Vera toward the stools at the counter. With perfect timing, a couple rose to leave even as he led Vera to slide onto one of the round leather seats.

  “You can’t sit here. I haven’t cleared the plates yet,” said the bartender behind the counter.

  “Please, sir, I have only an hour and a half left with this beautiful woman before I ship off, and a few dirty dishes won’t deter me from every second I can spend with her. For a fellow paesano?”

  Darling. Beautiful woman. What game was Angelo trying to play? She’d accepted a lunch invitation with an old friend, but she never would have agreed if she’d known he’d throw her into such a struggle within herself.

  She read the name tag of the bartender—Giuseppe Di Gregorio. Italians stuck together. Angelo would get anything he wanted now.

  I know about you and Angelo.

  She wanted to be sick.

  Lickety-split, as her mother used to say, the plates were cleared and the counters wiped down, and the bartender even slammed a bud vase with a single rose between the two of them.

  How romantic that would have been in another circumstance. She was tempted to just give up. She didn’t want to spend the little time Angelo had before he left for the train being angry with him. What if he never returned? What if this was the last time she would ever see him?

  She took a deep breath and decided to let this play out. In the event of his return, this would be the last time, the very last time, that Vera would participate in make-believe.

  Angelo slipped a dime across to Giuseppe and ordered two coffees.

  “What would you like?” Angelo asked, handing her a menu. She didn’t understand his lighthearted mood. He was about to be shipped off to war.

  Vera scanned it for the least expensive item. In this case, a chicken salad on rye.

  Angelo took the menu away from her. “Not today. Anything you want. Don’t worry about the money. This is my treat. It’s an important day.” His words reminded her of how very well he knew her.

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  Angelo turned to the bartender. “The lady will have a filet mignon with roasted potatoes and asparagus on the side, and a tiramisu for dessert.”

  What could he be thinking? She wanted to ask him, but she was afraid of what the answer might be. Especially in light of Pearl’s note.

  The man put his hands on his hips and huffed. “Mio amico, this is just the station café. You’d have to go to the restaurant in the first-class wing for that.”

  “Are both restaurants owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad?”

  “Si. Certo.”

  Yes, of course. The little Italian Vera had learned from Angelo came
trickling back, reminding her of older, happier times.

  “Would there be some way,” Angelo said as he slid two whole dollars across the counter, “to order from there and have it delivered here?”

  The man chuckled and waved a finger at Angelo. “You’re not merely a paesano. You’re a scugnizzo. Seeing as you’re in uniform and a fellow Italian, how can I refuse?”

  “Good man. Grazie.”

  The bartender finished wiping a glass with a towel whose edges had just begun to fray. He looked at Vera and winked. He waved a busboy over and whispered to him.

  “Coming right up, sailor.”

  Vera turned to Angelo once they were alone. “What are you doing? That’s too much.”

  Angelo took her hand and kissed it. She pulled back, but she still felt the heat of his skin on hers. The farce was feeling more and more real. What was his endgame? His train was leaving shortly. Did he have some kind of portent of the war that emboldened him to forget restraint?

  And had he forgotten that his wife had been with them only minutes ago?

  “I remember eating a cheese sandwich on day-old bread with a little girl once. She wore her hair in braids and had eyes just like yours. I called her Kid. I asked Kid what her dreams were, and she said, ‘Someday, I’d like to be a fancy lady who eats steak and potatoes and asparagus for lunch.’”

  He smiled at her. Vera felt a flutter through her body. She remembered that day, that sandwich. It was so long ago—maybe she had been seven or eight. Angelo had taken her out for gelato at a place near the opera house, but they’d passed a bakery advertising discounted baguettes because they were just about to close. They had twelve pennies between them—three from her, nine from him—just enough to treat themselves. They sat on a bench across the street. Theatergoers were already starting to line up.

  What do you want to be when you grow up, Kid?