Bellagrand

“Let’s re-dress you, angel, shall we? What was your daddy thinking?” Gina dressed the girl warmly and wrapped her snug, then took her out in the carriage so they wouldn’t be cooped up all afternoon playing patty cake and staring out onto Copp’s Old Burying Ground. “At least in the graveyard there are trees she can look at,” Salvo would say. “Anywhere else, poor thing would just be looking at a tenement.”

Trees and graves.

They walked slowly to Prince Park, with Mary suddenly deciding she wanted to push her own carriage, which added nine to thirteen years to their already lengthy excursion. They got a sandwich they split in half, caught the end of a late afternoon Mass at St. Leonard’s and then bought a few gifts for Christmas. Money was tighter than ever. Gina didn’t know how they would manage. Even the holiday ham was too much. She bought new knitting needles for her mother and a scarf for her cousin Angela, a beautiful red silk she spied in a tailor’s window. It was damaged on one side and imperfectly loomed, but the craftsmanship on the rest of it was superb. It was a real find.

She returned with Mary after six, fed her some cheese on a piece of bread, stacked blocks on the floor, waited. Salvo wasn’t back. Was this revenge for her own inadvertent lateness? He often did this. Stayed out knowing she absolutely had to catch the train home. She would be late returning to Lawrence, and then Harry would be upset with her.

Did her brother do this so her husband would be upset with her?

Mary’s mother finally strolled in around seven. She was a piece of work, that one. God knows what she got up to, out all hours day and night.

“What, he’s not back yet? Typical.” Phyllis yanked Mary out of Gina’s arms.

“He’s working.”

“Sure he is.”

“Mama, we got you Christmas things!” the little girl said, clutching her mother’s leg.

“You shouldn’t have bothered,” the blowsy, bedraggled young woman said rudely to Gina. “It’s tough this year. Where’s her coat? I have to go.”

“Maybe you can speak to Salvo when he comes back …” Gina said.

“I’m not waiting. You can wait until a cold day in hell for him to grace this apartment. No, we’re leaving. Come on, Marybeth, where’s your coat?”

“Goodbye, Aunt Ginny,” Mary said, hugging Gina around the neck. “Come tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow, baby. Wednesday.”

Phyllis pulled her daughter away from Gina and rushed out without a goodbye. Gina stared after mother and daughter with a sick longing. What must it be like to have the right to pull your own babies out of other people’s arms. She stuck around for a few more minutes, hoping Salvo would return, and when he didn’t, she put on her coat and went out to look for him.

She hated walking past the brick wall separating the burying grounds from the street. It made her heart cold knowing that though she couldn’t see the gravestones, they were lurking there, behind a deliberately erected wall, as if they were so terrible that she shouldn’t lay eyes on them.

She found her brother in a tavern down Hanover, shivering in a huddle with drunk men spilling their brew onto the sidewalk and blowing into their hands to keep warm.

“Salvo,” she said, coming up behind him, prodding him with her hand. She pulled him away from the others, but saw he was in no condition to talk, or even listen. Gina didn’t have the answer to the eternal question: did he drink so he could become unhappy? Or was he just an unhappy drunk?

Gina didn’t have answers to many eternal questions.

“Where’s the baby?”

That she knew. “With her mother.”

Salvo spat.

“You were supposed to come back by five so we could talk.”

“I got busy.”

She saw that. She was cold. “I have to run now. I’ll miss my train. I’ll come back Wednesday.”

“Come earlier. Please. I’ll lose my job if I can’t work lunch. How is Mimoo?”

Gina shrugged. “She lost another domestic job. She keeps dropping things. But Salvo …” She struggled with herself. This wasn’t the time. But it was Christmas soon. “Will you come with Mary, spend Christmas with us? Please?”

Salvo shook his head. “You know I can’t. Also her damn mother takes her.”

“Don’t talk like that about the mother of your baby.”

“Have you met the beastly creature?”

“All the same. Just … swallow your pride, Salvo. For our mother. Bring Mary. Bring Phyllis too. One day a year, on Christmas, let’s bury the hatchet.”

“You know where I’d like to bury the hatchet,” her brother said, lucid enough.

“Oh, Salvo … what are you going to do, be angry forever?”

“Per sempre.”

“Please. Mimoo cries every night. She wants to see her grandchild for Christmas.”

“Her mother has her, I told you. Her mother, who, by the way, has found herself another fool to pay her rent.” Salvo swore. “Instead of talking to me, why don’t you tell that common-law husband of yours to go visit his family for Christmas? Tell him to go spend some time with them. Or tell him to go get a fucking job. Then I’ll come.”

“He is not my common-law husband.”

“Did you get married in a church?”

“Salvo.”

“Exactly.”

“You know he can’t,” she finally said.

“Can’t get a job? What a great country this is.” Salvo laughed. “Where one can live without doing any fucking work whatsoever. Can the immigrants do this? How many generations must we toil before we’re able to do nothing but sit around the table and pretend we’re smart?”

“Stop it, Salvo, you know he’s been working. He’s trying hard. It’s not easy for him. I mean, he can’t visit his family.”

“Oh, he can’t, can he? Well, I can’t either.”

“He can’t visit them because they don’t want him. That’s the difference. They want nothing to do with him. His father made that very clear. You know that.”

Salvo sighed. His black eyes glistened. “I can never set foot in the house where that man resides.”

“The man who’s your sister’s husband?”

“Whatever you call him.” He blinked, shrugged, deflected as always. “Tell Mimoo I’m thinking of changing professions. Look at this.” He showed his sister a pipe inlaid with intricate carving. “The Battle of Bunker Hill is carved on it,” he said with incredulity. “Isn’t it fantastic? I want to be a pipe carver. I know a guy. I’m trying to get in as an apprentice.” He shook his head. “There’s an idiotic rule, though, we’re trying to get around. I have to apprentice for twenty-five years before I can become a carver. Can you imagine?”

She gazed at him fondly. “You gonna become a pipe carver, Salvo? Do you even hear yourself?”