Leaving Lucy Pear(65)

Bea took the paper and read for a minute. “I wonder what made him change his mind.”

“The bombs,” Ira said with joy. “The demonstrations! London, Chicago, Brussels, everywhere. Workers standing up as one!”

“You think a few bombs scared Fuller?” Henry huffed. “They sent one to his house in May, didn’t change his mind. You think he cares about the mighty granite cutters threatening to strike?” Henry shook his head. “He’s got two hundred million in riot insurance, tear gas by the truckload, machine guns stacked like wood. It’s not up to him anyway. It’s the judges who decide.”

“That’s what Fuller would have us think,” said Ira.

Bea handed the paper back. “They should get a fair trial. I do believe that, even if the throngs think I’m a beast. But it won’t make any difference in the end. They criticize America. Their English is bad. I wouldn’t execute them. But they’ll be executed.”

She left the room.

“I wouldn’t bother her with the news while she’s still in it,” Albert said from his spot at the window. He was thinking of Lyman Knapp, the man who owned the huge, strange house on the harbor and who was a great success in interior design in Boston. On the afternoon Albert had dared climb onto his raft, Lyman had swum out to say hello. He was gaunt, with an easy grin and a hairless chest. They were lovers now.

Ira and Henry looked at each other, then Henry shut the paper and slid it under his left buttock. Ira smiled. Even as his ever-roving mind drew lines from Sacco and Vanzetti to Bea (for wasn’t it all about money, in the end? didn’t class oppression work both ways?), his brother’s boyish charm titillated him. So what if Henry was, politically speaking, a simpleton and a jackass? He knew how to get things done, which was more than Ira could say about himself. Ira slid the Globe under his own haunch and circled his hands on his wrists, then straightened his right leg and circled his foot, then straightened his left leg and circled that foot, and the maneuvers, undone for decades, brought him back to the loud, tiled lunchroom at the William Cabot School for Boys, where each morning, before lunch, the headmaster would direct them to rise from their chairs, stretch their arms and legs, and perform twenty jumping jacks. Ira remembered how anxiously he had watched the gaggle of younger boys. Where were Henry’s hands? Had he fallen? Did he not understand the rules? Later, Ira learned that Henry had been sitting calmly on the floor, out of the headmaster’s view: already he had devised the most efficient route to success. His brother was extraordinary, Ira thought now. Even in that bouncing sea of silken, Gentile hair, Henry had understood how to win.

Bea walked in swinging a torn envelope. “What am I supposed to do now?”

“Sweetheart, why don’t you sit down?”

“It’s from Luis Pereira’s wife.” Bea shook the envelope upside down, releasing a flurry of torn paper. “My check. They don’t want my ‘dirty money.’ The Murphys haven’t deposited theirs, and now the Pereiras rip theirs up. What am I supposed to do?”

“Bea—”

“Why don’t they believe me?”

No one answered.

“Oh,” Bea said. “Of course. You don’t believe me either. You’re awful. All of you. I did see her. I saw her. She was here. The pears . . .”

“Sweetheart.”

“She was! Besides, I’m not talking about that.”

Albert turned. “What is it you want them to believe, Bea?”

“That I’m sorry.”

“You’ve written your apologies. You’ve sent your checks.”

“Exactly!”

“Exactly. That’s all you can do. You can’t make anyone believe anything.” He laid out his palms as if he himself were proof.

“I used to be able to,” she said.

“You think the women who came to your speeches didn’t have their minds already made up?”

Bea whimpered. “I’m like poor Sacco.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Ira said.

Bea rolled her eyes. “I feel that way.”

“Bea.” Albert walked softly toward her, and cupped her shoulders in his hands. “Does it matter if they believe you? If they took the money, if I got them to take it, would that be enough?”

Bea squinted at him. “Enough to do what?”

“To satisfy you. To stop your train wreck.”

“I am not a wreck!” Bea shook him off. “I am not a nut and I am not a wreck, and if I were a wreck it would be because of you!” She swung her glare at each of them. “But I’m not. I am fine! I am absolutely fine!”

“FINE!” pinged off the chandelier, flew around the room, shimmied into silence. Ira looked at his slippered feet, next to Henry’s shining Haven wingtips. Henry looked away, wishing Lillian were there. Albert stared at Bea, as if daring her to say it again. She shook, frustration and humiliation warring in her limbs. She had seen her daughter as clearly as she saw Albert now. She had followed her, but not fast enough: by the time Bea reached the orchard, she had lost her. Bea had crept, then listened, crept, listened. She did not want to frighten the girl away—this was one reason for her caution. But it was also true that Bea herself was afraid: she did not want to discover that there was no girl, that she had, in fact, made her up, drawn her from her haze of Templeton and self-pity. She trained her eyes on the darkness, willing the girl to reappear. She nearly called, Hello? but lost her courage, so neither she nor Lucy heard the other—they were both, mother and daughter, too good at hiding, too practiced at silence. And they moved synchronously, like two second hands on the same watch, driven by the same gear. By the time Bea reached the gap, Lucy was gone. Bea had seen her! But then, what if she hadn’t? Each time she had to defend herself, she felt her certainty split a little more.