Monterey Bay(41)

The brothers froze in place and closed ranks around Tino.

“By all means,” Anders replied.

Mrs. Agnelli reentered the church. With a glance in Anders’s direction, Margot followed. Inside, it was quiet and cool, the walls white and bare. Father Paraino was fiddling with something on the lectern. The candles on the altar had just recently been extinguished, wicks still smoking. She remembered the séance in the lab. The broken circle.

Mrs. Agnelli sat heavily on the nearest edge of the rearmost pew. At the noise, Father Paraino looked up, bowed to her, and scuttled out of sight.

“There’s been some trouble,” Mrs. Agnelli began, her voice even kinder than before, even softer.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Oh, I don’t want you to be sorry. I just want you to help.”

Margot shifted her weight to one foot and then the other, noticing how the dress swished timidly across her knees in response. In a situation like this, it was important to equalize the balance of power. She should be sitting next to the older woman, side by side as equals. But, on account of the space Mrs. Agnelli had chosen to occupy, this was nearly impossible. To join her on the pew, Margot would have to climb right over her or walk all the way around to the other side of the nave and slide down to meet her, both of which were too awkward to even contemplate. So she remained standing and took a small step forward, which ensured that, when Mrs. Agnelli began to speak again, it would be to Margot’s back and not her face.

Mrs. Agnelli giggled as if in understanding, and then continued.

“At first, you see, I thought your father was to blame, but then I realized it was most likely a shortcoming of my own. The truth is, I’m unaccustomed to the company of men. They’re always out on the boats, often for weeks on end, which means they have a different way of seeing the world than we do. A different way of finding satisfaction.”

A rogue sunbeam shot through the stained glass window above the altar, the effect identical to what it looked like when light shone among the leaves and blossoms of the bougainvillea.

“You have six sons,” Margot countered. “All of whom work with you.”

“Yes, but working with someone and feeling bettered by their company are two different things entirely. I’m sure you understand.”

Margot resisted the impulse to look behind her. Mrs. Agnelli produced a short, crackling cough and then resumed.

“And I might be flattering myself, but I like to think that, when I put my full trust in my real allies—my fellow mothers and daughters, the ones who understand life’s bloodiest battles and how to win them—I can see it all much more clearly. Both the big picture and the small one. Or, as your friend Ed Ricketts might say, both the ocean and the tide pools on its border.”

From where she was standing, she couldn’t see the sacristy, but she could hear a subdued commotion occurring inside of it: chalices clinking, robes shifting on their hangers, uneaten communion wafers being returned to their tins. There was a strange, unpleasant sort of pressure in the air, as if she were about to enter a tunnel. She turned around.

“What’s your question?”

Mrs. Agnelli broadened her smile, her nose crinkling.

“Oh, I have several. The workers he’s hired, for one thing. Not a single Sicilian—or even a Genoan—on his payroll. He’s taken in all the mongrels instead: the Japanese, the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Filipinos, the Okies, all the people that live even lower on the hill than you do. He’s even allowing them to fully unionize, which is something I’ve been fighting against for years.”

“None of that was in the contract. So it’s fully within his rights.”

“Oh goodness! You are clever! No, the real problem isn’t the people he’s hiring or the bureaucratic mess he’s allowing them to make. It’s what he’s not having them can.”

She looked beyond Mrs. Agnelli at the iron-studded front door, biting the insides of her cheeks to keep from smiling.

“You see, my most valuable property sold at a pittance. There’s an absurd surplus of product on my hands, and the biggest buyer in town refuses to buy.” She rose from the pew, the wood creaking. “And unlike you, I don’t find it particularly funny.”

“He isn’t buying from anyone else. He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“That depends on who you ask.”

“I’m unclear on what you want me to do.”

The sound of a car sputtering down the street outside, the jovial hollers of someone selling ice cream or peanuts. For a moment, Mrs. Agnelli seemed pinned to the floor. Then, without warning, she was smiling and laughing, pitching forward and pulling Margot into a hug.

“I’d like you to think carefully about your own interests. And then tell me what you decide.”

Margot couldn’t see. She was in the tunnel now, and Mrs. Agnelli’s voice was bouncing against the walls and her smell was, too: warm and thick and lovely. Margot held her breath. She tried to move her body but it wouldn’t listen, so she called on her mind. Run, she told it, before it’s too late. But it was just like that first morning in the tide pools: her limbs dead with panic, the unwanted memories rapidly surfacing. The discovery of the fake paintings in the root cellar. The bestowal of the penknife. The ghost-balloon of her mother’s floating, omniscient head. But also something from much further back, from before she was of use to her father, from before she was of use to anyone. A toy made of tin and held aloft on little wheels, its mouth clattering behind her as she pulled it across terrain that was far too rough for either of them to safely navigate.