It’ll take you your full sentence to finish that one. And Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.”
He slumps back down. “I’ve read them all,” he says. “Several times.”
“They were on sale and available, and it’s what I could afford.”
He sighs. Minutes pass. His head tilts to stare at her as a lover might stare before a kiss.
“What are you up to this week?”
Gina opens her mouth to tell him about Ben, then closes it. Harry is chatty, more or less friendly, relaxed. His gray eyes look blue today and she knows they change color depending on his mood. Today his mood is easy. She can say many things to ruin it. Mentioning Ben would be one of those things.
“Is Salvo really back home?”
“Temporarily.” She is glad for the diversion. “Until you come back.”
“You smile as if it’s a joke, but you and I know you’re not joking.”
“I’m not joking,” agrees Gina, trying to suppress her smile.
When he quietly chuckles, she is so happy, and glad she hasn’t mentioned Ben.
“So how is it out there?”
“The leaves are changing. It’s like you love it.”
“Yes. I do love the New England autumn.”
They clear their throats. “Purdy says you should be out in a month or two. Definitely by Christmas.”
He can barely look at her when he says, “So far away.” His blinking eyes are deep with remorse. “I’m sorry I’m in here again,” he says. “I’ve really done it this time, haven’t I?”
She says nothing.
“I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I thought I was exercising my First Amendment rights. Voicing my disapproval. What’s more American than dissent?”
She wavers.
“How did I know,” he continues, “that it’s against the law to flaunt your free speech by blocking entrances to army recruitment stations? Who made that cretinous law?”
She keeps quiet.
“Even that would’ve been okay if I weren’t on probation.”
To that she has something to say. “You were already on probation when you went to Paterson. You should’ve never gone.”
“Bill was paying me,” Harry says, immediately less nice. “We talked about this. What did you want me to do?”
“Not go.” She is also less nice. “Get another job. Tell him to stuff it. I could think of about five minutes worth of things I would have told him had he asked me.” She pauses. “Hasn’t he done enough to hurt us?”
They don’t even glance at each other when she says this.
“Okay, okay.” His tone softens. “Clearly I need to find other employment when I’m back outside.”
That part is a fact. One of the conditions of his release that the District Attorney and Purdy have been going back and forth on is that Harry will not be allowed to come within a quarter mile of Big Bill Haywood or the IWW. Harry has been resistant, not because he wants to work for Big Bill, but because he doesn’t want the government telling him where he can and can’t work. No matter how many times Gina mentions it’s only temporary, Harry doesn’t care and doesn’t want to hear it.
They change the subject. They always do. They have to. They have only two hours a week together and Gina will be damned before she ruins it with lectures and nagging. She has a lot going on in her life, but Harry only has these two hours. No point making him feel worse, when all he’s got is his own thoughts and her words until the following Sunday.
“Anything special you want me to get for you next week?” she asks.
He thinks. “Maybe you can bring me some pumpkin pie.”
“Some what?”
“Pumpkin pie. It’s the season for pumpkins.”
They don’t have pumpkins in Italy. Gina’s never had a pumpkin or made a pie out of it. She smiles. “Sure, mio amore,” she says. “Anything you want. Next time I come I’ll bring you pumpkin pie.”
“Bring one for Roy, too,” he tells her. “The other week when you brought biscotti, he raved to everyone how good they were. And he let me keep my light on an hour past curfew because he knows I like to read in bed.”
“Okay, tesoro. I’ll bring one for Roy, too. He’s a nice man. He likes me.”
“A little too much if you ask me.”
She wants to touch him to reassure him, hold his hand, press his head to hers. Other things.
“Do you know,” Harry says, “when I was, I don’t know, eleven, twelve maybe, my father took my sister and me to a pumpkin farm, and we brought these great big pumpkins home and carved them.”
“Why would you do this?”
“Carve pumpkins? I don’t know. The inside of the pumpkin is what you make the pie with. It’s messy, though. You’d like it.” He inhales. “It’s messy, just like your tomatoes.”
They can barely speak after that or look at each other. Short of breath, he can’t go on with his story. Somehow he does.
“After we removed the flesh from inside and carved the pumpkins, Esther decided she wanted to give me a fright, play a practical joke on me. So she cut one pumpkin in half, and placed it on top of our huge black tomcat sleeping on the grass, covering him as if he were in a clamshell and leaving him holes for eyes. We were sitting in our backyard that night, and through the eyeholes, the tomcat sees a squirrel and takes off like a horse, with the pumpkin still on top of him.” He laughs as he recalls it. “It was dark, and I wasn’t expecting it, everything had been so quiet, and this giant pumpkin just up and gallops across the yard, a pumpkin running after a squirrel. I must have screamed for five minutes, it was so startling and unexpected.”
Gina laughs.
Harry leans back. “I don’t think I ever heard my sister and my father laugh harder. My father actually cried. I had never seen that. Before or since. And then he kissed my sister and said, ‘You’ve outdone yourself, Esther. Well played.’” Harry shrugged. “Since he never praised her for anything, she nearly cried herself. We kept trying to do it again, stage a prank that would make him laugh. But …” he trails off. “You know.”
Gina leans closer to the partition, her heart opening, squeezing shut.
“You said you were only eleven or twelve?”
“Yes.”
“So your mother was still alive? Where was she?”
Harry looks down at the table, then up at the hands of the clock above Gina’s head. “I don’t know where she was,” he says, his eyes opaque. “Not with us.”
When it is time to go, she stands with the books to be returned in one hand.
“Lean forward,” he says. She obeys. Harry glances behind her at Roy, reaches out and strokes her cheek, her hair, cups her face. Gina presses his fingers against her lips as they pass over her mouth.
“I’ll see you next Sunday, il mio delitto.”
“I’ll see you next Sunday, my wife.”