and I was I.
—Michel de Montaigne
Love is not blind;
that is the last thing that it is.
Love is bound;
And the more it is bound
The less it is blind.
—GK Chesterton
One
ALL LOVE STORIES END. Who said that? Gina heard it once years ago. But she didn’t believe it. That hers never would is what she believed.
Gina set her internal clock by two things. One was the train schedule to Boston, a shining city on a hill if ever there was one. And the other was her monthly cycle. She’d been marking the calendar for the last three years. She’d been making the trip to Boston for twelve, and she was making it still, setting store by it, anticipating it. She would put her long-fingered hands in black silk gloves on the train window to touch the towns she passed and would dream about other cities and cradles, parks and prams, annual fairs and lullabies.
Her gauzy reflection in the glass returned curls and dark auburn hair, hastily piled up because she was always late, always running out of time. Returned translucent skin, full lips, bottomless coffee pools for eyes. Her rust-colored wool skirt and taupe blouse were not new but were clean and pressed and perfectly tailored, a custom fit for her tall, slender, slightly curvy figure. She always made sure, no matter how broke they were, that whenever she went out she was dressed as if she could run into her high society father-in-law and not look like an immigrant, could run into her husband’s ditched and furious former fiancée and not look like steerage, could run into the King of England himself and curtsy like a lady.
Where else besides Boston might the train take her? If she stayed on past North Station, where might she ride to? Where would she want to ride to in her velvet hat and leather shoes? If the train could take her anywhere, where would it be? She spent Monday mornings imagining where she might ride to.
Every Monday but today.
Everything was different today, and was going to be different from now on. Everything had changed.
Gina was running down Salem Street past the lunchtime peddlers, breathing through her mouth to avoid the pervasive odor of the North End—fish and molasses—that today was making her subtly queasy. The train had been delayed and she knew her brother would be upset because until she arrived to look after his little girl, he couldn’t go to work.
By the time she got to his cold-water flat, all the way in the upper-north corner of Charter and Snow Hill, he was fit to be tied, pacing about the tiny living room like a caged lion, carrying Mary, who was cooing merrily. She clearly thought it was all in good fun, daddy carrying her back and forth, back and forth, rocking her in his arms as if he were a swing.
“I’m sorry,” Gina said, extending her arms to the child. Salvo had dressed her, but like a dad would. Not only did nothing match, but he had dressed the child in shorts—in December.
He didn’t want to hear it. “You’re always sorry.” He swung the baby upside down. She squealed more more and then cried when he handed her over. Not to be outdone, Gina held the girl upside down by her ankles. Mary chortled, and this allowed Gina to speak.
“I have to talk to you, Salvo.”
“You’ve made that impossible. Should’ve thought of that before you sauntered in two hours late.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“Nothing is ever your fault.”
“The train was late.”
“Should’ve taken an earlier train.”
“Salvo, basta.”
There was no more talking after that. He left, after kissing Mary’s feet.
“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,