I went inside with Sam; Maurice Nissenbaum put the cash in his big safe, gave Sam a signed slip, and we returned to Dependable where we finally parted. Sam left on that rumbly, popping old Honda with Popeye, goggles and all, right behind him. It seemed as if we could hear him three blocks out of sight. At home I poured large dollops of Laphroaig into brandy snifters and added some room-temperature soda water. We sat outside on the flagged terrace and looked at the two pink dogwood trees that were in full bloom. Joe and I stuck our noses down into the bowl-like glasses and inhaled the warm malty smell of the whisky. Mary sipped on Amaretto liqueur.
My lawn was bright green and wide. In one cozy corner of it was a cluster of paper-birch trees, and in the midst of this copse was a rough wooden table with benches. Moe and I like to sit there and play chess on a crisp fall day. Moe brings his old samovar and we make Russian caravan tea and play and push our little chess clocks down and he beats me. And we pretend we're Tolstoi and Chekhov. We wear warm sweaters in the afternoon and play balalaika music on a tiny cassette player. The birches are gold and white, and it's very Russian.
Mary has part of the side yard bounded by a walk-through arbor. The side of the house there is set with some Florentine tiles and a bronze wall fountain. There are Lombardy poplars around the other two sides, and two gas lamps. It's a romantic Latin courtyard, and only about twenty feet square. My favorite spot is still under construction, and borders on the small garage-sized guest cabin far back on the lawn. It is enclosed by birches and wild evergreens and wide bamboo stakes. Inside this tiny court are boulders, a pond, a curved concrete footbridge, a small torii, and two dozen dwarf bonsai in old pots or pots made by Mary, or set into rock crevices, or lining the miniature waterfall. Then in the middle, surrounded by all this miniaturized countryside, is a tiny teak teahouse with ungawa and rice screens. By the time I'm a hundred I may finish it. It's only forty feet square, but inside it one has the feeling of great space, privacy, and timelessness. Not a lot of talking in there. No laughing or loud noise. Cats but not dogs. You go there alone, or with someone you really care about, and sit quietly. Little bronze temple bells chime in the wind, and the squat bronze lantern by the miniature lake glows, and you can sometimes see the dull golden flash of the bug-eyed goldfish who live in the lake. I wanted to be there right now. I wanted to be drinking hot Keemun, not Scotch, and meditate on the past few days. I wanted the dust and events to settle, find their place, and begin to make sense.
"Charlie! Charlie! My God, how many times do we have to ask you?"
"Hmmm?"
"What's it going to be tonight, rack of lamb or bouillabaisse?"
"Oh, whatever." I got up and paced the flagstones. I looked up at our house. It looked big. I felt insulated and spoiled. Then I thought of what I'd read about Sacco and Vanzetti. Sacco and his family lived in a tiny cottage in Stoughton. He worked eighty-hour weeks and kept a big garden. He gave his spare vegetables to the "needy" families in the area. Vanzetti was a boarder in North Plymouth who, if the testimony of his neighbors in that town could be believed, made pennies at a time, yet gave the kids in the neighborhood dimes. Not only was their testimony as to his good character and generosity not believed by the jury (because the neighbors, too, were Italians and therefore in league with him), but his giving away of dimes was taken as evidence that he had stolen fifteen grand from the Slater and Morrill shoe company in South Braintree. Of course this line of thinking failed to explain why both Sacco and Vanzetti had none of this fortune in their hands, and why they then perversely chose to continue to live in tiny workingmen's dwellings and to work eighty-hour weeks.
Looking up at our red-brick house on Old Stone Mill Road, which looked very big and splendorous, I thought of Sacco and Vanzetti and all the old ladies on the oil-soaked floors who were deaf from the looms, and felt guilty.
"I think we should sell this place, Mary," I announced, "and get something a bit smaller. What do you think?"
"What?"
"Well, don't you think it's a bit big for us? Jack and Tony are off at school now, and I just thought-"
"You're losing your mind, Charlie. Okay, sit out here and moon and pout all you want. We're not selling this house; we've got way too much at stake here. And a large part of it's mine, kiddo. You forgot that? See you later; Joe and I are going in to make bouillabaisse. And if you're not a good boy you won't get any."
But I couldn't have cared less. Oh, they tried to distract me, all right. A few times I almost weakened. First the aroma of the olive oil with onions, shallots, and leeks sauteing in it. I didn't even flinch. Then Joe brought out a glass of cold Soave, and shortly afterward I heard the strains of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major. I sipped and listened and sniffed, but not a quiver. I just kept thinking of the pouch, the empty pouch… the anterior bridge, and those two working-class Italians strapped into the electric chair at Charlestown Prison and coming out in those black boxes.
I heard the hum of the microwave. Mary was defrosting frozen fillets of striped bass and containers filled with littleneck clams and mussels, shrimp, lobster claws, and maybe even some king-crab legs
… big, thick, spiky golden sticks full of white meat… I squirmed a bit and stared out over the wide lawn.
The pouch was empty. Why had they come back for it? Maybe it was somebody else who'd come back. Some other party entirely. That would explain why the guy we'd gotten the drop on had been digging in the wrong section of the old wall. He hadn't been there when the pouch was dropped down into the "How you doing?" asked Joe, who had sneaked up on me. "Mary just added the fumet. Smell it?"
"Yeah. Hey Joe, how did your old man get to be president of his company, anyway? That's pretty good for an Italian peasant who landed broke at Ellis Island. I know the broad details. But you know Mary doesn't talk about it that much. I know he started out as a carpenter, right? But how'd he-"
"Pop made it on hard work and luck. And common sense. He was no genius, but he wasn't dumb, and he listened to the right people. I tell ya, Doc, next to common sense, genius isn't worth shit."
"I agree."
"Well, Pop went from New York up to Schenectady, where he had some relatives. He learned to be a plasterer, and he earned good money, which he saved. He got married and Mom worked too, as a pastry cook. They saved and saved. just before World War Two, rock lath came in. Most people dismissed it as a fad, but Pop saw the writing on the wall- no pun intended. He knew rock lath was here to stay, and that it would put him out of business. I don't know if you know this, but it took a week to put up a real plaster wall. The wooden lath, sometimes wire lath, then the rough coat. Day or so later the brown or scratch coat. Finally the finish coat. A great wall, but a lot of time and dough. So Pop, using his common sense and some of the saved money, got some young greaseballs off the anchovy boats and trained them to put up rock lath. That was the start of his contracting business."
"Ah sooo."
"It was small at first, and Pop worked with them, doing the fancy cornice work and stuff. Before long he hired more greaseballs to work as carpenters, putting up studding and door frames. About that time Pop ran into a young Polack named Ray Woznicki, who was a plumber. Well, both guys were looking for a shop and some rolling stock, and they thought if they could go together on the capital equipment both would benefit. Ray wasn't Italian, but he was Catholic, which was almost as good. They were in the same parish. So they went in as partners, and each guy moved out of his garage and into their new rented building in the center of town. Result? Central Construction Company. Hah! Original, huh?"