Paullina Simons - Children of Liberty

“Thank you, young man,” Mimoo said in the meantime to Harry. “I hope we are on the first floor. I am very tired.”

“Unfortunately we are on the third.”

“Ah, but from the third floor,” Ben said, “you can see Boston Harbor if you lean out the window and look to the left.”

“Boston Harbor?” Salvo repeated contemptuously. “I lived a road away from the Adriatic sea. I was born and raised on the Mediterranean.”

“I’m sure it’s very nice,” said Ben. “But we don’t have the Mediterranean here. Just the harbor.”

Mimoo turned to Harry. “Forgive Salvo for squabbling. It’s been a long journey.”

“Nothing to forgive. He is in better spirits than most people we meet.”

Mimoo smiled. “You do this often?”

“Every week when the ships come in. If we have the space.”

Mimoo looked inside the front doors. A dark wide staircase ran up the center of the building like a spine. “How are we going to get our heavy trunks up three flights of stairs? We are such a burden. You shouldn’t have bothered with us.”

“It’s no bother,” Harry said. “None at all. This is what we do. We’ll get you upstairs, don’t worry.”

Mimoo appraised him, her face softening.

“Believe me, you won’t mind being on the third floor,” said Harry, helping her to the landing. “On the first floor you hear the sailors outside your windows all night in the summers. They tend to get rowdy by the docks.”

“You are so well mannered. How did you get into this line of work?”

“I’m not in this line of work,” Harry corrected her. “My father owns some apartment buildings. In the summers when we’re on a lighter load at university, we help him manage them. Ben and I see to the three he has here on Lime Alley.”

“He’s got more?”

“A few more.”

“Isn’t that the understatement of the decade,” Ben said, propping open the front door with a piece of driftwood. Harry glanced down the pavement at Gina, who in her blue dress and faded hat stood entranced by the little boys playing ball on the street. He watched her for a moment. Maybe two.

“She won’t like Lawrence,” Harry said to Mimoo, nodding to Gina. “It’s too sleepy. You’re sure you don’t want to stay? We can help you. We’ll find you work.”

Mimoo shook her head. “Too sleepy for her maybe, but ideal for her mother, who worries too much. I don’t need excitement in my life. I’ve had enough of it, thank you.” She shrugged. “Gia will be fine. She’ll be fine anywhere.”

“Gia?”

“It’s Gia when I love her,” said Mimoo. “My husband never called her anything but that. Me, I love her, but she drives me crazy. So headstrong. To call her stubborn like a mule is an injustice to mules. The mules are St. Francis compared to her.”

Harry laughed.

“It’s my husband’s fault, bless his soul,” Mimoo went on. “Now he was a saint. Adored her. And she took every advantage. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. You know what my husband used to say, may he rest in peace?” She crossed herself. “He said many wise things. Like your father, I imagine?”

“My father is mostly silent,” said Harry. “But if he did speak, perhaps he would say wise things.”

“Well, my dearest departed Alessandro, the second greatest man ever to walk this earth, and the greatest man to stand before the gates of St. Peter, said about his children, they find a life everywhere they look .”

Mimoo held on to Harry’s arm. He nodded politely, listening as if deep in thought. The day was waning and the shadows were long.

“But if that is true, señora,” Harry said, as they began slowly to walk up the stairs, with Ben carrying one of the trunks behind them, “why did you leave your homeland? You must have thought you could find a better life here, no?”

“No,” replied Mimoo. “That is not why we left.”

“Why then?”

The weary Italian woman nodded at her children behind her. “Where we come from, everybody lives only one kind of life. Alessandro said he wanted his children to choose the life, not the life to choose the children. And also,” she added, panting, slowing down and wiping her brow, “he said America is the only place in the world where even the poor can be smart.”

“Well, Harry wouldn’t know anything about that,” Ben cheerfully chimed in, hurling one of the trunks onto the landing. “Because he, unfortunately, is neither.”

Harry and Ben and a reluctant Salvo left to go get some dinner, while Gina and her mother nested in the two small rooms by putting fresh linen on the dining table. Mimoo ordered Gina not to take too many things out, since they would have to repack them before they left the following morning. Gina unpacked too much anyway. She was hoping her mother might change her mind and let them stay. “I’m not a child, Mimoo,” she said quietly, while fixing her hair, hoping her mother wouldn’t hear, but wanting her mother to hear.

“You are still a child,” said Mimoo, who heard everything. “And I want to keep you that way—for your father—as long as possible.”

“Papa would want me to be happy, no?”

“No, be a child first. Happy much, much later. If ever. Put on a cardigan this instant. Don’t let the men see you at night with bare shoulders.”

“But it’s hot, Mimoo.”

“What did I say?”

“It’s stupid! I’m hot.”

“Gina!”

How Gina wished her papa were here.

Ben was right: the third-floor rooms did allow Gina a glimpse of the waters just beyond Lime Alley. After Mimoo lay down, a perspiring Gina in an itchy cardigan went to sit by the window, waiting for the men to come back. She stuck her head out, to better inhale the scent of the sea, to see more clearly the sight of the water, to catch the breeze that might cool her. She didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want to even blink for fear she’d miss something. When she was sure Mimoo was asleep, she threw the cardigan off.

The two rooms were clean and comfortable. They had two beds and one sofa. While hauling trunks up the stairs and showing them the apartment, Ben had said proudly that Harry’s father’s renovated houses were the first residences in the North End to have standardized iron pipes for running water that was pumped in from the streets. The toilet and bathtub were just down the hall, Ben told them. “You don’t have to go downstairs and outside to use the privy.”

Gina realized she was hungry. It was after seven, and the smell of food permeated the stairwell. Lard grease, onions, the smells of fried tomatoes, garlic, basil, all of it was comforting to Gina, yet novel and desirable.

“Did you remember the wine?” was the first thing Mimoo asked from the sofa when the three men returned with dinner.

“I took care of it, Mimoo,” said Salvo, showing her the two bottles of red he carried.

“Did you buy one for Pippa?” Pippa was Angela’s aunt, and Mimoo’s cousin. Pippa liked her wine.

“No, I forgot.”

“He forgot.”

“We’ll buy another one tomorrow.”

“Where are we going to get one tomorrow? Do they sell it at the train station? Now we will arrive empty-handed.”

They brought back pasta, sauce and Italian bread. Harry wouldn’t hear of Mimoo offering him money. He turned away from her purse. “It’s not necessary,” he said.

“Harry is right,” Ben said, “it isn’t, but perhaps next week we can come to Lawrence to visit and have dinner in your new home?”

“Oh yes, please!” Gina beamed.

Harry cleared his throat, Salvo glared and Mimoo pretended she had gone suddenly deaf.

“Take the money, Harry,” Mimoo said. “Take it.” He still refused.