“Lovely,” Rose agreed, but her voice was drowned out by Oakes, who called to Julian, “Will you stop playing whatever you’re playing over and over again? What about something more appropriate, more cheerful? ‘Yankee Doodle, Keep It Up’?”
Julian kept his head low and did not stop. Onward he piddled for a phrase, then circled back, teasing—Bea could not help but feel teased. The sound of Julian’s old lightness on the keys slid between her ribs and quivered there. Number 17 had been one of her favorites.
Oakes started walking again. “On my way to work I pass this yard, every day, where this Eye-talian man and his wife have a garden. A little kitchen garden right out on the street, covered in soot.” He glanced at Ira, whose eyes were still closed. “So last month I see this guy’s got a project under way, he’s digging up something big and I stop and watch, wanting to see, you know, and he digs and digs and finally he pulls out this bundle, about the size of a child, and I’m thinking, this guy’s a murderer, an absolute madman, he’s unwrapping a corpse in his yard in broad daylight! But then he gets the cloth off and it’s a tree! A fucking tree.”
“Sweetheart, please,” Adeline said.
“So?” Rose said. “What’s your point?”
“My point? It’s a waste of time! You should have seen how long it took him to plant this thing again, then water it. In and out of the house with a tiny bucket!”
“It’s probably a lemon tree,” Rose said. “Something that can’t survive the winters here.”
“I don’t care what it is! Why doesn’t the guy get a job? If he loves this tree so much, why not take it back to Italy? These anarchist wops kill a man. . . .”
“Two men. Read the paper, Irving. And there’s little evidence that they killed him.”
“Two men! Even better. They kill them and then here we are, however many fucking years later, and people—Americans!—are going crazy to save them. How in hell can they be innocent?”
“It’s not about innocence. It’s about the fact that they’ve been convicted on account of their politics. It’s about the powerful trying to rout out people who don’t buy in to their power. It’s about process. . . .”
“Process!”
“Yes, Irving! Process! A fair and just trial. For the new as well as the old, the poor as well as the rich. I’m sure to you that sounds very un-American.”
Oakes groaned. He pulled a Chesterfield from his ear, lit it, exhaled. “I don’t even know half the time what the fuck you’re saying, Rose. My point is why does this guy with his crappy little house spend his time taking care of a tree that’s not even supposed to grow here in the first place?”
Emma and Helen, on the threshold of the room, did not enter. Julian played more slowly, so that Number 17, meant to be allegretto, began to sound like a dirge.
“I think it’s sweet,” Adeline said. “It’s like his baby.”
Bea felt sorry for her. Why had she married Oakes? Bea imagined that when they met, Oakes told Adeline first about his mother dying and second about his taking her middle name for himself and that Adeline took these facts to mean that Oakes was a particular kind of man, sensitive and loyal, perhaps like her own father but wealthy. She appeared bewildered by him now. Still, Adeline had to be terribly naive to have fallen so quickly for Oakes—that or far smarter than she appeared, out for Oakes’s money, in which case she didn’t need Bea’s pity. There was an undeniable comfort in watching Adeline’s unease—she was more an outsider than Bea.
“On to a new topic!” cried Rose. “I’m afraid we’ll have to change our plans for a bake at Brace’s Cove tomorrow. I hear there’s a red tide on the clam flats.”
“It’s not a red tide,” Oakes said. “Just red tide—there’s red tide in the Annisquam. Or wherever. You sound like a tourist.”
“I am a tourist. So are you.”
“We’re summer people.”
“And that’s better.”
“Of course it’s better!” Oakes pounded the mantel. “Summer people descended of year-round people, old people, real people! Bents! Of course it’s better. Have you heard what that interior designer from Boston is doing over at that mansion down on the harbor? Whole rooms wallpapered in circus print. New wings just to show off the wallpaper. His friends are all artists. A bunch of faggots. And I bet they get better booze than us, too. This”—he held up a bottle—“I have my doubts. I suspect Cousin Bea’s been watering it down while we sleep, gradually tricking us into abstinence!”