Chapter 8 - The High Water
By Thursday morning, the garden party had become a story that the Providence papers did not print.
There were only three lines on page fourteen of the Journal, between the notice for an estate auction in Tiverton and the shipping clearances for the port of Boston:
A minor incident involving an electrical wheelchair occurred during an informal reception at the Ferrara residence in Newport on Saturday. No injuries were reported. Mr. S. Ferrara resumed his duties at the maritime exchange on Monday.
Emily sat at the mahogany partner’s desk in the library, her fingers moving across the keys of the Remington electric with a dry, rhythmic clatter that sounded like hail on a tin roof.
Re: Sakonnet Easement – Parcel 6.
To the Commissioners of the Port of Fall River:
Please be advised that the leasehold previously assigned to the Sakonnet Development Corporation has been terminated under Section 14 of the Maritime Code of 1888. The coal trestle will be dismantled by the union local beginning the first of the month. The slips will be reserved for the small craft from the Sakonnet fleet.
Santino was at the window, watching the rain beat against the rose beds that Julian’s mother had planted thirty years ago.
His crutches were leaning against the bookshelves behind him. He had spent twenty minutes that morning walking from the bedroom to the library without them, his hands sliding along the oak wainscoting, his teeth clicking together every time his left hip took his weight.
"You spelled 'easement' with an 'a' in the third paragraph," he said without turning around.
"It has an 'a'," Emily said, not stopping her typing. "E-A-S-E-M-E-N-T. From the Old French. It means 'convenience.'"
"It means twenty thousand dollars a year in slip fees," Santino grunted.
The Remington carriage returned with a loud ping.
"Your mother called," he said.
Emily’s fingers froze over the home row. The keys stayed three inches from the platen, suspended like small iron birds.
"What did she want?"
"She wanted to know if you needed your winter coat sent down from Pawtucket," he said. "The one with the beaver collar that your brother bought her from the catalog."
"I have a coat," Emily said, looking down at the gray wool sweater that had belonged to Silvio’s sister.
"That coat looks like an engine cover," Santino said. He wheeled his chair—the old wooden one with the scarred rims—around to face the desk. "There is an account at the Industrial National Bank in Providence. It has seven thousand dollars in it. It was opened in nineteen seventy-nine under the name of the Cranston Lifesaving Association."
"The association closed in eighty-one," Emily said. "When they built the municipal gym."
"I know," Santino said. "I was the treasurer. I forgot to file the certificate of dissolution."
He reached into his waistcoat, took out a small blue passbook with gold lettering on the cloth cover, and slid it across the mahogany blotter until it stopped against the frame of the Remington.
"It’s for the girl who went off the coping," he said. "The one with the eight-dollar shoes."
Emily didn't touch the book.
The blue cover had a grease stain near the spine, the size of a thumb.
"I didn't jump for seven thousand dollars, Mr. Ferrara."
"I know," he said. "If you had jumped for seven thousand dollars, you would have looked for my wallet before you cut the wool off the axle."
He leaned back, his broad hands resting on his knees. The gray wool blankets were gone today; he wore dark trousers that had been pressed by the maid, with the creases sharp as folded paper down to the leather soles of his orthopedic shoes.
"What did you jump for, Emily?"
She looked at the small brass key that sat on the corner of the inkstand, beside the paperweights.
"Because my brother said you were the only one who stayed in the truck," she said.
Santino’s brow furrowed. "What truck?"
"The Mercedes," she said, her voice dropping into that quiet, cold register from the cellar. "On the bypass. When the steering went, Leo tried to ditch it in the gravel on the shoulder. He didn't know your car was behind the salt spreader. The state trooper said the Mercedes could have swerved into the median, into the clover, and missed him by thirty yards."
She looked straight into his pale hazel eyes.
"The trooper said the man in the Mercedes stayed on the brake until his legs broke because there was a school bus with twenty-four children coming up the left lane in the fog."
Santino didn't move.
His jaw set with that hard, iron line that made him look like his grandfather’s portrait in the hall—the one that had been painted in Palermo before the family had five docks and three grand jury investigations.
"The trooper," Santino Ferrara said softly, "was a liar who talked too much for an eight-dollar-an-hour corporal."
"He was Leo’s friend," she said.
"He was an idiot," Santino said. "The school bus was empty. The driver had dropped the kids at the parish school twenty minutes before the bridge."
"You didn't know that," she whispered.
May you like
Santino looked down at his own knuckles—the scarred, square fingers that had signed two hundred manifests and three mortgage foreclosures before he was forty.
"The windows were dirty," he said to his desk. "You couldn't see through the back glass."
