Now I was getting uncomfortable. 'Well,' I said, 'we'd better get back to our guests.'
Bellarosa hesitated a moment, then said, 'I'm having a little Easter thing tomorrow. Some friends, a little family. Nothing fancy. Traditional Italian Easter foods.' He smiled. 'I went to Brooklyn to get capozella. Lamb's head. But we got the rest of the lamb, too. About two o'clock. Okay?' I wasn't sure I'd heard him right about the lamb's head. I replied, 'I'm afraid we've got another Easter thing to go to.'
'Yeah? Well, see if you can drop by for ten minutes and I'll show you the place.
Have a drink. Okay?' He looked at Susan.
She replied, 'We will certainly try to join you. But if we can't, have a very joyous and blessed Easter.'
'Thanks.' Bellarosa shut the trunk and went to his car door. 'You mind if I drive around a little?'
Susan said, 'Not at all. That's a rather long car to try to turn on this lane, so go on up to the main house and turn in the circle.'
I knew if I wanted to annoy Susan I should tell Mr Bellarosa that the old homestead was up for sale, but I figured we had enough to talk about for one day.
Bellarosa looked at us over the top of his car, and we looked back. It was a contest, or maybe the first skirmish in the clash of cultures, I thought. Susan and I were both raised never to be rude to social inferiors unless they presented themselves to you as equals. Then you could massacre them. But Mr Frank Bellarosa was not trying to put on any airs or ask for honorary gentry status. He was what he was and he didn't care enough about us to pretend he was something else.
I was reminded of my first impression of him, of a conqueror, curious about the effete society he had just trampled, maybe a little amused by the inhabitants, and certainly monumentally unimpressed by a culture that couldn't defend itself against people like Frank Bellarosa. This, I would learn later, was an accurate first impression and was, as I discovered from the man himself, part of the Italian psyche. But at that moment, I was just glad he was leaving. I knew, of course, I would see him again, if not to eat lamb's head together on Easter, then some other time in the near future. But I did not know, nor could I have possibly guessed, to what extent we three would bring ruin and disaster on one another.
Bellarosa smiled at us, and I was struck again by that gentle mouth. He said bluntly, 'I'm going to be a good neighbour. Don't worry. We'll get along.' He ducked into his car and drove off up the sun-dappled lane. I handed Susan the bag of lettuce. 'Oil and vinegar.' I added, 'You were a bit snooty.'
'Me? How about you?' She asked, 'Well, do you want to drop by for a quick lamb's ear or something?'
'I think not.'
She stayed silent a moment, then said, 'It just might be interesting.'
I said, 'Susan, you're strange.'
She replied in a husky voice, 'Yeah? Ya think so?' She laughed and turned back toward the tennis courts. I left the tray of seedlings on the ground and followed. 'Do you think I should plant vegetables this year?' 'You'd better.' She laughed again. 'This is bizarre.'
The word was scary not bizarre, and we both knew that. Not scary in the physical sense perhaps; we weren't going to get rubbed out for not showing up at Bellarosa's house or not planting his seedlings or even for being a little curt with him. But scary in the sense that the man had the power to have people who annoyed him rubbed out. And despite Susan's aloofness and what I hoped was my cool indifference toward the man, you did not deal with Frank the Bishop Bellarosa in the same way you dealt with the Remsens, the Eltons, or the DePauws. And the reason for that was not too subtle; Frank Bellarosa was a killer.
Susan said, 'Maybe 'Casa Bellarosa'.'
'What?'
'His place. Maybe I'll get a nice sign made as a housewarming gift. Something in mother-of-pearl. Casa Bellarosa.'
I didn't reply to what I thought was nearly an ethnic slur. Susan pulled a leaf of radicchio from the plastic bag and munched on it. 'A little bitter. It does need some oil or something. But very fresh. Want some?' 'No, thank you.'
'Should we have introduced Mr Bellarosa to the Roosevelts? You know, like, 'Jim and Sally, may I present our newest friend and neighbour, Frank the Bishop Bellarosa?' Or would one say 'don Bellarosa', to impress the Roosevelts?' 'Don't be inane.' I asked Susan, 'What did you think of him?' She replied without hesitation, 'He has a certain primitive charm and a self-assurance even in the face of my well-bred arrogance.' She paused, then said, 'He's rather better looking than I'd imagined.'
'I don't think he's good-looking.' I added, 'And he dresses funny.'
'So do half the tweedbags around here.'
We walked back onto the court, where Jim and Sally were volleying. I said 'Sorry'. You should know that interrupting a tennis game for anything short of a death on the court is in bad taste.
Jim responded, 'Susan said that might be your new neighbour.'
'It was.' I picked up my racket and took the court. 'Where were we?'
Sally asked, 'Frank Bellarosa?'
'I think it was my serve,' I said.
Susan said to Sally, 'We just call him Bishop.'
Three of us thought that was funny. I repeated, 'My serve, two-love.' Susan showed the Roosevelts the bag of radicchio and they all examined it as though it were Martian plant life or something.
'It's getting dark,' I said.
'What did he want?' Jim asked Susan.
Susan answered, 'He wants us to eat this and plant a vegetable garden.'
Sally giggled.
Susan continued, 'And he wants to know if he's supposed to put a sign out front that says Alhambra. And,' Susan added, 'he invited us over for Easter dinner.' 'Oh, no!' Sally squealed.
'Lamb's head!' Susan exclaimed.
'Oh, for God's sake,' I said. I've never seen a game delayed for conversation on the court except once at the Southampton Tennis Club when a jealous husband tried to brain the pro with his Dunlop Blue Max, but everyone got back to business as soon as the husband and the pro disappeared around the clubhouse. I said, 'My muscles are tightening. That's the game.' I gathered my things and walked off the court. The other three followed, still talking, and I led the way back to the house.
It was still warm enough to sit in the garden, and Susan brought out a bottle of old port. For hors d'oeuvres there was cheese and crackers, garnished with radicchio, which even I found amusing.
I drank and watched the sun go down, smelled the fresh horse manure in the rose garden, and tried to listen to the birds, but Susan, Sally, and Jim were chattering on about Frank Bellarosa, and I heard Susan using the words 'deliciously sinister', 'interestingly primitive', and even 'intriguing'. The man is about as intriguing as a barrel of cement. But women see different things in men than men see in men. Sally was certainly intrigued by Susan's descriptions. Jim, too, seemed absorbed in the subject. If you're interested in the pecking order on my terrace, the Stanhope and the Grace sitting across from me are considered old money by most American standards, because there wasn't much American capital around until only about a hundred years ago. But the Roosevelt sitting beside me would think of the Graces and Stanhopes as new money and too much of it. The Roosevelts were never filthy rich, but they go back to the beginning of the New World and they have a respected name and are associated with public service to their country in war and peace, unlike at least one Stanhope I could name. I told you about the Sutters, but you should know that my mother is a Whitman, a direct descendant of Long Island's most illustrious poet, Walt Whitman. Thus, in the pecking order, Jim and I are peers, and our wives, while rich, pretty, and thin, are a step down the social ladder. Get it? It doesn't matter. What matters now is where Frank Bellarosa fits.
As I listened to Susan and the Roosevelts talk, I realized they had a different slant on Frank Bellarosa than I did. I was concerned about Mr Bellarosa's legal transgressions against society, such as murder, racketeering, extortion, and little things like that. But Susan, Sally, and even Jim discussed larger issues such as Mr Bellarosa's shiny black car, shiny white shoes, and his major crime, which was the purchase of Alhambra. Susan, I think, acts and speaks differently when she's around people like Sally Grace.
I was also struck by the fact that these three found some entertainment value in Mr Frank Bellarosa. They spoke of him as if he were a gorilla in a cage and they were spectators. I almost envied them their supreme overconfidence, their assurance that they were not part of life's circus, but were ticket holders with box seats
