When she was satisfied she’d seen the kitchen, Ethel went into the front room. Like the kitchen, this room was brightened by a large window that stretched almost floor to ceiling. Sunlight spilled in and made bright patches on the floor, which was covered in a green-and-brown linoleum. Ethel didn’t like the wallpaper – a dark pattern that she knew would make the room look gloomy – but that could be changed. She knew just the pattern she’d pick.
Jim walked around the room with a small frown, as if calculating how much each square foot of space would take from his pay packet. He made $150 a month, and the apartment cost $40 a month; they were paying only $20 for their rooms now and it seemed they were counting every penny. Jim always found money for something foolish like going to the pictures or eating in a restaurant, but if Ethel wanted something for the house, something to make their lives a bit better, he muttered under his breath and counted the bills in his wallet. And she could see him counting now, in his head.
Ethel just stood there, trying to picture a couch, a chair, a little daybed for Ralphie in the corner. She imagined painting and papering, sewing curtains for the windows, making this apartment into a proper home.
Ralphie hung out the open window, looking onto the courtyard below. Ethel could hear, as well as see, that the dirty space was full of people – maybe a dozen kids ranging in age from Ralphie’s size right on up to tall boys and girls of twelve or thirteen, all playing and laughing and shouting. Several wash lines crisscrossed the courtyard, though no-one had clothes hung out today, being Sunday. She saw women leaning in their doorways or windows, watching the children, talking to each other, and men sitting on steps and benches smoking and talking.
In the middle of the pavement a skipping rope whirled, marking a circle in the air inside which small girls with flying braids hopped on light feet, while the other children chanted:
She is handsome
She is pretty
She is the belle of New York City
Nearer to Ethel’s window, a thin dark-haired woman sat on a step darning socks. The woman took up the skipping rhyme with different words and a more tuneful melody, singing as her needle darted in and out:
Let the wind and the rain and the hail blow high
And the snow come tumbling from the sky…
Irish, Ethel thought, because although dark, the woman did not look foreign; she sang in English and the song sounded like Irish songs, a bit like songs from back home. The woman glanced at Ethel and their eyes met. Embarrassed to be caught staring, Ethel looked away.
She thought of home with a pain in her chest that was as real as if she’d taken a bad heart. She saw her mother’s dark blue house, square and simple in its design but standing by itself in its own yard on Merrymeeting Road, neighbours always nearby but separated by fences and decency. Her own line of washing stretching across her own yard; her children playing in the quiet streets where no motorcars rumbled and even carts and horses were few. She knew there were people in St. John’s who lived crowded into row houses, poor people who lived in little better than shacks and hovels. But for her kind of people there was always a house of your own once you married and had a family: your own land, your own space. She knew from hearing people talk that America had places like that too, little towns where houses grew like flowers in their own neat gardens behind tidy white fences.
Ethel knew now she would never live in such a place. Her life in America was a New York life, a Brooklyn life; it was as bounded and hemmed in as this yard with the brown brick buildings on all sides. The knowledge made her heart fall with a little despair; then she buckled herself into courage as she might into a girdle, and looked out the window again and willed herself to see in the mix of faces, dark and pale, in the babble of voices, a place she could belong.
When she turned from the window toward Jim and the landlord, she gave Jim her brightest smile. Ralphie tugged at her skirt and she scooped him up in her arms and stood with him there, framed against the window with the lively, noisy yard behind them, so that Jim, who was talking money and contracts with the landlord, could not do anything but nod and say, “All right then. We’ll take it.”
ANNIE
ST. JOHN’S, MARCH 1928
BILL WINSOR TOOK TO walking home with Annie after the Sunday night Salvation Meeting. Annie and Harold used to always walk home together, but now Harold was going out with Frances Stokes. Frances’ people were Church of England, but for years she had gone to the Army with the Evans girls. Now that she and Harold were sweet on each other, she went every Sunday, morning and night. Annie made excuses to hang back, to talk to someone after meeting, telling Frances and Harold to go on ahead so they’d have a few minutes alone. Then Bill started waiting for her, saying he didn’t want to see her walk alone.
Annie walked home those nights still warm inside from the meeting, warm with the singing and prayers and testimonies, the glory. Sometimes she went down to the penitent form and knelt and prayed, because that week she had been angry and impatient with her mother, and jealous of Harold’s and Frances’ happiness, and envious when she got Ethel’s letter about the new apartment and how Ralphie was talking now. On her knees at the mercy seat all her discontent and petty thoughts and meanness melted away and she felt good and whole again, filled with enough of the glory to make it through another long week.
“You’re in a good mood tonight,” Bill said the third time he walked home with Annie alone. It was a cold clear night and their breath made white puffs in the air with every word as they climbed the steep slope of Barter’s Hill. Slushy snow slopped around their gaiters.
“I’m always in a good mood after meeting.”
“Captain had a fine sermon tonight,” Bill said. “Some good testimonies, too.”
“Yes. I like to died, though, when Mrs. Pitcher got up, didn’t you? The look on old Helen Abbey’s face, did you see it?”
Annie shot a quick glance of quickened interest at Bill: she knew almost everyone else in meeting had been watching the subtle glances between the two women, but not everyone would have pointed it out. She was dying to talk about it, even if it was the sin of gossip. “I suppose so, when she must have known every word Mrs. Pitcher was going to say. And when she said, ‘Praise the Lord for giving me the courage and fortitude to bear up under the affliction of this troublesome neighbour, this false friend–’” Annie imitated the pitch of Mrs. Pitcher’s voice perfectly; she was a good mimic, though she seldom had a chance to show off her skills.
“I know! I saw Miss Abbey’s lips start to twitch; I thought, She’s going to sing her down for sure. I figured next thing we’d hear was ‘Throw out the lifeline! Throw out the lifeline!’” Bill’s imitation didn’t quite catch the timbre of Helen Abbey’s reedy voice, but he knew her favourite hymn.
Annie laughed. “Have you ever really heard anyone sung down in meeting? Not just for going on too long, I mean, but because someone didn’t like what they had to say?”
“Once, years ago. I was at a meeting around the bay where Uncle David Abbott started to testify about overcoming the sins of the flesh, and there was people there didn’t think he should go into as much detail as what he did, so my grandmother, Sadie Bartlett, started in with ‘I am under the good old Army flag…’” Bill had a powerful voice once he got going; Annie joined him on the next line. They turned off Prince of Wales Street and walked down Rocky Lane singing.
Bill laughed a nervous little laugh as the hymn finished. “Look at us, making a holy show of ourselves,” he said. A wagon rumbled past on the road; the driver lifted his hat and nodded.
“Sure, nobody would mind someone singing a hymn on the way home from meeting,” Annie said. “There’s no harm in that.”
“I s’pose not,” Bill said.
She looked up at him sideways, seeing what she had always seen: his fine fair hair, his blue eyes, his strong jaw, but seeing him as if he were a stranger. She felt suddenly distant from him and at the same time quite close, and that strange d
ouble vision made her say, “Mom had a letter from Rose this week.”
It made her heart fall, to see how quickly the light leapt to his eyes, how quickly their little moment of laughter and music faded compared to a half-dozen words if Rose’s name was among them. “Is there any news, then?”
Annie shrugged. “Rose never has much in the way of news. She’s still as foolish as the odd sock, writes about going to movies and dancing, just because she knows it will drive Mom to her knees in prayer. She’s left off the last job she was at, the laundry, and she’s working in a shop.”
“And she’s…is she…I mean…”
Annie took pity, although she was sorely tempted to let him flounder like a cod on the wharf. “Ah, no, she never talks about her fellows, so I suppose that means there’s no-one serious. Although Rose is so close with her news, she could turn up on our doorstep married with four children one day, and never a word said.” She glanced at Bill again before going on. “But Ethel now, she writes regular. She says that Rose has been going out with some fellow, some Italian man, for awhile now, but Ethel don’t know how serious it is.”
They walked along for awhile in silence out Freshwater Road, past the farms and open fields, falling into step together without trying to. “I suppose Rose got to live her own life,” Bill said at last, in a voice like you’d hear at a wake.
Annie nodded. “All of us at home figured that out a long time ago, Bill. It’s…it’s time you did too. You can’t go on through your whole life waiting and hoping, you know.”
But am I any different? she asked herself later that night, leaning close to the watery green mirror, one foot square, that hung over her dresser. Her face hung in the greenish gloom like a sickly phantom. She thought again of Bill, of his quiet humour and quick eye. No, she told herself very firmly. No, Annie. Don’t waste your time waiting and hoping for Bill Winsor, who is in love with your sister and always has been. She turned away from the mirror, then turned back for one last savage glance.
You don’t want Rose’s leavings anyway, do you?
ETHEL
BROOKLYN, JULY 1928
“DID YOU PACK ANY more of Mom’s cake? We got to give Rose some of that cake!” Jim called from the bedroom, where he was looking for his old bathing suit to loan to Harold. Ever since Jim and Rose had cooked up this scheme to take their brother Harold out to Coney Island to celebrate his arrival in New York, Jim had been giddy, like Ralphie with a new toy, insisting on new bathing suits, new hats, the best of everything.
Ethel cut another big slice off Mom Evans’ cake, wrapped it in a napkin and stuck it in the basket. Harold had brought the cake with him on the boat, on top of his trunk, and the first night he arrived he and Ethel and Jim had sat down around the table with a cup of tea and sliced into the cake and it was just like being home.
“Am I supposed to go out in public in this, Jim, my son?” Harold’s voice came booming out of the bedroom. He had a big voice for a small fellow. “Sure, I’d be stoned to death if I went down Water Street dressed like that! Things must be some different in Brooklyn!”
“Only at Coney Island, b’y, they’re all dressed like that out on the beach there. You takes it out and changes once you gets down there.” Ethel squeezed out a smile at that, Jim playing the big New Yorker for his little brother. Jim hadn’t been to Coney Island since, oh, maybe 1922, back when he first came. Long before they were married. Ethel had never wanted to go there, maybe because Rose said she went three or four times every summer and loved it. It sounded cheap, crowded and tawdry, not the kind of place Ethel would like to bring Ralphie.
Ralphie was staying home today with Jean and her youngsters. Jean and Robert had promised to take the children to the zoo in Prospect Park. All the same, Ethel and Jim had had a fight about leaving Ralphie behind.
“I just don’t see the point, to take a whole day and spend all that money to go to the seaside and not take our own child!” Ethel had said. “We don’t have that many outings and it seems mean not to take him.”
“And how many outings do we get, just me and you, no kid?” Jim countered.
“There’s no need for that! We’re adults now, we have a child.”
“Yes, but we’re going with Rose and her boyfriend, with Harold – young single people. It’s not fair to tow a kid along. It’d be no fun for Ralphie and no fun for the rest of us.”
She could see his point. You had a different kind of fun going somewhere with a small child, or with another family who had children, as they sometimes did with Jean and Robert. She could see, too, Jim’s longing for that other kind of fun, going on dates, going around with other couples, going to the pictures and to amusement parks. Rose’s kind of life.
“It just don’t seem right,” she said again.
“Fine then, we’ll take him with us.” Jim had shrugged.
“I am not taking Ralphie to Coney Island with your sister and her Italian boyfriend!” Ethel had said. “He can stay with Robert and Jean for the day, and that’s final!” She raised her voice to cover the feeling that she’d been tricked into backing down.
So here they were, eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, all packed to go and still no sign of Rose and the Italian. Ethel felt a little uneasy about missing Sunday School and church, but Rose and Jim had insisted Coney Island was an all-day trip. Ethel’s foot, pinched tight in the pointed toe of her new white summer shoes, drummed a staccato rhythm on the linoleum.
They finally came at nearly eight-thirty, by which time Ethel had Jim and Harold out waiting on the sidewalk with the lunch basket and all their bags. Rose came sashaying up the street in a bright pink dress that showed her knees and a little pink hat so small it was ridiculous. Beside Rose walked a dark-haired young man in a straw hat with his jacket slung over one shoulder, a young man with a wide smile and a swinging, swaggering step. Jim stepped forward and swept Rose into a hug, swirling her away from the Italian, happy to see her as he always was when she crossed their doorstep every two or three months. Jim and Rose were two of a kind, Ethel thought, just like Bert and Annie. She didn’t know Harold well enough yet to know which kind of Evans he was.
Harold stepped forward now, letting Jim lead him towards the sister he hadn’t seen in five years. Ethel could see him taking in the changes in Rose: the cherry lipstick, the rouge, the hard shiny voice that sounded more Brooklyn than St. John’s, which Ethel knew was put on.
“Everybody, this is Tony Martelli,” Rose said. “Tony, my big brother Jim, my little brother Harold, and my sister-in-law Ethel.” Rose’s eyes slid quickly over Ethel’s outfit, back up to her face and away.
Tony Martelli shook hands with the boys and took Ethel’s fingertips lightly, lifting them, grazing them with his lips. Ethel pulled her hand back and giggled to cover the rudeness, both hers and his. Then she collected herself and said, “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure, Mr. Martelli. Rose has told us so much about you.”
The Italian smiled. “Tony, please. Yes, Rose speaks so well of you all.” He and Ethel smiled at each other, acknowledging the polite lies.
Jim broke the silence. “Come on, we better get a move on, let’s catch the subway.”
Ethel never liked travelling on the subway; she preferred trolleys. The dark tunnels and the hot crowded cars bothered her: it was impossible not to think of the cars and horses and people and houses all piled on top of her, ready to collapse. Jim strode onto the car behind Rose and Tony. Harold gave Ethel his arm to help her on. She shot him a look of gratitude. A kindly man, like Bert.
Harold was short, with bright blue eyes and sandy, crinkly hair. “Well, this is something, ain’t it?” he said as he squeezed onto the seat next to Jim and Ethel.
“Sit back, kid. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Rose said. She turned to Tony. “I hope you got big bucks today, Tony Martelli, cause we are going to show my baby brother a good time at Coney Island. We’re gonna eat a Feltman’s hot dog and go for a ride on the Cyclone, right?”
Ethel glance
d up at Jim. They had two dollars to entertain themselves and Harold, and fifteen cents was already gone on the subway fare. But Jim didn’t look worried.
Finally the car lurched to a stop where the doors opened and people poured out in a living flood. “This is it,” Rose said. Ethel scrambled on the floor, feeling for the lunch basket, the bags, her purse. Rose, a tiny handbag slung over one shoulder, stood up empty-handed without glancing down, leaving Tony to carry her bags while she led them out into the glaring sunlight.
Ethel hated Coney Island at first glance. Between the steady flow of people on all sides she caught glimpses of garish signs, heard barkers’ voices luring them in to games of chance, smelled food in the air. She felt hot, faint, and queasy. But the others charged ahead, eager to get to the boardwalk. Ethel felt Jim’s hand on her elbow and let him propel her along.
Her first glimpse of the beach was a shock too. Already, only ten in the morning, the sand was black with people, swarming like ants down off the boardwalk and onto the seashore. The ocean looked very far away, a narrow line of dark blue at the edge of a seething mass of humanity.
“Look, there’s a bathhouse down there. Let’s go change,” Jim said.
Rose ruffled her brother’s hair. “Don’t go playing the big-shot New Yorker with me, Jimmy. You might impress Harry and the little woman there, but you don’t know from nothin’. See the line-up outside that bathhouse? You wanna wait two hours and throw fifty cents each for a private locker? You follow me.”
By the Rivers of Brooklyn Page 5