The rest of the room was filled with aunts and uncles and neighbours and church people, about twenty guests in all, crowded into the little front room, fanning themselves with their hands or with various papers from the table in the front room: The Evening Telegram, The Ladies’ Home Journal, The War Cry, whatever came to hand. Annie caught Bill Winsor’s eye across the room. She and Bill would be the only ones of their old crowd left, now, once Harold and Frances were gone.
The ceremony was done; everyone crowded around to congratulate the bride and groom. Annie folded Frances into her arms, feeling her friend’s bird-fragile bones and her brittle strength. “I know you’ll be happy, Franny,” she said. “Everything was beautiful…the dress came out lovely.” Annie had helped sew it.
Frances stepped back and looked down at herself mockingly. “You know what they say,” she said. “Married in blue, ever be true. Married in red, better off dead. Married in pink, certain to shrink!”
Annie laughed and turned to Harold, let herself be gathered into his hug. He was so much like Bert: she saw it more every year. So steady and responsible. Here he was, only twenty, with a wife and a good job back in New York, his whole life in front of him. She wouldn’t mention to him how much like Bert he was. It wouldn’t be fair.
She stepped back and watched her father come up, stiffly, to embrace his son and his new daughter-in-law. Annie smiled at him, radiantly, and took his arm as they went out into the dining room where her mother and Mrs. Stokes had lined off the table with every imaginable variety of tea buns, cookies, squares, sandwiches, and scones, with the wedding cake a magnificent white-topped centrepiece to the whole display. The wedding guests crowded around the table and two dozen neighbours, who had not been asked to the ceremony but had been hanging around the kitchen and the yard, edged in and began offering congratulations to the bride and groom as they moved carefully towards the table. Annie saw her mother catch Mrs. Stokes’ eye when she saw old Tim Casey, who was not much better than a tramp, standing with a tea bun in one hand and a glass of ginger-beer in the other. But neither woman said anything: you wouldn’t turn anybody away from a wedding.
Frances and Harold left an hour after the wedding, climbing into the car David Janes had borrowed for the occasion. Everyone else stayed a good two hours longer, reciting over every detail of the wedding and reminiscing about every wedding ever held in the neighbourhood, the family, and the church for the last two decades. Along about seven-thirty, when it started getting duckish, Annie began to circulate, picking up plates and teacups and glasses, moving them to the kitchen, filling the sink to wash them. She found it soothing to be alone in the dim kitchen, lit by only one smoky lamp on the table, plunging her hands into and out of the soapy water. She always liked this part of a party, cleaning up afterwards, clearing away the evidence, returning everything to normal. She hummed “O Promise Me” as she washed, stacking the dishes neatly in the drain board.
She had caught the bouquet, of course. Frances had made sure of that, turning to flick it directly at her just before getting in the car, so that Annie hadn’t even had time to duck or dodge. Frances was sure Annie wouldn’t have long to wait. “Don’t be talking about being an old maid, sure, Annie,” she’d say. “You’re only twenty-two, you got a long ways to go before you’re over the hill yet. It won’t be long before Bill comes to his senses and stops waiting around for Rose.” Annie said nothing; she paid no mind to that kind of talk, even from Frances.
It was getting dark by the time Annie and her parents walked across the road to home. Mrs. Evans kept up a steady commentary all the way up into their own yard: “My, I don’t know what to think of this spending the night in a hotel… there’s a bed in our own house good enough for them…must be New York ideas Harold’s after picking up…he don’t put on airs too much though, apart from that, though I must say he’s quick enough to head back there, taking the boat tomorrow morning…I wonder if Frances will be seasick on the trip? Ethel said she was terrible seasick when she crossed…Frances did a good job on that dress, though I don’t think pink suits her complexion…lavender would have been nice…never seen anyone married in lavender, have you, Annie?”
No, Annie had never seen anyone married in lavender. Just as well; nothing rhymed with lavender. Pop had gone on ahead of them to lift the latch and go into their own kitchen, which was a bit chilly now. He knelt to stir up the coals in the stove and said, “Needs a bit more coal.” He moved to the basement door and started down the stairs as Annie got her mother’s spring coat off, settled her in her comfortable chair, hung up her coat and laid her good new hat on the shelf, and filled the kettle for a cup of tea.
Her mother was still talking: “…poor Catherine got herself wore out over this wedding…hasn’t slept good in a week…still it’s a fine thing to marry off your daughter…doesn’t look like I’m going to have the pleasure, does it? You’re in no hurry and I don’t say we’ll hear wedding bells from Rose anytime soon…”
A heavy solid thud sounded in the basement, much louder and more compact than a load of coal being shovelled into the bucket. Then silence. Annie went to the basement door and called, “Pop? Pop? Are you all right, Pop?” Her voice went up a little on each Pop, tighter and shriller each time he didn’t reply.
She started down the dark steps, but she was less than halfway before she saw him lying at the bottom, sprawled facedown on the dirt floor, arms thrown above his head. He’s dead, she thought. He’s taken a heart attack and died.
Then her father moved: she saw the patch of white as his face turned sideways, his eyes searching for her. “Fell…my leg gave out,” he said, but she had to come down three more steps to hear him.
She tried to pull him to a standing position, but he could not sit up on his own, much less stand, and he was far too big for Annie to push and pull around. From the top of the stairs her mother’s voice drifted down: “What is it, Annie? What’s the matter with your father? Is he all right?”
Annie knelt on the cold damp basement floor beside her father. “Pop, will you be all right here if I go get help? I need to get someone, a man, to help bring you up the stairs.”
“My leg…just gave out under me,” he said, dazed.
She hurried up the stairs, wishing she was wearing anything but the narrow-skirted bridesmaid’s dress and the pointed-toed shoes. “It’s all right, Mom,” she said, trying to staunch the flow of her mother’s worries and questions. “Pop’s all right, he’s alive. He fell over the stairs.”
She was running through a mental list of her neighbours, thinking who would be at home and able-bodied enough to help, when there was a knock at the back door and there stood Bill Winsor. Annie didn’t stop to question what Bill had come over for; his arrival was a godsend. He carried her father up over the stairs, settled him on the chesterfield in the kitchen, phoned for the doctor and waited with her till the doctor came and examined Pop.
“His hip is broken, Annie,” Dr. Mills said. “We’ll have to take him to the Grace, probably put him in a body cast. Even after he comes home, he won’t be the same man again.”
“Broken hip,” she said. This was what she’d been thinking ever since she saw him move, and it was as bad in its own way as if he had had a heart attack and fallen dead at the bottom of the stairs, worse in a way, because he would be confined to bed and need constant care, constant nursing, and he would never be up and walk and work and care for himself again.
“He’s young for a broken hip, isn’t he?” Bill said. “My grandfather had a broken hip but he was seventy-seven. Mr. Evans is, what, not sixty yet, is he, Annie?”
“No, he is young for it, but it’s not unheard of,” the doctor said. “It’s a terrible blow for a man like him, though, that’s what it is. I’m just going to go out now and bring my car around so we can take him to the hospital. Annie, will you come with him?”
“I don’t know…Mom…” Annie began, and looked at Bill.
“I’ll see Mr. Evans down to the Grace
with you, doctor,” Bill said, as the doctor went to the door.
Annie thought of Harold and Frances in their hotel room, enjoying their first night together. And tomorrow morning at first light, leaving on the boat. She said nothing aloud, but Bill said, “Do you want me to go down to the hotel and get Harold, tell him what’s happened?”
“No. No, don’t do that.” Harold and Frances had their plans made, their tickets bought, their lives ahead of them. “I’ll write a letter after they’re gone, tomorrow, and tell Ethel and Jim what’s happened. Harold will get the news when he gets to New York. I don’t want him feeling he has to stay back here on account of us. Though I’m sure I don’t know what we’re going to do,” she added, staring down at her hands lying on the yellow flowered oilcloth.
One of Bill’s hands moved to cover hers. “Don’t worry about it, girl. You don’t have to solve all your problems today. We’ll take one day at a time, that’s all. You know I’m here to help you.”
ROSE
BROOKLYN, AUGUST 1930
ROSE STANDS IN MARCELLA’S kitchen, the heat from the stove like a slap in the face. Outside it is August, ninety-five degrees, even small children scurrying for shade or water. In five years Rose has still not adapted to the heat of a Brooklyn summer. Marcella’s kitchen is the back porch of hell, she thinks.
Marcella, unmoved by heat or, apparently, any other force of nature, stands at the stove stirring her sauce. She moves back and forth between the stove and the kitchen table, quickly and gracefully for such a big woman, sprinkling handfuls of this and that into the pan, speaking to her food in a soft singsong voice. Rose’s legs ache. Shooting pains right up the back. She’s been standing all day. Time to quit this job, find something where she’s not standing all the time. All day in the factory, and now she’s here in Marcella’s kitchen, watching this thick Italian peasant woman who is only five years older than herself but seems of another generation, this woman who has finally decided to accept Rose into the family as a necessary evil and has, unfortunately, chosen to show her acceptance by teaching Rose to cook.
“Now, a handful of oregano,” she says, scooping up what looks like grass clippings and scattering them over the chicken breasts simmering in the big castiron pan. Earlier, Rose watched Marcella pound the breasts almost paper-thin and dust them lightly with flour, watched as her plump quick hands sliced through bell peppers and green onions. Marcella is doubtless gratified at Rose’s attention; she has not guessed that Rose is watching with what amounts to horrified fascination. Such attention, such passion, such love, even – lavished on something as trivial, as menial, as cooking a dinner.
Did her own mother cherish the act of cooking like this? Rose wonders, dragged unwilling back in memory to the canvas-floored kitchen on Freshwater Road with the Ideal Cookstove that dominated the landscape and set the hours of the women’s days. Did Annie? Annie loved to cook, had taken over most of the cooking from Mom when she was about thirteen. Mostly Rose remembers Annie baking, up to her elbows in flour, dipping her fingers in a bowl of water, sprinkling one drop, two, three…but no more, never too much. Rose, when she tried, would dash half a cup of water into the pie crust, ignoring Annie’s shrieks, not caring about the tough chewy crust anyway. Annie flushed with pleasure when the family cooed over her flaky crust. Annie has probably never seen a bell pepper, or oregano either, but perhaps she and Marcella would understand each other.
“This is Tony’s favourite dinner, this is what I make for him on a special occasion. You can’t afford to do chicken like this on an ordinary Sunday. You know on a Sunday, coming home from church, Tony likes macaroni with meatballs and gravy,” Marcella says. She knows Rose doesn’t go to church, isn’t Catholic. She doesn’t know that the first time Rose came for macaroni with meatballs and gravy she was expecting gravy, like at home, a beef gravy or something, and didn’t know what to make of the rich red tomato sauce all over the noodles and meatballs. That was a long time ago: Rose has been coming here for meals for nearly three years now. But she knows, and Marcella knows, that she will always be an outsider.
Marcella knows that Rose hates to touch raw meat and loves to eat in restaurants where waiters bring her things on trays. Marcella’s words say, I’ll show you how to look after my brother, but underneath she is saying, I know you won’t look after my brother. I know you’re not good enough for him.
Rose wants to sit down. She knows it will be one more black mark against her but how long, really, can she stay standing up? After three years of keeping company, three years of nothing better coming along, she has almost decided to marry Tony, but worries the price may be too high. Is Tony worth spending hours and days cooped up in the kitchen on the back porch of hell, listening to Marcella? Worse yet, turning into Marcella? Thoughts of getting older, getting fat, making babies, oppress Rose. When she thinks about being locked into a kitchen like this one, what she imagines is lying in a coffin, the lid nailed down on top of her.
She sways a little: heat, exhaustion, the cramps in her legs. She steps back and lets her legs buckle, settles into a chair. Marcella doesn’t notice: she is singing to her food now, singing a song in Italian with a high sweet voice that doesn’t match Marcella at all. It’s like those songs Tony sings sometimes, when he’s drunk or happy or sad, the songs that make Rose wish she really did love him. Another memory stirs and Rose is again back in that other kitchen at home, watching Annie knead bread. Annie sang as she kneaded, clear and strong and a little shrill on the high notes, emphasizing the beat more than the melody and punching the bread down on each beat. “Would you be free from your bur-den of sin? There’s power in the blood, power in the blood!”
Quickly Rose knows she has to leave; she stands up even before Marcella notices she was sitting down. “I got to go, Marcella, sorry, I’ll see you later,” she says, grabbing her purse.
“What…where are you going? Tony’s coming over, what am I going to tell him?”
“Tell him…tell him I’ll see him later. Thanks for the cooking lesson, Marcella.” Rose is already out the door, flinging the words back as she runs down the steps, teetering on her heels.
Out in the street, ninety-five degrees seems blessedly cool. Rose walks through the streets, hearing the babble of Italian voices, waiting till the sound ebbs and she hears only English again, out on the broad main streets. She looks hungrily at stores, speakeasies, movie theatres.
A movie. That’s what she needs. She wants to get far, far away, and only the movies can take her far enough. She is a thousand miles from home, in Brooklyn, New York, where she has always wanted to be. But now she knows that even Brooklyn is not really far enough; it is full of little pockets, little holes you can fall down and find yourself back home, or someplace too much like it.
She can’t go to a movie alone. She walks, aimlessly at first, then with some purpose, down to the candy store at Bushwick and Myrtle, just beyond the edges of Tony’s neighbourhood. It’s a tiny store spilling over with people. In the lot outside a bunch of little kids play with alleys, and there are two sagging benches laden with old men reading newspapers and muttering to each other through clouds of cigar smoke. Inside, in the dim and crowded interior, Rose can see a row of people jammed elbow-to-elbow at the counter getting sodas or egg creams. But in front of the store, the reason she’s here, is a knot of fellows who usually hang out there in the evenings after work. This being Saturday, the ones who get a half-holiday are there early, lounging around the steps, carrying on with each other and checking out the girls. One of them, Danny Ricks, who works at the Navy Yards, whistles as Rose comes down the street.
“You better watch yourself,” Rose says, slowing down and smiling at him. “A lady don’t take that kind of thing from bums like you.”
“My apologies,” Danny says, taking off his cap and doing a big fancy bow. He’s always flirting with her. She’s known him for years, back before she was going out with Tony.
“I can’t forgive you that easy, you gotta make i
t up to me,” Rose says.
“How about a soda? Would that make it up?”
“It’d be a start,” says Rose. Danny offers his arm and they go up the steps into the store, where they lean on the counter and both order chocolate sodas. After the brilliant sunlight outside, the inside of the candy store seems like a cave. Rose blinks, trying to accustom her eyes to the gloom.
“So, seen any good pictures lately?” says Danny.
“I hear that new one with Gary Cooper is good,” she says, flashing her brightest smile.
“Morocco?” Danny says. “I hear it’s great. It’s got Marlene Dietrich in it.”
“Morocco? What’s that mean?”
“Some place far away in the desert,” Danny says with a wink, even though there’s really nothing to wink about.
“I like movies about places far away,” Rose says. “I wonder if it’s as good as The Virginian. I loved that movie.”
Danny isn’t bright but it doesn’t take him forever to get the hint. He looks her up and down and smiles again. “Only one way to find out if a picture’s any good. Ain’t Tony taken you to see it yet?”
“Tony’s working tonight,” Rose says, “and I want to go to a show. Haven’t I got the worst luck?”
“Maybe your luck’s about to change,” says Danny.
Rose falls into the movie like she’s plunging headfirst into water – which is a funny thing to think, because the movie is so dry, the desert sands and all. But that’s how it feels: the movie rises up, absorbs her. She is there in Morocco, in a place almost as hot as Marcella’s kitchen on an August afternoon.
The very first scene of the movie shows a man struggling with a donkey in the middle of a dusty road, and Rose remembers the first time she heard Tony talking about his home back in Italy. Donkey – they had a donkey. To Rose, the donkey is an exotic creature, something from an alien world. Is this the kind of world Tony comes from: hot, dusty, with voices wailing strange music? Thinking of Tony makes her feel guilty, and she’s glad when the Foreign Legion marches onto the road, onto the screen, brushing aside the man with the donkey.
By the Rivers of Brooklyn Page 8