By the Rivers of Brooklyn

by Trudy Morgan-Cole

  Side by side they stalked up Bedford Avenue towards their own neighbourhood, drawing the occasional stare from passersby. Jim was silent for a moment, then he reached out and grabbed her arm.

  “Yeah, you made your mistake, didn’t you? Too bad you never had another choice. What did you say a minute ago? My brother is ten times the man I am? Ever think about how hard it is to live up to a brother who’s perfect, to know my wife would rather be married to another man?”

  The world stopped turning for a second and Ethel slowed her pace as his words hit her. How could he know? Nobody knows what I feel about Harold, she thought, and then realized that she hadn’t ever said it, even to herself, till that moment. She turned to face Jim at last, looking as stunned as he had when she caught him with Cecilia Fines.

  Jim went on, “It’s no picnic for me, you know, all my life trying to fill a dead man’s shoes.”

  “A dead man’s…” The world turned again, though very slowly. Bert. “You mean Bert,” she whispered. Then, louder. “Bert! Don’t you even compare yourself to your brother Bert. Bert was…Bert was a man of honour.”

  She darted another glance at Jim and saw he was swallowing hard. “Bert was my brother, remember, and you’re not the only one misses him. I tried hard enough to make you happy, but I’m not Bert and I never could live up to him.”

  The picture of Jim in the restaurant, holding hands with that girl, rose in her mind. Bert wouldn’t have done it. Harold wouldn’t do it. She’d gotten the one bad apple in the Evans barrel.

  “No, you’re darned right you’re not Bert,” she said. “I think of him every day of my life, and I miss him, and you can bet your bottom dollar that” – she said the words in a rush now, because it was like walking into the restaurant, if she didn’t say it now she never would. And she had to say it because it was the only thing that could hurt him like he’d hurt her, the only weapon she had – “that never in a million years would I have picked you to try and fill Bert’s shoes if I hadn’t needed a father for his son.”

  Ethel paused, waiting for her words to hit home. She could tell when they did because Jim stopped walking. She kept on. She was a long ways ahead, maybe half a block, before he called out.

  “Ethel! Stop right there and tell me you didn’t mean what you just said!”

  “What, that I only married you to give Bert’s son a home and a name?” She yelled the words out on the empty street, not caring who heard, exulting in the power to hurt.

  She expected another angry roar, but she just heard him say, “Ralphie?” in a voice so small and lost she nearly didn’t catch it. So, she had hurt him. Good.

  “Yeah, Ralphie,” she called back, not shouting now but talking loud and clear. He was walking towards her. “What’s the matter, Jim, can’t you even do your sums? You never counted back when Ralphie was born?” The more clearly she could see his eyes the more she felt the need to drive it home. “Did you really think you were the first man I was ever with? You really…you really thought, all these years, that he was your son?”

  When he stood in front of her at last she wondered if she’d gone too far. It scared her, the look on his face. They stood under a streetlight at the corner, looking in each other’s eyes, saying nothing. Finally Jim turned onto Linden Boulevard. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get home.”

  There was nothing gentle in his words; he didn’t sound as if he was either apologizing or forgiving. But she walked along beside him, as stripped of words as he was, thinking about the balance sheets she kept in her head, her balance sheet with God. Maybe at last everything was paid up.

  She didn’t guess how wrong she was until they were inside their own apartment, till she’d given Sarah Liebowitz a dime and sent her home. Jim banged around the living room, turning on lights, taking off his coat and shoes, making as much noise as possible. Ethel glanced toward the daybed. “Hush, you’ll wake Ralphie,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Jim. “That’s the general idea.”

  Ralphie moaned and moved in his sleep and Jim sat on the edge of the daybed. Ethel stood still, watching. So many nights she had seen Ralphie stir or wake, and Jim, gentle at his bedside, give him a cup of water or touch his forehead, saying, “Go back to sleep, son. Daddy’s here.”

  Whatever else, he always has been a good father, she thought. That counts for a lot.

  She didn’t realize how much it counted for till Ralphie sat up, looked at Jim, and smiled. “Daddy,” he said.

  Jim took the boy’s face in his hand, tilted it up, searched it till Ralphie squirmed away, closing his eyes. Jim’s face was cold and blank, like a fireplace when the fire has not only died but been swept out and cleaned. “Go back to sleep,” he said as Ralphie settled back on the pillow. Jim walked past Ethel into their bedroom without saying a word.

  She kept telling herself, that night and the next day and all the days after, that it would pass, that when the shock wore off, Jim would be the same as before. In every way but one it was as if that night had never happened: they went on packing and planning for the trip; Jim said nothing to her about Cecilia Fines or anything that had been said that night. He still romped and played with Jimmy, but when Ralphie was home from school and said, “Daddy, can you play with me?” Jim said, “Not now. I’m busy.” Ralphie skirted the edge of Jim’s and Jimmy’s games; he tried to tell Jim what he’d done in school each day, about the year-end concert and the recitation he’d given. Jim never struck him or spoke harshly, but it was as if he was no longer at home to Ralphie. He was cold and distant, as he might be to a stranger’s son.

  One night as Ralphie sat at the table after supper, watching Ethel do the dishes while Jim and Jimmy played in the living room, he finally asked, “Mommy, is Daddy mad at me? Did I do something wrong?”

  Ethel swallowed. “No, Ralphie, Daddy has a lot on his mind right now, with our trip back to Newfoundland and all. You’ll see. When we get back home everything will be all right.”

  “Home,” Ralphie said. “I’ve never been there, have I?”

  “No. But it’s a beautiful place. You’ll meet both your Nannies and your Poppy Evans, and your Aunt Annie, and lots of other relatives and friends, and you’ll have a big yard to play in.”

  “I can’t wait to go home,” Ralphie said.

  There was a knock on the door. “You go get that, Ralphie,” Ethel said, glad to have him out of the kitchen, to have a chance to wipe away her own tears. She felt as if, in washing the dishes, she had somehow clumsily dropped a priceless crystal bowl – not that they had any crystal bowls – and now stood looking at the pieces, wondering if it could ever be fixed.

  Ralphie came back through the hall. Ethel moved to the kitchen door to see him standing uncertainly, someone else behind him. He looked at Jim, then looked away and turned to Ethel.

  “Mommy, there’s a lady with a baby here, and she says she’s my Aunt Rose. Is that true?”

  ANNIE

  ST. JOHN’S, JUNE 1932

  “DID YOU PUT THE clean sheets on the beds in the children’s room, Annie? I think that bit of stew is going to catch, you wants to watch that. What time does the boat come in?”

  “Two o’clock. Bill’s got a car and he’s going down to get them, and there are clean sheets on all the beds,” Annie said, coming through the kitchen door and going to the stove to stir the stew. She’d liked to have had something nicer than stew, a nice roast or something, for an occasion like this, her brother and sister-in-law back home with all their family. But she couldn’t afford a roast that size. She had already made up her own old bedroom for Ethel and Jim and the spare bedroom for Ralphie and Jimmy; she cleaned the house top to bottom; she baked bread and a cake and made the stew and dumplings for supper, all the while caring for her father who needed something different done for him every half-hour: a drink brought, a pillow turned, sometimes a few pieces from the newspaper read out to him. He could still see fine to read but he liked being read to.

  Her mother, meanwhile, dir
ected operations from the armchair in the kitchen. In the two years that her husband had been bedridden, Mrs. Evans had put on a bit of weight and her varicose veins had gotten worse, so that she preferred to spend most of the day in her chair. “I got one bed-rid and one chair-rid,” Annie had told Bill the day before. “And now I got Jim and Ethel coming for I don’t know how long, and two little boys to look after, and Ethel with a baby on the way, and, Bill, I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.”

  “Ah, it won’t be so bad,” Bill had assured her. “Sure, Ethel will be able to give you a hand with the housework and with your father, and Jim will probably find a few days’ work here and there to help out with expenses.”

  “I don’t know where he’s going to find those few days’ work. Sure, you’re having a hard enough time finding any yourself,” Annie said.

  Bill touched her shoulder lightly. “Everything will work out,” he said.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Bill.”

  He smiled and went away to get the car from his brother-in-law. She tried not to say things like that too often. Bill was a great help around the house. He did every kind of little job, he lifted and turned and carried her father when needed, he chopped wood for them and even gave her small gifts of money when he had either bit himself, which she used to think she’d be too proud to accept, but now she thought differently. Pride was something you couldn’t afford if you had a bedridden father, a chair-ridden mother, and no man in the house bringing in any pay.

  Annie ran upstairs to change into her brown dress with the white polka dots – good as new, she’d made it over completely from an old dress of her mother’s – and the hat that matched it, and got into the front seat of the car with Bill. She had only driven in a car a scattered few times in her life and that added to the nervous excitement building in her stomach.

  Water Street was busier than usual because of the people gathered to meet the boat. Annie loved being downtown with Bill: with so many people around it was fine to have a man standing by your side. And Bill was tall enough to see over people’s heads and tell her that the boat was coming into the harbour. After a bit she could see it herself, a squat black steamer with the Furness-Withy name painted on the side, and soon they were putting down the gangplank and the passengers were walking off.

  She scanned all the dark and distant shapes, looking for a man and woman with two small boys. Bill saw them first though, and steered her forward through the crowd till she could pick out that the man was Jim. The woman’s face was half-hidden by her hat, but yes, that had to be Ethel. “But what’s she carrying?” Annie said. “She got a bundle of something but she’s carrying it in her arms like a baby.”

  “Well, maybe she had the baby already. Maybe it was born on board ship,” Bill suggested.

  “Don’t be so foolish, Bill, that baby’s not due till October and ’tis only June. If it were born already it wouldn’t be still alive. Besides, you can see from the size of Ethel she’s still expecting. Hello! Over here! Jim! Ethel!”

  Finally Jim saw them and waved before he led Ethel and the children into the customs shed. Annie and Bill waited in silence until they emerged a little while later, Jim carrying the littlest boy in his arms as the bigger boy struggled to get free from Ethel’s hand. And Ethel – who was certainly still in the family way – was indeed carrying a baby.

  “Annie! Bill! How wonderful to see you again!” Ethel and Annie sized each other up. Yes, Ethel’s dress was more in style for all it was a maternity dress and hidden under her coat. The hat was smart, too. Ethel looked curiously at Bill; Annie realized that in her letters she had not talked about him much and Ethel wouldn’t realize what a part of the family he’d become. Of course she’d conclude that– “And this is Ralphie, and that’s Jimmy there with Jim,” Ethel said, and looked down at the bundle in her arms, as if she were momentarily at a loss for words. “And this is baby Claire,” she said at last.

  “Claire? But she’s not…I mean, you’re not…” Annie stumbled over her words. The baby was big and bright-eyed, obviously not a newborn. Maybe six months old.

  “No, she’s not our baby. She’s…” Ethel glanced from Jim to Annie to Bill and back to Annie. “She’s Rose’s baby. Rose turned up on the doorstep just a few days before we sailed. We hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her in over a year and, well, the long and short of it is, this is her baby and she wanted us to bring it home to you and Mom and Pop.”

  “Rose’s baby.” Annie didn’t even glance at Bill to see how he took the news. Her arms shifted automatically to take the burden from Ethel, to cradle the baby in her arms. She saw a small round face peeking out from a huddle of blankets: a wisp of Rose’s fair hair paired with dark brown eyes unlike anyone in the family. “Claire. Hello, baby Claire,” she crooned softly.

  Ethel was still gripping Ralphie and now had Jimmy holding her other hand while Jim and Bill went off to get the trunk. Their procession wound up from the wharf to Water Street, where Bill had parked the car in front of the Board of Trade building. The little boys darted away from their mother every chance they got, out into the street, looking into the storefronts. “It’s all so different to them,” Ethel said. “So quiet, compared to Brooklyn.”

  It was hard to imagine how anyone could find Water Street on a weekday afternoon quiet. Annie couldn’t imagine what Brooklyn must be like.

  At the house they all unloaded. Bill helped Jim in with the trunk while Ethel and the children performed the ritual of greetings and kisses and hugs. While they were gone to the boat, Ethel’s widowed mother had arrived and was settled in the kitchen too, so that the children could meet all their grandparents at once. Annie stayed out on the back step for a minute, the baby still in her arms, trying to think how to explain the baby to her mother. It shouldn’t really be her worry; she wasn’t the one who was entrusted with the baby to deliver, yet she saw already that this baby was her problem, her burden to carry, and she was glad to have it so.

  Bill Winsor stepped out of the house, his cap in hand.

  “You’re going to stay for dinner,” Annie said.

  “Ah, you’ve got enough already. And it’s all family.”

  “You’re family too. And it’s only stew, it can stretch.”

  Bill moved closer to Annie, moved the blanket that covered most of baby Claire’s face. The baby opened her eyes and stared unblinking at him. She frowned and began to whimper. Bill touched her cheek with a fingertip. Annie looked at him; he gazed at the baby so intently that she was free to study his face without his even noticing. This was the man who had loved Rose and wanted to marry her for years, looking down at the baby Rose had had by another man and casually packaged off to whoever might look after it. When she said, “Do you want to hold her?” Bill took Claire, settled her in his arms with an ease that seemed natural, and the baby’s whimpering settled down, till she seemed almost content again.

  By eleven o’clock that night, when she fell exhausted into her bed, Annie had figured out a number of things. She realized that no amount of explanation would force her mother to acknowledge that Claire was, in fact, Rose’s illegitimate child. The baby was there: the baby was a fact, but where she came from was never going to be talked about. Annie saw, too, that Jim and Ethel were shocked by Pop, how wasted and feeble he had become; they were not prepared to find him aged and invalid no matter what she put in her letters. She figured out that Ethel and Jim were not happy; they barely spoke to each other, avoided each other’s eyes. Annie saw, too, that Jim, who Ethel had always said was such a good father, was indeed a wonderful father to little Jimmy but barely touched or spoke to Ralphie, who looked ready to turn himself inside out to make his father notice him. And she had figured out that Ethel and Jim were not back here to stay, whatever they might think themselves.

  Annie figured out one more thing: that baby Claire was hers, her own baby, the one she had asked God for. Everyone took turns holding her, but they always handed her back to Annie. Ethel,
who had cared for the baby all the way from New York, seemed to have no further interest in her once she was safely in Annie’s arms. So tonight baby Claire slept in an ancient bassinette that Bill dug out of the attic, hastily lined with a spare soft blanket, pulled up next to the couch where Annie slept in the living room. All night Annie lay listening to the baby’s snuffling breath and her father’s shallow steady wheeze, and thought of the verse that said In everything give thanks.

  The summer unravelled day by day, growing warm in late July and cooling down again after Regatta Day in the first week of August. Ethel and Jim had tense, low conversations up in the bedroom at night. Annie heard them as she helped her mother get ready for bed in the next room. She couldn’t pick out the words but she knew they were talking about what they were going to do: stay or go back to New York.

  “He has to make up his mind sometime soon,” Ethel said to Annie as they stood in the pantry washing dishes one night in mid-August. “If we’re staying here, Ralphie will have to be put in school. And I’m due to have this baby in October and I’d like at least to know where I’m having it. I can’t travel when I’m nine months along. I don’t want my baby born on a boat.”

  This was as forthcoming as she had been all summer about their plans. Annie found it harder to talk to Ethel than it used to be: they had been apart so long, and also Ethel, like all married women, now had secrets to guard. She did not tell Annie why she and Jim were so uneasy with each other, nor why Jim adored his younger son and ignored the older. She only made reference to this once, when the girls were sitting on the step watching Jim chase Jimmy around the yard while Ralphie, solitary, watched from a branch of the dogberry tree. “He wasn’t always like this,” Ethel said then. “He used to be wonderful with Ralphie. It’s only lately…” Her voice trailed off.