By the Rivers of Brooklyn

by Trudy Morgan-Cole

  “Hey, that’s not fair,” Diane protests, though she’s said a thousand times worse herself about her parents. “Anyway, I told you, that’s not what I want. Maybe that’ll be Joyce and Jimmy someday, but it’s not going to be…us.”

  “Us.” Mickey stops again, turns to look at her. A streetlight illuminates his thin handsome face, the sharp jawline, the nose just a little too long. “What other choices do we got, Diane? Wanna be like my mom and dad instead? Want me to come home drunk every night and beat the crap out of you and our kids? Would you like that?”

  “Mickey! No! Of course not.” She reaches out to touch him: his arm is cold and hard as metal. “You’re not going to be like your dad.”

  He laughs. “Think again, sweetheart. Everyone turns into their parents. Can’t you see that?” He looks away again, swallows hard, twice. “I’m joining the army.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Joining the army. I already been to see about it. It’s the best thing for me.”

  “Mickey, don’t be stupid! You join the army now, you’ll get sent to Korea. You might…” She remembers her mother crying the day they got the telegram about Ralph. But Mickey just laughs again.

  “Yeah, go to Korea and get my ass blown off. From where I’m sitting right now, it don’t look like a bad deal.” He grips her upper arms and she looks into his eyes and sees all the pain there, all the darkness, everything she’s tried to patch up and make better. Sees that she’s been like a child putting Band-Aids on someone whose throat is cut.

  “I love you,” she tries. “I thought…you loved me.”

  He shoves her away, so hard it almost hurts and she reels for a moment. “I don’t know about love, Diane. But if I did – if I loved anybody – here’s what I’d do.” He turns and walks away from her, down a side street. When he’s about fifteen feet away he turns back. “Don’t come after me, Diane. This is for your own good. I’m leaving now, because I love you, okay? Go home now. Go home to Mommy and Daddy.”

  She watches, wanting to follow but nailed to the spot, till he turns another corner and is gone. And then she goes home to Mommy and Daddy.

  ANNIE

  ST. JOHN’S, JUNE 1953

  “TELL ME THE TRUTH, Aunt Annie. What’s wrong with me? I’m a fine figure of a fellow, wouldn’t you say?”

  Doug Parsons sat at Annie’s kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea. He was indeed a fine figure of a fellow, twenty-three years old with a good job with the Daily News. Annie wasn’t sure exactly what he did, but Doug’s mother assured her it was a good job. His family went to Number Two Corps with Annie and Bill; she had known Sarah and Abe Parsons all her life, seen their children grow up. Doug had had his eye on Claire since she was fourteen. But Claire never paid him no particular mind, no more so than just one of a crowd of friends, which Annie thought was right and proper when she was a young girl in school.

  But now Claire was twenty-one and here was Doug Parsons, still hanging around. Not making a fool of himself waiting, now mind, not like her Bill did over Rose for all those years. Doug took out other girls: last year he went around with a girl called Theresa Walsh for five or six months. Anybody who heard the name Theresa Walsh could have told you what was wrong with that match, and his poor mother was practically in tears at the thought that her boy might end up marrying Catholic. Annie watched closely during those months to see if Claire showed any signs of jealousy. But Claire, as always, was busy with work, going out with a crowd of girlfriends and sometimes with one fellow or another, doing things with the Young People’s Fellowship at the corps. When the Theresa Walsh fiasco ended, Claire had barely even seemed to notice.

  Now here was Doug again, in Annie’s kitchen, dropping by on a pretext of returning some dress patterns Annie had loaned to his mother. “Aunt Annie,” he said – the young ones who grew up with her nieces and nephews all called her Aunt Annie – “I’m not such a bad catch, am I? Why do Claire think I’m not good enough for her?”

  “Now Doug, ’tis not a matter of you not being good enough for her. I’m sure Claire don’t think that way. She’s just very…choosy, I guess,” Annie said gently. Doug posed his questions like jokes but you never knew with young people. She guessed he really had feelings for Claire, underneath all his carrying on. He was a good boy, even if he didn’t go to meeting. She didn’t want to see him hurt, though of course, if he ever hurt Claire, Annie would tear the eyes out of him.

  A clatter of feet and high girlish voices on the back step made Doug glance to the door and sit a little straighter in his chair. “Look at that, my white shoes are filthy now, where they oiled the road again today.” A girl’s voice, not Claire’s but one of her friends.

  “That’s her, home from work now,” Annie said.

  Sure enough, Claire came through the door, trailed by her girlfriend Phyllis from work. It wasn’t so very different from the days when she used to come home from school with Valerie, all chatter and giggles. Claire was taller and more elegant, even more confident now that she was earning money, buying her own clothes, having her hair permanent-waved.

  She was a good girl, but she seemed so cool sometimes, so distant. What was the word? Aloof, that was it. Annie rolled the word in her mind, liking the sound of it, the way it captured Claire. Aloof. From where Annie sat, aloof wasn’t such a bad thing. She could see, though, how Doug Parsons might not like aloof so much.

  “Doug! How’re you doing? What brings you here? Just stopped in for a chin-wag with Aunt Annie, did you?” Claire’s eyes sparkled: she enjoyed teasing him.

  “What’re you at, Doug?” Phyllis asked, sliding into the chair next to his. Annie got up and went into the pantry where she began slicing onions, blinking back the tears. She listened to the conversation in the other room, not wanting to miss it.

  “Not much, girl, not much,” said Doug. “Just stopped in to drop something off for Mother on my way home from work.”

  “This isn’t on your way home,” Claire pointed out.

  “Well, in a manner of speaking, you know. After all, it is Friday night, so I was thinking I might find a pretty girl – or two – who wanted to come out to Barney’s for supper with me tonight.”

  “You might find two,” Claire said. “Pretty girls only come in pairs around here.”

  “Well, if I looked hard enough, I might find another fellow on the way,” said Doug. “I could swing by and pick up Gary Follett. What do you say to that, Phyllis?”

  “Why not ask me what I say to it?” Claire countered. “You might end up with Phyllis and then I’d be the one stuck with poor old Gary Follett.”

  “There’ll be no reason to pity Gary if he winds up with you,” Doug said. “As for me, how can I lose? It’s a win-win situation.”

  They were so easy with each other, boys and girls these days. Annie was glad she heard a lot of it or she might have thought badly of Claire. In her day she could only ever remember Rose talking so freely to fellows, and if she didn’t know better she might have thought Claire was a copy of her mother. But the world had changed, Annie knew. Girls like she had been herself – modest, shy and quiet – were out of style. Claire was quiet enough, compared to some of the young ones she ran around with, but she could hold her own in any conversation with a fellow.

  Annie wondered how much she really knew about Claire, what the girl could be getting up to behind her back. Young people weren’t always straightforward, she knew. But all signs pointed to Claire being exactly what she appeared: a nice girl. Smart, and strong-willed in her way, but always respectful and polite. Always ready to lend a hand around the house, even though she never had learned to enjoy cooking and cleaning. She brought money home to contribute to the household, every payday, before she ever touched a cent herself. She was in meeting twice every Sunday and down to Young People’s every Tuesday night, a senior soldier, though she didn’t wear the uniform and wasn’t the sort you’d ever expect to find going off to officers’ training. But that was all right with Annie.
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  She didn’t really want to see Claire married off to some young officer, in charge of a corps down in a tiny little outport, slaving day and night to keep the church on its feet. Claire would do the job well, of course – Annie couldn’t think of a job Claire wouldn’t do well – but she wasn’t cut out for that kind of life. She suspected if Claire were away from home she might not go to church all the time, or at least not to the Army. She’d seen Claire’s distant look sometimes when the testimonies got heartfelt and people began to weep. Claire might even go to a movie or a dance if she were living away, but here at home she did what was expected, followed the rules, and never suggested by a word or a glance that those rules held her back.

  They were back again by nine o’clock, the four of them crowding into the kitchen as Claire and her friends often did after an evening out. Claire made cocoa for everyone, and Annie, who had just gotten her mother settled in bed, brought out a plate of cookies she made that morning and set them on the table. Bill was sitting by the stove with his feet up, reading the paper, the cat curled on his lap. The scene was warm and familiar. It took Annie a moment to notice the one unfamiliar thing: the young man accompanying Claire, Phyllis and Doug was not Doug’s friend Gary Follett but a stranger, a tall, strikingly handsome boy with glossy black hair. When he spoke, she knew he wasn’t a Newfoundlander.

  “Aunt Annie, this is Eddie Tanner,” Claire said, and the young man stepped forward with a hearty handshake. “He’s down here visiting his mother, Mrs. Curtis.”

  The pieces fell into place. Herb Curtis was a Salvation Army man who had come home from Toronto a few years ago married to a widow whose own children were all grown up. This must be one of those children, Eddie Tanner from Toronto.

  He was as handsome as a movie star, good teeth, healthy glowing skin. His suit seemed a little flashy; it was powder-blue and he was wearing a foolish little string tie. But he positively glowed with warmth and energy as he pumped Annie’s hand and said, “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Winsor. My mom’s told me so much about you and your family.”

  “Has she now?” Annie said, trying to make her voice as warm as his, but failing. She was sure none of the young people noticed but Bill cocked an eyebrow at her over the edge of the paper. Then he laid down the paper and stood up to be introduced to Eddie Tanner.

  “Oh yes, she’s told me all about how nice you folks in NewFOUNDland have been to her, how friendly everyone is, the hospitality. And now I can see she wasn’t exaggerating. Why, in Toronto, if you drop a young lady off after a date, that’s it, goodnight at the doorstep. Here you get invited in, get cocoa and cookies. My word! It’s a whole different world, I can see that now.”

  “Eddie’s in university, he’s applying to medical school next year,” Claire said, taking Eddie’s coat to hang up on the hook by the door. “Sit down now, Eddie. Don’t just talk about the cookies, have one.” Claire’s voice was as pleasant and calm as usual, but Annie, who knew her so well, saw something in her eye, heard something in her tone, that Doug Parsons had never put there. And she saw by the way they were all sitting that Doug and Phyllis were paired off after all, two castaways in the storm, while Claire was circling Eddie Tanner like a miller around a lamp.

  Sunday morning at Holiness Meeting, Eddie Tanner sat not with his mother and her husband, but on the bench with Annie and Bill, sharing a songbook with Claire. His voice rang out strong on the choruses. In the evening, he came by to walk Claire up to church for Salvation Meeting.

  His mother was vague about how long Eddie planned to stay in St. John’s, but he had the whole summer free from university. And clearly there was plenty of attraction. He and Claire were a number. Not only did he come by to take her out on the weekends, he also picked her up and dropped her off after work in a car he had mysteriously gotten the use of – certainly not his stepfather’s, since old Herb Curtis never drove in his life. Apparently it belonged to one of Herb’s sons and Eddie was borrowing it for as long as he stayed.

  Annie had never seen Claire like this. Or rather, she had often seen Claire like this, but never about a fellow. When Claire talked about her work, she had a focused, purposeful kind of excitement that made her light up from the inside. She was the same way when she was social convenor of the Young People’s group, or last summer when she organized the Songsters to go on a tour, travelling about and singing at the Salvation Army corps around the bay.

  Now Annie saw her focus all that glowing attention on Eddie Tanner. Claire, always so careful about her hair, her clothes, her grooming, now went the extra mile. She came home one Saturday from a trip downtown carrying a new dress, a pink so soft it was nearly white. Annie touched the fabric almost reverently, it was so delicate. “That’ll be hard to wash,” she said.

  “I know,” said Claire with a sigh. “But it’s worth it. Eddie’s taking me to Frost’s Restaurant tonight, then to a symphony concert at Pitts Memorial Hall.” Frost’s was a cut above Barney’s and the Chuck Wagon, places Claire and her crowd usually went to eat. That evening when she stepped out the door on Eddie Tanner’s arm, wearing the pink dress, Annie couldn’t begin to explain to herself, much less to Bill, why she didn’t trust the boy.

  “You’re just afraid he’ll marry Claire and take her away from here,” Bill suggested, up in their bedroom one night in early July. The fog and cold of June’s caplin weather had slipped back out to sea and even the nights were warm now. The flowers had taken heart and started to bloom in earnest.

  “No, it’s not that.” Annie shook her head. “She’s fond of her home, I know that, but I’ve always expected her to go away sooner or later. I wouldn’t be surprised if she took up with a fellow from away.”

  “But not this fellow,” Bill said.

  “No, not this one.”

  Claire changed that summer, but only in the sense that her happiness had a sharper, brighter edge, and was clearly focused on Eddie Tanner. Otherwise she was the same, still Annie’s good girl. Despite her whirlwind romance she did not stay out late or give her aunt a moment’s worry. She and Eddie Tanner went out to supper, they went for walks and drives, they went to meeting. They joined friends from the Young People’s Fellowship for get-togethers at someone’s home or afternoons trouting and picnicking in the woods. Annie didn’t worry about her virtue. Perhaps, she thought, it was Claire’s heart she worried about.

  In the middle of August, Eddie Tanner disappeared. The first Annie knew of it was when Mrs. Captain Avery sat at Annie’s table having a cup of tea and she said, “Ada Curtis misses her son some lot. My, that house just came alive when he was in it. It must seem some quiet now.”

  “Gone back, is he?”

  Mrs. Avery raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I thought you’d know all about it, him and your Claire being so close and all. He didn’t come in here to say goodbye to you crowd?”

  Annie looked down; she had miscalculated. Now half St. John’s would know that Eddie Tanner left town without saying goodbye to Claire Evans’ family. What did this mean? Clearly Mrs. Avery had come here to tease out this very information. “Oh, you know the young folks are always coming and going,” Annie said, thinking quickly to make up for her blunder. “Claire had a grand time with young Eddie, but I don’t think she was any more fond of him than any of the others, not that I know of. I don’t know that he’d feel the need to come in here and say goodbye before he went back to university.”

  “Oh, but he’s not gone back to university,” Mrs. Avery said, leaning in a little. “Ada says his classes don’t start till second week in September. She expected to have him here till Labour Day at least. But he took off right sudden, only gave her a day’s notice. Bought the ticket one day and was gone on the train the next.”

  “You don’t say,” Annie said mildly. “Well, no doubt he got a little tired of it down here. Must be very quiet, compared to what he’s used to.”

  Claire came home from work that afternoon and Annie searched her face for signs of a change. She was quiet, but then Claire
was often quiet. Annie couldn’t think of a good way to bring up Eddie Tanner, so she waited. And waited. A week slipped by and no mention of Eddie’s name. On Saturday afternoon, Claire and Annie sat on the back step fanning themselves with the War Cry. It was muggy and overcast. The yard was heavy with the scent of the wild roses, deep pink and smelling like heaven. Laundry hung limp on the line. Every Saturday this summer, Claire had gone somewhere with Eddie Tanner. It was only natural to ask.

  “So Eddie’s gone back, is he?” Annie said finally.

  Claire leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, fanned herself a little more vigorously. “Yes, he’s gone back to Toronto.”

  “I’m surprised he never came over to say goodbye, he was over here so much,” Annie said, keeping her voice level. “We’d all got so…” she was going to say, “fond of him,” but honesty compelled her to say, “used to him.”

  “He made up his mind very quickly,” Claire said. “He hardly said goodbye to anyone.”

  And that was all. There was so much more Annie would have liked to ask, but Claire remained aloof.

  In the second week of September, the temperature dropped sharply. Annie looked out one morning and saw a tracing of frost on the grass. Her wild roses, still open yesterday and spilling their scent into the air, had shrivelled and closed like brown-edged fists. Annie pulled on her jacket and went out to inspect them. She found a single rose, sheltered under some leaves, still open and untouched by the frost. Taking scissors from her apron pocket, she snipped the rose and carried it in to place in a glass on the table.

  Claire came down in her dressing gown – it was a Saturday morning. “Grandmother’s still asleep,” she said, and saw the rose. “Oh, did all the other roses die?”