By the Rivers of Brooklyn Page 3

  But it hadn’t. The sin was this: to do it as she had done it, cold, calculating, serving her own purpose. Planning every step, every move. Her definition of sin was far more elastic in New York than it had been back home, where it was a sin to dance or even to curl her hair too fancy, but by any standard, Ethel Moores had sinned tonight.

  She only prayed it would all work out.

  ETHEL

  BROOKLYN, OCTOBER 1925

  Dear Annie,

  I hope you and all the folks at home are well. We are all as well as can be expected after the terrible shock we had.

  I suppose the news in this letter will be a shock to all of you as well, but I hope you will understand that we did what we thought best and mean no disrespect to poor Bert or his memory.

  Me and Jim got married two Saturdays ago in Jean’s front room with the Methodist minister. I’m putting in a snap Jean’s husband took of us after the ceremony. I hope you will not be too shocked or think it improper so soon after our tragedy, but ever since the funeral me and Jim have been together so much and taken what comfort we could from one anothers company and from our memories. I am sure we will be happy together...

  ETHEL TOOK THE CORNER of the paper, ready to tear it, almost a reflex after tearing up the first five copies. Then she paused and reread the letter. “I can’t say it any better than that no matter how many times I writes it,” she said aloud.

  Jim looked up from his chair at the other end of the kitchen table where he was drinking his cup of tea and reading the Brooklyn Eagle. “You worries too much, Ethel,” he said. “Mom and Pop never had a word to say against you, and Annie’s your best friend in the world. No doubt they’ll like you a lot better than any of the other girls I might have married.” It was no more to him than if a place had opened up on the job and a new fellow stepped into it. Doubtless some new fellow had filled in Bert’s place on the worksite, and Jim had moved over to fill Bert’s place in Ethel’s life, Ethel’s apartment, Ethel’s bed.

  It did seem that way sometimes, even to Ethel. She and Jim lived in an apartment just like the one she and Bert would have rented. She kept house just as she would have done for Bert, missing the lovely convenience of the Careys’ vacuum cleaner and washing machine but happy to be sweeping her own floor, beating her own mats, trimming her own curtains with lace she had starched herself in sugar water. The pleasure of making a home was exactly the same as it would have been with Bert; for those purposes, it hardly mattered who the husband was.

  Except – except that when Jim came home from work, he wanted to take her out for a hot dog or go out himself for a drink with his friends, not sit at their nice little table in the cheery kitchen and enjoy the good dinner she’d cooked, the way Bert would have done. They didn’t have money to go out nearly as much as Jim would have liked, so most of the time they actually did sit down at their own table. Jim would say, “Good dinner, Ethel,” when it was all done, but she could tell he didn’t take pleasure in it like Bert would have done.

  Jim noticed how she looked, if she had a new dress or had her hair done differently; he liked her to look smart and pretty, but he never noticed things like the new trim on the curtains or the rug she’d just bought. He didn’t care to hear about how she had gone to Woolworth’s and picked out the whole set of china with the pink rose pattern, only she got the girl to knock a dollar off on account of there not being teacups, and how she rode the subway all by herself into Manhattan to another Woolworth’s and found the teacups on sale there. She could imagine sharing such things, the little victories and details of her day, with Bert. Sometimes, to her embarrassment, she even pretended Bert was there, talking out loud to him in the empty apartment.

  She pounded the stamp up in the corner of the envelope, above where she had written:

  Miss Anne Evans

  Freshwater Valley

  St. John’s, NewFoundland

  She could picture Annie at her kitchen table, opening the letter on top of her bright red or yellow tablecloth, reading it. But she couldn’t quite see the look on Annie’s face.

  ANNIE

  ST. JOHN’S, FEBRUARY 1926

  Dearest Annie,

  I hope this letter finds you and all the folks at home very well. Has it got real cold there yet? It is cold here in Brooklyn and last week we had a big snowstorm. You should see how fast they shovel it off the streets here. There are so many motorcars that they have to keep the streets cleared.

  Jim and I are doing well. Thank you and the folks for the kind gift of money you sent. We used it to buy a new clock for our kitchen wall and some blankets for the bed which are coming in handy now as the nights are so cold.

  We have some exciting news and hope you will be very happy for us...

  “THERE’S ANOTHER LETTER FROM Ethel, Mom,” Annie said as her mother entered the kitchen, tapping her walking-stick ahead of her. As near as Annie could see there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with her mother’s legs except maybe varicose veins. But Mrs. Evans had decided some years ago that she was now an old lady, with all the trappings of that position – like the cane – and all the rights and privileges that went along with it.

  “Hmmph. I wonder what that one got to say for herself now.”

  “Don’t be hard on her, Mom, at least she writes a letter now and again, not like Rose.”

  “Rose? Rose!” Louise Evans compressed twenty years of annoyance into the single syllable of her daughter’s name. “Don’t give me Rose. She’s better off not writing letters. There’s things I’d sooner not know. Come on now, what do Ethel have to say?” She heaved herself down into a chair, and Annie moved from the stove to the table, sat down, and unfolded Ethel’s letter, which she had already read three times. She was just going to read it aloud and let Ethel speak for herself. Annie wasn’t about to waste any more time trying to put things in the right words or prepare Mom for anything.

  She watched though, over the edge of the letter, and saw her mother’s fingers start to twitch as soon as she read, “I am expecting a baby in late spring or early summer.” Counting, counting off the months.

  When Annie finished reading her mother said, “Hmm! Well, they didn’t waste their time, did they?” Her eyes went to the calendar on the wall and her fingers moved again.

  That was all she would say to her eighteen-year-old unmarried daughter. She was obviously bursting with comments and speculations, but she needed another married woman to talk to. Annie knew quite well that babies took nine months to get born and that bad girls sometimes got them started before they got married. She could also count nine months in her head without using her fingers. She knew her mother suspected that Jim had gotten Ethel in the family way before they were even married. She couldn’t picture Ethel doing such a thing, but she could well believe it of Jim, who was not always a gentleman, not like poor Bert.

  Poor Ethel, Annie thought, how lonely she must have been up there all by herself, without Bert. I hope Jim is good to her.

  Annie loved all three of her brothers, of course, but they were so different. She had always admired Jim. He was the oldest, the good-looking one, the hero behind whom they all trailed, amazed at his daring feats, unable to imitate him. Little Harold – not little now, of course, he was almost seventeen, but they were all used to thinking of him that way – was such an afterthought for Mom that Annie had fallen into the habit of looking after him, even though she was only two years older.

  But Bert had been the one she was closest to. He always had a kind word for everyone. Better than words, he could walk into a house where everything was topsy-turvy, where something had gone terribly wrong, and Bert could find the one good useful thing to do, like bringing in an armload of wood for the fire or shovelling a path to the door. She had been so happy when he and Ethel had started walking out, because Ethel admired and loved Bert just as she did. Bert would take good care of her best friend, and all three of them could always stay close, not like if her favourite brother had married some stranger
.

  And now Bert was dead, and Ethel was married to Jim, and they were having a baby. Life was funny. Annie turned back to her pot of stew on the stove and pushed at one of the dumplings, letting it bob back to the surface, thinking of the warm solid weight of a baby in her arms. Ethel would have that, soon. A baby of her own.

  “I think it’s grand. I hope they’ll be very happy,” she said.

  “Hmm.” The stick tapped and the chair creaked as Mrs. Evans got up. “I’m just going over the road to Mrs. Stokes’ for an hour. I’ll be back before your father gets home. You have supper ready by five, you mind.”

  In the empty kitchen, Annie sang, “There is power, power, wonderworking power… In the blood…of the Lamb,” as she worked on supper. She didn’t hear Harold come in behind her until he pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “Some cold out today,” Harold said. “Jim says down in New York the snow is already thawed by March.”

  Annie heard his words and what lay underneath them, and felt her heart grow hard like a stone. They would all be gone soon. Harold was the last and he would be gone as soon as he could wheedle his way past Mom and Pop.

  “Mom’s not going to let you go, you know,” she said.

  They had never spoken before about Harold going away, but he didn’t seem surprised at her reply, only nodded, as if his thoughts had been painted on the kitchen wall and anyone should have been able to read them. “I knows that. But I knows I’m going, too.”

  “Not yet. It’s too soon…after Bert.”

  “No, not this spring, anyway. Maybe next year. There’s nothing in this place for me, Annie.”

  “I know.”

  He didn’t say, You should come too. Nobody ever did. They took it for granted that she didn’t want to go, and they were right. The longing for faraway places, for new voices, for a different kind of life, even for more money, drove all her family away, but all those longings were absent in Annie.

  “No, girl, I got to give Mom time to get used to the idea. You’ll have me hanging around like the millstone around your neck for a good while yet, I’d say.” He grinned, his laughter coming quickly as always.

  Much as she had loved Bert, Annie now thought Harold was perhaps the best of them all. He had Jim’s quick way with words and ready laughter, his wit and light-heartedness, but he was as solid and sensible as poor Bert, as kind and thoughtful, and because he was so quick he could be even kinder, because he could see into what you were thinking or feeling. She felt a sudden rush of affection for her youngest brother. “Here, let me pour you a cup of tea,” she said.

  “You’re a good woman, Annie,” her brother said.

  ETHEL

  BROOKLYN, NOVEMBER 1926

  ETHEL PUSHED OPEN THE door of the house with her shoulder, her arms being occupied with Ralphie’s carriage and several bags of food. She edged inside the porch to lay down her shopping bags, begrudging even the few seconds she had to leave Ralphie outside in the frigid November air. Then she dragged the huge unwieldy carriage through the door, hoisting it over the doorstep. Once inside, with the shopping bags and the baby carriage, she couldn’t maneuver enough room to close the door. November rushed inside, cold air and grey-brown leaves and dirt from the sidewalk all whirled on the wind. Ralphie was crying. Ethel backed up against the landlady’s door and shifted the pram a few inches farther into the corner, then squeezed around it to shut the door.

  She picked up Ralphie, who was howling, and jostled him around, a tiny squalling mass inside a huge bundle of knitted sweater, cap, booties and blankets. She jiggled and soothed him, partly because she hated to hear him cry but also because Mrs. Delaney, the landlady, had little tolerance for crying infants, as Ethel had good cause to know. When Ralphie was colicky at two and three months, Ethel and Jim would take turns walking the floor with him, trying to quiet him, waiting for the inevitable banging on the door as Mrs. Delaney came up to say that the second-floor tenants were complaining.

  Now Ethel looked up at the stairs, towering above her, disappearing into the gloom of the third floor. She thought of Jim, climbing each day up on the naked skeletons of the skyscrapers that towered over New York. Could that be any harder than climbing two flights of steps with a crying baby and five bags of groceries? It couldn’t be done, not in one trip. She would have to bring Ralphie up, lay him in the crib, and come back down for the food.

  The time it took to settle Ralphie in the crib meant she had left the porch downstairs cluttered with her bags and her carriage. When she came down, Mrs. Delaney was standing in her doorway, shaking her head.

  “Mrs. Evans, I may have told you,” she began.

  “Yes, yes, I’m sorry, Mrs. Delaney, you did tell me.”

  “It’s not me, it’s the fire regulations, you know. What would happen if we had a fire and the doorway was obstructed like this?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Delaney. I just took Ralphie up to lay him down. I’ll put the baby carriage away in the corner right now,” Ethel said, doing it as she said it so Mrs. Delaney would see that she really meant it.

  Mrs. Delaney glanced up the steps to the unseen apartment above, from which banshee wails were issuing. “Is your little boy all right, Mrs. Evans? Is he suffering from gas pains?”

  “No, Mrs. Delaney, I don’t think he’s got gas. I believe he’s hungry. We were out at the shops for a little longer than I thought. I’m just going up, now, to feed him.” Laden with parcels like a pack-horse, Ethel began her long trek up the stairs. Her legs were killing her. The heels of her shoes were slicing into her flesh. She needed new shoes.

  “Because if it’s gas, you’ll want to get the gripe water. As I’ve told you before, Mrs. Evans, I used it with all six of mine and they never–”

  Ethel shut the door of her apartment behind her, very gently and quietly. She wished she could slam it with a huge bang, but she was not that type of woman. Anyway, there was something nice in the idea of Mrs. Delaney in the stairwell, still talking away, not realizing Ethel couldn’t hear her.

  Ethel wanted to sink down into Jim’s chair, the one armchair in their apartment, but Ralphie had managed to pull himself up to a standing position on the bars of his crib and was jumping up and down, his face tomato-red. Last month she had been so proud he could pull himself up. Now she was worried he’d jump so hard he’d shoot right out of the crib and onto the floor. There was no question of leaving him in there while she prepared a bottle. Instead, she scooped him up in one arm – he was so heavy these days – and held his squirming, wriggling body while she used her free hand to open the draft of the coal stove, poke up the fire a bit, put on the kettle to boil, measure out the tinned milk, add hot water once the kettle was boiled, and shake it up to mix it. All this terrified her: she couldn’t escape visions of Ralphie twisting violently while she held the kettle, causing her to drop it and splash boiling water all over him, leaving his poor skin scarred for life, so that all the other children would laugh at him. “Hush, baby. Hush, baby,” Ethel cooed. “It’s all right, your milk will be here soon. Hush, hush-a-bye.”

  Her hush-a-byes had no effect on Ralphie, who continued to squall. Finally, an eternity later, Ethel was settled in Jim’s chair with bottle and baby. “Here you go, here you go,” she crooned, but Ralphie pushed the bottle away and screamed twice as loud. Ethel felt panic begin to rise. She was exhausted. She needed to pee. Mrs. Delaney would be hammering on the door soon. And whatever Ralphie wanted, it wasn’t this bottle.

  She walked with him some more, changed his diaper while he screamed and kicked, tried again with the bottle. Maybe Mrs. Delaney was right and he did have gas. Maybe he had caught something terrible, being dragged out in the cold. Maybe from now on she could buy everything from people who came to the door, or from shops that delivered. But after the long hot months of summer spent almost entirely cooped up inside when Ralphie was too young to take out much, she felt she needed a weekly hour at the shops. But at what cost?

  Finally, finally, exhausted, he allowed
the nipple into his mouth. He sucked almost accidentally, widened his eyes, looked gratified, and began to drink steadily. Ethel studied his face, so round and serious, the dark red colour beginning to recede now. His blue eyes, calm again, looked so much like Bert’s. Or Jim’s. Of course all the Evans boys had the same eyes, wide and light-blue and guileless.

  He was so much like Bert, Ethel thought as he finally settled down contentedly in the crook of her arm. At moments like this she loved to look at him, to search secretly for hints of Bert. It wasn’t easy because Jim and Bert looked a lot alike anyway. And when people pointed out that Ralphie had Jim’s chin or Jim’s nose, Ethel wanted Jim to believe that. But when she was alone with the baby, she thought, Bert’s chin. Bert’s nose. And, especially – because she missed them so much – Bert’s eyes.

  Jim had been wonderful. He never questioned, never cast a doubt or a suspicion. Yet he must have guessed. How could he not? Ralphie was born eight months to the day from the night of Bert’s funeral. Twenty-three hours a day, baby Ralphie was a little bundle to love, an endless round of chores to complete, a screaming nightmare of frustration. All the things a baby was supposed to be. But one hour, at least one hour every day, Ethel had the peace and quiet to sit alone and look at him. Then he was a reminder, a charm hung around her neck, calling back her very best memories and her very worst. He was the living memorial of Bert, and he was also the shape of her own guilt, which she must never forget or forgive. She loved him with every breath in her body.