By the Rivers of Brooklyn (16 page)

Tony is neither laughing nor crying; he looks serious. Then he says the last thing she expects. “I love you, Rose. Will you marry me?”

Rose is lying on the bed; she leans up on her elbow and looks at him, to see if he's serious. “You want to marry me
now
? After…this? After all the other guys?”

He puts his finger on her lips. “Shh. No other men. Just you and me. You took away my curse. It's gone. No power. Now I take away yours, and we can be together.”

If only it were that simple. Rose closes her eyes.
But you haven't taken away
my curse
, she thinks. She's been under a curse all her life and it will take more than Tony to erase it.

“No,” she says. “You're very sweet, but it doesn't change anything. I can't see myself getting married. I don't think I'd be a good wife. No, I don't want to marry you.”

“You don't want to marry me?” Tony sits up, naked on the bed. “I love you like no other man ever loves you, I forgive you everything, even cheating on me, I give you my deepest secret to keep for me, and you won't marry me?” At first she thinks he is joking, mock-angry, but then she sees the anger is real: finally he's mad at her. He flings a pillow to the floor for emphasis, punches the wall without even stopping to rub his hurt knuckles. His eyes dart around the room looking for something else to break and she prays he won't hit the mirror because that will cost her money. There's only one other thing really and she knows he'll go for it; he grabs the glass with the single perfect pink rose and flings it against the far wall where it shatters and spits shards of glass all around. In the silence after the crash Tony yells, “I love you, Rose! I wanna give you everything, and you're gonna throw it back in my face? Well, all I can say is, to hell with you!”

He stands up, pulling on his trousers as someone bangs on the wall and shouts, “Hey, shaddup in there, willya?” There are no secrets at Mrs. Borkowski's. Rose says nothing, just stands there and watches him storm out. “And I ain't comin' back neither, so don't wait up for me,” he adds as he runs down the stairs.

She watches out the window, sees him run down the street, slowing once and turning like he's going to look up at her window but then keeping on going.
To hell with you
. A good line to go out on. Even in a movie, it would be good.

Rose sits at her window.
What's wrong with me?
she asks herself over and over. She doesn't know what more she could want, or why she's sent Tony away, after he's played a scene even Gary Cooper would envy.

Maybe Tony was right. Maybe he did lift her curse, or part of it. Because six days after she sends Tony away, Rose gets her reward. She finally meets the man she's been waiting for.

His name is Andrew Covington and he's from Manhattan. She meets him when he walks into the candy store one day to buy a newspaper for his great-aunt who lives in this neighbourhood, right here in Brooklyn, though the rest of the family got out of Brooklyn a long time ago, before he was born. Smartest thing his parents ever did. You've gotta be in Manhattan, downtown; that's where the action is, if you want to get ahead. But his great-aunt is a hoot. He likes the old gal, and she likes him, and she's got a bit of money put away so he visits every month or so.

Andrew Covington is good-looking, tall and slim with dark-blond hair and green eyes. He's a snappy dresser, even when he's going to visit his great-aunt in Brooklyn. Shirt and tie and all that. He works on Wall Street. Sure, business is bad on Wall Street, ever since the Crash. A lot of up-and-coming young guys lost their jobs, but not everyone. Not Andrew Covington. There's money to be made even in a bear market, if you know your stuff and play your cards right. Is she interested in the markets? A little? Well, Andrew Covington is her guy. Has she been up to Manhattan much? No? Sure, you'd like to see more of it. He ends up inviting her to meet him for lunch at the Automat on her next day off.

Rose chooses her dress carefully: her myrtle-green pleated satin, along with shoes, lipstick, hat. Everything has to be right. This is her chance, her big chance. She can't blow it. Andrew Covington, up in Manhattan, has no way of knowing what kind of girl Rose is, what reputation she has – unless his great-aunt has a very unusual circle of acquaintances. She gets off the subway that Wednesday looking like she stepped off a magazine page, advertising the smart young career girl in New York City.

Rose loves the Automat, the neat precision of a restaurant where there's a place for everything and a clearly defined way of getting what you want. She lets Andrew pick out her lunch, though, following his lead, taking his suggestions. She sits across the table and asks him leading questions about his work, his interests, his background. He is happy to talk about himself. But he wants to know about her, too, about Rose. She glances at her watch.

“Oh, goodness, look at the time,” she says. “Don't you have to be getting back to work? If you want to know all about little old me, we'll have to do that next time.”

“Next time? How about next time is dinner and dancing on Friday night? Dinner at Lindy's, dancing at the Savoy Plaza.”

“Oooh, I
love
to dance. Can't wait. Where will we meet? No, you don't want to come all the way down to Brooklyn to get me.” Rose is only too happy to meet Andrew on his side of the Brooklyn Bridge, on his ground, which she hopes will soon become her ground.

She spends the rest of her day off in Loehmann's, going through every dress on the rack till she finds one she can wear on Friday night. As she checks it out, she glances up at the top floor. Someday, she'll be there. She's on her way. Andrew Covington isn't a rich guy – she's smart enough to know that – but he's better off than any fellow she's ever gone out with and he's on the way up, too. He's twenty-eight, a year older than her, and he says he's going to be a millionaire by the time he's thirty-five. He would have been a millionaire by thirty if it wasn't for the Crash.

They meet several times over the next six weeks for dinner and dancing, once or twice for lunch. Then, one Friday afternoon, he asks if she can come to a party with him Saturday night.

“It's a dinner party. Friends from work,” he adds. “My boss is going to be there.”

“Oooh, I'll need a nice dress for that,” Rose says.

“Why don't you let me buy you one? May I take you shopping?”

“Weeelllll…I guess I should say yes, if you want me to look nice enough to impress your boss and your friends from work.”

“Impress ‘em? You'll knock ‘em dead, baby. You and me are gonna go far together, Rosie.”

Rose floats home that night. She still doesn't let Andrew walk her home, though she's come clean and told him it's because she lives in a poor neighbourhood. Her family back home are good people, but she's on her own in New York, working hard to make her way, and she doesn't want him to see the rundown place she lives now, is that okay? Of course that's okay. And Rose drifts through the sultry streets to Mrs. Borkowski's boarding house, dreaming of the dress she'll let Andrew buy for her. A red dress. Would that be too daring? Black is always classy, of course. Or white. With her colouring, she looks good in white. Only, her period must be due sometime soon; it might not be a good idea to wear white in case…

Her period. When was it? She has to stop and think, though usually she's very regular. She counts back. No, she definitely missed it this month. It should have been weeks ago. She hasn't had one since…before Tony came to her. All those nights with Tony. He never once wore a safe. She was living in a magic spell and he was planning to marry her. Neither of them thought of being safe.

She checks the calendar carefully. Near as she can tell, she has missed one whole period and by now she should have been in the middle of her second one. She's never skipped more than a day or two before.

The next morning, Saturday morning, when she's arranged to meet Andrew to go shopping, she wakes up feeling queasy. Has she felt like this before? Maybe just a touch. She put it down to nerves, excitement over Andrew. Today it could be excitement about the party, worry about Tony. It could be anything. But fifteen minutes later, when she's kneeling over Mrs. Borkowski's third-floor toilet, her cheek pressed against the none-too-clean porcelain, she knows she can't fool herself, or anyone else, any longer.

Rose heads out into the streets, walking blindly, lost in the summer sunshine. Andrew Covington is waiting for her in Manhattan, waiting and waiting. He doesn't have her address or a phone number; he only knows the candy store where she works, but she's not going back there. He'll wait all day but she'll never show up. She'll miss the party; he'll call a secretary in his department to be his date at the last minute and they'll hit it off brilliantly and end up married and she'll be by his side as he rises to be vice-president of the company.

Rose goes to the Loew's Kings and watches two double features, the cartoons, a newsreel or two. She doesn't come out till dusk, hungry and sleepy and bleary-eyed from the moving images that filled the screen. She walks back to the alley where she first went with Danny Ricks after another movie, and looks up at the grey-blue sky between the roofs of the buildings. Her head rests back on the brick wall as her eyes close and her body sags a little. But she's all alone this time. No-one comes to join her.

ETHEL
 
BROOKLYN, MAY 1932

E
THEL SAT IN
J
IM'S
armchair in the living room, knitting, when she heard the outside door to the apartment open. Jimmy, sprawled on the floor lining up blocks in a patient array, jumped up. “Daddy's home!” he cried. To an almost-three-year-old who adored his father, the fact that Daddy was home at eleven o'clock in the morning could only be good news.

Ethel listened to the sound Jim's feet made coming up the hall toward the living room door. She knew from his feet how his morning had gone, even if she couldn't tell by him coming home so early. First going off, he used to be gone all day looking for work. Then he would come home early in the afternoon. Now he was hardly out before he was back home again. Giving up got easier and easier.

“No luck?” she called out, trying to force something bright and cheerful into her voice.

“Daddy, can you play with me?” Jimmy said. The same words Ralphie always used. Ralphie was in school now, but as eager for his father's company as ever when he got home. Ralphie was old enough, though, to understand that there was something wrong in coming home from school to find his father already home ahead of him. A six-year-old could pick up on things a smaller child would miss. And the new baby, curled tight inside Ethel's womb, knew nothing of job lines and unemployment, nothing of her mother's worries or her father's frustration. This one was going to be a girl, Ethel knew. She was sure enough that she was knitting one little sweater in pink, though all the others were a safe yellow or green or white.

Jim was in the door now, Jimmy up in his arms. “No, nothing on the go,” he said. Ethel stood up awkwardly, getting out of his chair. She hated that she was only four months along and already so big. She was carrying this one differently, lower, which was one of the reasons Jean said it must be a girl.

“Come outside and play alleys with me, Daddy?” Jimmy begged. Jim closed his eyes, looking as if he'd just put in a full day's work. Maybe in some ways looking for work and not finding it was more tiring than going to work, Ethel thought. Building was still slow because of the Crash, and what construction work was going on, Jim didn't have a chance at, because of the Ironworkers' Union. Because he'd gone against them, to work on the Empire State Building. He'd taken her and the boys up to Manhattan to see it one day after it was finished. Jim looked proud that day, but now, after weeks and weeks without work or only the odd day's work here and there, he looked beaten.

She thought the baby she was carrying had got started the first night he came home without finding any work at all. After the work on the new skyscraper was finished, they had made do with the money Jim could pick up from odd jobs here and there. They'd gotten used to the awkward coldness that settled between them after Ethel found out about Jim's little fling – that was what she called it, in her mind. But that night in the winter when he came back and told her he'd been out all day looking for jobs and there was nothing out there at all, she knew he was telling the truth. He hadn't been with a woman, not that time anyway. That defeated look could only come on the face of a man who'd been told he couldn't have a day's work to support his wife and kids. He didn't say much, but that night in bed he turned to her and buried his face between her breasts with the sadness of a man who needs a woman's love to make him feel like a man again.