By the Rivers of Brooklyn (33 page)

“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?”

“Yes. The frost, you know.”

Claire filled her bowl with Cream of Wheat from the pot on the stove, poured herself a cup of tea, and sat down. “You want toast?” Annie said, cutting the bread.

“Yes, please.” From where Annie stood in the pantry she could see the pink rose against Claire's white cheek, both of them beautiful, perfect and untouched.

ETHEL
 
BROOKLYN, MAY 1955

C
LAIRE ARRIVED IN
N
EW
York on a spring evening when the air was warm and the sky was blue and gold. Ethel heard the downstairs door open at six o'clock and she could hear girls' voices, light feet on the stairs. Diane came in first, carrying a powder-blue train case, and behind her, lugging a large suitcase, was a fair-haired girl in a green-and-white striped suit. Jim folded the paper and got up at once to take the suitcase from her. “So, Claire,” he began. Then, as she straightened up, his voice dropped for a moment. “Glory be, you look just like your mother.”

Ethel stepped forward, holding out her hands. Jim was right. Replace the haircut and dress with the styles of 1925 and Rose might have been standing before them: tall, fair-haired, pretty, except the girl's eyes were brown instead of the Evans blue. But this girl did not have Rose's brashness; she looked polite and eager to please. To cover Jim's gaffe, Ethel said, “We're so glad to have you, Claire. I'm your Aunt Ethel, of course. And how was your journey?”

Claire looked around her at the tiny neat kitchen, the faded wallpaper, the well-scrubbed linoleum. “It was fine, thank you,” she said. Her voice had the slightest trace of a St. John's accent, nothing heavy, but it warmed Ethel's heart. All her friends had lost their accents; Brooklyn sounds overlaid the old rhythms of their speech. Claire sounded fresh, like something just unfolded and taken out of a drawer, clean and pressed.

Through supper, the girls did most of the talking. They seemed to hit it off right away. Diane had suggested weeks ago that Claire should stay with her and Carol in their apartment in Manhattan, rather than with Jim and Ethel in Brooklyn, but Ethel had vetoed that. “I owe it to Annie to look after her properly,” she had told Diane.

Diane's lip curled. “So, if she was with me, she wouldn't be looked after properly?”

“She should live with a family,” Ethel said. “That's all I'm saying. Your place is too small, anyway.”

Ethel knew Diane and Carol lived a fast, immoral New York life, and she had accepted that there was nothing she could do about it. But Annie's girl, little Claire, deserved something better. She was nearly a year older than Diane but would seem younger, Ethel was sure, having been raised at home. She would enjoy their sheltered, quiet family life. She would be company for Ethel.

Now, listening to the girls talk, Ethel wondered if Claire wouldn't prefer to live in Manhattan with Diane and Carol after all. Diane chattered about her new job at an advertising agency, which she loved. Claire talked about the course she was going to take so she could be a legal secretary, and whether it would be easy to get work in a law office once she was finished. They sounded so smart, the two of them. She couldn't ever remember hearing girls talk that way when she was young. The only jobs she ever knew of for girls were working as a maid or working in a shop. She passed the salt and the butter and poured iced tea from a glass pitcher, thinking how this was as it should be: children were meant to rise above their parents, to go farther and higher.

Ethel had laid aside any hopes of herself and Jim ever doing any better for themselves.
This is my life now
, she reminded herself, looking around the four tiny rooms above the shop.
This is what I have
. She had a daughter in Manhattan, a smart-mouthed career girl who knew everything and couldn't stop criticizing her mother. She had a good son with a nice wife out on Long Island, where she was lucky to see them once a month, and no grandchildren yet. She had a husband who worked downstairs all day and climbed the steps at suppertime and hid behind his newspaper, who cared more about whether the Dodgers won or lost than about whether his wife was dead or alive. She had her church, which had continued to be a habit even after she and God had gone their separate ways. She had a few old friends from home; she had a photograph, a telegram, and a Gold Star to mark the place of her eldest son, dead on Okinawa. She had a pain she carried between her stomach and chest, dull but large and hard as a fist. After thirty years in New York, she didn't ask much, Ethel told herself, but was it really fair she'd landed in an apartment as small and shabby as this one?

After supper, Claire helped Ethel clear the dishes, bringing her up to date on news of Harold and Frances and their family, with whom she had stayed for a few days in Toronto on the way down. Diane sat at the table with her father and lit up a cigarette. Ethel hated it when Diane smoked in the apartment, which was probably why Diane always made a point of doing it.

Ethel enjoyed having Claire to work with, liked the soothing rhythm of two women working together, something she had never enjoyed with Diane. It reminded her of years ago, clearing a table with Frances or with Jean, or with Annie, during that year they'd spent back home. Back when Claire and Diane were both babies, which meant it must have been more than twenty years ago.