By the Rivers of Brooklyn (5 page)

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

E
THEL 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.

And so did Jim. Yes, Jim had been wonderful. He gave bottles and had even changed the odd diaper, clumsily. Ethel knew from watching Jean's husband Robert that some men had no real interest in babies or small children, appeared not to notice them except as noise until they were old enough to throw and catch a ball, if boys, or to look pretty, if they were girls. Jim was never like that. Even when Ralphie was the tiniest thing, Jim would talk to him while he walked the floor with him. He would talk the strangest talk – not baby talk, gushing and cooing like a woman would do, but he would carry on these serious one-sided conversations, or sometimes not serious, sometimes telling jokes and stories. Stories from home. He talked about home a lot to Ralphie, talked about taking him to Newfoundland someday, showing him to his Nan and Pop Evans, his Nanny Moores.

At those times Ethel had to turn away, busy herself with dishes or laundry, something noisy. She wanted home so bad it was like a pain in her gut. And she knew they couldn't go, not for years and years anyway.

Ethel moved to the window and looked out at the back of another house just like the one they lived in. They had two rooms – barely. One L-shaped room had Ralphie's crib and a chest of drawers in one arm, the stove, sink, and cupboard tucked in the corner, and the table and chairs, with the one armchair, in the other arm. Their other room, the bedroom, was nestled into the crook of the L and was so small the double bed had to be shoved up against the wall. Only Jim could get out on his side; Ethel had to crawl over the foot of the bed to get out. She remembered herself one year ago, a new bride and a new homemaker, proud of this tiny space and loving it. Now the walls were closing in.

This was Saturday and Jim might have been home early, but lately he had been working all the extra hours he could; all the men were, trying to get more work done before the snow came. Ethel hoped he'd be tired, too, when he got home. Too tired to want anything in bed.

She used to enjoy it in bed with Jim, at the very first, even though she felt guilty and knew she shouldn't. She used to pretend, sometimes, that he was Bert and that she and Bert had had a chance to finish what they'd started, making love in a proper bed with sheets instead of on the damp ground with twigs sticking into her backside. Now, since Ralphie was born, all she could ever think was how tired she was and how she didn't want another baby, not till Ralphie was a little older.

She was lucky; Jim was tired. In the morning, Ethel let him sleep while she went to church. For several months after her marriage she didn't go. The church she had attended in her old neighbourhood was farther away now, and anyway she didn't feel right about going. Then Ralphie came and she couldn't get out. But a month ago Jean had asked her to come to the Methodist church with her, because Jean's oldest, Sadie, was going to be in some Sunday School program. Ethel found it was nice to have an hour to herself, out of the apartment, away from Jim and Ralphie. It was wonderful to have a husband who didn't mind watching the baby for a little while on Sunday morning.

She liked dressing up a little, going with Jean and her children – Robert, who was brought up Catholic, didn't go to church at all – sitting in the small quiet chapel on the hard pews, hearing the organ and the choir. She didn't like the words of some of the hymns anymore, or the sermons. This week, for instance, the minister was preaching about the Prodigal Son. Ethel was the only Christian she knew who didn't like that story. She felt sorry for the older brother, who always got a hard time when preachers told the tale. What was so bad about staying at home and working hard? she wondered. The older brother could be like Annie – the one who stayed behind and kept house when everyone else went off to seek their fortune. Why shouldn't he want a feast, a party for himself once in awhile? Was that so wrong? Why was the old father too mean to slaughter a calf for his faithful older son? Just once, Ethel would have liked to see the older son get some credit.