Exile on Bridge Street (11 page)

“Because I think you're pretty and . . .”

“Ya full of it,” she says, thrusting the flowers into my chest. “Give'm back to Dinny Meehan, we ain't gypsies here.”

“I don't know anyone by that name,” I say.

“The hell ya don't.”

Mr. Lonergan laughs at me as the children sing songs while dancing in circles, which I feel is a mockery of my shame-faced stance there in the entrance of the bicycle shop. Before I can think of asking her some question so that I can listen to her answer, like Sadie explained, Mrs. Lonergan comes back and stands in front of me, waiting.

I look over her shoulder at Mr. Lonergan, then ask her, “Can we talk, you and me?”

“Sure ye can, bhoy,” she says, looking back at her husband in triumph. “Anna? Help yer fadder take care o' dese childers will ye now?”

“Sure, Ma.”

“What is it, bhoy?” she says outside with the white noise mumbling in the background.

“The man tells me to give this to you and not to the mister,” I say handing her an envelope. “It's two months' rent.”

“Good, good, tell the man many t'anks, yeah? It'll go straight fer the rent here at the bikecycle shop, t'will. What is this all over it?” she says, noticing a red smear.

“Oh,” I say, realizing it is blood. “I wiped my hand on it by accident, I'm sorry.”

“No matther,” she says turning back.

“One more thing.”

“What is it?”

“Has Bill Lovett been seen round here, Mrs. Lonergan? Does he come by? Does he speak with your son and his fellows?”

She looks away, then back at me, “Well I've not seen Mr. Lovett in quite some time. Since before all that stirring up in the Red Hook last month, I'd say. Don't werry though, we know who the man is round here.”

“Has he come here to the shop looking for you to pay him tribute?” I ask, remembering Dinny's directions.

“Absolutely not,” Mrs. Lonergan says in shock. “My son knows who the king is round here too and wouldn't allow it. Besides, he never even works with Lovett any longer. Dinny's got Richie's whole crew up in the Navy Yard werking for Red Donnelly and with Cinders Connolly under the bridges everyday,” she explains with logic. “Like they never even see Bill Lovett like.”

“All right, thank you. I'll let the man know.”

“Good lad, many t'anks. And tell him we're doin' rather well here on Bridge Street, and with Richie and his boys werkin' regular work now'days maybe, if God allows it, maybe we can move to a better neighborhood that has more money. I mean to say, we love Irishtown an' all. To the core of us, but in Crown Heights or Prospect Park there's moneyed people who ride on the weekends for the pleasure in it and spend more coin than anyone here in Irishtown an' it's a legitimate business proposal I have here.”

“Prospect Park? That's a nice area, I hear.”

“Oh t'is child, t'is,” she says in a loud and happy tone. “And trees to fill yer eyes all the days. Will ye tell 'em?”

“I will.”

“I mean we're not unhappy about the man's kindness in helping, no no. But with a family an' all, ye know, with a family like ours, best to move to the better schoolin' areas and cleaner churches with the smarter people. I mean look at this bhoy. Tommy? Tommy, c'mere, child.”

One of her young sons comes walking out the door and with only a pair of talking shoes on him where the sole of it flops at each step.

“Look at him,” Mary says to me. “They call him Tiny Thomas 'cause he's small fer his age. He's six but looks four, does he not?”

I don't know if I should agree, but simply nod.

“He needs a good school,” she demands. “Prospect Park's like a heaven to us on Johnson Street. A heaven. We deserve a legitimate business and to live with the good people. The gentlelife.”

“The gentlelife, yes,” I agree wholeheartedly with the sound of that description. “I'll tell him.”

“Oh yer a sweet child,” she says and cups her hand on my jaw. “And yer face looks better too. Yer eyes 'specially, not blackened t'all any longer.”

“Thank you,” I say, wishing I could say the same about her own face.

“But the nose looks atrocious,” she finishes, tilting her head back to look down at me.

And before I can respond, she closes the door to the bicycle shop with her envelope at her breast and off to the next stop I go.

Standing in front of the tenement on Bridge and York, I throw the flowers to the sidewalk and enter, up the stairs I go and knock on the third floor.

The youngest daughter opens the door and I ask her, “Is Mrs. McGowan here?”

“She'll be back in just a moment,” says the daughter.

“Oh,” I say, unsure of what to do next.

“What's your name,” she asks openly.

“Uh, Patrick . . .”

She smiles, “No it's not.”

I look away, but she holds a stare on me, “I remember you from my brother's wake.”

I nod my head.

“You've gotten bigger since then.”

“Have I?”

“And I like your haircut, it looks nice on you.”

I smile and again look away, “My nose looks like a blooming mushroom though.”

“It'll heal,” she says kindly, laughing at my accent.

“What is your name?”

“Emma.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Me too,” I say and look up at her sweet and genuine face. “Wait here.”

“What?”

I run down the stairwell in the dark, jump over the stoops, and grab the flowers from the sidewalk and sprint up the stairs.

“Here, these are for you.”

“Oh,” she smiles, smells them. “You didn't get these for me though.”

“Now I did,” I say, out of breath. “You deserve them. You're nice and I think you're pretty and I mean it too. Not just saying it. I mean it. I remember when Vincent was talking to you on the sofa at the wake. I thought you were pretty then, but . . . uh . . . I had a lot on my mind, I suppose.”

She smiled at me in a wondrously uninhibited way.

“Do you go to school still?”

“Yes, I do. At PS 5,” she says.

“That is over by McLaughlin Park?”

“Yes.”

“I wish I could go to school again,” I say.

“You could come to my school, they would take you in.”

“Really?”

“They're always trying to get the kids to stay in school, but so many leave to get jobs.”

“I'm saving money to bring my family here, so I guess it's best that I work.”

“Well, I think that's good of you. That you care about your family.”

I could see that she was thinking about people who don't care about their family. Maybe even that her father was on her mind, who I'd never met or heard anything about.

“There are a lot of us that care about your family,” I say.

“I know, your friends have been good to us since before I was even born. When my Ma was pregnant with me, my brother and, uh . . . your friend,” she stuttered, not wanting to say Dinny Meehan's name. “They were best friends. Just kids really, but they made their way. Before that, we were not doing well. Working together, those two got us a place to live and everything. Your friend has always been there for us.”

The humility of the girl. Her youthful beauty and the genuine things she says, understating that her family was homeless and desperate. All of these things make me very happy. It is amazing to me that through all of these hardships, hard work, and hard living in Brooklyn that I can feel something so delicate in me. So warm and colorful that makes my stomach turn in happiness. There is an immediate attraction between the two of us, but being so young, neither one of us knows what to do with it. But on every moment we have together in the hallway do we hang. Hoping it won't end. Fools for feelings, the two of us.

Downstairs we hear the door open and without looking I know it is Mrs. McGowan.

“Emma,” I whisper.

“Yes?”

“My name is William Garrity. Just don't tell anyone, all right?”

She smiles at me. That smile where a secret between her and I is held. That trust which comes from a place where distrust is the standard. A bit of happiness twinkling far off in our minds yet matured but still endowed and aroused and savory like the meat of the lamb. I smile back at her marble-white face and bright lips amongst the tenement wood-grays and rush down to help Mrs. McGowan carry up her groceries.

“Such a nice child,” she says.

“How are things, Mrs. McGowan?”

“They're good, child. Send t'anks to the man from me, will ye?” she says, wearing the same shawl I saw her wearing months earlier.

“I will,” I say as we reach the third floor.

And from the doorway I look to see the fatherless daughter holding tight on her grandmother's dress and thigh, looking up at me through her thin blond hair and big gnome eyes. Behind her is a toddler about L'il Dinny's age, who looks up at me distrustingly as does his mother, the widow McGowan.

“You know he still talks of your son, Mrs. McGowan. Everyone does too. We have his strength with us. A lot of stories come from that man's life, and I'll make sure they'll be told for a long time. They got him when he was ripe, they say. Should be here with us now.”

“He's with me everyday, child, and we'll be leavin' Brooklyn, if God above allows it. The jobbers ye bhoys got me an' me daughters downtown are helpin' us save. We want to go to the West. Or maybe Rochester where I've a cousin. Far away at the least of it. But the man, well . . .” she trails off.

I look at Mrs. McGowan's face when she speaks of leaving Brooklyn and notice that she longs for it. Only the reference to Dinny Meehan stopping her from continuing to speak of it. I scratch my head and look past Mrs. McGowan at Emma, who has by now hidden the flowers I gave her.

“For you,” I say handing Mrs. McGowan a bloody envelope.

“Thanks so much. Come in for some tae?”

“I can't, but thank you,” I say, then nod toward Emma, who smiles at me.

* * *

W
ALKING
DOWN
THE
HILL
ON
B
RIDGE
Street toward the Dock Loaders' Club, I think that there is nothing in the world that is more beautiful and intriguing than Emma McGowan. I don't have feelings for Anna Lonergan. I can see why Dinny would want us betrothed, since the Lonergan family has so many boys in it, along with the teenagers that follow Richie. It's the future Dinny is concerned for, but what about what I want? I want to be with someone who makes me feel the way Emma does, but with all this talk of leaving Brooklyn or moving—Sadie, Mrs. Lonergan, Mrs. McGowan. . . . Why they all want to leave is no surprise, of course, but I hope only that Emma does not go just yet. But the way she hid those flowers from her mother leads me to think that she does not want her mother to know she is being courted by one of Dinny's boys.

Reporting back to the Dock Loaders' Club, all the men I know as I remember them are there: it's Tommy Tuohey at the stairwell looking out for the men upstairs, and Paddy Keenan and James Hart unloading the automobile truck back behind the rear room in the morning, because it's in the morning when we get most of the day's work done anyway. Rain or not. But even though it's morning, Beat McGarry and Ragtime Howard sit in the same spots as they always do in the afternoon and in the evening; at the end of the bar not far from the stairwell and the rear room never once lifting a finger to help.

“And it was all a hoax,” Beat finishes a story while everyone tries not to listen, for they've heard it many times. “The man never jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge at all, but still became famous. Some people say that's what made him smart. Can ya imagine that, kiddo? A lie as proof of a man's intelligence? If that's what the future looks like, count me out. I'll just stay safe and sound right here. . . . Where'd ya get that, William?” He notices me fiddling with the pencil I keep in my pocket.

“I . . .”

“Ya stole it. Do ya know how to use it?”

“I do.”

“Hmm,” Beat says. “Keep it to ya'self. People round here don' like writin' things down, ya know. But that reminds me, I found out about them words on the picture o' President Lincoln over there about the dooryard.”

“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd?” I ask, looking over toward the lone picture of Lincoln on the wall behind us with those words underneath it.

“That's it. It's from a poem, ya know. A poem about Lincoln, in fact. Someone musta hung it on the wall years ago. Been there since I can remember.”

“I knew it,” I say. “Had to be poetry.”

“Guy named Walter Whitman wrote it. Not Poe after all.”

Ragtime grunted.

“No one said it was Poe anyway,” I tell him.

“No? I thought Ragtime was monikerin' ya Poe 'cause he wrote Poe-ems,” he said, laughing at his own joke.

I don't laugh much at Beat McGarry's jokes, but that's all right because no one really does anyway. “What was Walter Whitman like?”

“He was a newspaperman and a poet, wrote a big book o' poetry, and that's the title o' one o' his poems there,” he said pointing at the picture.

“Where did you hear all of this about the poem by Mr. Whitman?” I ask Beat.

“The Gas Drip Bard. He was a lifer at the Union Gas Company, now he just tells stories. He's what they call a shanachie.”

“ I know what a shanachie is,” I say. “I want to meet him.”

“We'll do that someday.”

“Let's go,” James Hart says slapping his hand on the bar as I remember still having one more envelope to deliver to the widow Gilligan.

We jump in Hart's automobile truck out back and before long he is chaffing about it. “Great day for a move,” says he, holding the wheel and wiping the outside of the window with a dirty rag, bumping over the rough streets, dodging potholes and horse-drays and trolleys down Flatbush.