by Colm Toibin
He was considerate and interesting and good-looking. She knew that he liked her, not only because he said that he did, but by the way he responded to her and listened to her when she spoke. Everything was right, and they had the long summer when the exams were over to look forward to. A few times in the dancehall, or even on the street, she had seen a man who had appealed to her in some way, but each time it was just a fleeting thought lasting not more than a few seconds. The idea of sitting by the wall again with her fellow lodgers filled her with horror. And yet she knew that in his mind Tony was moving faster than she was, and she knew that she would have to slow him down, but she had no idea how to do so in a way that did not involve being unpleasant to him.
The following Friday night, as they huddled together on the way home from the dancehall, he whispered to her once more that he loved her. When she did not respond he began to kiss her and then he whispered it to her again. Without warning, she found herself pulling away from him. When he asked her what was wrong she did not reply. His saying that he loved her and his expecting a reply frightened her, made her feel that she would have to accept that this was the only life she was going to have, a life spent away from home. When they reached Mrs. Kehoe’s house, having walked in silence, she thanked him almost formally for the night and, avoiding eye contact with him, said goodnight and went inside.
She knew that what she had done was wrong, that he would suffer now until he saw her on Thursday. She wondered if he would call around to see her on Saturday, but he did not. She could think of no good reason to tell him that she wanted to see less of him. Maybe, she thought, she should say to him that she did not want to talk about their kids when they had known each other only a short time. But then he might ask her, she believed, if she was not serious about him and she would be forced to answer, to say something. And if it was not fully encouraging she might, she knew, lose him. He was not someone who would enjoy having a girlfriend who was not sure how much she liked him. She knew him well enough to know that.
On Thursday, as she came out of her class and was walking down the stairs, she spotted him but he did not see her; there were many students milling about. She stopped for a second and realized that she still did not know what she was going to say to him. Carefully, she went back up the stairs and found that if she moved along the first landing she would be able to see him from above. Somehow, she thought, if she could look at him, take him in clearly when he was not trying to amuse her or impress her, something would come to her, some knowledge, or some ability to make a decision.
She discovered a vantage point from where, unless he looked directly upwards and to the left, he would not see her. He was, she thought, unlikely to look in her direction as he seemed absorbed by the students coming and going in the lobby. When she directed her gaze down she saw that he was not smiling; he seemed nonetheless fully at ease and curious. There was something helpless about him as he stood there; his willingness to be happy, his eagerness, she saw, made him oddly vulnerable. The word that came to her as she looked down was the word “delighted.” He was delighted by things, as he was delighted by her, and he had done nothing else ever but make that clear. Yet somehow that delight seemed to come with a shadow, and she wondered as she watched him if she herself, in all her uncertainty and distance from him, was the shadow and nothing else. It occurred to her that he was as he appeared to her; there was no other side to him. Suddenly, she shivered in fear and turned, making her way down the stairs and towards him in the lobby as quickly as she could.
He told her about his work, with a story of two Jewish sisters who wanted to feed him, who had a huge meal ready for him when he had restored their hot water, even though it was only three o’clock in the afternoon. He did an imitation of their accents. Even though he spoke as if nothing had happened between them on the previous Friday night, Eilis knew that this funny fast talk of his, as story followed story while they walked to the trolley-car, was unusual for a Thursday night and was partly a way of pretending that there had been no problem then and that there was none now.
As they came close to her street she turned to him. “There’s something I need to say to you.”
“I know that.”
“You remember when you told me that you loved me?”
He nodded. The expression on his face was sad.
“Well, I didn’t really know what to say. So maybe I should say that I have thought about you and I like you, I like seeing you, I care for you and maybe I love you too. And the next time if you tell me you love me, I’ll—”
She stopped.
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll say I love you too.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Holy shit! Sorry for my language but I thought you were telling me that you didn’t want to see me again.”
She stood beside him looking at him. She was shaking.
“You don’t look as though you mean it,” he said.
“I mean it.”
“Well, why aren’t you smiling?”
She hesitated and then smiled weakly. “Can I go home now?”
“No. I want to just jump up and down. Can I do that?”
“Quietly,” she said, and laughed.
He jumped into the air waving his hands.
“Let’s get this straight,” he said when he came towards her again. “You love me?”
“Yes. But don’t ask me anything else and don’t mention wanting kids who are Dodgers fans.”
“What? You want kids who support the Yankees? Or the Giants?”
He was laughing.
“Tony?”
“What?”
“Don’t push me.”
He kissed her and whispered to her, and when they reached Mrs. Kehoe’s house he kissed her again until she had to tell him to stop or they would have an audience. Even though she was studying the following night and would have to miss the dance, she agreed to see him and go for a walk with him, if only around the block.
The exams were easier than she had expected; even the law paper had easy questions, requiring only the most basic knowledge. When they were over she felt relief but knew also that she would have no excuse now when Tony wanted to make plans. He began by setting a date for her visit to his parents’ house for supper. This worried her, since she already believed that he had told them too much about her; she now understood that she was going to be presented to them as something more than a girlfriend.
On the evening in question when he collected her he was in a relaxed mood. It was still bright and the air was warm and children were playing on the streets as older people sat on the stoops. It was something that had seemed unimaginable in the winter and it made Eilis feel light and happy as they walked along.
“I’ve got to warn you about something,” Tony said. “I have a kid brother called Frank. He’s eight going on eighteen. He’s nice and he’s smart but he’s been talking of all the things he’s going to say to my girlfriend when he meets her. He’s got a real big mouth. I tried to pay him money to go and play ball with his friends and my dad has threatened him but he says none of us are going to stop him. Once he gets it off his chest, you’ll like him.”
“What will he say?”
“The thing is we don’t know. He could say anything.”
“He sounds very exciting,” she said.
“Oh, yeah, and there’s one more thing.”
“Don’t tell me. You have an old granny who sits in the corner and she wants to talk too.”
“No, she’s in Italy. The thing is that all of them are Italians and they look like Italians. They are real dark, all except me.”
“And how did they get you?”
“My mom’s dad was like me, at least that’s the rumour, but I never saw him and my dad never saw him and my mom doesn’t remember him because he was killed in the First World War.”
“Does your dad think…” She began to laugh.
“It drives my mom crazy but he
doesn’t really think it, he just says it sometimes when I do something funny that I must be from some other family. It’s a joke.”
His family lived on the second storey of a three-storey building. Eilis was surprised at how young Tony’s parents seemed. When his three brothers appeared, she saw, as he had told her, that each of them had black hair and eyes that were deep brown. The two older ones were much taller than Tony. Frank introduced himself as the youngest one. His hair, she thought, was astonishingly dark, as were his eyes. The other two were introduced to her as Laurence and Maurice.
She realized immediately that she should not comment on the difference between Tony and the rest of the family since she imagined that every single person who entered this apartment and saw them all together for the first time had a great deal to say on the subject. She pretended it was something that she had not even noticed. She presumed at the beginning that the kitchen was just the first room and that beyond it lay a parlour and a dining room, but slowly she understood that one door led to a bedroom where the boys slept and another door led to a bathroom. There was no other room. The small table in the kitchen, she saw, was set for seven. She imagined that there was another bedroom beyond the boys’ room where the parents slept, but once Frank began to talk, he explained to her that each night their parents slept in a corner of the kitchen in a bed that he showed her was on its side against the wall, discreetly covered.
“Frank, if you don’t stop talking you won’t be fed,” Tony said.
There was a smell of food and spices. The two middle brothers were studying her carefully, silently, awkwardly. They both, she thought, looked like film stars.
“We don’t like Irish people,” Frank suddenly said.
“Frank!” His mother moved from the stove towards him.
“Mom, we don’t. We’ve got to be clear about it. A big gang of them beat up Maurizio and he had to have stitches. And the cops were all Irish too, so they did nothing about it.”
“Francesco, shut your mouth,” his mother said.
“Ask him,” Frank said to Eilis, pointing to Maurice.
“They weren’t all Irish,” Maurice said.
“They had red hair and big legs,” Frank said.
“Don’t mind him,” Maurice said. “Only some of them had.”
Frank’s father asked him to follow him into the hallway; when they returned after a few moments Frank was, to the amusement of his brothers, suitably chastened.
As Frank sat opposite her, quiet while food was brought to the table and wine poured, Eilis felt sorry for him and noticed how much he resembled Tony just now; feeling down seemed to have affected his entire being. Over the previous weekend, Eilis had received instructions from Diana about how to eat spaghetti properly using a fork only, but what was served was not as thin and slippery as the spaghetti Diana had made for her. The sauce was just as red, but was filled with flavours that she had never sampled before. It was, she thought, almost sweet. Every time she tasted it, she had to stop and hold it in her mouth, wondering what ingredients had gone into it. She wondered if the others, so used to this food, were being careful not to look at her too closely or make any comment as she attempted to eat it using only a fork as they did.
Tony’s mother, who spoke at times with a strong Italian accent, asked her about the exams and if she intended to do another year at the college. She explained that it was a two-year course, and that, when she finished, she would be a bookkeeper and could work in an office rather than on the shop floor. As Eilis and Tony’s mother discussed this, none of the boys spoke or looked up from their food. When Eilis tried to catch Frank’s eye so she could smile at him, he did not respond. She glanced at Tony, but he too had his head down. She realized that she would love to run out of this room and down the stairs and through the streets to the subway to her own room and close the door on the world.
The main course was a flat piece of fried meat covered in a thin coating of batter. When Eilis tasted it, she found that there was cheese and then ham inside the batter. She could not identify the meat. And the batter itself was so crisp and full of flavour that, once more, each time she took a taste, she could not work out what had been used to make it. There were no vegetables or potatoes accompanying it, but as Diana had explained that this was normal for Italians, Eilis was not surprised. She was telling Tony’s mother how delicious it was, trying not to imply that it was also strange, when a knock came to the door. Tony’s father answered it and returned, shaking his head and laughing.
“Antonio, you are wanted. Number eighteen has a blocked drain.”
“Dad, it’s dinnertime,” Tony said.
“It’s Mrs. Bruno. We like her,” his father said.
“I don’t like her,” Frank said.
“Francesco, shut your mouth,” his father said.
Tony stood up and pushed his chair back.
“Take your overalls and your tools,” his mother said. She pronounced the words as though with difficulty.
“I won’t be long,” he said to Eilis, “and if he says anything at all, report him to me.” He pointed at Frank, who began to laugh.
“Tony is the street plumber,” said Maurice and explained that since he worked as a mechanic they called him when cars and trucks and motorbikes needed repairing, while Laurence would soon be a qualified carpenter so that if people’s chairs or tables broke they could call him.
“But Frankie here is the brains of the family. He’s going to college.”
“Only if he learns to keep his mouth shut,” Laurence said.
“Those Irish guys who beat Maurizio up,” Frank said as though he had not been listening to any of their conversation, “they moved out to Long Island.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Eilis replied.
“And out there, they have these big houses and you have your own room and you don’t get to sleep in the same room as your brothers.”
“Would you not like that?” Eilis asked.
“No,” he said, “or maybe just sometimes.”
As he spoke, they all looked at him, Eilis noticed, and she had the impression that they thought the same thing as she did, that Frank was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen in her life. She had to stop herself looking at him too much as she waited for Tony to come back.
They decided to go ahead with dessert in Tony’s absence. It was a sort of cake, Eilis thought, filled with cream and then soaked in some sort of alcohol. And, as she watched Tony’s father unscrewing a machine and putting in water and spoonfuls of coffee, she realized that she would have plenty to tell her fellow lodgers. The coffee cups were tiny, and the coffee, when it came, was thick and bitter, despite the spoonful of sugar that she added. Although she did not like it, she attempted to drink it, as the rest of them seemed to think it was nothing special.
Slowly, the conversation became easier but still she found that she was on display and every word she said was being listened to carefully. When they asked her about home she tried to say as little as possible and then worried that they might think she had something to hide. Each time she spoke now she observed Frank staring at her, taking in everything as though he would need to memorize it. When the meal was over and Tony had still not returned, Laurence and Maurice said that they would go to get him away from the clutches of Mrs. Bruno and her daughter. Tony’s parents refused Eilis’s offer to help them clear off the table and appeared embarrassed now about Tony’s absence.
“I thought it would just take him a second,” his mother said. “It must have been serious. It’s hard to say no to people.”
When Tony’s parents were away from the table, Frank signalled to her to come close.
“Has he taken you to Coney Island yet?” he whispered.
“No,” she replied in a whisper.
“He took his last girlfriend there and they went on the big wheel and she puked hot dogs all over herself and she blamed him and wouldn’t go out with him again. He didn’t speak for a month.”
“Is that right?”
“Francesco, get up and go out,” his father said. “Or go and do homework. What was he saying?”
“He was telling me that Coney Island is nice in the summer,” Eilis said.
“He’s right. It is,” his father said. “Has Tony not brought you?”
“No.”
“I hope he will,” he said. “You’ll like it.”
She detected a smile on his face.
Frank was watching her with wonder because, she thought, she had not told his father what he had really said. When his father turned away, she made a grimacing face at him and he stared at her in astonishment before he made a face back at her and left the room just as Tony, in his overalls, was returning with his two brothers. He dropped his tools and held his hands up: they were grimy.
“I’m a saint,” he said, and grinned.
When Eilis told Miss Fortini that Tony was going to take her to the beach in Coney Island some Sunday now that the weather was becoming balmy, Miss Fortini expressed alarm. “I don’t think you’ve been watching your figure,” she said.
“Yes, I know,” Eilis replied. “And I have no bathing costume.”
“Italian men!” Miss Fortini said. “They don’t care in the winter but in the summer on the beach you have to look your best. My guy won’t go on the beach unless he already has a tan.”
Miss Fortini said that she had a friend who worked in another store that sold good-quality bathing suits, much better than the ones on sale in Bartocci’s, and she would get some on approval so that Eilis could try them. In the meantime, she advised her to begin watching her figure. Eilis attempted to say that she did not think Tony cared that much about suntans or how she might look on the beach, but Miss Fortini interrupted her to say that every Italian man cared about how his girlfriend looked on the beach, no matter how perfect she might be in other ways.
