By the Rivers of Brooklyn

by Trudy Morgan-Cole

  And she is free, and all alone, on this rainy March evening in her room, putting her feet up after standing all day at work, reading Life magazine and having a smoke. This is all she has the energy for most days. Apart from working and going out with fellows, she mostly lies on her bed, asleep or only half-awake. In fact she’s starting to drift off when a tap comes on her door. She doesn’t encourage fellows to come to her place looking for her; she’d rather make a date and meet them somewhere first, but it’s only to be expected that someone will take liberties sooner or later. It could be a girlfriend, of course, but Rose has few girlfriends left.

  “All right, hold your horses,” she calls. She gets up, pulls on a housecoat over the underwear she’s lounging in, and opens the door.

  Tony Martelli stands there, his shirt soaked almost transparent, his wet hair plastered to his skull. She hasn’t laid eyes on him since – when was it? – September. Six months.

  “I gotta talk to you, Rose,” he says.

  She opens the door, stands aside. He sits down on the bed, shivering with cold from the rain outside. “Take your shirt off,” she says. He strips off the wet fabric and she sees again what a lovely body he has, the clean lines of his well-muscled chest and arms and shoulders. Not one of the fellows she’s been with has been as good-looking as Tony, not really. She hands him a towel and he rubs his head vigorously and then wraps the towel around his shoulders. “It’s pouring out there,” he says.

  “You’re still shaking. Here, have a drink.” She opens the drawer where she keeps a flask of whiskey and hands it to him. As he drinks she sits down beside him, one leg cocked up on the bed so her housecoat falls open and her bare legs and the frilly edges of her underwear are showing.

  Tony looks up, and she sees something in his eyes that echoes the bleak emptiness in her own. She’s never seen that before. Tony is full, not empty, full of life and hope and plans. He’s still shaking, and she sees that it’s more than the rain that’s making him shiver.

  “What happened?”

  “We just got news today. My mama, she’s dead.”

  “Your mama. Over in Italy.” It seems so far away. Rose tries to imagine what she’d feel if she heard her mother died back in St. John’s. All she can imagine is the echo of an echo of a feeling: sadness, but nothing that would make her shake and go walking blindly in the rain.

  “You don’t understand, Rose, I never told you about me and my mama. I was always her favourite, always the boy who could do no wrong. The youngest, her baby, her last little boy. I helped her in the house, in the garden, I slept in her bed. She’d say, ‘My Tonio, my wonderful boy.’”

  Rose nodded. She has not heard it in these words before, but she knows Tony was his mother’s favourite. He must have told her, or else it was something Marcella said.

  “But you don’t know, Rose, what this means to her. To my mama, she has to give one son to God, one son to be a priest. And who better to give than her favourite son, especially when he’s so good, such a kind and helpful boy. So from all my childhood days, all she tells me is, ‘Tonio, you are given to God. You are my gift to God, you will be my priest.’”

  “Really?” Rose can’t imagine this, wrapping up one of your children like a package to give to God. Especially when Catholic priests can’t even marry, so it’s like you’re telling him from the day he’s born he’ll never grow up to love a woman or have a son of his own. She shudders. “That’s not fair of her, Tony. You musta known that, since you’re not a priest, right, honey?”

  “When I was fifteen, sixteen, I knew. I told my mama I was going to America and I wasn’t being no priest.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She cursed me, Rose. No, I don’t mean she just said a curse word at me. That wasn’t her way. She was a very holy woman. She just said that I was going against God’s will, and making her break her vow to God, and God would damn my soul to hell forever, and a curse would follow me to America and ruin everything I did.”

  “Tony! You don’t believe that stuff, do you?”

  He looks up at her with a smile that isn’t a smile. “Believe it? I don’t know. So far, the curse don’t hurt me much. I was doing pretty well here, till I lost you. Maybe that’s the start of it. But in the next life? She could be right. She made a vow and I broke it. Maybe I am going to hell.”

  Rose shivers, because she was raised to believe in a hell too, maybe not the Italian Catholic hell but the Newfoundland Salvation Army hell, just a few doors down from it. And from everything she knows, she’s going there for sure. She can’t quite believe in it, but she can’t quite stop believing either. But she says bravely, “Your mama’s curse can’t hurt you, Tony. That’s just old woman’s foolishness, something she said to make you feel bad.”

  “But Rose, those are the last words she said to me. I wrote her letters and she never answered them. She never spoke my name again, like I was dead to her. I loved my mama, and the last thing she ever said to me was a curse.”

  Rose takes him in her arms and lets him press his face against her chest, where her housecoat falls open and it’s just her bra there. He’s crying, his shoulders shaking, using her to cry into, but then he’s kissing too, kissing and touching in a way none of the other fellows ever did, a way that makes it seem like both of them are in this together, not just him doing it to her. This makes her feel excited, as if she were with someone new for the first time, only better, and that in its turn makes her feel even more like she’s going to hell. Her and Tony, going to hell together.

  The night seems to go on forever, though morning finds them both asleep. “Rose, sorry, I gotta get to work,” Tony says, sitting up in the dawn light, feeling for his clothes. She didn’t bother to hang up his shirt last night and it’s in a heap on the floor, still damp. “I gotta hurry, get home and change. Listen, tonight…will you meet me for dinner tonight?”

  Dinner. Just like before. Tony has changed the rules, and the ground shifts under Rose. But she says, “No, not dinner. You come here, later on in the evening. Just come back here, okay?”

  Tony looks disappointed. But he’s there that night, and they talk for a few minutes only and then make love again, and sleep together again. Rose is amazed. She is hungry for Tony, for what his hands and body can do for her, and yet she fears him more than ever. Rose feels like a girl in a movie at last – not that girls in movies ever do this. She is the princess in the enchanted castle, living under a spell. It will end, but for now she just wants to be bewitched.

  Every night for a week he comes over. She doesn’t make any other dates, any other plans, just waits in her small bare room for him to arrive.

  One night, the seventh night, he brings something. It’s a single pink rose. Not a red one, her favourite kind, but at least it’s a rose, and she knows what it means. Rose would like to think of something sweet and romantic but what really pops into her head is that silly poem. She’s not a great one for poetry by any means but there was this one poem her friend Nelly read in a magazine years ago, and the two of them used to recite it and laugh to kill themselves, all about the fellow who sends the girl one perfect rose to show his love, and she says,

  Why is it no one ever sent me yet

  One perfect limousine, do you suppose?

  Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get

  One perfect rose.

  Just my luck, she thinks, but manages not to laugh or anything. She looks around for what to do with the rose and finally sticks it in her water glass on the night table because there’s no vase or anything to put it in. Then she looks around again and sees her room so shabby and tacky-looking, and thinks that not only is she not going to get one perfect limousine, she’s damn lucky to be getting even a rose from a fellow as sweet as Tony.

  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 se
e 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.
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br />   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

  ETHEL SAT IN JIM’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.