Read Online By the Rivers of Brooklyn by Trudy Morgan-Cole - Free Book Online Page B

length of the Bowery again, and everyone wanted hot dogs. Tony showed them the way to Nathan’s, where the hot dogs were five cents instead of the usual ten. Ethel felt strange, walking and eating right out on the street, but everyone around her was doing it, so she did.
    Then they turned into Paddy Shea’s on Surf Avenue, which, Rose said, used to be an Irish bar before Prohibition. Now it was still Irish but it sold only sarsaparillas and lemon sodas. They squeezed around a table and drank their huge sarsaparillas in the slanting late-afternoon light and listened to the tinkle of the player piano. Ethel put her hand in her purse to check: three nickels, exactly enough for the fare back.
    A family near them packed up their things and the father shouldered a sleepy, cranky child, just about Ralphie’s size. It was a good thing they hadn’t brought Ralphie, Ethel thought, looking at the child’s flushed unhappy face. She had never spent a whole day apart from Ralphie before. She felt curiously light, as if she might float away, no longer anchored to earth by Ralphie’s familiar weight.
    The piano began to play “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” and Rose put her head on Tony Martelli’s shoulder. Jim reached out and put his hand over Ethel’s and she smiled up at him. Her nose and shoulders were burned and she felt tired in a giddy, sunwashed kind of way. She was almost happy, except for the thought of the subway ride back.
    But Harold broke the silence to say, “Now ye been treating me all day and it’s time for me to treat back. I’m paying the fare for our ride back, and we’re going to take that elevated train, not the subway, so you can all show me the sights on the way back. That’ll be all right, won’t it Ethel?”

ROSE   BROOKLYN, SEPTEMBER 1928
    A RICH MAN , R OSE thinks. That’s what I need next.
    She spins in Tony’s arms, the dance floor a blur of light and colour. Music saturates the air. The band is good; she lets herself drown in the mellow sound of horns and in Tony’s brown eyes, fixed on her like she imagines sailors might gaze at a lighthouse as their ship runs toward the rocks. He is a beautiful dancer. Her steps match his perfectly, as neatly as if they were really in love, really made for each other.
    She is sure now that Tony thinks he loves her. They have been going out nearly a year and a half, a long time for Rose to be with one man. Now autumn is coming again. She heard a song once that said that in spring a young man turns to thoughts of love. But her mother always said that back home, out around the bay where she came from, people got married in fall, when the hard work of summer was over, before long dark winter nights closed in. Maybe it’s the same way in Sicily. Soon leaves will drop from the trees in Prospect Park, and Tony Martelli’s thoughts are turning to love.
    They are dancing at the Plaza Ballroom to “I’ll Get By.” The words weave in and out of the music, in and out of Rose’s thoughts as she dances in Tony’s arms.
    I’ll get by as long as I have you…
Though I may be far away, it’s true
Say, what care I dear,
I’ll get by as long as I have you
    A rich man . Rose steers her thoughts back into line. The song ends; another song starts.
    â€œThat’s a lovely dress,” Tony says.
    â€œThanks. I bought it at Loehmann’s this week,” she says. It’s the blue velvet and georgette dress she has been saving for and dreaming of, the one that’s a cut above anything else she has ever owned. Only from Loehmann’s could a factory girl get a dress like this. She remembers the clear bright moment of finding it, squeezed among the others on the rack, pulling it out and deftly stripping down to her underwear there on the floor, pulling the dress over her head, knowing her heart would be broken if it didn’t fit.
    But it fit. Rose was so