Margy, watching Frankie come up the stairs, saw him through her parents’ critical eyes and decided that he’d do. He had had his suit pressed and a bay-rum barbershop smell preceded his entrance.

  She introduced him self-consciously before she took his hat and placed it in the exact middle of the bed in the adjoining room. Frankie came with gifts: a box of peanut brittle for his future mother-in-law, a couple of two-for-a-quarter cigars for Henny and a corsage of lavender sweet peas tied with tinsel ribbon for Margy.

  Flo thanked him stiffly but Margy knew she was pleased. Henny made much of the cigars assuring Frankie that he was a young man who certainly knew his tobacco. But Henny didn’t smoke cigars. He placed them in his vest pocket intending to present them to his foreman in hope of gaining some small concession in exchange. Margy beamed with pride as she pinned the corsage to the left shoulder of her blouse. Flo passed the box of candy around. The peanut brittle came in for sprightly praise. They talked about the gifts as long as they could. Then the conversation died. No one said anything for a long time.

  Henny, knowing it was his duty as host to keep the talk flowing, put his stiff curved hands on his knees, leaned forward, cleared his throat, looked directly into Frankie’s eyes and asked:

  “Do you think light wines and beer will ever come back?” It was a frequent question in those days. Frankie looked confused but pulled himself together.

  “You can search me,” was his considered opinion.

  Flo put in her two cents’ worth. “Maybe the young man ain’t interested in blind tigers.”

  “Pigs,” corrected Henny.

  “Saloons, tigers, speakeasies, cider stores, call them blind pigs, even,” conceded Flo. “All mean the same thing—a place where a man gets drunk and spends his hard-earned money.” She looked directly at her husband.

  His eyes fell. He wanted to explain that he never got drunk; that he spent very little money in saloons; that he went there merely to relax in talk with other men. But out of consideration for their guest, he said nothing. He tried a different conversational approach.

  “Me, I’m all for keeping the law. But they got no right to take a workingman’s beer away from him. Prohibition was put over on us while our boys was dying in the trenches. That reminds me: Was you with the Rainbow Division, Mr. Malone?”

  “I never saw action,” admitted Frankie. “I happened to be in second-year High when the war broke out.”

  “You should have known,” Flo reproached her husband.

  “I only thought . . . so many of our Brooklyn boys was with the Rainbow Division,” apologized Henny, “that I thought you was one of them.”

  “I was only a kid myself,” put in Margy brightly. “So dumb, I hardly knew there was a war on. But I saw Rudolph Valentino in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and that showed that war is a terrible thing.”

  All agreed that war was a terrible thing and again the talk died out. Margy revived it. “Still and all,” she said, “there were the poems that came out of the war. I love the one about the poppies growing between the crosses row on row.”

  “My favorite,” said Frankie, “is, ‘I Have a Rendezvous With Death.’”

  They urged him to recite it but he begged off saying he didn’t know all the words. Henny came out of a deep study.

  “Rondy-voo?” he asked, puzzled.

  “It means a date,” said Margy.

  “It means we all got to go someday,” amplified Flo.

  “Knock wood,” suggested Frankie.

  The quartet beat a brief tattoo on the arms of their chairs. There was a solemn pause—the pause that precedes a dissertation on death. Henny took matters into his own hands and rejected death as a conversational theme. He brought the talk back to poetry.

  “There’s a piece, not about the war exactly, but I like it anyway. It goes something like this:

  In all my life, I’ve got to see

  A poem as lovely as a tree.

  His wife and daughter looked at him in blank astonishment. They had never heard the word, lovely, come from his lips. They looked at him so strangely that he felt he had to apologize.

  “Only reason I read it when it was in the Brooklyn Eagle was that the feller what wrote it was a Brooklyn boy what got killed in the war. They got a legion post named after him, now: The Joyce Kilmer Post they call it.”

  Margy was proud of her father for knowing that. “You know a lot of things, Papa,” she said.

  “Oh, I get around,” said Henny debonairly.

  Flo pressed her lips together so that she wouldn’t say, Yes, around to saloons and wherever else bums hang out.

  “Brooklyn is a wonderful place in many ways,” expanded Henny, heady with his daughter’s compliment. “There’s many a famous person come from Brooklyn.”

  “And most of them are ashamed of it, too,” said Flo making ashes out of his pride.

  “That’s because some dumb people don’t realize Brooklyn’s a fine city.”

  “This part of Brooklyn ain’t fine,” said Flo, “the way the neighborhood’s run down.”

  “This neighborhood ain’t all of Brooklyn, I’ll let you know,” said loyal Henny.

  “Well, it’s all the Brooklyn we’ll ever know,” said Flo. She stood up and asked to be excused and left the room abruptly. Frankie looked puzzled.

  “Mama went out to make coffee,” explained Margy.

  “Oh! For a minute I thought something out of the way was said,” said Frankie.

  They had about run the gamut of conversational topics. They had discussed the fiery question of the day. The right of a strong minority to inflict prohibition on an unwilling majority. Henny had made a brief statement concerning the rights of the workingman. They had acknowledged the horrors of war and the beauty of poetry; the inevitability of death, and had skirmished briefly with the subject of civic pride. There remained three more general topics of conversation to get them through the rest of the evening: Religion, politics and the weather. Henny tackled politics.

  “If it’s not a personal question, Mr. Malone,” he asked politely, “I’d like to know whether you’re a Republican or whether you vote the Democrat ticket.” His voice capitalized Democrat but put Republican in the lower case.

  “I cast my first vote this coming election,” said Frankie proudly, “and of course, I’ll vote the straight Democratic ticket.”

  “That’s fine,” approved Henny. “Then I take it that you got no use for that man in the White House—Harding.”

  “No use at all,” pronounced Frankie.

  Henny got up and shook the boy’s hand. They were one against the Republican party. After a while Flo appeared in the alcove.

  “There’s coffee,” she announced.

  They went out into the kitchen. There was a fresh cloth on the table. Instead of the usual custom of placing the cut cake in the center of the table where all could reach for a piece to eat with their hands, Flo had set out cake plates and forks. Margy was proud of her mother for knowing and doing the right thing. Frankie stood in the middle of the kitchen and looked around.

  “May I wash my hands?” he asked politely.

  Margy, knowing that his request was a delicate way of asking where the bathroom was, was filled with consternation. They had no bathroom! Literal Flo produced a small enameled basin which she placed in the sink, handed the boy a clean towel and told him there was hot water in the kettle.

  Frankie held the towel in his hands and looked frustrated. Henny drew him into the bedroom next to the kitchen.

  “The toilet’s in the hall,” said Henny in a hoarse whisper heard by the two women in the kitchen. “I’ll get you the key.”

  “I just want to wash my hands,” lied Frankie in a clear loud voice.

  The two men came out of the bedroom. Frankie’s face was brick red with embarrassment. He washed his clean hands at the sink and dried them thoroughly. They sat down to coffee and cake.

  Frankie, trying desperately to ingratiate himself with Margy’s parents, praised the cheesecake claiming it was creamier than the kind sold on his block. He asked where the bakery store was, saying he intended to buy a duplicate cake to take home to his mother.

  Flo was anxious to know the boy’s religion. To that end, she asked him bluntly what church he attended. He told her St. Cecelia’s.

  “We go to St. Catherine’s ourselves,” she said, implying that people who went elsewhere just didn’t count. “I mean, Margy and me go,” she added giving her husband a bitter look.

  “Sunday’s the one day in the week when a workingman can sleep late,” said Henny defensively.

  “You could go to twelve-o’clock Mass,” said his wife.

  “That’s High Mass and too long.”

  Before Flo and Henny could get off on an argument, Frankie announced his impending departure.

  “I guess I better make a break,” he said, “and not wear out my welcome by staying too long.”

  They trooped back to the parlor. Margy held his hat while he made his polite farewells.

  “I enjoyed the conversation,” he said, “and the coffee and cake.” Feeling that this was inadequate, he added, “You certainly have a nice home here, Mrs. Shannon.”

  Then it came!

  “I’m glad you realize that, Mr. Malone,” said Flo. “You can understand, then, that Margy’s in no hurry to leave her home and get married until she can have even a nicer home than this.”

  Frankie’s face colored quickly. “I happen to come from a pretty nice home myself, Mrs. Shannon,” he said with dignity.

  Margy, trying desperately to change the conversation called out: “Look! It’s beginning to sprinkle.” All went to look out of the window at the light rain which had begun to fall.

  “What’s a little rain?” asked Frankie.

  “But you’ll ruin your press,” she said.

  “I happen to have another suit home, strange as it may seem,” said Frankie coldly.

  Stiff goodnights were exchanged. Margy walked down the stairs with Frankie. As they reached the bottom, Mrs. Shannon called over the banister:

  “Thanks for the peanut brittle and all.”

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure,” he called back.

  When they reached the vestibule he would have left her without a good-night kiss but she held him there in the dark cubicle. All doubt of her love for the boy vanished when she realized how vulnerable he was to hurt and how she had hurt him indirectly through her parents. She decided that she wanted to stand between him and hurt for the rest of their lives.

  “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,” she soothed him. “Mama’s that way to everyone.”

  “That crack about taking you out of your rich home,” he said.

  “She didn’t mean anything.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “Well, even if she did, what does it matter? I’m the one you’re marrying, not her. And I think you’re wonderful.”

  “Thanks for nothing.”

  She held him tightly, murmuring comforting words. He stood unyielding in her arms. Finally she said:

  “And we’ll be married very soon.”

  That won him over. His arms went around her and he whispered against her hair, “I’ll show them! I’ll show them all someday.”

  “I know. I know you will,” she whispered back in fierce faith.

  They gave promises to each other.

  He finished off the evening by passing fair judgment on Margy’s parents. “Your old man’s not a bad guy,” he said. “But your mother . . .” He decided to be charitable. “Well I guess she’s got her troubles,” he conceded.

  “They’re really all right,” she said. “It’s just that you have to get used to their ways.”

  “It was sure hard talking to them,” he said. “I don’t mind saying I was nervous.”

  “You know,” said Margy, “I was wondering when we’d get around to talking about the weather.”

  “You had a hell of a time bringing it in, all right.”

  “I thought I’d die.”

  “Come to think of it, we all had a hell of a time, didn’t we?”

  Suddenly the strain of the evening was lifted and they started to snicker as they recalled the more humorous aspects of the visit. The snickers changed to giggles and the giggles to laughter. Margy laughed so hard that she became weak and had to hold on to Frankie. They laughed until they cried.

  The laughter came up the stairs—through the closed doors of the flat. The father and mother, hearing the young laughter, exchanged a slow look of defeat.

  17

  A VISIT TO FRANKIE’S folks was in order but they kept putting it off. Frankie said he didn’t want Margy to go through what he went through the first time he met her folks. Margy said she was willing to get it over with but secretly she was relieved at putting it off. They talked about it and exchanged wondering conjectures as to why they should have any backwardness about announcing their engagement to Frankie’s people. Both agreed they were doing nothing wrong; it was right and normal to fall in love and marry. They analyzed their dread of each other’s folks and came to the conclusion that they really weren’t afraid of their parents only all the talk and antagonism darkened their happiness.

  Now that they were engaged with Margy wearing a diamond chip ring to prove it, they settled into the routine of many another Brooklyn couple. They eased up on shows and chopsuey suppers, agreeing to save the money to put into a home. Frankie came to see her each Wednesday night and she entertained him in the parlor while her mother sat in the kitchen straining her ears.

  The phonograph was giving out music again. Frankie had found a handle in a junky store on Canal Street. When talk ran out, they put a record on and danced. It was a form of lovemaking that her mother couldn’t find a way to object to.

  And sunshine I’d bring every day,*

  he’d croon as they danced cheek to cheek.

  You would reign all alone

  Like a queen on a thro-ohn,

  If I had my way.

  At ten o’clock Flo appeared to announce that she had made coffee, thus fulfilling her obligation to a guest in the house and letting that guest know that the intimate part of the evening was over.

  He came late Sunday afternoons and stayed for a delicatessen supper. At five he and Margy went out to the Kosher delicatessen and bought a quarter-pound of pastrami and a loaf of rye bread. Also some salami to piece out the more expensive pastrami. They got slivers of juicy pickle and cornucopias of mustard free with their purchase. They bought potato salad at the German delicatessen and a coffee ring at the bakery, which obligingly opened up for the supper hour on Sundays. Frankie paid for the food. That was the custom.

  Nights when Frankie didn’t show up Margy stayed home and embroidered stamped bits of cloth which would turn out to be “runners” and doilies. Her parents kept her company in the kitchen. Henny read his paper and Flo crocheted squares for a bedspread for Margy.

  Flo tried to do better. She was ingratiatingly nice to Frankie as though she wanted to make him like her so much that he wouldn’t think of taking her only child away from her. Too late, Flo tried to make the home pleasant for Margy. She urged her to bring all her friends to the house. But Margy had no friends save Reenie and Frankie.

  Reenie came over and brought her embroidery. She too was filling a hope chest only she called it her hopeless chest because her marriage to Sal seemed more hopeless than ever. Margy asked how things were coming.

  “Oh,” sighed Reenie, “it’s still the same old coffin argument. His mother says the day he marries a Protestant is the day she’ll be lying dead in her coffin and my mother says the day I marry a Catholic she won’t be there to see it because she’ll be buried in her grave. Sal and I sort of took things into our own hands,” hinted Reenie.

  “You mustn’t do anything you’d be ashamed of after,” said Margy.

  “God knows we tried our best to be decent and get married,” said Reenie. “But they put too many things in our way. So we figured it out we got to live while we’re still young. How many years is a person young?” asked Reenie wistfully. It was a frequent question with her.

  “You wouldn’t want to get into any trouble,” cautioned Margy as tactfully as she could.

  “We won’t. We know our way around.” Reenie dropped her voice to a whisper. “Aren’t parents fierce?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Margy, trying to be fair. “They mean well, I guess. Maybe time passes too quick for them and they don’t realize that kids grow up. Now you take Mr. Prentiss’ mother.”

  “You take her,” suggested Reenie. “I’d rather take a dose of salts.”

  “Reenie!” As always, Margy was shocked by Reenie’s earthiness. Yet she envied it, too, and wished she could get away with remarks like that.

  Margy didn’t invite Reenie to the house often because her mother didn’t like her. Flo was polite enough to the girl while she was there but in the post-mortem session afterward she couldn’t resist running her down. Flo said Reenie was too flip and flashy and predicted that she’d come to no good end. She advised Margy to be more careful in her choice of friends.

  The girls in the office took the news of Margy’s coming marriage with typical reactions. They felt she was lucky—anything was better than being an old maid and slaving your life away in an office. On the other hand, without ever having seen Frankie, they insisted that Margy was too good for him—that any woman was too good for any man. (The men had all the fun and the women had to bear the children.) They seemed to regard marriage as a tug of war in which the woman had to get the best grip. The youngsters gave her washroom advice based on what their mothers and other women had told them and on their own conclusions and observations.

  “Don’t take no lip off your mother-in-law,” said a frank, perky eighteen-year-old. “If she gets an edge in, you’re sunk.”

  “Make him turn over all his pay to you,” advised an older girl. (Flo had said that and her mother before her.)