Brooklyn (24 page)

“Heard what?” Patty asked.

“Nothing,” Diana said. “But it sounded lovely.”

Eilis slept deeply and woke in the morning exhausted and sore. It was as though Rose’s death had happened long ago, and her night with Tony remained with her as something powerful, still present. She wondered how she would know if she was pregnant, how early the signs would come. She touched her stomach, asking herself if at this very moment something could be happening there, some tiny connection like a small knot, or smaller even, smaller than a drop of water but with everything in it that was needed for it to grow. She wondered if there was anything she could do to stop it, if there was something she could wash herself with, but as soon as she thought of that she knew that even the idea was wrong and that she would have to go to confession and make Tony go too.

She hoped that he would not grin at her again as he had done the previous evening and that he would realize the trouble she was in if she was pregnant. But if she was not pregnant, she hoped he would understand, as she did now, that what they had done was wrong, and more wrong because it had been done when Rose was barely in her grave. Even when she went to confession, Eilis realized, and told the priest what they had done, she would never be able to tell anyone that just half an hour before they had been crying. It would seem too strange.

As soon as she saw Tony that evening she told him that they would both have to go to confession the following evening, which was Friday, and that she presumed he understood this.

“I couldn’t go to Father Flood,” she said, “or any priest who might recognize me. I know it shouldn’t matter, but I couldn’t.”

Tony suggested that they should go to his local church, where most of the priests were Italians.

“Some of them don’t understand a word you’re saying if you speak in English,” he said.

“That’s not a real confession, then.”

“But I think they recognize some key words.”

“Don’t make jokes. You are going to confession too.”

“I know that,” he said. “And will you promise me something?” He moved close to her. “Will you promise to be kind to me after the confession? I mean to hold my hand and talk to me and smile?”

“And will you promise me to make a good confession?”

“Yes, I will,” he said, “and my mom wants you to come to lunch on Sunday. She’s worried about you.”

The following evening they met outside his church. Tony insisted that they go to separate priests; hers, he said, a priest called Anthony with a long Italian surname, was young and nice and spoke English. He himself, he said, was going to go to one of the older Italian ones.

“Make sure he understands what you say,” she whispered.

When she told the priest she had had sexual intercourse twice with her boyfriend three nights earlier, he left silence for a long time.

“Was this the first time?” he asked when he spoke eventually.

“Yes, Father.”

“Do you love one another?”

“Yes, Father.”

“What will you do if you are pregnant?”

“He will want to marry me, Father.”

“Do you want to marry him?”

She could not answer. After a while, he asked her again, his tone sympathetic.

“I would like to marry him,” she said hesitantly, “but I am not ready to marry him now.”

“But you say you love him?”

“He is a good man.”

“Is that enough?”

“I love him.”

“But you are not sure?”

She sighed and said nothing.

“Are you sorry for what you did with him?”

“Yes, Father.”

“For your penance I want you to say just one Hail Mary, but say it slowly and think about the words, and you must promise to come back in one month. If you are pregnant, we will have to talk again, and we will help you in every way we can.”

When she got back to Mrs. Kehoe’s she discovered that a lock had been put on the basement gate and she had to let herself in by the main door. Mrs. Kehoe was in the kitchen with Miss McAdam, who had decided that she was not going to the dance.

“I’m going to keep the basement locked in future,” Mrs. Kehoe said as though speaking to Miss McAdam alone. “You wouldn’t know who would be going down there.”

“You are very wise,” Miss McAdam said.

As Eilis made her supper, Mrs. Kehoe and Miss McAdam treated her as though she were a ghost.

Eilis’s mother wrote and mentioned how lonely she was and how long the day was and how hard the night. She said that neighbours looked in on her all the time and people called after tea but she had run out of things to say to them. Eilis wrote to her a number of times; she told her mother all the news about the summer styles in Bartocci’s and other stores on Fulton Street and about preparing for her exams, which would come in May, saying she was studying hard because if she passed she would be a qualified bookkeeper.

She never mentioned Tony in any of her letters home and she wondered if, by now, her mother, in clearing out Rose’s room or in receiving what was in her desk at the office, had found and read her letters to Rose. She saw Tony every day, sometimes merely meeting him outside the college and travelling with him on the
trolley-car and letting him walk her as far as Mrs. Kehoe’s. Since the night he had spent in her room everything was different between them. She felt that he was more relaxed, more willing to be silent and not trying to impress her so much or make jokes. And every time she saw him waiting for her, she felt that they had become closer. Every time they kissed, or even brushed against each other as they walked along the street, she was reminded of that night they had been together.

Once she discovered that she was not pregnant, she thought of the night with pleasure, especially after she had returned to the priest, who somehow managed to imply that what had happened between her and Tony was not hard to understand, despite the fact that it was wrong, and was maybe a sign from God that they should consider getting married and raising a family. He seemed so easy to talk to the second time that she was tempted to tell him the whole story and ask him what she should do about her mother, whose letters to her were increasingly sad, the handwriting at times wandering strangely across the page, almost illegible, but she left the confession box without saying anything more.

One Sunday after mass, as she was walking out of the church with Sheila Heffernan, Eilis noticed that Father Flood, who often stood in front of the church after mass greeting his parishioners, had averted his eyes and moved into the shadows when they approached and was soon speaking to a number of women with immense concentration. She waited behind only to find that the priest, having spotted her, turned his back and walked away from her quickly. It occurred to her immediately that Mrs. Kehoe had spoken to him and that she should go to see him as soon as possible before he did something unthinkable such as write to her mother about her, although she had no idea what she would say to him.

Thus after lunch with Tony and his family, she made an arrangement to see Tony later, but said that she had to go now
and study. She refused to allow him to come on the subway with her. She went straight from the subway station to Father Flood’s house.

It was only when she was sitting in the front parlour waiting for him that it struck her that she could not easily mention Mrs. Kehoe, she would have to wait for him to do so. If he did not raise the subject, she thought, she could talk about her mother and maybe even discuss the possibility of moving into the office at Bartocci’s were a vacancy to arise after she passed her bookkeeping exams. As she heard footsteps approaching in the hallway, she knew she had a choice. She could appear humble before him and imply an abject apology even if she did not admit everything, or she could model herself on Rose, stand up now as Rose might have and speak to Father Flood as though she were entirely incapable of any wrongdoing.

Father Flood seemed uneasy when he came into the room and did not immediately catch her eye.

“I hope I am not disturbing you now, Father,” she said.

“Oh, no, not at all. I was just reading the paper.”

She knew that it was important to speak now before he did.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard from my mother but I have had letters and she seems not to be well at all.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Father Flood said. “You know I did think it must be hard for her.”

Whatever way he looked at her, he managed to let her know that he meant more than he said, that he was suggesting it might be hard for her mother not only losing Rose but having a daughter who would take a man home to her room for the night.

Eilis now held his gaze and left enough silence for him to know that she had understood the implications of his words but had no intention of giving them any further consideration.

“As you know, I hope to get my exams next month and this would mean that I would be a qualified bookkeeper. I have some
money saved and I thought I might go home, just to see my mother, for as long as Bartocci’s would let me have unpaid leave. Also, like many of the other lodgers, I have been having difficulty with Mrs. Kehoe and when I come back from Ireland I might consider changing my lodgings.”

“She’s very nice, Mrs. Kehoe,” Father Flood said. “There aren’t many Irish places like that now. In the old days there used to be more.”

Eilis did not reply.

“So you want me to talk to Bartocci?” he asked. “How long would you like to go for?”

“A month,” Eilis said.

“And you would come back and work on the shop floor until a job in the office came up?”

“Yes.”

He nodded his head and seemed to be thinking about something.

“Would you like me to talk to Mrs. Kehoe as well?” he asked.

“I thought you already had.”

“Not since Rose died,” Father Flood said. “I’m not sure I have seen her since then.”

Eilis studied his face but she could not tell whether it was true or not.

“Would you not make it up with her?” Father Flood asked.

“How would I do that?”

“She’s very fond of you.”

Eilis said nothing.

“I’ll tell you what,” Father Flood said. “I’ll square Bartocci if you make it up with Ma Kehoe.”

“How would I do that?” she repeated.

“Be nice to her.”

Before she had seen Father Flood, it had not occurred to Eilis that she might go home for a brief stay. But once it had been said and did not sound ridiculous and had met with Father Flood’s approval, then it became a plan, something that she was determined to do. At lunchtime the following day she went to a travel agent and found prices for liners crossing the Atlantic. She would wait until her exam results came out, but once she knew them she would go home for a month; it would take five or six days each way, so she would have two and half weeks with her mother.

Although she wrote to her mother later that week she did not mention anything about her plans to go home. When she saw Father Flood in the department store one day she knew that he was there on her behalf because he winked at her as he passed and she hoped he would have news for her soon.

On Friday, when Tony had walked her home after the dance, she found a letter from Father Flood that had been delivered by hand. Mrs. Kehoe soon arrived into the kitchen to announce that she was about to make tea and that she hoped Eilis would join her. Eilis smiled warmly at Mrs. Kehoe and said that she would love that and then went to her room and opened the letter. The Bartoccis, Father Flood said, could offer her one month’s unpaid leave, the date to be arranged with Miss Fortini, and, if she passed her exams, they hoped they could offer her a job in the office over the next six months. She left the letter on the bed and went upstairs to find her tea almost poured.

“Would you feel safe if I took the lock off the basement gate?” Mrs. Kehoe asked her. “I didn’t know what to do so I asked that nice Sergeant Mulhall whose wife plays poker with me and he said that he would have his officers keep a special watch on it and report on any untoward activity down there.”

“Oh, that’s a great idea, Mrs. Kehoe,” Eilis said. “You should thank him on behalf of all of us the next time you see him.”

She hoped that the law exam would be as easy as the last time. And she was happy with the work she had done in all the other subjects. As part of the final exam, however, every student would be given all the details of the annual life of a company, rent and heat and light, wages, the fact that machinery and other assets might devalue each year, debt, capital investment and tax. On the other side, there would be sales, money coming in from a number of sources, be they wholesale or retail. And all of this would have to be entered into ledgers in the correct column, it would have to be done neatly so that at an annual general meeting when the board and shareholders of a company wanted to see clearly how profit or loss had been made, they could do so from these ledgers. Anyone who failed this part of the exam, they were told, would not get a passing mark even if they did well in other papers. They would have to repeat the entire exam.

One evening close to the exams, when Tony was walking her home, Eilis told him about her plan to go home for a month once the results came. She had already written to her mother telling her the news. Tony said nothing to her, but, when they arrived at Mrs. Kehoe’s, he asked her to walk with him around the block. His face was pale and he seemed serious and did not look at her directly as he spoke.

When they were away from Mrs. Kehoe’s he sat on a stoop where there was no one, leaving her standing against the railings. She knew that he would be upset about her going like this but was ready to explain to him that he had family in Brooklyn and he did not know what it was like to be away from home. She was prepared to tell him that he would go home too for a visit under similar circumstances.

“Marry me before you go back,” he said almost under his breath.

“What did you say?” She went to the stoop and sat beside him.

“If you go, you won’t come back.”

“I’m just going for a month, I told you.”