MINNIE FLYNN
THE brisk autumn wind tilted Minnie Flynn's faded straw hat to a rakish angle. She walked with swift bouncing steps, her taut body showered by the recurrent sweepings blown from the alleyways of the tenement houses. A rippling stream of dust and débris, made bright by spinning bits of colored papers, ran down the gutters to the street corners, where they were sucked into one of those dank, slimy tributaries of the open sea. Minnie, quickening her steps, followed a leaf of tinsel as it rose with the swell of the wind, sought the last ray of sunlight shot between gaunt buildings, spun in gay pirouette, then sank once more into the dust stream, its golden promise lost in the dun and grimy débris.
Minnie veered over toward the shop windows, now blinking squares of light, for dusk was swiftly descending and the shopkeepers hastened to display their wares to the tides of people hurrying homeward. She was a part of the current of dun-colored humanity, buffeted by casual but friendly contacts.
At the corner of Ninth Avenue and Forty-sixth Street, two blocks from The Fashion Department Store where Minnie worked, was a saloon. No men were standing around the swinging doors, so she paused before the plate-glass window, a flattering mirror, with incomplete reflection which allowed Minnie's vanity to create its own illusion. She hated the narrow mirrors of the shop windows which reflected with cruel precision the hard, white faces of vain passersby who stopped, shocked by what they saw, yet held spellbound by their grotesque unreality. At sixteen she had been unafraid of them; at eighteen the white liquid powder looked mottled, the rouge seemed laid on in hard bright spots as if, in a moment of clowning, she had pasted a patch of red tissue paper upon each cheek.
The plate-glass window of Sullivan's saloon was to Minnie like the warming smile of a good-looking man. She saw her figure delicately soft and rounded, the ugly suit pastelled in shadows, her gloveless hands little and white. As she held them above her head to adjust her hat, to smooth out its long green quill, they looked like two lilies on long waving stalks. Minnie loved herself when she looked in this window. There was a caressing tenderness in her own fingers as she hiked up her skirt in the back, smoothed the yellowing collar to her coat, drew a cool powder-puff lightly over her face and touched up her lips with a vermilion lip stick. She spat upon the second and third fingers of her right hand, before patting into place each crescent, bandolined curl. She might have thrown a kiss to her smiling reflection had she not been afraid of leering eyes through the louvered swinging doors. An intense curiosity possessed her to see if this mirror would betray her as those slender shafts set in the frames of shop windows had done. She leaned so close that a faint spot of white powder was left upon the chilled pane.
Minnie Flynn, smiling and posing, uttered a sharp cry when a swaying figure lurched through the swinging doors and fell at her feet. "Oh!" Her voice was pierced with fright. And then, when the man staggered to a sitting posture, and she recognized an old friend, she laughed as shrilly as she had screamed. "Lord, Papa Grouse, you sure gave me a fright. You'd think I'd never seen a drunk before!"
He lurched again, now to his feet, and rocked upon them.
She reached out to help him, but he shot away from her. Bent almost double he was sidling over toward the lamp post. "Papa Grouse," she laughed again, "you look just like an open safety pin."
"Go t'hell!"
"I'm on my way, old man!" Now she was shaking with shrill merriment. "Steady now! Crack! I knew you'd do it!" . . . "Oh, God," she said to herself, "when he hit his head on the fire plug he closed up slow—just like a safety pin!"
"Just like a safety pin," she kept repeating to herself as she walked swiftly away, not waiting to see him roll to the edge of the sidewalk and tumble into the gutter. "Bet that old woman of his gives him the devil when he gets home. Poor Papa Grouse!"
As she rounded the corner she heard the shuffle of running feet in back of her and a woman's voice, choppy and rasping, calling her name. She wheeled around and saw Elsie Bicker. Elsie was breathless from her run and her gray, anæmic face was flushed with a sudden, unnatural color. "Say, what's the idea of the marathon?"
"To keep warm," Minnie answered good-humoredly, "and then I'm feelin' kind of O. K. to-night. I was just thinkin' to myself, Els, that life ain't so rotten, is it?"
"Aw, I'm onto you," said Elsie with a superior air. Elsie prided herself on her frankness. "You're feelin' good because the girls laughed at your cuttin' up to-night."
The recollection of Minnie's performance in the locker room brought a faint smile to Elsie's eyes. Again she saw the girls of The Fashion Department Store in a restless semicircle around Minnie. Cheap, tawdry ballads Minnie had heard in the vaudeville houses on Ninth Avenue seemed sparkling with fresh vitality when sung in her nasal falsetto. She always accompanied these songs with amazing gyrations of her lithe body, and gestures, pert and meaningful. Her favorite imitation was of a little Chinese girl learning to speak English, which she called "The Chink Act." She tapered her eyes, stuffed cotton in her nose to widen her nostrils, and made a fan out of the comic section of a Sunday paper. She sang, "Chinky, Chinky, Chinaman, sabe washee clo'es," over and over, executing a stiff, formal cakewalk, the finger of her left hand pointing to the ceiling, her right hand fluttering the paper fan.
After "The Chink Act," Minnie, with a pretense of self-consciousness, announced: "The next on the program, ladies and girls, will be a brand new take-off."
Shrills of laughter and applause echoed through the long close locker room. Girls scurried from all corners to watch Minnie, eager for the relaxation of laughter, for the day had been a long, trying one under the first onslaught of late autumn sales.
Minnie drew into a shadowed recess. There was a sharp command from Elsie Bicker that absolute silence was to prevail. Then after a dramatic pause, from out of the darkness came a long, rasping, wheezing sound.
There were shrieks of laughter. "Jeeps!" came hysterically from a dozen voices.
When Elsie had again silenced them, Minnie, still wheezing, emerged from the shadows. "Jeeps!" rose the cry again.
To the girls it was a perfect imitation of Mortimer Jeeps, the floorwalker of the basement: his splay-footed walk, his sheeplike expression, his asthmatic wheeze. They laughed hysterically when Minnie smiled, revealing yellow buck teeth made of orange peel.
The final touch to Minnie's imitation was the way Jeeps stood, rocking on his broad flat feet, his hands clasped in back of him, his open frock coat revealing a faded green silk vest and a ponderous gold watch chain.
All this Elsie was thinking about as the two girls, bodies bent to brace the wind, were hurrying homeward. Minnie broke the long silence.
"Say, Els, what you moonin' about? A fellow would think you was deaf and dumb."
"I was goin' over the fun we had in the locker room tonight. Honest, Min, I'd just die if they ever took you out of the Odds and Ends and put you on the main floor."
Elsie linked her arm through Minnie's and a contented look came into her dull eyes; men were looking at them. What if their eyes measured hers and lingered upon Minnie—she was being looked at just the same. She liked their personal, appraising stares; it made her believe for the moment that she too was desired. Elsie wanted men more than Minnie. She was ten years older. Her body had been wracked with torturing illnesses, and with needs more mental than physical. A fear tormented her, gnawed at her—the bitter fate of growing old unmated. Some of the girls were afraid of her. The men despised her. She was seldom invited anywhere, but often forced herself into Minnie's parties. Like most homely girls who are aware of their looks, she tried to hide her self-consciousness by an assumed boisterousness, her pain and need by a callous indifference. She was insulting to the men and girls, morose and resentful.
Arm and arm they walked, Elsie finding it difficult to keep up with Minnie's quick steps.
"Honest, the way them fellows eye us gives me a pain. Ain't they fresh!" Elsie whispered to Minnie.
Minnie knew the men were looking only at her, but she said: "It's that new hat o' yours, Elsie. It gives you a swell air. Really, when I first seen it I was terrible struck with it. It sets off your face. Red's such a good color. Me with my red hair can never wear it."
Elsie's moist hands trembled. "Do you think it's too early for velvet, Min? I suppose I should o' waited, but I couldn't when I passed that Tenth Avenue shop and seen it in the window."
"Did you get it at The Bon Ton?" Minnie asked, looking past the hat, slyly, at a tall gangling boy leaning against the lamp post.
"Say, what do you think I am, a millionaire? No, I got it at The Palace Bazaar."
"Never would o'guessed it." Minnie's eyes met those of a chauffeur driving slowly past in a rattling taxi, and a jerk of her head declined his motion that she ride up the street with him. "What'd you pay for it, Els? It's got a lot o' style."
"One eighty-five."
"Whew! You don't care how you spend your dough, do you?" and Minnie smiled. Her eyes met those of a flashily dressed man. There was a momentary salute between them, he paused, then ambled around the corner as the two girls hurried on.
"Well, it's my only extravagance," came defensively from Elsie, "and it's worth it. Look close, Min, you couldn't get a remnant of velvet like that in our basement for under seventy-five cents. And the near-feather. . . ."
"I ain't criticizin' you. I like to see a girl spend money on herself, and believe me, if Nettie wasn't sick I wouldn't be wearin' my straw clean into October neither."
They stopped before a shoe store. Minnie wanted to look at pumps.
"Oh, God, how I hate shoes," whined Elsie, wetting her dry lips. "My bunions is somethin' fierce! I never get a pair that don't look big and clumsy. I wish I had feet like yours, Min. What size do you wear?"
Minnie wore three and a half, but she answered, "Oh, about two's, I guess."
Elsie sighed. "Gee, but you're a lucky girl, Minnie," she said, giving her a long envious glance. "You got good looks and you're young. Of course you ain't got much of a shape," she added, glancing critically at Minnie's straight, boyish figure. "Why don't you stuff an old stockin' and wear it over your chest?"
"I hate bein' flat." Minnie threw out her chest with a quick intake of breath. "But if I was to pad, Jimmy would certainly make it hot for me. He'd tease the life out o' me."
"If that ain't like a kid brother. They'd rather see their sisters lookin' like frights." After a long pause, somewhat embarrassed, she said, "Pete don't worry you though, does he, Min?" As she mentioned Pete's name Elsie's voice changed. It lowered in key and trembled perceptibly.
"Pete don't know he's alive," said Minnie evenly. "He gives me a pain."
Elsie was silent. The hot blush which mounted to her temples beat the pulses in her throat. Minnie saw it and her lips quivered contemptuously. "Els, you're a fool to be stuck on a fellow that don't care about nobody but himself."
After a minute's silence, Elsie said, staring at Minnie with stern condemnation, "I'm surprised at you talkin' that way about your own brother, Minnie. If I had a brother like him, I'd be so proud I'd have nothin' but nice things to say."
Minnie's laugh was tauntingly bitter. "Poor old Els, it's because you're stuck on him! It's because you don't know how tough he is to get along with. Honest," she looked with contemptuous pity at Elsie's plain face, "there's a bunch of other fellows you oughta try to land, and give Pete the air. He don't know you're on earth, Els, and even if he did he wouldn't show you no more consideration than he does for ma. He's just a born loafer, that's all Pete is."
Elsie flared up savagely. "He's just unfortunate, Min, and you know it. He told me all about it the other day. He says every time he lands a new job somethin' happens to keep him from it, like as if some invisible black hand was movin' against him. There's his very words the way he said 'em. Poor Pete. I didn't think it was like you to kick a fellow when he's down, especially when he's your own flesh and blood."
"Aw, can it, Elsie. Now you're goin' on like ma does, and it gives me a pain. I get enough of that at home without lectures on the side from my girl friends. Look here, Els, don't pull it on me again or we don't walk home together, do you get me?"
Elsie's thin lips closed tightly over her projecting teeth, drawing in the hollows of her cheeks. The blush had gone and in its place was a gray pallor, so dead that it did not even reflect the flame of the bright red hat. In her sunken eyes was such a look of despair that it aroused Minnie's pity. She slipped her arm around Elsie's waist. "I'm awful sorry if I said anything to hurt you, Elsie," she whispered placatingly. "It's only because I'm so fond of you that I want you to lay off Pete and go lookin' around for somebody else before it's too late."
Elsie's eyes filled with tears and she turned her face toward the shop windows so Minnie couldn't see them. She spoke so low that Minnie had to bend her head to hear. "You can't help who you love, Min, so there's no use fightin' against it. You love or you don't love, and there's no regulatin' it like you do your meals, or work, or anything else."
"I suppose so," Minnie replied indifferently, "or I wouldn't o' turned down Dan Sullivan with his prospects of gettin' his father's saloon some day, and started keeping steady company with Billy MacNally."
"By the way, Min, goin' out with Billy tonight?" Whenever Elsie spoke of "going out" there was a wistful note in her voice.
"Yeh, I guess we'll go out tonight." Minnie always pretended an indifference to Billy. "But I don't care much about it, though."
"Where'll you go?" The words came breathlessly from Elsie. It excited her to talk about a good time. "Will you go to a movie?"
"I dunno. I don't care much. Anywhere's better than sittin' in the dining room. Pa always comes in and planks himself down and takes off his shoes. You'd think he'd have the decency to stay in the kitchen, but not him. Oh, no, he's got to hang around and gas all night about the plumbin' business and never give Billy a chance to talk about the meat business, just as if that was nothin' at all."
"And where does Pete go?" Elsie was just a poor soft fool, Minnie thought to herself, and suddenly the sight of that eager, sickly face splotched with pimples sickened her, and she broke away from her with a shudder of disgust.
"To bed," she answered laconically, "and snores. Makes a noise you could hear a city block."
Elsie's voice sunk to a dead whisper as she echoed, "To bed." A ponderous sigh escaped her which sounded such a note of intense physical longing that it struck Minnie as ludicrous and she burst into uncontrollable laughter.
Elsie, her gray face suddenly convulsed with raging hatred, reached over and pinched her. "You shut up!" she shrilled. "You make me tired. You walk alone, Minnie Flynn, that's what you can do. Walk your fool head off, for all I care!" and she rushed away, down the street and around the corner, Minnie's taunting laughter trailing after her.
The Flynns lived on Ninth Avenue between Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Streets, in what was called in that locality "a classy brownstone brick front." It was the most pretentious tenement house in the neighborhood. Four stories high, it housed sixteen families. Eight of the apartments had narrow front windows which afforded a view of the street, while the other eight overlooked dingy backyards webbed with clothes-lines and fire-escapes.
The entrance to the house justified the pride of its tenants. Two discolored and badly chipped marble columns supported a shell-shaped canopy, the iron framework of which still held a few of the original mosaics of colored glass. The floor and the two crumbling steps to the sidewalk were also marble. A panel of art glass decorated with a gaudy design was set into the door, and in scroll letters was written, THE CENTRAL. It was the only door in the neighborhood not scrawled over with initials.
When Minnie met a new fellow at a dance and he asked to see her again she was always pleased to give him her address. "You'll know the house by the marble entrance," she would say, trying to appear casual. "Our apartment's in the front, third floor, nine."
Minnie searched a long time through her deep, messy pocketbook before she found her key. Click, she heard the lock slip. She put her shoulder to the door and leaned her weight against it. It sagged on its rusty hinges and it took all of her strength to move it even far enough to let her slender body slip through. It closed with a screech.
Minnie was in the dark, dank, foul-smelling lower hallway that tunneled to the rear of the house. The narrow stairway which coiled in a spiral, was half covered with worn linoleum, its pattern lost in stains and greasy layers of dirt.
Minnie paused for a moment on the first landing to tie her shoelace. She winced. Like a shallow well the hall was a sounding board which reverberated with all the chaotic noises of the sixteen apartments. Those brats! Weak-looking kids, but how they screamed! Cursing, phonographs, dishes rattling, the thunder of the elevated as it tore past the house, high, shrill voices—God, what a racket, she thought.
On the second flight Minnie felt her way through the stifling darkness, thumbing the wall to keep from stumbling over empty milk bottles or newspaper bundles of garbage. Clinks of light outlined two doors. One led into the apartment occupied by an Italian family. In three rooms lived a man, his wife, her mother and father, and five little children. Minnie was resentful that "Wops" were allowed in her apartment house, even though Carlotti was a first-class barber with a job in an uptown hotel. As if the place wasn't stinking enough without the acrid smell of garlic and rancid olive oil.
Minnie hated offensive odors. Her dream was to own a bottle of expensive perfume. She called it perfumery, and her favorite extracts were lilac and carnation.
The Flynns' apartment was one of the largest in The Central. The window of the room which served as a parlor and dining room overlooked the elevated tracks, but because of the noise and whirling dust, it was seldom open. A musty closeness made the room oppressive. There lingered the faint sickening perfume of Chinese punk sticks which were always burned before the arrival of company.
On the drab walls of the parlor was a patchwork of bright colored pictures; family groups, post cards, Harrison Fisher heads, plaques, calendars sent by Ninth Avenue tradespeople, and innumerable clippings from papers and magazines. Wired to the gas jet which vibrated when the elevated passed the house was a Chinese musical lantern which was her sister Nettie's only contribution to the home. The lantern, composed of little brass bells and long pieces of glass wired together, tinkled monotonously.
There was a red plush sofa in the room, and five oak-stained pine chairs which matched the center table. The table was covered with a red damask cloth heavily bordered with tangled fringe. In the center of the table was a paper palm; another paper plant stood on the mantelpiece, a flowering geranium; in the window two small flower pots held perennial paper carnation blooms. In one corner was a glided easel on which rested a large framed crayon of Minnie as a squirming, fat, naked baby lying upon a fuzzy rug—a horrid picture that made Minnie blush.
The fuzzy rug was a graying Angora which still served the Flynn family as a decoration. It had been meant for the floor, but Mrs. Flynn, always upset when it was carelessly scuffled by anyone except visitors, nailed it to the back of a dilapidated morris chair. No one in the family was ever permitted to lean against it.
Minnie often spoke of her flat as a "swell little place," for it was better furnished and cleaner than most of the others in the neighborhood.
Minnie and Nettie slept in a dark bedroom. The window opened out on a light well. A curtain shut off their room from the larger adjoining bedroom which was occupied by their father and the two boys. Mrs. Flynn slept on the red plush sofa in the combination parlor and dining room. But when Minnie talked of the flat to girls who had never been there, they always visualized it as large, airy and comfortable. For Minnie always spoke of Nettie's room, and her room, and the boys' room, and mother's room, and the dining room, and the parlor.
Nettie had been sick in bed for two weeks with tonsilitis, so they moved her from the bedroom to the parlor's red plush sofa. For a few hours in the afternoon the sun crept into the room and took some of the autumn chill away.
The parlor was in disorder when Minnie opened the door and stepped inside; the floor littered with papers, the table covered with bottles, a basin, towels and dirty dishes. Nettie lay sprawled out on crumpled pillows, her face flushed with fever, her greasy black hair matted and disheveled. Nettie was only twenty, but she looked twenty-five. Her features were coarse and a pendulous underlip gave her a dull sensuous expression. Her eyes, steel gray—very large and heavily, lashed like Minnie's—were her only charm.
Nettie didn't look up from the paper-bound novel she was reading until Minnie had said "Hello" twice. Then she nodded her head, adjusted the wet towel around her throat and went on reading.
"Gee, I thought you'd be out o' here by tonight." Minnie was looking at the untidy room with disgust. "It's been two weeks since we've had a decent place to sit in, and I get sick of eatin' off the kitchen sink."
"Of course you would." Nettie always sneered when she spoke. "You'd be glad if I kicked the bucket. I know you."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Nettie, can that kind o talk. Don't you think a family ever gets tired of hearing it? You've always got a chip on your shoulder about somethin' or other. Try bein' a sport for once."
Nettie stared at her sharply. "That's easy enough for you to talk. You're the only one that ever gets a good time as far as I can see. I don't notice anybody tryin' to be nice to me so I guess I'll. . . . Oh, hell—" Her angry tug at the towel around her throat pulled it off and it fell to the floor.
"Don't move, I'll get it." Minnie leaned down to pick it up, then refolded and wrapped it around Nettie's throat. "I'm sorry if you thought I was sore about the place, Net, but you know why I hoped you'd be moved tonight."
"Billy comin' here?"
"Yeh, but that's all right. I can meet him downstairs again. He always whistles first. Don't make much difference, except the hall is gettin' awful cold these nights."
Nettie looked at her sister's thin cotton serge suit, the sheer lisle stockings, and the cheap lace waist. "What's the matter with bundlin' up in your old check coat? Ain't that good enough for Billy MacNally?" She added maliciously, "he ain't so much, you know."
Minnie didn't answer. She stood staring at Nettie, frustrated and furious. Nettie was sick or she would have hurled herself upon her.
Billy MacNally was a steady, plodding boy who had left grammar school to work in Hesselman's butcher shop. He had begun humbly, as a delivery boy. Through the years of hard faithful service he had worked up slowly, from the driver of the wagon to a door-to-door solicitor, and finally, reaching the goal of his ambitions, a position behind the counter, working beside old Hesselman himself, with vague, pleasant prospects of a future partnership. Billy was full of schemes. He already saw Minnie and himself married and settled down in a little flat. He saw the name MacNally instead of Hesselman over the door and on the windows. His contentment made him seem stupid. There was no challenge against the routine of his life to stimulate his imagination. He believed that all blessings were his because he deserved them. To live simply, to want little, to love normally, to go to church on Sundays, and to be scrupulously honest with his customers (not even permitting himself the pleasure of giving more meat to the pound when Minnie was buying); these were the divine laws by which Billy MacNally lived.
Why Minnie, with so many admirers, chose Billy she could never understand. He wasn't even a good dancer. She might have tired of him quickly had it not been for Nettie's vicious ridicule of him.
Again Nettie's guttural voice broke into unexpected laughter. "Billy MacNally!" she drawled out. "Minnie's little butcher boy. As if the old check coat ain't good enough for him!"
Minnie sprang to her feet. She swayed, her nails pressing into the palms of her hands. She stared at Nettie with an ominous calm, then fearing to speak, rushed out of the room into the kitchen where her mother was stooping over the stove.
"Ma," she said between her clenched teeth, "Nettie gets my goat! I'm goin' to stay in the kitchen to keep out of her way. There are times when I can hardly stand her."
Mrs. Flynn clicked her tongue and wagged her head. Then she sighed. She always did that when a quarrel started in the family.
"Oh, ma, please don't act like a martyr," Minnie begged, her temper collapsing at the sight of her mother's panic-stricken expression. "You always take everything too serious."
Mrs. Flynn sighed again. "I wish you two girls would try to get along better," she said in a thin, tired voice. "First it's one and then it's the other. Your pa was sayin' only the other night that he's never seen such a family for quarrelin'. It's just wearin' my life out."
Minnie sank down on a three-legged stool and watched for several minutes in silence while her mother peeled the potatoes. She noticed her mother's hands, large, swollen and red, and she wondered if they had ever been well-shaped like hers. Old friends of the family said that she looked like her mother, and Minnie searched, almost fearfully, for the resemblance. Her mother was ill-proportioned now, though she boasted of having been "skinnier" than Minnie, as she called it. Her thin gray hair had once been red. "Two thick red braids the size of your wrists," Michael Flynn always described them. Her eyes had lost their luster, her drooping mouth was grooved with fine wrinkles, and the years of neglect had rotted her teeth, once, little white even teeth like Minnie's.
"Ma, dear, it makes me sick to see you always workin' so hard," Minnie reached over to lay her arm across her mother's back as the latter bent over the stove. "When Billy gets his raise I don't see why we should wait any longer. We can afford to have a little place of our own, and that makes one less to cook and wash up after."
Mrs. Flynn turned to her placatingly. "Now, look here, Minnie. I don't want you goin' off and gettin' married just to make things easier for me. You're the kind of a girl that likes to have a good time, to be always on the go, a party here—a party there. Marriage means givin' 'em all up, Minnie. . . ."
Minnie smiled tolerantly. "I know, ma, you've gone all over that before. You got a lot of old-fashioned ideas in your head about marriage, and you don't seem to see that things is different now than they used to be. Men don't expect women to be their slaves no more, they want 'em to be pals—sweethearts."
"That's what they all say, Minnie, before they get you."
"No, ma—you needn't worry about me havin' to give up everything when I marry Billy MacNally, because I ain't! Us women is too advanced to make such mistakes nowadays like they used to. Advanced," emphasized Minnie.
Her mother went on with her work, saying nothing, but a faint smile brightened her face.
"Why, only the other night at the movies," Minnie continued, "Billy and me saw a picture about a couple startin' out on a fifty-fifty plan—and maybe it didn't work out swell. We talked about it on the way home and Billy says it's exactly how we'll do it, ma, just like a couple o' pals. No, none o' that old slave stuff for Billy and me."
Mrs. Flynn looked up and smiled at her daughter's pretty, eager face. Then the smile died away as she asked: "Do you love him, Minnie—enough to stand for him day in and day out, when he's sick and tired and discouraged, and out of a job—and dirty?"
"Honest, ma, the way you go on is a holler." Minnie's laughter filled the kitchen. "O' course I love him. Or believe me, I wouldn't be thinkin' of marrying him. And you know, ma, that I'm wise to the fact that no man's a bed o' roses. I'd like to know if I ain't had a good trainin' as to what men are like, with their dirty, stinkin' tobacco, and always needin' a shave, with a guy like Pete around givin' his sisters a liberal education!"
At the scorn in Minnie's voice when she spoke Pete's name the same look came into Mrs. Flynn's eyes as had flamed into Elsie Bickers's.
Minnie saw the look. "Oh, Lord, now I've put my foot in it," she thought as she walked uneasily over to her mother. "Don't carry on, ma, I'm saying nothin' much against your little pet except that he's no matinee idol. Honest I ain't."
Her mother caught her by the arm.
"The first thing we know," she whispered in a pitiful whimper, "Pete's goin' to get sick of hearin' what a loafer he is from you and your father and he's goin' to clear out again. Clear out again! Do you get me? And if he does, Minnie, as God is my judge, I won't be able to stand it." Her voice, ascending into a trembling falsetto, broke off suddenly, and the tears rushed to her eyes.
Though Minnie was used to these outbursts, she always felt sorry for her mother. "Please, ma, don't get so excited over it. I promised you the last time that Pete got sore and threatened us, I'd never say anything about it again, and I've kept my word, ain't I? Even when he took that dollar bill out o' my purse, did I say anything to him about it outside of askin' him what he done with it? Go on, ma, tell me—did I nag him about it? Did I?"
"Pete never took that bill out o' your purse, Minnie Flynn, and you know better. You're careless, and like enough you lost it. Or maybe you never had it in the first place, you just thought you did."
"Oh, ma, what's the use of goin' into that again? I had the bill, and you know it, too. You seen me put it into my purse and five minutes later with nobody in the house but Pete it was gone."
Mrs. Flynn's hand was trembling as she seized hold of Minnie's arm.
"I don't care whether you're my daughter or not, I'm not goin' to let you stand there and call your own brother a thief. Do you understand? He's your own flesh and blood, and I tell you, Minnie, as my father used to say, 'It's a foul bird that dirties its own nest.'"
"Ssh, ma. Stop yellin' like that. I just heard the door slam. Maybe it's Pete, and if it is, you better not let him see you cryin' like this—he hates it, and if he sees too much of it he'll like as not clear out on us. . . . Fat chance," Minnie added, and her voice trembled, "not so long as he gets somethin' for nothin'. Not that bird!"
It was Pete. He shuffled into the room and fixed his small, red-rimmed eyes upon them. "What's the big idea?" he asked. "You been cryin' again, ma?"
"I been fixin' onions," Mrs. Flynn forced a sudden nervous smile. "Kiss me, dearie, I'm glad you're home so early. Gonna have hamburger for dinner."
Pete bent over and turned his cheek so that his mother could kiss him.
"My, but your face is cold. You shouldn't be goin' out without them newspapers on your chest, Pete. You know that last cold, how it hung on. If I hadn't watched it, maybe you would of come down with pneumonia."
"Disappointed, ma?" He laughed and winked at Minnie. "I swear, Minnie, ma's hankering for a wake."
"Oh, Pete darlin,' what a thing to say to your old ma. You—you big kidder, you." She reached up and pinched him on the cheek.
"Gee, ma, your hands stink of onions. I should say you was fixin' 'em."
Minnie hurried out of the kitchen because she knew just what was coming. She was to be the next victim of Pete's humorous abuse. How he had tormented her when they were children! How he had tormented her pets! He would sit for hours poking a pencil into the canary cage, laughing to see the bird's fluttering attempts to escape. When he was a little boy, afraid to tease the cat, he caught flies and pulled off their legs, one by one.
When Pete was a little boy he had often watched his mother make her nightly pilgrimage through his father's pockets in search of stray coins. It was a jolly game to Pete, this search, and once when they were caught, and his father called them dirty sneak-thieves, he knew his father was just a rotten, stingy old man, and that he would never like him.
Up to fourteen Pete had run away from school so often that his father decided to let him go to work. He tried to get him a job in the plumbing shop, but the boss had heard of Pete's dishonesty and refused to employ him. He tried selling papers, but he was so clumsy, overgrown, and lazy that the other boys outran him and often at the end of the evening he found that he had lost money on the day's investment. At eighteen Pete ran away from home and joined the navy. His father was content because he was sure that the men would pound some of the cussedness out of him, but his mother's heart was broken. For two years his mother cried and prayed, and prayed and cried. Then he returned to them—unchanged. And she lived in a perpetual torment that he would leave again.
Minnie's younger brother, Jimmy, had a disposition very much like her own—happy-go-lucky. He let the years pass by without any serious regard for the future. He and Minnie measured their success by the laughs they could crowd into each day. They awoke in the morning singing, went to work with light, careless hearts, and enjoyed the evenings when they went to the movies or to dances.
Jimmy was a handsome boy; small, slender and well-built. He had been pitcher on the school baseball team and at sixteen had won quite a reputation as an amateur boxer. At the Three Sports Club, he had knocked out Mickey McGovern, the East Side lightweight champion. He won a small purse, and the following morning, in the newspaper, the Flynn family glowed to see this paragraph:
"We prophesy big things for a newcomer, Kid Sparrow, known out of the ring as Jimmy Flynn, the West Side amateur lightweight. He will fight Terry Donovan at the Three Sports Club next Friday night, six rounds.
"Last night's performance puts Young Sparrow out of the curtain-raiser class. Watch his step!"
The ten-dollar purse he won that memorable Friday evening paid for two false teeth and the care of a torn ear. But his wounds made him the hero of Ninth Avenue from Forty-second Street to the Circle.
Minnie adored this smiling, easy-going younger brother, and his very weaknesses made him dearer to her. Though he hated work he was not a loafer. He hung onto his job because he dreaded facing a Saturday night without a pay check. Three dollars always went to his mother, the other three he spent on what he styled a blowout. This consisted of a table d'hôte at an Italian restaurant (sixty-five cents, a quart of wine included), a dance at the free pier, or the movies, and sometimes a vaudeville show.
Jimmy had no steady girl; in fact he preferred taking Minnie out. She was the best dancer of their set, and Jimmy was proud of her. For a long time he resented Billy MacNally, and was jealous of him. And when Saturday night came he was lonesome for his sister's company. Beside Minnie, other girls all seemed drab and colorless. But he was never seen with Pete or Nettie.
At seven-thirty, Michael Flynn came home from work. His ashen face told how tired he was, though he never complained. When he spoke it was in a dull voice that had lost all of its vitality.
"I couldn't get the eight dollars today, Annie, because Carter never come in. But I got a loan of two off Mitchell. He's the new pipe fitter I been telling you about. It's through him we got the sample line of new pipes in today, with the swellest automatic joints you ever seen. I tell you, Annie, that fellow"
"Oh, my God, he starts right in gabbin' about the rotten plumbin' business before he even gets his coat off!" Nettie's voice shrilled above the noise of the elevated. "I swear I'd drop dead if pa ever got off on another subject."
"You ain't so fast under the hat that you should be criticizin' anybody else!" Minnie came to the defense of her father who stood before them, looking like a small gray animal.
"That's right, Minnie, you take your father's part like a good girl," Mrs. Flynn's voice rose. "It's a pretty sorry day for parents when their own children starts ridiculing 'em, just as if they hadn't sacrificed their whole lives for 'em"
Nettie flung herself back among the pillows with an angry gesture. "Oh, Lord, now it starts all over again. I'm sick, I tell you, but a hell of a lot you care."
"Nettie!" Her mother's voice rose again in pained reproval. "How many times have I asked you not to use swear words the way you do? It's awful common, and after me doing my best to bring you children up respectable—in spite of the little money that I've got from your father to do it on."
The hollows in Michael Flynn's face deepened.
"Let's not get on to that subject again, Annie. You know how you get sick every time you work yourself up to it."
"Oh, hell! I don't blame Nettie for cussin' around this joint. It's nothin' but a free-for-all every time the family gets together." Pete swung out his fist to emphasize his remark. It struck the chair and sent it crashing into the corner.
"Sic 'em, Fido!" laughed Minnie. "All we need is a parrot squawkin' and a jazz band record on the phonograph. Maybe when Jimmy comes in he'll step on the cat's tail. Jimmy's the only one in the family that don't do his share o' the battlin', thank God."
"Aw, shut up—can't you see I'm tryin' to read the paper?"
"Shut up yourself, you big loafer!" Minnie was now quivering with rage. "Always stickin' up for Nettie against Jimmy and me, ain't you? You make me sick, and I ain't afraid to tell it to you, either. You're a bum, that's all you are, just a bum!"
A shrill cry from Mrs. Flynn.
"Shame on you, Minnie—after what you promised me," Mrs. Flynn wailed.
Pete flung the paper aside, and rose threateningly. "So she promised you, did she? So you've been talkin' about me behind my back, have you? I might of known it! A bum and a loafer! I'll fix you for that! You'll see! I'll fix you!"
Michael Flynn stepped between his son and his wife. "For God's sake, Pete, not another word out o' you. You can't talk to your mother like that."
"Well, Minnie started it," Pete answered resentfully.
Nettie staggered to her feet and slung the crazy quilt coverlet to the floor. "Minnie always does," she cried. "Every time that Jimmy's name is mentioned it means a fight in the family. Jimmy! The dirty little sneakin' quitter—that's what he is."
"Who's a quitter—me?"
They turned and saw Jimmy's head edging around the door. His broad warming grin told them that he had overheard everything and that, as usual, it amused rather than angered him.
"'Lo, Jimmy." All anger went from Minnie's voice at the sight of him. She slipped her arm affectionately through his. "You're just in time to put on the gloves," she said laughingly, "the crowd's all rootin' for you."
"I get you, kid," answered Jimmy, "it looks like a big night tonight," glancing from one distorted face to the other. "Who's in the ring, folks?"
No one volunteered to speak but Minnie.
"All the West Side champions, Jimmy," she answered his bantering tone, "two to fight to the finish—and two that will last about two rounds before I throw the sponge in the ring."
"O. K! I'm ready for 'em," and Jimmy started shadowboxing.
Minnie laughed at Jimmy and the atmosphere cleared. Mrs. Flynn's sigh of relief was so ludicrous that even Pete relaxed and grinned sheepishly as he picked up his paper.
"Come, children, let's set down to supper before the things is cold. Hamburger, Jimmy. Go wash your hands."
Michael Flynn tried to be friendly with his children. "You'd think he was in the plumbin' business, ma," he said, laughing awkwardly, "he's that black and greasy."
"Got it working on an old motorbike, pa. MacNally's paid a deposit on a last year's model. Been in a smash-up but we're overhaulin' it. Tomorrow we'll show up at the shop and graft a couple o' bolts offen you, if you can dig 'em up for us."
"You sure can, Jimmy." Mr. Flynn glowed with pleasure when any one of the family turned to him for advice or help. Flushing with timid importance he tapped Jimmy on the shoulder. "There's that fellow Mitchell down to our place, that new pipe fitter, Jimmy. He's a regular wiz when it comes to fixing up mechanical contraptions."
"Thanks, pa. I'll run MacNally over there tomorrow. He says"
"Billy MacNally?" interrupted Minnie.
"Yeh—who'd you suppose it was?"
"Why—I didn't know—" Minnie paused. Her large eyes narrowed in fury. "I like his nerve buyin' motorbikes when he couldn't even afford to get me a dinky turquoise engagement ring." Minnie was troubled; she had told all the girls at the store about the ring and had gone so far as to describe it just as if the first instalment were already paid on it.
By this time the dinner was almost ready. The rooms were filled with a thin smoke and reeked of many odors; frying grease, onions and boiling coffee.
Nettie, with lugubrious self-pity, had risen and gone into the bedroom. Pete sprawled on the sofa in her place and read the comic supplement out loud, while Jimmy played on the harmonica, and Michael Flynn helped his wife set the table.
Minnie was getting ready for the evening, because at eight-fifteen she expected Billy. She combed her hair and rolled it into so many puffs that it looked like a bright red, padded cushion. She re-bandolined the two curls that lay flat on her cheeks and again touched up her eyelashes.
"Puffs certainly do set your hair off, Min," ventured Nettie as a peace offering after a long, sullen silence. "I sure wisht I had a mess o' hair like that. Mine's so straight I've give up tryin' to do a thing with it."
"Maybe if you washed it offener," Minnie suggested in an even tone, "and braided it around your head, you'd keep them stray hairs from lappin' over your ears. You know, Net, any girl can improve herself if she's a mind to."
"I s'pose so," and defiance crept again into Nettie's voice. "But what difference does it make how I look? I might be as ugly as Elsie Bicker for all the good times I get out o' life. Is it any wonder that I'm soured, Min?"
Minnie reached over for a bottle of home-made cologne—(lemon-verbena leaves soaked in alcohol)—and poured some of the liquid into the palm of her left hand. Then she dipped the fingers of her right hand into it and brushed it over her hair, behind her ears and across her mouth.
"Nettie," she said at last, "you'd have just as good times as me if you'd be willing to give somethin' toward it. You take life too serious, Net. Why, you and Elsie Bicker act as if you was a couple of tragedy queens. Laugh up! Don't be a couple o' glooms always goin' around feelin' sorry for yourselves. That's no way to make a bunch of friends, and hold 'em. Now I ask you, Nettie, who wants the measles to come to a party? And that's the way you act, you and Elsie Bicker."
"But I ain't got your talent for kiddin' and makin' other people laugh," whined Nettie. "You was just born with it, you know it. Ma marked you, Minnie, sure as there's a God, she did. She never went to no burlesque show before I was born."
"Maybe," answered Minnie, "but them are things we ain't sure of. Whether she marked me or not, Net, I learned this much when I was only a kid: that everything in life is fifty-fifty. If you're gonna get you gotta give 'em somethin' in return."
"Yeh, and you can do it, Min. But not me. I ain't a born four-flusher like you. I can't put on what I don't feel, even to be popular like you and Jimmy. Say, Minnie," she added after a contemplative pause, "if you was a man I bet you'd be in politics. Honest, I mean that, I bet you'd work up to be a top-notcher. You're that slick."
Minnie considered this a compliment, so she leaned over and kissed Nettie before she went into the dining room for her dinner.
Mrs. Flynn made it seem quite an event to have dinner in the dining room again. Ever since Nettie's illness they had crowded into the kitchen, single file, and filling their plates, had set them upon the sink. All had gobbled to get out of the heat and the unbearable stuffiness.
"Lord, you'd think there was company, ma, the way you carry on," Minnie remarked as she sidled through the door and into the vacant chair next to her father. "What you usin' the servin' dishes for?"
Her mother flushed. "I dunno, Minnie, except that—well, you like 'em, don't you, Pete?" Losing all control of herself, she lapsed into a nervous titter. "Pete says the food tastes better out o' chinaware than out o' the pots and kettles on the table."
"Oh, Mr. Astor would, o' course. He's that elegant—" Minnie laughed scornfully.
Pete turned toward his mother. "There!" he cried triumphantly. "You see how Minnie always starts it, the dirty little sneak, tryin' to put it off on me and Nettie, and gettin' away with murder. Do you wonder I want to get out of here, ma, now do you?"
Minnie laughed again because she enjoyed tantalizing Pete. It was the only way she knew of getting back at him. She looked into his surly face and saw the red flush mount to his bulging forehead as he clamped his teeth and cursed under his breath. At last he reached over and pushed his plate from him.
"Oh, Pete!" cried his mother tremulously, "you ain't through yet. Please don't let Minnie spoil your dinner for you. Please don't let her, Pete. I got rice puddin' for dessert with raisins in it. I made it special for you, Pete. You know she's only teasin'. Ain't you, Minnie? Tell Pete you're only teasin', Minnie dear. Tell him please . . . for my sake. . . ."
Pete and Minnie quarreled through the meal. Then Pete rose and cried out with sudden ferocity, "You go to hell every one of you. I'm through!"
"Oh, God, Pete!" and the tears gushed to his mother's eyes. "Minnie! Look what you done to your brother. You're a bad girl, that's what you are."
She swayed as she saw Pete make for the door, and reached out her arms as he went out.
"Pete!" A cry was torn from Mrs. Flynn, and its echo followed Pete down the two flights of stairs and into the lower hallway. It was like the cry of an animal in pain. But Pete was unmoved.
Mrs. Flynn lay against her husband's breast, with convulsive, rasping sobs that only annoyed Minnie.
"Cheer up, ma," Minnie said. "I'll be out of here myself before long. You know what I told you. I'm goin' to settle that tonight."
"Settle what, Minnie?" Mr. Flynn turned toward her and his voice was querulous.
"Oh, nothin', pa. Just a little promise to ma about Billy MacNally."
"Don't call it no promise to me," cried Mrs. Flynn from the kitchen. "The first thing you know you'll be lettin' everybody think it was me that drove my daughter outta my own house."
"I like Billy MacNally," ventured Mr. Flynn with nervous uncertainty, "but Minnie, you're too young to be thinkin' of gettin' married."
"I ain't no younger than ma was."
Mr. Flynn moistened his lips. "That's just what I want to tell you, Minnie. If your ma and I had to do it all over again we would of waited until I'd got a good start. There was even times when I didn't have a job."
"I ain't afraid o' hard work," answered Minnie, polishing her fingernails on the palm of her hand.
"Neither was your ma, Minnie. But there was times when it looked as if we'd have to let you kids go to a home, we was that hard up."
"Say, pa," Minnie squinted her eyes to admire the polish—"You and ma oughta do team work in vaudeville. You two can sob the neatest duet I ever heard."
Jimmy, leaning back in his chair, reached for the paper. He put his feet upon the edge of the table, and was soon lost in the sporting page. Minnie leaned against the window, waiting for the familiar whistle.
Hesselman had kept Billy at the shop going over accounts, so he didn't come until ten o'clock. A cold wind whistled around the lower hallway as Minnie opened the door and let him in. They stood under the sputtering gas jet, and shook hands, solemnly. Billy's expression of contentment made her want to laugh at him. His mouth was slightly open in a fixed grin, his head wagging foolishly. His huge, clumsy fingers trembled.
"Minnie," he said, embarrassed by her quizzical stare, "you just make me sick with happiness."
"Yeh?"
"What do you say," and his voice lowered to a husky whisper, "if we sit on the stairs and spoon a while?"
Minnie laughed pleasantly.
He sat on the third stair, and drew Minnie onto his lap, circling her body with his arms and drawing her head to his shoulder. She could hear his heart thumping. Sometimes when he whispered to her the words were inarticulate, and when he kissed her she noticed that his lips were hot against her cool ones. Poor Billy! He wasn't much, she thought, as she listened to his plans for the future, but he was a decent boy. She wished he were tall and handsome and wore a little mustache like the men she admired in the movies.
Billy's desire for kissing grew as the hours passed all too swiftly. He moved down to the second step, resting his head against her waist. She lay in his arms enjoying his kisses, often putting her head far back so that his lips brushed her neck. Sometimes his almost furious onslaught confused her, but it never frightened her. Minnie had spooned with all her beaux. It seemed a natural thing to do, and she was unashamed of enjoying it. Sometimes her curiosity was aroused when she became conscious of the emotional perturbation of the boys who held her so fiercely in their arms, but within herself there were seldom any tumultuous longings. At times she felt a vague restlessness, an inner glow, but it generally came from complete mental satisfaction: she was enjoying her power over them—at these times when they needed her, they became humble and abject before her. Then, too, their warmth was nice on the cool nights during the late fall and winter.
The girls with whom Minnie associated discussed this quite frankly. In the summer they cared little for spooning. There were the pier dances, the trips to Coney, the walks in Central Park, the open-air skating rinks, with an occasional kiss, but not long hours given up to spooning. Their moral code was simple and understandable; there were physical laws which must be obeyed; inescapable punishment if these laws were ignored. Only once with Dan Sullivan had Minnie been aroused beyond the complacent contemplation of the effect she had upon the boys. She and Dan Sullivan, with four other couples, had gone for a boat ride up the Hudson River. They danced all day, ate their lunch under the trees while the boat was docked at a pier on the Jersey coast, sang to the accompaniment of accordions and harmonicas, played handball, had a cheap shore dinner aboard the boat; then they sat in couples on the deck, waiting for the moon to rise in cool glittering dignity. When the girls, secure in the deepening dusk, permitted the outstretched arms of the boys to find them, Minnie leaned back until her head rested upon Dan Sullivan's breast. His lips found hers and they kissed long and fervently. It seemed as if her heart had lifted and was suddenly detached from its moorings. An ecstasy which she knew only as pain raced through her. She clung to Dan and kissed him with feverish haste, as if she dared lose no time—in a few seconds this terrifying but exquisite joy might be gone forever.
The shrill strident whistles cut into the air, whistles which warned other boats nosing their way along the dark waters. Minnie sprang, startled, from Dan's arms. These hideous sounds crashing so violently into her enfolding dream awoke her to sudden consciousness. She felt as if, groping through darkness, she had hurtled against a door which had sprung open. . . . Her mind was flooded with light, blinding, relentless, uncompromising. It brought out everything in stark reality: Dan, the spooning couples, her own ecstasy, now so remote an emotion it left barely an impression upon her. . . . When the whistles ceased Dan pulled her to him again. Once more they had tumbled into concealing shadows. He was laughing because she had been so frightened. His voice was coarse, his hands on her seemed rude. She was shocked at the way he plunged his mouth upon hers. The pressure of his arms around her waist seemed a strangling vise. Her scream startled him, infuriated him. "You little devil!" he said, pinioning her in his strong grip, silencing with kisses, now ugly and terrible to her, Minnie's intermittent screams. Revolted, she struggled free from him, slapping him with hysterical violence when he groped for her in the darkness, escaping and running blindly away from him, reaching the lighted saloon of the boat, sinking down on one of the benches, seeing a reflection of her white, startled face in the mirror opposite her, wondering why she had enjoyed his kisses one minute, only a few minutes later to be terrified and repelled by them.
Dan and she had parted after this open rebellion which had made him a laughing stock. She soon forgot him.
To Billy, on the other hand, her response was tender, not passionate, for she feared that again passion would trick and betray her.
At two o'clock they were still sitting in the lower hallway of the tenement house. A damp chill enveloped them; no longer did the contact of bodies pressed close warm them. Minnie drew away from him. "I'm cold, Billy. You gotta go home."
"Aw, Minnie, the nights is so darn short."
"They won't be when we're married, Billy. You get over this kind of stuff awful quick. Nothin's very romantic when you're married, I guess."
Billy was sure it would be.
They rose, and pulled open the heavy squeaky door. The streets were almost deserted; intermittently the elevated roared past. The wind had died down but the sidewalks were littered with débris. Two doors from The Central, an ashcan had fallen over and they saw the slinking shadows of half-starved alley cats circling around it. From Sullivan's saloon came ribald cries and muffled drunken songs. Sometimes the swinging doors opened and figures sprawled out onto the sidewalk. A fight, the shrill police whistle, scurrying of feet, then silence.
"This ain't such a rotten neighborhood to live in," Minnie remarked after the fight in the saloon had been quelled. "There's always somethin' doin'. Imagine the people who have to live clear over in Jersey."
"Jersey ain't so bad," answered Billy, almost wistfully, "they got gardens over there. A fellow come into our shop the other day lookin' for a job. He says he's got a place in Jersey and wouldn't live in New York if you was to give him the Flatiron Building. Why, Minnie, he's got lettuce an' onions an' spuds in his back yard. He's gonna have two apple trees bearin' next year."
Minnie's laughter echoed down the deserted street. "Billy," she said, "you sure talk like you was a hick. First thing you know you'll be wantin' to give up the butcher business and go to raisin' animals. I'd be a swell nurse-maid to a lot of cows and pigs, now wouldn't I, Billy?"
"Aw, Minnie, you got a way of makin' fun of a fellow every time he gets serious."
As usual Minnie answered, "Well, Billy, if you don't like it you know what you can do," and closed the door upon him. "Good night!" she called from the hallway, "and good-by. If I let you, you'd keep me up all night."
Billy stared at the closed door for several seconds. He beat his hands together nervously, then cleared his throat to call out to her. He stopped short, turned his head quickly and saw two people walking down the street. In a few moments they would pass him. His desire to protect Minnie conquered his longing to hold her once more in his arms so he turned and walked hurriedly down the street.
Minnie heard the retreating footsteps. So he had dared leave her without that last apology! Perhaps he was only fooling her. She opened the door cautiously and peeked out. Billy had crossed the street and was hurrying along without looking back. On the sidewalk she heard a shuffle of feet, low mumbling voices, then two people blocked the entrance way. Minnie closed the door. She heard Pete's voice saying: "S' nice of you, Elsie, to see me home. Damn nice, I say. Damn nice girl!"
Minnie drew in her breath sharply and her eyes widened. Elsie Bicker and Pete! Cautiously she opened the door. She was curious to know why these two were together because Pete always cursed at the mention of Elsie's name and so far as Minnie knew, Pete had never given her any encouragement.
What a flat, insipid voice Elsie had, Minnie was thinking as she strained forward to catch the drift of the whispered conversation. A voice like her colorless face!
"Pete, dear, you know I'm awful glad to help you get home. . . ." Minnie started at the intimacy of the "Pete dear. . . . ." "And some day I hope you'll tell your ma that if it wasn't for me you'd never of gone home at all."
"Sure will, Elsie. Never gone home a-tall. Damn little snip, Minnie, gonna wring her neck!"
"She's just a crazy kid, Pete. She don't mean nothin' by it."
Pete's swaying figure struck one of the marble columns. The sudden jar caused him to belch violently.
Elsie's long thin arms reached out to steady him. "Pete, darlin'," she cried, "go inside now. Go upstairs and sleep so you'll feel O. K. in the mornin'."
"Whash time we get spliced?"
"S-sh! Somebody might hear you." Elsie raised on tiptoe so her mouth was close to his ear. "I'll be outside Sullivan's at two o'clock. We'll get a license. Then Father Duffy'll marry us tomorrow night. Tomorrow night, Pete," she emphasized this strangely. "For God's sake, don't forget it."
"You sure you got enough money, now? You ain't holdin' out on me. Damn it! If you're holdin' out on me!"
"Pete, I swear upon everything holy that I got four hundred dollars. I've been savin' up for ten years I—I got a hope chest, too."
"Whash t'hell's that?"
"A box filled with things I've been makin' up ever since I was a kid. Towels and napkins. Classy little table covers with flowers embroidered on 'em. Kitchen aprons. Oh, Pete, don't laugh at me. I—I got"
"No chance laughin'! Funny as a crutch you are. Go on, Els, shoot!"
"I got baby things made up. Oh, God, Pete, don't you laugh at me!"
Minnie closed the door and hurried upstairs. She couldn't bear to hear any more of it. She felt sorry for Elsie though she hated her for the open acknowledgment of her sentiment. Minnie saw what was ahead for them but she thought it was none of her business to stop them. They were going to be married just because Elsie had four hundred dollars which Pete would blow in for her. They would move away into a rented flat for a couple of months and then come crowding home to her mother. But she didn't care. She wouldn't be there. She would marry Billy MacNally just to get away from it all.
That night she lay awake for an hour trying to make up her mind whether or not to tell her mother what she had overheard. She went to sleep deciding that it would be rather interesting to see what came of the marriage, so she said nothing.
Two days later Pete and Elsie were married.