Brooklyn (11 page)

The law instructor, who took the class after the break on Wednesdays, was clearly Jewish; she thought that the name Rosenblum was Jewish, but he also made jokes about being Jewish and spoke in a foreign accent that she guessed was not Italian. He talked big, asking them all the time to imagine that they were the president of a large corporation, larger than that owned by Henry Ford, being sued by another corporation or by the federal government. He then drew their attention to real cases in which the issues he had outlined were actually argued. He knew the names of the lawyers who had done the arguing and the track records and the temperaments of the judges who decided the cases and the further judges of the appeal courts.

Eilis had no trouble understanding Mr. Rosenblum's accent, and even when he made mistakes in grammar or syntax or used the wrong word she could follow him. Like the other students, she took notes when he spoke, but she could find nothing in her book on basic commercial law about most of the cases he mentioned. When she wrote home about Brooklyn College, she tried to describe to her mother and Rose some of the jokes Mr. Rosenblum made in which there was always a Pole and an Italian; it was easier to describe the atmosphere he created, how much the students looked forward to Wednesdays after the break, and how easy and exciting he made corporate litigation sound. But she worried about the exam questions that Mr. Rosenblum would set. One day after class, she asked one of her fellow students, a young man with glasses and curly hair and a friendly yet studious appearance.

"Maybe we'd better ask him what book he's reading from," the young man said and looked worried for a moment.

"I don't think he's reading from a book," Eilis said.

"Are you British?"

"No, Irish."

"Oh, Irish," he said and nodded and smiled. "Well, see you next week. Maybe we can ask him then."

The weather grew cold and sometimes in the morning it was icy when the wind blew. She had read her law book twice and taken notes on it and bought a second book that Mr. Rosenblum had recommended and it lay on her bedside table close to the alarm clock, which rang each morning at seven fifty-five just as Sheila Heffernan was starting her shower in the bathroom across the landing. What she loved most about America, Eilis thought on these mornings, was how the heating was kept on all night. She wrote to her mother and Rose and to Jack and the boys about it. The air was like toast, she said, even on winter mornings, and you had no fear when getting out of bed that your feet were going to freeze on the floor. And if you woke in the night with the wind outside howling, you could turn over happily in your warm bed. Her mother wrote back wondering how Mrs. Kehoe could afford to keep the heating on all night, and Eilis replied to say that it was not just Mrs. Kehoe, who was not in any way extravagant, it was everyone in America, they all kept their heating on all night.

As she began to buy Christmas presents to send to her mother and Rose, and Jack, Pat and Martin, checking how early she would have to post them so that they would arrive on time, she pondered on what Christmas Day would be like at Mrs. Kehoe's kitchen table; she wondered if each of the lodgers would exchange presents. In late November she received a formal letter from Father Flood asking her if she would, as a special favour to him, work in the parish hall on Christmas Day serving dinners to people who did not have anywhere else to go. He knew, he said, that it would be a great sacrifice for her to make.

She wrote back immediately to let him know that, as long as she was not working, she would be available during the Christmas period, including Christmas Day, any time he needed her. She let Mrs. Kehoe know that she would not be spending Christmas in the house, but working for Father Flood.

"Well, I wish you would take a few of the others with you," Mrs. Kehoe said. "I won't name them or anything, but it's the one day of the year I like a bit of peace. Indeed, I might end up presenting myself to you and Father Flood as a person in need. Just to get a bit of peace."

"I'm sure you would be very welcome, Mrs. Kehoe," Eilis said, and then, having realized how offensive that remark might sound, added quickly as Mrs. Kehoe glared at her: "But of course you'll be needed here. And it's nice to be in your own house for Christmas."

"I dread it, to be honest," Mrs. Kehoe said. "And if it wasn't for my religious convictions, I'd ignore it like the Jews do. In parts of Brooklyn, it could be any day of the week. I always think that's why you get a biting cold on a Christmas Day, to remind you. And we'll miss you now for the dinner. I was looking forward to having a Wexford face."

One day as she was walking to work, crossing State Street, Eilis saw a man selling watches. She was early for work and so had time to linger at his stand. She knew nothing about types of watches but thought the prices were very low. She had enough money in her handbag to buy one for each of her brothers. Even if they already had watches-and she knew that Martin wore her father's watch-these could serve them if the old ones broke or had to be repaired, and they were from America, which might mean something in Birmingham, and they would be easy to package and cheap to send. In Loehmann's one lunchtime she found beautiful angora wool cardigans that cost more than she had in mind, but she came back the next day and bought one for her mother and one for Rose and wrapped them together with the nylon stockings she had bought on the sale and sent them to Ireland.

Slowly, Christmas decorations began to appear in the stores and streets of Brooklyn. After supper one Friday evening, when Mrs. Kehoe had left the kitchen, Miss McAdam wondered when Mrs. Kehoe would put up the decorations.

"Last year she waited until the last minute, and that took all the good out of it," Miss McAdam said.

Patty and Diana were going to stay near Central Park, they said, with Patty's sister and her children and have a real Christmas, with presents and visits to Santa Claus. Miss Keegan said that it was not really Christmas if you were not in your own house in Ireland, and she was going to be sad all day and there was no point in pretending that she wouldn't be.

"Do you know something?" Sheila Heffernan interjected. "There's no taste off American turkeys, even the one we had at Thanksgiving tasted of nothing except sawdust. It isn't Mrs. Kehoe's fault, it's the same all over America."

"All over America?" Diana asked. "In every part?" She and Patty began to laugh.

"It'll be quiet anyway," Sheila said pointedly, glancing in their direction. "We won't have so much useless chatter."

"Oh, I wouldn't bet on that," Patty said. "We might come down the chimney to fill your stocking when you're least expecting us, Sheila."

Patty and Diana both laughed again.

Eilis did not tell any of them what she was doing for Christmas; at breakfast one day the following week, however, it was clear that Mrs. Kehoe had told them.

"Oh, God," Sheila said, "they take in every oul' fella off the street. You'd never know what they'd have."

"I heard about it all right," Miss Keegan said. "They put funny hats on the down and outs and give them bottles of stout."

"You're a saint, Eilis," Patty said. "A living saint."

At work Miss Fortini asked Eilis if she would stay on late in the evenings in the week before Christmas and she agreed, as the college had closed for a two weeks' holiday. She also agreed to work Christmas Eve up to the very last minute, since some of the other girls on the floor wanted to leave early to catch trains and buses and be with their families.

When she finished at Bartocci's on Christmas Eve she went directly as arranged to the parish hall so that she could take instructions for the next day. Long tables were being carried in from a truck parked outside, followed by benches. She had heard Father Flood before mass asking some women to lend him tablecloths that they could then retrieve when Christmas was over. After his sermon he had asked for donations of cutlery and glasses and cups and saucers and plates to add to his store. He also made clear that the parish hall would be open from eleven in the morning until nine in the evening on Christmas Day and anyone passing, irrespective of creed or country of origin, would be welcome in God's name; even those not in need of food or refreshment could drop by at any time to add to the day's cheer, but not, he added, between twelve thirty and three, please, when Christmas dinner would be served. He also announced that, beginning in the middle of January, he was going to run a dance in the parish hall every Friday night with a live band but no alcohol to raise funds for the parish and he would like everyone to spread the word.

As soon as Eilis had pushed past the men setting the tables and benches down evenly in rows and women hanging Christmas decorations from the ceiling, she saw Father Flood.

"I wonder would you count the silverware to make sure we have enough?" he said. "Otherwise, we'll have to go out into the highways and byways."

"How many are you expecting?"

"Two hundred last year. They cross the bridges, some of them come down from Queens and in from Long Island."

"And are they all Irish?"

"Yes, they are all leftover Irishmen, they built the tunnels and the bridges and the highways. Some of them I only see once a year. God knows what they live on."

"Why don't they go back home?"

"Some of them are here fifty years and they've lost touch with everyone," Father Flood said. "One year I got home addresses for some of them, the ones I thought needed help most, and I wrote to Ireland for them. Mostly, I got silence, but for one poor old divil I got a stinker of a letter from his sister-in-law saying that the farm, or the homestead, or whatever it was, wasn't his, and he wasn't to think of ever setting foot in it. She'd scatter him at the gate. I remember that. That's what she said."

Eilis went to midnight mass with Mrs. Kehoe and Miss Keegan, discovering on the way home that Mrs. Kehoe was among the parishioners who were roasting a turkey and potatoes and boiling a ham for Father Flood, who had arranged for it all to be collected at twelve.

"It's like the war," Mrs. Kehoe said. "Feeding the army. Has to be done like clockwork. I'll carve what our own small needs will be from the turkey, the biggest one I could get, it'll be six hours in the oven, before I send it off. And we'll eat, just the four of us, myself, Miss McAdam, Miss Heffernan and Miss Keegan here, as soon as the turkey is off our hands. And if there's anything left over, we'll save it for you, Eilis."

By nine o'clock Eilis was in the parish hall peeling vegetables in the big kitchen at the back. There were women working beside her whom she had never met before, all of them older than she, some with faint American accents but all of Irish origin. Most of them were just here for this part of the morning, she was told, before going home to feed their families. Soon it became clear that two women were in charge. When Father Flood arrived he introduced Eilis to them.

"They are the Miss Murphys from Arklow," he said. "Though we won't hold that against them."

The two Miss Murphys laughed. They were tall, cheerful-looking women in their fifties.

"It'll be just the three of us," one of them said, "here all day. The other helpers will come and go."

"We're the ones with no homes to go to," the other Miss Murphy said and smiled.

"Now, we'll feed them in sets of twenty," her sister said.

"Each of us prepares sixty-five dinners, it might even be more, in three sittings. I'm in Father Flood's own kitchen and the two of you are here in the hall. As soon as a turkey arrives, or when the ones we have cooking upstairs are ready, Father Flood will attack them and the hams and carve them. The oven here is just for keeping things hot. For an hour people will bring us turkeys and hams and roast potatoes and the thing is to have vegetables cooked and hot and ready to be served."

"Rough and ready might be a better way of putting it," the other Miss Murphy interrupted.

"But we have plenty of soup and stout for them while they're waiting. They're very nice, all of them."

"They don't mind waiting, and if they do, they don't say."

"Are they all men?" Eilis asked.

"A few couples come because she is too old to cook, or they're too lonely, or whatever, but the rest are men," Miss Murphy said. "And they love the company and it's Irish food, you know, proper stuffing and roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts boiled to death." She smiled at Eilis and shook her head and sighed.

As soon as ten o'clock mass was over people began to call by. Father Flood had filled one of the tables with glasses and bottles of lemonade and sweets for the children. He made everyone who came in, including women with fresh hairdos, put on a paper hat. Thus as the men began to arrive to spend all of Christmas Day in the hall they were barely noticed among the crowd. It was only later, after midday, when the visitors began to disperse, that they could be seen clearly, some of them sitting alone with a bottle of stout in front of them, others huddled in groups, many of them stubbornly still wearing cloth caps instead of paper hats.

The Miss Murphys were anxious for the men who came first to gather at one or two of the long tables, enough to make a group who could be served soon with bowls of soup so that the bowls could be washed and used again by the next group. As Eilis, on instructions, went out to encourage the men to sit down at the top table nearest to the kitchen, she observed coming into the hall a tall man with a slight stoop; he was wearing a cap low over his forehead and an old brown overcoat with a scarf at the neck. She paused for a moment and stared at him.

He stood still as soon as he had closed the main door behind him, and it was the way he took in the hall, surveying the scene with shyness and a sort of mild delight, that made Eilis sure, for one moment, that her father had come into her presence. She felt as though she should move towards him as she saw him hesitantly opening his overcoat and loosening his scarf. It was how he stood, taking full slow possession of the room, searching almost shyly for the place where he might be most comfortable and at ease, or looking around carefully to see if he knew anybody. As she realized that it could not be him, that she was dreaming, he took off his cap and she saw that the man did not look like her father at all. She glanced around her, embarrassed, hoping that no one had noticed her. It was something, she thought, that she could tell no one, that she had imagined for an instant that she had seen her father, who was, she remembered quickly, dead for four years.