A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Chapters 46-56

“You forgot to call me,” said Mama reproachfully, “and I thought I heard a whistle. It must be New Year’s now.”

Tin horns were added to the cacophony. Someone fired off a blank cartridge. There were shouts and catcalls.

She decided neither to make nothing of it nor much of it; to proceed as though drinking was no more or less than something to be moderately indulged in at seasonal times.

Laurie opened her eyes, lifted her head and showed two teeth in a befuddled smile.

The night was heady and frosty. There was no wind and the air was cold and still. The stars were brilliant and hung low in the sky.

“It’s only your imagination makes it different. But that’s all right,” he added magnanimously, “as long as it makes you feel so happy.”

He hated people to be demonstrative.

She had hoped to see it again but read in the papers that because of the imminence of war, the film had been banned.

All the neighborhood could think or talk about was the inevitability of war.

People in the house were tormented almost to death by his incessant fumbling cornet practice.

"We’re not living in adultery. We’re living in bigamy.”

He enclosed a photostatic copy of the decree (grounds, desertion), and a snapshot of three bouncing children.

“Anyhow,” she added complacently, “I’m nowhere near the change because I’m that way again.”

“You have a sweetheart or a brother, I presume?” she asked in her stilted readerish way.

The boss went home with an acute attack of dyspepsia.

The deluge of spring published books which brought in hundreds of seasonal five-dollar author clients and dozens of hundred-dollar publisher clients, had not been a deluge but a mere trickle.

The boss slashed impotently at newspapers, printed blurry slips and pasted items askew.

You didn’t stand a chance in an office unless you were a stenographer and typist.

Along with a dozen other girls, Francie filled out an application after presenting a fervent letter of recommendation from her ex-boss.

She took an aptitude test in which she answered questions which seemed silly—which weighs the most, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers, was an example.

At nineteen, his life was planned out in a straight unswerving line.

He was to succeed a distant relative, an aged country lawyer who had a well-established practice. He was in constant touch with his future predecessor and received long weekly letters of guidance from him.

That was Ben Blake; well-dressed, gay, handsome, brilliant, sure of himself, well-liked by the boys, with all the girls crazy about him—and Francie Nolan tremulously in love with him.

He pulled the curtain and she saw the asbestos roll up like a giant’s shade.

Then and there she renounced all other ambitions and went back to her first love, the stage.

She took her courage into her two hands and quavered boldly, “I’m...fifteen.”

“But if you ever need me—not for any trivial reason, of course—drop me a line and I’ll manage to see you.”

She had enjoyed the summer school so much that she wanted to matriculate in the same college that fall but she had no way of raising the more than three hundred dollars required for tuition.

She watched him work over her baby. She saw a miracle that transcended the miracles of the saints her mother had told her about.

Evy, Sissy, Katie, and Francie stood around the big brass bed in which the failure had ensconced himself.

“But she’s had them insured since birth—a nickel a week policy.”
“This is a different policy. Endowment.”

“Don’t call each other names,” chided Katie absentmindedly.

He put his hand on his hip and squealed in a lisping falsetto: “Oh, Mama! Will I have a baby if a man just kisses me? Will I, Mama? Will I?”

Life’s too short. If you ever find a man you love, don’t waste time hanging your head and simpering. Go right up to him and say, ‘I love you. How about getting married?’

Francie took a speculative look at the Pennsylvania fellow standing ten feet away. He didn’t look like much.

“You damned kid!” screamed Francie in impotent fury.

“People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains—a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone—just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.”

There was a postscript.
“I read the letter you sent Lee. It was mean of him to pretend to be in love with you and I told him so. He said to tell you he’s dreadfully sorry. E.R.”

Well, what could she say? That he was no good or at best just a weak man who was easily susceptible to whoever he was with?

"After the botch I’ve made of my own life,” said Francie bitterly (and Katie didn’t smile), "I’m the last person to hand out advice.”

He had graduated from high school in January 1918, had entered college immediately, taken a staggering number of courses and had come back to summer school in Brooklyn to take more work, and—as he confessed at the end of the session—to be with Francie again.

She wrapped the shaving cup with the name “John Nolan” on it in gilt block letters, in a white georgette crepe blouse which Katie had put in the “give-away” basket because its lace jabot had torn badly in the wash.

Her sparse library went into the box: the Gideon Bible, The Complete Works of Wm. Shakespeare, a tattered volume of Leaves of Grass, the three scrapbooks—The Nolan Volume of Contemporary Poetry, The Nolan Book of Classical Poems, and The Book of Annie Laurie.

She went into the bedroom, turned back her mattress and took from under it a notebook in which she had kept a desultory diary during her thirteenth year, and a square manila envelope.

He buttoned up his coat jauntily and Francie saw that he wore their father’s signet ring.