More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Francie felt sorry for Flossie. She never gave up hope no matter how many times she lost out with Frank. Flossie was always running after men and they were always running away from her. Francie's Aunt Sissy ran after men, too. But somehow they ran to meet her halfway.
The difference was that Flossie Gaddis was starved about men and Sissy was healthily hungry about them. And what a difference that made.
"I am not a happy man. I got a wife and children and I don't happen to be a hardworking man. I never wanted a family."
She walked with him to the trolley car. Women smiled at him until they noticed the little girl clinging to his hand. Johnny looked like a handsome, devil-may-care Irish boy instead of the husband of a scrubwoman and the father of two children who were always hungry.
Aside from his music, Uncle Flittman was a dull man. At home, his only topic of conversation was the way Drummer, the milk wagon horse, treated him. Flittman and the horse had been feuding for five years and Evy hoped that one of them would get the decision soon.
Those were the Rommely women: Mary, the mother, Evy, Sissy, and Katie, her daughters, and Francie, who would grow up to be a Rommely woman even though her name was Nolan. They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices. But they were made out of thin invisible steel.
She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only-the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life-the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.
Katie had married Johnny because she liked the way he sang and danced and dressed. Womanlike, she set about changing all those things in him after marriage.
She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it. She had had the pain. Dear God! Wasn't that enough? Why did he have to suffer? He wasn't put together for suffering but she was. She had borne a child but two hours ago. She was so weak that she couldn't lift her head an inch from the pillow, yet it was she who comforted him and told him not to worry, that she would take care of him.
"Why? When I, myself, do not believe?" "Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.
To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch. When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have had practice in disappointment and it will not come so hard. In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character."
"Married seven years and we've had three homes. This will be my last home." Francie didn't notice that he said my last home instead of our last home.
Francie, of course, became an outsider shunned by all because of her stench. But she had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered "different." She did not suffer too much.
She read a few pages rapidly and almost became ill with excitement. She wanted to shout it out. She could read! She could read! From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.
"There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky."
In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up." It was the best advice Francie ever got.
If she had not found this outlet in writing, she might have grown up to be a tremendous liar.
Francie's eyes smarted with hot tears. "Why can't they," she thought bitterly, "just give the doll away without saying I am poor and she is rich? Why couldn't they just give it away without all the talking about it?"
"Maybe," thought Francie, "she doesn't love me as much as she loves Neeley. But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better."
It seemed to Francie that she and mama were strangers again. The closeness of the last few days was gone.
"And that's where the whole trouble is," thought Francie. "We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand our own selves. Papa and I were too different persons and we understood each other. Mama understands Neeley because he's different from her. I wish I was different in the way that Neeley is."
"Then everything's all right now between us?" Katie asked with a smile. "Of course." Francie smiled back and kissed her mother's cheek. But in their secret hearts, each knew that it wasn't all right and would never be all right between them again.
Once more the night was quiet. Francie grabbed her mother and Neeley. "All together now," she ordered. The three of them leaned out of the window and shouted; "Happy New Year, everybody!" An instant of silence, then out of the dark a thick Irish brogue shouted: "Happy New Year, youse Nolans!" "Now who could that be?" puzzled Katie. "Happy New Year, you dirty Irish mick!" Neeley screamed back. Mama clapped her hand over his mouth and pulled him away while Francie slammed the window down. All three of them were laughing hysterically. "Now you did it!" gasped Francie, laughing so hard that she
...more
"What do we drink to?" asked Francie. "To a hope," said Katie. "A hope that our family will always be together the way it is tonight."
"Brooklyn is no different than any other place," said Neeley firmly. "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."
Neeley! So much like mama, so much like papa; the best of each in Neeley. She loved her brother She wanted to put her arms around him and kiss him But he was like mama. He hated people to be demonstrative. If she tried to kiss him, he'd get mad and push her away. So, she held out her hand instead. "Happy New Year, Neeley." "The same to you." They shook hands solemnly.
"Gosh, Sissy. Must you have the last word?" "Yes. Just like your mother has to have it, and Evy and you, too."
She learned "ballroom" dancing, although neither she nor her partners ever expected to set foot in something called a ballroom. Sometimes her partner was one of the brilliantine-haired neighborhood sheiks who was a snappy dancer and made her watch her steps. Sometimes he was a little old boy of fourteen in knee pants and she made him watch his steps. She loved dancing and took to it instinctively.
She and Lee had no date-had made no arrangements to meet again. But she knew he'd be waiting for her at five o'clock. Neeley got up from bed as she was about to leave. She asked him to tell mama she wouldn't be home for supper.
"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."
She tore the sheet in half. "No! I don't want to need anybody. I want someone to need me ... I want someone to need me." She wept again, but not so hard this time.
It was the last time she'd see the river from that window. The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn't held it tighter when you had it every day.
"To look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory."
Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn't happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?
"I remember you used to be a skinny long-legged kid. Well, I think you'll make a nice-looking woman some day-not pretty, but something." "Thanks for nothing." She laughed.
