Read By the Rivers of Brooklyn for Free Online

real interest in babies or small children, appeared not to notice them except as noise until they were old enough to throw and catch a ball, if boys, or to look pretty, if they were girls. Jim was never like that. Even when Ralphie was the tiniest thing, Jim would talk to him while he walked the floor with him. He would talk the strangest talk – not baby talk, gushing and cooing like a woman would do, but he would carry on these serious one-sided conversations, or sometimes not serious, sometimes telling jokes and stories. Stories from home. He talked about home a lot to Ralphie, talked about taking him to Newfoundland someday, showing him to his Nan and Pop Evans, his Nanny Moores.
    At those times Ethel had to turn away, busy herself with dishes or laundry, something noisy. She wanted home so bad it was like a pain in her gut. And she knew they couldn’t go, not for years and years anyway.
    Ethel moved to the window and looked out at the back of another house just like the one they lived in. They had two rooms – barely. One L-shaped room had Ralphie’s crib and a chest of drawers in one arm, the stove, sink, and cupboard tucked in the corner, and the table and chairs, with the one armchair, in the other arm. Their other room, the bedroom, was nestled into the crook of the L and was so small the double bed had to be shoved up against the wall. Only Jim could get out on his side; Ethel had to crawl over the foot of the bed to get out. She remembered herself one year ago, a new bride and a new homemaker, proud of this tiny space and loving it. Now the walls were closing in.
    This was Saturday and Jim might have been home early, but lately he had been working all the extra hours he could; all the men were, trying to get more work done before the snow came. Ethel hoped he’d be tired, too, when he got home. Too tired to want anything in bed.
    She used to enjoy it in bed with Jim, at the very first, even though she felt guilty and knew she shouldn’t. She used to pretend, sometimes, that he was Bert and that she and Bert had had a chance to finish what they’d started, making love in a proper bed with sheets instead of on the damp ground with twigs sticking into her backside. Now, since Ralphie was born, all she could ever think was how tired she was and how she didn’t want another baby, not till Ralphie was a little older.
    She was lucky; Jim was tired. In the morning, Ethel let him sleep while she went to church. For several months after her marriage she didn’t go. The church she had attended in her old neighbourhood was farther away now, and anyway she didn’t feel right about going. Then Ralphie came and she couldn’t get out. But a month ago Jean had asked her to come to the Methodist church with her, because Jean’s oldest, Sadie, was going to be in some Sunday School program. Ethel found it was nice to have an hour to herself, out of the apartment, away from Jim and Ralphie. It was wonderful to have a husband who didn’t mind watching the baby for a little while on Sunday morning.
    She liked dressing up a little, going with Jean and her children – Robert, who was brought up Catholic, didn’t go to church at all – sitting in the small quiet chapel on the hard pews, hearing the organ and the choir. She didn’t like the words of some of the hymns anymore, or the sermons. This week, for instance, the minister was preaching about the Prodigal Son. Ethel was the only Christian she knew who didn’t like that story. She felt sorry for the older brother, who always got a hard time when preachers told the tale. What was so bad about staying at home and working hard? she wondered. The older brother could be like Annie – the one who stayed behind and kept house when everyone else went off to seek their fortune. Why shouldn’t he want a feast, a party for himself once in awhile? Was that so wrong? Why was the old father too mean to slaughter a calf for