Read By the Rivers of Brooklyn for Free Online Page B

dinner service that had to be shined till Mrs. Clark, the old cow, could see her face in them. Rose hated mopping, dusting, vacuuming, doing other people’s nasty laundry and making up their beds and washing their dishes. She didn’t last long at Mrs. Clark’s.
    Then she worked in a laundry, and that was worse: the heat, the steam, the fourteen-hour days, the living-in. But the girls were fun there. Here, Rose is lonely. The shop is small, only three girls working at a time, and the other two “girls” are over fifty and disapprove of her.
    At five she’ll be off. Mike O’Dea is going to pick her up and take her someplace for dinner. Rose has a good red dress on under her shop coat, for her date with Mike O’Dea the cop. He is a serious young man – serious about police work, serious about Rose. He fully intends to make Rose his wife. In fact he has only one good point, and that is that he likes a few drinks. When Mike gets drunk, he’s funny. He laughs and sings and spends money foolishly, mostly on Rose. When Mike is sober, he apologizes for his drinking and swears he’ll give it up entirely when they get married. This doesn’t help his position any, in Rose’s eyes. Rose has no intention of marrying a drunk. She knows where that leads: the poverty, the crying, the hungry children, the dirty tenements. But why would she want to marry the sober Irish cop, Mike O’Dea?
    The starched pink woman holds up pairs of cheap cotton drawers and sturdy corsets that remind Rose of the laced steel girders of the bridges and buildings her brother Jim works on. This woman will prod and poke and look for half an hour and buy one item, the cheapest thing on the table. The door clangs again.
    A man walks in, young and very handsome. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, Italian or Greek maybe. Rose feels her cheeks flush, and her smile this time grows as naturally as dandelions in the small green gardens in front of city houses. She has not realized until this moment how tired she is of her job, her life, of Mike O’Dea. She has not realized how badly she needs someone new to walk through the door.
    He comes straight to the counter instead of looking around, asks if they have belts, men’s belts. Yes, they have belts. “Never needed a new belt before this,” he says. His English is good but heavily flavoured: he has not been here long, perhaps not as long as she has. “I been working in the Navy Yards ever since I come from Sicily, two years now. One shirt, one shoes, one pants, one belt. No problem. Then last month, I start working for a guy who owns a fruit store, running one of his pushcarts. Suddenly, the old belt breaks. The old man, my boss, he thinks I’m eating too much – eating up his profits.” His hands dance, his smile flashes, as he looks through the rack of belts and calls his life story across the shop to Rose.
    â€œYou used to work in the Navy Yards? I know lots of guys in the Navy Yards. Did you ever know Paul Starr? David MacKay?” She wonders what kind of girl she sounds like, saying she knows lots of guys, then doesn’t care.
    Her customer doesn’t seem to care either. He tosses names back and forth, casual acquaintances they both share. “But you left the Navy Yards to work on a pushcart selling fruit?” Rose says.
    The Italian boy laughs. “It’s the family business, back home. That’s what I grew up with. I’m gonna get into business for myself someday, own my own store. You know the American Dream, dontcha? That’s what I’m here for. I signed up for my little piece of America.”
    Rose laughs with him. She envies him, too, knowing his dream, having his little piece of America marked out so clearly. She had only one dream, and now she is living it: she lives in Brooklyn, she has a job, she goes out with men, she dances and wears short dresses and smokes and goes to movies. Suddenly her American