and kiddish and harum-scarum at nineteen as he had been at nine. He seemed sometimes to deliberately try to get Florence and Mr. Meagher upset. He seemed to do it almost from malice. Maybe he was striking back because the father—and perhaps Florence too—was sitting too hard on him, was too critical of him. Of course, all the Irish fathers were alike, Jill thought. If the son or daughter brought home a “99” grade on the report card, the father didn’t praise the high mark: he wanted rather to know why it wasn’t a hundred. It was the same in the South household. But there was more there in that relationship between Mr. Meagher and Jim. Mr. Meagher had been a youngest child. Had he been sat on too hard by a father and older children? In that case, the sins of the father weren’t being visited on the son, so much as the sins of the grandfather were. Wasn’t that great? And where did it all begin? Back in the mists of some Celtic dawn? And where would it end? In some American twilight?
In any event, Florence would be married: Jill had no doubt that she was going to get Ralph. The question was, was he worth getting? He seemed very mild to handle someone as domineering as Florence could be. But that was a question that would be answered only by the years.
Florence would be married, and Nancy McGann was getting married, and Tootsy Vesh had a baby already, and how many others? A lot. How about herself? The old fear: was she pretty enough to get married? It was the fear that made her arrange the bathroom mirrors so that she could almost get a profile, and she always had the hope that the nose would be a little shorter, and the chin more feminine and rounded. She did have nice legs though. Jim said that. She knew it anyway. She held her legs up. Boys did like her. They seemed to, anyhow. But she hadn’t gone out in two months. So? How many girls had dates all the time?
Why wasn’t Jim taking her out if he thought she had such great legs? There could be a lot of reasons. Maybe it was just because she was next door. Maybe he was afraid to get involved because the families were so close. But Eva lived only two blocks away. That was pretty close too. What secret did Eva have? She was cute all right. But no personality. Nobody knew anything about her, really, because she never said anything. “Like a tomb,” as Tootsy Vesh said.
Maybe Eva was letting him take liberties with her, Jill thought. Maybe she wasn’t as sweet and innocent as she looked. Jill sat straight up. That was mean, she said to herself. Catty. Most likely untrue.
Maybe Jim went out with Eva instead of her because Eva wasn’t a cold fish, worrying all the time.
That’s me, thought Jill. Worry. Worry. Worry.
Bob Pinelli, who was the last boy to take her out with any regularity, undoubtedly thought she was a cold fish. They went dancing, and in the slow number when he held her too close (“that Italian blood,” she could hear her aunt saying), she fended him off. In the end she sat him down, worrying that perhaps she was inciting him, which would be a serious sin. At the same time she was thinking: Am I crazy? I finally find a guy I can get excited and I’m fighting with him?
Oh, face facts, Jill thought. She didn’t really like Bob Pinelli. He always had his comb too handy. And he was forever squatting down before gum machine mirrors in the subway to admire himself. And he scented himself. Like a rose. And as for getting him excited, a female cat could get him excited. Worst of all, he had no sense of humor. If a girl didn’t want to go along with him, he could at least have made a joke out of it. But Pinelli got angry, made comments about her being a cold fish, asked, “Are you a nun?” and went on in that vein.
Later on that night in her bed, Jill framed the answer that hadn’t come to her at the dance. “It may come as a surprise to you, Mr. Pinelli, but the question of religion is central.”
Pinelli wouldn’t have known what she was talking about, but it was true nevertheless. The question of religion didn’t seem to trouble her parents. They had the good, old-fashioned, unquestioning kind of faith. They were—as the students sometimes put it sarcastically— of the pay, pray, and obey generation. True, they didn’t have any college degrees on the wall, and the only books in the houses of the first-generation Irish immigrants were of the odd-lot variety to be found in the living room bookcase, but then they didn’t have to worry whether Bertrand Russell was right in calling the earth an orb spinning heedlessly through a mindless universe, or if the French Existentialists were right in demanding that man learn to live without God because there wasn’t anybody up there. Jill had to worry about that. That was the gift of education that the Irish worshipped.
One thing was sure. If Bertrand Russell was right, then girls like Eva were right; there was no need to bother. Why scruple if the world were after all a jungle? But Jill hadn’t come to any such conclusion, and hoped she never would.
Chapter 5
Jim left the ballgame after several hours and headed home. He had to make another stop at the store for Florence. He got in about 7 in the evening and went up to do the bathroom. Florence was on her knees, scrubbing the tub. She had certainly heard him coming up the stairs, but she gave him no acknowledgment.
“I told you I’d do it,” he said.
“You don’t have to bother now.”
“I said I’d do it and I’ll do it.”
“When? Monday?”
“I had to stop at the store for you.”
“Oh I’m sure it took you all this time to stop at the store.”
“I bought the poultry seasoning. It’s downstairs.”
“How much was it?”
“Twenty-nine cents.”
She went to her bedroom, and came out and gave him a quarter and four pennies.
“Thanks. I have at least twenty-nine cents for tonight now, anyway.” He gave her a pleasing little smile.
She was stone-faced. “It’s not my worry if you have no money.” She went down the stairs.
Florence had been scrubbing at the brown stain formed by the constant drip of water from the tap. He powdered on cleanser and scrubbed at the remaining brown section until his arm was sore. He still couldn’t get it as white as the section she had done. He rinsed with tap water, powdered on another layer of cleanser, and went back to scrubbing. How did she ever get it so white? She was as strong as a horse. Heaven help poor Ralph, he thought.
Already tired, he sat back on the mat and lit a cigarette. A cockroach came out from behind the adjoining wall and Jim sent him spinning down the drain with water from the tap. He could of course stay at Eva’s for the evening and watch television, and then he wouldn’t need any money. But that was awkward. Her father never left the living room.
Maybe Cricket. He went to the bedroom and pulled the bureau out from the wall that separated the Meagher house from the attached Connolly house. He got on his knees and put his mouth to the hole drilled in the baseboard. “Hey Cricket.”
He got an answer right away. “What?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m in the rack.”
“You got any money?”
“Yeah.”
“Great.” Cricket, Nora’s older son, worked sometimes after school as a copy boy at The Mirror, where his father was a deskman. He’d probably gotten a paycheck. “How much?”
