A View from the Bridge Read Free Page B

Where’s she goin’?
    BEATRICE: Noplace. It’s very good news, Eddie. I want you to be happy.
    EDDIE: What’s goin’ on?
    Catherine enters with plates, forks.
    BEATRICE: She’s got a job.
    Pause. Eddie looks at Catherine, then back to Beatrice.
    EDDIE: What job? She’s gonna finish school.
    CATHERINE: Eddie, you won’t believe it—
    EDDIE: No—no, you gonna finish school. What kinda job, what do you mean? All of a sudden you—
    CATHERINE: Listen a minute, it’s wonderful.
    EDDIE: It’s not wonderful. You’ll never get nowheres unless you finish school. You can’t take no job. Why didn’t you ask me before you take a job?
    BEATRICE: She’s askin’ you now, she didn’t take nothin’ yet.
    CATHERINE: Listen a minute! I came to school this morning and the principal called me out of the class, see? To go to his office.
    EDDIE: Yeah?
    CATHERINE: So I went in and he says to me he’s got my records, y’know? And there’s a company wants a girl right away. It ain’t exactly a secretary, it’s a stenographer first, but pretty soon you get to be secretary. And he says to me that I’m the best student in the whole class—
    BEATRICE: You hear that?
    EDDIE: Well why not? Sure she’s the best.
    CATHERINE: I’m the best student, he says, and if I want, I should take the job and the end of the year he’ll let me take the examination and he’ll give me the certificate. So I’ll save practically a year!
    EDDIE, strangely nervous: Where’s the job? What company?
    CATHERINE: It’s a big plumbing company over Nostrand Avenue.
    EDDIE: Nostrand Avenue and where?
    CATHERINE: It’s someplace by the Navy Yard.
    BEATRICE: Fifty dollars a week, Eddie.
    EDDIE, to Catherine, surprised: Fifty?
    CATHERINE: I swear.
    Pause.
    EDDIE: What about all the stuff you wouldn’t learn this year, though?
    CATHERINE: There’s nothin’ more to learn, Eddie, I just gotta practice from now on. I know all the symbols and I know the keyboard. I’ll just get faster, that’s all. And when I’m workin’ I’ll keep gettin’ better and better, you see?
    BEATRICE: Work is the best practice anyway.
    EDDIE: That ain’t what I wanted, though.
    CATHERINE: Why! It’s a great big company—
    EDDIE: I don’t like that neighborhood over there.
    CATHERINE: It’s a block and half from the subway, he says.
    EDDIE: Near the Navy Yard plenty can happen in a block and a half. And a plumbin’ company! That’s one step over the water front. They’re practically longshoremen.
    BEATRICE : Yeah, but she’ll be in the office, Eddie.
    EDDIE: I know she’ll be in the office, but that ain’t what I had in mind.
    BEATRICE: Listen, she’s gotta go to work sometime.
    EDDIE: Listen, B., she’ll be with a lotta plumbers? And sailors up and down the street? So what did she go to school for?
    CATHERINE: But it’s fifty a week, Eddie.
    EDDIE: Look, did I ask you for money? I supported you this long I support you a little more. Please, do me a favor, will ya? I want you to be with different kind of people. I want you to be in a nice office. Maybe a lawyer’s office someplace in New York in one of them nice buildings. I mean if you’re gonna get outa here then get out; don’t go practically in the same kind of neighborhood.
    Pause. Catherine lowers her eyes.
    BEATRICE: Go, Baby, bring in the supper. Catherine goes out. Think about it a little bit, Eddie. Please. She’s crazy to start work. It’s not a little shop, it’s a big company. Some day she could be a secretary. They picked her out of the whole class. He is silent, staring down at the tablecloth, fingering the pattern. What are you worried about? She could take care of herself. She’ll get out of the subway and be in the office in two minutes.
    EDDIE, somehow sickened: I know that neighborhood, B., I