By the Rivers of Brooklyn Read Free Page A

and Bert had gone home over Christmas when construction work slowed down a little. Ethel had stayed in her little room at the Careys’, spent Christmas Day at her cousin Jean’s apartment in South Brooklyn, and longed for home.
    But now, with spring, she felt no urge to go home. Brooklyn was coming alive around her and she wanted to be there when the streets grew so hot that, Bert joked, you could not only fry an egg on the pavement but a couple of strips of bacon to go with it.
    â€œMother says thanks for the handbag and shoes, and Annie likes her new hat. I told her you picked them out,” he added. Bert sent frequent gifts along with the money he mailed home out of every week’s pay. Ethel did the same with her pay, sending money to her widowed mother and her younger sister Ruby. Beyond that, both Bert and Ethel put a bit aside for the day when they would be able to get married. They had only a little left over for going to the movies and eating out on Saturdays.
    When they left the park they ate at a cafeteria on Flatbush. Ethel had never had dinner in a restaurant in her life before she came to New York, and now they ate sandwiches and drank egg creams at restaurants every Saturday. Then they went to see The Thief of Bagdad at the Paramount.
    â€œOh I love Douglas Fairbanks,” Dorothy said as they spilled out of the theatre into the street. “Isn’t he gorgeous, Ethel? Do they have fellows that good-looking back in NewFOUNDland?”
    Ethel giggled, feeling lighter and sillier than usual under the influence of the movie. “You knows what kind of fellas we got in Newfoundland; sure, you can see them all over the streets in Brooklyn. See these two here now, you won’t find anything in New York finer than the Evans boys.”
    â€œI thought you liked Valentino,” Jim said to Dorothy. “I always figured I was more the Valentino type, anyway.” He whisked Dorothy into his arms, humming a tune they’d just heard in the theatre. The two of them danced in the streets, singing, whirling, moving into the streetlights’ glow like spotlights, while Bert and Ethel laughed at them, told them to be quiet, to stop that foolishness now.
    The two couples said goodbye at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenue, Jim to walk Dorothy back to her boarding house and Bert to walk Ethel back to the Careys’. “I’ll come by for you tomorrow at ten,” he said as they came within sight of the house.
    â€œI’ll be waiting,” said Ethel. Bert was good about taking her to church every Sunday. They didn’t know any Army people here in Brooklyn so they went to the Congregational church nearest to where Ethel lived. Jim sometimes came and sometimes didn’t, depending on which girl he was walking out with. “I don’t suppose Jim will be bringing Dorothy to church,” she guessed.
    Bert laughed. “Not hardly. She’s Catholic, I’m pretty sure.”
    â€œYour mother would kill him if she knew,” Ethel said.
    Bert didn’t seem interested in talking about Jim’s new girl. He took Ethel in his arms, clinching her waist more tightly than usual. “Kiss me, Ethel,” he said, and kissed her hard before she had a chance to say anything. “You knows I loves you, Ethel, only you don’t know how much.” Ethel wondered if watching Douglas Fairbanks had gone to his head.
    Spring unfolded into summer that way, weeks of work punctuated by half-days off and dates with Bert and Sundays in church. July and August were every bit as hot as Bert had warned her they would be. Ethel sat in her cousin Jean’s kitchen one evening while Jean cooked a feed of roast beef, potatoes, carrots and cabbage on the coal stove in one-hundred-degree heat. Jean interspersed her cooking with complaints: “Ethel, when you goes to have a baby, make sure it’s not going to be born in September, because if it is you’ll go