A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [176]
Francie shivered. “I don’t like Germans,” she said. “They’re so…so persistent when they want something and they’ve always got to be ahead.”
Once more the night was quiet. Francie grabbed her mother and Neeley. “All together now,” she ordered. The three of them leaned out of the window and shouted,
“Happy New Year, everybody!”
An instant of silence, then out of the dark a thick Irish brogue shouted: “Happy New Year, youse Nolans!”
“Now who could that be?” puzzled Katie.
“Happy New Year, you dirty Irish mick!” Neeley screamed back.
Mama clapped her hand over his mouth and pulled him away while Francie slammed the window down. All three of them were laughing hysterically.
“Now you did it!” gasped Francie, laughing so hard that she cried.
“He knows who we are and he’ll come around here and fi…fi…fight,” gurgled Katie so weak from laughing that she had to hold on to the table. “Who…who…was it?”
“Old man O’Brien. Last week he cursed me out of his yard, the dirty Irish….”
“Hush!” said Mama. “You know that whatever you do when the new year starts, you’ll do all year.”
“And you don’t want to go around saying ‘dirty Irish mick’ like a busted record, do you?” asked Francie. “Besides, you’re a mick yourself.”
“You, too,” accused Neeley.
“We’re all Irish, except Mama.”
“And I’m Irish by marriage,” she said.
“Well, do us Irish drink a toast on New Year’s Eve, or don’t we?” demanded Francie.
“Of course,” said Mama. “I’ll mix us a drink.”
McGarrity had given the Nolans a bottle of fine old brandy for Christmas. Now Katie poured a small jiggerful of it into each of three tall glasses. She filled the rest of each glass with beaten egg and milk mixed with a little sugar. She grated nutmeg and sprinkled it on the top.
Her hands were steady as she worked although she considered this drinking tonight as something crucial. She worried constantly that the children might have inherited the Nolan love of drink. She had tried to come to an attitude about liquor in the family. She felt that if she preached against it, the children, unpredictable individualists that they were, might consider drinking forbidden and fascinating. On the other hand, if she made light of it, they might consider drunkenness a natural thing. She decided neither to make nothing of it nor much of it; to proceed as though drinking was no more or less than something to be moderately indulged in at seasonal times. Well, New Year’s was such a time. She handed each a glass. A lot depended on their reactions.
“What do we drink to?” asked Francie.
“To a hope,” said Katie. “A hope that our family will always be together the way it is tonight.”
“Wait!” said Francie. “Get Laurie, so she’s together with us, too.”
Katie got the patient sleeping baby out of her crib and carried her into the warm kitchen. Laurie opened her eyes, lifted her head and showed two teeth in a befuddled smile. Then her head went down on Katie’s shoulder and she was asleep again.
“Now!” said Francie holding up her glass. “To being together, always.” They clicked glasses and drank.
Neeley tasted his drink, frowned, and said he’d rather have plain milk. He poured the drink down the sink and filled another glass with cold milk. Katie watched, worried, as Francie drained her glass.
“It’s good,” Francie said, “pretty good. But not half as good as a vanilla ice-cream soda.”
“What am I worrying about?” sang Katie inwardly. “After all, they’re as much Rommely as Nolan and we Rommelys are not drinking people.”
“Neeley, let’s go up on the roof,” said Francie impulsively, “and see how the whole world looks at the beginning of a year.”
“Okay,” he agreed.
“Put your shoes on first,” ordered Mama, “and your coats.”
They climbed the shaky wooden ladder, Neeley pushed the opening aside and they were on the roof.