A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [196]
“I don’t mind.”
“Thanks,” he indicated his arm. “Hang on, best girl.” As they were about to enter the subway, he paused. “Say ‘Lee,’” he ordered.
“Lee,” she said.
“Say, ‘Hello, Lee. It’s so good to see you again, dear.’”
“Hello, Lee. It’s so good to see you again…” she said shyly. He tightened his arm.
The waiter at Ruby’s put two bowls of chop suey and a fat pot of tea between them.
“You pour out my tea so it’s more homelike,” said Lee.
“How much sugar?”
“I don’t take sugar.”
“Me either.”
“Say! We have exactly the same tastes, don’t we?” he said.
Both were very hungry and they stopped talking in order to concentrate on the slippery wet food. Every time Francie looked up at him he smiled. Every time he looked down at her she grinned happily. After the chop suey, rice, and tea were all gone, he leaned back and took out a pack of cigarettes.
“Smoke?”
She shook her head. “I tried it once and didn’t seem to like it.”
“Good. I don’t like a girl who smokes.”
Then he started to talk. He told her all that he could remember about himself. He told her of his boyhood in a Pennsylvania town. (She remembered the town from reading its weekly newspaper in the press clipping bureau.) He told her about his parents and his brothers and sisters. He spoke of his school days—parties he had gone to—jobs he had worked at—he told her he was twenty-two—how he had come to enlist at twenty-one. He told her about his life at the army camp—how he got to be a corporal. He told her every single thing about himself. Excepting the girl he was engaged to, back home.
And Francie told him of her life. She told only of the happy things—how handsome Papa had been—how wise Mama was—what a swell brother Neeley was, and how cute her baby sister was. She told him about the brown bowl on the library desk—about the New Year’s night she and Neeley had talked on the roof. She didn’t mention Ben Blake because he never entered her thoughts. After she had finished, he said:
“All my life I’ve been so lonely. I’ve been lonely at crowded parties. I’ve been lonely in the middle of kissing a girl and I’ve been lonely at camp with hundreds of fellows around. But now I’m not lonely any more.” He smiled his special slow shy smile.
“That’s the way it was with me too,” confessed Francie, “except I’ve never kissed any boy. And now for the first time, I’m not lonely either.”
The waiter again replenished their almost filled water glasses. Francie knew it was a hint that they had sat there too long. People were waiting for tables. She asked Lee the time. Almost ten o’clock! They had been talking for nearly four hours!
“I have to start for home,” she said regretfully.
“I’ll take you home. Do you live near the Brooklyn Bridge?”
“No. The Williamsburg.”
“I hoped it was the Brooklyn Bridge. I thought that if I ever got to New York, I’d like to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“Why not?” suggested Francie. “I can get a Graham Avenue trolley from the Brooklyn end that will take me right to my corner.”
They took the I.R.T. Subway to Brooklyn Bridge, got out and started to walk across. Halfway over, they paused to look down on the East River. They stood close together and he held her hand. He looked up at the skyline on the Manhattan shore.
“New York! I’ve always wanted to see it and now I’ve seen it. It’s true what they say—it’s the most wonderful city in the world.”
“Brooklyn’s better.”
“It hasn’t got skyscrapers like New York, has it?”
“No. But there’s a feeling about it—Oh, I can’t explain it. You’ve got to live in Brooklyn to know.”
“We’ll live in Brooklyn some day,” he said quietly. And her heart skipped a beat.
She saw one of the cops who patrolled the Bridge coming toward them.
“We’d better move,” she said uneasily. “The Brooklyn Navy Yard’s right over there and that camouflaged boat anchored there is a transport. The cops are always watching out for spies.”
As