A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [32]
“At different times, I hope,” replied her husband sourly.
“What do you think,” she answered indignantly.
So fifty cents more a week was scraped up and folded into Blossom’s reluctant hand and she was sent off to take fiddle lessons, too.
It so happened that Professor Allegretto had a very slight peculiarity concerning his girl pupils. He made them take off their shoes and stockings and stand in their bare feet on his green carpet while they sawed away. Instead of beating time or correcting their fingering, he spent the hour in a revery staring at their feet.
Evy was watching Blossom getting ready for a lesson one day. She noticed that the child removed her shoes and stockings and washed her feet carefully. Evy thought that commendable but a little strange.
“And why do you wash your feet now?”
“For my fiddle lessons.”
“You play with your hands, not your feet.”
“I feel ashamed standing in front of the professor with dirty feet.”
“He can see through your shoes maybe?”
“I don’t think so because he always makes me take my shoes and stockings off.”
This made Evy jump. She knew nothing of Freud and her scanty knowledge of sex did not include any of its deviations. But her common sense told her that Professor Allegretto should not charge fifty cents an hour and not attend to his work. Blossom’s musical education was terminated then and there.
Upon being questioned, Paul Jones said that he had never been asked to take anything off but his hat when he went for a lesson. He was allowed to continue. In five years, he could play the fiddle almost as well as his father, who had never taken a lesson in his life, could play the guitar.
Aside from his music, Uncle Flittman was a dull man. At home, his only topic of conversation was the way Drummer, the milk wagon horse, treated him. Flittman and the horse had been feuding for five years and Evy hoped that one of them would get the decision soon.
Evy really loved her husband although she could not resist mimicking him. She’d stand in the Nolan kitchen and pretend that she was the horse, Drummer, and she’d give a good imitation of Uncle Flittman trying to put the feedbag on the horse.
“The horse is standing at the curb like this,” Evy leaned over until her head was dangling at her knees. “Will comes along with the feedbag. He’s just about to put it on, when up goes the horse’s head.” Here Evy would jerk her head high and whinny like a horse. “Will waits. The horse’s head goes down again. You’d think he never could get it up in the air. The horse makes out like he’s got no bones.” Evy’s head lolled alarmingly. “Comes Will with the feedbag, up goes the head.”
“Then what happens?” asked Francie.
“I go down and put the feedbag on the horse. That’s what happens.”
“Does he let you?”
“Does he let me,” Evy reported to Katie, then turned to Francie. “Why he runs up on the sidewalk to meet me and sticks his head in the feedbag before I can lift it up, even. Does he let me,” she murmured indignantly. She turned again to Katie. “You know, Kate, sometimes I think my man is jealous the way the horse, Drummer, likes me.”
Katie stared at her a moment with her mouth open. Then she started to laugh. Evy laughed and Francie laughed. The two Rommely girls and Francie who was half a Rommely stood there laughing about a secret they shared concerning the weakness of a man.
Those were the Rommely women: Mary, the mother, Evy, Sissy, and Katie, her daughters, and Francie, who would grow up to be a Rommely woman even though her name was Nolan. They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices.
But they were made out of thin invisible steel.
8
THE ROMMELYS RAN TO WOMEN OF STRONG PERSONALITIES. THE Nolans ran to weak and talented men. Johnny’s family was dying out. The Nolan men grew handsomer, weaker and more beguiling with each generation. They had a way of falling in love but of ducking marriage. That was the main reason why they were dying out.
Ruthie Nolan had come from