A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [45]
Johnny and Francie felt the growing change in Katie. As the boy grew stronger and handsomer, Johnny grew in weakness and went further and further downhill. Francie felt the way her mother thought about her. She grew an answering hardness against her mother and this hardness, paradoxically enough, brought them a little closer together because it made them more alike.
By the time Neeley was a year old, Katie had stopped depending on Johnny. Johnny was drinking heavily. He worked when he was offered one-night jobs. He brought home his wages but kept his tips for liquor. Life was going too swiftly for Johnny. He had a wife and two babies before he was old enough to vote. His life was finished before it had a chance to begin. He was doomed and no one knew it better than Johnny Nolan.
Katie had the same hardships as Johnny and she was nineteen, two years younger. It might be said that she, too, was doomed. Her life, too, was over before it began. But there the similarity ended. Johnny knew he was doomed and accepted it. Katie wouldn’t accept it. She started a new life where her old one left off.
She exchanged her tenderness for capability. She gave up her dreams and took over hard realities in their place.
Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difference between these two who loved each other so well.
11
JOHNNY CELEBRATED HIS VOTING BIRTHDAY BY GETTING DRUNK FOR three days. When he was coming out of it, Katie locked him in the bedroom where he couldn’t get anything more to drink. Instead of sobering up, he started to get delirium tremens. He wept and begged by turns for a drink. He said he was suffering. She told him it was a good thing, that suffering would harden him, would teach him such a lesson that he’d stop drinking. But poor Johnny just wouldn’t harden. He softened into a wailing, screaming banshee.
Neighbors banged on her door and told her to do something for the poor man. Katie’s mouth set in a hard cold line and she called out to them to mind their own business. But even as she defied the neighbors, she knew that they would have to move as soon as the month was up. They couldn’t live in the neighborhood after the way Johnny was disgracing them.
In the late afternoon, his tortured cries unnerved Katie. Crowding the two babies in the buggy she went over to the factory and had Sissy’s long-suffering foreman get her away from her machine. She told Sissy about Johnny, and Sissy said she’d come over and fix him up as soon as she could get away.
Sissy consulted a gentleman friend about Johnny. The friend gave her instructions. Accordingly, she bought a half pint of good whiskey, concealed it between her full breasts and laced her corset cover and buttoned her dress over it.
She went over to Katie’s and told her that if she could be left alone with Johnny she’d get him out of it. Katie locked Sissy in the bedroom with Johnny. She went back into the kitchen and spent the night with her head on her arms on the table, waiting.
When Johnny saw Sissy, his poor mixed-up brain unscrambled for a minute and he grabbed her arm. “You’re my friend, Sissy. You’re my sister. For God’s sake give me a drink.”
“Take it slow, Johnny,” she said in her soft comforting voice. “I’ve got a drink right here for you.”
She unbuttoned her waist releasing a cascade of foaming white embroidered ruffles and dark pink ribbon. The room filled up with the sweet scent of the warm strong sachet she used. Johnny stared as she undid an intricate bow and loosened her corset cover. The poor fellow remembered her reputation and misunderstood.
“No, no, Sissy. Please!” he moaned.
“Don’t be a dockle, Johnny. There’s a time and a place for everything and this isn’t the time.” She pulled out the bottle.
He grabbed it. It was warm from