The Amboy Dukes (24 page)

Alice held his hand and glanced at Frank. She knew that the news about Fanny Kane had disturbed him, although she believed he had known the night before what had happened. And she was worried about Crazy. Frank hated Crazy and Crazy hated her brother, and people said that Crazy was liable to do anything. She shuddered.

Frank felt her tremble. “What’s the matter, baby?” He looked at her.

“I got a chill,” she apologized. “It’s nothing. Look at the gardens!” she exclaimed as they entered the promenade from Fifth Avenue. “They’re beautiful!”

Frank pointed to a square of cardboard at the end of a stick. “Read the little signs. They tell the names of the flowers and”—he bent forward—“their Latin names.”

Alice sat on a wooden bench and stared at the azalea shrubs, whose red blossoms were like a vivid splash of flame against the short thick grass. Surrounding the azaleas like an antique gold frame that has become mottled and foxed were rows of jonquils and tulips, with their yellow, red, and purple-black blossoms swaying in the light breeze. At the outer border of the plots the clumps of velvet-petaled pansies, with startling blues, purples, and yellows, added the final thrust of extravagant color to the formal flower arrangement.

Frank smiled and tugged at his sister’s arm. “I’ll take you to the Botanical Gardens next week.” Her childish and trusting face with frank brown eyes that were suddenly happy as he spoke to her made him want to cry. He felt like a rat, a heel. If he had given her more attention he wouldn’t have had so much time for Black Benny and the Dukes—but there was no use thinking about it.

“Hurry up,” he said again. “We want to make the show and we want to get out before it’s too late. You gotta eat. I never noticed how thin you were.”

Alice stood up and smoothed her skirt. “I could sit here and not go to the movie. I eat plenty.”

Frank paused as Alice leaned over the parapet to see the people eating and drinking under the awnings.

“They eat like that in French restaurants in Paris,” he informed her. “It’s kinda nice.”

“I don’t want to go to the movies,” Alice insisted. “Please.”

Frank looked at her. “All right,” he said. “Suit yourself.” For almost an hour Alice sat on a bench in the promenade staring at the flowers as if she wanted to impress forever in her mind their colors, their grace of line, their beauty and unconscious loveliness. And as she sat there, darting shy glances at the people who strolled past them, reaching suddenly forward with a quick yet timid motion to touch the bright face of a pansy, and breathing the wonder and excitement of the stone fountain whose white spumes of spray hung as a fine irisation in the sun, the hour was a magic time.

Frank pushed a strand of hair back from Alice’s forehead. “Come on, baby,” he said, “let’s get something to eat.”

Reluctantly she permitted herself to be led back to Fifth Avenue. “I could still stay,” she said.

“I believe you.” Frank nodded. “Now look, we gotta eat. I’m taking you to a swell place to eat. Wait till you see it. Nothing like what we got in Brownsville.”

The sun was joyous over Fifth Avenue, and Frank permitted Alice to gape and goggle at the store windows. Each window held something of interest for her, and Lord and Taylor, Franklin Simon, Best and Company, stores whose names she had read in the newspaper advertisements, suddenly were real to her, and she was not disappointed. The season depicted in the windows was summer, and the mannequins portrayed the average citizen and his family, clad in expensive cottons, tending their victory garden and flower beds. An excited terrier stood near the master of the house, dumbly protesting as his master dug up a bone. Another window depicted a carefree, light-hearted group picnicking on a terrace, and their set faces were fixed in an eternal smile. Their shorts, culottes, garden hats with wide-sweeping brims, slack sets were witnesses that the outdoor life still was fashionable. There were windows depicting gay, carefree, bright people at the beach, at the country club, strolling to the badminton courts. There were windows featuring the correct dress for the junior miss, and Alice covertly glanced at the suit which her mother had purchased for her in Klein’s better store, and the suit now appeared drab and uninteresting, without charm or smartness.

Alice turned to Frank. “Do people live like this and dress like this?” Unconsciously envy had crept into her voice.

Frank nodded affirmatively.

“Will we?”

Frank shrugged his shoulders. He did not want to hurt his sister.

“Where do people live who have outdoor fireplaces in their back yards?” she asked.

“Around,” he said vaguely. “Not around Pitkin Avenue,” he added.

“Let’s go home,” she said suddenly. “I don’t want to see any more.”

Frank looked at a street sign. “We’re almost at Thirty-fourth Street. I wanta show you the Empire State, and it’s after one and I’m hungry.”

Alice walked along, looking neither to her right nor left, concentrating upon the Empire State Building, whose steel and granite, bright in the afternoon sun, surged from the earth and dwarfed the buildings around it. She tilted her head back as her gaze went upward.

“I can’t count no more,” she gave up. “It’s too big.”

“We’ll go up to the top someday,” Frank said. “I never been on the top, and they say you can see for almost a hundred miles. Come on, baby.” He led her toward Longchamps Restaurant. “I’m starved.”

“In there?” Alice asked unbelievingly. “It must cost a lot.”

“Pop gave me five bucks.” Frank guided her through the restaurant doors into the sudden air-conditioned coolness. “Two,” he said to the smiling hostess.

The hostess led them to a table, and after Alice was seated Frank awkwardly pushed her chair toward the table.

“Shall I take off my hat?” she whispered.

“You don’t have to.” He stood up. “I want to hang mine.”

He watched Alice scan the menu and shook his head. Funny how the kid had reacted to what she had seen. Then he remembered there were no reasons for her to respond differently. Alice’s vision of wealth had been Uncle Hershell’s home, but Uncle Hershell was a sloppy little man who received his infrequent guests in a shaker sweater with gaping elbows and old carpet slippers. The furniture in Uncle Hershell’s house was hideous and massive, with intricately carved walnut frames and stolid legs, built to last forever and to withstand all attempts at beautification. Uncle Hershell’s back yard consisted of a sickly sycamore and a number of untidy hedges, and nowhere was there evidence of a dining terrace, an outdoor fireplace, or a badminton court. But to Alice, Uncle Hershell had represented wealth, until today, when suddenly, without warning or preparation, in a sudden sunburst of color, she had seen the true glories that money could purchase, and her initial enthusiasms had now been replaced by the first twinges of envy and sadness. He had felt the same way as Alice, years ago, when with some of the boys on the block he had been taken to a charity summer camp for two weeks and had known the joy of trees, flowers, grass, running streams, hills, and forest trails. He had to smile as he remembered how he had clung to his cot on the last day of his stay, refusing to leave, biting the hand of one of the counselors, and finally, how he had been pried loose and forcibly placed in the camp truck. He had tried to leap off the tailboard, but the counselors were prepared for him; and, weeping and sobbing, he had made the return journey to Brooklyn, and when his parents met him at the welfare office he had greeted them with a kicking and swearing because they were not farmers.

“I’ll order for you,” Frank said to Alice as he saw her continued hesitation. “Bring her a fruit cup,” he said to the waiter, “a tuna-fish sandwich on toast, lettuce and tomato salad. She’ll have something to drink and her dessert later. Me”—he pondered the menu—“I’ll have a fruit cup on the roast-beef dinner. Mashed potatoes and squash, salad, and I’ll take my drink and dessert with hers. All right what I ordered for you?” he asked Alice.

“Yes,” she said softly.

Frank nodded to the waiter and picked up his water glass. The outside of the glass was frosted, and he drank slowly, enjoying the coldness of the iced water.

Alice was worried. “You sure you have enough money?” she asked anxiously.

“Plenty,” he reassured her.

She gestured to the silver placed before her. “It’s so fancy here. I don’t know what to do.”

“No one’s watching you. Just keep one hand in your lap and eat slowly, and don’t put your elbows on the table.” Alice glanced about her and saw the men and women chatting and eating with ease. At a near-by table a man and woman sat with their two children, and Alice saw that the girl was about her age, but this girl cut her meat and used her salad fork with confidence.

The waiter placed the fruit cocktails before them, and Frank smiled encouragingly at Alice as she hesitantly dipped her spoon into the cup.

“Snap out of it,” he whispered. “We’re as good as the jerks in here. Start eating.”

Alice nodded and ate timidly, taking such tiny bites of her sandwich that the taste of the tuna was barely discernible and neglecting her salad because she was afraid to cut the slices of tomato. With relief she heard Frank order milk for her, but she insisted upon choosing her own dessert. “I’ll have chocolate pudding,” she said to the waiter, and then she dropped her glance and sat stiffly with her hands folded in her lap.

The family at the near-by table were too engrossed in one another to notice anyone else, and Alice tried to imitate the self-possession of the girl. She smiled at Frank and nodded appreciatively at the smooth taste of the pudding, and Frank winked at her as he cut his slab of apple pie which was decorated with a golden strip of cheese.

Frank sighed expansively. “That was good; I sure was hungry. I’ll finish the cigarette and we’ll go.”

“I hope you’ve enough money.”

“More than enough.”

He motioned to the waiter, who approached with the check. Frank glanced at the check and withdrew some bills from his wallet.

“Keep the change,” he instructed the waiter.

He nodded slightly as the waiter thanked him, and inhaled deeply on the cigarette. He wished it were a reefer. It might have been better if he had continued to smoke them, continued to act as he did before—it happened. Then Larry would not have guessed what was bothering Black Benny and him. But he hadn’t admitted anything, though what Larry said was true. Benny drinking and losing control of himself was bad for them. He would have to see Benny after he took Alice home and have it out with him. Today was the eighteenth. There were only two more weeks of school. They could hold on for that much longer. Even Gallagher and the other bastards didn’t seem to be bothering them so much, but suppose they came around somewhere and found Benny drunk and they started to pump him and the dope shot off his mouth? Benny didn’t trust him, but at least he knew how to keep his lips buttoned. Frank ground his cigarette into the ash tray, stood up, and walked around the table to Alice. “Let’s go,” he said.

Alice opened her purse and looked at herself in the mirror.

Frank pulled her chair back. “You look fine. When’re you gonna start using make-up?”

Alice laughed shyly. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t need it.” Frank removed his hat from the clothes tree.

“I don’t want to wear it for a long time.”

“You don’t need it,” Frank repeated. “So you had a good time?” he asked her as they walked toward the Lexington Avenue subway. “Well,” he replied to her nod, “I’ll take you out again soon. To the Botanical Gardens or someplace.”

As they walked along Pitkin Avenue from Saratoga to Amboy, Alice narrowed her eyes so that she saw nothing but the sidewalk before her. She turned the corner into Amboy, and the contrast with Fifth Avenue was more startling than she had imagined it would be. She did not expect to see the well-groomed and handsome men and women strolling leisurely in the sun, nor uniformed chauffeurs in gleaming and polished limousines, but she had not realized how drab the tenements were. She remembered the apartment houses with their impressive canopies and casement windows, their clean brick and stone vaulting pride-fully toward the washed blue of the sky. Here there were only ugliness and the sour smell of boiling wash and the wretchedness which everyone on the block accepted.

Suddenly she felt older than Frank, wiser, more certain, more settled. She saw her brother as he was: too sharp and slick in appearance, with an expression furtive and too old for his face and eyes. He was not the sixteen of the boys and girls whom she had seen eating in Longchamps and strolling along Riverside Drive and Fifth Avenue. She realized that normal boyhood had never been a part of Frank. He had grown up too suddenly, and the mold of the slum tenements and the years of public charity had cast Frank true to form: sullen, suspicious, bitter, cruel, uncaring as to what had happened to Fanny Kane, who was twelve, and only a year older than she.

The first thing she noticed as she opened the kitchen door was that her mother had spread their good linen tablecloth across the kitchen table. Then she saw Stan Alberg sitting with her father near the open kitchen windows. The good tablecloth usually meant a party, but one glance at her mother’s seething, angry face and she knew that the tablecloth was only in use to impress Mr. Alberg. Frank immediately sensed the troubled silence and he mumbled a greeting and went into his bedroom to prepare himself for the storm which he knew was coming. It was only four o’clock, which meant that his parents had come home early, and he knew that their early home-coming had something to do with Fanny Kane. He was getting tired of these week-end battles, with their curses and accusations and threats of punishment, these battles when his parents raved and stormed at him for not devoting more lime to Alice, not keeping their flat looking tidy, not studying and paying closer attention to his schoolwork. Between Frank and his mother and father there seldom passed a cheerful or happy word. All their conversations were sharp, violent, hateful, as they tore and clawed at one another’s wounds and deficiencies, and only when they spoke to Alice did their voices become less strident and harsh.