Brooklyn Page 0,36
you,” Mrs. Kehoe said. “I won’t name them or anything, but it’s the one day of the year I like a bit of peace. Indeed, I might end up presenting myself to you and Father Flood as a person in need. Just to get a bit of peace.”
“I’m sure you would be very welcome, Mrs. Kehoe,” Eilis said, and then, having realized how offensive that remark might sound, added quickly as Mrs. Kehoe glared at her: “But of course you’ll be needed here. And it’s nice to be in your own house for Christmas.”
“I dread it, to be honest,” Mrs. Kehoe said. “And if it wasn’t for my religious convictions, I’d ignore it like the Jews do. In parts of Brooklyn, it could be any day of the week. I always think that’s why you get a biting cold on a Christmas Day, to remind you. And we’ll miss you now for the dinner. I was looking forward to having a Wexford face.”
One day as she was walking to work, crossing State Street, Eilis saw a man selling watches. She was early for work and so had time to linger at his stand. She knew nothing about types of watches but thought the prices were very low. She had enough money in her handbag to buy one for each of her brothers. Even if they already had watches—and she knew that Martin wore her father’s watch—these could serve them if the old ones broke or had to be repaired, and they were from America, which might mean something in Birmingham, and they would be easy to package and cheap to send. In Loehmann’s one lunchtime she found beautiful angora wool cardigans that cost more than she had in mind, but she came back the next day and bought one for her mother and one for Rose and wrapped them together with the nylon stockings she had bought on the sale and sent them to Ireland.
Slowly, Christmas decorations began to appear in the stores and streets of Brooklyn. After supper one Friday evening, when Mrs. Kehoe had left the kitchen, Miss McAdam wondered when Mrs. Kehoe would put up the decorations.
“Last year she waited until the last minute, and that took all the good out of it,” Miss McAdam said.
Patty and Diana were going to stay near Central Park, they said, with Patty’s sister and her children and have a real Christmas, with presents and visits to Santa Claus. Miss Keegan said that it was not really Christmas if you were not in your own house in Ireland, and she was going to be sad all day and there was no point in pretending that she wouldn’t be.
“Do you know something?” Sheila Heffernan interjected. “There’s no taste off American turkeys, even the one we had at Thanksgiving tasted of nothing except sawdust. It isn’t Mrs. Kehoe’s fault, it’s the same all over America.”
“All over America?” Diana asked. “In every part?” She and Patty began to laugh.
“It’ll be quiet anyway,” Sheila said pointedly, glancing in their direction. “We won’t have so much useless chatter.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t bet on that,” Patty said. “We might come down the chimney to fill your stocking when you’re least expecting us, Sheila.”
Patty and Diana both laughed again.
Eilis did not tell any of them what she was doing for Christmas; at breakfast one day the following week, however, it was clear that Mrs. Kehoe had told them.
“Oh, God,” Sheila said, “they take in every oul’ fella off the street. You’d never know what they’d have.”
“I heard about it all right,” Miss Keegan said. “They put funny hats on the down and outs and give them bottles of stout.”
“You’re a saint, Eilis,” Patty said. “A living saint.”
At work Miss Fortini asked Eilis if she would stay on late in the evenings in the week before Christmas and she agreed, as the college had closed for a two weeks’ holiday. She also agreed to work Christmas Eve up to the very last minute, since some of the other girls on the floor wanted to leave early to catch trains and buses and be with their families.
When she finished at Bartocci’s on Christmas Eve she went directly as arranged to the parish hall so that she could take instructions for the next day. Long tables were being carried in from a truck parked outside, followed by benches. She had heard Father Flood before mass asking some women to lend him tablecloths that they could then retrieve when Christmas was over. After