Brooklyn Page 0,59

she had classes at Brooklyn College. He had not asked her what she did every evening, and she had kept it to herself almost deliberately as a way of holding him at a distance. She had enjoyed being collected by him on a Friday night at Mrs. Kehoe’s up to now, and she looked forward to his company, especially in the diner before the dance. He was bright and funny as he spoke about baseball, his brothers, his work and life in Brooklyn. He had quickly learned the names of her fellow lodgers and of her bosses at work and he managed to allude to them regularly in a way that made her laugh.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the college?” he asked her as they sat in the diner before the dance.

“You didn’t ask.”

“I don’t have anything more to tell you.” He shrugged, feigning depression.

“No secrets?”

“I could make up some, but they wouldn’t sound true.”

“Mrs. Kehoe believes that you’re Irish. And you could be a native of Tipperary for all I know and just be putting on the rest. How come I met you at an Irish dance?”

“Okay. I do have a secret.”

“I knew it. You come from Bray.”

“What? Where’s that?”

“What’s your secret?”

“You want to know why I came to an Irish dance?”

“All right. I’ll ask you: why did you come to an Irish dance?”

“Because I like Irish girls.”

“Would any one do?”

“No, I like you.”

“Yes, but if I wasn’t there? Would you just pick another?”

“No, if you weren’t there, I would walk home all sad looking at the ground.”

She explained to him then that she had been homesick, and that Father Flood had inscribed her on the course as a way of making her busy, and how studying in the evening made her feel happy, or as happy as she had been since she had left home.

“Don’t I make you feel happy?” He looked at her seriously.

“Yes, you do,” she replied.

Before he could ask her any more questions that might, she thought, lead her to say that she did not know him well enough to make any further declarations about him, she told him about her classes, about the other students, about bookkeeping and keeping accounts and about the law lecturer Mr. Rosenblum. He knitted his brow and seemed worried when she told him how difficult and complicated the lectures were. Then when she recounted what the bookseller had said on the day when she went to Manhattan to buy law books, he became completely silent. When their coffee came he still did not speak but kept stirring the sugar, nodding his head sadly. She had not seen him like this before and found that she was looking closely at his face in this light, wondering how quickly he would return to his usual self and begin smiling and laughing again. But, when he asked the waiter for the bill, he remained grave and he did not speak as they left the restaurant.

Later, when the dance music became slow and they were dancing close to each other, she looked up and caught his gaze. He had the same serious expression on his face, which made him appear less clownish and boyish than before. Even when he smiled at her, he did not make it seem like a joke, or a way of having fun. It was a warm smile, sincere, and it suggested to her that he was stable, almost mature and that, whatever was happening now, he meant business. She smiled back at him but then looked down and closed her eyes. She was frightened.

He arranged that evening that he would collect her the following Thursday from college and walk her home. Nothing more, he promised. He did not want to disturb her, he said, from her studies. The following week, when he asked her to come to a movie with him on the Saturday, she agreed because all of her fellow lodgers, with the exception of Dolores, and some of the girls at work were going to go to Singin’ in the Rain, which was opening. Even Mrs. Kehoe said that she intended to see the film with two of her friends and thus it became a subject of much discussion at the kitchen table.

Soon, then, a pattern developed. Every Thursday, Tony stood outside the college, or discreetly inside the hall if it were raining, and he accompanied her onto the trolley-car and then he walked her home. He was invariably cheerful, with news of the people