Minnie Flynn/Chapter 8
MINNIE telephoned from Fort Lee to Billy. It was several minutes before he recognized her voice, it was so high-pitched; then the sentences were so fragmentary he could scarcely make sense out of them. Bewildered he hung up the receiver. Only so much did he understand: Minnie was back in the movies. Minnie had found a hundred dollars somewhere and was spending it—this terrified him—Minnie ordered him to send word to her mother that she and Billy would have dinner there.
Two hours later the Flynn family was waiting nervously for Minnie, hardly daring to hope, though Elsie laid persistent stress upon the importance of the engraved letterhead and the personal tone to the letter.
"You'd be sick as a dog, Pete Flynn, if Minnie put one over, after the way you've talked about her," challenged Mrs. Flynn from her vantage point at the window where she had been waiting since the five o'clock whistles had blown.
"She'll have nothin' to crow about—not that dirty little sneak," came Pete's surly reply. A look from Elsie silenced him.
"Them raised letters, Pete, and the almost beggin' way it was worded, 'If you please come to my office,' as if they was sorry they hadn't seen her lately. Don't be too hasty, Pete dear."
Billy came in, pale with unexplained nervousness. A strange tight pain lay under his heart. Mrs. Flynn, perceiving at once that Billy wasn't himself, drew him to one side and asked what was troubling him. He pressed her hand over the spot where the pain was.
"Why, Billy MacNally, it ain't nothin' but indigestion." Then she ordered Michael Flynn to mix a spoonful of soda in a glass of hot water. Billy drank it, but it didn't relieve the pain. Billy was worried. In his inner consciousness tugged an inexplicable premonition, and he sat there, overpowered by the tumultuous emotions that had so unexpectedly laid hold of him; fear of losing her, fear that any success away from their humdrum existence would take her away from him. Agonizing fear!
Minnie turned the handle of the door and kicked the door open.
"Hello!" she cried in a voice that rose like a sharp report. "Well, here I am!"
It had come . . . Minnie had won out! They read her triumph in her eyes. Mr. Flynn was awed by it, Minnie's mother hysterically relieved, Elsie and Nettie and Jimmy and Billy knew it. Pete knew it, too. For one fleeting moment he could have struck her to the floor, and stamped upon her, feeling a personal insult in her triumph.
"Oh, Minnie!" It was Billy's voice.
She threw down the packages that had laden her arms, and rushing across the room hurled herself upon Billy's breast, kissing him wildly and passionately. "Billy," she cried, "I'm almost crazy. I'm almost out of my head! What do you think has happened to me?—I've been spendin' money for the last two hours—I got a hundred dollars off the director at the studio!—I signed something—I got my name changed—Billy, I bought you a silver toothpick—Mama, I got a present for you, look in my pocket—Oh, Lord! I can hardly get my breath! Seventy-five dollars a week, for eight weeks!—And I'm to be a star with my picture in the papers—Papa I got you a mustache cup!—I start to work tomorrow, rehearsals, he called it. Oh, I'm crazy, Billy, I tell you I'm just off my nut with it! Look at me! Ain't I shaking from head to foot?"
The breathing in the room made strange rasping sounds as they crowded around her.
"Minnie, lower your voice—you're screamin' so! I'm afraid I'll miss some of it. Tell it to us all over again—please, Minnie."
"She's either drunk or cuckoo," said Pete. He leaned down quickly and picked up a bill which Minnie had dropped as her trembling hands emptied her pockets.
"A lip-stick for Nettie, and I got a green tam like the director wanted me to—" A sob choked off her laughter. "Oh, Billy, we're rich, honey! Just think of it! For heaven's sakes, somebody quick—figure up what eight times seventy-five dollars is!—and the old boss is goin' to give me much more work when I finish the eight weeks."
Pete had ironed out the bill.
"⟨Jesus⟩!" he cried when he saw that its denomination was ten dollars.
"Look here, Pete Flynn! There's no reason why you should take the Lord's name in vain just because Minnie's got all this money—I'm ashamed of you!"
"Don't get so excited, mama. Here, Minnie—here's your dough." And Pete handed it back to her, his little jealous eyes riveted upon the bill.
Minnie laughed, folded it up, started to drop it into Billy's pocket when her eyes sparkled. "Mama, what you got for dinner?"
"Lamb stew, Minnie. Billy paid for it out of his own pocket."
"Stew nothin'! What do you say, folks, if we all go out and celebrate?—Make one big night of it! I'll blow you to the whole ten!—I'll take you to some swell chop suey joint for supper, and after that, we'll all go to the movies. Mama,—papa—what do you say, folks? Come on, Billy, let's stir 'em up and get out of here!"
They stood there saying nothing, their nerves jarred by the sharp staccatos of Minnie's voice. Jimmy was the one to break the silence. "I think you've got the right idea, sis. What's the good of money if you don't spend it. Let's put on the big works. Everybody kick over the traces. Ma, you're gonna step out and dance with me tonight!"
"But it's lamb stew, Minnie—Billy and your pa's favorite."
"Warm it up for tomorrow night, dearie. Tonight's the night, ma. Ain't I right, Jimmy?"
For the first time, Michael Flynn spoke. His voice was trembling; he was afraid of his family. "Are you sure, Minnie, that it's not like the last time, when they promised you such a swell job and then never gave it to you?"
"Oh, papa!" Minnie's voice whined with irritation. "Please don't be a kill-joy tonight! Didn't I explain to you how different this was?—that I signed something?—that I got a hundred bucks from the director for just signing it?" With studied tolerance she put her arm around her father's neck. "Didn't I make it clear to you, papa dear, how I'm goin' to get seventy-five dollars a week, collectin' it on every Saturday night?—As regular as if I was workin' in a plumbin' shop?"
"Sure—just as regular as if she was workin' in a plumbin' shop," repeated Jimmy. "Come on, pa, get your shoes on. We can't spoil Minnie's good time by throwin' cold water on it. Ma, get out the old bonnet. I know the niftiest chop suey joint that's got a good floor and a nickel piano, and everything! We're goin' to step out with some little style tonight!—Minnie's brought home the bacon!" Bustle and confusion, and in the center of it was Minnie. Several times Billy tried to get close to her, but he was pushed away by eager, grasping hands. And so they clattered down the narrow steps, stopping at each neighbor's door to tell the news, adding to their story every time they told it in spite of Michael Flynn's warning and Billy's embarrassed protests.
Billy felt uneasily alone, isolated from these people, whose very friendliness made them seem strangers to him. Even Minnie and he seemed to have drifted far apart. Later, in the chop suey restaurant, Billy warmed under the glow of many glasses of beer, and the feel of Minnie's palpitating body against his. They danced furiously to the whang and pulse of the electric piano, kept noisy by the succession of nickels Minnie dropped into it. He and Michael Flynn had figured up the sum that Minnie was going to make. "What'll you do with it, Minnie? Six hundred dollars," he kept repeating as they danced around and around.
"Oh, I dunno," and her voice trailed off dreamily. "Buy a lot of things for me and you, honey—a new overcoat and some silk stockings—and a swell brass bed like the one we seen in the window at Macy's the other evening, and. . . ."
"Maybe it would be wiser if we invested it in the meat business, Minnie. There's goin' to be an opening in Hesselman's this fall."
"I know, Billy dear, but let's wait till we get the fur coat, and the brass bed—you said yourself how swell the bed was, and you was wishin' that we had one like it."
The music came to a cacophonous finale. Feet shuffled over the dance floor, and when all were seated, Minnie again made herself conspicuous by rushing across the empty floor, to drop with exaggerated gesture another nickel into the slot. "Come on, Jimmy!" she cried out. "My feet are achin' from dancin', but I've never had such a good time in all my life."
"It's gettin' so late, Minnie," protested her mother, who had called her over to the table. "It's after midnight. Papa's awful tired, and he gets up at five, dearie."
Minnie was tired, too. She had lived so fast and furiously in the last few hours. "All right, ma. I'm ready to go home. I don't feel that it's the end of a big night, because all nights are goin' to be big nights from now on for the Flynn family. What do you say, Pete? Havin' a good time lappin' up the beer and noodles?"
"Sure I am," said Pete sheepishly, "But I ain't got nothin' on the old man. Caught pa sittin' back in his chair tonight like a millionaire, and smokin' an Owl. I notice that nobody else got a whack at 'em."
Minnie leaned over and gave a swift kiss to her father's bald head. "Pa's goin' to be smokin' two-for-a-quarters before I'm through with him, ain't you, papa dear?"
Mr. Flynn was always embarrassed when he was the center of attention. "Oh, go on, Minnie. Chewing tobacco is good enough for me. I ain't used to cigars. I don't want you to spend your money on me. I don't know what the boss of the plumbin' shop would say if he seen me smokin' a cigar."
Minnie squeezed his hand. "I love you, papa," she said. And she did love him more than any of the others. "I'll have every cent that I borrowed of your funeral money paid back to you by the end of the first week, you see if I don't!"
The ten-dollar bill was in Billy's pocket. His hand had gone swiftly to it many times during the evening. He would draw his hand away, as if the bill were a live coal. He didn't know why he should feel that way about money that Minnie had given him, but he did. To take that money and invest it for her was one thing, to spend it was another.
"Hey, Chinky!" Minnie's voice had jarred on him all evening. Now it was raucous, shrill, even cutting above the din of the electric piano. "Bring us the bill, and pronto. Savvy?"
When Michael Flynn thought about the bill, he cringed as if expecting a physical blow. He had noted every order that went forth from the table. He had been counting all evening the glasses of beer set in front of Pete and Jimmy. "It's gonna be pretty steep, little girl," he said to her nervously. "You went on orderin' all those funny names, and I never seen you once look to the right side o' the bill o' fare."
"Oh, papa, you're a scream! All my life I've been wishin' that I could eat a meal without havin' to look at the right side o' the bill o' fare and order from the prices instead of the dishes. And now that time has come, don't you see, papa? We'll never have to look at the price list first."
The bill was eight dollars and twenty-five cents. It was madness to Michael Flynn.
When they filed out, through the ornate, Chinese door, Minnie linked her arm through her father's. It pleased Michael Flynn and flattered him. A faint blush mounted to his graying temples. "The old man's steppin' out," he said, attempting to make light of it, but his arm trembled when Minnie tightened her grasp.
"Let's fall behind the crowd a bit. I got somethin' to tell you," Minnie whispered in his ear.
"Sure, Minnie, what is it?" The quaver in his voice revealed a new concern.
"Don't worry, it's nothin' to be scared about." She watched and waited until Billy, swinging off in stride with Jimmy, was out of hearing.
"Papa."
"Yes, baby."
"I give the studio your telephone number instead of Billy's. They're gonna call some time tomorrow and leave a message for Miss Day. You know that's what I told you they're gonna call me, papa—Miss Day. I don't want Billy to know I gave 'em your plumbing shop instead of the butcher shop."
"Aw, Minnie, why did you ever do such a thing as that!"
"Shh! Papa, they'll hear you. It's hard to explain now, but I couldn't tell 'em over at the studio that I was married."
"Why, Minnie MacNally!"
"Papa dear, you're old-fashioned and you don't understand."
"Thank God I don't, Minnie. This is gettin' to be a terrible world if girls is ashamed of their own good husbands."
"It ain't because I'm ashamed of him, papa—honest, it ain't—but I've heard a lot of girls at the studios say that you'll be queered the minute they find out that you're married. "You see, papa, there are so many girls lookin' for work, they won't give the married girls a chance if they got husbands to support 'em. That's fair, ain't it, papa? And after all I've been through, I got as much right to success as if I was single, ain't I, papa?"
Michael Flynn could not understand it at all. Life had always seemed simple when the children were little.
"Minnie, you're takin' a wrong step. The minute you start any kind of crooked business, you're gonna make everybody unhappy" Minnie's sudden, unexpected laughter came as a startling interruption.
"Oh, papa," she was saying. "You certainly are a funny one. This ain't no right time for lecturin' me, I'm too happy."
"I'm sorry, Minnie, but Billy's a good boy, and don't you forget it."
"I won't, papa. I'm crazy about him, honest I am."
That evening when her husband's strong arms held her close to him, she protested her love for him more warmly than she had ever done before. "Kiss me, Billy. Kiss me a lot tonight. I'm awful nervous. My heart's shakin' my whole body. Feel it? Gee, I'd just die if I didn't have you. You're like that big red sofa in the parlor at home. It's been there ever since I can remember. I'd hate that place if it wasn't for that sofa. It sounds terrible silly, I know, but you are like that sofa, Billy."
Billy never had any answer for such talk as this. He stroked her hair with his clumsy hand, and wondered what a sensible woman like Hesselman's dead wife would have thought about a girl like Minnie. As he lay there looking off into the darkness, he was thinking, he knew not why, of this strange comparison. He was thinking of the bread that Mrs. Hesselman had made, of the children that she had borne and buried, how she had helped her husband in his work. And he was ashamed of it, but he was thinking also that Minnie had never even cooked a breakfast for him.
"A penny for your thoughts, sweetheart."
"Oh, nothin,' honey"
"There was somethin' more than that to my thoughts. Guess what I'm thinkin' about, Billy dear."
"I dunno, honey."
"All the things I'm gonna buy you!"
"Me?"
"Yeh, you."
"But I don't want you to buy me anything, honey. I got everything I want."
Minnie laughed and buried her face into the curve of his neck. "You old silly! Why, I know a dozen things that I'm gonna get you," came her half-smothered answer. "You're gonna make Al Kessler look like thirty cents—that's what you are!"
"But I can't afford it, Minnie!"
"That's just it, but I can. I'm gonna begin to help you, Billy. Think of that six hundred dollars the first crack out of the box. Oh, I'm so excited, Billy! It all seems too good to be true. Kiss me on the mouth—kiss me hard! I want to make you so happy, Billy, honest, I do."
Minnie fell asleep, exhausted by the play of her imagination as her dreams shuttled back and forth from Ninth Avenue to the studio, from the studio to Ninth Avenue.
But Billy lay awake long into the night, the burden of Minnie in his arms, his own hands in tight lock as if to hold her there, her face glowing even in her sleep with this newfound happiness and one of his tears glistening upon a strand of her loosely braided red hair.
The Flynns had only one bitter regret about Minnie's success—the changing of her name. Even the consolation of her picture in an evening paper couldn't lessen their disappointment. Michael Flynn, who alone remained passive through these swift moving changes, commented upon it. Flynn was no name to be discarded. A good name that stood for good honest people. He could not understand a business which discounted all that your father and your father's father had stood for.
To Minnie, this hectic new life had assumed distorted proportions; her days were too short, her nights too long. The days were filled with hard work, little triumphs, often unhappy conflicts; her nights restless, made unpleasant by the realization that Billy MacNally would never fit into this new scheme of things. His stolid patience soon became an irritation to her. She resented his silent martyrdom, and tried to stir up an antagonism, feeling that she would be better able to cope with this. When night came, she was physically exhausted by the hard day's work. The excitement, the effort to succeed, lashed her brain with little, sharp, stinging blows. She would sink back, her body aching from the mental strain as if from physical punishment. Then Billy would come to her and in his dull, droning voice, recount in maddening detail all that had passed during the day; who had come to the shop, what had been bought, the success of the new block and cleaver, the few moments' conversation with her father wherein plans were made for Minnie's future after Billy had saved enough money to buy an interest in Hesselman's butcher shop. But never once did he ask her what the day had held for her, with whom she had come in contact, never once demanded an explanation of the character of her work, never once talked about the possibilities of her success. He ignored it as completely as if their life held only his work and his future. Minnie resented his lack of interest in her career, chafed under his dry recital, and despised him when he smiled upon her with patronizing tenderness. She could not forget the excitement of the day. She wanted sympathy for her disappointments, praise for her triumphs.
Her family gave her the mental support she missed from Billy. They listened with awed enthusiasm to all she had to tell them. They followed her through the maze of every step, wide-eyed, their minds too dull to grasp what Minnie pictured. What terrified them was the fear that the money should prove utterly unreal. Like gaunt, half-starved birds, they hovered around her, each one's reactions different, but all greedy for a share of what they considered their rightful portion of position and riches.
To give to them—to hear their incoherent expressions of wonderment—to buy and spend became a passionate vice with Minnie. Her father and Billy alone disappointed her. They apparently had no interest in the work she was doing or the money she was receiving, once they found that money would never mean anything else to Minnie than the spending of it.
Billy accepted the fancy vests she bought him. Her father was inordinately proud of the gold-banded brier-wood pipe. But their gifts were laid away with the sentimental cards she had written to accompany them.
So Minnie concentrated her charities upon the other members of her family. Instinct warned her against the sudden warmth of Nettie and Pete. She knew it would stop if the money ceased coming in; but her senses were made drunk at the sight of them wallowing before her, grunting like hungry, rooting animals. Nettie. Pete. Elsie. Her mother. She was herself conscious of a soothing narcotic on her open sore, which was Pete. She picked and prodded him with barbed raillery, but never once now did he lose his temper. What was sniveling pride to the joy of getting drunk on good whisky bought with money he did not have to earn? Then there was Elsie, sick in mind and body, hovering close to him, whispering advice in his ears—her fetish was Pete's comfort, no matter how it was bought. Sometimes Minnie hated them, when their huddling presence smothered her like foul air. But the longing to satisfy the self-vanity of generosity made it impossible to free herself from these parasites. It drew them the closer until that unhealthy group had become incurably adherent to her life.