Minnie Flynn

Front matter

Copyright, 1925, by Boni & Liveright, Inc.Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to my father and mother

Chapter 1

Section 1

THE brisk autumn wind tilted Minnie Flynn's faded straw hat to a rakish angle. She walked with swift bouncing steps, her taut body showered by the recurrent sweepings blown from the alleyways of the tenement houses. A rippling stream of dust and débris, made bright by spinning bits of colored papers, ran down the gutters to the street corners, where they were sucked into one of those dank, slimy tributaries of the open sea. Minnie, quickening her steps, followed a leaf of tinsel as it rose with the swell of the wind, sought the last ray of sunlight shot between gaunt buildings, spun in gay pirouette, then sank once more into the dust stream, its golden promise lost in the dun and grimy débris.

Minnie veered over toward the shop windows, now blinking squares of light, for dusk was swiftly descending and the shopkeepers hastened to display their wares to the tides of people hurrying homeward. She was a part of the current of dun-colored humanity, buffeted by casual but friendly contacts.

At the corner of Ninth Avenue and Forty-sixth Street, two blocks from The Fashion Department Store where Minnie worked, was a saloon. No men were standing around the swinging doors, so she paused before the plate-glass window, a flattering mirror, with incomplete reflection which allowed Minnie's vanity to create its own illusion. She hated the narrow mirrors of the shop windows which reflected with cruel precision the hard, white faces of vain passersby who stopped, shocked by what they saw, yet held spellbound by their grotesque unreality. At sixteen she had been unafraid of them; at eighteen the white liquid powder looked mottled, the rouge seemed laid on in hard bright spots as if, in a moment of clowning, she had pasted a patch of red tissue paper upon each cheek.

The plate-glass window of Sullivan's saloon was to Minnie like the warming smile of a good-looking man. She saw her figure delicately soft and rounded, the ugly suit pastelled in shadows, her gloveless hands little and white. As she held them above her head to adjust her hat, to smooth out its long green quill, they looked like two lilies on long waving stalks. Minnie loved herself when she looked in this window. There was a caressing tenderness in her own fingers as she hiked up her skirt in the back, smoothed the yellowing collar to her coat, drew a cool powder-puff lightly over her face and touched up her lips with a vermilion lip stick. She spat upon the second and third fingers of her right hand, before patting into place each crescent, bandolined curl. She might have thrown a kiss to her smiling reflection had she not been afraid of leering eyes through the louvered swinging doors. An intense curiosity possessed her to see if this mirror would betray her as those slender shafts set in the frames of shop windows had done. She leaned so close that a faint spot of white powder was left upon the chilled pane.

Minnie Flynn, smiling and posing, uttered a sharp cry when a swaying figure lurched through the swinging doors and fell at her feet. "Oh!" Her voice was pierced with fright. And then, when the man staggered to a sitting posture, and she recognized an old friend, she laughed as shrill as she had screamed. "Lord, Papa Grouse, you sure gave me a fright. You'd think I'd never seen a drunk before!"

He lurched again, now to his feet, and rocked upon them. She reached out to help him, but he shot away from her. Bent almost double he was sidling over toward the lamp post. "Papa Grouse," she laughed again, "you look just like an open safety pin."

"Go t'hell!"

"I'm on my way, old man!" Now she was shaking with shrill merriment. "Steady now! Crack! I knew you'd do it!" . . . "Oh, God," she said to herself, "when he hit his head on the fire plug he closed up slow—just like a safety pin!"

"Just like a safety pin," she kept repeating to herself as she walked swiftly away, not waiting to see him roll to the edge of the sidewalk and tumble into the gutter. "Bet that old woman of his gives him the devil when he gets home. Poor Papa Grouse!"

As she rounded the corner she heard the shuffle of running feet in back of her and a woman's voice, choppy and rasping, calling her name. She wheeled around and saw Elsie Bicker. Elsie was breathless from her run and her gray, anaemic face was flushed with a sudden, unnatural color. "Say, what's the idea of the marathon?"

"To keep warm," Minnie answered good-humoredly, "and then I'm feelin' kind of O. K. . I was just thinkin' to myself, Els, that life ain't so rotten, is it?"

"Aw, I'm onto you," said Elsie with a superior air. Elsie prided herself on her frankness. "You're feelin' good because the girls laughed at your cuttin' up tonight."

The recollection of Minnie's performance in the locker room brought a faint smile to Elsie's eyes. Again she saw the girls of The Fashion Department Store in a restless semi- circle around Minnie. Cheap, tawdry ballads Minnie had heard in the vaudeville houses on Ninth Avenue seemed sparkling with fresh vitality when sung in her nasal falsetto. She always accompanied these songs with amazing gyrations of her lithe body, and gestures, pert and meaningful. Her favorite imitation was of a little Chinese girl learning to speak English, which she called "The Chink Act." She tapered her eyes, stuffed cotton in her nose to widen her nostrils, and made a fan out of the comic section of a Sunday paper. She sang, "Chinky, Chinky, Chinaman, sabe washee clo'es," over and over, executing a stiff, formal cakewalk, the finger of her left hand pointing to the ceiling, her right hand fluttering the paper fan.

After "The Chink Act," Minnie, with a pretense of self-consciousness, announced: "The next on the program, ladies and girls, will be a brand new take-off."

Shrills of laughter and applause echoed through the long close locker room. Girls scurried from all corners to watch Minnie, eager for the relaxation of laughter, for the day had been a long, trying one under the first onslaught of late autumn sales.

Minnie drew into a shadowed recess. There was a sharp command from Elsie Bicker that absolute silence was to prevail. Then after a dramatic pause, from out of the darkness came a long, rasping, wheezing sound.

There were shrieks of laughter. "Jeeps!" came hysterically from a dozen voices.

When Elsie had again silenced them, Minnie, still wheezing, emerged from the shadows. "Jeeps!" rose the cry again.

To the girls it was a perfect imitation of Mortimer Jeeps, the floorwalker of the basement: his splay-footed walk, his expression, his asthmatic wheeze. They laughed hysterically when Minnie smiled, revealing yellow buck teeth made of orange peel.

The final touch to Minnie's imitation was the way Jeeps stood, rocking on his broad flat feet, his hands clasped in back of him, his open frock coat revealing a faded green silk vest and a ponderous gold watch chain.

All this Elsie was thinking about as the two girls, bodies bent to brace the wind, were hurrying homeward. Minnie broke the long silence.

"Say, Els, what you mooin' about? A fellow would think you was deaf and dumb."

"I was goin' over the fun we had in the locker room tonight. Honest, Min, I'd just die if they ever took you out of the Odds and Ends and put you on the main floor."

Elsie linked her arm through Minnie's and a contented look came into her dull eyes; men were looking at them. What if their eyes measured hers and lingered upon Minnie—she was being looked at just the same. She liked their personal, appraising stares; it made her believe for the moment that she too was desired. Elsie wanted men more than Minnie. She was ten years older. Her body had been wracked with torturing illnesses, and with needs more mental than physical. A fear tormented her, gnawed at her—the bitter fate of growing old unmated. Some of the girls were afraid of her. The men despised her. She was seldom invited anywhere, but often forced herself into Minnie's parties. Like most homely girls who are aware of their looks, she tried to hide her self-consciousness by an assumed boisterousness, her pain and need by a callous indifference. She was insulting to the men and girls, morose and resentful.

Arm and arm they walked, Elsie finding it difficult to keep up with Minnie's quick steps.

"Honest, the way them fellows eye us gives me a pain. Ain't they fresh!" Elsie whispered to Minnie.

Minnie knew the men were looking only at her, but she said: "It's that new hat o' yours, Elsie. It gives you a swell air. Really, when I first seen it I was terrible struck with it. It sets off your face. Red's such a good color. Me with my red hair can never wear it."

Elsie's moist hands trembled. "Do you think it's too early for velvet, Min? I suppose I should o' waited, but I couldn't when I passed that Tenth Avenue shop and seen it in the window."

"Did you get it at The Bon Ton?" Minnie asked, looking past the hat, slyly, at a tall gangling boy leaning against the lamp post.

"Say, what do you think I am, a millionaire? No, I got it at The Palace Bazaar."

"Never would o' guessed it." Minnie's eyes met those of a chauffeur driving slowly past in a rattling taxi, and a jerk of her head declined his motion that she ride up the street with him. "What'd you pay for it, Els? It's got a lot o' style."

"One eighty-five."

"Whew! You don't care how you spend your dough, do you?" and Minnie smiled. Her eyes met those of a flashily dressed man. There was a momentary salute between them, he paused, then ambled around the corner as the two girls hurried on.

"Well, it's my only extravagance," came defensively from Elsie, "and it's worth it. Look close, Min, you couldn't get a remnant of velvet like that in our basement for under seventy-five cents. And the near-feather. . . ."

"I ain't criticizin' you. I like to see a girl spend money on herself, and believe me, if Nettie wasn't sick I wouldn't be wearin' my straw clean into October neither."

They stopped before a shoe store. Minnie wanted to look at pumps.

"Oh, God, how I hate shoes," whined Elsie, wetting her dry lips. "My bunions is somethin' fierce! I never get a pair that don't look big and clumsy. I wish I had feet like yours, Min. What size do you wear?"

Minnie wore three and a half, but she answered, "Oh, about two's, I guess."

Elsie sighed. "Gee, but you're a lucky girl, Minnie," she said, giving her a long envious glance. "You got good looks and you're young. Of course you ain't got much of a shape," she added, glancing critically at Minnie's straight, boyish figure. "Why don't you stuff an old stockin' and wear it over your chest?"

"I hate bein' flat." Minnie threw out her chest with a quick intake of breath. "But if I was to pad, Jimmy would certainly make it hot for me. He'd tease the life out o' me."

"If that ain't like a kid brother. They'd rather see their sisters lookin' like frights." After a long pause, somewhat embarrassed, she said, "Pete don't worry you though, does he, Min?" As she mentioned Pete's name Elsie's voice changed. It lowered in key and trembled perceptibly.

"Pete don't know he's alive," said Minnie evenly. "He gives me a pain."

Elsie was silent. The hot blush which mounted to her temples beat the pulses in her throat. Minnie saw it and her lips quivered contemptuously. "Els, you're a fool to be stuck on a fellow that don't care about nobody but himself."

After a minute's silence, Elsie said, staring at Minnie with stern condemnation, "I'm surprised at you talkin' that way about your own brother, Minnie. If I had a brother like him, I'd be so proud I'd have nothin' but nice things to say."

Minnie's laugh was tauntingly bitter. "Poor old Els, it's because you're stuck on him! It's because you don't know how tough he is to get along with. Honest," she looked with contemptuous pity at Elsie's plain face, "there's a bunch of other fellows you oughta try to land, and give Pete the air. He don't know you're on earth, Els, and even if he did he wouldn't show you no more consideration than he does for ma. He's just a born loafer, that's all Pete is."

Elsie flared up savagely. "He's just unfortunate, Min, and you know it. He told me all about it the other day. He says every time he lands a new job somethin' happens to keep him from it, like as if some invisible black hand was movin' against him. There's his very words the way he said 'em. Poor Pete. I didn't think it was like you to kick a fellow when he's down, especially when he's your own flesh and blood."

"Aw, can it, Elsie. Now you're goin' on like ma does, and it gives me a pain. I get enough of that at home without lectures on the side from my girl friends. Look here, Els, don't pull it on me again or we don't walk home together, do you get me?"

Elsie's thin lips closed tightly over her projecting teeth, drawing in the hollows of her cheeks. The blush had gone and in its place was a gray pallor, so dead that it did not even reflect the flame of the bright red hat. In her sunken eyes was such a look of despair that it aroused Minnie's pity. She slipped her arm around Elsie's waist. "I'm awful sorry if I said anything to hurt you, Elsie," she whispered placatingly. "It's only because I'm so fond of you that I want you to lay off Pete and go lookin' around for somebody else before it's too late."

Elsie's eyes filled with tears and she turned her face toward the shop windows so Minnie couldn't see them. She spoke so low that Minnie had to bend her head to hear. "You can't help who you love, Min, so there's no use fightin' against it. You love or you don't love, and there's no regulatin' it like you do your meals, or work, or anything else."

"I suppose so," Minnie replied indifferently, "or I wouldn't o' turned down Dan Sullivan with his prospects of gettin' his father's saloon some day, and started keeping steady company with Billy MacNally."

"By the way, Min, goin' out with Billy tonight?" Whenever Elsie spoke of "going out" there was a wistful note in her voice.

"Yeh, I guess we'll go out tonight." Minnie always pretended an indifference to Billy. "But I don't care much about it, though."

"Where'll you go?" The words came breathlessly from Elsie. It excited her to talk about a good time. "Will you go to a movie?"

"I dunno. I don't care much. Anywhere's better than sittin' in the dining room. Pa always comes in and planks himself down and takes off his shoes. You'd think he'd have the decency to stay in the kitchen, but not him. Oh, no, he's got to hang around and gas all night about the plumbin' business and never give Billy a chance to talk about the meat business, just as if that was nothin' at all."

"And where does Pete go?" Elsie was just a poor soft fool, Minnie thought to herself, and suddenly the sight of that eager, sickly face splotched with pimples sickened her, and she broke away from her with a shudder of disgust.

"To bed," she answered laconically, "and snores. Makes a noise you could hear a city block."

Elsie's voice sunk to a dead whisper as she echoed, "To bed." A ponderous sigh escaped her which sounded such a note of intense physical longing that it struck Minnie as ludicrous and she burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Elsie, her gray face suddenly convulsed with raging hatred, reached over and pinched her. "You shut up!" she shrilled. "You make me tired. You walk alone, Minnie Flynn, that's what you can do. Walk your fool head off, for all I care!" and she rushed away, down the street and around the corner, Minnie's taunting laughter trailing after her.

Section 2

The Flynns lived on Ninth Avenue between Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Streets, in what was called in that locality "a classy brownstone brick front." It was the most pretentious tenement house in the neighborhood. Four stories high, it housed sixteen families. Eight of the apartments had narrow front windows which afforded a view of the street, while the other eight overlooked dingy backyards webbed with and fire-escapes.

The entrance to the house justified the pride of its tenants. Two discolored and badly chipped marble columns supported a shell-shaped canopy, the iron framework of which still held a few of the original mosaics of colored glass. The floor and the two crumbling steps to the sidewalk were also marble. A panel of art glass decorated with a gaudy design was set into the door, and in scroll letters was written, The Central. It was the only door in the neighborhood not scrawled over with initials.

When Minnie met a new fellow at a dance and he asked to see her again she was always pleased to give him her address. "You'll know the house by the marble entrance," she would say, trying to appear casual. "Our apartment's in the front, third floor, nine."

Minnie searched a long time through her deep, messy pocketbook before she found her key. Click, she heard the lock slip. She put her shoulder to the door and leaned her weight against it. It sagged on its rusty hinges and it took all of her strength to move it even far enough to let her slender body slip through. It closed with a screech.

Minnie was in the dark, dank, foul-smelling lower hallway that tunneled to the rear of the house. The narrow stairway which coiled in a spiral, was half covered with worn linoleum, its pattern lost in stains and greasy layers of dirt.

Minnie paused for a moment on the first landing to tie her shoelace. She winced. Like a shallow well the hall was a sounding board which reverberated with all the chaotic noises of the sixteen apartments. Those brats! Weak-looking kids, but how they screamed! Cursing, phonographs, dishes rattling, the thunder of the elevated as it tore past the house, high, shrill voices—God, what a racket, she thought.

On the second flight Minnie felt her way through the stifling darkness, thumbing the wall to keep from stumbling over empty milk bottles or newspaper bundles of garbage. Clinks of light outlined two doors. One led into the apartment occupied by an Italian family. In three rooms lived a man, his wife, her mother and father, and five little children. Minnie was resentful that "Wops" were allowed in her apartment house, even though Carlotti was a first-class barber with a job in an uptown hotel. As if the place wasn't stinking enough without the acrid smell of garlic and rancid olive oil.

Minnie hated offensive odors. Her dream was to own a bottle of expensive perfume. She called it perfumery, and her favorite extracts were lilac and carnation.

The Flynns' apartment was one of the largest in The Central. The window of the room which served as a parlor and dining room overlooked the elevated tracks, but because of the noise and whirling dust, it was seldom open. A musty closeness made the room oppressive. There lingered the faint sickening perfume of Chinese punk sticks which were always burned before the arrival of company.

On the drab walls of the parlor was a patchwork of bright colored pictures; family groups, post cards, Harrison Fisher heads, plaques, calendars sent by Ninth Avenue tradespeople, and innumerable clippings from papers and magazines. Wired to the gas jet which vibrated when the elevated passed the house was a Chinese musical lantern which was her sister Nettie's only contribution to the home. The lantern, composed of little brass bells and long pieces of glass wired together, tinkled monotonously.

There was a red plush sofa in the room, and five oak-stained pine chairs which matched the center table. The table was covered with a red damask cloth heavily bordered with tangled fringe. In the center of the table was a paper palm; another paper plant stood on the mantelpiece, a flowering geranium; in the window two small flower pots held perennial paper carnation blooms. In one corner was a gilded easel on which rested a large framed crayon of Minnie as a squirming, fat, naked baby lying upon a fuzzy rug—a horrid picture that made Minnie blush.

The fuzzy rug was a graying Angora which still served the Flynn family as a decoration. It had been meant for the floor, but Mrs. Flynn, always upset when it was carelessly scuffled by anyone except visitors, nailed it to the back of a dilapidated morris chair. No one in the family was ever permitted to lean against it.

Minnie often spoke of her flat as a "swell little place," for it was better furnished and cleaner than most of the others in the neighborhood.

Minnie and Nettie slept in a dark bedroom. The window opened out on a light well. A curtain shut off their room from the larger adjoining bedroom which was occupied by their father and the two boys. Mrs. Flynn slept on the red plush sofa in the combination parlor and dining room. But when Minnie talked of the flat to girls who had never been there, they always visualized it as large, airy and comfortable. For Minnie always spoke of Nettie's room, and her room, and the boys' room, and mother's room, and the dining room, and the parlor.

Section 3

Nettie had been sick in bed for two weeks with tonsilitis, so they moved her from the bedroom to the parlor's red plush sofa. For a few hours in the afternoon the sun crept into the room and took some of the autumn chill away.

The parlor was in disorder when Minnie opened the door and stepped inside; the floor littered with papers, the table covered with bottles, a basin, towels and dirty dishes. Nettie lay sprawled out on crumpled pillows, her face flushed with fever, her greasy black hair matted and disheveled. Nettie was only twenty, but she looked twenty-five. Her features were coarse and a pendulous underlip gave her a dull sensuous expression. Her eyes, steel gray—very large and heavily lashed like Minnie's—were her only charm.

Nettie didn't look up from the paper-bound novel she was reading until Minnie had said "Hello" twice. Then she nodded her head, adjusted the wet towel around her throat and went on reading.

"Gee, I thought you'd be out o' here by tonight." Minnie was looking at the untidy room with disgust. "It's been two weeks since we've had a decent place to sit in, and I get sick of eatin' off the kitchen sink."

"Of course you would." Nettie always sneered when she spoke. "You'd be glad if I kicked the bucket. I know you."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Nettie, can that kind o' talk. Don't you think a family ever gets tired of hearing it? You've always got a chip on your shoulder about somethin' or other. Try bein' a sport for once."

Nettie stared at her sharply. "That's easy enough for you to talk. You're the only one that ever gets a good time as far as I can see. I don't notice anybody tryin' to be nice to me so I guess I'll. . . . Oh, hell—" Her angry tug at the towel around her throat pulled it off and it fell to the floor.

"Don't move, I'll get it." Minnie leaned down to pick it up, then refolded and wrapped it around Nettie's throat. "I'm sorry if you thought I was sore about the place, Net, but you know why I hoped you'd be moved tonight."

"Billy comin' here?"

"Yeh, but that's all right. I can meet him downstairs again. He always whistles first. Don't make much difference, except the hall is gettin' awful cold these nights."

Nettie looked at her sister's thin cotton serge suit, the sheer lisle stockings, and the cheap lace waist. "What's the matter with bundlin' up in your old check coat? Ain't that good enough for Billy MacNally?" She added maliciously, "he ain't so much, you know."

Minnie didn't answer. She stood staring at Nettie, frustrated and furious. Nettie was sick or she would have hurled herself upon her.

Billy MacNally was a steady, plodding boy who had left grammar school to work in Hesselman's butcher shop. He had begun humbly, as a delivery boy. Through the years of hard faithful service he had worked up slowly, from the driver of the wagon to a door-to-door solicitor, and finally, reaching the goal of his ambitions, a position behind the counter, working beside old Hesselman himself, with vague, pleasant prospects of a future partnership. Billy was full of schemes. He already saw Minnie and himself married and settled down in a little flat. He saw the name MacNally instead of Hesselman over the door and on the windows. His contentment made him seem stupid. There was no challenge against the routine of his life to stimulate his imagination. He believed that all blessings were his because he deserved them. To live simply, to want little, to love normally, to go to church on Sundays, and to be scrupulously honest with his customers (not even permitting himself the pleasure of giving more meat to the pound when Minnie was buying); these were the divine laws by which Billy MacNally lived.

Why Minnie, with so many admirers, chose Billy she could never understand. He wasn't even a good dancer. She might have tired of him quickly had it not been for Nettie's vicious ridicule of him.

Again Nettie's guttural voice broke into unexpected laughter. "Billy MacNally!" she drawled out. "Minnie's little butcher boy. As if the old check coat ain't good enough for him!"

Minnie sprang to her feet. She swayed, her nails pressing into the palms of her hands. She stared at Nettie with an ominous calm, then fearing to speak, rushed out of the room into the kitchen where her mother was stooping over the stove.

"Ma," she said between her clenched teeth, "Nettie gets my goat! I'm goin' to stay in the kitchen to keep out of her way. There are times when I can hardly stand her."

Mrs. Flynn clicked her tongue and wagged her head. Then she sighed. She always did that when a quarrel started in the family.

"Oh, ma, please don't act like a martyr," Minnie begged, her temper collapsing at the sight of her mother's panic-stricken expression. "You always take everything too serious."

Mrs. Flynn sighed again. "I wish you two girls would try to get along better," she said in a thin, tired voice. "First it's one and then it's the other. Your pa was sayin' only the other night that he's never seen such a family for quarrelin'. It's just wearin' my life out."

Minnie sank down on a three-legged stool and watched for several minutes in silence while her mother peeled the potatoes. She noticed her mother's hands, large, swollen and red, and she wondered if they had ever been well-shaped like hers. Old friends of the family said that she looked like her mother, and Minnie searched, almost fearfully, for the resemblance. Her mother was ill-proportioned now, though she boasted of having been "skinnier" than Minnie, as she called it. Her thin gray hair had once been red. "Two thick red braids the size of your wrists," Michael Flynn always described them. Her eyes had lost their luster, her drooping mouth was grooved with fine wrinkles, and the years of neglect had rotted her teeth, once, little white even teeth like Minnie's.

"Ma, dear, it makes me sick to see you always workin' so hard," Minnie reached over to lay her arm across her mother's back as the latter bent over the stove. "When Billy gets his raise I don't see why we should wait any longer. We can afford to have a little place of our own, and that makes one less to cook and wash up after."

Mrs. Flynn turned to her placatingly. "Now, look here, Minnie. I don't want you goin' off and gettin' married just to make things easier for me. You're the kind of a girl that likes to have a good time, to be always on the go, a party here a party there. Marriage means givin' 'em all up, Minnie. . . ."

Minnie smiled tolerantly. "I know, ma, you've gone all over that before. You got a lot of old-fashioned ideas in your head about marriage, and you don't seem to see that things is different now than they used to be. Men don't expect women to be their slaves no more, they want 'em to be pals—sweethearts."

"That's what they all say, Minnie, before they get you."

"No, ma—you needn't worry about me havin' to give up everything when I marry Billy MacNally, because I ain't! Us women is too advanced to make such mistakes nowadays like they used to. Advanced," emphasized Minnie.