As she got older and along in gradeschool at Rockaway Park it got to be less often like that. More and more Fred was drunk when he got off the train or else he didn’t come at all. Then it was Agnes who would tell her stories about the old days and what fun it had been, and Agnes would sometimes stop in the middle of a story to cry, about how Agnes and Margie’s mother had been such friends and both of them had been salesladies at Siegel Cooper’s at the artificialflower counter and used to go to Manhattan Beach, so much more refined than Coney, Sundays, not to the Oriental Hotel of course, that was too expensive, but to a little beach near there, and how Fred was lifeguard there. “You should have seen him in those days, with his strong tanned limbs he was the handsomest man…” “But he’s handsome now, isn’t he, Agnes?” Margie would put in anxiously. “Of course, dearie, but you ought to have seen him in those days.” And Agnes would go on about how lucky he was at the races and how many people he’d saved from drowning and how all the people who owned the concessions chipped in to give him a bonus every year and how much money he always had in his pocket and a wonderful laugh and was such a cheery fellow. “That was the ruination of him,” Agnes would say. “He never could say no.” And Agnes would tell about the wedding and the orangeblossoms and the cake and how Margie’s mother Margery died when she was born. “She gave her life for yours, never forget that”; it made Margie feel dreadful, like she wasn’t her own self, when Agnes said that. And then one day when Agnes came out of work there he’d been standing on the sidewalk wearing a derby hat and all dressed in black and asking her to marry him because she’d been Margery Ryan’s best friend, and so they were married, but Fred never got over it and never could say no and that was why Fred took to drinking and lost his job at Holland’s and nobody would hire him on any of the beaches on account of his fighting and drinking and so they’d moved to Broad Channel but they didn’t make enough with bait and rowboats and an occasional shoredinner so Fred had gotten a job in Jamaica in a saloon keeping bar because he had such a fine laugh and was so goodlooking and everybody liked him so. But that was the ruination of him worse than ever. “But there’s not a finer man in the world than Fred Dowling when he’s himself… Never forget that, Margie.” And they’d both begin to cry and Agnes would ask Margie if she loved her as much as if she’d been her own mother and Margie would cry and say, “Yes, Agnes darling.” “You must always love me,” Agnes would say, “because God doesn’t seem to want me to have any little babies of my own.”
Margie had to go over on the train every day to go to school at Rockaway Park. She got along well in the gradeschool and liked the teachers and the books and the singing but the children teased because her clothes were all homemade and funnylooking and because she was a mick and a Catholic and lived in a house built on stilts. After she’d been Goldilocks in the school play one Christmas, that was all changed and she began to have a better time at school than at home.
At home there was always so much housework to do, Agnes was always washing and ironing and scrubbing because Fred hardly ever brought in any money any more. He’d lurch into the house drunk and dirty and smelling of stale beer and whiskey and curse and grumble about the food and why didn’t Agnes ever have a nice piece of steak any more for him like she used to when he got home from the city and Agnes would break down, blubbering, “What am I going to use for money?” Then he would call her dirty names, and Margie would run into her bedroom and slam the door and sometimes even pull the bureau across it and get into bed and lie there shaking. Sometimes when Agnes was putting breakfast on the table, always in a fluster for fear Margie would miss the train to school, Agnes would have a black eye and her face would be swollen and puffy where he’d hit her and she’d have a meek sorryforherself look Margie hated. And Agnes would be muttering all the time she watched the cocoa and condensed milk heating on the stove, “God knows I’ve done my best and worked my fingers to the bone for him… Holy saints of God, things can’t go on like this.”
All Margie’s dreams were about running away.
In summer they would sometimes have had fun if it hadn’t been for always dreading that Fred would take a bit too much. Fred would get the rowboats out of the boathouse the first sunny day of spring and work like a demon calking and painting them a fresh green and whistle as he worked, or he would be up before day digging clams or catching shiners for bait with a castingnet, and there was money around and big pans of chowder Long Island style and New England style simmering on the back of the stove, and Agnes was happy and singing and always in a bustle fixing shoredinners and sandwiches for fishermen, and Margie would go out sometimes with fishingparties, and Fred taught her to swim in the clear channel up under the railroad bridge and took her with him barefoot over the muddy flats clamming and after softshell crabs, and sportsmen with fancy vests who came down to rent a boat would often give her a quarter. When Fred was in a sober spell it was lovely in summer, the warm smell of the marshgrass, the freshness of the tide coming in through the inlet, the itch of saltwater and sunburn, but then as soon as he’d gotten a little money together Fred would get to drinking and Agnes’s eyes would be red all the time and the business would go to pot. Margie hated the way Agnes’s face got ugly and red when she cried, she’d tell herself that she’d never cry no matter what happened when she grew up.
Once in a while during the good times Fred would say he was going to give the family a treat and they’d get all dressed up and leave the place with old man Hines, Joe Hines’s father, who had a wooden leg and big bushy white whiskers, and go over on the train to the beach and walk along the boardwalk to the amusementpark at Holland’s.
It was too crowded and Margie would be scared of getting something on her pretty dress and there was such a glare and men and women with sunburned arms and legs and untidy hair lying out in the staring sun with sand over them, and Fred and Agnes would romp around in their bathingsuits like the others. Margie was scared of the big spuming surf crashing over her head, even when Fred held her in his arms she was scared and then it was terrible he’d swim so far out.
Afterwards they’d get back itchy into their clothes and walk along the boardwalk shrilling with peanutwagons and reeking with the smell of popcorn and saltwater taffy and hotdogs and mustard and beer all mixed up with the surf and the clanking roar of the roller-coaster and the steamcalliope from the merrygoround and so many horrid people pushing and shoving, stepping on your toes. She was too little to see over them. It was better when Fred hoisted her on his shoulder though she was too old to ride on her father’s shoulder in spite of being so small for her age and kept pulling at her pretty paleblue frock to keep it from getting above her knees.
What she liked at the beach was playing the game where you rolled a little ball over the clean narrow varnished boards into holes with numbers and there was a Jap there in a clean starched white coat and shelves and shelves of the cutest little things for prizes: teapots, little china men that nodded their heads, vases for flowers, rows and rows of the prettiest Japanese dolls with real eyelashes some of them, and jars and jugs and pitchers. One time Margie won a little teapot shaped like an elephant that she kept for years. Fred and Agnes didn’t seem to think much of the little Jap who gave the prizes but Margie thought he was lovely, his face was so smooth and he had such a funny little voice and his lips and eyelids were so clearly marked just like the dolls’ and he had long black eyelashes too.