And All the Horns and Raging Trumpets
by Cryptographic DeLurk
...
AN: Written for Yuletide over on ao3. I encourage you not to overthink the possibility of fetal alcohol syndrome.
.
.
"So you don't like her?" Neely asked.
The club was empty, before opening hours. And what would have been a bright and twinkling star in the black of the night, seemed dusty and dim and dead with the lights off and the sunlight beaming through the windows in the middle of the day.
"I never said that," Francie protested. Her heels clicked as she crossed her legs under the table. Her skirt was long and loose and pleated, but somehow her skinny legs seemed to strain against its crushing boundaries.
"You hardly need to," Neely was laughing into his cup. His suit was nicely pressed, his blonde hair – styled back beautifully, and his face – clean shaven. "Mama said you were silent at dinner… You're quiet, Francie, but not that quiet. With the people you know and like, at least, you'll lash out with biting wit."
Ah, yes. Katie always had a way of seeing through Francie. And selling her out.
"I don't dislike her," Francie said. She stirred the ice in her glass, and watched the rivulets of water spread into the corn whiskey. Neely always had connections for the best moonshine.
"Ah, but you don't like her either," Neely pushed. He had such a good-natured way about it, that Francie could not remain angry at him when he tilted his head knowingly and let the light catch his eye. He really was too much like Papa.
"That Miss Annie Laurie McShane." Neely clicked his tongue and chuckled under his breath.
Francie pursed her lips. She had let Laurie borrow her writing, the four stories that she had wrapped up in her envelope – stories about their father, and her struggle, and her hunger. And Laurie had taken those stories and fashioned her own writing from it. She attended a school in a nice and quiet part of Queens, with a nice group of children who would probably grow up to be something. And Laurie stood in front of the class and gave speeches about hunger and poverty and the recent depression to a teacher that didn't silence her.
Fracie picked up her glass and swirled it in her hand, and then took a long draught. The alcohol warmed her, and she bit her lip to feel the burn more acutely, and to stop herself from making excuses for her sister.
It didn't work.
"She only meant to do good by it." Francie sighed.
"But she just doesn't understand it." Neely raised an eyebrow, smiling. "She'd never poured out a cup of coffee – because there was nothing else to waste."
"She's never been stuck in the Arctic, never made it to the North Pole with us," Francie smiled, secretly, bitterly. But Neely would remember the games Katie Nolan had encouraged, to get them through their hungry nights. "You can't take credit for being part of the Ziegler Polar Team, without ever having gone on the expedition."
Right on cue, Neely laughed. He slid in his seat, like it was wider than it was. Like it could be the complete piano bench. In his laughter, and his gestures, Neely took up the whole room.
Francie could feel the hunger in her gut even now. She could feel the fear and the judgement under her skin. And she could see her father stumbling home and singing in the hall – the union badge pressed to his shirt. She felt possessive of the sensation. Laurie could not understand – Francie wouldn't have wished for Laurie the experiences that would prompt such an understanding. But she didn't want Laurie to pretend either.
"You know," Neely prompted. "If you still wrote yourself, you might not feel Laurie was stealing your words and our experiences in exactly the same way."
Francie said nothing.
This was an issue that had prompted months of long contemplation. Francie's hands were itching. Secretarial work only held so much thrill. Her hands were itching to bend truths and weave stories and tell lies. She considered journalism, since making a living seemed to be an issue of increasing urgency. She wondered if news stories were filled with enough falsehoods to calm the pulse and the urge in her knuckles.
Neely sighed, and moved on without her.
"I bet you wouldn't complain about little Richard the same way, would you?" he asked.
Francie fiddled with her drink. Their half-brother, Richard McShane, was a dear. Sure, he was spoilt, but in the kind of nice and friendly way that managed not to grate or consume. Francie didn't have to worry about him in the same way.
"He wouldn't take up the pen in the same way," she protested to Neely.
Neely huffed. "For someone who disparages of Mama as much as you, you sure are a lot like her. Why is it that you women are always breathing down each other's necks?"
Francie shot her boot out under the table, to kick at Neely's shin in retaliation, but it only made Neely sharper.
"You and mom, and the way you are with your men, too," he growled. "None of them can do any wrong in your eyes. And here you are, married and pregnant to a man you don't even love. And now that his jobs on the rocks, he's looking more like the worst of Father and Dad all at once, isn't he?"
This prompted a larger drink, imbetween glares.
Francie had always wanted Ben to need her. To be drawn to her in the same kind of fleeting desperation of not knowing what was next. But, as presumptive and condescending as the way he made decisions for her seemed in retrospect, Francie had no notion of whether or not it was worse than watching him flounder and try to cut losses he'd never predicted he'd have to cut.
The law firm Ben was assisting at had let him go. Small government, and its corruption, had proven more of a hurdle than he had ever expected.
"At least he didn't throw himself out a window, like some of those poor fools," Neely said, a little too happily.
"There were only two jumpers," Francie huffed. "But I suppose what you meant, was that it was only my good luck he studied law and not business."
But, regardless, she wondered if Ben would have tossed himself from a window, if he'd been involved with the stock trade. She imagined rushing to stop him. To be honest, having to bear the brunt of Ben's fear and anger and desperation had made him the most attractive he'd been to her in a long time, never mind she had also never felt more repulsed.
None of it was a very promising environment to raise a child in. But she was already twenty-eight, and she liked children, so it would have seemed been impractical to wait any longer.
"Look at what's on your own plate, Neely," she prodded. "Don't you have your own job to worry about?"
He snorted. "Not so long as prohibition is with us," he crowed. "Thank God for that!"
"Thank God for that," Francie agreed. And they clasped their whiskey glasses together, and drank alone on opposite sides of their table.
…
He pulled her aside after that, to listen to him sing at the club's piano. His fingers drifted over the keys in large, smooth motions, and he sang songs she remembered from her father. Francie did not join in, even when Neely slapped anxiously at her wrist between the movements of the song. But then he moved forward, to the ragtime and jazz classics he liked so much.
Francie felt her eyes drawn again towards her brother's handsome features. Probably all the girls were chasing after him, hanging over his piano in the club. He hadn't married, though. For all he was successful from Katie and McShane's influence, he seemed to take after the Nolans in this manner.
Although, Francie though, he was a man after all. So he had more time to change his mind and settle down.
And Neely had already changed his mind. He tapped quickly on the keys, changing to a silly circus tune. He seemed to make it up as he went along, improvising the keys and the timing. And when he missed a note, he smiled with red cheeks and kept moving, until he ended suddenly with three loud chords.
"Do you know where I heard that?" he asked, turning his head sideways at her.
Francie said that she didn't.
"It went differently than that," he allowed. "But I heard it from old Uncle Willie… you know, Aunt Evy's old husband?"
Francie was not sure what to say to this, so she said the first thing that came to her head.
"Not quite her old husband, is he? It's not as if he ever gave her a chance for divorce."
"The Rommelys could make a living out of professional bigamy," Neely joked.
He laughed shortly, but it rang hallow. Francie realised abruptly she had killed the conversation. Although Neely was kind enough to fill the silence with a simple tune on the piano, pounded out measuredly with one hand.
"Where did you see him?" Francie asked. She tried to make her voice soft.
"In the park, in Manhattan. Said he was there more often than not… He looked so worn, I'm not sure how I recognised him." Neely cleared his throat. "But I did."
"I see," Francie said, and she let it lie. And she had never cared so much for Uncle Willie, so it didn't make sense the way the ideas took hold of her.
Neely didn't say anything, but he could see it in her eyes – the way Francie sensed a story.
.
.
Francie snuck out of the house a little too late. Ben would be upset – moreso than he already was, sulking in bed – but it was her mother that she really worried about, walking briskly to try and catch Uncle Willie in the last of the winter sunlight.
Katie McShane had given Francie a full itinerary of practical and frugal advice for raising a child. She delivered to Francie the same advise her own mother had given her over twenty years prior, as well as some more straightforward tips on diapering and washing and living. She spoke frankly and stomped her shame down, so as it was almost nonexistant, when she relayed to Francie the physical reality of childbirth.
Katie McShane did not believe in hospital births, even now. Although she understood the wonder a doctor had been for Sissy. Although she understood Ben Blake would not hear of anything other than having Francie deliver interned.
Francie had muttered under her breath: a small, but scathing, comment.
Katie McShane reminded her, as her sister had reminded her about Johnny years before: "You chose to become Mrs Frances Blake, so you'd better learn to accept your husband for who he is – through the good times and the bad."
Francie fretted. She didn't have the heart to tell her mother, that Ben losing his job hadn't even been the worst of times, by her estimation. At least it had not been dull.
Instead she listened to what her mother had to say, and prepared herself for the poverty that was likely to seep back into her life, after so long.
Perhaps it was a good thing that Katie McShane was too much of a Rommely to let her habits go. There was a hardness and a unbendingness in Francie's mother that would never disappear, no matter how many years were between the times she scrubbed her hands raw cleaning the floors. But Katie held that too close to herself. She was stern and flat, and too lacking in indulgence towards her daughter's interests, to be caught up in them.
"And remember not to do anything foolish," her mother had concluded. "You have the health of your baby to consider."
Francie thought of how very foolish she was being. It was dark and dismal in Central Park's winter. And, even if she was not heckled, there was the risk she might slip on the wet and frosted ground.
She found him with an ease she didn't expect, sitting on a bench with his guitar and horns and drums and harmonica – his entire lonely one man band. And she understood immediately what Neely had said. Willie Flittman was all cracked brass and chipped plastic and broken strings. His teeth were rotty, and his eyes showed a lot of red where white had once been. But he was still small and thin and dark, and his jaw had the same rough bite that reminded Francie of a horse.
He was playing his song to nobody, and looked up when Francie tipped him a couple cents. He nodded, but seemed to grow increasingly confused as she stood there, waiting.
She introduced herself once the song came to a close.
"Ah! Maybe I should've expected you, little Francie, after your brother showed up the other day? How are things? I still have your harmonica."
He did. And he showed it to her. He dug it out of heavy pockets, and it was rough and dark where his lips had brushed the mouthpiece.
She was surprised it had lasted so long. She was surprised this whole band of his had lasted so long.
She was not surprised his estrangement with Evy had lasted. She realised suddenly, that she didn't want to have to tell him about Evy and her new husband and her new job. She didn't want to tell him about Evy's horses and children and astounding success.
"Whatever happened to that old horse, Drummer?" he asked. "That horse was a devil – a fuckin' shit," he snarled. "Had hell coming for him."
"He died a while back," Francie said. Horses didn't live that long. But Drummer had been retired into Aunt Evy's care, before he passed. And then she had gone back to the stable, to help deliver milk for a while when times gotten tough. The boss and the workers there had remembered her, and what a good worker she had been, and given her the job with no trouble.
"Got what was coming to him," Willie Flittman said. He nodded smugly.
Francie lingered a bit longer. She wondered what kind of man asked after his horse, and not his wife. Probably the same kind of man who was constantly being outsmarted and beaten by a horse.
He was already losing interest in her. He avoided her eyes – turned the other direction, and fiddled with his horn.
"Well, it was nice seeing you again, Uncle Willie," Francie said.
He looked after her as she left, like he had already forgotten her, and was wondering who she was.
Francie sighed as she walked away. She didn't know what she expected, but this was not it.
She felt the warmth of her stomach, and she wondered if she would ask after Ben, when she left.
Francie was waiting for the day she left their house, a little too late, and didn't bother to come back. She wondered if her child would be born to see that day. She wondered what would happen after that, and if she would write about it.
She found no answers – only a great raging fire of music and anticipation.
.