Everything about Beth Finnegan rattled every loose, wobbly nerve in Elvie's small anxious body, yet she couldn't help but like the gruff, brazen, outspoken woman. She never had friends beyond girls she talked to in the schoolyard. Beth wasn't nice but she was kind and she didn't chat but she listened. She didn't prattle like Annabel did, and she was sometimes so forward that she brought Elvie to tears without meaning to, but she was always honest. She'd been given the wrong change and had her face lied to just because people saw her clouded eyes and thought they could get away with it too many times. She demanded the truth. She demanded lots of things and people learned quickly that she didn't tolerate being ignored any more gently than she tolerated being lied to. The feeling of kinship seemed to be mutual though, Elvie realized as the brass finial on her friend's cane rapped heavily on the front door of the basement apartment. It was the Finnegan's fourth visit to the Lower East Side in the two weeks since Bays introduced the girls. "Adrienne, open the door before she has that man knock it down."
While Elvie had warmed to Beth despite her temper and her lack of any sort of a filter, the same could not be said for Brendon. She knew he was dangerous, and while she also knew he wouldn't hurt her neither bit of knowledge really helped her get used to his looming presence. Adrienne put aside her work and stood up. "His name is Brendon," the eleven year old scolded, "and he's very nice." The slight squeeze in her voice every time she talked about Beth's husband made Elvie wonder if maybe her baby sister didn't have a bit of a schoolgirl crush.
Bays took her to an eye doctor a few days after he introduced her to Beth when he noticed that both lenses in her glasses had a prescription to them. Her secret, that she couldn't make herself go out when she noticed her vision in her good eye blurring so she just took a pair of Doug's old glasses and made do, came to light. He didn't scold her, just knocked the next morning, put a cane in her hand and walked her to an optician uptown. The doctor told her that Doug's glasses were doing more harm than good and that she should stop wearing them. She adapted easily to her whole world being a blur, to doing everything blind and to being led everywhere outside of her home, but today was the day she would pick her new glasses up.
Adrienne opened the door and Beth stepped past her with a quiet murmur to the girl. After being alone most of her life, Beth seemed to soak up the company of Elvie's siblings, creating a close bond with Adrienne especially. "C'mon, Vie," Beth snapped impatiently, tugging Adrienne to her side, "time to see the world again."
"Hold your horses," Elvie muttered, "some of us have respectable businesses to maintain." She carefully pinned off the first sleeve of the wedding dress and set her cushion aside as Beth chuckled.
"I got lots of respectable businesses," she answered with a wicked lilt in her voice as she tapped her cane on the stone floor. "How else d'ya think I keep the bulls off my back?" Elvie stood and moved easily across the small room to put her modest straw hat on, pinning it carefully, and reached for the cane that Bays gave her, the rough carved surface of the head of it catching her fingertips. "By all means, take all day. You know how much waiting for your meticulous ass thrills me." Beth's dry wit quirked the corner of Elvie's mouth. "It ain't my glasses we's going to pick up, so please, lets just stand in your crummy apartment all day."
Elvie scowled. "I don't remember inviting you to come with me," she retorted saucily. "You're welcome to stand around in my crummy apartment, or, heaven forbid, your own crummy apartment and not join me."
Beth cackled. "You get mouthier every damn time and I love it. Who knew there was a fat fucking lip under all that mousy meekness." She patted Adrienne affectionately on the head while the girl tried to stifle a giggle at her older friend's fowl language.
"Ladies, got a carriage waiting," Brendon called from the top of the stairs. She shuddered lightly, trying to holster her fear of the gentle giant who followed small, sharp Beth everywhere she went.
Beth's voice came out soft and quiet, "You gonna be ok in a carriage with him?"
"Fine," Elvie answered in a whisper. "I'll be fine."
She stood, letting her fingers brush over the bumps and swirls on the head of the cane while she tried to calm herself. She was terrified, but somehow it felt like calm washed over her when she held it. Every time Beth insisted that she walk or let Brendon in without thinking, she ran her fingers through the familiar channels and protrusions and felt the ability to breathe come back to her. "C'mon, c'mon! You'd think you wasn't excited about ya first pair of glasses that's just for you! Who knows, maybe you won't be so blind. Maybe you won't even need all the knowledge I have so graciously bestowed upon you."
Elvie laughed quietly. "In a modest mood, are we?" She held her hand out and Adrienne ducked under it, so it rested on her shoulder and they climbed the stairs together.
A tense and silent carriage ride later, they were outside the Lexington Avenue office, where the kind older man tucked her glasses over her ears and told her to open her eyes. She took a deep breath in and did as he asked. It was strange and disorienting to suddenly see again and wasn't the life altering moment that Beth and Adrienne were hoping for. She was still blind on the right, of course, and the bubble of things she could see with glasses wasn't really any bigger than before, but what was inside the bubble was much clearer. She felt her heart quicken as her panic went from nothing to worrying about every shape in the perimeter of her vision, her head swiveling wildly to try to keep watch on all of it. Her hands had nothing to grip so they fiddled and wrung in her lap. "Vie, talk to us," Beth demanded, seeming to hear Elvie's wild thoughts and hummingbird heart.
"I need..." her voice was a raspy whisper, and her fingers clawed so frantically that she nearly cried out in pain. "I need my cane please."
"You've got me," Adrienne murmured, taking her hand. At first the panic told her that the touch was worse than walking into cobwebs, but Adrienne refused to be shook off and held fast until Elvie calmed. "Look at me, Elvie. Tell me you can see me."
She forced herself to obey, turning her head while her shoulders still danced up and down trying to shake off the tingle but it lingered eerily. She looked carefully at her sister, a wobbling smile spreading across her face. There were freckles on Adrienne's nose that she never knew were there. Her hand darted out wanting to touch Adrienne's cheek, but her knuckles rammed into the poor girl's soft skin long before it seemed to her that she should have been so close. Adrienne jumped back, and for the first time, Elvie's ability to read facial expressions wasn't limited to watching eyebrows move up and down and dark lips in pale faces curve. She could see well enough to see the hurt on Adrienne's face and the pink of a bruise blooming out from under her hand.
"You're going to need time to get a feel for judging distance," the doctor said gently, while Adrienne cradled her marred cheek. She looked back at Elvie with a smile and guided her sister's hand forward slowly until it was cupping her face.
"Look at you," Elvie murmured. "You look just like Mama." Her fingers caressed her sister's soft skin as her eyes and fingers and brain all worked together, trying to make sense of the person in front of her. She was only four when Elvie was injured, five or six when she started to notice that her vision was getting weak in her other eye. "Same curls, same hazel eyes. Same freckles. How did I not know you were so beautiful?" Adrienne's eyes shined as she tried not to cry from the compliments, but they were all true. She shook her dark hair that was a much deeper brown than Elvie's around her face to cover her tears. Sometime, while Elvie slaved away in the basement, just trying to keep a roof over their head and clothes on them, Adrienne started to grow up. She was the same age Elvie was when she became the matriarch of the family, and here Adrienne was, leading her blind big sister all over Manhattan, all while going to school and helping with the family business. She was so strong, and Elvie felt terrible for stealing her childhood. "I've missed so much of you." She marveled at the changes until Adrienne moved away from her and moved towards the large dark topped mountain in the room that Elvie could only assume to be Brendon.
"You'll still need this," the doctor said as he went to the umbrella rack near the door where Elvie stowed her cane when they came in, and she was able to follow his movement. The textured top of her cane fell into her open fingers and she traced the now familiar grooves with a loud breath of relief as that sense of comfort washed over her. "The bottom of your lenses are for reading and for work," the doctor said. She looked down through the inset glass and drew in a sharp breath. What was just texture under fingers was a cluster of raspberries complete with leaves and flowers, intricately carved and sanded. Down the handle was nipped and cut to look like lace. The longer she looked, the more her vision clouded until tears ran down her pale cheeks. "It's lovely," he said, handing her a hanky. "Someone put a lot of time into that. Signed it too." He pointed, and Elvie peered out of the reading lenses in her bifocals at an intricate Celtic heart knot with letters in the middle. "E.G. + A.B." She ran her calloused fingers over the carving and wiped her eyes and nose. She never would have felt that far down, she wouldn't have known it was there if she didn't see it.
"This must have cost him a fortune," she whispered, still dabbing at her eyes. "He shouldn't have gotten something so extravagant." She couldn't stop touching the silky soft surface and letting her fingers dip into the grooves and valleys. Everything was so expertly cut and sanded that nothing caught at her fingertips.
"It didn't cost him a penny. He made it," Beth said, her face amused. "It's his walking stick from when he was a newsboy, he carved it down just for you."
She looked over to her friend with her brows knitted. "How do you know that?"
Beth smirked and Brendon chuckled as Beth held her hand out towards the wall of man who Elvie assumed was still comforting her sister. "Aide...g'head. Tell her what you been up to." Adrienne stepped forward until she could tell her sister's eyes were following her and blushed as she looked at Elvie's confused face.
"Joey's been selling up here most days so he can keep Bays in the loop on days he can't come see us and I go see Beth after school and Brendon makes me pancakes while I tell him and Beth what going on."
"What do you mean you tell them what's going on? Nothing is going on." While she wanted to be mad at them for keeping something from her, she found that she wasn't.
Beth moved closer, gently finding Elvie's shoulder, "You's with me now. I wanna know before something is going on." It had been ages since anyone cared about her enough to check on her. She'd been so alone with nothing but her rules and her white knuckle grip on her work, her apartment and her siblings. It was all that kept her going, but it was pushing Doug away and straight into the same life that nearly killed her. How long until Auggie pushed back, or Adrienne? How long till Joey stopped coming home because her way left no room for him to breathe? Beth's fingers dug in again, pulling her mind back into the doctor's office. "Bays wants to know that you ain't in a panic. He's a schmuck, that one, but a good schmuck."
"I still don't understand why either one of you feels like I need to be checked up on." She didn't like being thought of as weak, even if it was painfully true.
"Me? Because for some reason your slow poke, stick in the mud personality has grown on me," Beth said with a smirk on her heart shaped face, "and because you's about as tough as a baby bunny. And Bays? You really don't know?"
"It's right there, Elvie," Adrienne said, pointing at the carved heart on the bottom of the cane. She put her hand over the heart and the initials in it and sat with that a moment. She knew there was something there, she'd known it since the first night and even more so when he decided to bring Beth to help her, but this was big, and she wasn't sure what she did to deserve it. No one had ever loved her who wasn't supposed to because they were family. No one who she didn't take care of.
"Seventeen blocks, Gamble," Beth said. "Seventeen blocks and shins that is still black and blue. I knew it then and there."
The doctor cleared his throat and she looked back to him, wobbling as she tried to keep what she could see in focus. Her stomach turned a bit and the old man smiled apologetically. "You should just wear the glasses in the house until you've gotten the hang of judging distance and looking back and forth between the two lenses or you're likely to make yourself a little seasick." She pulled them off and sighed in relief as she tucked them into a case and then her pocket. She found being sightless almost comforting, for some reason, her brain could relax when it wasn't trying to decipher what every lumpy blob around her was and what kind of threat it posed. "The lenses will improve your vision, but not enough to put you back into a normal range."
"So I'm still blind." His hesitation was all the answer she needed, but she wasn't sad. She had more to work with and people who cared enough to get her to see that. Regardless, she was in a better place than she was two weeks prior.
She thanked the kind doctor and smiled as the wooden raspberries and their flowers pressed against the inside of her wrist. That familiar warmth and comfort assuring her that she could keep going. Back out in the street, Beth was already climbing into the carriage again but Elvie didn't want to go home yet. "Your turn," Adrienne said, walking towards the carriage with her sister's hand on her shoulder.
But she stayed in her spot, letting Adrienne out of her reach, floating in the grey, swirling abyss of her city. "I need to go see Bays," she said quietly and heard the other three pause. "I had no idea he made this just for me and I want to see him and thank him."
"Beth," Brendon rumbled, "we gotta get back."
She reached out into the air and a big calloused hand caught it, but she didn't have time for her fear of Brendon. She let him pull her close to the carriage door until she could hear the sweet grunts of a happily nursing baby. "Beth, I need to see him. If there were a way for you to see Bren and he couldn't go with you to get it, you'd go straight to where he was after, wouldn't you?"
"In a heartbeat," came the soft answer from inside the carriage. "Does this mean you understand now? Why he'd care?"
She chuckled quietly, "Not at all. It just means that I'd do the same for him if I could."
"I can take her," Adrienne answered, shoving herself in between Brendon and Elvie, giving her sister something to anchor herself to. "It's only a few blocks. I know where I'm going and Bays will make sure we get home."
"We will make sure we get home," Elvie said, holding her chin up.
Beth laughed, "All right, but Adrienne? Don't think I don't know you's snuggled up to my husband. Bren ain't good enough for a girl like you. He likes to steal kisses and never learns his lesson. You need to find a smarter one than I did." The skin Elvie could feel through Adrienne's dress grew hot and she had to stifle a laugh. A big hand fell on her shoulder and she stiffened.
"Ya shoah you'll be ok?" he asked.
"We won't know if we never try," she answered bravely but trying to wiggle out of his grip. "You two get back and take care of the things I don't want to know about." His low laugh rumbled through his arm and into hers before he gave her a soft squeeze and climbed into the cab to head back to their territory. She let out a sigh of relief and put her cane out, sliding her hand up Adrienne's neck to pull the girl in to kiss her hair. "Let's go kiddo."
It only took a few blocks for Adrienne to start to squirm. "You're hurting me!" she whined.
"Where are we, Aide?" Elvie asked in a trembling whisper, doing nothing to loosen her grip. She only had a shaky grasp on the streets around her apartment, but she was miles from her neighborhood.
"Three more blocks," Adrienne grunted, trying to work her way out of the iron grip on her shoulder. "You're supposed to be counting your steps so you know where we are, remember? You start counting again when we step up the curb." Elvie was too confused and nervous about going to see Bays, about why she needed to. She was too lost, too out of her element to count so she just blew air out through her lips and felt Adrienne stiffen. "You know, Beth says I can ditch you when you're rude to me."
She huffed, Beth would tell her that. "Don't threaten me with Beth's life lessons, Missy." She squeezed even more tightly. "If you leave me here you can start finding your own food."
"Fine," the girl said airily. "Then you can deal with Annabel's lessons all on your own." She shrugged, and Elvie could feel the smug smirk radiating from the eleven year old's very pores, knowing she had her older sister beat, knowing that Elvie could not take Annabel's enthusiasm without Adrienne in the room as a buffer. Elvie grinned and rolled her eyes, wondering how she missed the amount of sass Aide gained while visiting Beth everyday. Her grip relaxed, giving her sister the trust she had earned, and felt the muscle under her hand loosen as well, until they came to a stop in a warm, sour smelling place where Adrienne told her to put her glasses on. The door in front of them in the smelly alley was nondescript, but the sign on it made her heart skip.
The Benjamin Hotel Service Entrance, Ring Bell for Deliveries.
A/N: sometimes you just know.
Elvie's vision is modeled after my cousin. Some of us super old, original Newsie fangirls will remember the Pogoball from the 90's. It was like a basketball, but with a plastic deck around it making it look like Saturn. You stood on the deck and jumped like a pogo stick. My cousin is one of the many reasons you don't see this toy anymore. He was bouncing in his garage and launched himself face first into a bike that was hanging from the ceiling, damaging his eye to the point of blindness. As he grew up, the vision in his other eye naturally worsened and he was deemed legally blind. Modern lenses meant that he could still function nearly normally, much more easily than our girl E, and he got lasik and now is only blind in the one eye. I know, I know, cool story bro...
Anyway, let me know what you think! Beth has decided that she and Elvie are besties, and even as the writer, I can't tell Beth what to do. She does what she wants. Please keep reviewing! I love all the feedback this story is getting! It's so refreshing to see the fandom come back to life!
Thank you to Joker is Poker with a J, annonymous guest reviewer and Hannah Emily Bunker for your lovely reviews and for all of the follows and favorites in the past week! Remeber, the fandom only comes back and we only become a community if we review each other's work! I'm doing my best to remember to do it too!
