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FISH ON FRIDAY And Other Sketches Leonard Feeney (Sheed and Ward, 1934) From Dorothy Burke Dear Rev. Father: I wonder would you be willing to read
this letter and tell me what you think. I have been so disconsolate for the
past two weeks I do not know what to do. I guess it’s just my vanity which is
a foolish thing for a girl to have at my age, being, well, to be honest,
forty-two, which is easier to admit in a letter than when I am talking with
people. Sometimes I don’t look forty-two, at least so my brother Eddie says,
and the fellows who come to play poker with him at our house after supper
says Eddie is right. One of the fellows who plays poker with Eddie and who
wins most of the big pots in the game says, “Eddie, Dorothy don’t look a day
over thirty-five or six.” And Eddie replies, “You’ll have to bid a little
higher than that to get the old lady’s age,” and I think that that’s what
started the fellows who plays poker calling me “the old lady,” though never
to my face, but only when I am in the kitchen making club sandwiches for the
boys and not supposed to hear. It didn’t hurt me so much to be called
“the old lady” by the boys if they started it, but Eddie started it just
because he has so darn much blah. I told Eddie that if he didn’t have so darn
much blah he would make more money playing poker. Every time he has a good
hand you can tell it by his blah and the way he twitches his cigar, and all
the fellows are wise and pass. And that’s why whenever Eddie wins a pot
there’s nothing to win because nobody raises him. When Eddie bids and starts
blahing all the fellows know he has a good hand and all pass. I know it doesn’t sound right for a lady
like me to be knowing so much about poker but I can’t help it as the fellows
come every night and play and you get so tired of the radio it sort of whiles
the time away to look in at the game and find out how much Eddie is losing,
and he is always losing on account of having so much blah and giving his hand
away, Once or twice the fellows made me sit in
and play a hand while Eddie went out to the store to buy some ginger ale
which I always serve to the boys before leaving, and every time I sat in for
Eddie I won. I think the reason I won was because one of the fellows named
Mr. Devins, who is quiet and who looks at me sometimes in the strangest way,
backed out and let me win the pot just to make me feel happy, The boys refer to me sometimes as the
Queen of Hearts, that is when I am in the room, but when I am out of the room
getting sandwiches and ginger ale ready it’s always “the old lady,” all
except Mr. Devins, who calls me the Queen of Hearts even when I ain’t there to
hear him. I never heard Mr. Devins call me “the old lady.” Mr. Devins looks so sad even when he is winning on
account of being a bachelor, although the boys says his wife left him and he
is paying alimony, and that’s why they hate to lose to him on account of
having to pay somebody else’s alimony. In fact the boys have got into the
habit of calling the chips they put up alimony, and they’ll say, “There’s
lots of alimony in this pile, boys,” and this is all on account of Mr.
Devins, who never says anything about his past life, and who never refers to
the chips as alimony and never calls me “the old lady,” but always the Queen
of Hearts. The boys got a great laugh out of my knowing so much
about poker one night when Eddie went out in the kitchen to get the ginger
ale. Eddie says, “It’s time to pour out the ginger ale, Dorothy! Ain’t you
got any openers?” Eddie of course meant the openers for the ginger ale
bottles, but I said, so the boys could hear me, “Why don’t you get a pair of
Jacks? Ain’t they openers?” Because in poker you have to have higher than a
pair of tens to open the bid, and you have to show your openers, and Mr.
Devins was the first to get on to the joke and laughed for the longest time.
And the other fellows all laughed too when they got on to the joke, and Mr.
Devins kept on laughing so much he lost four dollars in the next two pots on
account of being distracted from his cards by my joke. And the fellows says,
“The Queen of Hearts is a witty old girl, isn’t she?” And Mr. Devins spoke up
and says, “Yes, the Queen of Hearts is a witty lady,” which was a much
sweeter way of putting it than saying “the old girl,” but that is just like
Mr. Devins, who is a perfect gentleman, and how he got in with the gang Eddie
travels around with is more than I know, because, although they are gentlemen
in a way, being good fellows at heart, they are not perfect gentlemen. Mr.
Devins is a perfect gentleman. My brother Eddie is a bachelor and I keep house for him,
and that is why I suppose I never married, having Eddie on my hands, as he is
an awful baby even though he tries to be a hard guy. Eddie is really an awful
baby because we had a white dog, a collie that Eddie bought, and when the dog
died last May Eddie cried. And I think it is a good sign when a man cries as
it shows that there is some good in him. And I was going to tell the boys
about Eddie crying over the dog, just to let them know that there is
something gentle in Eddie’s nature, only when I started to tell about the dog
dying before the boys Eddie says: “It’s a good thing. He was a lousy little
cur anyhow!” and he looked at me as though he was going to kill me if I said
another word, no matter what it was. And so I says, “Yes, the dog is dead,” and began to cry
myself. And all the fellows says, “Gee, that’s tough, Dorothy,” all except
Mr. Devins, who said, “I’m so sorry!” And Eddie says, “Well, what the
blankety-blank are you boohooing about?” bursting into profanity at me. And
the fellows think Eddie is much harder than he is. And the next day Eddie bought me a canary bird and that
night when the boys came in to play poker they said, “Oh, ho, a new bird,
eh?” and Eddie says, “Yes, I had to get her something to keep her mouth
shut!” And that night when the boys left I went in and knelt
down by Eddie’s bed and says, “Eddie, why didn’t you buy another dog?” and
Eddie says, “There’ll be no more dogs now that Snuff is dead. No more. No
more,” and he buried his head in the pillow. And Eddie keeps the picture of
Snuff, the white dog we used to have, on his dresser behind our mother’s
picture. Only the fellows don’t know that. Mr. Devins is always so sad. If a fellow who wins as
much money playing poker as he does is still sad there must be some tragedy
in his life, only you can be sure Mr. Devins would never tell you what it
was. And Mr. Devins looks at me sometimes for the longest time while one of
the boys is shuffling the cards, and he looks at me so long I have to look
away or lower my eyes, although the boys never suspect Mr. Devins of looking
at me, but think he’s only trying to dope out how much alimony he’s winning. And Mr. Devins is always so well dressed. All the boys
dress well except Eddie, who comes out in his suspenders just to show it’s
his house and not theirs, but they dress flashy and they wear socks that look
like cheap wallpaper, but Mr. Devins always dresses to the king’s taste and
not with wallpaper socks. And he is always neatly shaved and never needs a
haircut, and some of the other fellows always needs a haircut and even a shave,
and when a man doesn’t shave he always keeps rubbing his beard when he plays
poker, and it makes a disagreeable, swishy sound like trying to shuffle a
sticky pack of cards, and that annoys me more than the smell of the fellows’
black cigars which I like to smell. And when fellows play poker they sometimes get very
intense and sometimes don’t speak for a long time, and all you can hear is
the clicking of the chips, and the room gets so still you can hear the
fellows breathing one by one, and one of the fellows has a habit of grinding
his toe inside his shoe, and you can hear every little noise in the room you
otherwise wouldn’t notice. And maybe I ain’t glad when those tense moments
are over and the hand is won and the men talk and laugh again and drown out
the little noises that you hear only when they get intense. Because when the men get intense that’s when Mr.
Devins’s eyes get big and look at me in the strange way, and you’d think I
was one of the cards, he stares at me so when the game gets intense and the
clock begins to tick and you hear the fellows breathing and Eddie squidges
his cigar in his teeth and the fellow who churns his toe inside his shoe
begins to do it. And last Thursday an awful calamity happened, at least
for Eddie, and I was all to blame. There was about fourteen dollars on the
table, which is one of the biggest pots the boys ever play for, and the boys
were all keyed up over it, all except Mr. Devins, who acts the same whether
he wins or loses, though he generally wins. I was sitting behind Mr. Devins and watching his draw.
One of the fellows, named Jimmy Hutch, opened it and Eddie stayed in and so
did all the other fellows, because the pot was so big. And Mr. Devins held
four hearts, Ace, King, Jack, and ten, and he discarded the four of spades
and drew one card, trying for a Royal Straight Flush in hearts, which is the
highest thing you can get in poker. Jimmy Hutch called for three cards, showing he had a
pair to start with and nothing else. Eddie called for two cards, meaning he
must probably have three of a kind. The other boys called for either four or
five cards, and Mr. Devins called for one. It was one of those times when the
boys was terribly intense and all the little noises in the room began to
start up again on account of the awful silence. The clock began to tick, and
the little bird in the cage could be heard twitching his feet, and you could
hear Eddie giving little chews on his cigar, and all the boys began to
breathe out loud, and the toe of one of the fellows that he crunches inside
his shoe was crunching away, and everybody’s perspiration was on their
forehead, and I thought I would have to scream from nervous excitement, but I
knew that if I even coughed the boys would go into hysterics. And one of the fellows said, “Oh, Rats!” out loud, which
doesn’t mean a thing in poker, because maybe he was trying to bluff it that
he didn’t draw anything so the others would stay with him on the bid. And
then Mr. Devins, whose hand I was watching, reaches for his one card. And he
turned it over, slowly, slowly, and it was a Queen! Only it wasn’t the Queen
of Hearts, it was the Queen of Spades, and my nerves seemed to give way on
me, and I said, “Oh, Mr. Devins, I’m so sorry!” And when I said, “Mr. Devins, I’m so sorry,” the awfulest
hush came over the poker game I ever heard, and the boys turned white and
glared at me, because nobody who is watching the game is ever, ever supposed
to speak during the time of play. And Eddie just looked at me as though I had
run a knife through the heart of every man at the table. And the boys just
sat there holding their cards and staring at me, and I thought the room had
turned into a furnace in Hell; and then I turned cold and the blood ran out
of my fingers and I would have shrieked and fell into a faint with all the
boys staring at me if Mr. Devins hadn’t said, “Your bid, Eddie.” And Eddie,
who had been trying to think of some profanity bad enough to say to me but
couldn’t think of any he was so furious, said sheepishly, “I’m offering two dollars.
Only I apologize to Devins before all you fellows for the dirty trick my
sister played on him. And if she ever opens her yap in one more poker game
she’ll sit in the kitchen from now on with the door slammed in her face.” And Mr. Devins says, “That’s all right, gentlemen,” and
went right on raising my brother Eddie. And then I got more frantic than
ever, because I knew Eddie thought from my remark that Mr. Devins hadn’t
drawn to his hand, and he had, because with the Queen of Spades, that gave him
a straight run of picture cards, which is a very, very good hand in poker,
only I was disappointed because Mr. Devins had not drawn the Queen of Hearts
and so have a Royal Grand Flush which comes in poker once every hundred
years. And then I didn’t know whether I ought to tell Eddie
what my remark about Mr. Devins’s hand meant, only that would be putting my
foot in it worse, and so I began to cry. And Mr. Devins and Eddie kept on
bidding and raising and I began to cry harder and harder and kept pleading with
Eddie with my eyes not to bid any more. But Mr. Devins kept raising the bid and Eddie kept
putting out chips and staying with him as if to say, “You’ll fool me, will
you, Devins, you piker, after Dorothy gave away your hand?” And I kept
praying to God that Eddie would stop bidding. And the pile of chips kept getting bigger and bigger and
all the fellows kept dropping out, and finally there was left only Eddie and
Mr. Devins. And then the chips gave out. And the fellows were nearly insane
from excitement at Mr. Devins’s nerve, as they all thought too he was
bluffing. But neither Eddie nor Mr. Devins would back out. And Eddie got up
and went into the next room to get some more money from the dresser where we
were keeping the money for the new pianola. And I says, hysterically, “Boys, boys! Please! — ” and
every one of the fellows says together, as though they were drilled, “Shut up!” And when the pot had risen
to eighty-seven dollars, with twenty dollars of our pianola money in it,
Eddie calls on Mr. Devins to show his hand. And Eddie laid down three deuces
and Mr. Devins laid down his straight run from ace to ten, and smiled, and
swept the chips into his corner. And he turned quietly to me and said, “Well,
the Queen of Hearts won that hand for me after all,” and he pocketed all the
money, and got up and put on his hat and went home. When Mr. Devins left, Eddie and the fellows sat in
complete silence. Finally one of the fellows said, “Well, folks, I guess I’ll
be going”; and one after another they said, “Good night, folks,” and after a
while there was left just Eddie and me. And I didn’t dare to even move until
Eddie got up and slammed the door and went to bed. And nobody drank their
ginger ale. And I didn’t get to sleep until 3:00 A.M. from worrying. And then
I fell asleep and dreamed and dreamed, and all during the dream the boys kept
staring at me and telling me to shut up and kept calling me “the old lady.”
And Mr. Devins kept laughing all during my nightmare. And I didn’t hear the
alarm go off at six when I am supposed to wake Eddie. And when I woke up I
heard Eddie leaving in the morning without any breakfast, which he must have
got in the lunchroom out at the corner. But what is troubling me most of all is this. Last night
just before the boys were leaving, Mr. Devins came out in the kitchen and
gave me thirty-five dollars. And Mr. Devins said, “I really feel that your
brother has been chagrined at you all on my account over the expensive hand I
won the other night. If I remember rightly he had about thirty-five dollars
in the game. So rather than keep things uncomfortable for you and him any
longer, I am giving this money back to you, and you can return it to him with
my compliments, and then maybe he will forgive you.” And he put the
thirty-five dollars into my hand and went into the other room. And now that thirty-five dollars has been troubling me
all day. Because I don’t know whether it belongs to Eddie or not. And if I
give it back to Mr. Devins, maybe it don’t belong to him. And if Mr. Devins
really owes the thirty-five dollars to Eddie, maybe he owes him thirty-five
more for the share he would have had to give Eddie if Eddie won the hand. And
if Eddie won the hand maybe I would have to ask Eddie for the money back to
give Mr. Devins, as the hand was all muddled up on account of my saying it
was too bad when Mr. Devins drew the Queen of Spades instead of the Queen of
Hearts. And besides, if I give the money to Eddie now he will be madder than
ever, because he’ll think I asked Mr. Devins for it, and then Eddie will
think Mr. Devins will think Eddie is a quitter. And besides that, I spent
five dollars of the money this morning getting a semipermanent wave at the
hairdresser’s. And now I don’t know whether I ought to give the thirty
dollars I have left to Eddie or Mr. Devins, or put back the five dollars I
spent at the hairdresser’s and give that too, either to Eddie or back to Mr.
Devins. It’s bothering my conscience, Father, and I wish you would tell me what
to do. And now my life with Eddie for the past two weeks has
been miserable. He don’t even notice me and never speaks to me unless in a
growl. And when the fellows come in to play poker I’m practically ignored by
all except Mr. Devins, who talks to me very pleasantly and pays no attention
to what the boys say. And I tried to make off I wasn’t interested in the game
any longer, and made off I was sewing in the corner. And one night I tried
staying in the kitchen and not going in the room at all, only that made me
worse, because if there’s a poker game, it is impossible to stay in the next
room without going crazy, that is if you know the game and hear the boys
bidding through the keyhole. And some of the boys make mean, cutting remarks, and
they’ll say things like, “You ought to win this hand, Eddie, if the old lady
doesn’t butt in.” And then somebody’ll say to Mr. Devins, “Devins, why don’t
you call the old lady over and ask her what to bid?” And Eddie never says a
word at all in reference to me, which from Eddie is worse than if he filled
the room with profanity. Because if Eddie is thinking profanity about me I
wish he would out with it, because I keep thinking to myself of the kind of
profanity Eddie is thinking about me and that keeps filling my own mind with
profanity. And I keep inventing new kinds of profanity in my own mind trying
to think of what Eddie is thinking about me. And in that way I have thought
of some expressions of profanity that I know even Eddie wouldn’t say. So you see why I am unhappy and disconsolate, and it’s
all over my vanity and my liking to be called the Queen of Hearts which got
me into trouble and made me blurt out about Mr. Devins’s hand the night he
won all the money from Eddie. And one thing I have learned and will never forget, and
that is, never, never talk during a poker game, because you are sure to have
trouble of conscience later on about owing somebody some money. Please tell
me what to do. Yours sincerely, Dorothy Burke (“The Queen of Hearts,” which, I am ashamed to say, I
like to be called). From Dorothy Burke Dear Rev. Father: When I wrote you that last
letter I said I was disconsolate. But now I am more disconsolate than when I
wrote you the last letter, in which my trouble was money and not love as it
is now. Because if you have money you think belongs to the wrong person you
can give it back, and if Eddie, your brother, is mad on you, you know it
won’t last forever, because no matter how mad he makes off he is you know
down in your heart he would die for you in a pinch. But when love starts in
to make you disconsolate — it’s the limit. The funny thing about being bothered by
love is that you enjoy being bothered. And the worst thing about being bothered
by love is that you begin thinking about the time before you were in love and
that makes you absolutely disconsolate thinking that you might get back that
way again. Any way you look at it, you are unhappy. Well, I might as well out with it and tell
you that the whole cause of my heart affection is none other than Mr. Devins,
the man who plays poker with the boys at our house, and who wins so much
money, including the thirty-five dollars, which he gave back to me, and which
I did not give back to him, Father, but put in the dresser with the money for
the new pianola, as you told me to in your nice letter. And Eddie was so
surprised to find so much money there he forgot all about losing it after all
to Mr. Devins, and Eddie is friends with me again. To explain my affair with Mr. Devins I
shall have to begin by telling you about my eyes, which are blue, and which I
do not like to talk about in a letter, but would prefer that a person meet me
face to face and then notice it for themselves. Ever since I was a little
girl people have been saying, “Hello, blue eyes!” or, “Dorothy has lovely
blue eyes,” or, “Dorothy is pretty with her blue eyes,” and things like that
which I can’t help at least hearing. I had three chances to get married on
account of my blue eyes, which I turned down. Two of the chances were bums
they proved to be afterwards, who just say the same thing to every girl they
meet, only change the color of the word they use for blue to suit the eyes of
the girl they are spooning with. But one was from a nice boy about twenty
years ago, and I almost kept the ring for good which he gave me, only he had
the awfulest bushy eyebrows and I couldn’t help thinking that after we were
married and perhaps had children that looked like both of us, his bushy
eyebrows would never go with my blue eyes in the children. And as long as God
gave me blue eyes, it would be a shame to waste them on the wrong kind of
eyebrows, though ever since, and on account of losing a nice boy for a
husband (on account of a technicality) I have often wondered if I did
not make a mistake, especially when you get older and wake in the night time
and wish you had some children to love you no matter what kind of eyebrows
they had over their eyes. I don’t know why it is that blue eyes are so much better
than any other color, but everybody seems to think so, and if you read a
novel and the writer is describing the girl who is to be the heroine in the
story, as soon as he comes to her eyes they are always blue. At least it seems
so, and I have noticed myself that if ever the writer said the heroine had
not got blue eyes, somehow or other you seem to lose interest in the book.
And I have been so careful to keep my blue eyes looking presentable that I
have not worn my glasses which the doctor ordered me to wear continually.
Because glasses just make a person with blue eyes useless to look at. Only I
get terrible headaches from not wearing the glasses. Well, the other night Mr. Devins came out into the
kitchen when I was preparing the club sandwiches which the boys like after
the poker game, making off he wanted a drink of water. And Mr. Devins looked
at me in that strange way which he always looks at me in, but this time more
strange than I ever saw him look at me before. And Mr. Devins took hold of my
hand which I am ashamed to say was greasy from putting bacon into the club
sandwiches, and he said, “Didn’t we meet and have a long talk in the
moonlight on the Rivvyaira about thirty years ago?” And I was so surprised
and frightened I answered him in my worst tone of voice, “No, Mr. Devins. At
least I don’t think so.” And I was wondering what the Rivvyaira was outside
of a moving picture house. And then Mr. Devins gripped my hand tighter until he
must have got bacon grease all over his fingers, and he said, “Well, then,
you sat in the prow of the gondola when the man paddled us through the alleys
of Venice, in May, when the singers were passing in the dark, in the spring
of ninety-seven?” And I said, “No, Mr. Devins. I don’t think so.” And I kept
wondering how Mr. Devins would ever get the bacon grease off his hand when he
let my hand go, which I hoped he never would, no matter how much it hurt. And then Mr. Devins started for the next room, only he
turned suddenly and came back, and he took hold of my hand again, which I was
glad he did because I had a chance to wipe it on my apron in the meantime,
and he said, “But weren’t you — ” and I said quickly, “No, Mr. Devins. I
don’t think so,” just like a boob, because I should have waited to find out
what he was going to say. And then Mr. Devins said, “That’s strange. I
thought your eyes were familiar.” And he went out of the kitchen like a flash
and closed the door. And I kept wondering how Mr. Devins ever got the bacon
grease off his hand, because I knew he wouldn’t wipe it on his trousers like
Eddie would, and if he rubbed it on his handkerchief, later on he would be
sure to get it on his nose, because Mr. Devins has hay fever and would be
sure to have to use his handkerchief for a hurry-up sneeze. And I got so
nervous when the boys began to holler, “Where’s the grub?” that I didn’t put
enough bacon in them and the boys said, “These club sandwiches are rotten,”
and wasn’t that a nice way to end the most beautiful night I ever spent in my
life, outside of getting poor Mr. Devins’s hand all over bacon? And then, of course, after Mr. Devins left I had my
usual nightmare, which I always have after any excitement, on account of not
sleeping well from asthma which I have, and it makes it hard for me to sleep
sound. And all during the nightmare I was rubbing bacon all over Mr. Devins’s
nose and in his eyes, and while Mr. Devins was trying to talk about the
moonlight I was greasing his face and hands and his nice clean collar with
bacon grease, and I began to shudder and cry out, “Oh, Lord, bacon, bacon, of
all things, bacon!” and I must have yelled it out loud in my sleep because
Eddie came running in with baking soda in a glass of hot water, which was
what he thought I wanted for my indigestion which I sometimes get during the
night and Eddie has to get me some baking soda in hot water. And Eddie said, “Poor kid, the old indigestion, eh? Poor
old lady!” And I was crying and I didn’t know how to explain to Eddie except
to drink the hot soda, which I did. And Eddie stooped down and gave me a
kiss, which is a big thing for Eddie to do, as he does it very seldom, about
twice a year, and he never lets you kiss him first but only when he wants to
himself. And he generally only kisses me when my asthma gets very bad or else
bad indigestion. And I kept wondering after Eddie left if only Mr. Devins had
kissed me what would I do, because if Mr. Devins had kissed me it would have
been a mustache kiss, because Mr. Devins wears one, and that would be a new
experience for me, because you get tired of getting the same old kind of a
kiss all your life (that is one without a mustache), especially when the only
man who ever, ever kissed you in your whole life is your brother Eddie. And the next night after Mr. Devins came out into the
kitchen in that mysterious way, maybe I wasn’t all prepared to meet him,
after another semipermanent wave at the hairdresser’s that morning, and a
blue apron on to go with something else blue which I have, namely, eyes. And
I got a little oyster fork to use on the bacon for the club sandwiches, and
was all ready in case Mr. Devins should come out into the kitchen for another
drink of water. Only that night Mr. Devins didn’t show up for the poker game
at all. And talk about disappointment! I was never so disappointed in my
life, especially because of those semipermanent waves which are supposed to
last two weeks, but the day after you get one you wonder if it was worth the
money. And the next day I was on pins and needles from fright,
thinking that maybe Mr. Devins had given up poker and the boys and me
forever. But, thank God, that night he showed up again as usual. And I waited
in the kitchen all dolled up while preparing the club sandwiches. But Mr.
Devins didn’t come out that night, although I took as long as possible to
prepare the sandwiches for the boys. And once I went to the door and called
out, “Anybody want a drink of water?” But the boys was in the middle of a
hand, and you might as well be talking to the wall for all the attention the
boys, including Mr. Devins, paid to me. And for four nights straight now I have been waiting in
the kitchen for Mr. Devins, but he never comes out any more. And I have been
abusing myself for not being more encouraging to Mr. Devins when he gave me
the chance. Because a man can only do so much, and if a girl keeps throwing
him down as I did Mr. Devins by telling him that I was not the girl he saw on
the Rivvyaira or in the alleys in Venice when the moon was shining, then you
can’t expect Mr. Devins to go on forever paying attention to a girl who keeps
disappointing him. I know it sounds foolish for a person of my age
(forty-two) to become romantic, but fortunately Mr. Devins is fifty-one. At
least Mr. Devins said one night to the boys that this was his thirtieth year
voting the straight Republican ticket, and so, if he began at twenty-one,
that would make him fifty-one now; unless Mr. Devins didn’t begin voting when
he was twenty-one, which I know he did because Republicans, which he is, and
Eddie and the boys are not, always vote. And so Mr. Devins is at least
fifty-one or two, if not older, which would not be a bad thing if he was,
because then people would be saying, “She married a man much older than
herself,” which is a nice thing for a girl to hear and makes it look as
though the man had to fight for her to win her. So I have decided to put my pride in my pocket and go at
least half way with Mr. Devins by telling him that his attentions to me are
not displeasing. And I have thought of some lovely things to say to Mr.
Devins if I could only get the nerve to say them, and if he would only be
sensible and come out and ask for a drink of water when I knew he was coming. And I don’t think a girl my age should be as timid as a
girl in her teens and wait for the man to say everything, especially when Mr.
Devins has gone so far already. And I am sick and tired of waiting for
somebody to come out and say to me what a lot of men seem to want to say to me
(namely: propose), that is, judging by all the compliments they have paid to
me about the blue eyes which I have. And I think a good way to begin with Mr. Devins, now
that he has broken the ice, would be to say, “I don’t ask you to love me, Mr.
Devins, I only ask you to let me love you.” And I think if Mr. Devins would
hear me say a thing as romantic and encouraging and unselfish as that, he
wouldn’t be long finding a jewelry store for the purpose of buying something
that goes around your (the bride’s) finger. And so I am writing to you, Father, to ask you if you
think that would be a suitable and proper thing to say to Mr. Devins. Or
should I say it or write it in a letter? And do you think Eddie ought to know
about Mr. Devins’s and my love for each other? Because I think Mr. Devins is
really in earnest, and the coming out to ask for a drink of water was a
bluff, otherwise why would Mr. Devins, who is so particular and neat, get his
hand all over bacon grease trying to make love to me? I think Mr. Devins was
so willing to get his hand greasy as long as it was my hand that he was
holding, that that is a sure sign that Mr. Devins is madly in love with me,
which is the way I like to see Mr. Devins be in love with a girl, namely, me. And I shall be so disconsolate until I get this affair
with Mr. Devins settled once and for all. Because Mr. Devins isn’t getting
any younger each day, and every year he gets older will make it so much
harder for him to find a wife. Awaiting your advice. Yours respectfully and perplexed, Dorothy Burke (The Queen of Hearts, according to Eddie
and the boys). From Dorothy Burke Dear Rev. Father: I asked Eddie to write to you and tell
you what happened, but he said he couldn’t bear to do it. And that is why you
didn’t hear from me about the letter I wrote and you answered. And the reason
I didn’t write, Father, was because I was in the hospital which I got out of
the day before yesterday And I wish to God I were dead, which I hope I will
be soon. You remember the blue eyes, Father, which I had and
which I told you about in the last letter on account of trying to explain why
Mr. Devins grew so infatuated and came out into the kitchen? Well, I lost one
of them. The doctor had to take it out three weeks ago, which was when the
accident occurred when I had to go to the hospital. The day after I wrote you the last letter I was working
at the sink in the kitchen, which was broken on account of the soapstone
piece that fits in the back of the sink being broken. And I told Eddie a
dozen times to fix it, only he kept letting it go. And I was so happy that
morning thinking about Mr. Devins, and about our finding out about our love
for each other right there in the kitchen, that I said I will fix the sink
myself, I was so happy. And I was singing at the top of my voice (which is
not so good for asthma and hard to do when you have it), only I was so happy
I felt like singing, asthma or no asthma. Because I was in love. And I tried to fix the piece of soapstone in place which
Eddie ought to have fixed, or at least a plumber. And in order to get it
fitted into the groove in the sink where it came out of, I took a hammer and
began to pound it into place. And I gave it a very hard crack with the hammer
with all my might, and a piece of the soapstone flew off and went into my
right eye. And I screamed from fright and the lady in the next apartment came
in and looked at my eye and saw the blood which was flowing. And I tried to
look through the right eye and all I could see was blood flowing. And the
lady in the next apartment sent for the doctor. Only the lady in the next
apartment told the doctor over the telephone that I had got something in my
eye, and the doctor didn’t think that was any sign for him to rush and didn’t
come for three hours, during which time you saw the blood in your eye stop
flowing and when you tried to look through it I could see nothing but black,
although the lady next door said that is nothing because it’s just swollen. And the pain was terrific, and we tried to get Eddie at
the store, but he was out of town for the morning, and finally the doctor
came and said, “We got to get her to the hospital right away.” And I said,
“Doctor, will I lose my eye?” And he said, “I don’t think so,” but took me in
his car and we dashed for the hospital. And the doctor in the hospital said he would have to
operate right away and give me ether which I always choke taking on account
of the asthma. And there was a nurse in the hospital who was a little nun and
who came in to see me and tried to make off it was nothing. And I got down on
my knees and prayed to God, “Almighty God, please don’t let them take out my
blue eye but only the piece of stone which is in it!” And the doctor said he
wouldn’t take out the eye unless he absolutely had to, and I made him swear
to God that he wouldn’t, which he did, and I was nearly frantic. And I made a
promise to the Blessed Virgin, who has blue eyes in most of her holy pictures
I have seen, that I would say the Rosary every day for a year on my knees no
matter how sick I was with indigestion or the asthma, if she would only ask
her Divine Son not to let me lose the blue eye which had the piece of stone
in it. And the nun prayed with me, only she said, “But you will
be resigned to God’s Holy Will if the doctor has to take out the eye if it’s
the best thing to do, won’t you? Because you don’t want to lose both your
eyes by any infection.” And I said I would rather be blind entirely than lose
any of my both eyes which was the only thing I had left in life to live for
besides Eddie. And then the doctor took me into the operating room and
they tried to give me ether, but which they had to give up trying to give me
on account of the asthma, and had to operate without ether as I nearly choked
to death and turned black one of the nurses told me afterwards. And during the operation which took two hours, and which
was simply frightful on account of the pain, I heard one of the doctors say,
“It’s got to come out.” And I screamed out loud and said, “Doctor, do you
mean the eye?” And one of the young doctors in white said, “No, dearie, just
the piece of stone.” And I said, “Will I be blind and will the eye keep on
being blue after the operation?” And he said, “Yes,” and the doctor kept on
cutting. But I was so happy to think that I was not going to lose my eye that
I didn’t mind how much pain it took to cut out the piece of stone. And then they bandaged the eye all up and put me to bed
in the hospital. And the pain was frightful, but I didn’t care as long as the
stone was out and the eye was there. And Eddie came in that night and knelt beside my bed and
was crying and gave me a kiss. And I said, “What do I care, Eddie, as long as
the eye is going to get better and keep on being blue like it used to be?”
And Eddie kept on crying, but finally began to cheer up and tried to cheer me
up by making a lot of wise cracks, which Eddie is good at when he is really
funny, but that night none of the wise cracks was funny. But I laughed just
the same, and Eddie laughed too, and the lady in the next bed hollered,
“Don’t you know this isn’t no place to laugh, in a hospital? If you had
appendicitis you wouldn’t laugh after the operation!” So Eddie kissed me
good-night and went out, and I kept thinking about how easy it is to have
appendicitis when nothing that they ever take out of you shows after the
operation. And I wondered if there would be a scar in my eye and if Mr.
Devins would ever think about the Rivvyaira when he looked into it again in
the kitchen. Only the next day the little nun came in and said,
“Aren’t you glad that God didn’t take away your sight entirely? Just think of
the poor people that are blind and haven’t even got one eye to see with.” And
I was listening to her in the dark, because the doctor kept both my eyes
covered for three days. But I began to feel the sweat coming out all over me
and it seemed that all I could see was blood and more blood flowing down
before both my eyes. And I said, “Sister, for the love of God, you don’t mean
to say that I haven’t got my both blue eyes underneath this bandage!” And the
sister put her head down beside mine and held me tight, and seemed to
tremble, and I screamed, “Where’s my right eye gone?” And the sister cried so
hard I knew where it had gone after all. So what could you do? You had to put up with it or else
commit suicide, which I might have kept thinking about (though I would never
do it), if it wasn’t for the little nun who took care of me. Because when
they took the bandage off the other eye, that is the one blue eye I have
left, I looked into the most beautiful pair of blue eyes I have seen on any
human being since I was born, outside of in a mirror. And those were the blue
eyes of the nun who was my nurse. And I said to her, “Where did you get such
wonderful eyes, sister?” And she tried to blush like they all do when you ask
them something personal, and she said, “My mother has blue eyes.” And I said
a little prayer to God that she would never be such a darn fool as to try to
fix a sink with a hammer which her brother Eddie ought to have done. And then after I got over crying and weeping with the
one blue eye I have left, I started in to get funny. Because people always
try to get funny when they have been through some great sorrow and are trying
to forget it. And I said to the little nun who wears a black veil over her
head, and black clothes with a white neckpiece and a collar, I said, “Sister,
you look just like the Queen of Spades.” And then I thought I ought to
apologize to the sister for mentioning anything about cards, which they
probably don’t know one from the other. And I explained to the sister about
watching the boys playing cards so much, and that was what put the idea about
the Queen of Spades in my mind, which I apologized for. And the sister laughed, and told me that when she was a
little girl her father used to call her the Queen of Hearts, my title with
Eddie and the boys. And that took the word out of my mouth about telling her
about myself. Because if I came out and told her about me being the Queen of
Hearts with the boys, it would sound like a flat tire after her saying it
about herself, and it would look as if I was just making it up. And that’s what
I get for trying to be funny and calling her the Queen of Spades. What I
ought to have done was tell her first about me being the Queen of Hearts, and
then spring the joke about the Queen of Spades after that. But you always
think of things after they are done. But you’d be surprised to find out all that little nun
knew about cards. And she said her father used to play cards all the time
when she was a little girl. And she knew that four of a kind beats a full
house, and a whole lot of other things about poker that I never thought nuns
even remembered after they go into the convent. And I noticed that whenever
she spoke about her father she seemed very sad. And one day I said to her, “Sister, is your father
dead?” And she began to cry. And she told me very confidentially that her
father left her and her mother and ran away with somebody else, and that he
was a great gambler and drank and disgraced his family and never writes to
them and hasn’t been seen for years. And after she told me all those things she
seemed ashamed that she had told me so much about her private life. But she
said one thing which I thought was very strong for a girl like her who has
such beautiful blue eyes to say, and she said, “And I would gladly give up
one of my blue eyes to get my father back again, because I have offered up my
life being a sister in a convent for his salvation.” And she was so confidential to me that I thought I would
tell her about my love affair with Mr. Devins, only not mentioning his name,
because I was sure that Mr. Devins would come to see me in the hospital and I
wanted her to pick him out from all the other boys who came to see me, and
not know right away that he was Mr. Devins from being told his name by me. |