Peggy was asking herself why she didn’t spend more time at her sister’s place. She’d never seen Martin so loosey-goosey, and this Francis was a hoot. Who knew that Martin’s brother would be so much fun? Martin was nice, and it was neat, she guessed, that he stuck with his music when a lot of others would have taken whatever job Daddy offered them, but he came across as kind of stuck-up, as if he was judging you and you were always coming up short but he would never tell you what you needed to do to pass his stupid test. No, Martin was great for Rosemary, but there was something unsettled about him. Like he was always going somewhere but had lost the address.
Now Peggy had discovered this brother of his whom she’d barely known existed. She had heard that Martin had family in Ireland, but the only brother he ever mentioned was the younger one studying to be a priest. But Francis. He was the type that her father called a good-time Charlie. (That’s what he’d called Martin when he found out Martin was a musician, except that as far as Peggy saw, Martin rarely looked like he was having a good time.) But you only had to spend a few minutes with Francis to see that he knew how to have fun. Just look at that giant bottle of champagne! Now that was how you started a party!
Her fiancé, Tim, was a sweetheart—the sweetest!—but if Peggy had pointed out a bottle like that to Tim, he would have said, Who could ever drink that much champagne? Or would have wondered how much it cost. Or complained that champagne gave him a headache. Peggy decided right then and there that she wanted a bottle just that big at her wedding reception—and if they made them any bigger, then that’s what she wanted. The single biggest bottle of champagne that anyone had ever seen. People would laugh at the very sight of it, and for months afterward and maybe even for the rest of their lives they would tell the story of the biggest bottle of champagne they had ever seen. And the kicker would be that they could say that it wasn’t just the biggest they’d seen—it was the biggest they had ever tasted. Because that’s what Peggy would do: before the toasts started, she and Tim would uncork that bottle like it was a cannon and all the guests would fill their glasses. What could be more fitting than that? It would be beautiful; symbolic, even. And for once it would be nice to show everyone that every day didn’t have to be about cutting corners and doing what’s practical and for God’s sake don’t waste anything. For one day they would have this bottle full of more champagne than anyone had ever seen and they would drink it dry.
“SO WHAT’S A typical night like around here?” Francis said. They had moved their drinking into the living room, a few feet farther away from where the girls were sleeping. The radio played and Francis held his glass to the overhead light, where it glowed like honey. “I picture bathtubs full of gin, Duke Ellington and his colored dancers dropping in at all hours, rent parties that have the neighbors calling the police—”
“What exactly have you been telling them?” Rosemary said to Martin. “I really want to hear more about these dancing girls.”
“The only girl who’s been dancing around here is Kate, though I’ll admit that getting her to keep her shirt on and her skirt down can be a problem.”
“Come on, now,” Francis said. “You must go out on the town. Nightclubs and ballrooms are Martin’s places of business.”
Martin and Rosemary exchanged a look and a movement of the mouth that wasn’t quite a grimace but certainly wasn’t a smile. There hadn’t been many nights out lately, they allowed, not for the two of them together.
Peggy clapped her hands. “That’s what we should do! Dancing! I want to go out dancing.”
“It’s a Sunday night,” Rosemary said. “And you’re getting married in six days.”
“Exactly,” Peggy said. “You just said yourself that once you get married, you stop having fun.”
“That’s not—”
“So where should we go?” Francis said. “Where’s the tip-top for dancing in this town?”
Peggy’s eyes were aglow. “The Savoy! Let’s go to the Savoy!”
“For crying out loud,” Rosemary said. “You can’t go to the Savoy!”
“Why not?”
“Because if Mom and Dad find out that I let you go to Harlem on the Sunday night before your wedding, they will kill you, and as soon as they’re done with you, they’ll kill me, too.”
“What’s all this about you letting me go? You sound just like them.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Francis said.
“I don’t think it’s such a good idea,” Martin said.
“I managed jail without a scratch. I think I can handle myself in a dance hall.”
“You were in jail?” Peggy’s face flushed. “Do Mother and Daddy know about that?”
“Jesus Christ, Franny. Will you watch what you say?”
Rosemary took hold of Peggy’s arm. It was the same pincer grip she used when Kate misbehaved in a department store. “They don’t know, and they can’t know.”
“Oh my God—”
“You can’t say anything. Ever.”
“What’s all this?” Francis said. “I’m not ashamed—it’s our narrow-minded, priestly government that should be ashamed.”
“What did you do?” Peggy said.
“He didn’t do anything,” Martin said. “What I mean is, he’s not a thief or a killer or—”
“I was practically a political prisoner.”
“Oh, Janey Mack,” Martin said.
“Here’s what we can agree on,” Rosemary said. “Mom and Dad are never to hear a word of this.”
“Because Martin is ashamed of his own brother,” Francis said.
“Because I’m not my in-laws’ favorite person, and having a convict for a brother isn’t going to help matters.”
“Do I look like a convict?”
“Not at all,” Peggy said. “You look like a gentleman.”
“It’s nice to know there’s someone in this family who thinks so.”
“Now, if it’s okay with you old married folks, this gentleman and I are going dancing.”
While Francis reknotted his tie, rolled down his cuffs, helped himself to another slice of cake, and even ventured into the kitchen to pick at the few scraps of roast beef that had escaped his plate, Peggy ransacked Rosemary’s closet for something to wear. She complained in an offhand way about how out of date, and also how large, Rosemary’s clothes were, before finally settling on a dress that Rosemary had bought right before she found out she was pregnant for the second time and which she had never worn. Out in the living room, it was decided that Michael would stay at the apartment and that Francis would escort Peggy home from the Savoy—midnight at the latest!—but that he was not to have any contact with the Dwyers.
“Stay in the cab when you drop her off,” Martin instructed his brother. “Just to be on the safe side.”
“Not very gentlemanly,” Francis said.