A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

A girl Francie knows asks Francie to go out with one her boyfriend’s friends so she can have some alone time with her boyfriend. Francie ends up having a wonderful dinner with Corporal Lee Rhynor, who is happy to oblige her with his life story. She also reminisces on the happy parts of her past. They both agree that having dinner together makes them feel less “lonely” (451). He tells her he is about to ship out for war and wants to know if he can pretend that she is his “best girl” for the night (450). After a four-hour dinner, they walk along the Brooklyn Bridge until Francie insists she has to go home. Lee kisses her before she disappears into the trolley.

The next day, she gets all dressed up thinking he might show up to take her out again. He does and they go out for dinner and dancing. He tells Francie he has to go back home to his mother’s in the morning and asks her if there is any way she would spend the night with him. She says she would like to, but she can’t. He then tells her he loves her and asks her to marry him. This confuses Francie, as initially Lee had told her he was engaged. She asks him about the engagement, and he says it’s a passionless one and he plans on calling it off. She then agrees to marry him when he returns from war.

Francie goes home and writes Lee a letter full of loving promises. For the next few days, she anticipates his reply, only to a find a letter from his new wife telling Francie that she was sorry Lee “pretend(ed) to be in love” with her, and that she hopes the best for Francie (463). Francie starts crying immediately and calls out for her mother. Katie comforts her and then reveals that she has also received a letter of some importance recently, a letter saying she should expect a visit from McShane. She asks Francie if she would “like Mr. McShane for a father” (465). Francie says she is in no position to give advice and asks her mother how she can always be so sure of everything. Katie responds that she works off of feeling, not fact. Francie spends much of the next day crying and almost writes Ben, but then thinks better of it.

McShane comes over for coffee and cake and listens to Katie talk about all of Francie and Neeley’s accomplishments since Johnny’s death. Katie then has Francie bring Laurie out to meet him. Laurie falls asleep in his lap, and then he proposes to Katie, who accepts. Francie and Neeley discuss how different Laurie’s upbringing will most likely be now with no financial worries and no fun father to make her laugh. 

Francie admires Ben’s high school ring on her finger. She’s leaving her job to go to college in Michigan, a suggestion Ben made. She often still thinks of Lee, but Ben says he wants to marry her in five years, and Ben shows up when she needs someone.

The day before Katie and McShane’s wedding, Francie packs up her belongings, as they will be moving to a much bigger house after the wedding. She takes Laurie around the neighborhood and spends some time feeling sentimental about the school she used to attend. She thinks about Ben and how he is “so sure of himself,” and she decides she doesn’t love him (492). She and Neeley say goodbye to each other, as they know with the hullabaloo of the wedding they won’t have another chance to be alone before Francie leaves for college. Francie sees a little neighbor girl playing on a fire escape like she used to do and calls her Francie, even though it upsets the little girl, who insists she is Florry, not Francie. Looking into the yard, where the old Tree of Heaven once stood, she notes that the landlord had the tree cut down after neighbors complained their hanging laundry got tangled in its branches. From its stump, a new tree has grown—first along the ground, until it reached a spot with no wash lines above, and then up toward the sky.