Water Street

by Patricia Reilly Giff

  He didn't look cool; in the flickering light his face was red and beads of sweat were on his forehead.

  They walked back along Fulton to Water Street, the smell of the butcher shop strong as they passed, with its slabs of beef in the window, and sheep's heads with dull eyes that seemed to stare after them.

  Thomas kept thinking about the boy with the dark hair, and his face when he went down. Had he been hurt?

  They could see the tower that was rising on the Manhattan side of the East River. He wondered what it would be like to walk around eight or ten stories above the ground.

  Pop's hand was still on his shoulder, a wide hand, long fingers. “Listen, Thomas. Maybe everything will be different this time.”

  He said that every time they moved, but Thomas nodded as if he believed him. He wanted it to be true, wanted it so much, and he wanted to reach up and hug Pop, because his eyes looked so sad.

  “A new start,” Pop said as they stopped at the corner and waited to cross over to where the horse and cart waited for them. “A new apartment, Thomas. A new life.”

  A new world to write about.

  CHAPTER THREE

  {BIRD}

  Mama's healing plants marched across the windowsill, waiting for a drink. Bird had promised her brother, Hughie, she'd water them this morning, and had forgotten all about it in her excitement over the baby. Next to Mama he was the most interested in the plants, not the way she and Mama were, for how they could heal, but for the look of them, the size of them, even for the feel of the damp earth they grew in.

  One of her first memories: Hughie holding her up to touch a pink bud. “New like you, Birdie,” he'd said.

  She filled a jelly jar with water and dribbled it into the pots: more for the primroses, thirsty things, and a little less for the chives. She ran her finger over pots of soft moss, and in her head: Moss to stop bleeding. She tapped the top of a spiky plant: Aloe for burns.

  She was writing all of it down in a book Mama had made for her, but she knew most of it by heart now anyway.

  Outside the window in front of her was Water Street. People sat on the stoops to escape the heat, and a line of dray horses clopped by.

  The new tenants' cart was still there in front, the horse's head drooping; he was almost asleep. It was close to nine o'clock. What was the matter with those people anyway?

  She angled her head to see better.

  Her older sister, Annie, turned from the counter, looking almost like Hughie with her thick dark hair and skyblue eyes. She wasn't good-looking like Hughie, though. She called herself plain, and Bird knew that was true. Annie hated the small scar like a dent in her cheek from where she had fallen once, but Bird loved Annie's face.

  “You're watering the floor, Bird,” Annie said.

  “Watch out. I may water your feet and I think they're big enough as it is.”

  That made Annie laugh. “Any minute the plants are going to go, and you with them.” She tapped her finger gently on the yeast dough she had rising in the yellow bowl. “Almost ready to bake.”

  She came over to stand next to Bird at the window, her hair tickling Bird's cheek.

  “I think you're hoping the new tenant will be handsome and single,” Bird said. “A beau for you.”

  “Not a bit of it.” Annie gave her arm a tiny pinch.

  At the table, Da looked up smiling. “At least let's hope it isn't someone who dances all night, rattling the floor-boards over our heads.”

  Bird looked back at him, running his hand through that gray hair of his. He was broomstraw thin, tall, and a little bent, and she knew he didn't really care about how much noise the new tenants would make. Mama said he slept like a log.

  Mama called him Sean Red, and once Bird had asked her why. Mama had wiped her hands on her apron. “His hair is the color of the carrots in the soup Annie makes,” she had said, and they'd all laughed. Mama had glanced up at Da then, her hand to her mouth. “You've gone white, Sean. I never noticed.”

  Annie leaned forward. “Is that someone on the other side of the cart now?”

  Yes, Bird saw two pairs of feet. She looked harder. Men's feet. “I think I'm going to get some air,” she said.

  “Is there anyone nosier in this world than Bird Mallon?” Annie had a glint in her eye.

  “No one unless it's you,” Bird said.

  “Nothing wrong with a little curiosity,” Da said.

  “It's dark out,” Mama said.

  “Not that dark,” Bird told her. “And I'm just going to walk up and down the block.” She took a breath. “It's roasting in here.” She pecked Da on the cheek, and went around the table to run her hand over Ma's shoulder.

  She rushed down the stairs, passing Mrs. Daley's apartment on the first floor, then Sullivan's Bakery on the ground floor, closed for the night, with its baker cooking somewhere in back.

  She slowed her steps as she reached the stoop outside, glad there were people all over the place. The new tenants would never think she was coming after them.

  And there they were. She was close enough now to see those sticklike chairs piled up on the wagon, a couch with stuffing coming out of one arm, a mattress, and stacks of boxes. She swept her eyes toward the sky, as if she were looking at the stars, then glanced down to the street again: a boy and his father.

  The father was under the weather; he must have been drinking for hours. He was singing “Sweet Rosie,” or “Sweet Kate,” or “Sweet Mary,” stumbling over the back wheel, and “Sweet Kate” became “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph” under his breath.

  She ducked her head the way Father Kinsella had told them to do when they heard the Holy Name.

  The boy stood next to the wagon, skinny as a rail with sandy hair and baggy pants. He looked as if you'd raise dust if you took the rug beater to him.

  A bitter disappointment.

  He grinned when he saw her, almost as if he knew who she was. “What's your name?”

  What nerve. “Bird,” she said reluctantly.

  “I thought it was something terrible, like Eldrida, from the look on your face.” He tilted his head. “Prunes or lemons, maybe persimmons.”

  She could only imagine what a persimmon was. She grinned, trying to hide it from him as she looked up, catching a glimpse of Annie's face at the window. No beau for her. The boy was too young, the father too old.

  And the boy was right in back of her, his neck thin as a pencil. “My name is Thomas,” he said. “Thomas Neary.”

  She didn't answer.

  “The horse's name is Alfred, in case you want to know.” He screwed up his face. “Or maybe Fernando.”

  She had to laugh, and so did he. But Mr. Neary was outside hollering to two boys on the corner to give a hand. Bird and the new boy went back to help, one on each end of the mattress, dragging it up the stairs.

  “Filthy stairs,” someone said.

  “Not so bad,” she said with some guilt. After all, Mrs. Daley paid her to sweep them down every Saturday.

  When they were finished moving everything upstairs, the brown couch in between the windows, a long table with feet like lions in the middle of the room, and the chairs all around, Mr. Neary wandered back and forth between the rooms. He fingered the velvet curtains, left by an earlier tenant, worn to the backing, but still a gorgeous purple color.

  She and Thomas sat one on each end of the couch in the living room without much to say to begin with. She ran her hands over her skirt. She knew it was getting late and that she should go, but still—

  She peeked at the things he had lined up on the table: a gray feather, a penknife with a white bone handle, and a book he had made himself, almost like her cure book. And real books with leather covers. Ten of them, maybe a dozen. How lucky he was.

  At last she began. “Nice view of the new bridge going up from here,” she said. “My father works there. My sister loves to cook, to bake really, and my mother is a healer. Half of Brooklyn knows her.” What else? “My brother, Hughie—” She bit her lip. S
he didn't want to talk about Hughie. And why had she blurted all that out anyway? She reminded herself of their kitchen faucet. They'd turn it on and nothing happened. Then when they'd almost given up, water splashed out and out and they had a hard time stopping it.

  But Thomas was hardly listening. He took a quick look over his shoulder and she thought he might be embarrassed about his father, who was out of sight, singing “Murphy's Little Back Room.”

  He stood up and wandered into the bedroom after his father. Without thinking, she pulled his homemade book an inch closer: pages filled with handwriting, but she didn't have time to read them.

  There was a picture of a woman, though, torn out from a magazine. A beauty called Lillie, it said. She wore a hat with a plume and a silk gown; pearls the size of marbles were looped around her long neck, and her hands were clasped in front of her.

  She really was a beauty.

  There was writing scribbled on the bottom. She thought it said Mother.

  He had a mother who looked like that?

  But then a door slammed, and Mr. Neary's voice was cut off. Before she could even close the book, Thomas was back in the living room.

  She felt her face redden as she pushed the book away, hoping he hadn't seen her looking at his things.

  But he pointed to the window. “Stars out there. You're supposed to wish on them.”

  “What would you wish?” she asked.

  He raised one shoulder, but she could see from the look on his face there was something he wanted.

  “I want to be a healer,” she said, “like my mother.” She couldn't wait for it to begin. One more year of school, one long year left before she could go with Mama all the time.

  She thought of the little baby. Mary Bridget.

  All her days would be like the day she'd had today.

  But Annie was calling from the stairs now. “Bird? Where did you get yourself? It's almost eleven o'clock.”

  She put her hand up to her mouth. Eleven, that late. “My sister,” she said. “Five years older. She thinks she's my mother.” She slid off the couch and waved at him over her shoulder on her way out the door.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  {THOMAS}

  “So, Thomasy,” Pop said, “a girl downstairs.”

  He tried not to grin. “Yes.”

  “Same age as you are? Lives right in the apartment below?”

  “Yes.” A girl who swings hands with her mother. Eldrida.

  “You might want to clean yourself up a little then. Wash your face once in a while.”

  He didn't answer that. He wasn't sure the girl would care about it; he didn't care about it.

  There were two bedrooms in the apartment, curtains blocking them off instead of doors. The larger one had a window, the other was smaller and without a window, boiling in summer, but cozy in the winter, and the last tenant had left a picture hanging there where the window might have been.

  It showed a lighthouse standing on a jumble of gray rocks with foamy white waves crashing up on them. But what he really liked about it was the square window three-quarters of the way up the lighthouse, lighted with a splash of yellow paint.

  What would it be like to live there in back of that window with the warm candlelight? The waves looked stormy, dangerous, and you'd be up there with the rest of the family, looking down at it all with a fire going in the hearth and a hot stew on the stove.

  He stood there running his hand over the frame. He'd leave the big room for Pop and take the one with the lighthouse.

  “Have to bring the horse and wagon back to the livery place now,” Pop said.

  “I'll go with you.” He could see Pop wasn't that steady on his feet.

  Pop waved his hand. “It's been a long day. Stay here then, Thomas, get some sleep for yourself.”

  Thomas knew he'd bring the horse to the stable, then take himself back to Gallagher's.

  “Listen, Pop,” he said, “don't do that.”

  Pop raised his eyebrows. “Have to bring the horse back. We're late as it is. Sweeney is going to carry on about the extra hours; he's going to want more money. But too bad for Sweeney. You can't get blood out of a stone.”

  “I'll go with the horse,” Thomas said.

  He could see Pop thinking. It was Gallagher's he had in mind, not Sweeney's.

  “Ah, Thomasy, you need your sleep, every bit of it. Look at you. You look like a beanstalk back in Granard.”

  “There's fighting going on at Gallagher's,” Thomas said. “Bare-knuckle fighting in the back room. It's against the law, you know that. Even to watch.”

  “Ah, but I'm going to the stable, to Sweeney's, remember?” Pop's eyes slid away from him.

  Thomas swallowed. There was nothing he could do. He listened to Pop's footsteps on the way down the stairs, then took the bag with his clothes from the living room and slid it under the bed in the lighthouse room. Then he heard the sound of voices.

  He'd read about old houses with ghosts, but this house wasn't that old, maybe thirty years or so, and he wasn't afraid of ghosts; they were just dead bodies over in Holy Cross or Green-Wood Cemetery. His mother might even be one if she was there. He'd tried to ask Pop more than once, but Pop was hard to pin down. He'd look up at the ceiling, or remember he had something to do in another room, or even whistle a bit of a song.

  The sounds were coming from the heat register. He stared at the curlicued iron covering the rectangular space in the floor, and heard something again. Was it laughing? Coming from the apartment downstairs?

  He spread himself down on the floor, with his ear on the cold metal. It sounded like the surf crashing onto the shore, not that he'd ever seen the ocean, but he could imagine it from all the books he had read about it.

  He heard the girl's voice then.

  Bird.

  A good name for her. She wasn't a sparrow or songbird, though. She stood so straight, and her face was strong. He thought of her trying not to laugh, but it had bubbled out of her anyway. He'd put her in one of his stories; he'd do that this week.

  He wanted to know what the mother's name might be. He'd find out tomorrow. How wonderful to have a mother with a face like that, with those kind eyes. And the daughter was going to look just like that one day.

  What else did he know about them? A father who worked on the bridge, she had said, a brother, and a sister who loved to cook. As hard as he pressed his ear against the register, he couldn't hear what they said, only the sounds, deeper for the father or brother, lighter for the women.

  He threw himself on the bed. It was hot in there, the air stale, but he was tired; he'd gotten up early to pack and sweep out the old apartment. His stomach growled. Always a bit of hunger there. But he fell asleep thinking of Bird, and the rest of that family downstairs.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  {BIRD}

  On Monday morning, Mama bustled around dropping potatoes in one pot to boil, and eggs in another. “We'll put them on ice before we leave, and have a cold supper on this hot night.”

  “And Annie will be sure to make us a pie.” Bird hummed as she snipped off a couple of aloe shoots for old Mrs. Cunningham's legs. They were going to her apartment at the other end of Water Street to bathe her and make her comfortable.

  It was quiet in the kitchen, peaceful. Da slept in the bedroom after the graveyard shift at the bridge, Annie was at the factory banging slabs of wood into boxes, sometimes banging purple blisters into her fingers, and Hughie had taken the ferry over to Manhattan before any of them were awake, to work at the market.

  She folded the sharp green aloe shoots into a piece of paper and tucked it into Mama's bag, then piled up the old newspapers to take down to the ash cans in the areaway.

  “You're happy today, Bird,” Mama said from the stove.

  “I like going to Mrs. Cunningham's after all.”

  Mama raised her eyebrows. Mrs. Cunningham had a miserable disposition, slapping out at them as they combed her hair or rubbed cream into her hands, complaining that the bed
was too lumpy, the covers too heavy. But Bird was strong enough to lift her now, to straighten the tangle of sheets under her, and when they were finished and she was clean and the bed neat, Bird had a feeling of satisfaction.

  “If only she didn't act like a scalded cat,” Bird said, thinking of the scratch on her arm from last week's visit.

  Mama spread out her hands as if she were smoothing down Mrs. Cunningham's lumpy bed. “I'd be complaining, too, if I'd been in bed for ten years with only my rosary beads to keep me company.”

  They drained the potatoes and eggs and rested them on top of the square of ice in the box. Mama tiptoed into the bedroom to lean over to kiss Da without waking him, and Bird reached for her hat.

  Moments later they started down the stairs, both of them glancing up at the Nearys' closed door.

  “Tell you what, Bird. When we're finished later this morning, go upstairs and knock on the door. Take the boy around. Show him the neighborhood.”

  “That's not a good idea.” How embarrassing to go up there and knock, and worse, walk him around, the mess of him, for everyone to see. “I don't think he's touched a wash-cloth to his face since the day he was born.”

  Mama tilted her head. It was hard to say no to her.

  “All right. I guess I could do it for a while.”

  “Ah, Birdie, that's my girl.”

  Water Street was busy this morning, carts in the street with stacks of walleyed fish, and stands with blue-legged crabs, still alive and scuttling around on small hills of chipped ice. “I'm glad we're having eggs,” Bird said.

  They stayed with Mrs. Cunningham all morning, chasing the dust out from under her bed, washing her poor old body, and at the end Bird twisted Mrs. Cunningham's long hair into two smooth braids.

  “Silver,” Bird said. “Pretty.”

  For the first time, Mrs. Cunningham smiled, showing toothless gums. “In my drawer there's a flower,” she said. “You can have it.”

  Bird began to shake her head, but Mama was nodding, so she opened the drawer and took out a small pink paper rose. “I love it,” she said, and tucked it in her pocket.