Water Street

by Patricia Reilly Giff

  And then they were outside in the heat, walking slowly. “You have a way with the patients, Bird,” Mama said.

  Back at home, they climbed the stairs to the apartment. She'd really have to do a better job on the sweeping Saturday, Bird thought, glancing at the drifts of sand in the corners of the steps. But right now she was ready to sink down at the table for a cup of tea with three teaspoons of sugar, and a bit of Annie's leftover yeast cake.

  Mama nudged her. “The poor boy has probably been up there all morning without anything to do.”

  Bird stifled a sigh and gulped down the tea. She went out on the landing, still savoring the last bite of cake. But before she could even climb the stairs to the fourth floor, he came down, almost as if he'd been watching for her.

  “I saw you and your mother go out a while ago.”

  Yes. He'd probably been peering out the door for an hour.

  “What's her name anyway?” he said.

  Why did he want to know that? “Nora. My father calls her Nory.”

  They went down the steps. Sullivan the baker was in the window, a smudge of flour on his nose. “Watch.” She waved at him.

  The baker paid no attention.

  “See? He's the crankiest person in all of Brooklyn.”

  Without saying where they were going, she walked with Thomas toward the school a few blocks away, and pushed open the door. “Just a couple of weeks left before it starts again.” She peered down the hall to be sure the janitor wasn't around to chase them out. “Come on.”

  They went to the end of the corridor and down the stairs. Strange to go downstairs when they wanted to go up, but the only door they could use to get to the roof was in the basement. It led to a dusty stairway that had the janitor's footprints etched on its steps. Halfway up, she pointed out a huge gray cobweb that drifted across the corner of the wall. A memory: “Help me, Da, I just walked into a spider's house.”

  “Ah, Bird, lucky for the spider. But they build bridges, don't they? Look, the line joins one side of the doorway to the other.”

  Thomas pushed against the heavy door and stood back to let her go first. Better manners than anyone else around, she had to admit, and remembered the woman in the picture, Lillie. Had she taught him?

  Outside was the roof with its ashes and dust scattered across the tar. They edged their way to the wall and leaned over to peer down. Laid out in front of them were the streets of Brooklyn, some of them straight and even, others curved.

  Thomas was so far over the edge, she took a step closer, thinking to grab his arm before he tumbled down all that way. She looked at his shirt, same one as yesterday, and probably last month, if the truth were told.

  She pointed at the doctor going along the street below, sitting up high in his carriage, his horse the most beautiful gray in the city. “Mama says he gets less sleep than she does,” she said, “and she hardly sleeps at all.”

  She watched until he turned the corner and then looked up toward the bridge towers: the one on their side was finished, the one on the other side a place of furious activity, workers going up and down on ropes, trying to finish it by next year.

  She was beginning to see how the bridge might span the river, people going back and forth, and Da had said there was even room for railroad tracks.

  “It will change everything for us,” he'd said. “People will be able to go to work in the city, to shop.” He smiled. “Brooklyn and Manhattan are reaching out to touch each other.”

  And then, so much like Da, he'd said, “But what I picture, what I love to think about, is that right here at our doorstep, we'll have the most beautiful bridge in the world. And that's something, isn't it?”

  She glanced down at Water Street now, and leaned closer to the edge. She drew in her breath. Was that Hughie down there? “What is it?” Thomas asked.

  She was glad he didn't know Hughie. Glad he didn't know that Hughie was supposed to be working, and why wasn't he? Instead he was standing in a group on the corner with members of that gang, Sons of Sligo or whatever its name was.

  His arms were waving. What was he talking about? But she could guess. It was about fighting, about boxing with his bare knuckles, the Irish against the Yankees.

  Da would say, We're all Americans now.

  And Mrs. Daley with her biscuit-dough arms folded over her huge chest, her elbows poking out of the raveled sleeves of her sweater, had said more than once, “It's the good-lookers like Hughie Mallon who give you problems, fighting and carrying on. Ah, his poor mother, who knows what will happen to him? He's looking for trouble.”

  Bird didn't want to think about it. “Do you know why they began the bridge?” she asked in a rush.

  Thomas stared at her with that intent look he had. Whatever she said might be written in his notebook. “Sometimes in winter,” she began, “the ice is so thick the ferry gets caught in it.”

  Thomas glanced toward the river that rushed along, blue and then suddenly gray as the clouds moved over it. “Black water against the white floes. I can see it.”

  “One day a man named John Roebling was in a hurry to get from Brooklyn to Manhattan,” she said, “but the river was packed with ice, one piece crashing into another. And finally—”

  Thomas raised his hand. “The ferry was caught.”

  “Yes. And Roebling told his son, ‘I'm going to build a bridge, and people won't have to take the ferry on a winter day.’ ”

  He pulled at her sleeve. “See that group down there?”

  She pretended she hadn't heard. “Before he could build the bridge, his foot was smashed against the dock pilings. He died of lockjaw. Bad luck for the son, too,” she said. “He got the bends from going down in one of the caissons deep under the water. He's an invalid over on Hicks Street.”

  Thomas's eyes were still on the group on the street.

  “He watches from the window with a telescope while his wife, Emily, finishes the bridge. A woman, can you imagine?”

  Thomas pointed. “Do you know who they are?”

  She twitched her shoulder.

  “That one with the dark hair, waving his arms?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Just wondering.”

  She hesitated. “That's my brother, Hughie.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  {BIRD}

  She could hardly wait to walk back home with Thomas. Once there, she stood at her doorway watching until he disappeared upstairs, and then she was out again, feeling beads of perspiration on her forehead and down her back from the heat. She ran full tilt into Willie, the baker's assistant. “Sorry,” she called over her shoulder breathlessly.

  She passed the school and went to the corner looking for Hughie. Only one of the group was still there. “Have you seen my brother?”

  “And he would be?” How fresh he was. He knew very well who it was. “Hugh Mallon.”

  Hugh Mallon, who was supposed to be working, and wasn't. Hugh Mallon, who was fighting whenever he could in a city where it was against the law. Hugh Mallon, whom she loved best.

  The boy pointed. “Isn't he supposed to be working at the market?”

  “He certainly is.”

  “Well then—” He waved toward the ferry.

  She went past, thinking about stepping on his boots, and close enough that he had to step back. She turned the corner toward the ferry.

  She caught up with Hughie a block before the terminal. She called out, and he turned, smiling. The anger went out of her. There was something about his face, those blue eyes like the sky on a summer day, that she loved the look of. It reminded her of being so little she'd have to take big steps to keep up with him. It reminded her of one night when she was sick and he'd brought her home an ice from the sweet shop, lemon and tart.

  “Oh, Hughie,” she said now. “What are you doing?”

  “Doing?” he asked. “Delivering fruit to one of the big houses on Hicks Street.”

  Did she believe him? But he never lied.

 
; “What about—” she began. “I saw—”

  He tucked her arm in his. “We'll stand by the water and take in the breeze. What could be nicer on a hot day? And old Mr. Breslin at the market won't mind if I take a little longer getting back.”

  They leaned on the railing. The water was smooth as silk on this breathless day. What could she say to him?

  She remembered the last night he had worked on the bridge, months ago now. She'd heard the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs and heard the door bang open so hard it slammed back against the wall. Da and two of Hughie's friends carried him inside, putting him on the couch, his knees bent to his chest, his arms twisted.

  “What is it?” Mama said as Bird backed away to stand in the corner near Hughie's head, hearing his moans. Tears ran like white rivers on his filthy face.

  Hughie crying.

  Da shook his head. “He was deep under the water working in the caisson.”

  The caisson. Bird hated the thought of it. A huge box, a block long, that had been sunk all the way down to the riverbed, the bottom open to the sand and boulders. Inside that caisson, in the yellow glow of lanterns, in that suffocating air, Hughie had been digging away those huge rocks so the bridge tower could be laid.

  And now, the dreaded caisson disease had come to Hughie.

  “When he climbed the ladder to come out,” Da said, “he couldn't straighten. He rolled on the street with the pain of it.”

  Mama stood there helpless. “My own son,” she said. “And I don't know what to do.”

  “No one does,” Da said, hovering over him all that night and the next day, until at last the pain eased and Hughie was himself again, lucky to be alive.

  “You don't have to go down there ever again, Hughie, no matter what,” Da had said.

  Hughie had held up two fingers and she knew what he meant: the two dollars a day that he brought home for the farm box would be gone forever. How little he'd make at the box factory or the market.

  “What are you saying?” Hughie asked now.

  “Why are you fighting?”

  He turned to her. “I'm not fighting. I'm standing here with my favorite person in the world, looking at the water, wondering what it would be like to be on that boat over there.” He pointed. “On my way out west.”

  She squinted in the sunlight, looking at the spanking sails of a boat gliding down the river. She looked back at him. Once, two or three years ago, they had taken the ferry to Manhattan. He'd held her up to see the houses and the church steeple as they chugged away from Brooklyn. “Don't let me fall,” she'd said, grasping his hair.

  “Ah, never,” he'd said.

  “Remember—” she began, reminding him of that misty spring morning, and he nodded, smiling.

  Later she realized he'd distracted her. She hadn't said the things she wanted to say. She hadn't said any of them.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  {THOMAS}

  All week it had stormed, with rumbles of thunder vibrating through the apartment. Pop had gotten a job down near the bridge, weighing loads of granite as the horses brought them in. Thomas wondered how long this job would last. But it was Sunday now, and Pop would sleep most of the day.

  The rain had finally stopped. From the window he saw wisps of steam rising off the roof across the way. Everything was wet, sticky.

  He went to the door, propped it open, and sat there leaning against the stairway and writing in his notebook. It was the coolest spot he could find, with that small breeze coming up the stairs.

  He looked down to see the mother, Mrs. Mallon, starting up the stairs. She was wearing a hat with a veil and had a missal in her hand. Coming from Mass, he thought.

  Did she think he was spying on them, sitting in the stairwell over their heads?

  Of course he was spying, he knew that. He hadn't seen Bird in a couple of days; he hadn't seen any of them, but he told himself that even if it got to be two hundred degrees in that apartment, he'd keep the door shut from now on. He would have closed it, but Mrs. Mallon had already seen him. He waved the book in front of his face. “It's hot up here.”

  “Come down and have Sunday dinner with us.” She pushed her veil back over her hat. “It's Bird's birthday, and you haven't met the rest of the Mallons yet.”

  He almost said no, but stood up and went down the stairs.

  They were all crowded into the kitchen, Bird looking at him over her shoulder at the counter. An older girl called, “I'm Annie, and I know you're Thomas.” The fighter sat on the edge of a cot in the corner, a newspaper hiding his face, but he waved one arm at Thomas.

  Who was left? A gray-haired man: the father. He had a good face, a face for a story. And another woman was stirring something in a pot. She looked just like Mrs. Mallon, but her nose turned up the slightest bit. “I'm Aunt Celia,” she said.

  There wasn't enough room at that small table with one end against the wall. Thomas counted the chairs, two on each side, and the fifth on the other end.

  It didn't seem to bother anyone. The bowls went on the table, and the fighter, Hughie, folded the newspaper behind him, reached over for another bowl the older sister had filled for him, then moved to make room for her on the cot. The stew was thick, filled with carrots and potatoes and shreds of lamb, and Thomas felt the first mouthful all the way down.

  He took a quick look at Hughie then. He had bruises on his face and knuckles.

  Mrs. Mallon waved at him. “You're lucky today, Thomas. They left you a place at the table. Usually everyone fights for it.”

  He could feel his face get hot. He shouldn't be there, but there was nowhere he'd rather be. The small room was steamy with all those people, Mr. Mallon saying grace, then knives and forks clinking and everyone laughing at a story the aunt was telling about a goat in Ireland.

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Mallon. “Remember that goat, so stubborn with its yellow teeth, butting at us whenever we tried to cross the field?”

  Mr. Mallon smiled. “Strange, isn't it? We couldn't wait to get out of Ireland, and now all these years later, what we remember is not the starving but the living.”

  They were all quiet; then Mrs. Mallon spread out her hands. “All of us scattered now. My brother Patch working on a farm in New Jersey, Maggie and Francey out west—” She hesitated. “Parents long gone.”

  “Ah, Nory,” the aunt said, “we can't be sad on Bird's birthday.”

  Thomas looked down at his plate, pretending he belonged there with them, that he knew all about their family. Then Pop's face was in his mind. How would Pop feel if he knew Thomas wanted to be part of this family?

  He swallowed. Pop was just upstairs sleeping, and Thomas would never leave him, even if he could change things around and be part of the Mallons. But thinking about it, for just that second, that he was one of them, that he really belonged there, gave him a rush of warmth in his chest.

  Bird nudged him. “What's that look on your face? Have you swallowed wrong or something?”

  He didn't have time to answer. He heard footsteps, someone running up all those flights. There was a quick knock on the door and then it flew open.

  The man standing there was familiar. He delivered milk in the mornings in a faded cart with a skinny gray horse.

  Everything stopped: forks half raised, a bowl being passed. It seemed that the man was bathed in red, great swaths of it across his shirt and hands. And then Thomas realized: he was covered in blood.

  The man reached out to Mrs. Mallon, who was bending already to pick up her bag. “You're cut,” she said.

  “Please, Mrs., hurry,” he said. “It's not me. It's my son.”

  Bird stood too, pushing the table back, plates and bowls rattling. “I'm coming.”

  What could have happened to cause all that blood? Thomas couldn't stop staring at the man and listening as the three of them went down the stairs.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  {BIRD}

  Mama and the milkman flew down the stairs in front of her, their feet barely touchi
ng each tread. “I can't get the doctor,” he said breathlessly.

  Bird knew that was so. She had seen the doctor earlier, his carriage rattling along the street so fast that people hardly had time to get out of the way. “Just a block,” the man said. “A block.”

  Bird stumbled and ran to catch up with them. How quiet everything was this Sunday afternoon, how still. No horse and wagon clopped down the street, no cart; no one stood on the corner talking. It was as if they were the only ones in the world. Their footsteps echoed, and Mama's breathing was heavy as they hurried toward Fulton Street and up the steps into the house.

  “Fifth floor,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

  Mama waved her hand to tell him it was all right, but she held her side as they took the long flights up. Bird wondered what they'd find at the top of those stairs, what terrible thing, and then there was a quick memory of the milkman standing at their door once, his face like an apple that had browned and lost its juice, complaining that they hadn't paid the bill on time.

  The door to the apartment was half open. It smelled as if no one ever opened a window in there. There must be a pot of day-old cabbage on the stove. The shades were down, and she stumbled over someone's coat bunched up on the floor.

  “The bedroom,” he said. “In the bedroom.”

  “Go back out, Bird,” Mama said. “Sit on the steps in the hall.”

  So what did you do? Annie might have said later. Sit outside in the hall?

  She gritted her teeth so she wouldn't gag over the smell. She thought of the baby, Mary Bridget. “I can help, Mama.” She tried to keep her face smooth. “Really.”

  Mama didn't bother to answer but went straight into the bedroom, where there was no window and almost no light. It felt as if it were the middle of the night—worse than that, because at home Mama always left a candle burning in a bowl in the kitchen.

  “I can't see.” Mama's voice was sharp. “Get a lamp or a candle quickly.”