The Leap Year Boy

by Marc Simon

  If he wanted to see Delia, and damn it, he sure wanted to, he had to figure out a way to do it during daylight hours. Shields gave him twenty minutes for lunch. He could take an extra fifteen, maybe even half an hour, if he could get Mougianis to cover for him. Hell, he’d done the dumb Greek plenty of favors, he’d covered his ass plenty of times when the man got so drunk during lunch he could hardly turn on his machine, so the man owed him one. He’d take a ride up to Delia’s place, just to take a look-see. She probably wouldn’t be there anyway, in the middle of the day, she was a waitress, that’s what Malkin had said. He’d leave her a note. He’d written it three times over:

  Dear D,

  Heard you was back in town. Want to see you, if it’s all right with you, for old time sake. What do you say? Get word to Malkin or leave word at The Wheel. Just say when.

  Yours Abe.

  And so, a little before noon on January 2, 1910, Abe stood on the platform of the Monongahela Incline on East Carson Street, his collar turned against the chilly, sooty air wafting in off the river, his hand cradling the slip of paper with her address, and he felt in the moment and out of it, as if his body was taking him and the rest was just along for the ride. He wondered what would happen if on the off chance she’d be there when he knocked on her door. Would he stand there, hemming and hawing, hat in hand, or would he rush in and throw her on the floor?

  A cable car squealed to a stop not ten feet away from his face. Twenty riders sprang from the steel and glass cage, faces flushed with exhilaration and relief that they had made the precipitous ride without incident. A little boy in a hat with dangling earflaps begged his mother please let’s do it again, why can’t we do it again, please I’ll be good, Momma, but Momma was having none of it and deflected his entreaties gently at first and then with more vigor, pulling the boy away by the neck.

  Abe handed the conductor a nickel and took a seat against a window. Arthur and Benjamin would get a kick out of riding in this contraption, after all, they were crazy for the Jack Rabbit roller coaster and all the rides at Kennywood Amusement Park. He’d have to take them on this contraption sometime. Even the little one would be thrilled.

  The car filled quickly, with a squat mother and father and six children chattering excitedly in some Eastern European dialect Abe couldn’t quite get the hang of. The smallest child stared at him. He felt conspicuous in his blue workshop jacket with “Abe” stitched over the breast pocket.

  “All righty, folks,” the conductor announced as he closed the metal grate and the heavy sliding door, “there’s no getting off now, we’re about to set off on a wonderful, remarkable, gravity-defying journey reaching stratospheric heights, leaping forth into the wild blue yonder, clinging by the skin of our teeth to the rocky hillside. You, sir,” he continued, pointing to the father, “do you realize the gravity—gravity, get it, that’s a joke, sir—of our situation, that we are connected to good old terra firma by nothing more than some heavy gauge steel cables, a steam engine and our faith in the Almighty?”

  The man blinked. Two of the smaller girls clung to his side.

  The conductor, a one-time stage actor of some local notoriety until drink got the better of him, adjusted his blue uniform cap. “Never mind, sir, because the good Lord in His infinite wisdom is looking out for every mother’s son and daughter among us. There are no atheists on board, are there?”

  The man blinked again.

  Abe said, “I don’t think they capiche the language too good.”

  “You don’t say. Nevertheless, let me explain the technicalities of our impending journey, for your edification, sir, if not for theirs. We will be traveling on the diagonal some 635 feet up this small mountain and reach our final destination—not in the metaphorical sense, of course—the Grandview Avenue station, elevation approximately 370 feet, moving at the breakneck speed of six miles per hour. But enough physics for now. Folks, please keep your hands inside the windows unless you want to lose them on the way up, and prepare for perhaps the most exciting two to three minutes of your lives.”

  The passengers let out a collective ooh as the cable car fought to gain traction against gravity. Their trepidation turned to shouts of elation as they eked their way up the hillside. Abe was able to make out the Shields Metal Building, where at this time on any other workday he would have been eating lunch and complaining about the boss with the other stiffs, as the men referred to themselves.

  The car thumped to a stop at the top of the hill. The relieved travelers applauded, the father shook the operator’s hand, and everyone spilled out onto Grandview Avenue. Abe stood cement-footed in the wind, fingering the slip of paper with Delia’s address, wondering whether he should turn back now, return to the ordinary life, to the miserable monotony of days with Irene and the boys, or go through with this, what, this irresistible diversion. He’d heard Davy talk about life-changing moments. He wondered if he were having one now.

  A woman pushing a stroller bumped into Abe’s calf as she hurried by, tossing an excuse me into the wind. It was enough to prod Abe out of his stupor. He put one foot in front of the other in a stiff-legged march, which in seven minutes brought him to 14 Desdemona Way.

  *

  As Abe was riding up to meet his short-term fate, Irene was wheeling Alex four blocks to St. Philomena’s Church, the scene of so many of her unhappy childhood memories. She stopped at the neatly shoveled and rock-salted front steps. They were all too familiar. Her mother used to make her say a prayer to the Lord on every step before she entered, as if she were a pilgrim paying homage to a holy shrine. She was sure it was just another ploy her mother used to keep her under her Catholic thumb, but on this day, she said fourteen prayers for Alex, pausing on every step.

  When she came to the massive wood and wrought iron front doors, she couldn’t go through with it. She remembered Father Kiernan’s unfeeling condemnation when she’d married out of the faith—she could only imagine his contempt, had he known she was two months pregnant before her marriage. Good Lord, was she that desperate for someone to talk to about Alex’s condition, about Abe’s infidelities that she would go to a man of God that had proclaimed her godless? Would he really welcome her back, accept her in his good graces as if she were the prodigal daughter? More likely, he would he subject her to a lecture on the wages of sin. She shuddered, but not with the cold but with the shame that she’d come so close to opening herself up to the man. “Alex,” she said, “let’s go see Nana.”

  Alex stood up in the stroller, spread apart the fingers of his right hand and made the sign of the cross in the air.

  Irene dropped to her knees beside him. “Alex? What did you, how do you know how to do that?”

  He repeated the motion.

  Oh my God, she thought, what does this mean, he can’t possibly understand what he’s doing, or what a church is, or what it’s supposed to stand for; but what if he does, what does that make him, the Second Coming? No, he was simply waving his arms, babies wave their arms all the time, he waves those long arms of his when he wants something, but God, those long arms.

  “Alex, baby boy, are you waving to Momma?” She moved her hand back and forth, up and down.

  He waved back.

  “Let’s leave this old church. Let’s go see Nana. Do you want to see Nana, Alex?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned the stroller and hurried away from the church as fast as she could wheel through the slush, the wind cold at her back.

  Although his mother couldn’t see him do it, Alex crossed himself again.

  *

  It was warm in the lobby of the apartment building, but Abe had the chills. He stared at the register, and there it was, Apartment 6, Novak, just like Malkin’s note said it would be, and he thought there still was time to turn around and walk back into his hum-drum life.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  Abe wheeled around.

  A short, bald black man with white mutton-chop whiskers stood three feet away, leaning on a long push broom.


  “What?”

  “My name is Baker, but I ain’t no baker. That’s just a joke. You need some help finding someone, sir?”

  “No.”

  “’Cause the way you was standing there, you looked lost.”

  Lost. That was a good word for how he was feeling. “No, I ain’t lost, I’m looking for number six.”

  The man propped the broom against the wall. “Miss Delia.”

  “Yeah. I got a note for her.” As if he were a schoolboy eager to show his hall pass, Abe took it out of his pocket.

  “You want me to run it up for you? Tell her you was here?”

  “Wait, she ain’t here right now, is she?”

  The man scratched his head. “Well, sir, unless she jumped out the window, and there ain’t no earthly reason why she should, or she done disappeared into thin air, which also ain’t likely far as I know, she’s right there where she was an hour ago, when I brought her up the newspaper. See, I look after this building for the folks what lives here, doing this and that and whatnot, so I know what this one likes and that one likes, and Miss Delia, she likes to read the paper, which, like I said, I took up to her this morning. Now I’ll take that note up to her straightaway if you like.” He held his hand out.

  “No, that’s all right.”

  “You don’t want to give it to her now?”

  “No. What I mean is, I’ll take it myself.”

  “All right then. Whatever you say, sir.”

  They stood facing each other for a moment. Abe figured the man wanted a tip. He tried to hand him a nickel. ““No sir, I don’t take no tips, except for Christmas time, no sir, the tenants here, they took real good care of Baker this Christmas, just like Baker takes good care of them, yes sir. Now did you want me to ring that bell?”

  *

  They were wet with snow flurries by the time they reached her mother’s house. Irene rang the bell.

  Ida came to the door wearing a white sweater over a plaid housedress and a scowl until she saw Alex. “Look who’s here, look who’s here!” she said, and the wrinkles around her eyes and the corners of her mouth receded as she scooped up her grandson and walked back inside, leaving Irene in the vestibule with a snow shovel and the empty stroller.

  In a little-girl-lost voice, Irene called, “Hi, Ma.” She trudged after them into the kitchen. She glanced up at the hand-lettered plaque resting on the molding above the entryway that had been there since she was a child. It read, No matter where I serve my guests, it seems they like my kitchen best. She threw her wet coat over a chair.

  “Look what Grandma has for you, blessed precious, does Alex like Grandma’s extra special rice pudding with cinnamon and sugar on top? Is it sweet enough for the world’s sweetest little boy?” She fed him pudding with a demitasse spoon.

  “Not too much, Ma. He hasn’t had his lunch yet.”

  “What? It’s nearly one o’clock. What kind of mother are you?”

  “Ma, please, I don’t need this today.”

  “Well, I’m just wondering, one o’clock and no lunch, the poor thing.” She put him on her lap and began to feed him rice pudding.

  Irene watched Alex gobble up the pudding, his skinny little tongue working like an anteater. She was gratified that her mother’s attitude had softened toward him—who couldn’t love him?—even if Ida still treated Irene like a misguided teenager. “Ma, remember when I was a little girl, you used to feed me rice pudding and tea and crackers when I had a tummy ache? And ginger ale, too, and you used to tell me stories about far away lands and how one day a prince charming would come for me and I’d live happily ever after. Do you remember, Ma?”

  Alex rubbed the pudding cup over his nose and mouth.

  “Ma?”

  “I don’t know, I suppose I did. Why are you bringing this up now?”

  Irene put her hands on the sides of her cheeks. “I went to see Father Kiernan this morning.”

  Ida wiped Alex’s mouth with a checkered napkin. “That nincompoop? What in the world did you want with him?”

  “Because, Ma, you always told me that no matter what happened, you were always supposed to be able to tell a priest your problems and he would give you good advice, or comfort, or understanding, no matter what you did, but Ma, I couldn’t go through with it.”

  “Well, at least that was sensible. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, Kiernan is an idiot. Now Father Delaney, bless his soul, now there was a priest you could talk to.” Ida remembered the day she sobbed her heart out to Father Delaney after her son, her precious little boy James, had taken ill and died of a blood infection when he was just four. What kind of evil God would do that, she asked him, why would God sear her soul like that, and although she couldn’t recall what Delaney had said that soothed her, she remembered the mellifluous sound of his voice.

  “Ma, don’t you want to know why I almost went to see a priest?”

  Alex made the sign of the cross.

  Ida said, “What’s he doing?”

  “Never mind him for a second.”

  “Irene, what is wrong with you?”

  “Abe is cheating on me, Ma. Some woman named Delia.”

  Alex said, “Delia.”

  “I don’t know who she is and I don’t care. Alex must have overheard something Abe said, that’s why he keeps repeating her name.”

  “So he’s cheating on you? What a surprise.”

  “I was going ask Father Kiernan how I could get the marriage annulled.”

  “Annulled?” Ida laughed through her nose. “Oh no, annulment is out of the question. Think of the boys, Irene. Think of your upbringing.”

  “But what am I gonna do, Ma? I can’t live like this.”

  Ida considered telling her daughter, I knew this day would come, I knew you’d come running to me with your pack of troubles, the whole kit and caboodle, I told you this is what you’d get for marrying out of the true faith, and to a Jew, yet. But beneath the streaking tears, this was her daughter after all, her little girl, her only child, looking as frightened as she did during summer thunderstorms, when she would cower against her skirts, and so Ida began in an unaccustomed softer tongue.

  “First of all, Irene, settle down, you’re upsetting the baby. Here, wipe your face.” She handed Alex’s napkin to her. “Now, you listen to me. I’m sure you want to do the most sinful things to him. It’s only natural. And it would serve him right. Men are the way they are, and there’s no changing their swinish nature. Your father, may he rest in peace, was no exception.”

  Irene sniffed. “Daddy?”

  “Yes, your dear Daddy. He had some floozy in Aspinwall. He thought he could hide it from me—they all do—but I knew. A woman always knows. Come here.” She put her arm around Irene’s shoulders for the briefest of moments. “But now listen to me. You have to stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re not the first woman in this situation and you won’t be the last. You need to do what I did.” The words of Father Delaney came rushing back to her. “You must perish murderous thoughts from your mind. You must rise above it. You must be better than he is. And sad to say, of course you can’t leave him. For lots of reasons. First, it’s against the church. And what if you did? You’d be on your own, and who in God’s creation is going to marry a woman with three young boys? You might as well have leprosy, that’s how close single men will come to you.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Think about it, Irene. Let him know who’s boss. See how he likes cold dinners and colder sheets.” She poured tea for her daughter and herself and added a shot of Irish whiskey to each cup. “Here’s to better days, daughter.” Her double chin shook a little as she took a deep swallow.

  *

  The door to number six swung open as soon as he knocked.

  “Look at you, Mr. Abraham Miller. Look at you with those big brown eyes.”

  “Hi, Delia.”

  “What you gonna do, stand in the doorway? Come over here.”

  D
elia’s dark bangs clung to her forehead. She wore her New York City hat and a red silky robe that hung down below her ankles, so that Abe couldn’t tell if she were wearing those dark stockings with the seams up the backs, but he sure hoped so.

  On the far wall of the flat was a glass and mirror breakfront, her mother’s, with a variety of porcelain figurines, also her mother’s, on the shelves. In the center of the room, over a faux oriental carpet, was a round coffee table with a fringed tablecloth and a photograph of Delia’s parents, sitting ramrod straight, three feet apart on a large stuffed sofa. Next to it was another photo, an eight-by-ten of Delia as a little girl in a buckskin dress, sitting on a pinto pony.

  Abe said, “Nice place.”

  Delia imitated his voice. “Nice place? That’s all you got to say to me after all this time?”

  “You look good, Dee.”

  She twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “Damn right I do. So what are you doing all the way over there? Come over here.” She tightened the sash of her robe so that her breasts rounded against the material. “You nervous or something? You look like you got the heebie-jeebies.”

  “No, I’m just…you know.”

  “Relax, Abe, I won’t bite. Unless you want me to.”

  Abe grinned. It was going to be all right. “That’s some nightgown.”

  “You like it?” She spun around. “Criminy Dutch, you men can be so weird sometimes. I thought you’d be all over me by now.” She turned her back to Abe. She took a cigarette from a glass box on the table. Before she could put it to her lips, she watched Abe’s hands slip over her breasts from behind. She pressed her hands over his, squeezing and massaging. She ground her buttocks against the front of his trousers, up and down, then in tight circles, her grip on his hands never relaxing. Abe thrust himself against her, and she moved her hips in rhythm. She pulled his right hand into her mouth and sucked his fingers. “Now, this is more like the Abe I know. You like that, don’t you? Did you miss me?”