North River

by Pete Hamill

  Mr. Nobiletti nodded, his balding head shiny from exertion, his lips clamped upon nails, which he removed one at a time to hammer into the fresh sole of a boot on his steel last.

  “Good morning, Mr. N.”

  The old man nodded.

  “This is my grandson, Carlos.”

  Mr. Nobiletti looked down and smiled, still hammering. Then the final nail was driven. He smiled. He had hard white teeth.

  “Buon giorno, Dottore.”

  “Good morning to you too, Mr. N. Listen, when you have a chance, can you come over? I want to undress the olive tree.”

  The shoemaker looked out, and smiled.

  “T’morrow, hokay?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Back in the street, there was still no automobile traffic, and Delaney felt his blood beginning to move. From his heart, through his legs, making a round-trip back to his heart. He felt young. He could not see the boy’s face, but saw his small hands holding the rim of the basket and his head turning as new things appeared. He could smell the bakery before he saw it. The wonderful bakery of Mr. Ferraro, from Napoli, even older now than Delaney. Delaney remembered walking these streets as an altar boy, heading for the six-thirty mass at Sacred Heart, struggling with the demands of his fast when the odor of fresh bread and rolls filled the dark air and tempted him to sin. On this fresh morning, he turned right and saw the light spilling from the bakery, with Reilly’s newsstand beside it, and he could see Mr. Lanzano’s ice wagon pulled up in front, with nobody on the seat. He was making a delivery to the store. Oil for the boiler. Or ice for the icebox. And almost surely he was buying a fresh roll and a thick coffee at the counter.

  “Stay here, Carlito,” he said, pushing down the kickstand. “I’ll be right back.”

  Mr. Lanzano smiled as he entered, and said buon giorno, and sipped his tiny cup of the darkest coffee on the West Side. Even darker than the coffee of Rose Verga. Delaney returned the greeting in Italian, and the image of Rose scribbled through him. The dark glossy hair. The fine scar. Mr. Ferraro came from the back room, where the ovens were, sweaty and balding, with a towellike sash across his brow. The scent of fresh bread was like a delirious floury perfume, the best aroma in the city. Delaney held up two fingers, and Ferraro smiled and slid two fresh loaves into a bag and handed them over. Delaney paid and went out, wishing both men a lovely day.

  He handed the loaves to Carlito, who laid them across his lap. Then he went next door to the newsstand and took the newspapers off the stand, waved at Reilly in the dark interior so that the delivery boy would be saved a trip. Then he mounted the bicycle and they were off.

  All the way back to the house on Horatio Street, Carlito was silent, hugging the warm bread with one hand, holding on with the other, newspapers stuffed against his back. He was looking at the world that was arriving after the long winter. So was Delaney. Winter was the worst time, for patients, for people trapped in the dirty air of tenements, for coughs and colds and worse problems, and for boys. But they were moving into a better place together. To hell with the Depression, and Hitler, and the troubles in Spain. To hell with Frankie Botts and the man in the gray coat. To hell with Grace. To hell with Molly. He would forget about things he could not cure. It was spring.

  Delaney lifted Carlito from the basket and leaned the bike against the wall in the waiting area. He handed Carlito the fresh bread. But when they went into the kitchen, Rose was there in her flowered bathrobe, leaning with her back to the sink. She was angry.

  “You don’t leave a note!” she said. “You don’t wake me up! I think maybe Carlito is sick and you take him to the hospital. Worse: I think you are kidnapped by some gangster!”

  “We wanted to surprise you, Rose.”

  “Some surprise!”

  He thought: Please don’t be a pain in the ass, Rose. Carlito handed her the bread, looking troubled, and she took the loaves and calmed him by rubbing his head.

  “Thank you, Carlito,” she said. “What a good boy.”

  “Eat, Rosa!” the boy said. “We all eat!”

  The boy smiled, and so did Rose.

  “Eat!” Delaney said. He laid the newspapers on the table. “And later, read.”

  The day moved quickly, with fewer patients in the morning and house calls made easier by the bicycle. He used a chain and lock to secure the bicycle to the fences of the tenements, and noticed the odor of garbage rising from the dented metal cans. Patients were more cheerful. From Reilly’s candy store, he called a friend at Bellevue to check the condition of Mr. Cottrell. The doctor came back after a few minutes. “Critical, but stable. He should live.” He called St. Vincent’s too, to check on some patients and to tell Zimmerman that he would start grand rounds again in a few days and they could have lunch when everything was done. Delaney felt as he did when he was an intern himself: filled with endless energy, ready to help anyone feel better.

  He made it to Tommy Chin’s around four, when it was still light. The wounded girl had healed. The others were clean. Liann looked unhappy, as usual, and Tommy Chin said business was picking up.

  “It must be the weather,” he said. “It fills them with romance.”

  He rode home on the bicycle, through the thickening traffic, wary of trucks. When he turned into Horatio Street he saw Callahan, the FBI agent, talking to an older man in a tweed coat and hat. The man who wore the gray coat to Washington Square. Delaney stopped, lifted the bicycle to the sidewalk, and walked to them.

  “Are you guys looking for the unemployment office?” Delaney said.

  “Hello, Doctor,” Callahan said. He looked uneasy. “You’re home early.”

  “Maybe you’re here for the view?”

  “Come on, Doctor,” Callahan said in an amiable way. “You know why we’re here.” The man in the tweed coat glanced around at the street, which was lively now with kids and unemployed men, with women staring down from open windows in the tenements.

  Callahan squinted and said: “You heard from your daughter?”

  “No. Have you?”

  Callahan sighed, took the other man by the elbow, and walked away.

  He talked awhile in his office with Monique, telling her that he thought Rose should get a raise. She made a face and said, “It’s a little early for that, isn’t it?” Delaney said that Rose put in a lot of hours and the boy loved her and he didn’t want her to walk away for another job that paid more. Monique sighed. “I’d like you to tell her, Monique. Not me.”

  “You just gotta add some rules to the deal,” Monique said. “She’s too goddamn bossy, Jim. She thinks she knows you better than I do, and what’s good for you, and all that. Sometimes it pisses me off.”

  Delaney looked at her in an annoyed way, then pulled a chair beside her desk and sat down. She wouldn’t look at him, her fingers busy with papers.

  “Monique?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Listen to me, Monique.” She looked up at him. “You are very, very important to this house. And to me. I truthfully could not do what I do if you weren’t here. I want you here for as long as I do this work.” He paused. “But goddamn it, the boy has changed things. And Rose has to be here too. For as long as the boy needs her.”

  Monique looked unhappy. “I guess,” she said.

  “I promise I’ll talk to her about the bossy stuff. For now, don’t get in a fight with her.”

  She sulked for a long moment. And then exhaled hard, as if saying it was time to move on.

  “Speaking of the boy, what about his birthday?” she said. “It’s St. Patrick’s Day, right? It’ll be here before you know it.”

  “I know, Monique,” Delaney said, pushing the chair back and then standing.

  “My advice?” Monique said. “Don’t take him to the parade. He’ll think it’s for him, and that could ruin his life.”

  “You’re right, of course. Even if you do sound bossy.”

  She smiled in a thin way. “And don’t get him a dog. Rose’ll have to walk him — or it’ll
be left to me.”

  “Okay, no dog. Any mail?”

  “Nothing important,” she said. “An’ by the way, some guy called three times but wouldn’t leave a name. I told him you couldn’t call back if he didn’t leave a name. But he hung up each time.”

  “Maybe it was Hoover,” he said. “Always on the job.”

  “He sounded more hoodlum than Hoover, you ask me.”

  He peeled the wrappers off two medical journals and signed some checks, and then he could hear Rose and Carlito coming down the stairs.

  After they ate together, and after they walked together down to the North River and Carlito stared a long time at a passing liner, and after they returned in the chilly night air, they went back to the kitchen for tea. Rose had bought some biscotti from the bakery, and music played quietly from the Italian station, and they talked about why there was no such thing as Irish food while there were hundreds of kinds of Italian foods, all delicious. Delaney said that the bad luck of the Irish was the problem.

  “Sicily was conquered by the Arabs, and they knew how to cook,” he said. “But the poor luckless Irish were conquered by the English, and they didn’t even know how to eat. For them, food was fuel, like coal. Pleasure of any kind was a sin.”

  “So how’d they get so many babies?”

  “They could do something about the food,” Delaney said, “but they couldn’t do anything about human beings in bed.”

  Rose laughed. Carlito looked preoccupied. He waited for a break in the talk, and then he went to Delaney and pointed upstairs.

  “I want my book, Ga’paw,” he said.

  “Damn, I forgot,” Delaney said. “Where’d I leave his books, Rose?”

  “Upstairs. I know where.”

  Delaney rinsed the cups and saucers, and Rose put away the cream and the rest of the biscotti, and they went upstairs together.

  Rose found the books on top of the armoire, still in their bag.

  “You read to him,” Rose said. “I’m goin’ to run a bath.”

  Delaney and the boy went into his room and took off their shoes, and he stretched out on the small bed with the boy curled beside him. They could hear the water running in the tub. Rose leaned on the doorframe, arms folded across her breasts. Delaney held up the two books. “Which one?” The boy pointed to The Story of Babar. Delaney opened the book, and the first page showed a gray baby elephant being swung in a hammock by an older elephant. They were surrounded by green jungle. Rose came in and sat at the foot of the bed, while the water ran slowly.

  Delaney read the text, running a finger over the words, and pointing at the things they named: “In the great forest a little elephant was born. His name was Babar. His mother loved him very much. She rocked him to sleep with her trunk while singing softly to him.”

  “Babar,” Carlito said. “He’s an evvafent.” Rose smiled as Delaney turned the page.

  “Babar grew bigger. Soon he played with the other little elephants. He was a very good little elephant. See him digging in the sand with his shell?”

  Delaney pointed at elephants swimming in a pond and elephants playing football and elephants parading, holding other elephants’ tails in their trunks, and elephants snacking on oranges and bananas, with the jungle in the background and pink mountains in the distance. The little elephant named Babar had a seashell in his snout and was carving away at a small pile of sand.

  “Let me see that,” Rose said, grinning, and Delaney turned the book. “Wow! That’s a great spot!”

  Then Delaney went to the next spread. On the left page the little elephant was riding on his mother’s back, while a monkey and a red bird watched from a bush. To the side, behind another bush, a man with a helmet was firing a gun.

  “One day, Babar was riding happily on his mother’s back when a wicked hunter, hidden behind some bushes, shot at them.”

  Delaney glanced at the boy, whose eyes were suddenly wide. He thought he should stop. But he went on.

  “The hunter’s shot killed Babar’s mother! The monkey hid, the birds flew away. And Babar cried.”

  Tears began seeping from Carlito’s eyes.

  “I want Mamá,” he whispered.

  He wasn’t speaking to Delaney. Or to Rose.

  “I want Mamá!”

  Rose stood up abruptly and hurried into the bathroom. She closed the door. The running water stopped. Delaney hugged the boy and laid down the book.

  “Carlito, boy, Carlito, big fella, don’t worry,” he said. “It’s a story, that’s all.”

  “Mamá,” the boy whispered, his voice charged with anguish.

  “Your mama’s not dead, boy. Your mama’s coming back.”

  The boy sobbed in a small way, and Delaney consoled him, using soothing tones, and then decided he should continue the story. If it was, as he had told the boy, a story, then he should finish the story. He opened the book and showed the boy the drawing of Babar running away to safety, and finding his way to a town. “He hardly knew what to make of it because this was the first time he had seen so many houses. So many things were new to him! The broad streets! The automobiles and buses!” To Delaney, the town was Paris. It could have been New York.

  He was near the middle of the story when Rose came out of the bathroom in her robe, to the sound of draining water. She didn’t look at them. She walked heavily to her own room, and Delaney could hear the door click shut.

  He resumed the story, with Babar walking on two legs like a human and wearing a bright green suit, which made Carlito smile. And after a while, Carlito fell asleep. Delaney was still for a long time and then slowly detached himself from the sleeping boy, closed the book, and turned off the light. He slipped the Babar book under the mattress and left the door open a crack as Rose always did. Then he looked at Rose’s door. He knocked, turned the knob, and went in.

  Rose was awake in the dark. He went to her and sat beside her, inhaling the aroma of soap laced with hurt.

  “He didn’t mean anything,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, I know. Come on . . .”

  Her voice was choked. He slid an open hand under her head, and felt the pillow damp across his knuckles.

  “Please don’t cry, Rose,” he said.

  She was silent then for almost a minute. Then she cleared her throat.

  “I gotta leave here,” she said. “This ain’t right. I’m not his mother, and he knows it and you know it. My heart is killing me. I gotta go.”

  He held her tight now, pulling her to him.

  “I won’t let you,” he said.

  ELEVEN

  ROSE DID NOT LEAVE. NOR DID SHE SPEAK TO HIM THE NEXT morning about what had happened. Perhaps nothing had happened, except that he had held her until she fell asleep. A moment of intimacy, one lonesome human consoling another. Nothing big, nothing major. But Delaney knew it was a lot more than nothing.

  At seven-thirty, Mr. Nobiletti arrived carrying shears, and smiling when Rose greeted him in Italian. Both were from Sicily, although the towns were far apart. Both must have dreamed on certain nights about olive groves. They went into the yard together, with Delaney and Carlito after them, and Mr. Nobiletti stared at the wrapped tree.

  “It should be okay,” he said to Delaney.

  “A tough New York tree,” Delaney said.

  The older man began cutting through the cords and tar paper, dropping strips on the earth, which was softening into grassy mud. He said nothing. Carlito lifted each strip as it fell, carried it to the back door, and made a neat pile. Then the last strips fell away and the tree stood before them. To Delaney it was as scrawny as a girl of twelve, each branch curving and seeming to reach for the distant sun.

  Rose clapped her hands and then whispered: “Che bello! Che bello!”

  Tears were brimming in her eyes as she caressed the branches. Here was Sicily in a yard near the North River. She hugged Mr. Nobiletti. She squeezed Carlos. She smiled in an embarrassed, teary way at Delaney. Sicily was here.

  Later in the mor
ning, after Nobiletti had gone off with her punishing boots, Delaney gave her the Babar book to read, so that she would see that it was not about the mother, really, but about having a life, no matter what. It was a story. That’s all. A story for kids. It was also a story about the consolations of cities. She carried the book to her room, but she did not speak about it. Across the morning, in abrupt moments between patients, Delaney remembered the beating of her heart.

  Around the house, Rose moved with purpose, in and out of the yard as if expecting instant life from the olive tree, showering the boy with affection. She thanked Delaney for the raise and said, with deadpan irony, that she was thinking of investing in the stock market. She showed the boy how the sun was falling on the tree and the other growing things in the yard, and how soon they would be full of life. “You’ll see,” she told him. “Life is green.”

  Three days later, she tried on her widened shoes and wore them in the house for a few hours at a time, always with white cotton socks. “Black socks are for cops,” she said. She listened to the Italian radio station, and hummed arias to herself. If Rose had been frightened that things would fall apart, the moment seemed to have passed.

  In the warming evenings, they began to take walks after an early dinner. They went down to the North River piers, and Delaney sometimes thought about the many evenings when he had grieved here for Molly. One night in the second week after his return from the war, he told her: “I’ll never go away again, Molly. I promise you that.” She looked at him with such angry suspicion in her eyes that it struck him as permanent hostility. But as months slipped into years, Delaney kept his word. He did not go away again, not even for a night. But their lives were not the same. To be sure, there was surface civility. They would talk in a cool way about Grace, and her schooling, and her affection for painters and for the game of baseball, and Molly kept reminding Delaney that he was spoiling the girl. He would mumble something about lost time and shrug, and Molly would seethe. They sometimes discussed politics. They talked about what might be coming to the world after the stock market collapsed in October 1929. But Delaney often felt as if he could be talking to a neighbor. Her anger was always there beneath the civility. It wasn’t simply about the war. It was about him, about his being a doctor, about his obligation to help others, about many things. He taught himself to live with it, telling himself that Molly, after all, was Irish. Everything could be forgotten, except the grudge. Their bed became a place almost exclusively devoted to sleeping. Molly would turn her back to him, sending a familiar signal that another day was over. He would sometimes long for flesh and intimacy. For hair and teeth and wetness. Or a simple night of dancing. Until she finally turned her back on him for the final time and walked to the river.