North River

by Pete Hamill

  But he did not, of course, mention any of this to Rose. On their walks, the boy was between them, a link, a bond, a kind of gift. And Delaney made no moves that could be seen by Rose, or by strangers, as expressions of intimacy. The boy was all. He loved to see a liner moving at dusk on the river, with the sun vanishing into New Jersey. He loved seeing a train grind slowly south on the High Line.

  Then one evening as the sun began to fade, they went to Jane Street to show the boy the firehouse. The doors had been closed through the hard winter days, but now they were open, and the engine was gleaming and redder than the vanishing sun. Two mustached firemen were smoking cigarettes and nodded to Delaney, right out of the days when the fire companies supplied the infantry to Tammany Hall. Then suddenly bells began to ring loudly, metallically, and the cigarettes were flipped into the street and other men were thumping down stairs and sliding down the fire pole, pulling on rubbery raincoats and boots and reaching for axes stacked against the wall. The boy backed away from the fierceness of the sight, and then the lights of the engine came on, and a siren screamed, and the engine pulled out, making a slow turn toward the city, with men hanging off the sides, and then, all power and controlled passion, it roared away.

  The boy was frozen in astonishment. Rose lifted him and hurried him to the middle of the street so he could watch the engine on its way to work.

  “Fire engine,” she said. “That’s a fire engine, ragazzo.”

  The boy’s jaw was slack with awe. And Delaney knew what he must do in the next few days.

  St. Patrick’s Day fell on Saturday, and in the morning they stood three feet apart in the areaway watching the neighborhood empty. The boy peered through the grillwork of the fence while Irish music came from everywhere, out of open tenement windows, from the old streets of the Five Points, from Tin Pan Alley, from distant Kerry and Antrim and Mayo. They watched the entire student body of Sacred Heart, garbed in maroon uniforms, march east to the subway. They saw men in green ties, long coats, and a few vaudeville green derbies, coming from the saloons beyond the High Line, and clusters of women following the men. Some wore green buttons that said ENGLAND, OUT OF IRELAND. Most of the men nodded to Delaney as they passed. They were all going uptown to the parade.

  “They must wonder why you’re not going to the parade, Dottore.”

  “They know I’ve got patients,” he said.

  Rose sat on the second step of the stoop, and Carlito climbed up behind her, to see better.

  “Some of these guys,” Rose said, “they’re gonna need you tonight. After they beat the hell out of each other.”

  Delaney laughed. “Let’s hope whatever they do, they do it uptown.”

  He had taken part in many of these parades before the war, starting in the ranks of Sacred Heart, and later marching with his father, and he hated them and loved them too. Above all, he loved the defiant pride of the marchers. When he was twelve he asked Big Jim why the parade was on Fifth Avenue, where all the rich lived and the only Irish were doormen and maids. And his father said, Big fella, it’s simple: to show those bastards that they got the money but we got the votes. Delaney loved that part, the Tammany tale, and the sense among all of them that they too owned a piece of New York, they had purchased it with sweat and will, they were New Yorkers forever. He hated other things, starting with the clergy, plump and sleek, and how they insisted that the parade was a Catholic event, not just an Irish event. That meant they had no room for Jonathan Swift or Wolfe Tone, for Oscar Wilde or William Butler Yeats. He hated the drunkenness too, men embracing the stereotype and careening around the Irish joints on Third Avenue after they had marched. Hated above all what would happen to them in the night, or to their wives. He had treated too many of them. He knew all the reasons: the way the British refused to give them power of any kind, except to get drunk and assault their women. Drunks were no threat to power. Knew the reasons, but hated seeing their leftovers on the streets of New York. Still, in other ways, the Irish tale was a noble one, all about people who kept getting knocked down and kept getting up. He would tell that tale to Carlito too. Eventually.

  “I went to the parade, five, six years ago,” Rose said. “Lots of guys throwing up on their shoes.”

  Delaney said: “Were they at least nice to you?”

  “Falling all over me,” she said, and grinned, and turned her attention to the last stragglers heading east, three old women of the type who used to be called shawlies, widows who stayed in church for hours each day. They wore shawls now too, and long dresses and warm coats.

  Rose said: “I should walk wit’ these women. Look at them feet.”

  They indeed had huge feet. Larger, by far, than Rose’s, but from similar histories. They had worked the stony fields of Connemara or Donegal, before embarking forever for New York. He knew one of them. The one in the center, with blue eyes like ice water. Dunn. Bridey Dunn. He remembered her fury when he told her that her son had polio and there was nothing to be done. There was no cure. The boy would live all of his life with a maimed leg. Bridey stopped and gazed from Delaney to Rose.

  “So here you are with your whore,” Bridey said. The word was pronounced “who-uh.” The New York style. Rose tensed, as if preparing for combat.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Dunn. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.”

  “Bad cess to you and your good wishes, Dr. Delaney.”

  The two other shawlies were at her elbows, trying to move her along, but Mrs. Dunn shook them off.

  “You’re a bloody disgrace,” she said. “Living in sin with this trollop.”

  “Hey, you,” Rose said, with heat in her voice. “Shut up and go to the parade.”

  Delaney stepped in front of Rose, his back to Mrs. Dunn. “Ignore this fool,” he said. “I’ll explain later.” But Rose stepped to the side and hissed at Mrs. Dunn. “Go on, get the hell outta here!”

  “I’ll sic the coppers on the pair of yiz. I’ll get the priest over here! Yiz are a disgrace to all of us!”

  “Bah fongool!” Rose shouted. And then her friends led Mrs. Dunn away to the east, snarling and sputtering all the way. Carlito ran to Rose and embraced her hips.

  Delaney explained to Rose about Mrs. Dunn’s son, who probably picked up polio swimming in the North River and was now almost twenty, with a permanently maimed leg. He explained how Mrs. Dunn was like many other people: she had to blame someone for misfortune, and the doctor was the easiest target. In cases of incurable disease, a doctor was only a messenger, but they chose to blame the messenger.

  “But she was after me too,” Rose said. “Not just you. But me! And she doesn’t even know me!”

  “She knows you a little better now.”

  Rose looked away, with some shame in her face.

  “I’m sorry I used bad words,” she said.

  “I don’t blame you,” Delaney said. “But it wasn’t you she wanted to hurt, it was me.”

  “You feel hurt?”

  “A little,” he said. “I should have defended you better.”

  “Hey, I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you can,” he said, remembering the affectionate way that Knocko Carmody called her a hoodlum. To him the word was a compliment.

  “I just don’t like it when there’s some secret going on and I don’t know what it is.” She was silent for a beat. “Know what I mean?”

  Then he told her about the single phone call with the breathing sound but no voice. He told her about seeing the bartender from Club 65 on the Sunday walk, and about Callahan and his friend in the tweed coat.

  “Thanks for telling me,” she said. “I gotta watch even better now.”

  And then went upstairs to work.

  At one-thirty that afternoon, after dealing with a scattered lot of Saturday-morning patients, Delaney sat down at the kitchen table. There would be no house calls on this day of celebration. It was as if the entire neighborhood had gone up to Fifth Avenue to sing and march. In the warmth of the kitchen, he felt almost dizz
y from the aroma of olive oil, basil, garlic, and simmering beef. Osito was on the chair to Delaney’s left, Carlito to his right. As always, Italian music was playing very low. Then Rose turned from the stove, grinning, to present the meal.

  “Okay, something special, somethin’ new!”

  “What is, Rosa?” the boy said.

  “Braciol’,” she answered. “With pasta in oil!”

  She laid plates in front of Delaney and Carlito and then one for herself. Carlito stared in a suspicious way at the mysterious new food. A rolled tube of beef, covered with dark red sauce.

  “Watch,” she said to the boy, and reached over to cut his rolled beef in pieces.

  “You see? Beef, with cheese inside, and sauce!”

  He stared at the braciole, not moving. Delaney took a piece and started chewing.

  “This is great,” he said. Carlito lifted a piece with his left hand and took a tentative bite. His face was dubious and then subtly relaxed. He began to chew. Rose looked relieved.

  “This great!” the boy said.

  The boy lifted another piece on his fork. Now he was eating, not merely chewing, and began splashing sauce to his left and right, spearing pasta with his fork, making sounds but no words. Mmmm, uh. Mmm, mmm, mmm. Rose winked at Delaney, who answered with sounds too.

  “Mmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm, uh!”

  The boy shared another piece of braciole with Delaney, and chewed away on the pasta, and then his plate was empty and he sat back and belched.

  “Hey, don’t do that, boy! That’s bad manners. They think you a mameluke!”

  “A what?” Delaney said.

  “A mook! It’s like some kind of Arab. You know, they eat, they like it, they make a sound like —” She groped for the word, gesturing at her throat with a little wave of the hand. “Uh —”

  “A belch,” Delaney said. “Or a burp.”

  “Burp!” the boy said.

  Rose got up, and so did Delaney, and they laid the plates on the side of the sink. Rose took four smaller plates and placed them on the table. One was for the bear. Then she smiled and said to the boy: “I gotta go burp.”

  She went out to the hall, closing the door behind her.

  “You liked the braciol’, didn’t you?” Delaney said.

  The boy shook his head up and down, with much energy: “Good! Very good. Ba-zhoal . . . very, very good, Gran’pa.”

  Then the door opened and Rose was there with a vanilla cake on a platter and three green candles burning brightly and a huge grin on her face. She began to sing.

  “Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you —”

  Delaney was up now and into the song:

  “Happy birthday, Carlito — Happy birthday to yoooooooou!”

  Rose placed the cake on the table and took a large flat knife from a drawer, while Delaney hugged the boy. The boy looked as if some memory was forcing its way into his mind, a memory of another birthday in another country. Delaney knew that at three, the events of turning two could be a long time ago. A third of a lifetime.

  “It’s your birthday, boy! You, today” — she touched his chest —“you are three!”

  She held up three fingers, then pointed at the cake and the three burning candles and said: “Now, you blow them out!” She turned her head and started blowing. “Just blow out the candles!”

  The boy didn’t move. Delaney now demonstrated the minor art of blowing.

  “Blow them out, big fella,” he said. “You’re three years old!”

  Carlito stood up on the chair and braced himself with his hands on the table and looked at the candles and took a deep breath and started to blow. One candle went out, and then he pounced on the other two, blowing wetly and hard, and then all three were out, with little tendrils of smoke rising from the wicks. Rose hugged him hard and he grinned widely. “Three,” the boy said, and Rose lifted the candles out of the cake and laid them carefully on the table and cut a slice for each of them, including Osito, the bear. She placed two cups of black Italian coffee on the table and filled a small glass of milk for Carlito. The boy loved the cake and then stole Osito’s portion, and smeared his cheeks with cream, and licked his fingers. He got up and pushed a small lump of cake into the bear’s mouth, and then Rose was standing again.

  “I gotta burp another time,” she said. In ten seconds she was back with two brightly wrapped packages. One was very bulky, and she placed it on the floor. The other was a book. That was from her to Carlito, and Delaney didn’t know what it was.

  “This is for you, Carlito, for your birthday . . .”

  He took it and felt its shape.

  “It’s a book!” he said.

  “Yeah,” Rose said, “but what book?”

  “Take the paper off, Carlito,” Delaney said.

  The boy began to remove the paper, tentatively, cautiously, and then more quickly. He burst into a squeal.

  “Babar!”

  He held the book and stared at the cover. The Travels of Babar. He started turning the pages quickly. Delaney looked at Rose, who was smiling while tears welled in her eyes. God, she is tough, he thought. Lovely and tough. And he hoped the boy would not call for his mother.

  “Open the other one, ragazzo,” she said in a softer voice.

  The boy was standing on the floor now. He put the book on Osito’s chair and turned to the much bulkier package and began to attack it. The paper seemed to fly away. And there it was, red and gleaming and beautiful: a fire engine.

  “Fi’ engine, Gran’pa, it’s a fi’ engine!”

  Rose whooped and clapped her hands. The boy jumped up and down. The fire engine was low and strong with a seat for a driver to sit upon, so that he could propel himself with his legs, and a wheel for steering. Delaney showed the boy how to slide onto the seat and how to use his legs, and then Carlito was propelling himself all around the kitchen, as Rose jumped out of his way in mock horror and Delaney stood up on a chair, feeling young, exuberant, full of delight and something like joy.

  “Happy birthday, Carlito, happy birthday to yoooouuuuuuu.”

  After an hour, the boy started fading. He pedaled more slowly. He sagged in his seat, leaning on the steering wheel. His eyes, which had been so bright with excitement, began to close. The telephone rang in the office. Delaney went to answer it, gesturing upstairs. Rose nodded agreement and lifted the boy. Delaney paused as he picked up the black telephone receiver, wondering if this would be another heavy breather. It was Zimmerman.

  “Your neighbor?” Zimmerman said. “I just heard from one of the guys at Bellevue. And that Mr. Cottrell, he’ll be discharged tomorrow.”

  “Great!”

  “He a friend of yours?”

  “No, but I’m glad he’ll live. How’s it going there, Jake, on this day of Irish days?”

  “It’s a little like what the Somme must’ve been. The casualties are rolling in.”

  “Stay alert,” Delaney said, “and make sure there’s plenty of iodine for the wounded.”

  He put the fire truck in the shed leading to the yard and straightened out the dish towels and chairs and then went to the top floor. He could hear water running. He could hear Rose speaking softly, telling the boy he shouldn’t worry: the fire truck would be there later. Delaney turned and went down the stairs. He could hear Rose humming an aria.

  In the office, he wrote a note to Grace, describing the boy’s birthday and how they had avoided the parade, afraid of spoiling him, and how he was sure the boy now wanted to grow up to be a fireman. He enclosed fifty dollars and sealed and addressed the envelope to Leonora Córdoba and slipped it under the blotter. Then he went to his bedroom. He undressed and donned his robe and stretched out above the covers in the gray light. From a long way off, he could hear a raw tenor singing about the mountains of Mourne, his voice full of longing and melancholy along the early evening streets. What was his name? The writer of the song? French. Of course. Percy French. Before the war, before Vienna, he and Molly had gone to see the famous
Mr. French at a recital in Steinway Hall. Delaney thought the man’s songs would make Molly smile. Instead they provoked her anger. He never took her to another Irish evening or even to the parade. On this day, the Irish laughter and the Irish brawling and the rowdy Irish songs were all uptown. Down here in the West Village, there was only this lone tenor. Singing Percy French. It was as if the unseen singer was standing on the High Line flinging the words down the North River to the harbor and then through the Narrows and across the Atlantic to some Irish village that was forever lost.

  Delaney slipped under the covers, seeking warmth, and was awake a long time. He thought about Grace, off in Barcelona, and realized that his anger at her had ebbed. In his mind now, when he faced his daughter, he had stopped shouting. And he was thinking in a cooler way about Molly. Soon he must open her locked room and put her things in cartons and store them in the basement, on new shelves, high and dry. He would wrap her framed photographs too, the silvery faces of her heroes, separating them with the musical scores, and seal them with tape. The piano would stay. Perhaps when the boy gives up his fire engine he will play piano. Here, or somewhere else. But Delaney now felt that Grace was almost surely right about her mother. That top-floor room contained Molly’s ghost. It reeked with death. He must open the door, and leave it open, and give it over to life.