North River

by Pete Hamill

She looked serious now. “What’s the matter with her?”

  He explained about shingles and its roots in chicken pox and how it can be triggered by worry. Her brow furrowed.

  “Can we give it to Carlito?” she said.

  “Probably not,” he said. “But we’d better wash again when we get home.”

  She nodded and went into the cheese store, and Delaney stood there watching the ceaseless movement of the street. Now he spotted two men from Club 65, sitting in a parked car, watching him. They had pulled guard duty on Grand Street. Frankie Botts said there were other people involved. But he wouldn’t have to consult with these neckless gunsels. They were just enlisted men from the infantry of the Mob. Then he was sure that Frankie Botts did not need to consult with anybody else. He wanted Delaney to care for his mother, to cure her, and he would not lift the threat until the task was done. But at least for now, they were safe. He felt lighter, and watched the schoolkids running around the pushcarts.

  After a while, Rose stepped out of the store with a smile on her face and a brown paper bag in her hand. Delaney reached for the bag, and she pulled it away from him.

  “Hey, you got a bad arm. Just carry your doctor bag. This doesn’t weigh much, so don’t even try.”

  She was issuing orders, and her tone pleased him. It meant that she was more comfortable with him now, that she believed he would see the joke in what she was saying, that she wasn’t just a person who worked for him. She had made sergeant.

  “Whatever you say, Rose.”

  They moved west through the crowds, while Puccini’s music played from several open windows. He glanced at her, and she seemed thoughtful.

  “Maybe I could be a nurse.”

  Delaney said: “You already are.”

  In the following weeks, they lived by the certainties of routine. The ache in his arm went away. The bad dreams ended. In the mornings, he took Carlito on the bicycle to buy bread and newspapers. On days of spring rain, he covered him with a poncho that Rose had found on Fourteenth Street. He took Rose with him to visit Frankie’s mother, and the blisters healed, but the dark stains remained on her itching skin. He showed Rose how to take the woman’s pulse and temperature, and back in the office he explained how to enter the information on the woman’s record sheet. Monique was not happy about any of this.

  “I got two things to tell you,” she said one afternoon. “One, I’m not a babysitter. I can’t handle all this and the boy too. He’s adorable, but I just can’t do it.” She took a deep breath, exhaled. “And Rose? She’s not a nurse. She does the records, she goes on a house call, what the hell is that?”

  “It’s just for one patient, Monique.”

  “I know, but it’s the way she does it. Going in the file cabinet, taking the patient record sheet, writing stuff that isn’t spelled right. I just don’t like it.”

  “Maybe you could do it together.”

  “No, I’m the nurse.”

  Delaney sighed.

  “Give me a few more weeks.”

  “I’m serious, Jim. I just might quit.”

  He looked at her hard. “Don’t do that, Monique. Don’t even say it. For God’s sake. The patient speaks Sicilian, and I need Rose there. The way I need you here. Capisce?”

  She looked away.

  “I hope you capisce where you’re going with all this,” she said. He did not answer, and went into his office.

  Days passed. He noticed that Rose’s diction while speaking English was becoming crisper, and she told him to correct her when she said the words wrong, the way he corrected Carlito. Most mornings she took the boy grocery shopping, while Delaney handled patients and while Bessie cleaned, and in the afternoons he pedaled hard from one house call to another. Rose went with him to see Mrs. Botticelli. He did not bring Rose with him to examine the Chinese women on Mott Street.

  More and more people were on the streets now, exulting in the good weather, and he waved to Mr. Lanzano, the oil and ice man, and Fierro, the sign painter, and Mr. Nobiletti, the shoemaker. He explained to Danny Shapiro that a medical truce was under way and there was no need for cops on the block. He had a cup of coffee with Knocko Carmody and explained the truce. Knocko was pleased and promised him two ducats for opening day at the Polo Grounds. “Make it the first Sunday after opening day,” Delaney said. “You got it,” Knocko said. One morning Delaney stopped at a shipping company on Fourteenth Street and ordered twelve book cartons and some tape and three lithographic crayons, and later told Monique that when the goods arrived, she should have them stacked in Molly’s room. He lunched with Jake Zimmerman. He examined the window of Billy McNiff’s toy store. He went on grand rounds at St. Vincent’s. He read the newspapers. There was a story deep inside the Times about growing tension in Spain, and mergers of the left-wing parties, and talk of the coming struggle. But there was no real news, and no letter from Grace. He wondered if the FBI had intercepted all of them.

  Rose took over the records of Carlito, weighing him, measuring him, exclaiming one evening to Delaney that his legs were already harder from pedaling the fire engine and maybe even longer. This made Delaney laugh. Rose said: “I’m not kiddin’ around! Take a look!” Looking at the boy’s legs, he thought: Maybe she’s right. She took the boy’s temperature every morning. She examined him carefully after each evening’s bath, searching for signs of chicken pox, saying, “I don’t want this kid getting shingles when he’s sixty!” She never did say where she went on Sundays.

  One Saturday evening, Rose said: “You want to come with me tomorrow?”

  “Where?” Delaney said.

  “Where I go on Sunday morning,” she said. “You asked me about it.”

  “Sure,” he said. “We’ll go together. The three of us.”

  The next morning they walked west and then north. The boy was excited, pointing out new churches and new stores and another firehouse. Then they turned toward the North River. Ahead a crowd of men waited before a church called St. Brendan’s. Rose said: “Hey, Jimmy, how are you?”

  A small dirty man smiled at her. “Just great, Rose,” he said. “Just great, now that you’re here.”

  He had hollow colorless eyes, white hair growing in tufts from his ears, a heavy rat-colored coat. He smelled like shit. Delaney edged away from him, lifting the boy, thinking: I should have brought surgical masks. If I’d known we were coming here. Rose pushed forward, past the shit-smelling man, took the boy from Delaney, and led the way to a side entrance. The men here all knew her name too. Mornin’, Rose . . . God bless ya, Rose . . . Hey, Rose, get that sauce goin’, Rose. She waved to them and kept moving, burying the boy’s face against her shoulder.

  The path to the old lower church was down three steps into a gloomy alley. In the old days, the overflow crowds heard mass down here, but times had changed, for the worse. Here and everywhere. The downstairs space was no longer a church. There were more than fifty long tables, each occupied by men having Sunday breakfast. At the front of the low-ceilinged lower church, there was a kitchen where the altar once stood. A few men were on line with metal trays, stragglers scooping up watery scrambled eggs and mashed potatoes and coffee. A growling mesh of talk provided the basic sound, punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter and the clatter of metal trays. They were all men. Some ignored breakfast. They were waiting for lunch. Waiting for Rose.

  “I work here Sunday mornings,” Rose said, “getting lunch ready for these guys.” She returned the boy to Delaney, told them to wait, and walked to the side of the steam tables into a back room. The way altar boys once walked to the sacristy. Carlito’s eyes were full of questions, but he said nothing. Rising off the men was an odor of dried sweat, dirty clothes, unwashed feet, and despair.

  Rose reappeared behind the counter with a pale green cotton uniform over her street clothes and a dark green apron looped around her neck. She had tied a handkerchief across her mouth and was nodding, gesturing, ladling out the last remnants of breakfast to newcomers. They came in more slowly
now, a few volunteers waiting until other men left spaces at the tables before admitting new ones. Breakfast was almost over. Rose turned to the kitchen and began pouring water into a huge pot for soup. The early-afternoon meal was next, and she was clearly the boss. She began chopping vegetables and slicing chicken and gesturing with her hands to some of the others. A young black man helped her lay all the pieces on platters, covering them with dish towels against the flies. Then she started preparing the sauce. The black man opened can after can of tomato sauce, sliding them to her along a counter, and Rose emptied each into a huge pot. Then she added freshly diced tomatoes. Her hands moved as quickly as they did in the kitchen on Horatio Street. She never once looked at Delaney and the boy.

  The boy kept pointing at Rose and saying her name and smiling. But Delaney thought: I must get him away from here. The place is a germ farm. Everything might be in the air. From tuberculosis on down. He waved at Rose and caught her attention and gestured toward the exit and then at the boy. She stopped what she was doing and came around from behind the counter and down the aisle. She lowered the handkerchief, smiling broadly.

  “So you see what I do on Sundays,” she said.

  “I do,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I make the sauce, and they have a big meal of ziti and chicken at two o’clock. When I’m already gone. It’s the best they get all week. They come from all over.”

  “This is great work, Rose.”

  He meant it.

  “Hey,” she said. “See you later.”

  She turned, lifted her handkerchief to her nose, and hurried back to the kitchen. Delaney took the boy’s hand and they went out into the hard city, heading for the park. When they reached the corner, the sun was shining. Delaney inhaled deeply, breathing in the morning air. Breathing the spring.

  That night she came home looking drained, but now Delaney understood. Her Sundays were for the casualties of peace. For all those sad, fucked-up, beaten-up, or beaten-down men who had survived the Great War, who had made marriages and fathered children and roared in speakeasies and danced until dawn and then blew it all. She didn’t judge them. She tried to comfort them, to put a little good sauce into their lives, at least once a week. Delaney started to boil water for coffee, and when she tried to move him away from the stove, he stood in front of her, his hands up, his palms out. Carlito came to Delaney’s side, grinned, and put up his hands too.

  “You’ve had a long day, Rose. Now it’s our turn.”

  “Come on, no jokes, please.”

  He opened the refrigerator and lifted out the flat box from Angela’s and placed it on the table. The boy blurted: “For you, Rosa!” She blushed, turned away, squeezed the boy’s right hand. Delaney opened the box to the tightly wrapped sandwiches, the container of soup, the bread, the cannoli.

  “Just sit,” Delaney said. “We know where the oil is, and the butter, and the pot to heat up the soup. Just sit.”

  “Sit, Rosa,” said the boy, patting the seat of her chair. She eased into the chair, hugging the boy, looking at Delaney.

  While they ate, she explained how St. Brendan’s worked, using leftover food from grocery chains and restaurants (including Angela’s), and how the priests raised money with bingo games and raffles, and how it was never enough. Delaney wished he had taken Frankie’s money and given it to Rose for the Sunday kitchen. She finished her half sandwich and sipped her coffee. The boy slipped off the chair, mounted the fire engine, and banged it into the door to the yard. Rose laughed out loud.

  “Hey! Ragazzo! You gonna hurt yourself!”

  He laughed. “No, Rosa. No.”

  Rose turned to Delaney, arms folded on the tabletop.

  “I guess you want to know where I go after we feed the men,” she said.

  “I wonder sometimes, sure,” Delaney said, thinking: She reads minds too.

  “It’s pretty simple,” she said, looking at him in a new way, as if suspecting he might be jealous. She smiled sweetly. “I don’t have a boyfriend, if that’s what you think.”

  “You have the right.”

  “I know better.”

  “So?”

  “I go to the movies,” she said.

  “That’s it?” Delaney said, feeling something like relief. He smiled. “You go to the movies?”

  “Every Sunday,” she said. “They are so — what’s the word? — wonderful.”

  She said the word with a hair of pride in her voice for saying it exactly.

  “What’s your favorite?”

  “Last week I saw Flying Down to Rio. It’s got that actress Dolores Del Rio, who’s the most beautiful girl in the world. Dark hair, a long neck, long legs, a face, ooof. And she dances with that skinny guy, he can’t do nothing wrong. Every step he’s perfect, and relaxed, and like one hundred percent American. That Fred Astaire. I wanted to stay and see it twice, but then I’d have to sit through a gangster movie. I hate gangster movies.” A pause. “You know why.” Another pause. “I hate gangsters.”

  “And today? What did you see?”

  “The truth?” She chuckled. “I like to go over the East Side, a place called the Palestine, that everybody there calls the Itch, and I see King Kong again. The fifth time since it come out last year.” Now she was smiling broadly. “It’s just so wonderful. The greatest love story ever!” Her face darkened slightly. “That poor monkey, he falls in love with Fay Wray and what happens? He dies! Because he loves her! I cry every time.”

  “Imagine if he met Dolores Del Rio.”

  She laughed out loud. “And tried to dance like Fred Astaire.”

  She leaned against Delaney, and he put his good hand on her shoulder and pulled her closer.

  On the following Sunday morning, the city was drowning under a heavy spring rain. In his office, Delaney opened the safe and took a hundred-dollar bill out of Eddie Corso’s envelope. He addressed a new envelope, to St. Brendan’s, slipped in the bill, sealed the envelope, and gave it to Rose.

  “A contribution to your Sunday work,” he said. “Don’t tell them where it came from. They might ask if I’m in a state of grace.”

  She looked at him in a confused, dubious way.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “But I want to.”

  Then he handed her a manila envelope.

  “There are face masks in here,” he said. “The kind we use at the hospital. They tie at the back of your head. Wear one. You never know what’s floating around in the air of St. Brendan’s beautiful restaurant.” He smiled. “And if you get a cold or something, you won’t pass it to the food.” A beat. “Or Carlito.”

  She took the pale blue masks from the envelope and looked at them.

  “They might think I’m some kind of a bank robber. Lady Dillinger feeds the poor!”

  “Rose, I doubt that very much.”

  She shrugged, slipped the envelopes into her pocketbook, donned her own poncho and winter boots, and went out to feed the poor. For a while, Delaney and the boy watched the rain pelting the backyard, where flowers were bending under the assault. The thirsty limbs of the olive tree reached for the sky. Then he turned to the boy.

  “Come on, big fella,” Delaney said. “We have work to do.”

  They climbed together to the top floor, and Delaney took out his keys and opened the door to Molly’s room. He switched on some lamps and raised the window shades. The boy gazed around.

  “That’s a piano!” he said, as if suddenly retrieving the word in Spanish.

  “You can play if you like,” Delaney said, and raised the top. He plunked one key. There was no echo of the past. “You see,” he said, “each key has a different sound.” He plinked another key, and another. Then he lifted the boy onto the stool. “Play, Carlito. Make music.”

  He turned to the flattened boxes leaning against the bookcase, and to the roll of tape and pair of scissors. A stack of old newspapers was lying on the floor. Thank you, Monique. He unfolded one box. The b
oy plinked a key, then another, each one tentative. Delaney taped the bottom of the box, and placed it on the floor, and started to stack Molly’s scores. Schoenberg. Mahler. Bach. He remembered how Molly would come home from the Steinway store on Union Square with her face flushed and happy and a new score in her hand, and how she would go directly to this room. Here, she vanished into the music, forgetting the world, the house, Grace, me. Some passages were repeated over and over again, and he could hear the Ringstrasse in some of them, that year before the war. Now the boy was pounding the keys with two hands, a prodigy of atonality and dissonance, or just a kid making noise, and Delaney thought: Molly would have winced over this, and loved it too.

  By the time Delaney was on the second box, Carlito came off the stool, bored with playing at the piano, and stood beside Delaney. He asked the boy to put a finger on the tape while he cut it with the scissors. He flipped the box to its taped bottom, and Carlito began to bring books from a lower shelf. Some belonged to Grace when she was not yet ten years old.

  “Let’s keep these,” Delaney said. “Make a pile right there.”

  “Okay, Gran’pa,” the boy said, and sat on the rug, looking at the books, turning the pages, seeing visions of Oz and Sherwood Forest. Delaney remembered buying the Oz book on Fourth Avenue, just before leaving for the war. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. By L. Frank Baum. The fourth edition. Molly said in one letter that she was reading it to Grace, who loved the illustrations, but never said that she had finished it. He handed Oz to the boy and told him to hold on to it. Robin Hood could wait. He put a Matisse book aside for himself, with tipped-in illustrations in splashy color. He filled two more boxes, sealed and marked them, and then Carlito looked up. He was looking at an illustration from Oz.

  “Gran’pa, what is this?”

  “That’s the Tin Man,” he said. “And that’s the Cowardly Lion. They’re going to the Emerald City. Later I’ll read it to you.”

  “Read it now!” the boy said. “Come on, Gran’pa.”

  “In about an hour, Carlito. We just have to finish the job.” Understanding that the boy didn’t know an hour from a month. “We’ll work fast, okay?”