North River

by Pete Hamill

  — it’s too mysterious.

  You work, you save, you worry so —

  Now the dancers were louder.

  But you can’t take your dough

  When you go, go, go!

  They all knew the next verse, even Delaney, and all of Roseland was singing it, except Rose. She didn’t know the words.

  So keep repeating it’s the berries,

  The strongest oak must fall,

  The sweet things in life

  To you were just loaned,

  So how can you lose

  What you’ve never owned?

  Life is just a bowl of cherries

  So LIVE and LAUGH at it all . . .

  They roared the final lines, living tough and laughing at the whole goddamned world.

  “Who is this Wop?” Rose said.

  “I doubt he’s without papers. The voice is pure New York.”

  “His mother should be ashamed. That kid needs to eat!”

  The young singer began a version of “Melancholy Baby,” somehow making the words romantic without being sentimental. The voice was urban, pure, new. Not Crosby. Not Russ Columbo. Definitely not Jolson. Delaney was sure his father was a fireman or worked three days a week in a factory. And thought: The strongest oak must fall. He pushed his face into Rose’s hair, inhaling the aroma of soap and oil. One ballad led to another for more than fifteen minutes. Then the singer said into the microphone: “Ladies and gentlemen, the national anthem.”

  Without missing a beat, he began to sing, while the band supported him with a kind of Times Square dirge.

  They used to tell me I was building a dream,

  And so I followed the mob.

  When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear,

  I was always right there on the job.

  Some of the older men, the men Delaney’s age, stopped dancing. They knew this song too. They knew every word because in a big way, it was about them.

  They used to tell me I was building a dream,

  With peace and glory ahead,

  Why should I be standing in line —

  Just waiting for a piece of bread?

  The singer was crooning the song, making it into a kind of blues, and more and more people stopped dancing and started singing.

  Once I built a railroad, I made it run,

  Made it race against time.

  Once I built a railroad, now it’s done —

  Brother, can you spare a dime?

  Delaney and Rose were not dancing now either, and as they looked around and the verses continued he could see the anger in the men and some of the women. Many men punched out each word with a clenched fist. Some of them surely had been shot at. Some of them surely had been hit. Delaney thought: This singer must have been four when the war ended. Same as Grace. And yet he is making it his song too.

  Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell

  Full of that Yankee Doodle dee dum,

  Half a million boots went slogging through Hell —

  And I was the kid with the drum —

  The drummer added a rim shot and someone in the reed section yelled Hey! Then the singer lowered his voice, almost speaking the final lines of the anthem.

  Say, don’t you remember?

  They called me Al.

  It was “Al” all of the time.

  Why don’t you remember,

  I’m your pal?

  They all roared the final line, Delaney among them.

  Say Buddy, can you spare a dime?

  Then the young singer was gone, and Rose leaned into Delaney and held him tight, one hand pressed into the back of his neck. The band began to play “Stardust” in the packed intimacy of Roseland. He took her hand.

  SEVENTEEN

  THE PIER WAS A LONG HIGH UGLY BARN MADE OF CORRUGATED iron and splintery timbers, rusting with time and the Depression. He walked its length, his footsteps echoing in the dim light, and remembered the piers of Europe before the war, with their crowded bars and restaurants, their glad sense of imminent arrival, and the din and bustle of the New York piers, loud with the moneyed celebrations of departure. How did Rose get here? Where did she make landfall in this great strange scary city, with nothing but guts to get her through? A few couples passed along the pier, pausing to look out at the river through the open doors, joined in solitude. The slip was still empty, awaiting the arrival of the Andalusia, but Delaney could see the gulls watching from the next pier. Orange peels were floating in the water. Small waves slapped against timber. An unseen whistler was offering the melody of a song, off in the rusting silence. “It Had to Be You.” And lyrics rose in Delaney.

  I wandered around

  And finally found

  Somebody who . . .

  He walked back to the stevedores’ office, where Knocko had promised a chair. One of the stevedores stood up, smiling. There were two others waiting to go to work, and a phone on a scarred table.

  “Have some coffee, Doc,” he said. “And, oh, Knocko called. The Andalusia? It’s out at quarantine, jus’ past da Narrows. Should be pretty soon now.”

  “Thanks, Mr. McGinty,” Delaney said, and poured some coffee. It tasted like aluminum. The men started talking about the Giants and the goddamned Yankees. McGinty lit a thin Italian cigar. Delaney eased over to the door, trying to evade the smoke. The unseen whistler was now offering “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.” Was he at Roseland too? Did he also believe that even the strongest oak must fall? Oh, Rose . . . He couldn’t remember what he had written to Grace about Rose. He didn’t remember whether he had even told Grace her name. He did tell her that he had found a woman to help with Carlito. He did remember that. But in her own letters she was not very curious about the details. He remembered telling Molly when Grace was small: I will spoil her? All right, I will spoil her. And he had, and had paid a price. Grace had sent one final letter before leaving Spain, brief and elliptical, that arrived three days before the Andalusia was due. The big news was personal: it was over with Rafael, her husband, the boy’s father. In Moscow he fell in love with a Bulgarian woman! Can you believe it? When he told me I burst out laughing! A Bulgarian! And I thought he was in love with Lenin!!! So she would arrive with hopes of curing her own solitude. Almost certainly with Carlito. Who had cured the solitude of Rose. And mine too.

  Knocko called in a bulletin. The Andalusia was being lashed to a tug and the pilot was on board, to guide her in to safety. A bookmaker called and McGinty mentioned Likely Lad in the sixth at Belmont. Then Knocko again. The ship was coming into the Narrows. How many times had this ship passed Molly’s bones, going and coming? How many other ships had done the same? Another bookmaker called. The whistling stopped.

  Delaney filled with images of Rose and what she might be doing at this very moment. Each image drove into him a stab of impending loss. Rose, fixing a last lunch for the boy. Rose, packing her bags. Rose alone, lugging her bags down Horatio Street. Bending under their weight. Pausing to gather strength, her eyes wild. Looking for a taxi that would take her away from Horatio Street before Delaney arrived with his daughter.

  He stepped back, staring down at the rough planks of the pier, silently addressing himself. And Rose. I wouldn’t blame you, Rose, if you went away forever. You don’t need any of this. My daughter, Molly’s ghost, the boy. Why should you want any of this? That’s why I’ve never mentioned anything permanent to you. Never said those big little words that come at the end of every movie romance. They make movies about getting married, but not about being married. That’s why I’ve never even whispered certain words to you, Rose. Maybe I just lack guts. Maybe I’m afraid that I’ll let myself believe again in permanence and then wake up one morning and find that you’re gone too. And, of course, maybe you fear the same about me. But I’m too old now for such fears. I just don’t want to hurt you, woman. Now, or ever. Or to see you hurt because of me. By uptown snobs or downtown shawlies. The world has taught me that not a goddamned thing is ever certain.

  That m
orning, he had treated patients until eleven-thirty, his right shoulder aching from tension. The long night’s dancing had been joy. Waking was not. He wished he could relax into something like peace. When the last patient left, Rose came in to see him alone in the office.

  “All my life,” she said in a husky voice, “I’m going to remember all those people singing about the guy that just needed a dime.” She paused. “All my life, I’m going to remember dancing with you too, Jim. All my life.” She touched his face fondly. She had never called him Jim before. “No matter what happens.”

  He knew that she had pondered these words, had even privately rehearsed them. He felt himself tremble. But she didn’t wait for a reply. She hurried out, without collapsing into self-pity. She has pride, he thought, but no vanity, and the pride will keep her from saying anything that would sound like begging. She did not want a dime’s worth of Delaney.

  She and the boy were out again when he left for the pier. Delaney wore a white sport shirt and decided to walk. The humidity was rising off the North River, and he felt as if he needed shears to pass through the dense air. And the sun was climbing. The heat would get worse. And now on the pier hours had passed, and he was drinking coffee with the stevedores as they argued the comparative merits of Bill Terry and John McGraw as a manager. The phone rang. This time it was for Delaney.

  “It’ll be docked in twenty minutes,” Knocko said. “I’ll see you there.”

  They were standing together about thirty feet from the gangplank when the first passengers began descending. Knocko had already sent three longshoremen into the ship for the luggage. He had talked to the customs people too. An old couple walked unsteadily down to the pier, where the man did a little jig. A refugee, for sure. From what was coming in Spain. Or Germany. Now they were both safe. They walked away holding hands, into America. Three young men followed, rich kids coming back from a time in Europe that they did not pay for themselves, laughing and grab-assing all the way. A man in a chauffeur’s uniform went to greet them with a bow. Two old women, dressed in clothes from the time before the war, moved down the gangplank, clutching the railing. They might never see the Prado again or the palaces of Venice or walk together along the Ringstrasse. None seemed surprised by the rusting, unpainted condition of the pier. The Andalusia was not a luxury liner.

  Then he saw Grace. She was at the top of the gangway, wearing dark slacks, a patterned blouse, a black beret. She squinted into the darkness of the giant shed. Delaney waved and she leaned forward, then smiled and moved faster, and hit the pier running. She went straight to Delaney and made a little leap and they embraced and hugged.

  “Oh, Daddy, oh, Daddy, oh,” she said. Then dropped her voice. “Oh, Daddy. I’m so sorry. For everything.”

  “Welcome home, Grace.”

  Then she saw Knocko.

  “Oh, Mr. Carmody! How are you! Thank you for coming!”

  “You play any softball over there?” he said, and grinned.

  “Not an inning,” she said. “How about tomorrow?”

  They walked together toward the street side of the shed, and the longshoremen came up behind them with one large bag and two smaller ones, and they passed into the sunlight and the sparsely crowded avenue that ran along the piers. Before the Depression, Delaney thought, the crowds were so thick here you couldn’t cross without a rifle. Grace took off her beret and stuffed it in her belt. Her blond hair was darker and coarser, from too many years of hard water. Her smile was still lovely, her eyes remained a lustrous brown. But Delaney thought: She is twenty and looks thirty. Lines were scratched into her brow. Her mouth was more severe.

  “I can’t wait to see Carlito,” she said.

  “He doesn’t know you’re coming,” Delaney said. “I didn’t want him getting nervous.” He looked directly at her. “But first we have to talk, Grace.”

  “Oh, there’ll be plenty of time to talk, Dad.”

  “Now, Grace.”

  The longshoremen were loading her bags into the trunk of Knocko’s Packard. He could see several canvases tied with cord. He went over to the car, but Knocko wasn’t there. The driver was standing at the door, smoking.

  “Listen, could you go over to my house and wait for me?” Delaney said. “You know where it is. My daughter and I will walk home.”

  “Sure thing, Doc,” he said. He got into the loaded car. Delaney turned to the longshoremen and tried to pass them a tip. “It’s okay, Doc,” the heavier one said. “It’s taken care of.”

  Delaney turned to Grace. She was staring out at the river.

  “The waterfront looks bad from the ship,” she said. “It looks worse up close, doesn’t it?”

  “The Depression did it,” he said. “Not just to the waterfront.”

  “Even Barcelona looks better,” she said.

  She glanced at him as they started walking downtown beside the piers and the gaps.

  “You’re angry, aren’t you, Daddy?”

  “Yes.”

  She jammed her hands in her pockets. “I don’t blame you.”

  “You were selfish and careless, goddamn it,” he said, trying to wring the anger out of his voice. “That boy’s whole world was ripped up. He was crying for you, Mamá, Mamá, for days. Goddamn it.”

  She looked as if she’d been slapped. A longshoreman passed, hook in his belt, lost in thought. She touched Delaney’s arm, and he could smell the sea rising from her clothes.

  “We have to talk about now,” Delaney said. “What you’re going to do now.”

  “Okay. First, we have to take care of what I came for,” she said, bristling slightly. “We have to get my mother buried. My mother. Your wife. Now.”

  “It’s all arranged,” he said. “There’ll be no mass, but we’ll go with her to the cemetery. The Green-Wood in Brooklyn. That’s where we can say good-bye . . .”

  She asked for details, and he provided them in a low, clinical voice, blocking the current of anger. They saw a small crowd of men around the entrance to a pier and a black freighter docking, like the ship in the Babar book. A hot dog cart with an umbrella was feeding the men. He thought of Carlos. And then Rose.

  “I wonder what happened to her,” Grace said. “Did she just give up? Did she slip and fall?”

  “There was no note,” he said. “We’ll never know.”

  And told himself: Get to it. Get to now.

  “Can I see her?” Grace said.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Grace. Remember her in life. The good and the bad.”

  “Do you remember her?”

  “Of course.”

  Get to it.

  “What else are you going to do, Grace? What are you going to do today?”

  She seemed startled by the question, and stopped walking. Her eyes reminded him of Carlito’s when he was scolded.

  “I’m going home,” she said.

  “To stay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know,” he said in a flat voice.

  “You said today. You said now.” Her eyes flashed, her mouth seemed harder. “Can’t we talk about this later?”

  “No.”

  They were at Christopher Street now, with its pedestrian path under the highway, and a stoplight. He took her hand as he so often did when she was a child, and they hurried across. They waited for one lone truck as it groaned and turned, carrying heavy crates into the city. When they reached the opposite side, he released her hand. She stood there and faced him.

  “Daddy, listen to me, Daddy,” she said with some heat. “Please listen. I did what I did because I had to. It wasn’t forever. It was for what I thought would be a month, at most. I had to find my husband. I had to know if he was alive or dead. If I didn’t know, I couldn’t get on with my life.” She paused for breath. “I thought I couldn’t be a decent mother to Carlito if I didn’t resolve the thing with Rafael.”

  Delaney wondered: From what movie did she take this scenario? From what novel? Oh, how young she is.r />
  “And so I went. I —”

  Across the street, a few vagrants stood together, passing a pint of wine from one mouth to another. Some kids with a basket and a blanket were walking east to the subway. Delaney saw none of them. He stared into his daughter’s face.

  “Goddamn it, Grace. You could have called me and said you were coming and why. You could have brought the boy into the house and introduced him to me and explained who I was. You could have slept in your own bed. You could have stayed a few days, taken another ship —”

  “It was the last ship to Spain until the spring!”

  “Then you could have figured it out better, goddamn it. You could have come a week early. Not the night before! Instead —”

  She turned her back on him and began to sob.

  “Stop!” he said, hating his own prosecutorial vehemence but unable to cage it. “You’ve got to face what you’ve done!” His voice lowered. “Now there are other people involved. Not just you.”

  She turned to him. Her eyes were wet and she was sniffling, but she had stopped crying.

  “And you have to face what you did when I was small.”

  “I have faced it. I did what this whole neighborhood did, when the young men went off to the war. But yes, I didn’t have to go. And yes, I was sorry. But I tried and I tried and I tried to make it up to you. I spoiled you. I forgave everything, even if I could not forgive myself. But Carlos is also three years old. How could you do to him what I did to you?”

  She seemed to be shrinking. He took her elbow and walked east, then took a left, heading for Horatio Street. His heart was drumming.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to make this worse.” She didn’t reply. “And it turned out —” He groped for the right words. “It turned out that Carlos was a gift. His innocence was a gift. His way of looking at the world, and naming it, and showing it to me fresh: that was a gift, Grace.” Say it, he thought. Now. “And because of him, I received another gift. A woman.”

  She slowed down as they walked on Washington Street. Away off they heard the elevated train squealing against its tracks.