North River (18 page)

“Tell me the truth.”

“Ah, you know . . .”

“No, I don’t.”

She was silent and still for a long moment.

“They look at you,” she said. “Then they look at me. Then they look at you.”

“So?”

“They thinking, What’s
he
doing with
her? . . .
”

She seemed about to weep. He squeezed her hand, then released it.
Just affection here. Nothing else.

Delaney said
: “
Maybe they’re thinking, What’s she doing with
him?
A beautiful young woman with a scrawny old Mick.”

She turned to him, returning his grin. Then wiped at tears with her bare wrist. Carlito looked confused.

Rose said, “I’m sorry.” Then to the boy: “Hey, Carlito, what d’you want for lunch?”

“Bagetti.”

“Always bagetti. Bagetti, bagetti, bagetti.” Then to Delaney: “You sure he’s not half Italian?”

She looked at him, hugging Carlito. Then she gazed out past the taxi window and its little rivers of rain. In this place a long way from Agrigento. There was a faint smile on her face. She had wiped so hard at her tears he could now see the scar.

They came in under the stoop, and Rose was hurting. Delaney sat her on the empty patients’ bench and knelt to unlace her boots, widening the leather tongues, while Carlito watched. Delaney widened the opening still more and tried to ease the right boot off. Rose grimaced, tightening her mouth. When the first boot was off, and on the floor, Rose moaned.
Oh,
she said.
Oh oh oh.
They did the same with the left boot. Her thick black stockings were soaked.

“Rose,” Delaney said. “Listen to me. Go upstairs to your room. Slowly. Get undressed and into bed, and peel off the socks. Very gently. As gently as you can. Leave the socks on for now, I don’t want you getting any splinters. Your feet will hurt going up the stairs, but I’ll be up in a few minutes and do something for the pain. Okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Carlito, you stay here with me.”

Rose stood up, bit her lip against the pain caused by her weight, and without a word started up the stairs, holding the banister. Delaney went to his office, Carlito beside him. He checked the contents of his bag. Then he went out to the mailbox on the gate. A few notes, in childish writing, asking for help.
Please come when you can. My mother can’t move her legs. My father’s hand is broke.
Patients who had found the door mysteriously locked on Horatio Street and could not read the sign saying the office was closed for the day and had their American children write out their pleas for help. Delaney gazed around him. The street was awash with the rain. He thought: I have to work on the olive tree.

He climbed the stairs, two at a time, with the boy lagging behind him. Delaney walked through the open door of Rose’s room. Her black dress was hung neatly on a hanger, the hat slung over the hook. Rose was on her back in bed, wearing her flowered bathrobe, her feet exposed. She did not look at him.

Her feet were swollen. A yellowing blister the size of a quarter had started forming on the sole of her right foot, and the big and little toes of her left foot were rubbed raw. A crevice of skin had opened on the arch of her right foot. Delaney opened his bag as Carlito reached the open door. The boy paused, eyes wide with concern.

“Oh, oh, oh: Rosa, oh!”

He went directly to her and gently touched her face with his small fingers.

“
Oh,
Rosa.
Oh,
Rosa!”

She started to bawl. Without looking at Delaney, she took the boy’s hands and kissed them and said his name and bawled.

Then: “Don’t worry, Carlito. The doctor, he’s going to fix me. Don’t worry, this is nothing. I love you, boy, don’t you worry. . . .”

Delaney cleaned the arch with alcohol, massaging the foot with his good hand. Some blood seeped out. He wiped it, then cleaned the wound again. Gently, easily. She winced when he applied iodine with a glass dropper. Her toenails were trim and clean. He could feel the warmth of her body. Then he wrapped gauze around the arch of her foot and made it firm with adhesive tape, and then he was done.

“Okay, now just rest,” Delaney said. “I’ll bring some ice in a cloth to stop the swelling.”

She took a breath and slowly exhaled, as if calming herself, and then whispered, “I can’t rest. I gotta feed this boy. You too.”

Delaney went past her and drew the window shade.

“We’ll manage, Rose. Today,
we
feed
you.
”

She turned her head. The boy touched her face, wiping at tears. His own face was confused and sad. Rose was hurting and he didn’t know what to do about it.

They managed. Delaney used his best physician’s tone to tell Rose to stay off her feet. Angela sent over sandwiches from the restaurant, along with copies of the
Daily News
and
Il Progresso.
Rose read the newspapers and applied ice to her feet and dozed. In dreams, she mumbled in Italian. The boy kept watch. The rain slowed and then stopped.

That first evening, Delaney placed a water jug and a glass beside her bed, talked with her for an hour about what they had seen in the morning in the great cathedral. He said he was sorry for putting her through the ordeal of the trip to St. Patrick’s.

“We could have listened to it on the radio,” he said.

“No. It was like a
show.
”

“That’s exactly what it was.”

“Except for those goddamned women. And my shoes.”

Now the boots were wasted, she said. They cost money and they were a waste. He said there was a shoe repair store on Ninth Avenue that specialized in stretching shoes and boots. Run by Mr. Nobiletti, the shoemaker.

“He gave me the olive tree,” he said. “I was going to call him anyway.”

She said she didn’t want to see the boots again for the rest of her life. She waved a dismissive hand and cursed in Sicilian. Delaney smiled, and then she did too. He changed the dressing again, caressing her wounded feet. Both were awkward in the intimacy of the small room. Several times, Rose began to say something then stopped herself. Delaney realized he was doing the same, but was smoothing the silence with his practiced bedside manner. He felt that Rose was afraid to go past certain boundaries. And so was he. Then he went into the bathroom to run water for Carlito’s bath. By the time the boy was clean and dressed, Rose had fallen into sleep.

While she slept, Delaney moved the radio to the hall outside Rose’s room. Around seven, he heated one of Angela’s sandwiches in the oven and poured a glass of water, and then he and the boy went to the top floor. When they arrived, she reached over and switched on the bedside lamp.

“Dinnertime,” Delaney said.

“Hey, come on, I can’t —”

“Eat,” Delaney said.

“A samich for you, Rosa,” the boy said.

She sighed and sat up with the tray on her lap and her feet hidden beneath the blankets. He laid the radio against a wall and plugged it in. Verdi played on the Italian station, and he turned down the volume.

“God damn you, Dottore,” she whispered. And bit into the sandwich and smiled.

Over the next few days, a new routine took over. Delaney and Carlito brought Rose her food. Delaney explained certain mysterious words that she had found in the
Daily News.
Carlito entertained her with paddleball and conversations with Osito. When Delaney moved through the warming parish, attending to patients, Angela came by to visit with Rose, and Monique swallowed her resentment or irritation and visited for a while too. Bessie, the cleaning woman, told jokes and made Rose laugh. They all somehow ate, although the house had lost the aroma of garlic and oil. Each night Delaney changed the bandages and told tales of some of the patients.

Alone in his bedroom, he read the newspapers, all about La Guardia and what Roosevelt was planning and what Hitler was doing. The numbers of the unemployed were beginning to stall, and that was mild good news. Maybe the goddamned Depression would be over soon. He leafed through the stack of medical journals. He filled in the records of patients. He heard opera descending from the upstairs rooms and the sounds of Carlito running and bursts of his laughter. The boy was taking care of Rose too. Delaney wrote to Grace, saying little about Rose, and a lot about Carlito’s presence at McGraw’s funeral. He addressed an envelope to Leonora Córdoba at American Express in Barcelona and enclosed the letter and five ten-dollar bills. And spoke in his mind to Grace the words he could not write on paper.

Find your goddamned husband. But don’t worry. We are fine here without you. Just be careful. I don’t like what I’m reading. About tensions in Spain, about rumors of revolt. Stay away from barricades, those new castles in Spain. Your barricades are here, daughter. Your son is here. Rose is hugging him in your place.
And the sentence he could never write:
Don’t come home.

Have no fear, Delaney told himself. Spring is almost here.

TEN

S
PRING CAME ON
S
UNDAY, BUT NOT IN THE MORNING HOURS.
IN the gray chilly darkness of morning, Delaney prepared coffee, found a tray, and carried a cup to the top floor, with a plate of crisped Italian bread and a slab of butter. Rose laughed, sat up, and slammed the pillow. “Breakfast in bed,” she whispered, savoring the words. “Just like the movies.” There was no sound from Carlito’s room.

“You can get out of bed now,” he said. “Just don’t wear the new boots until we get them stretched.”

She swung around on the bed and placed her feet on the floor. She moved her toes up and down then slid her feet into the slippers.

“The truth? I been up already. I go to the bathroom, of course. I look in the boy’s room. I sneak downstairs if nobody’s here and see if everything is okay.” She smiled. “Otherwise it’s like jail.”

She reached for a piece of bread and held the plate under her chin while she bit into it. She flipped off the slippers, then sat up in bed, still moving her toes. She looked up at him. Delaney smiled.

She joined him in the kitchen, carrying the tray, with its still full coffee cup and empty plate. The belt of her bathrobe was pulled tight. She was walking easily now, and he could see that the bandage was gone.

“Everything’s normal again,” she said. “I hope.”

“And a normal Sunday for you is a day off,” Delaney said.

“No, no,” she said. “I miss a couple days, I gotta make them up. I owe you, Dottore.”

“Rose, I already made plans,” he said. “So make this really normal with a normal Sunday.”

She looked relieved. “Okay,” she said.

Delaney told Rose that he planned to take the boy on a long walk. He would tire him out, and then they could all sleep a long time. Then he realized that her cup remained full. He made a sour face.

“You’re right,” he said. “That’s pretty lousy coffee.”

She glanced at the clock. “Want me to make a fresh pot?”

“It’s your
day off,
Rose.”

She smiled and then Carlito entered in his pajamas, holding the bear and grinning in a sleepy way. He hugged Rose’s hips. Then he walked into the light that was now streaming through the backyard windows and hugged Delaney, who hugged him back.

“Good morning, big fella.”

He remembered Big Jim calling him big fella from the time he was the size of this boy. This boy that Big Jim didn’t live to see.

“ ’Lo, Gran’pa.”

“Let’s eat.”

Rose started to place the warm loaf of Italian bread on the table, but Delaney took her elbow, moved her aside, and said: “It’s Sunday.”

“Okay,” she said. “I better get dressed. Carlito? When you finish come up and get dressed.”

“Okay, Rosa.”

And she was gone. Delaney watched her go, then took cornflakes from the closet and milk from the icebox. Normal. It was Sunday. She was never here on Sunday.

Then the telephone rang. Twice. A third time. He was suddenly rheumy with dread. But then thought: It could be news. From Knocko. Or Danny Shapiro. Or Grace. He went through to the office and lifted the receiver.

“Hello,” he said.

Someone was breathing on the other end. But no words were said.

Carlito dressed warmly, and they went walking east, with church bells ding-donging everywhere. Delaney could not tell Catholic church bells from Protestant church bells. Some were joyful. Some were somber. All were a form of summons, calling the faithful to services, as they had for centuries. He loved the sound but ignored the summons. Delaney felt warmer, holding the boy’s hand.

As they reached Broadway, Delaney squatted down and showed Carlito how to tuck the bear inside his coat, with its head sticking out, leaving the boy’s hands free. He could swing both gloved hands now, Delaney explained, or he could jam them in his pockets. And he could still talk to Osito. When Delaney stood up, a woman was smiling at him. She was about fifty, wearing a Sunday hat bedecked with artificial spring flowers. There was no makeup on her fleshy features. She wasn’t flirting. She didn’t seem amused. She just seemed happy to see a grown man, no longer young, caring for a small boy.

“What a handsome lad,” she said.

“That he is,” said Delaney. “Thank you.”

She nodded and moved on, walking downtown. He noticed that her long dress stopped above large feet. The feet of Connemara, not Agrigento. She merged with the crowd.

They turned west on Eighth Street, heading to Fifth Avenue. As they came closer, the boy stopped again. Up ahead was the Sixth Avenue Elevated, turning into Greenwich Street. For a moment, Delaney froze. Against the window of a saloon, he saw the bartender from Club 65, dressed in a camel’s hair coat and brown fedora. He was watching Delaney and the boy. Then he turned abruptly and walked away.

“Gran’pa, look!” the boy said excitedly, pointing to the distant sight of iron pillars rising from the street. “The El!”

“Yes, that’s the El all right. But it’s not the one we saw before. It’s a different El.”

The boy’s brow furrowed, and he whispered something to the bear. There was no train visible on the El. Delaney looked in the other direction and saw a man in a gray belted coat peering into a store window. The man who was alone in Angela’s that night.
Goddamn. I’m being followed. By two different guys!

“Let’s go up onna El, Gran’pa.”

“Not now. Maybe later.”

The boy mumbled to the bear in a disappointed way. Delaney was sure that the bear was disappointed too. When he looked back, the man in the gray coat was gone. A G-man? Watching the same target as the bartender from the gangster joint? Maybe it was just an accident, Delaney thought. Maybe the bartender was out for a Sunday-morning stroll. Just like us. And saw me. Maybe the G-man, if he was a G-man, just needed a rest after sitting through mass. Maybe, but not likely. And who called this morning? Who was breathing into the telephone? Delaney noticed a hot dog shop on the other side of the street and, sensing danger, steered the boy left into a used-book store. From behind the streaky window, he looked back into the street and did not see the man in the gray coat or the bartender. Why would they follow me around? They must know I’m not part of the great communist plot. And Frankie Botts knows I’m not that hard to find. Killing me would be simple.

The boy was gazing around him at walls of books, and at tables piled with larger volumes. At the far end of the room, a man with a thick red beard and heavy horn-rimmed glasses sat at a desk. He wore a bulky gray sweater and a loose red scarf in the chill of the room. He looked up and then went back to reading his own book. Classical music played from a radio. There were a few other men in the store, examining books, locked in solitude. There were no women. Delaney turned to Carlito and gestured at the walls and table.

“Books,” Delaney said. “These are all books.”

“Books.”

They drifted around the store, the boy touching the books as if they were polished shoes. They came to a table of children’s books. Delaney searched them for a book about trains or the great oceans. Nothing. But there were some treasures.
A Child’s Garden of Verses. Peter Rabbit. Treasure Island. The Story of Babar.
Delaney wondered what the boy could comprehend. It was too soon for Long John Silver. But maybe I could read him the lovely Stevenson verses and put poetry in his head to stay. I could start him up the road to Byron and Whitman and Yeats. He picked up the copy. It was worn, but unmarked by scribblings in pencils or crayons. Then he opened the Babar book. The illustrations were bright with primary colors, as innocent as Matisse, with all those gray elephants in green suits, exploring the world.

“Look at this,” Delaney said to the boy, who took the large book in his small hands. He sat on the floor and peered at the images of elephants and ponds and jungle and a city that was surely Paris. He turned the pages with growing anticipation. He pointed at a bear’s face on one page.

“You like that book?” Delaney said.

“Yes, Gran’pa. I like it.”

“Give me a buck for da two of dem,” the owner said, in the tones of Brooklyn. His fingers and teeth were yellow from tobacco.

“Thanks.”

“Dat Stevenson book, da pomes are pretty nice,” he said, sliding the books into a paper bag. “But y’ know, dat Babar is pure colonialist propaganda.”

Delaney wanted to laugh and didn’t. The man was so serious he didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “Could be,” Delaney said. “But I like the pictures, and so does the boy.”

The owner shrugged. “Just warnin’ you.”

“Thanks.”

They turned into lower Fifth Avenue, with its stately Georgian houses and the Brevoort Hotel, and up ahead was the Washington Arch and the green swath of the park beyond. The boy stopped and gazed up at the arch, as if he’d seen it before somewhere. He pointed and looked up at Delaney with a questioning face.

“The arch,” Delaney said.

“Arch.”

In six or seven years, he would tell the boy about Stanford White, who designed the arch, and how Big Jim was at the opening with all the other boys from Tammany Hall. He would explain Tammany Hall soon enough. After a long while, he would tell the boy how Stanford White died. Shot down by the crazy husband of a discarded young mistress. He could explain the meaning of all this carved stone. For now, it was enough to take the boy’s hand and cross the street. A uniformed cop in a long uniform overcoat stood before the arch, shifting his weight from foot to foot, tapping his club into the bare palm of his left hand.

“Good morning, Officer,” Delaney said.

“Good morning,” the cop said, a bit startled.

“Morning,” the boy said.

They walked under the arch and back around, with Delaney pointing at the bas-reliefs and George Washington and details the boy would learn about later. All the time, he was scanning the square for the man in the gray coat or the bartender from Club 65. No sign of either of them. Then he and the boy faced the six acres of Washington Square. Under the grass and the walkways, the bones of thousands of human beings were buried. For a long time, it was the city’s Potter’s Field, where the bodies of the lonesome poor were dropped in ditches and covered with dirt. Here the victims of smallpox lay wrapped in yellow shrouds. Murderers were dropped after being hung from the gallows on the northwest corner. On foggy nights, the residents always insisted, the ghosts of the unhappy dead rose to walk the world again. That too must wait. The boy was still too young for ghost stories. He was still learning the names of the visible world.

They walked into the park, the boy swinging his arms freely. Under the brightening gray sky, students from New York University walked in groups across the park, talking intensely. Professors crossed their paths, overcoats open to the warming day. Carlito stared at a boy his own age who was pedaling a yellow tricycle under the watchful gaze of a red-haired Irish governess. There were battered men here too, as there were everywhere, sitting alone on benches. And on one bench, he saw the man in the gray coat, reading a
Daily News.
I should just confront him, Delaney thought. Go over there and . . .

Then Delaney was distracted by a man in a velvet-collared overcoat and modest gray fedora, walking in a jerky way from the Minetta Lane end of the park. It was Mr. Cottrell. Alone and far from Horatio Street. He staggered, then fell facedown, the fedora rolling a few feet. People stopped to look. Delaney ran to him, dragging Carlito. He squatted beside Mr. Cottrell and gently turned him over. His eyes were open, but he did not seem to be seeing anything. He certainly showed no sign of recognizing Delaney. Two students paused about ten feet away. Delaney called to them as he squatted beside the fallen man.

“
Hey!
There’s a cop just past the arch. Tell him to call an ambulance.
Right now!
This man’s having a heart attack.”

The students hurried away to the arch. Carlito was looking down at the man, his face tense
,
holding the bag of books to his chest. Delaney leaned close to the stricken man’s ear.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Cottrell,” he said. “The ambulance is coming. Don’t worry. Try to breathe. Slow, yes, like that. Breathe . . .”

The cop arrived as Delaney placed Cottrell’s hat on his chest.

“They’re on their way,” he said. “This guy gonna make it?”

“Maybe.”

Delaney and the boy watched as the ambulance pulled away to the east with its siren wailing. About fifteen other people watched too, including the governess and the boy with the tricycle. The man in the gray coat was gone. Delaney thought about Mr. Cottrell, locked within his bitter cell, and what he would think if he learned who had tried to help him. I couldn’t save his son, Delaney thought, but maybe I’ve helped save him. He wondered what Cottrell was doing here. Down beyond Minetta Lane there were whorehouses that had been there since the Civil War. There were also churches. Maybe he just was out for a walk. Maybe alone, in an anonymous crowd, with the winter easing, he could find some consolation. Maybe.

Delaney gripped the boy’s mittened hand. He took a deep cleansing breath, then exhaled. Then saw people looking into the brightening sky. Some of them were smiling. The boy looked up too, and pointed.