North River (4 page)

Delaney paused before unlocking the door to the large room at the front of the house. Molly’s room. He hadn’t opened this door since that August night when he heard her playing one of the preludes. She had been gone for a year then, and now it was January, which meant it was sixteen months since Molly vanished. Last August he was alone in bed in the vast oaken emptiness and hurried upstairs and opened the door. The music stopped. He called her name. Molly! O my Molly-O.

But she wasn’t there. There was no sound at all in the empty house, except his own heavy breathing.

That night was twelve months after she had vanished, and tonight she still wasn’t there. She might never be in this room again. This room that was her secret garden of books and music and dreams. Right up to the moment when she went down the stairs and started walking to the river, the breeze ruffling her blue dress. Other people saw her go, but I was out on house calls. Goddamn it all to hell.

He took a breath, exhaled, and went in.

The room was as it always was: wide, the ceiling higher than in the small maids’ rooms in the rear. The hardwood floors looked gray under a coat of fine dust. The fireplace awaited a fire. The piano stood near the windows, properly grand in spite of the dust, filling the space between the windows. Delaney sat down on the wide sturdy bench and could see Molly’s heroes, framed upon the wall. Mr. Bach. Mr. Mozart. Mr. Brahms. Mr. Scott Joplin. Mr. Arnold Schoenberg. In the years after the war, he was away so much on calls, or at the hospital doing grand rounds, or tending to patients, that she often played only for her masters

The wall on the right was stacked from floor to ceiling with his books and hers. Many of his were on the top shelves, near the ceiling, some going back to high school, dozens from Johns Hopkins before the war. The textbooks were filled with the medical ignorance of the day, now worthless rubbish that could not even be sold to the dealers on Fourth Avenue. And yet he could not throw them out. Once he loved them and learned from them. They were now like aging teachers whose time had passed. Then his eyes fell to the lower shelves, full of treasures. Dickens and Stevenson and Mark Twain. Conrad and Galsworthy, Henry James and Edith Wharton. On one shelf, Theodore Dreiser leaned against Dostoyevsky, and he remembered how sure he once was that they were snarling at each other, each filled with certainty. To their left, unable to soothe them, was the good Dr. Chekhov. With any luck, these books will be the patrimony of the boy. And who will teach him how to read?

There too was his chair, with its thick rounded arms and its ratty green brocaded covering. The place into which he would sink at the end of a fatiguing day. There he would read novels to know more about human beings, who were, after all, his basic subject, and still were. The medical books didn’t tell such stories. Only novels did. Sometimes Molly would play a concert for him alone. When she wanted to annoy him, or irritate him for some infraction of decent manners, she would play Schoenberg, knowing that Schoenberg would always break his trance. When she wanted to move him into sleep, she played Brahms. She knew that men broken by war need lullabies.
O my Molly-O.

He opened a closet filled with dusty luggage and Molly’s old summer dresses, and lifted a small valise down from a high shelf. He turned a small key in the lock and clicked it open and then placed his daughter’s letter into a folder with her other notes from distant places. The folder was on top of those from Molly. Letters Molly wrote to him in France. Earlier letters full of plans and hope. The 1918 letter sent to his hospital bed in Paris, as his ruined arm slowly healed. The letter telling him about his mother and father and how they had died in the influenza epidemic. Along with thirty thousand others in New York alone and millions all over the planet. Some of the older letters were full of longing for him, pulsing with love and desire. From the time before the slow darkness fell. Letters that made him bubble with happiness. Letters that made him weep. Only later, as time dragged and healing slowed and his stay in the French hospital was prolonged, only then did Molly’s tone alter into icy anger. Have you forgotten you have a daughter? she wrote. Have you forgotten you have a wife? And why did you go to that stupid war anyway? You didn’t have to go. You were never going to be drafted. You volunteered! Why? Over and over. Why? Those letters were there too. He clicked the valise shut, locked it, and placed it back on the shelf.

Then he lighted the candle again and shut down the oil lamp, locked the door behind him, and went down one flight to bed. His pajamas felt cold. He placed more coal on the fire and looked at the sleeping boy in his corner of the huge bed. There were no sounds from the street, as the silent neighborhood huddled under the smothering blankets of snow.

He slipped into bed in the dark.

O Molly. Come home, Molly. I need you now. Come and play for me. Come and play for this boy. Come home, my Molly-O.

THREE

T
HE WOMAN ARRIVED JUST BEFORE SEVEN O’CLOCK THE NEXT
morning. At the first ring of the bell, Delaney was in the cellar, shoveling coal into the small boiler that heated the water. A flashlight was perched on a milk box. The sound of the bell first made him think it was Bootsie again. Some demand in the ringing. A feeling of alarm. And Monique was not yet at her desk. He closed the furnace door, laid down the shovel, grabbed the flashlight, and went up the darkened stairs, afraid the sound would wake the boy. But Carlito was already awake, sitting on the stairs near the bottom, his pajamas blotchy with urine. He must have tried, Delaney thought. He must have stood on the bowl and tried. The boy hugged Delaney’s leg as if consumed with shame, and the doctor hefted him and carried him to the door under the stoop. This should take only a minute, boy, he whispered. Hug me to stay warm.

The woman stood beyond the gate, snow on her wool hat and shoulders. She was in her middle thirties, with olive skin, a longish nose, a strong jaw, a faint mustache. Her body looked heavy under her dark blue coat, and she was wearing men’s boots. Her black eyes glistened. She was carrying a woolen bag and a cheese box.

“I’m Rose,” she said in a gruff voice. “Angela sent me.”

“Come in, Rose. Come in.”

She stepped in as Delaney backed up, her feet crunching on the hard snow that had blown in through the night. She pulled the gate shut. Steam was easing from her heavy lips. She stomped her boots on the mat and, as Delaney held the vestibule door open, passed into the hallway. Delaney closed the second door behind her.

“This is him, huh?” she said, and smiled.

“This is Carlito.”

She grinned more widely, showing hard white teeth, and turned to Delaney.

“Okay. Where’s the bathtub?”

Still in bathrobe and work shirt, Delaney brushed his teeth and washed at the sink while water ran into the small bathtub. An old showerhead rose above the tub. Steam drifted from the running water, and he used his fingers to wipe a space in the fogged-out mirror. The bathroom door was still open, and he saw Rose drape her coat over a chair. She looked thinner in a long dark dress that went below her knees, over the men’s boots. Then she pushed into the bathroom and placed the cheese box at the foot of the bowl. She removed the boy’s clothes, dropped them on the floor, and wrapped him in a large beige towel to keep him warm. The boy’s eyes were wide. What was this?
Who was this?
How many people were there in this world?

“Okay, get out,” she said to Delaney. “Get dressed. I gotta wash this boy.”

Delaney wiped his face, dried it, smiling as he shut the bathroom door behind him. He pulled on trousers, a clean shirt, socks, and boots. He could hear her low affectionate voice through the door: “What a handsome boy. All nice and clean now, you’re gonna be nice and clean. Hey, what’s this thing? What you got there? Nice and clean now. And your hair? Gotta wash that too. Pretty blond hair. Can’t wear it dirty.”

Thank you, Rose. Thank you, Angela.

There was a slight New York curl in her voice, “doity” instead of “dirty.” She dropped the
d
off every “and.” The
h
was banished from “thing.” She must be here a while. She’s definitely not just off the boat. Then the telephone rang for the first time in many hours. He lifted it.

“Hey, it’s me,” Monique said. “I’m at the telephone company. I told them we need the goddamned phone. I told them, hey, the man’s a
doctor,
people could die. Then I shot three guys at the front desk.
That
worked.”

Delaney laughed.

“What would I do without you, Monique?”

“You’d be doing house calls, that’s what. The patients must be going nuts trying to get through to you. I’ll be there in maybe twenty minutes.”

“I’ve got a surprise waiting for you.”

“I don’t like surprises.”

“You might love this one.”

“See you.”

She hung up. He buttoned his shirt. How long have you been here, Monique? How long have you been nurse and secretary and bouncer? Since we laid out the office. Since before the goddamned Depression. Since Hoover was president. Since the time when Molly found her secret garden on the top floor, her aerie, her retreat. Away from Monique, who annoyed her with her energy or her precision or her daily presence. Away from the patients. Away from me. The bathroom door opened and Rose was there, smiling a lovely smile, her face glistening from the small steamy room, snuggling the boy with one arm to her generous breasts and lifting clothes from the stroller with her other hand. Carlito was smiling too, pointing a finger at Delaney, then curling it. She dressed him quickly in two shirts and corduroy trousers.

“Now, where’s the kitchen?” she said.

Delaney led her downstairs again to the kitchen, the boy back in her arms.

“This is small,” she said darkly.

He tried to explain how he needed space on this floor for a waiting area, a consulting room, a small bathroom for patients, but she wasn’t really listening. They went into the kitchen and she put the boy down on a chair. And Carlito pointed to the pantry.

“Co’flay,” he said.

“You want co’flakes? Okay, boy. ”

How did she know co’flay was cornflakes? The telephone rang and Delaney hurried into the consulting room to answer it. Annie Haggerty. About her mother, around the corner on Lispenard Street. She was hurt. Bleeding and moaning.

“Where’s your father, Annie?” he said, knowing he was talking to a girl who was about fourteen.

“Out.”

“Is your mother awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Is she bleeding?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Face.”

“Nose? Mouth? Ears?”

“Yeah.”

“All of them?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be over as soon as I can. Keep talking to your mother, Annie. Keep her awake.”

“Okay.”

He wrote a note to himself: the name Haggerty, the word “blood.” He knew the building too well. The telephone rang again.
Hurry, Monique.
This was Larry Dorsey’s wife. He was a saxophone player in some Times Square hotel.

“Doc, it’s Larry. He got hurt New Year’s Eve, some fight, drunks throwin’ chairs. You know. He got hit on the head, but he won’t go to St. Vincent’s. Goddamned Irish, don’t want to go to hospitals.”

He took her address on Bank Street and then went to the kitchen.

“You get more calls than a bookmaker,” Rose said. Her English is good, Delaney thought, but who is she? Carlito was delighted with his cornflakes.

“Many more.”

She was going through the pantry.

“Not many pots and pans. The icebox is great, electric and all. But we gotta get some food in here for this boy.”

“Yes, we do, Rose. Plenty of food. Maybe when my nurse, Monique, gets here, you can —”

“And we gotta get rid of that stroller,” she said, pronouncing it “strolla.” “That thing will give you a disease or something.”

The telephone rang again.

The snow was piled high on Lispenard Street as Delaney trudged toward number 12, shifting his heavy leather bag from gloved hand to gloved hand. Today a change in routine. House calls in the morning or Mary Haggerty might die. Trucks were pushing for passage to the meat market, where Harry Haggerty was a butcher. Delaney knew the street well. Herman Melville had worked here, right in that building, waiting for ships to arrive so he could clerk the cargo. A job that he needed because nobody was buying his books. Even today nobody anywhere around here had heard of the white whale. Or Ahab. Or Queequeg. Or Melville himself . . . He climbed to the second floor and knocked.

"Yeah?” came the girl’s voice.

“Dr. Delaney.”

She unlocked the door and Delaney went in. The girl was trembling and pale, her hair frazzled, her eyes wet. There was an odor of excrement in the air.

“Where’s your mother, Annie?”

She led him to the back bedroom, where the odor was stronger. The woman’s face was swollen blue. Her husband had literally beaten the shit out of her. One eye was closed. The other was skittery with fear. Her nose had been pounded to the side.

“Annie,” he said to the girl, “boil a pot of water, will you, dear?”

All the way to Bank Street on his second call, he struggled with his rage. The story was too familiar. Big tough Harry Haggerty had come home loaded, demanded his supper, and when his wife served it cold, he started pounding her. He had to punch real hard. After all, he only had seventy-five pounds on her. Then he passed out on the couch, and went off to work at dawn. Big tough guy. Knowing that the cops would do nothing. Just another domestic dispute. If she died, maybe they’d make an arrest. . . . Delaney had done what he could: cleaned the wounds, applied bandages, checked for broken bones, gave her some aspirin and a painkiller, and told Annie to hold ice to her face. She should come see him when the swelling went down, and they would discuss what to do about her broken nose. The wounds in her mind would need much more time, and he could do little to heal them. Physician, heal thyself . . .

Larry Dorsey was in bed in the first-floor flat on Bank Street. The place was spotless, the wood polished, no dust. Wallpaper from an earlier time still looked fresh. It was an apartment without children, except Larry. Delaney could see a piano in the living room, topped with framed photographs of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bix Beiderbecke. A gallery of heroes, just like Molly’s, but with different names and faces. Louise was heavy, wearing full makeup, her face twitching.

“Look at that,” she said, pointing to her husband’s head. “That ain’t kosher.”

She was right. There was a bulge on the right temple. Larry was conscious, but when Delaney gently touched the lump, he pulled away in pain.

“That hurt,” he said.

“Is it getting larger?” Delaney said to Louise.

“Yeah,” Louise said. “When he come home last night, there wasn’t even a bump.”

Delaney leaned in close. “Listen, Larry, we gotta get you to St. Vincent’s —”

“No hospital. Not for me. Not now, not never. Everyone I ever knew went to a hospital never came back. Including my father.”

“Larry, you might have a fractured skull. You might have bleeding in the brain. We need X-rays. And I don’t have an X-ray machine in my bag.”

“Not a chance.”

Delaney sighed in an exasperated way.

“Okay, I can’t force you. But tell me this: Who’s your favorite undertaker?”

Louise sobbed and turned away.

“Don’t make jokes, Doc,” Larry whispered.

“It’s no joke, Larry.”

Larry said nothing. Delaney put his hands on his hips, trying to look stern.

“Come on, you dope,” he said. “I’ll go with you. I want to hear you play ‘Stardust’ again.”

Delaney and Louise walked him east on icy streets to St. Vincent’s. Larry Dorsey grumbled all the way. The wind rose, and they shuddered together in their heavy winter clothes. Boys shoveled snow in front of the shops. An elevated train moved slowly along the tracks into a crowded platform. The street in front of the emergency room had been plowed since he’d taken Eddie Corso through the secret door a hundred feet away from this entrance. They walked in past an empty ambulance. Delaney explained the problem to a buxom nurse named McGuinness. He saw nuns like black haystacks walking the corridors beyond.

“Thanks, Dr. Delaney. We’ll take care of it. Call later and we’ll know what it is.”

“Thanks, Miss McGuinness. Is Dr. Zimmerman on duty?”

“Wait, I’ll get him.”

Zimmerman emerged from an inner room, smiling, shaking hands with Delaney, while Dorsey was led away and a second nurse took notes from Louise. The two doctors stepped to the side. Zimmerman was in his twenties, skinny, freckled, with reddish hair and bulging, inquisitive eyes. He had some Lower East Side in his voice.

“Like Grand Central around here today,” Zimmerman said. “They’re all digging their way out and falling down with heart attacks.”

“How’s our patient?”

“He’s a tough nut, all right. He keeps asking for morphine and then laughing.”

“Can I see him?”

“Third floor, at the end.”

Zimmerman turned to see a man with a white face being carried in by two younger men. Delaney touched the intern’s sleeve.

“Thanks, Doctor.”

“If we get caught,” Zimmerman said, “we’ll do the time together.”

Eddie Corso was in a bed in his private room, covered with a heavy blanket, a transparent oxygen tent over his head. He needed a shave. To the side of the door was Bootsie, looking suspicious, even anxious, trying to appear casual by examining the state of his fingernails. The shade was drawn, a light burning on a side table. Delaney parted the flap of the tent.

“Morphine, morphine . . .”

“That’s a bad old joke now, Eddie.”

“So am I.”

Palm down, Corso curled his fingers at Bootsie, and the fat man eased out the door to stand guard in the hall. Corso smiled weakly.

“Thanks, Doc. Again.”

“Thank Dr. Zimmerman.”

“I did. But it was you, Doc. Without you . . .”

“Enough already.”

A longer pause.