“Alex, baby boy, are you waving to Momma?” She moved her hand back and forth, up and down.
He waved back.
“Let’s leave this old church. Let’s go see Nana. Do you want to see Nana, Alex?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned the stroller and hurried away from the church as fast as she could wheel through the slush, the wind cold at her back.
Although his mother couldn’t see him do it, Alex crossed himself again.
*
It was warm in the lobby of the apartment building, but Abe had the chills. He stared at the register, and there it was, Apartment 6, Novak, just like Malkin’s note said it would be, and he thought there still was time to turn around and walk back into his hum-drum life.
“Can I help you, sir?”
Abe wheeled around.
A short, bald black man with white mutton-chop whiskers stood three feet away, leaning on a long push broom.
“What?”
“My name is Baker, but I ain’t no baker. That’s just a joke. You need some help finding someone, sir?”
“No.”
“’Cause the way you was standing there, you looked lost.”
Lost. That was a good word for how he was feeling. “No, I ain’t lost, I’m looking for number six.”
The man propped the broom against the wall. “Miss Delia.”
“Yeah. I got a note for her.” As if he were a schoolboy eager to show his hall pass, Abe took it out of his pocket.
“You want me to run it up for you? Tell her you was here?”
“Wait, she ain’t here right now, is she?”
The man scratched his head. “Well, sir, unless she jumped out the window, and there ain’t no earthly reason why she should, or she done disappeared into thin air, which also ain’t likely far as I know, she’s right there where she was an hour ago, when I brought her up the newspaper. See, I look after this building for the folks what lives here, doing this and that and whatnot, so I know what this one likes and that one likes, and Miss Delia, she likes to read the paper, which, like I said, I took up to her this morning. Now I’ll take that note up to her straightaway if you like.” He held his hand out.
“No, that’s all right.”
“You don’t want to give it to her now?”
“No. What I mean is, I’ll take it myself.”
“All right then. Whatever you say, sir.”
They stood facing each other for a moment. Abe figured the man wanted a tip. He tried to hand him a nickel. ““No sir, I don’t take no tips, except for Christmas time, no sir, the tenants here, they took real good care of Baker this Christmas, just like Baker takes good care of them, yes sir. Now did you want me to ring that bell?”
*
They were wet with snow flurries by the time they reached her mother’s house. Irene rang the bell.
Ida came to the door wearing a white sweater over a plaid housedress and a scowl until she saw Alex. “Look who’s here, look who’s here!” she said, and the wrinkles around her eyes and the corners of her mouth receded as she scooped up her grandson and walked back inside, leaving Irene in the vestibule with a snow shovel and the empty stroller.
In a little-girl-lost voice, Irene called, “Hi, Ma.” She trudged after them into the kitchen. She glanced up at the hand-lettered plaque resting on the molding above the entryway that had been there since she was a child. It read,
No matter where I serve my guests, it seems they like my kitchen best
. She threw her wet coat over a chair.
“Look what Grandma has for you, blessed precious, does Alex like Grandma’s extra special rice pudding with cinnamon and sugar on top? Is it sweet enough for the world’s sweetest little boy?” She fed him pudding with a demitasse spoon.
“Not too much, Ma. He hasn’t had his lunch yet.”
“What? It’s nearly one o’clock. What kind of mother are you?”
“Ma, please, I don’t need this today.”
“Well, I’m just wondering, one o’clock and no lunch, the poor thing.” She put him on her lap and began to feed him rice pudding.
Irene watched Alex gobble up the pudding, his skinny little tongue working like an anteater. She was gratified that her mother’s attitude had softened toward him—who couldn’t love him?—even if Ida still treated Irene like a misguided teenager. “Ma, remember when I was a little girl, you used to feed me rice pudding and tea and crackers when I had a tummy ache? And ginger ale, too, and you used to tell me stories about far away lands and how one day a prince charming would come for me and I’d live happily ever after. Do you remember, Ma?”
Alex rubbed the pudding cup over his nose and mouth.
“Ma?”
“I don’t know, I suppose I did. Why are you bringing this up now?”
Irene put her hands on the sides of her cheeks. “I went to see Father Kiernan this morning.”
Ida wiped Alex’s mouth with a checkered napkin. “That nincompoop? What in the world did you want with him?”
“Because, Ma, you always told me that no matter what happened, you were always supposed to be able to tell a priest your problems and he would give you good advice, or comfort, or understanding, no matter what you did, but Ma, I couldn’t go through with it.”
“Well, at least that was sensible. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, Kiernan is an idiot. Now Father Delaney, bless his soul, now there was a priest you could talk to.” Ida remembered the day she sobbed her heart out to Father Delaney after her son, her precious little boy James, had taken ill and died of a blood infection when he was just four. What kind of evil God would do that, she asked him, why would God sear her soul like that, and although she couldn’t recall what Delaney had said that soothed her, she remembered the mellifluous sound of his voice.
“Ma, don’t you want to know why I almost went to see a priest?”
Alex made the sign of the cross.
Ida said, “What’s he doing?”
“Never mind him for a second.”
“Irene, what is wrong with you?”
“Abe is cheating on me, Ma. Some woman named Delia.”
Alex said, “Delia.”
“I don’t know who she is and I don’t care. Alex must have overheard something Abe said, that’s why he keeps repeating her name.”
“So he’s cheating on you? What a surprise.”
“I was going ask Father Kiernan how I could get the marriage annulled.”
“Annulled?” Ida laughed through her nose. “Oh no, annulment is out of the question. Think of the boys, Irene. Think of your upbringing.”
“But what am I gonna do, Ma? I can’t live like this.”
Ida considered telling her daughter, I knew this day would come, I knew you’d come running to me with your pack of troubles, the whole kit and caboodle, I told you this is what you’d get for marrying out of the true faith, and to a Jew, yet. But beneath the streaking tears, this was her daughter after all, her little girl, her only child, looking as frightened as she did during summer thunderstorms, when she would cower against her skirts, and so Ida began in an unaccustomed softer tongue.
“First of all, Irene, settle down, you’re upsetting the baby. Here, wipe your face.” She handed Alex’s napkin to her. “Now, you listen to me. I’m sure you want to do the most sinful things to him. It’s only natural. And it would serve him right. Men are the way they are, and there’s no changing their swinish nature. Your father, may he rest in peace, was no exception.”
Irene sniffed. “Daddy?”
“Yes, your dear Daddy. He had some floozy in Aspinwall. He thought he could hide it from me—they all do—but I knew. A woman always knows. Come here.” She put her arm around Irene’s shoulders for the briefest of moments. “But now listen to me. You have to stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re not the first woman in this situation and you won’t be the last. You need to do what I did.” The words of Father Delaney came rushing back to her. “You must perish murderous thoughts from your mind. You must rise above it. You must be better than he is. And sad to say, of course you can’t leave him. For lots of reasons. First, it’s against the church. And what if you did? You’d be on your own, and who in God’s creation is going to marry a woman with three young boys? You might as well have leprosy, that’s how close single men will come to you.”
“So what do I do?”
“Think about it, Irene. Let him know who’s boss. See how he likes cold dinners and colder sheets.” She poured tea for her daughter and herself and added a shot of Irish whiskey to each cup. “Here’s to better days, daughter.” Her double chin shook a little as she took a deep swallow.
*
The door to number six swung open as soon as he knocked.
“Look at you, Mr. Abraham Miller. Look at you with those big brown eyes.”
“Hi, Delia.”
“What you gonna do, stand in the doorway? Come over here.”
Delia’s dark bangs clung to her forehead. She wore her New York City hat and a red silky robe that hung down below her ankles, so that Abe couldn’t tell if she were wearing those dark stockings with the seams up the backs, but he sure hoped so.
On the far wall of the flat was a glass and mirror breakfront, her mother’s, with a variety of porcelain figurines, also her mother’s, on the shelves. In the center of the room, over a faux oriental carpet, was a round coffee table with a fringed tablecloth and a photograph of Delia’s parents, sitting ramrod straight, three feet apart on a large stuffed sofa. Next to it was another photo, an eight-by-ten of Delia as a little girl in a buckskin dress, sitting on a pinto pony.
Abe said, “Nice place.”
Delia imitated his voice. “Nice place? That’s all you got to say to me after all this time?”
“You look good, Dee.”
She twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “Damn right I do. So what are you doing all the way over there? Come over here.” She tightened the sash of her robe so that her breasts rounded against the material. “You nervous or something? You look like you got the heebie-jeebies.”
“No, I’m just…you know.”
“Relax, Abe, I won’t bite. Unless you want me to.”
Abe grinned. It was going to be all right. “That’s some nightgown.”
“You like it?” She spun around. “Criminy Dutch, you men can be so weird sometimes. I thought you’d be all over me by now.” She turned her back to Abe. She took a cigarette from a glass box on the table. Before she could put it to her lips, she watched Abe’s hands slip over her breasts from behind. She pressed her hands over his, squeezing and massaging. She ground her buttocks against the front of his trousers, up and down, then in tight circles, her grip on his hands never relaxing. Abe thrust himself against her, and she moved her hips in rhythm. She pulled his right hand into her mouth and sucked his fingers. “Now, this is more like the Abe I know. You like that, don’t you? Did you miss me?”
Abe grunted like a Neanderthal in heat. The sound excited her. Abe was a real man, muscle and rough whiskers, not like that prissy pants creep Devon, who was like a fancy dessert, and she was a meat and potatoes kind of gal.
“Does your wife do this for you, does she do things for you like I do, does she?”
The chapel bells at Glory Episcopal Church chimed one o’clock. Delia pulled Abe’s hands between her thighs and clamped them. “Does she do this for you? Does she?”
Abe mumbled something about never, never.
She pushed back hard against his thrusts. “Well, well, Mr. Man.” She turned and ran her hand against the front of his pants. “What do have we here?”
“You know what it is.”
She ran her fingernail over his fly. “Did you miss me?”
“Ever since I heard you come back from New York, you were all I could think of. Hell, even before I knew you was back, not a day went by I didn’t think of you. But I figured it was over between us, that you were gone for good, and here I was, a married man with three boys.”
“You should have left that pill years ago.” She stepped away. “So don’t ask me to feel sorry for you.”
It hurt Abe to think that maybe it was true, his wife was a bitter pill now, and yet there had been a time before the boys were born, it seemed so long ago, when Irene had been playful, provocative and so pretty. But here he was with Delia Novak, and wasn’t that the truth. “All I’m saying is, well, compared to my life, you have it free and easy, you come and go as you please to New York and such, you have no responsibilities, you have no one to answer to.”
Delia sat in a chair and crossed her legs, exposing most of her thigh. Her stockings gleamed in the lamplight.
“We all have to answer to ourselves.” She lit the cigarette. “But let’s not fight, handsome.” She crossed the room and sat on his lap, grinding into his crotch until she could feel him rise again. “You know, I met this man in New York, a real gentlemen, with fingernails cleaner than mine, but the whole time I thought, he’s sweet, he’s charming, he says all the right things, but he don’t make my knees feel like jelly the way you do. Maybe it’s your equipment, or maybe you remind me of my father, God rest his soul. He had a big one, too.”
“What?”
“Just kidding. How the hell would I know that?” She winked. “All I know is you get me hot and bothered, but Abe, listen, I didn’t come back to Pittsburgh to be the other woman for the rest of my life. You ain’t the only Joe in the world. I could find another one, just like that, at The Wheel or that hash house in Oakland where I work. You know damn well I could. So I gotta know, sweetheart, before you get any more of this,” she said, pressing into him a little harder, “I gotta know what your intentions are. That’s just the way it is. A girl has to protect herself these days.”
“It ain’t so easy as you think. I could leave Irene tomorrow if it was just her and me, but you have to realize, I got responsibilities to my sons. And the little one, Alex. I could never leave him.”
She told him briefly about her encounter with Irene and Malkin at the Home Town Tavern. “Is he as tiny as ever?”
Yes, Abe said, he still was, but now he was awfully smart. He knew all the names of the players on the Pittsburgh Pirates. He could count, forward and backward. And now, it seemed as if he could read. And even though he never seemed to grow any bigger, all of a sudden his arms grew several inches overnight, and one night he said her name out loud,
Delia
.