North River

by Pete Hamill

  “This is Rose Verga,” Delaney said. “And you’ve already met my grandson, Carlos.”

  “Can he pitch a few innings of relief?”

  “Soon. He’s a southpaw.”

  “That’s the only kinda relief pitcher.”

  Delaney smiled and turned to Rose, who seemed puzzled at men talking baseball when a corpse was about to enter the center aisle.

  She whispered: “The Irish are all crazy.”

  Now there was a greater stir, and heads turned to see Will Rogers coming down the aisle alone, tanned, lean, dressed in a dark business suit. His rolling gait said that he was a star, but there was no expression on his face and no vanity. Up front an usher was signaling him to come forward, and Rogers slipped into the same pew that had welcomed McCormack.

  “That’s that cowboy guy,” Rose whispered. “The guy with the rope.”

  “That’s him.”

  The boy didn’t look at Rogers. He was growing drowsy with the odor of burnt wax and the heat rising from many bodies, most of all from Rose. He put his head on her shoulder. Then came George M. Cohan, short and pugnacious, in the McGraw mold. He tried to walk with the solemnity required by the occasion, but still slipped into his old Broadway bounce. Delaney remembered that day in the first months of the war in France when the New Yorkers were marching toward the fighting and someone started singing “Give My Regards to Broadway.” And then they all were singing, slowly, like a dirge. Asking someone, anyone, to remember them to Herald Square, and to tell all the gang at Forty-second Street that they would soon be there. Some of them were still in France, forever.

  As he turned to look at Cohan, Delaney saw others looking at him, and at Rose. People who knew his father. Downtown people. Two women whispered, then averted their eyes. He saw another vaguely familiar face three rows behind them. Then the McGraw family entered the main aisle, but Delaney glanced again at the man three rows back. Long ago, before the war, before Johns Hopkins, before Vienna, the man was a regular at Big Jim’s club and had gone often to the Polo Grounds with the Tammany braves. With them, but not one of them. He looked exactly the same now as he did then. What was his name? Where had he been? Cormac. Cormac something. A face unmarked by time. Some kind of newspaper guy. Cormac . . .

  The pallbearers were suddenly at the entrance, the coffin on their shoulders. Incense thickened the air. The organ boomed its announcement of requiem. Everybody stood. Rose glanced at Delaney with sad, distracted eyes. A few more women looked at Delaney and Rose, and she must have seen the disdain in their eyes. She held the awakened Carlito, one hand on his small back. And John McGraw was carried toward the altar.

  Through the ceremony, Rose seemed to shrink away from Delaney, slumping in her tight seat while the tones of Latin made Carlito doze. Delaney stared at his hands, as always unable to pray. Carlito’s eyes closed. Delaney squeezed Rose’s arm, cradling the warmth moving into his fingers. She looked at him from under the black brim of her hat, surprised, her eyes wary and glistening. Then, on the altar, the mass was over. Ita missa est. They all stood, Flanagan wheezing, the boy stirring. The oaken kneelers were tight and unforgiving against the arches of their feet, as they inhaled the scented air. The pallbearers again lifted the coffin and slowly carried it down the center aisle, with the McGraw family and his closest friends trailing behind. McCormack. Cohan. Rogers. The organist played a muted farewell. Through the open doors, they could hear bagpipes skirling, voices of vanished Celtic kings. Carlito opened his eyes in a sleepy way. It had been a long morning.

  “Let them all go out,” Delaney whispered to Rose. “Then we’ll find a taxi.”

  “No. no. It costs too much.”

  “We’ll take a cab.”

  A woman in the row behind them touched Delaney’s arm. She was about fifty, wearing a suitably discreet hat and a coat with a fur collar.

  “You’re Jim Delaney, am I right?”

  Delaney smiled thinly. “That’s me.”

  “I met you at your father’s club, a long time ago, when we still lived downtown. I’m Janet Bradford. I was a Muldoon then. Before the war.”

  “Of course,” Delaney said, not remembering her at all. He offered a hand and she shook it. “Nice to see you again,” he said.

  She turned to Rose: “And who is this, may I ask?”

  “This is Rose Verga, and that’s my grandson,” he said.

  Rose nodded. The woman looked at her with the eyes of a prosecutor.

  “Buon giorno,” the woman said.

  “Good morning to you too,” Rose said, and turned to look at the empty altar.

  Flanagan was pulling on his coat and smiled at Delaney as he edged toward the aisle from the emptying pew. Delaney was relieved to turn his back on Janet Bradford, the former Muldoon.

  “Good to see you again,” Flanagan said.

  “Good to see you too,” Delaney said. “Thanks for making room for us.”

  “Hey, the room was there. We just hadda scrunch up a little. Try to come around the club sometime.”

  “I will,” Delaney said. “When I get some time. You know, the patients await me. Right now we’re gonna wait for the crowd to leave.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Flanagan said, and shook hands. Carlito began making squirming sounds. Delaney hugged the boy. “We’ll go home soon,” he said.

  “Home,” the boy said.

  A soft rain was falling as the taxi carried them down Fifth Avenue. It was a spring rain, falling straight from the grayness of sky, with no wind driving it from the North River. Rose had pushed herself against the window, holding the boy’s hand. She did not look at the streets.

  “How do they feel?” Delaney said, nodding at her boots.

  “Not so bad,” Rose said.

  Carlito looked at her, as if trying to unravel the meaning of her tone. She did not move, and the boy watched the unreeling streets: the rain, the trolley cars, the other taxis and cars, the few pedestrians. Delaney realized that this was Carlito’s first ride in a car since coming to New York. Perhaps his first ride ever. Occasionally the boy looked hard at the driver, the graying back of his head, the wheel he held in his hands.

  Rose looked at nothing, her jaw slack.

  “Is there something bothering you beyond your feet?” Delaney said.

  “No.”

  “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

  SPRING CAME ON SUNDAY, 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 brea
d 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.