Water Street (10 page)

Outside there was a thin dusting of snow from last night, almost like the flour in the bakery.

Bird loved this sweeping job. Mrs. Daley paid her whatever she had in her black purse. Half went into the farm box. That was only fair; everyone else gave what they could for the farm.

“Someday,” Mama always said, “our own little piece of land.” And Da, with his arms around her waist, told her he'd pick cabbages for her, or roses that grew against a rock wall.

And Hughie used to say, “Ma, you'll never leave Brooklyn, you'll never leave your patients.”

She'd laugh. “By that time Bird will take care of all of them for me.”

Bird stopped. There'd be no patients for her. Now she realized Mama hadn't mentioned nursing to her, not once, since the day of the milkman's boy.

But outside it was crisp, the sun was shining, and she looked up at the sky trying not to see Mama's face in her mind. Instead there was the sweeping money.

She had her own secret savings. It was hard to hide money in that small apartment. Annie was like a broom herself, sweeping up every single hidden morsel she could find. But Bird had fooled her. Whenever she was alone during the week, she'd stand on a chair and drop a penny onto the very top of the kitchen cabinet. Today there'd be another one to roll around and then lie still, waiting for her to scoop it up. Because someday, she promised herself, she'd have enough money to buy her first book.

She took a few steps through the snow to sweep the last of the sand into the street, and moved backward, only to collide with Officer Regan, the street cop. She righted herself and saw the anger in his eyes. “I'm sorry,” she began, “really sorry.”

“Never mind tilting along like a windmill,” he said. “I have to tell you about your brother.”

“Hughie.” She breathed it. Always Hughie. Always something to worry about.

“I have him down in the station house,” Regan said. “His face is a mess. He was fighting, with that gang of his. They knocked someone through a window.” Regan lifted his hat to run his finger across the deep red line it had left on his forehead. “Your parents will have to come down for him. And someone will have to pay for the window.”

Bird's fist went up to her mouth. She could feel her teeth against her knuckles. His face was so close to hers, she could
see the hairs of his beard, black mixed with gray. “I know all about him,” Regan said.

Bird wanted to sink down on the dirty ground.
Hughie, dear Hughie.

The door to Sullivan's opened with the tinkling of its little bell, and Annie came outside. “What is it, Bird?”

Bird shook her head.

“Your brother is in the station house—” Regan began.

Annie raised her hand. “Whatever it is, my father will take care of it.” She angled around them, leaving him open-mouthed. Who else would dare ignore him like that?

She looked at Bird. “If it were up to me,” she said, “I'd leave him right there.”

“You have to come for dinner,” Annie told Thomas as he passed her on the stairs. “I've made something new for dessert. A crisp with winter apples.”

He turned around and followed her into the Mallons' apartment, into the wonderful smell. Pop had gone out hours ago, after telling him that he had the chance for a new job. The old job as a weigher had lasted only a few months.

Thomas sat on the edge of Hughie's bed, leaving the table for the rest of the Mallons.

Bird came in from her bedroom, and then he heard the heavy steps on the stairs. He saw her glance at Annie, and both of them looked toward the door.

Mr. Mallon came in back of Hughie. “Sit down and listen to me,” he said. His face was flushed but his voice soft as always, and Thomas could hear the sorrow in it. “This has
to be the end of the fighting. You're destroying your mother, you're destroying me.”

Thomas wondered how he could slide out of the kitchen without anyone noticing, but Annie put her hand on his shoulder and shook her head.

Bird was taking down the plates and spreading them around the table. He saw that her hands were trembling, and Mrs. Mallon, who was bringing food to the table, had tears in her eyes.

“Bad enough to have to pay for a window—” Mr. Mallon said as they sat.

“I'll pay for it,” Hughie broke in. “Don't worry about that. I don't need you to give me money.”

“But the disgrace of going down to the station house to bring you home.”

“You didn't have to come for me,” Hughie said. “They'd have let me out sooner or later.”

“Yes,” Annie said with bitterness. “You should have left him there to think about things.”

Hughie glanced up at her. “You get harder every day, Annie.”

“How can you talk to your sister like that?” Mr. Mallon raised his hand and then dropped it on the table.

“I won't talk to anyone.” Hughie stood up and his chair went over.

“If you think you're going out this night, you're wrong.” Mr. Mallon stepped back to stand against the door. “You won't get past me.”

Thomas looked down at the plate Annie had put in his hand. He could feel his heart thumping. What was Hughie
going to do? He was younger and stronger than Mr. Mallon and they all knew it.

“I'm not going out tonight,” Hughie said. “I just want some peace myself—nowhere to go but this bed in the kitchen and the bit of space in the cellar. I hate it, all of it.”

Mr. Mallon stood aside and Thomas listened as Hughie went down the steps. Thomas ate, feeling as if everyone's eyes were on him, as if everyone was wondering what he was doing there. No one seemed to notice him, though.

Mr. Mallon barely touched his dinner. Finally he stood up and put on his cap and jacket. “I'm going for a walk, Nory,” he said. “Do you mind?”

“Go.” She reached out and touched his arm. “We've been through worse. We'll get through this, you'll see.”

Thomas waited until Mr. Mallon was gone; then he put his plate on the counter and slipped out. “Thank you,” he said, not looking at any of them.

Thomas had never been in the cellar before. It smelled damp, and as he passed the coal bin, he could smell the dust of it. He went slowly, not sure if Hughie would mind. Hadn't he acted as if he wanted to get away from everybody?

But Thomas thought about being alone. Sometimes that was worse than anything.

He heard Hughie punching at the bag in the small room in back, and then there was silence. He passed the storage rooms, and saw the crack of light at the end of the dark passageway. He didn't want to call out, but still he wanted Hughie to know he was there, so he made sure to bang into the cans that held the ashes from the furnace.

“Is that you, Thomas?” Hughie called, and shoved the door open with his foot.

“How did you know?”

“I thought you'd be along somehow.”

A bench stood along the wall, with cracked leather on top, and Thomas slid onto it. Now that he was there he almost felt foolish. There was nothing he could say. But maybe he wouldn't have to. Maybe he could just sit there for a few minutes.

Hughie gave the bag one last punch, then banged it against the wall with his elbow and sank down on the mat on the floor. “Why do I do it? Is that what you want to ask?”

Thomas shook his head. “No, I never thought about that.”

“I've thought about it forever. If I were on a farm somewhere, working in a field, I wouldn't care how hard I'd have to work.” Hughie put his head back against the wall. “Do you know what it was like working in that caisson under the river? Closed in, knowing the water was just inches away, deep underneath.” He shuddered. “But I thought if I had the money—”

Thomas swallowed, thinking of what it would be like to write about that, almost suffocating in that place, afraid of the water coming in, but trying to hold on for one more hour, one more day.

“The disease finished me,” Hughie said. “I couldn't go back. I knew I might die of it.” He spread his large hands. “A coward.”

“I couldn't do it either,” Thomas said. “Never.”

“I think you could,” Hughie said. “I think you could do anything you had to do.”

No one had ever said anything like that to him. Was this what it would have been like if he'd had a brother? He'd write those words down:
“I think you could do anything you had to do.”

He'd remember it when Pop didn't come in for half the night, for when he had to go looking for him.

“Now listen, Thomasy. Isn't that what your father calls you? I'm going to fight until someone stops me, or bashes in my head. I'm going to fight until I get the money for a farm.”

“Your mother wants a farm,” Thomas said.

“Ma doesn't want a farm, not really. She wants to stay here and do exactly what she's doing.”

Thomas nodded. Maybe that was true.

Hughie stood up and punched the bag. “Come on, I'll show you how to do this.”

Thomas stood up and tried, surprised at how hard it was. He kept working at it, though.

“Just don't tell my little sister you're doing this,” Hughie said. “What a fierce one she is.”

Thomas looked over his shoulder. “Do you think I don't know that?”

They both laughed, and after a while Thomas felt the rhythm of it, one fist and then the other, the bag moving back and forth between them, back and forth.

Bird was sitting at the kitchen table reading Sister Raymond's book when Annie came out of the bedroom. “Look what I found in the bottom drawer.”

It was the cure book. Bird had shoved it in the bottom dresser drawer weeks ago. But Annie was waiting to see how pleased she'd be.

Annie would never be pretty, but standing in the doorway smiling, with the blue shawl she'd just knitted thrown around her shoulders, she must have looked like Aunt Celia had when she was young, and sometimes Aunt Celia was beautiful.

“Thank you,” Bird said, as if she'd been wondering where the book was all this time, but that didn't seem enough. “I didn't remember where I put it.”

She could feel Mama's eyes on her as she riffled through
it: dill weed, foxglove, garlic and honey for a cough. And on one page she'd written two Irish cures: coal from a turf fire held under the nose stopped sneezing, and praying ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys healed shingles, a painful skin ailment.

She read it aloud to Annie, and Mama laughed. “Having the wee folk on your side is supposed to be good for any disease, especially the impossible ones.”

Bird could feel the color come into her face:
impossible.

Mama waited until Annie was down the stairs on her way to do the shopping. Then she pulled out a chair and sat next to her at the table.

“We could do another one,” Mama said. “Just in case you change your mind.”

It was the closest Mama had come to saying anything to her about nursing in all this time.

She looked up quickly, but Mama went on. “How about onion for bee sting?”

Head down, Bird wrote as Mama told her how it was used: cut the onion until it oozed, and it was the ooze rubbed on the spot that took the sting out.

“The bee probably dies of the smell if he stays around,” Bird said, trying to make Mama laugh.

But what good did it do her to know how to take the pain out of a bee sting? What good was it to know that a warm flannel placed on the neck helped the pain of a sore throat?

It wasn't enough. None of it was enough.

Mama's hand was on her wrist.

She felt the tears on her cheeks, and kept staring down at the book, until it seemed as if they'd been sitting there forever.

“I wanted …,” she began at last, spreading her hands out.

“Don't you think I know what's in your head?” Mama leaned forward. “We all have doubts. Always.”

Bird gave a shake of her head. “I can't.”

“What can I say to you, child?” Mama said. “If this isn't what you want, there are so many other things you can do. It's a big world out there; nothing's impossible. It's not like the Old Country, where we spent our days searching for food, when that was the only thing on our minds from the time we awoke in the morning until the sun went down in the sea.”

Bird closed her eyes. She had a quick picture in her mind of Mama walking through the streets, the medicine bag over her arm. “I'll never know enough.”

Mama sighed. “None of us will ever know enough, and some problems can't be cured. We just have to do the best we can—”

There was a quick rap on the door.

Mama didn't let go of her hand. “I will tell you this, Bird. I will never be disappointed in what you do. But I think you have a wonderful way with patients. I think—”

The knock came again.

“Thomas,” they said together. Bird had completely forgotten she had promised to walk to the bridge with him this afternoon.

Worse, it had been her own idea.

She reached back to turn the knob, then went for her coat. As she stood in the kitchen doorway pulling on her hat, Thomas leaned over Mama's plants. “This one's growing strong.”

“Geranium,” Mama said.

Bird pulled on her coat, feeling sadness deep in her chest, remembering the day the baby had been born. She'd never have that again.

Thomas was still talking to Mama. He would have stood there talking to her for a half hour and Mama wouldn't have minded one bit.

Bird took a good look at him. His shoes were scuffed much worse than hers. Had he even combed his hair today? Two buttons were missing from his coat, and he held the whole thing together with one arm crossed over the other.

It didn't take much to use a needle and thread. But then she smiled at herself for being such a know-it-all. Last night she'd tried crocheting a collar, and Annie'd had to rip out the first three rows of the lace because she had made so many mistakes.

She sighed. “Just let me get the button jar. I'll sew on those buttons.”

“Never mind,” he said, embarrassed, but she made a face. She told herself she was going to die of the heat in her own coat as she rummaged in the jar for two of Hughie's old buttons and sewed them on. Where was his mother? Where was that Lillie, taking herself through Europe with
her pearls and her buffed nails while her son was such a mess?