North River (19 page)

“Gran’pa, look! El sol!”

“Yes,” Delaney said, smiling too. “El sol. The sun.”

“The sun!”

Delaney could feel winter seeping out of him. He fought against tears.

They stopped to celebrate in a hot dog place on Sheridan Square. First they scrubbed their hands in the men’s room and dried them with sheets of the
New York Times
stacked above the bowl. They went to the counter, and Delaney lifted Carlito onto a stool, and the counterman asked what they wanted. Two hot dogs, Delaney said. Mustard in a bowl. Sure thing, the man said. This time Carlito insisted on trying mustard on his hot dog, instead of his fingertip, as if it were a sign of manhood. The counterman placed a bowl of mustard before him, with a wooden stick to be used for dipping. Delaney tried to help the boy, but Carlito insisted on doing it himself. He splashed mustard on the bear and on his own coat.

“Don’t worry, boy,” Delaney said, wiping at the mustard with a handkerchief. The boy looked embarrassed. “I mean it, boy: Don’t worry.”

Carlito made a face at the first taste of mustard, but was able to chew and make a face at the same time. As he worked his way along the length of the hot dog, the boy seemed to enjoy it more. He looked slyly at Delaney, who was consuming his own hot dog, as if they were engaged in a conspiracy. To hell with Rose.

Then a man was beside him. The bartender from Club 65. The man who had vanished from Washington Square.

“Hello, Doc,” he said.

“Hello. What’s your name again?”

“It don’t matter. Whatta ya hear from Eddie Corso?”

“Not a word.”

“Mr. Botts, the boss, well, he’s still very interested.”

“Let me ask you something, mister. You been following me?”

“Nah, I was just passin’ by. It’s a nice day. The sun is shining. A good day for a walk.”

“That’s what we’re going to do too. Just walk in the sun. Give my regards to Mr. Botts.”

He nodded to the man, took the boy by the hand, and walked out. He didn’t look back. They walked west toward the North River. The sun followed them, brightening every street, casting long sharp black shadows under the El as they crossed, bringing vivid color from the bricks of the buildings.
These fuckers are everywhere. Feds and gangsters. Jesus Christ . . .
More tenement windows were being opened, welcoming the breeze, letting it scour the sour winter air of the flats. Kids were arriving in noisy battalions. Running, leaping, playing tag, throwing balls and catching them. One kid burst out of the door with what was called a pusho, a scooter made of a milk box nailed to a two-by-four, with a dismembered roller skate serving as wheels. Carlito watched them all. They were offering him lessons in what it was to be a boy.

Delaney looked at the Cottrell house, but there were no signs of life. He thought about ringing the bell and explaining what had happened to Cottrell and how the ambulance had taken him to Bellevue. He didn’t. They were probably at the hospital now, on watch. Like hundreds of others all over the city on this day when the sun had returned from exile.

They entered under the stoop, the boy whipping off his coat. He called Rose’s name in the hallway, but there was no answer. He wanted to show her his books.

“Later,” Delaney said. “Now we take a nap.”

“Okay. I like a nap.”

He woke abruptly from a formless dream and saw the clock: four forty-five. Still Sunday. He remembered the man in the gray suit, and the bartender from Club 65. His breath kept coming in short panicky gasps. He remembered Mr. Cottrell and wondered if he was alive or dead. He rose and went to the bathroom and stepped into the shower and scrubbed himself. He dried, then dressed quickly, in rough clothes. When he opened the door, he could hear Carlito talking below to Rose. She was back from wherever she went on Sundays. The aroma of garlic and oil rose through the house. He hurried down to the kitchen.

She looked at him and held up Carlito’s coat.

“Mustard on his coat!” she said with a laugh. “I know what that means!”

He laughed too.

“
Hot
dogs!” she said, and now Carlito was giggling in a delighted way. The bear was seated on the fourth chair. Rose draped the coat on the empty chair.

“Rosa,” the boy said. “We see the sun.”

With that, she put her hands up, palms out.

“The sun, it’s beautiful,” she said. “It makes everything grow.”

They ate veal and pasta and bread, Delaney joking about how the hot dogs rose off the grill and flew into their mouths. Veal, he said, was definitely better. There was good color in Rose’s cheeks. She moved more easily now on her feet, and never mentioned the killer boots or murderous women at the funeral of John McGraw. Delaney cleared the table and washed the dishes while Rose helped Carlito feed imaginary food to the bear. When they finished eating, Delaney sat back in his chair. He said nothing about the man from Club 65. Or the man in the gray suit. He didn’t even mention what had happened to Mr. Cottrell.

“Okay,” Delaney said. “Some work to do.”

She looked at him in an apprehensive way, as he moved into the shed that led to the yard. He lifted the old Arrow bicycle and carried it through the kitchen into the hall where patients sat in the mornings. Rose and Carlito followed.

“We’ll need some newspapers, so we don’t dirty the floor,” he said. “And I have to find the oil in the shed . . .”

Rose produced some old newspapers while Delaney found the oil and then started tearing away tape and covering from the bicycle. Carlito ripped at the wrappings too. Then the naked bicycle stood there, as if shrinking into shyness. For twenty minutes, the three of them wiped away the dust of winter and spots of rust, using sandpaper and oil, and Delaney then oiled the gears.

“What a beauty,” Rose whispered. “Che bello.”

“Can you ride?”

“Of course. I can’t drive a car or a bus, but a bicycle, sì!”

“Hold this steady.”

Delaney lifted Carlito into the wide basket fastened to the front handlebars. It usually held his bag when he went on house calls. The boy looked uncertain and then smiled broadly when he fit perfectly, with his small legs draped over the front.

“He can be the chief!” Rose said. “Like on a fire engine.”

“The navigator,” Delaney said. “He can hold my bag in his lap.”

“Yeah, a navigator like Cristoforo Colombo.”

Delaney thought: Sailing without charts, right into the future.

That night he slept without dreams and awoke before six to a new sound.

Birds.

Unseen, but out there for sure. Their chatter celebrating the coming day with calls and whistles. Some must have worried about the presence of bullying seagulls. But mainly they issued songs of joy. Away off he heard the baritone horn of a liner, coming into the North River to one of the Midtown piers. Delaney felt the way he did every morning when he was twenty.

He shaved and showered and dressed. At Sacred Heart when he was a boy, they celebrated the first Friday of each month. But the central figure was always a dead man on a cross. They should have celebrated Mondays. They should have celebrated birdsong. They should have sung in Latin about foghorns.

Rose still slept, but the boy was up, and Delaney told him to dress.

“We’re going for a ride,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later, Delaney wheeled the bicycle into the areaway at the front of the house, with the bundled-up boy beside him. To the east in Brooklyn, the sun was struggling ro rise. Most snow was gone, and he saw that the yard was carpeted with dead leaves and litter and needed sweeping. That would have to wait. He placed clamps on his trouser bottoms and opened the front gate and wheeled the bicycle to the sidewalk. He lifted Carlito into the seat.

“Hold on, big fella,” he said.

And began to pedal. Slowly at first, with the back of the boy’s head before and below his own. Struggling for balance, finding it, then pedaling harder. He saw some silhouetted men waving as he passed, and he waved back. Then he saw the light burning in Mr. Nobiletti’s shoe repair store. Getting an early start. He pulled over and went in with the boy.

Mr. Nobiletti nodded, his balding head shiny from exertion, his lips clamped upon nails, which he removed one at a time to hammer into the fresh sole of a boot on his steel last.

“Good morning, Mr. N.”

The old man nodded.

“This is my grandson, Carlos.”

Mr. Nobiletti looked down and smiled, still hammering. Then the final nail was driven. He smiled. He had hard white teeth.

“Buon giorno, Dottore.”

“Good morning to you too, Mr. N. Listen, when you have a chance, can you come over? I want to undress the olive tree.”

The shoemaker looked out, and smiled.

“T’morrow, hokay?”

“Tomorrow.”

Back in the street, there was still no automobile traffic, and Delaney felt his blood beginning to move. From his heart, through his legs, making a round-trip back to his heart. He felt young. He could not see the boy’s face, but saw his small hands holding the rim of the basket and his head turning as new things appeared. He could smell the bakery before he saw it. The wonderful bakery of Mr. Ferraro, from Napoli, even older now than Delaney. Delaney remembered walking these streets as an altar boy, heading for the six-thirty mass at Sacred Heart, struggling with the demands of his fast when the odor of fresh bread and rolls filled the dark air and tempted him to sin. On this fresh morning, he turned right and saw the light spilling from the bakery, with Reilly’s newsstand beside it, and he could see Mr. Lanzano’s ice wagon pulled up in front, with nobody on the seat. He was making a delivery to the store. Oil for the boiler. Or ice for the icebox. And almost surely he was buying a fresh roll and a thick coffee at the counter.

“Stay here, Carlito,” he said, pushing down the kickstand. “I’ll be right back.”

Mr. Lanzano smiled as he entered, and said buon giorno, and sipped his tiny cup of the darkest coffee on the West Side. Even darker than the coffee of Rose Verga. Delaney returned the greeting in Italian, and the image of Rose scribbled through him. The dark glossy hair. The fine scar. Mr. Ferraro came from the back room, where the ovens were, sweaty and balding, with a towellike sash across his brow. The scent of fresh bread was like a delirious floury perfume, the best aroma in the city. Delaney held up two fingers, and Ferraro smiled and slid two fresh loaves into a bag and handed them over. Delaney paid and went out, wishing both men a lovely day.

He handed the loaves to Carlito, who laid them across his lap. Then he went next door to the newsstand and took the newspapers off the stand, waved at Reilly in the dark interior so that the delivery boy would be saved a trip. Then he mounted the bicycle and they were off.

All the way back to the house on Horatio Street, Carlito was silent, hugging the warm bread with one hand, holding on with the other, newspapers stuffed against his back. He was looking at the world that was arriving after the long winter. So was Delaney. Winter was the worst time, for patients, for people trapped in the dirty air of tenements, for coughs and colds and worse problems, and for boys. But they were moving into a better place together. To hell with the Depression, and Hitler, and the troubles in Spain. To hell with Frankie Botts and the man in the gray coat. To hell with Grace. To hell with Molly. He would forget about things he could not cure. It was spring.

Delaney lifted Carlito from the basket and leaned the bike against the wall in the waiting area. He handed Carlito the fresh bread. But when they went into the kitchen, Rose was there in her flowered bathrobe, leaning with her back to the sink. She was angry.

“You don’t leave a note!” she said. “You don’t wake me up! I think maybe Carlito is sick and you take him to the hospital. Worse: I think you are kidnapped by some gangster!”

“We wanted to surprise you, Rose.”

“Some surprise!”

He thought: Please don’t be a pain in the ass, Rose. Carlito handed her the bread, looking troubled, and she took the loaves and calmed him by rubbing his head.

“Thank you, Carlito,” she said. “What a good boy.”

“Eat, Rosa!” the boy said. “We all eat!”

The boy smiled, and so did Rose.

“Eat!” Delaney said. He laid the newspapers on the table. “And later,
read.
”

The day moved quickly, with fewer patients in the morning and house calls made easier by the bicycle. He used a chain and lock to secure the bicycle to the fences of the tenements, and noticed the odor of garbage rising from the dented metal cans. Patients were more cheerful. From Reilly’s candy store, he called a friend at Bellevue to check the condition of Mr. Cottrell. The doctor came back after a few minutes. “Critical, but stable. He should live.” He called St. Vincent’s too, to check on some patients and to tell Zimmerman that he would start grand rounds again in a few days and they could have lunch when everything was done. Delaney felt as he did when he was an intern himself: filled with endless energy, ready to help anyone feel better.

He made it to Tommy Chin’s around four, when it was still light. The wounded girl had healed. The others were clean. Liann looked unhappy, as usual, and Tommy Chin said business was picking up.

“It must be the weather,” he said. “It fills them with romance.”

He rode home on the bicycle, through the thickening traffic, wary of trucks. When he turned into Horatio Street he saw Callahan, the FBI agent, talking to an older man in a tweed coat and hat. The man who wore the gray coat to Washington Square. Delaney stopped, lifted the bicycle to the sidewalk, and walked to them.

“Are you guys looking for the unemployment office?” Delaney said.

“Hello, Doctor,” Callahan said. He looked uneasy. “You’re home early.”

“Maybe you’re here for the view?”

“Come on, Doctor,” Callahan said in an amiable way. “You know why we’re here.” The man in the tweed coat glanced around at the street, which was lively now with kids and unemployed men, with women staring down from open windows in the tenements.

Callahan squinted and said: “You heard from your daughter?”

“No. Have you?”