Water Street (3 page)

She had to laugh, and so did he. But Mr. Neary was outside hollering to two boys on the corner to give a hand. Bird and the new boy went back to help, one on each end of the mattress, dragging it up the stairs.

“Filthy stairs,” someone said.

“Not so bad,” she said with some guilt. After all, Mrs. Daley paid her to sweep them down every Saturday.

When they were finished moving everything upstairs, the brown couch in between the windows, a long table with feet like lions in the middle of the room, and the chairs all around, Mr. Neary wandered back and forth between the rooms. He fingered the velvet curtains, left by an earlier tenant, worn to the backing, but still a gorgeous purple color.

She and Thomas sat one on each end of the couch in the living room without much to say to begin with. She ran her hands over her skirt. She knew it was getting late and that she should go, but still—

She peeked at the things he had lined up on the table: a gray feather, a penknife with a white bone handle, and a book he had made himself, almost like her cure book. And real books with leather covers. Ten of them, maybe a dozen. How lucky he was.

At last she began. “Nice view of the new bridge going up from here,” she said. “My father works there. My sister loves to cook, to bake really, and my mother is a healer. Half of Brooklyn knows her.” What else? “My brother, Hughie—” She bit her lip. She didn't want to talk about Hughie. And why had she blurted all that out anyway? She reminded
herself of their kitchen faucet. They'd turn it on and nothing happened. Then when they'd almost given up, water splashed out and out and they had a hard time stopping it.

But Thomas was hardly listening. He took a quick look over his shoulder and she thought he might be embarrassed about his father, who was out of sight, singing “Murphy's Little Back Room.”

He stood up and wandered into the bedroom after his father. Without thinking, she pulled his homemade book an inch closer: pages filled with handwriting, but she didn't have time to read them.

There was a picture of a woman, though, torn out from a magazine.
A beauty called Lillie
, it said. She wore a hat with a plume and a silk gown; pearls the size of marbles were looped around her long neck, and her hands were clasped in front of her.

She really was a beauty.

There was writing scribbled on the bottom. She thought it said
Mother.

He had a mother who looked like that?

But then a door slammed, and Mr. Neary's voice was cut off. Before she could even close the book, Thomas was back in the living room.

She felt her face redden as she pushed the book away, hoping he hadn't seen her looking at his things.

But he pointed to the window. “Stars out there. You're supposed to wish on them.”

“What would you wish?” she asked.

He raised one shoulder, but she could see from the look on his face there was something he wanted.

“I want to be a healer,” she said, “like my mother.” She couldn't wait for it to begin. One more year of school, one long year left before she could go with Mama all the time.

She thought of the little baby.
Mary Bridget.

All her days would be like the day she'd had today.

But Annie was calling from the stairs now. “Bird? Where did you get yourself? It's almost eleven o'clock.”

She put her hand up to her mouth. Eleven, that late. “My sister,” she said. “Five years older. She thinks she's my mother.” She slid off the couch and waved at him over her shoulder on her way out the door.

“So, Thomasy,” Pop said, “a girl downstairs.”

He tried not to grin. “Yes.”

“Same age as you are? Lives right in the apartment below?”

“Yes.”
A girl who swings hands with her mother. Eldrida.

“You might want to clean yourself up a little then. Wash your face once in a while.”

He didn't answer that. He wasn't sure the girl would care about it; he didn't care about it.

There were two bedrooms in the apartment, curtains blocking them off instead of doors. The larger one had a window, the other was smaller and without a window, boiling in summer, but cozy in the winter, and the last tenant had left a picture hanging there where the window might have been.

It showed a lighthouse standing on a jumble of gray rocks
with foamy white waves crashing up on them. But what he really liked about it was the square window three-quarters of the way up the lighthouse, lighted with a splash of yellow paint.

What would it be like to live there in back of that window with the warm candlelight? The waves looked stormy, dangerous, and you'd be up there with the rest of the family, looking down at it all with a fire going in the hearth and a hot stew on the stove.

He stood there running his hand over the frame. He'd leave the big room for Pop and take the one with the lighthouse.

“Have to bring the horse and wagon back to the livery place now,” Pop said.

“I'll go with you.” He could see Pop wasn't that steady on his feet.

Pop waved his hand. “It's been a long day. Stay here then, Thomas, get some sleep for yourself.”

Thomas knew he'd bring the horse to the stable, then take himself back to Gallagher's.

“Listen, Pop,” he said, “don't do that.”

Pop raised his eyebrows. “Have to bring the horse back. We're late as it is. Sweeney is going to carry on about the extra hours; he's going to want more money. But too bad for Sweeney. You can't get blood out of a stone.”

“I'll go with the horse,” Thomas said.

He could see Pop thinking. It was Gallagher's he had in mind, not Sweeney's.

“Ah, Thomasy, you need your sleep, every bit of it. Look at you. You look like a beanstalk back in Granard.”

“There's fighting going on at Gallagher's,” Thomas said. “Bare-knuckle fighting in the back room. It's against the law, you know that. Even to watch.”

“Ah, but I'm going to the stable, to Sweeney's, remember?” Pop's eyes slid away from him.

Thomas swallowed. There was nothing he could do. He listened to Pop's footsteps on the way down the stairs, then took the bag with his clothes from the living room and slid it under the bed in the lighthouse room. Then he heard the sound of voices.

He'd read about old houses with ghosts, but this house wasn't that old, maybe thirty years or so, and he wasn't afraid of ghosts; they were just dead bodies over in Holy Cross or Green-Wood Cemetery. His mother might even be one if she was there. He'd tried to ask Pop more than once, but Pop was hard to pin down. He'd look up at the ceiling, or remember he had something to do in another room, or even whistle a bit of a song.

The sounds were coming from the heat register. He stared at the curlicued iron covering the rectangular space in the floor, and heard something again. Was it laughing? Coming from the apartment downstairs?

He spread himself down on the floor, with his ear on the cold metal. It sounded like the surf crashing onto the shore, not that he'd ever seen the ocean, but he could imagine it from all the books he had read about it.

He heard the girl's voice then.

Bird.

A good name for her. She wasn't a sparrow or songbird, though. She stood so straight, and her face was strong. He
thought of her trying not to laugh, but it had bubbled out of her anyway. He'd put her in one of his stories; he'd do that this week.

He wanted to know what the mother's name might be. He'd find out tomorrow. How wonderful to have a mother with a face like that, with those kind eyes. And the daughter was going to look just like that one day.

What else did he know about them? A father who worked on the bridge, she had said, a brother, and a sister who loved to cook. As hard as he pressed his ear against the register, he couldn't hear what they said, only the sounds, deeper for the father or brother, lighter for the women.

He threw himself on the bed. It was hot in there, the air stale, but he was tired; he'd gotten up early to pack and sweep out the old apartment. His stomach growled. Always a bit of hunger there. But he fell asleep thinking of Bird, and the rest of that family downstairs.

On Monday morning, Mama bustled around dropping potatoes in one pot to boil, and eggs in another. “We'll put them on ice before we leave, and have a cold supper on this hot night.”

“And Annie will be sure to make us a pie.” Bird hummed as she snipped off a couple of aloe shoots for old Mrs. Cunningham's legs. They were going to her apartment at the other end of Water Street to bathe her and make her comfortable.

It was quiet in the kitchen, peaceful. Da slept in the bedroom after the graveyard shift at the bridge, Annie was at the factory banging slabs of wood into boxes, sometimes banging purple blisters into her fingers, and Hughie had taken the ferry over to Manhattan before any of them were awake, to work at the market.

She folded the sharp green aloe shoots into a piece of
paper and tucked it into Mama's bag, then piled up the old newspapers to take down to the ash cans in the areaway.

“You're happy today, Bird,” Mama said from the stove.

“I like going to Mrs. Cunningham's after all.”

Mama raised her eyebrows. Mrs. Cunningham had a miserable disposition, slapping out at them as they combed her hair or rubbed cream into her hands, complaining that the bed was too lumpy, the covers too heavy. But Bird was strong enough to lift her now, to straighten the tangle of sheets under her, and when they were finished and she was clean and the bed neat, Bird had a feeling of satisfaction.

“If only she didn't act like a scalded cat,” Bird said, thinking of the scratch on her arm from last week's visit.

Mama spread out her hands as if she were smoothing down Mrs. Cunningham's lumpy bed. “I'd be complaining, too, if I'd been in bed for ten years with only my rosary beads to keep me company.”

They drained the potatoes and eggs and rested them on top of the square of ice in the box. Mama tiptoed into the bedroom to lean over to kiss Da without waking him, and Bird reached for her hat.

Moments later they started down the stairs, both of them glancing up at the Nearys' closed door.

“Tell you what, Bird. When we're finished later this morning, go upstairs and knock on the door. Take the boy around. Show him the neighborhood.”

“That's not a good idea.” How embarrassing to go up there and knock, and worse, walk him around, the mess of him, for everyone to see. “I don't think he's touched a wash-cloth to his face since the day he was born.”

Mama tilted her head. It was hard to say no to her.

“All right. I guess I could do it for a while.”

“Ah, Birdie, that's my girl.”

Water Street was busy this morning, carts in the street with stacks of walleyed fish, and stands with blue-legged crabs, still alive and scuttling around on small hills of chipped ice. “I'm glad we're having eggs,” Bird said.

They stayed with Mrs. Cunningham all morning, chasing the dust out from under her bed, washing her poor old body, and at the end Bird twisted Mrs. Cunningham's long hair into two smooth braids.

“Silver,” Bird said. “Pretty.”

For the first time, Mrs. Cunningham smiled, showing toothless gums. “In my drawer there's a flower,” she said. “You can have it.”

Bird began to shake her head, but Mama was nodding, so she opened the drawer and took out a small pink paper rose. “I love it,” she said, and tucked it in her pocket.

And then they were outside in the heat, walking slowly. “You have a way with the patients, Bird,” Mama said.

Back at home, they climbed the stairs to the apartment. She'd really have to do a better job on the sweeping Saturday, Bird thought, glancing at the drifts of sand in the corners of the steps. But right now she was ready to sink down at the table for a cup of tea with three teaspoons of sugar, and a bit of Annie's leftover yeast cake.

Mama nudged her. “The poor boy has probably been up there all morning without anything to do.”

Bird stifled a sigh and gulped down the tea. She went out on the landing, still savoring the last bite of cake. But before
she could even climb the stairs to the fourth floor, he came down, almost as if he'd been watching for her.

“I saw you and your mother go out a while ago.”

Yes. He'd probably been peering out the door for an hour.

“What's her name anyway?” he said.

Why did he want to know that? “Nora. My father calls her Nory.”

They went down the steps. Sullivan the baker was in the window, a smudge of flour on his nose. “Watch.” She waved at him.

The baker paid no attention.

“See? He's the crankiest person in all of Brooklyn.”

Without saying where they were going, she walked with Thomas toward the school a few blocks away, and pushed open the door. “Just a couple of weeks left before it starts again.” She peered down the hall to be sure the janitor wasn't around to chase them out. “Come on.”

They went to the end of the corridor and down the stairs. Strange to go downstairs when they wanted to go up, but the only door they could use to get to the roof was in the basement. It led to a dusty stairway that had the janitor's footprints etched on its steps. Halfway up, she pointed out a huge gray cobweb that drifted across the corner of the wall. A memory:
“Help me, Da, I just walked into a spider's house.”

“Ah, Bird, lucky for the spider. But they build bridges, don't they? Look, the line joins one side of the doorway to the other.”

Thomas pushed against the heavy door and stood back to let her go first. Better manners than anyone else around,
she had to admit, and remembered the woman in the picture, Lillie. Had she taught him?

Outside was the roof with its ashes and dust scattered across the tar. They edged their way to the wall and leaned over to peer down. Laid out in front of them were the streets of Brooklyn, some of them straight and even, others curved.

Thomas was so far over the edge, she took a step closer, thinking to grab his arm before he tumbled down all that way. She looked at his shirt, same one as yesterday, and probably last month, if the truth were told.