North River

  Molly, dear, now did you hear,

  The news that’s going ’round?

  He heard her laughing at the silly words.

  Molly, my Irish Molly,

  my sweet acushla dear,

  I’m almost off my trolley,

  my lovely Irish Molly,

  whenever you are near.

  And thought: I do not believe in ghosts. But I know they exist, because I live with one.

  He woke before seven and shadowboxed in the chilly room for five minutes with his hands open. Jab, left hook, right hand. Jab-jab, right hand. Hook, hook, double ’em up, step back, right hand. Jab, then bend, then the hook. The way he had been trained long ago in Packy Hanratty’s gym upstairs from the saloon on Ninth Avenue. Except that now the right hand had no snap, would never again be a punch, was shoved into the air instead of tearing at space. The hand that once had painted, the hand that once punched. Long ago. Still, he could hear the roar from the packed smokers in Brooklyn and East Harlem, in those years when every other Irish kid wanted to be a fighter, even those kids who wanted to be doctors. Packy’s motto was Above All, Do Some Harm. And he did.

  Then he went into the bathroom, where he shaved at the sink and stepped under the shower, an ache in his right shoulder, some migrating sliver of shrapnel loosened by the shadowboxing, working its way to freedom. Or the shrapnel of worry. The shower was an ancient device, reminding him of the insane inventions of Rube Goldberg in the Journal. Knobs, pipes, the water sometimes scalding, sometimes tepid, always sputtering. He dried himself with a towel that was too small, thinking: I could get all this goddamned plumbing fixed, I could buy big towels, and fresh underwear. I could do all those things put off after the bank on Canal Street failed in ’31 and took everything with it. I could . . .

  As he dressed, the aroma of frying bacon penetrated the room and he could hear voices from below: the small voice of Carlito, the deeper, more plangent voice of Rose. Rose smiled as he entered the kitchen, spears of loose black hair falling over her brow, and the boy rose from his chair and embraced him. Both wore sweaters against the morning cold. Without a scarf, her neck looked more than an inch longer.

  “Ga’paw! Look: baking!”

  “Bay-con,” Rose said. “Not -ing. Say it, boy, bay-con.”

  “Bay-con. Bay-con.” He laughed and left Delaney and took his seat. “Bay-con.”

  Rose turned the bacon in the heavy black pan. “What a smart kid he is,” she said, her back turned to both of them. “You’re smart, Carlito.”

  Delaney faced the yard, while Rose removed the bacon to a sheet of newspaper, cracked eggs into the pan, and basted them with the hot fat. In the yard the snow was gone, except on the wrapping of Mr. Nobiletti’s olive tree. The bushes seemed scrawny and barely alive. There were stains in the paint above the window, and paint was flaking on the wall behind the stove. I could get a real paint job, not just a cat’s lick. The whole kitchen, the bedrooms, everywhere, make it bright, make it alive. . . . Rose poured coffee into his cup and returned to the stove. Her wrists were very thin, but they must be strong too. Cabled with tendons and muscle under the olive skin. Delaney sipped the dark sweet coffee and wondered about his heart. Coffee this dark and this strong can’t be good for you, he thought. It tastes too good. Tastes like . . . hell, like Vienna. In the crowded coffeehouse that time with Molly, they were eating sweets, splurging on the bounty of scholarship money from Andrew Carnegie and Tammany Hall, and she saw Gustav Mahler come in with Alma, the pride and torment of his life. Molly trembled with excitement, wanting to go over to Mahler, to thank him, to embrace him, but didn’t, because she didn’t want to play the fool, didn’t want to trigger Alma’s jealousy either, and so she sent a note anyway in her imperfect German, and told Delaney that her heart would be pounding for a week.

  Then suddenly the bacon and eggs were before them, and Rose turned off the stove and took her place at the table, her back to the yard. Five days had passed since Carlito arrived in his vestibule, four days since he met Rose Verga, and for the first time in many years, the feeling of family had entered James Finbar Delaney.

  Rose gave him a list of things they needed for Carlito and for the house, written in a swift slanted hand in English: shoes and a sweater (spelled “swetter”) and underclothes for Carlito; towels and sheets; food. He took forty dollars from the petty cash box in his desk but did not open the safe. “Oh, yeah, toys,” Rose said. “The boy needs something he can, how d’you say it? Play. He’s got to play with something. He’s a boy.” Her eyes were wide and serious and oddly comic. Delaney smiled as he handed her the money. Then he remembered Grace at three, going to bed each night with a stuffed monkey, and wondered if they made them anymore. He would find one himself. It was too cold still for a baseball, but he would get one for the boy’s birthday in March. He told Rose that he was going to St. Vincent’s, to do what they called rounds, and would be back around one. Monique knew all about it. He went into the kitchen to say good-bye to Carlito.

  “Another thing,” Rose said, furrowing her brow, a vertical line pointing down at her long nose.

  “Yes?”

  “That suit. You been wearing it five straight days.”

  He looked down at the suit, rumpled and lumpy, the trousers without a crease.

  “I have another one,” he said. “But it’s too light for the winter.”

  She looked at him, amusement and pity mixed in her eyes.

  “You’re a doctor.”

  “I know that, Rose, and —”

  “You gotta dress good.” She smiled, without showing her teeth. “You got those long underwears?” Delaney said yes, he had. “Then wear them, and you could put another suit on top of it.”

  “They itch,” Delaney said.

  “I wash them so hard there’s nothing left to itch.”

  He smiled. “Whatever you say, Rose.”

  Carlito was now up on a chair, waving a spoon held in a small fist. He was trying with his free hand to take the lid off the sugar bowl.

  “He’s a real Irisher, this boy,” Rose said, fully smiling now. “He wants sugar to put on top of butter on top of bread! That’s why the Irish got the wors’ teeth in New York!”

  “I’ll be right back,” Delaney said.

  He hurried up the stairs, chuckling as he went, and moved into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. He unlaced his shoes, then removed the rumpled suit and laid it on the bed. He rummaged in a bottom drawer and found a neatly folded flannel union suit. He was fastening the buttons on the seat when the door burst open and Carlito ran in, giggling, waving his spoon. Rose was in swift pursuit. Then she stopped abruptly, looked at Delaney, and laughed out loud.

  “You better not go to no hospital like that!” she said.

  “Get out of here.”

  Carlito ran behind Delaney, and Rose went after him, bending to scoop him up. As she rose, her left breast brushed against Delaney’s arm. Soft and full. She paused, glanced at him with uncertain eyes, then hurried away with Carlito. A fresh scent hung in the air of the room. A suggestion of flowers.

  Zimmerman was in the hall of the first floor when Delaney came down in his light suit, scratching where the union suit itched. Zimmerman was dressed for the river wind. The door was open, and he could see Monique bent over records at her desk.

  “I’ve got to talk to you,” Zimmerman said.

  “Come in, but we’ve got to make it fast. I’ve got rounds today.”

  Delaney led the way into his office and closed the door behind them. Zimmerman took off his wool hat and scarf. His eyes moved around the crowded room.

  “Well, he’s gone,” Zimmerman said.

  “That’s what I figured when I saw you.”

  “They came for him around five, three of them, carrying a stretcher with a heavy blanket, and went out a side door.”

  “What shape is he in?”

  “Pretty good, considering.”

  “He always was a thick-headed son of a bitch.”
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  “As we say down the Lower East Side, he’s got the guts of a burglar.”

  They stood in silence for a few awkward seconds, while Zimmerman looked at the framed diplomas and certificates on the wall.

  “You went to Johns Hopkins?”

  “I did,” Delaney said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Zimmerman said, looking at Delaney in a new way. “How’d you manage that?”

  “I passed the exam,” Delaney said. “The rest was luck, and the financial resources of Tammany Hall. My father was a leader and had a few bucks.”

  “I’ll be goddamned. You never mentioned it before. Johns Hopkins . . .”

  “You never asked.”

  “When was this anyway?”

  “I finished in 1913. A long time ago. Before the war. You must have just been getting born.”

  “A couple years earlier. At 210 Allen Street. My father was a socialist, like everybody from Minsk, and hated Tammany.”

  “He wasn’t alone.”

  Zimmerman stared at the diploma.

  “Let me ask you a question. Don’t answer if you don’t want to.”

  “How’d I end up a GP on Horatio Street?”

  “Yeah.”

  Delaney now looked at the framed diploma from Johns Hopkins.

  “I wanted to be a surgeon, and for a while, a few years, I was. Then the war came. A few weeks before it ended, I got wounded.” He turned to face Zimmerman and started flexing his right hand. “Everything got torn up and I lost my strength. The strength any surgeon must have. I’ve got feeling. I can examine a patient. I just don’t have strength. So I decided to be a GP. As simple as that.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “No, it’s not. A lot of guys I used to know wish they had my problem, but they’re all dead. Here I can help a lot of people. And in a way, they’re my own people. So —” He glanced at the clock. “Hey, Jake, I’ve got to go.”

  Zimmerman paused, then cleared his throat.

  “I want to tell you something else,” he said.

  “I know,” Delaney said. “So tell me.”

  “I’m keeping the money,” Zimmerman said. “The money Eddie gave me.”

  “You earned it.”

  “It’s not even for me. My parents, well, this goddamned Depression, it has them —”

  “Don’t explain, Jake.”

  “I could get in a shitpot of trouble if —”

  “Stop. Let’s walk to the hospital.”

  Zimmerman exhaled, the tension draining out of him.

  “I can’t. I’ve got to meet one of the other interns for a bite.”

  Delaney opened the door.

  “I’ll walk you to the corner.”

  After grand rounds at St. Vincent’s, Delaney walked down the west side of Sixth Avenue, the El rising above him, the Jefferson Court House looming in the distance. At the corner of Tenth Street he saw the toy store. McNiff’s Toys. Run by Billy McNiff, who had opened it in 1928, three weeks after leaving prison, with a grubstake from one of his friends who were in on the holdup for which Billy took the fall. The shop’s windows were opaque with frost. Delaney went in. The small dark store was empty.

  “Hello? Billy, you here?”

  There was no answer, and he looked at the dusty toys in their bins. Tiny metal cars in bright colors, most of them Buicks. Bald, pink spaldeens, waiting for a stickball summer. Dolls with moving eyes, frozen into paralysis. Roller skates. A Flexible Flyer that nobody in the neighborhood could afford to race down a snowy hill. Surely stolen, Delaney thought. Somewhere uptown. Then, a dusty set of ice skates. A small red fire truck with a yellow ladder on top. Then he saw what he wanted: a bin full of teddy bears. He remembered an article in the Times where various pediatricians said that teddy bears gave young children a sense of security. There were no stuffed monkeys, and that was just as well. They would only remind him of the boy’s mother. Ah, Grace, goddamn you. We should be in this dump together, looking at the toys, and you could pick out what the boy might like and I could pay. You could tell me what you know about him that I don’t know. And then you could go, in pursuit of your goddamned husband, your last vision of utopia. You could give him a teddy bear too. I’ll take care of the boy.

  The door opened abruptly, with a draft of cold, and slammed shut as Billy McNiff walked in.

  “Hello, Doc,” he said, in a surprised way. “What the hell are you doin’ here?”

  “Looking for a few presents,” Delaney said.

  “We got ’em. At a good price too. Everything reduced ten pissent since Christmas. Who they for? Boy or girl?”

  “Boy.”

  McNiff was a small wiry man who seemed to bounce while he was standing still. His face was pared down, fleshless, lipless, like a skull. His skin seemed sprayed on his bones. As he came closer to Delaney, the odor of rum rose from his mouth and his body. From the saloon across the street. McNiff produced a paddle with a ball attached by a stapled rubber band.

  “This is a hot item,” McNiff said. His eyes were glassy, and he started batting the ball with the paddle, missing three out of six times. “Kids love it.”

  “I’ll take that, Billy,” Delaney said. “And this teddy bear.”

  “What’s he? A Teddy Roosevelt fan?”

  Delaney didn’t want a long talk, and said curtly: “Not at the moment.”

  McNiff started wrapping the toys in a copy of the Daily News.

  “The kid is your grandson, I guess.”

  “You guess right.”

  “The mother on vacation?”

  “Sort of.”

  “When’s she get back?”

  “Billy, just wrap the stuff. No interrogation, please.”

  McNiff laughed, his teeth brown and splintery.

  “Sorry. It’s a habit from my youth.”

  “What do I owe you?” Delaney said.

  Out on the street, kids were everywhere, freed from the tenement flats.

  Knocko Carmody came around a corner, in a gray fedora and long blue coat with a velvet collar. He grinned and embraced Delaney and asked how things were going and whether he needed anything.

  “As a matter of fact . . .” Delaney paused. “As a matter of fact, I do need something. You know a steam heat guy?”

  “Of course. My brother-in-law, Jimmy Spillane. Want me to send him over?”

  “When he’s free, Knocko,” the doctor said. “I need an estimate.”

  “Done.”

  Knocko pulled out a pen and notebook and scribbled a reminder to himself. The way Big Jim did when he was doing his own form of grand rounds. Then Knocko stared for a moment at Delaney.

  “You okay?” he said.

  Delaney smiled. “Better than I thought I would be.”

  “That Rose Verga is a pisser, ain’t she? Skinny as a rail, but she’d scare the shit out of a stevedore. A real hoodlum.”

  Hoodlum was high praise indeed from Knocko Carmody. Knocko glanced at his watch.

  “I’ll see you soon,” Delaney said, picking up the message. “Maybe at Angela’s. The boy likes bagetti.”

  “You blame him? You wouldn’t want to give him Irish food, for Chrissakes.” He paused, then said: “Well, I gotta go bribe a judge.”

  Knocko grinned, tapped Delaney on the shoulder, and went into a saloon called the Emerald Isle, walking the way Big Jim did, with an old-time West Side swagger, putting the weight on one foot and dragging the other.

  Delaney got off the El at Twenty-third Street, hurrying down the rickety steps, Carlito’s bundle under his good arm. He walked north. At Twenty-fifth Street, he turned left into the wind off the North River. There was an ambulance in front of Eddie Corso’s brownstone, and a couple of cops inside a green-and-white cruiser, and a young gunsel in the uniform of gray fedora and long blue coat, leaning against the iron fence. The gate under the stoop opened and Bootsie stepped out. He gestured to Delaney with his head. Meaning “follow me.”

  “How is he?” Delaney said.

 
“I ain’t the doctor,” Bootsie said. “You are.” He shook his head. “But he looks all right to me. Not great, but all right.”

  Bootsie led the way up a flight of stairs and into the bedroom. Eddie Corso was lying in bed, paler and leaner and subtly older. He smiled when he saw Delaney.