Pete Hamill - North River

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.”

“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.”