Pete Hamill - North River

“A guy named Jackie Spillane called,” Monique said. “About steam heat.”

Knocko had made the call. Again.

“I’ll call him later,” Delaney said. Then: “Where’s the boy?”

“Rose took him with her, food shopping.”

He held up the paper sack.

“I brought him a few things.” He passed the sack to her, and Monique peered inside and smiled.

“Aw, that’s great. He needs something to play with, that boy.” She handed the sack back to him. “I found those American Express addresses for you too. Barcelona, Madrid, Paris.”

“Just address the envelopes, and I’ll mail them later. I still have to write the notes.”

He paused again, then nodded toward the door to the waiting room.

“Is that child alive out there?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” she said. “The baby started bleeding from the nose and mouth last night. I tried to get the mother to go to the hospital. She said, ‘Absolutely not. I want this girl to live.’ ”

“Send her in first. Get the quinine ready for Brannigan, no charge. And what’s ailing Princess Wilson?”

“She wants her husband back.”

“I can’t help her with that. He’s been dead six years now.”

“She thinks you can bring him back.”

Delaney sighed. He noticed that Monique was chewing the inside of her mouth.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. No. Ah, hell, Doc, it’s the usual. We got bills here, a slew of them, and when Rose gets back with the kid, they’ll be worse.”

“Hold on.”

He went into his office and closed the door behind him. He turned the dial on the small safe, found the envelope, and removed a crisp hundred-dollar bill. He creased it and then went out and handed it to Monique.

“Change this somewhere. Not the bank. Pay some of the bills. And send in the woman with the baby.”

Monique stared at the hundred-dollar bill.

“You rob a bank?”

“Sort of.”

The woman’s name was Bridget Smyth, “with a y. ” She was nineteen, unmarried, and her baby girl was seven weeks old. She was also dead. He looked at the dead girl on his examination table, and his eyes wandered to the browning photograph of John McGraw and Big Jim. The woman sobbed. Touch her, for Chrissakes. Her baby is dead.

He gently touched her bony forearm but didn’t speak. She did.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Delaney said. “Pneumonia.”

She lifted the dead infant and hugged her close and began to bawl. No words came from her, just the wracking wail of grief.

Delaney put an arm around her and held her tight and the door opened and Monique came in. He nodded at her, and Monique came over and eased him aside. She put an arm on her shoulder, whispering, trying to move her to the outer room.

Bridget Smyth snapped.

“Don’t give me that effin’ rubbish! She’s dead! And there’s no effin’ food at me room and no effin’ water, ’cause the pipes is froze, and no effin’ heat, and her father is an effin’ eejit, gone off some effin’ place!” She bawled wordlessly, Monique holding her tight, Delaney caressing her bony arm. With his right hand.

“I’ll call someone at Sacred Heart,” Monique whispered. “Get a priest to help —”

“A priest? Never! I went to them and they turned me away. I sinned, I must pay! ”

Her eyes were wide now, and mad. She looked at them and held the child fiercely and then rushed the door. Delaney moved in front of her.

“Out of me way!”

“I won’t let you go this way,” Delaney said, trying to sound both gentle and commanding. “We’ve got to arrange a proper burial. Wait. Just wait. We’ll —”

“I know where to have the proper effin’ burial! The two of us, together! In the effin’ North River!”

Then she dissolved again, sobs mixing with wails, squatting with her back to the door and her unmoving child tight against her chest. Delaney whispered to Monique: “Get your coat. Stay with her, no matter where she tries to go.” He mouthed the word Moriarty, which was the name of the undertaker on Ninth Avenue. She rubbed thumb and forefinger together, indicating the unspoken word “money,” and raised her eyebrows.

“Use what I gave you,” he said. “I’ll get some more.”

Together they raised Bridget Smyth from the floor and led her into the anteroom. She was silent now, and limp, as if her body was empty of the fuel of rage. The infant seemed like an extension of her own body, posed as a small Madonna awaiting some draftsman with a sepia stick.

Delaney closed his door now, breathing hard. The effing North River… That summer evening, Molly walked toward the North River. There were still people on the streets, people she knew. Jackie Norris learned that in a few hours, with the help of his policeman’s badge. She was alone, wearing a blue dress, saying to one old lady that she was going to the ruined pier to watch the sunset. No surprise. Delaney had gone there with her many times, finding the scorched but solid timbers that served as small bridges between more solid planks. Sitting with her in silence as the sky reddened over New Jersey. She would draw up her knees, her arms hugging them, staring at nothing. Now and then she’d mention some moment from the years before the war, some character, some song. She’d mention a play they’d seen. She’d mention a café in Vienna. But that summer evening, she went alone, wrapped in a shroud of her own hard solitude, for there were five patients waiting for Delaney. She never came back. O my Molly-O.

He rose slowly and went to the safe and took another hundred-dollar bill from the envelope, to cover expenses after Monique paid for the infant’s funeral. And the woman’s rent. And some food. Thinking: The North River is jammed with ice. Thank God.

Brannigan took his quinine and left, angling past Monique’s empty desk. Then Sally Wilson came in. At twenty, she had been a star at Tony Pastor’s, a lush princess of the Rialto. Delaney had never seen her perform, but she had once showed up at his old office on Jane Street carrying her scrapbook. As if to prove that she existed. There she was, in big bustles, or in tights, and the stories said that she had a wonderful contralto voice. Her hair was so blond it seemed white in the photographs. Now it truly was white, but she had added forty years and fifty pounds. Along the way, she’d had two sons and three husbands. The sons were gone, one now working in despair for the Republicans in Franklin Roosevelt’s Washington, the other in California in the movie business. Or so she said. She only mourned the last husband.

“I can’t sleep,” she said abruptly. “I keep seeing Alfie, and when I turn over in bed, he’s not there.”

“Are you still drinking coffee?” Delaney asked gently.

“Of course.”

“Stop,” he said.

“You think it’s just coffee? ”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t even examine me! ”

“Well, do you have any physical symptoms?”

She always wanted him to examine her. She always had vague worries about her breasts, which were soft and heavy. She seldom said the word “cancer,” but it must have been in her dreams.

“I have these flutters, especially at night, Dr. Delaney.” She squeezed her left breast. “What do you call them flutters?”

“Palpitations.”

“Right.”

Delaney sighed. “Well, let’s have a listen.”

She stood up and unbuttoned her blouse, then turned her back and unfastened her white brassiere. Delaney had long ago trained himself to be objective when examining human beings, but Sally Wilson had not. Her breasts were large, fallen, blue-veined, but she lifted the left breast as if offering it to Delaney. The breast seemed to blush.