Pete Hamill - North River

Goddamn it, Molly, give me some fucking peace. I have done enough penance.

He remembered that morning last April, after she’d disappeared the previous August, the whole empty winter gone by, when Jackie Norris from the Harbor Police showed up with a sheaf of papers filled with the names of floaters and jumpers, the grisly harvest of the spring harbor. “If she jumped,” Norris said in a soft voice, “there’s a small chance that she was carried out to the Narrows and then on to the Atlantic. That’s pretty rare, Doc. Most times they end up around the horn in the East River, or they bump up against the shore in Brooklyn. Most times we find the bodies.” He sighed. “But then again, maybe she didn’t go in the North River at all.”

“Maybe,” Delaney said.

And yet he was filled with images of her swirling through the river waters, her long hair streaming as she floated free. Free of me. Free of the world. On some nights he saw her bumping against a roof of winter ice, separated from the air and the sky. On other nights, he saw her hand jutting from the water, desperate for rescue. All through the neighborhood that day, keeping his appointments with the sick and maimed, he saw her in her watery place, or remembered her sitting in the chair in the bedroom the night before, or heard her playing the piano in the sealed room on the top floor.

He returned at last to Horatio Street. Cottrell was walking from the subway, still dressed in the severe clothes of a banker, but he would not even glance at Delaney. Monique had gone home. On his desk he looked at the estimates on the steam heat system ($300, to start after April 1) and the cutting of new stairs directly into the kitchen ($100, to be started immediately), and checked phone messages at Monique’s desk and the mail that looked personal. Nothing from Grace. There were two notes from patients who were now well, thanking him for his help. There was an invite to a Democratic Party Valentine’s Day dance. There was a notice from the Metropolitan Museum about the opening of a show of art from the Renaissance. Among the artists was Botticelli. He should tell Rose. And then he thought about Frankie Botts, trying to imagine his face and his voice.

Delaney hurried upstairs to see Carlito and Rose. It was after seven now, and they already had eaten. Rose was seated on her bed, back against the wall, her legs extended, big downy slippers on her feet, reading the Daily News and marking it with a red pencil. She put the paper down and looked at him in an annoyed way. He went to the boy’s bedroom. Carlito leaped from his bed and jumped at Delaney, who scooped him up and hugged him.

“Ga’paw! Ga’paw! Rose, Ga’paw home!”

She came in and the boy slithered out of Delaney’s arms and grabbed the paddleball and started batting away.

“Dos, tres, quatro…”

He made it to nine and then missed.

“You okay?” Delaney said to Rose.

“Your dinner, it’s cold,” she said. Her face was stern, perhaps angry.

“I had all these patients, Rose…”

“Tell them you gotta eat.”

“I’ll eat it cold,” he said. “Thank you, Rose. I’ll just eat it cold.”

Rose sighed and tightened the belt on her housecoat, which was covered with printed roses.

“Come on, I’ll heat it up. I hope it’s not too dry. Hey, boy. Put on your bathrobe.”

In the warmth of the kitchen, the boy kept batting away, and counting in Spanish and English, while Rose fiddled at the stove, and the room filled with the garlicky aroma of simmering veal and tomatoes. Delaney watched the boy and glanced at Rose, her back to him, her waist more defined by the belt of the housecoat. She had hips, all right, and slender legs. Fat women must have called her skinny, but she would live a lot longer than they would. Her hair was brushed and gleaming. She placed a bread basket beside Delaney, then spread the veal and tomatoes on his plate and took it to him.

“Okay,” she said. “Eat.”

The boy sat down at his chair too, prepared to eat again.

“Not you, boy. Just your gran’pa. You ate already!”

The child sulked, a mixture of disappointment and confusion. He stretched an arm out on the table, his fingers fiddling with the sugar bowl, and then laid his head on his forearm. He was either exhausted or sulking. Probably both.

“I better take him up. You eat, Dottore. I’ll come back and make tea.”

The veal was still moist, and as he ate Delaney marveled at his good fortune. This woman was now essential to his life, and he knew almost nothing about her, except, perhaps, the most important things. Her ferocious passion for the child in her care. Her skills with food. Her intelligence. He knew the outlines of her life, as told to Monique on the first day that she arrived here. He knew about Gyp Pavese and the dangers of the streets that she had resisted. But little else. Who had scarred her face? Who were her lovers during the American years as a cook or a pieceworker? Perhaps he should not try to learn more. The potential for disaster, living in the same house, was too obvious. But if he knew nothing about her it was also possible that he would unwittingly insult her. He was sopping up sauce with the crisp Italian bread when she returned.

“This is great, Rose,” he said. “Just great.”

“It’s even more great two hours ago.”

He tried to explain how he couldn’t always be sure how long a house call would last. She’d have to get used to his uncertain routines. Some patients need more time than others, he said. They’re not machines. That’s what I told Molly too, but after a while she just didn’t care. In some way, he said to Rose, a house call was like baseball. There was no script. You didn’t know who would win. Above all, there was no clock. It took as long as it needed.

“Don’t say any more,” she said. “I understand. You gotta go help people. It’s not easy. I just want it, the food, to be good for you. You earn it. You work hard, I know that, and you got all these other things to worry about.” She paused, slowing herself down. “So when you eat, it should be simple. You and the food. Besides, I told you: I don’t know nothing about baseball.”

She took his plate and laid it in the sink and ran the water. She grunted, flicked off the faucet. The kettle began to whistle on the stove. She lifted it and poured water into cups and laid a tea bag on each saucer. She placed his cup before him almost gently and he knew she was no longer angry.

“It must be hard, all them sick people,” she said, taking a seat facing him, examining a wedge of lemon.

“Sometimes.”

“I guess you dream about them?”

“When I was young, I did. I dreamed about them every night. Not so much now, except for the war.”

“You were a doctor in the war, right?”

“Yes.”

“You musta seen lots of terrible things.”

“Yes,” he said.

She squeezed lemon juice into her tea.

“My husband, he was in Caporetto.”

“So he saw terrible things too.”

“They made him crazy.”

He waited for her to go on. She was very still, as if afraid of saying too much.

“Tell me about him,” Delaney said, as if asking a patient how she was injured. Rose turned away.

“He wasn’ my husband then, when he was at the war,” she said, her voice wavery with recall. “I was thirteen when the war starts, and Caporetto was, I think, three years later.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, the war ends. He comes back, and there’s a parade, and he’s with the other soldiers, all with no legs or no arms, and his head is all bandages, and I notice him, because of the bandages. What I can see, he’s very handsome. My father sees me looking and another year goes by, and then my father says I got to marry this man. That’s when I hear his name the first time. Enrico Calvino. A beautiful name, no? But I don’t know him, except for the bandages in the parade. So I say this to my father. I say, let this Enrico Calvino come and see me. And he does. He comes for three months, and takes me for to walk, and to the new cinema in Agrigento… He don’t talk much. He has headaches, and he tells me, inside his head there’s a, a —”