Pete Hamill - North River

He made it to Tommy Chin’s around four, when it was still light. The wounded girl had healed. The others were clean. Liann looked unhappy, as usual, and Tommy Chin said business was picking up.

“It must be the weather,” he said. “It fills them with romance.”

He rode home on the bicycle, through the thickening traffic, wary of trucks. When he turned into Horatio Street he saw Callahan, the FBI agent, talking to an older man in a tweed coat and hat. The man who wore the gray coat to Washington Square. Delaney stopped, lifted the bicycle to the sidewalk, and walked to them.

“Are you guys looking for the unemployment office?” Delaney said.

“Hello, Doctor,” Callahan said. He looked uneasy. “You’re home early.”

“Maybe you’re here for the view?”

“Come on, Doctor,” Callahan said in an amiable way. “You know why we’re here.” The man in the tweed coat glanced around at the street, which was lively now with kids and unemployed men, with women staring down from open windows in the tenements.

Callahan squinted and said: “You heard from your daughter?”

“No. Have you?”

Callahan sighed, took the other man by the elbow, and walked away.

He talked awhile in his office with Monique, telling her that he thought Rose should get a raise. She made a face and said, “It’s a little early for that, isn’t it?” Delaney said that Rose put in a lot of hours and the boy loved her and he didn’t want her to walk away for another job that paid more. Monique sighed. “I’d like you to tell her, Monique. Not me.”

“You just gotta add some rules to the deal,” Monique said. “She’s too goddamn bossy, Jim. She thinks she knows you better than I do, and what’s good for you, and all that. Sometimes it pisses me off.”

Delaney looked at her in an annoyed way, then pulled a chair beside her desk and sat down. She wouldn’t look at him, her fingers busy with papers.

“Monique?”

“Yeah?”

“Listen to me, Monique.” She looked up at him. “You are very, very important to this house. And to me. I truthfully could not do what I do if you weren’t here. I want you here for as long as I do this work.” He paused. “But goddamn it, the boy has changed things. And Rose has to be here too. For as long as the boy needs her.”

Monique looked unhappy. “I guess,” she said.

“I promise I’ll talk to her about the bossy stuff. For now, don’t get in a fight with her.”

She sulked for a long moment. And then exhaled hard, as if saying it was time to move on.

“Speaking of the boy, what about his birthday?” she said. “It’s St. Patrick’s Day, right? It’ll be here before you know it.”

“I know, Monique,” Delaney said, pushing the chair back and then standing.

“My advice?” Monique said. “Don’t take him to the parade. He’ll think it’s for him, and that could ruin his life.”

“You’re right, of course. Even if you do sound bossy.”

She smiled in a thin way. “And don’t get him a dog. Rose’ll have to walk him — or it’ll be left to me.”

“Okay, no dog. Any mail?”

“Nothing important,” she said. “An’ by the way, some guy called three times but wouldn’t leave a name. I told him you couldn’t call back if he didn’t leave a name. But he hung up each time.”

“Maybe it was Hoover,” he said. “Always on the job.”

“He sounded more hoodlum than Hoover, you ask me.”

He peeled the wrappers off two medical journals and signed some checks, and then he could hear Rose and Carlito coming down the stairs.

After they ate together, and after they walked together down to the North River and Carlito stared a long time at a passing liner, and after they returned in the chilly night air, they went back to the kitchen for tea. Rose had bought some biscotti from the bakery, and music played quietly from the Italian station, and they talked about why there was no such thing as Irish food while there were hundreds of kinds of Italian foods, all delicious. Delaney said that the bad luck of the Irish was the problem.

“Sicily was conquered by the Arabs, and they knew how to cook,” he said. “But the poor luckless Irish were conquered by the English, and they didn’t even know how to eat. For them, food was fuel, like coal. Pleasure of any kind was a sin.”

“So how’d they get so many babies?”

“They could do something about the food,” Delaney said, “but they couldn’t do anything about human beings in bed.”

Rose laughed. Carlito looked preoccupied. He waited for a break in the talk, and then he went to Delaney and pointed upstairs.

“I want my book, Ga’paw,” he said.

“Damn, I forgot,” Delaney said. “Where’d I leave his books, Rose?”

“Upstairs. I know where.”

Delaney rinsed the cups and saucers, and Rose put away the cream and the rest of the biscotti, and they went upstairs together.

Rose found the books on top of the armoire, still in their bag.

“You read to him,” Rose said. “I’m goin’ to run a bath.”

Delaney and the boy went into his room and took off their shoes, and he stretched out on the small bed with the boy curled beside him. They could hear the water running in the tub. Rose leaned on the doorframe, arms folded across her breasts. Delaney held up the two books. “Which one?” The boy pointed to The Story of Babar. Delaney opened the book, and the first page showed a gray baby elephant being swung in a hammock by an older elephant. They were surrounded by green jungle. Rose came in and sat at the foot of the bed, while the water ran slowly.

Delaney read the text, running a finger over the words, and pointing at the things they named: “In the great forest a little elephant was born. His name was Babar. His mother loved him very much. She rocked him to sleep with her trunk while singing softly to him.”

“Babar,” Carlito said. “He’s an evvafent.” Rose smiled as Delaney turned the page.

“Babar grew bigger. Soon he played with the other little elephants. He was a very good little elephant. See him digging in the sand with his shell?”

Delaney pointed at elephants swimming in a pond and elephants playing football and elephants parading, holding other elephants’ tails in their trunks, and elephants snacking on oranges and bananas, with the jungle in the background and pink mountains in the distance. The little elephant named Babar had a seashell in his snout and was carving away at a small pile of sand.

“Let me see that,” Rose said, grinning, and Delaney turned the book. “Wow! That’s a great spot!”

Then Delaney went to the next spread. On the left page the little elephant was riding on his mother’s back, while a monkey and a red bird watched from a bush. To the side, behind another bush, a man with a helmet was firing a gun.

“One day, Babar was riding happily on his mother’s back when a wicked hunter, hidden behind some bushes, shot at them.”

Delaney glanced at the boy, whose eyes were suddenly wide. He thought he should stop. But he went on.

“The hunter’s shot killed Babar’s mother! The monkey hid, the birds flew away. And Babar cried.”

Tears began seeping from Carlito’s eyes.

“I want Mamá,” he whispered.

He wasn’t speaking to Delaney. Or to Rose.

“I want Mamá!”

Rose stood up abruptly and hurried into the bathroom. She closed the door. The running water stopped. Delaney hugged the boy and laid down the book.

“Carlito, boy, Carlito, big fella, don’t worry,” he said. “It’s a story, that’s all.”

“Mamá,” the boy whispered, his voice charged with anguish.

“Your mama’s not dead, boy. Your mama’s coming back.”