Pete Hamill - North River

“This great!” the boy said.

The boy lifted another piece on his fork. Now he was eating, not merely chewing, and began splashing sauce to his left and right, spearing pasta with his fork, making sounds but no words. Mmmm, uh. Mmm, mmm, mmm. Rose winked at Delaney, who answered with sounds too.

“Mmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm, uh!”

The boy shared another piece of braciole with Delaney, and chewed away on the pasta, and then his plate was empty and he sat back and belched.

“ Hey, don’t do that, boy! That’s bad manners. They think you a mameluke!”

“A what?” Delaney said.

“A mook! It’s like some kind of Arab. You know, they eat, they like it, they make a sound like —” She groped for the word, gesturing at her throat with a little wave of the hand. “Uh —”

“A belch,” Delaney said. “Or a burp.”

“Burp!” the boy said.

Rose got up, and so did Delaney, and they laid the plates on the side of the sink. Rose took four smaller plates and placed them on the table. One was for the bear. Then she smiled and said to the boy: “I gotta go burp.”

She went out to the hall, closing the door behind her.

“You liked the braciol’, didn’t you?” Delaney said.

The boy shook his head up and down, with much energy: “Good! Very good. Ba-zhoal… very, very good, Gran’pa.”

Then the door opened and Rose was there with a vanilla cake on a platter and three green candles burning brightly and a huge grin on her face. She began to sing.

Delaney was up now and into the song:

Rose placed the cake on the table and took a large flat knife from a drawer, while Delaney hugged the boy. The boy looked as if some memory was forcing its way into his mind, a memory of another birthday in another country. Delaney knew that at three, the events of turning two could be a long time ago. A third of a lifetime.

“It’s your birthday, boy! You, today ” — she touched his chest —“you are three! ”

She held up three fingers, then pointed at the cake and the three burning candles and said: “Now, you blow them out!” She turned her head and started blowing. “Just blow out the candles!”

The boy didn’t move. Delaney now demonstrated the minor art of blowing.

“Blow them out, big fella,” he said. “You’re three years old!”

Carlito stood up on the chair and braced himself with his hands on the table and looked at the candles and took a deep breath and started to blow. One candle went out, and then he pounced on the other two, blowing wetly and hard, and then all three were out, with little tendrils of smoke rising from the wicks. Rose hugged him hard and he grinned widely. “Three,” the boy said, and Rose lifted the candles out of the cake and laid them carefully on the table and cut a slice for each of them, including Osito, the bear. She placed two cups of black Italian coffee on the table and filled a small glass of milk for Carlito. The boy loved the cake and then stole Osito’s portion, and smeared his cheeks with cream, and licked his fingers. He got up and pushed a small lump of cake into the bear’s mouth, and then Rose was standing again.

“I gotta burp another time,” she said. In ten seconds she was back with two brightly wrapped packages. One was very bulky, and she placed it on the floor. The other was a book. That was from her to Carlito, and Delaney didn’t know what it was.

“This is for you, Carlito, for your birthday…”

He took it and felt its shape.

“It’s a book!” he said.

“Yeah,” Rose said, “but what book?”

“Take the paper off, Carlito,” Delaney said.

The boy began to remove the paper, tentatively, cautiously, and then more quickly. He burst into a squeal.

“Babar!”

He held the book and stared at the cover. The Travels of Babar. He started turning the pages quickly. Delaney looked at Rose, who was smiling while tears welled in her eyes. God, she is tough, he thought. Lovely and tough. And he hoped the boy would not call for his mother.

“Open the other one, ragazzo,” she said in a softer voice.

The boy was standing on the floor now. He put the book on Osito’s chair and turned to the much bulkier package and began to attack it. The paper seemed to fly away. And there it was, red and gleaming and beautiful: a fire engine.

“Fi’ engine, Gran’pa, it’s a fi’ engine! ”

Rose whooped and clapped her hands. The boy jumped up and down. The fire engine was low and strong with a seat for a driver to sit upon, so that he could propel himself with his legs, and a wheel for steering. Delaney showed the boy how to slide onto the seat and how to use his legs, and then Carlito was propelling himself all around the kitchen, as Rose jumped out of his way in mock horror and Delaney stood up on a chair, feeling young, exuberant, full of delight and something like joy.

After an hour, the boy started fading. He pedaled more slowly. He sagged in his seat, leaning on the steering wheel. His eyes, which had been so bright with excitement, began to close. The telephone rang in the office. Delaney went to answer it, gesturing upstairs. Rose nodded agreement and lifted the boy. Delaney paused as he picked up the black telephone receiver, wondering if this would be another heavy breather. It was Zimmerman.

“Your neighbor?” Zimmerman said. “I just heard from one of the guys at Bellevue. And that Mr. Cottrell, he’ll be discharged tomorrow.”

“Great!”

“He a friend of yours?”

“No, but I’m glad he’ll live. How’s it going there, Jake, on this day of Irish days?”

“It’s a little like what the Somme must’ve been. The casualties are rolling in.”

“Stay alert,” Delaney said, “and make sure there’s plenty of iodine for the wounded.”

He put the fire truck in the shed leading to the yard and straightened out the dish towels and chairs and then went to the top floor. He could hear water running. He could hear Rose speaking softly, telling the boy he shouldn’t worry: the fire truck would be there later. Delaney turned and went down the stairs. He could hear Rose humming an aria.

In the office, he wrote a note to Grace, describing the boy’s birthday and how they had avoided the parade, afraid of spoiling him, and how he was sure the boy now wanted to grow up to be a fireman. He enclosed fifty dollars and sealed and addressed the envelope to Leonora Córdoba and slipped it under the blotter. Then he went to his bedroom. He undressed and donned his robe and stretched out above the covers in the gray light. From a long way off, he could hear a raw tenor singing about the mountains of Mourne, his voice full of longing and melancholy along the early evening streets. What was his name? The writer of the song? French. Of course. Percy French. Before the war, before Vienna, he and Molly had gone to see the famous Mr. French at a recital in Steinway Hall. Delaney thought the man’s songs would make Molly smile. Instead they provoked her anger. He never took her to another Irish evening or even to the parade. On this day, the Irish laughter and the Irish brawling and the rowdy Irish songs were all uptown. Down here in the West Village, there was only this lone tenor. Singing Percy French. It was as if the unseen singer was standing on the High Line flinging the words down the North River to the harbor and then through the Narrows and across the Atlantic to some Irish village that was forever lost.