Pete Hamill - North River

Frankie said: “He knows that, Momma. But he gotta examine you, see what’s the problem.”

“I don’t want nobody looking at me,” she said in English. “It’s too ugly.”

Then she saw Rose.

“Who’s she?”

“I’m like a nurse, signora,” Rose said in Sicilian. “I’m here to help the doctor.”

“That’s right, Momma,” Frankie said in English.

The woman sighed in an accepting way and said, “You get outta here, Frankie. Okay?”

Frankie shrugged, backed out of the room, and left Rose and Delaney with his mother.

“You have to show me the problem, Mrs. Botticelli,” Delaney said, and to be sure, Rose translated. The old woman seemed reassured and began to unbutton the top of her pajamas. Her scrawny chest and belly were covered with sores, some erupting into blisters. Delaney leaned forward to see them better, and touched them gently.

“You see?” the old woman said. “Disgusting!”

“The doctor’s going to fix it,” Rose said in Sicilian. “Don’t worry. He’s the best.”

“It’s so awful,” the old woman said. “I want to die.”

When Delaney came out ten minutes later, Frankie was leaning against a window, staring at the street.

“Jesus, that was fast,” he said.

“The problem is called herpes zoster,” Delaney said. “It comes from nerves, worry, any kind of stress. The common name is shingles.”

“Shingles? Like on a fuckin’ roof?”

“That’s the word. Don’t ask me why. They can be very painful for a while, and they itch. They come late in life to people who had chicken pox when they were kids. Somehow the chicken pox virus stays alive, buried in the body, waiting to make a move. She gets full of worry and then , pow: shingles. But they’re nothing to worry about. I mean, you don’t die from shingles.”

“So whatta we do?”

Delaney was already writing a prescription.

“First get this cream. She has to apply it four times a day. If she can’t do it, have someone come in and do it for her. I had a small jar in my bag, and Rose is applying it now.” Delaney filled out another prescription. “This is for some pills. To ease the pain. One after every meal.”

“She ain’t eatin’.”

“Make sure she eats something, Frankie. Three times a day. For strength. Otherwise, she’s okay. No fever, strong heartbeat. How old is she?”

“How should I know? She’d never tell us. You know these people from the old country. They think they’re always in front of the grand jury… I figure sixty-five, seventy, something like that.”

Rose came out of the bedroom, then stepped into a hall bathroom. They could hear water running as she washed her hands.

“I’ll come back same time next Monday,” Delaney said. “And see how she’s doing.”

Botts took an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Delaney. “For you,” he said. Delaney brushed it away.

“You know what I want,” Delaney said.

“I do?”

“Call off your boys, Frankie. Let us all live in peace down on Horatio Street.”

The sleet returned to the gangster’s eyes. His body tensed and coiled, and he turned away. “There’s a lot of things involved,” Botts said. “I gotta talk to my people.” Rose emerged from the bathroom, and Botts returned the envelope to his pocket. Rose nodded a cool good-bye to Frankie Botts, opened the two locks of the door, and stepped into the hall.

“Let me think about it,” Botts said. “Like I said, there’s lots of things involved.”

“Starting with my grandson.”

“No, starting wit’ that fucking Eddie Corso.”

Delaney lifted his bag and followed Rose into the hall. He did not shake hands or say good-bye. Going down the stairs, she looked at him, as if saying: What was that all about?

“We’ll talk later,” he said.

On the crowded street in front of the building, Rose looked straight at Delaney.

“That was nice with the mother,” she said. “What you did, the way you talked to her. She’s scared to death, and you made her feel safe. Very nice.”

“You helped too, Rose. You helped a lot.”

“I know,” she said. “She wouldn’t let a man put the cream on her. And it made me feel better. But I can’t stand that comorrista Frankie.”

“I wasn’t there just for her,” Delaney said. “I want Frankie to leave us all alone.”

“Then you better not cure the old lady,” she said. “As soon as she gets better, they come looking for you.” She laughed. “Faster if she dies.”

He grinned and said, “I thought about both possibilities.”

She looked serious now. “What’s the matter with her?”

He explained about shingles and its roots in chicken pox and how it can be triggered by worry. Her brow furrowed.

“Can we give it to Carlito?” she said.

“Probably not,” he said. “But we’d better wash again when we get home.”

She nodded and went into the cheese store, and Delaney stood there watching the ceaseless movement of the street. Now he spotted two men from Club 65, sitting in a parked car, watching him. They had pulled guard duty on Grand Street. Frankie Botts said there were other people involved. But he wouldn’t have to consult with these neckless gunsels. They were just enlisted men from the infantry of the Mob. Then he was sure that Frankie Botts did not need to consult with anybody else. He wanted Delaney to care for his mother, to cure her, and he would not lift the threat until the task was done. But at least for now, they were safe. He felt lighter, and watched the schoolkids running around the pushcarts.

After a while, Rose stepped out of the store with a smile on her face and a brown paper bag in her hand. Delaney reached for the bag, and she pulled it away from him.

“Hey, you got a bad arm. Just carry your doctor bag. This doesn’t weigh much, so don’t even try.”

She was issuing orders, and her tone pleased him. It meant that she was more comfortable with him now, that she believed he would see the joke in what she was saying, that she wasn’t just a person who worked for him. She had made sergeant.

“Whatever you say, Rose.”

They moved west through the crowds, while Puccini’s music played from several open windows. He glanced at her, and she seemed thoughtful.

“Maybe I could be a nurse.”

Delaney said: “You already are.”

In the following weeks, they lived by the certainties of routine. The ache in his arm went away. The bad dreams ended. In the mornings, he took Carlito on the bicycle to buy bread and newspapers. On days of spring rain, he covered him with a poncho that Rose had found on Fourteenth Street. He took Rose with him to visit Frankie’s mother, and the blisters healed, but the dark stains remained on her itching skin. He showed Rose how to take the woman’s pulse and temperature, and back in the office he explained how to enter the information on the woman’s record sheet. Monique was not happy about any of this.

“I got two things to tell you,” she said one afternoon. “One, I’m not a babysitter. I can’t handle all this and the boy too. He’s adorable, but I just can’t do it.” She took a deep breath, exhaled. “And Rose? She’s not a nurse. She does the records, she goes on a house call, what the hell is that?”

“It’s just for one patient, Monique.”

“I know, but it’s the way she does it. Going in the file cabinet, taking the patient record sheet, writing stuff that isn’t spelled right. I just don’t like it.”

“Maybe you could do it together.”

“No, I’m the nurse.”

Delaney sighed.

“Give me a few more weeks.”

“I’m serious, Jim. I just might quit.”

He looked at her hard. “Don’t do that, Monique. Don’t even say it. For God’s sake. The patient speaks Sicilian, and I need Rose there. The way I need you here. Capisce?”