Pete Hamill - North River

She looked away.

“I hope you capisce where you’re going with all this,” she said. He did not answer, and went into his office.

Days passed. He noticed that Rose’s diction while speaking English was becoming crisper, and she told him to correct her when she said the words wrong, the way he corrected Carlito. Most mornings she took the boy grocery shopping, while Delaney handled patients and while Bessie cleaned, and in the afternoons he pedaled hard from one house call to another. Rose went with him to see Mrs. Botticelli. He did not bring Rose with him to examine the Chinese women on Mott Street.

More and more people were on the streets now, exulting in the good weather, and he waved to Mr. Lanzano, the oil and ice man, and Fierro, the sign painter, and Mr. Nobiletti, the shoemaker. He explained to Danny Shapiro that a medical truce was under way and there was no need for cops on the block. He had a cup of coffee with Knocko Carmody and explained the truce. Knocko was pleased and promised him two ducats for opening day at the Polo Grounds. “Make it the first Sunday after opening day,” Delaney said. “You got it,” Knocko said. One morning Delaney stopped at a shipping company on Fourteenth Street and ordered twelve book cartons and some tape and three lithographic crayons, and later told Monique that when the goods arrived, she should have them stacked in Molly’s room. He lunched with Jake Zimmerman. He examined the window of Billy McNiff’s toy store. He went on grand rounds at St. Vincent’s. He read the newspapers. There was a story deep inside the Times about growing tension in Spain, and mergers of the left-wing parties, and talk of the coming struggle. But there was no real news, and no letter from Grace. He wondered if the FBI had intercepted all of them.

Rose took over the records of Carlito, weighing him, measuring him, exclaiming one evening to Delaney that his legs were already harder from pedaling the fire engine and maybe even longer. This made Delaney laugh. Rose said: “I’m not kiddin’ around! Take a look!” Looking at the boy’s legs, he thought: Maybe she’s right. She took the boy’s temperature every morning. She examined him carefully after each evening’s bath, searching for signs of chicken pox, saying, “I don’t want this kid getting shingles when he’s sixty!” She never did say where she went on Sundays.

One Saturday evening, Rose said: “You want to come with me tomorrow?”

“Where?” Delaney said.

“Where I go on Sunday morning,” she said. “You asked me about it.”

“Sure,” he said. “We’ll go together. The three of us.”

The next morning they walked west and then north. The boy was excited, pointing out new churches and new stores and another firehouse. Then they turned toward the North River. Ahead a crowd of men waited before a church called St. Brendan’s. Rose said: “Hey, Jimmy, how are you?”

A small dirty man smiled at her. “Just great, Rose,” he said. “Just great, now that you’re here.”

He had hollow colorless eyes, white hair growing in tufts from his ears, a heavy rat-colored coat. He smelled like shit. Delaney edged away from him, lifting the boy, thinking: I should have brought surgical masks. If I’d known we were coming here. Rose pushed forward, past the shit-smelling man, took the boy from Delaney, and led the way to a side entrance. The men here all knew her name too. Mornin’, Rose… God bless ya, Rose… Hey, Rose, get that sauce goin’, Rose. She waved to them and kept moving, burying the boy’s face against her shoulder.

The path to the old lower church was down three steps into a gloomy alley. In the old days, the overflow crowds heard mass down here, but times had changed, for the worse. Here and everywhere. The downstairs space was no longer a church. There were more than fifty long tables, each occupied by men having Sunday breakfast. At the front of the low-ceilinged lower church, there was a kitchen where the altar once stood. A few men were on line with metal trays, stragglers scooping up watery scrambled eggs and mashed potatoes and coffee. A growling mesh of talk provided the basic sound, punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter and the clatter of metal trays. They were all men. Some ignored breakfast. They were waiting for lunch. Waiting for Rose.

“I work here Sunday mornings,” Rose said, “getting lunch ready for these guys.” She returned the boy to Delaney, told them to wait, and walked to the side of the steam tables into a back room. The way altar boys once walked to the sacristy. Carlito’s eyes were full of questions, but he said nothing. Rising off the men was an odor of dried sweat, dirty clothes, unwashed feet, and despair.

Rose reappeared behind the counter with a pale green cotton uniform over her street clothes and a dark green apron looped around her neck. She had tied a handkerchief across her mouth and was nodding, gesturing, ladling out the last remnants of breakfast to newcomers. They came in more slowly now, a few volunteers waiting until other men left spaces at the tables before admitting new ones. Breakfast was almost over. Rose turned to the kitchen and began pouring water into a huge pot for soup. The early-afternoon meal was next, and she was clearly the boss. She began chopping vegetables and slicing chicken and gesturing with her hands to some of the others. A young black man helped her lay all the pieces on platters, covering them with dish towels against the flies. Then she started preparing the sauce. The black man opened can after can of tomato sauce, sliding them to her along a counter, and Rose emptied each into a huge pot. Then she added freshly diced tomatoes. Her hands moved as quickly as they did in the kitchen on Horatio Street. She never once looked at Delaney and the boy.

The boy kept pointing at Rose and saying her name and smiling. But Delaney thought: I must get him away from here. The place is a germ farm. Everything might be in the air. From tuberculosis on down. He waved at Rose and caught her attention and gestured toward the exit and then at the boy. She stopped what she was doing and came around from behind the counter and down the aisle. She lowered the handkerchief, smiling broadly.

“So you see what I do on Sundays,” she said.

“I do,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

“I make the sauce, and they have a big meal of ziti and chicken at two o’clock. When I’m already gone. It’s the best they get all week. They come from all over.”

“This is great work, Rose.”

He meant it.

“Hey,” she said. “See you later.”

She turned, lifted her handkerchief to her nose, and hurried back to the kitchen. Delaney took the boy’s hand and they went out into the hard city, heading for the park. When they reached the corner, the sun was shining. Delaney inhaled deeply, breathing in the morning air. Breathing the spring.

That night she came home looking drained, but now Delaney understood. Her Sundays were for the casualties of peace. For all those sad, fucked-up, beaten-up, or beaten-down men who had survived the Great War, who had made marriages and fathered children and roared in speakeasies and danced until dawn and then blew it all. She didn’t judge them. She tried to comfort them, to put a little good sauce into their lives, at least once a week. Delaney started to boil water for coffee, and when she tried to move him away from the stove, he stood in front of her, his hands up, his palms out. Carlito came to Delaney’s side, grinned, and put up his hands too.

“You’ve had a long day, Rose. Now it’s our turn.”

“Come on, no jokes, please.”

He opened the refrigerator and lifted out the flat box from Angela’s and placed it on the table. The boy blurted: “For you, Rosa!” She blushed, turned away, squeezed the boy’s right hand. Delaney opened the box to the tightly wrapped sandwiches, the container of soup, the bread, the cannoli.