Pete Hamill - North River

The waitress hurried away. He looked at Rose across the table.

“I want to dance,” she said.

“Like Dolores Del Rio?”

“Yeah,” she said, and squeezed his wrist. “On the wings of an airplane.”

Across the day, she did not speak about what had happened in the night. In early afternoon, they went to see Mrs. Botticelli, who made jokes in Sicilian and said she was feeling much better. Rose bought cheese in Di Palo’s and some oranges from a pushcart. She showed deference to Monique, and played in the garden with the boy, and Delaney went on house calls. That night she returned to Delaney’s bed. And the night after that. And the night after that.

Delaney did not say anything either. He was happy that she did not affect a girlish shyness, or a giggling modesty. She wasn’t a girl. She was in her middle thirties, not her teens. Through the days, she was as she was before, with only subtle changes. She flashed him intimate smiles, she touched a casual hand to his face, but she did not talk about what they now shared. On their walks with Carlito in the evenings, she showed nothing in the street, did not take his arm, did not hold his hand. She never used the word “love.”

In the luminous dark of Delaney’s bedroom, she was not shy either. They did many things with each other, like humans finding water after drought. One night she straddled him on the armchair. On another, she joined him in the shower, the lights out, and she soaped him and he soaped her until neither could wait another second and they moved barefoot, hair wild and wet, to the bed. Sometimes, in full passion, she covered her face with the pillow, fearful of waking the boy with her screams.

Carlito never woke. He was exhausted from pedaling his fire truck, often now on the sidewalk outside the house. Or he was full of the sly silent contentment of pasta. Or both. Each night, after the boy fell into sleep, Rose slipped beside Delaney, bringing warmth, changing the air and making it more humid, the two of them erasing loneliness. He never heard her leave, but she was always gone in the morning. Her presence now was larger in the house. She walked with greater confidence, exuding a sense that it was her house too. She was more comfortable than ever, and so was Delaney.

They began to talk in the dark before sleep would come to Delaney.

She said: “Is your wife alive?”

“I don’t know. She disappeared and was never seen again. Dead or alive.”

“You miss her?”

“Sometimes.”

“You dream about her sometimes?”

“Sometimes.”

Silence.

“I dream about my husband sometimes too. Calvino, with the plate in his head. Sometimes he’s even that handsome guy I saw after the war. Most times he’s a goddamn monster.”

She was silent then.

“I dream about the boy too. I dream about Carlito.”

“Me too.”

“They scare me, those Carlito dreams.”

He remembered the scarlet sea.

“Me too,” he said.

And laughed.

There was no fresh letter from Grace, and very little news in the papers about Spain. He thought of calling Tillman, asking if the mail from Leonora Córdoba was being stopped by some new young FBI zealot who had discovered the secret address. Then thought Tillman would be embarrassed or angry or both if he asked. Let it alone, he told himself. As he made his house calls, Delaney heard much talk about the Giants, with opening day coming on fast, and how this would be another immense year for the Giants after the great World Series win over the Senators of Washington. McGraw would not see it, of course, but Bill Terry was a great manager, along with being a splendid hitter, and Mel Ott was sure to have a big year at bat, and the pitching was strong, even if Adolfo Luque, the ancient Cuban, was another year older. One afternoon Delaney spent twenty minutes with an old man in Hudson Street, his wife dead, his children gone off to their own lives, his lungs choked by a million cigarettes, and they talked baseball, and how Gus Mancuso was still not able to play, on account of getting typhoid during the off-season. Delaney went to see the mother of Frankie Botts, with Rose beside him, and the old woman said she wanted to know about the Giants. “I just want to go one more time to the Polo Grounds,” she said in Sicilian. Delaney said, “You’ll see a lot more Giant games. Later in the summer.” Tears appeared in her eyes, and later, out on Grand Street, where the two hoodlums remained on guard duty in their car, Rose said: “I don’t understand this. How come one old lady from Sicily cares about this baseball?”

“Because she’s an American now,” Delaney said.

Then it was the Sunday after opening day, and over breakfast he and the boy talked about baseball. The boy still didn’t know what Delaney meant, but he listened intently, looking at the photographs on the back page of the Daily News. Then Rose came into the kitchen, dressed for Sunday, smiling broadly.

“You guys got a big day today,” she said. “The Polo Grounds!”

“Bay-ball,” Carlito said with a grin.

“ Base -ball.”

“Bayz-ball.”

“Good, Carlito,” Delaney said. “Baseball!”

“Have a great time,” Rose said, and went off to feed the men who would not be making it to the Polo Grounds anytime soon.

It was dark when Rose came home, and Carlito ran to her and started talking about what he had seen in the Polo Grounds. The words came in an excited rush. The boy was describing the world now, not simply naming it.

“Rosa, they have bats like you! Big bats, all bats in their hands, and they hit a ball, and they run. They run very fast, and they jump into the base. There’s grass all over, and lots of people. They all, they —” He paused, groping for the word, raising his hands in the air.

“Cheer,” Delaney said.

“Sí, they cheer, Rosa. All of them. Many, many people. Then they come with the bat again and they throw the ball and they hit the ball in the air, Rosa! Up high in the air!”

“You got to take me there someday, Carlito,” Rose said. “And explain to me how they play.”

“Yeah! And Osito too! But we can play in, in, the bagyard too.”

“Not when it’s dark, boy!”

“No, in the sun, Rosa.”

Later, they all went up to bed. Later, Rose opened Delaney’s door and entered the intimate darkness.

The next day, there were three letters from Grace, all with different postmarks, Nothing told him that they had been opened, but he was sure that Tillman had sent them on. Delaney couldn’t read them, because the Monday-morning rush was on outside his door.

Later, he thought. Always later. Now the quinine men were there, yellow with malaria. A few strangers. A woman with what was surely leukemia. One lunger. A hernia. A broken nose. And Sally Wilson, hoping again to have her breasts gripped in a man’s hands.

“I’m sure it’s a lump,” she said.

Delaney sighed and said: “Let’s see.”

When they were all gone, he sat heavily at the desk and opened the letters from Grace. Each was brief. Her husband was back in Spain but she hadn’t made contact yet. Somebody would try to bring her to him, or him to her. She was making drawings of Barcelona and its people. She missed Carlito and hoped to see him soon. But the husband, Santos, was essential. “I just have to resolve this,” she wrote, “and then try to get on with my life.” She thanked him for everything and apologized again for leaving the boy on his doorstep. Delaney put the letters back in their envelopes and slipped them under the desk blotter.

Then he filled out records. Sally Wilson: That was wrong. I can’t have her here anymore. The coldness of examination is in me, but not in her, and I’m servicing her. And I can’t go to the Chinese women anymore. I know I’m just providing medical services. But to Rose it would be like an act of infidelity. He thought about Grace. About her possible return. And what it might do to all of them. To him. To the boy. To Rose.