Pete Hamill - North River

At lunch Rose talked about the Bing Crosby movie she’d seen the day before on Fourteenth Street, and how Crosby was a wonderful singer, and so relaxed, and how she always heard him now on the radio. Mentioning him, she smiled widely. The boy wandered in and out of the back door, which was open to the garden and the olive tree. Rose did not bring him a baseball bat.

Delaney looked at Rose and saw that her face was smoother now, her skin rosier, her smile oddly wider. Some of it must have been from the sun. But maybe it was also from what they did in the night. He wanted now to hold her and kiss her and feel her pressing against him. Then he thought of Grace’s letters, and felt each minute ticking away. He wished for clarity, but it did not come.

That afternoon, at Billy McNiff’s, he bought a baseball and a small child’s glove. At the art supply store near Cooper Union, he picked up three brushes, watercolors, crayons, two pads of paper, some charcoal, and pencils. In Molly’s room, he and Rose set up two facing chairs for Carlito, and a table for Delaney.

“This is great,” Rose said, as she gazed around the room that had always been closed and was now wide-open. She was beaming as Delaney showed the boy how to use the crayons. Now they were both southpaws, and Delaney drew a crude head of a man wearing a baseball cap, with big eyes and a wide grin, then handed the crayons to Carlito.

“You try it now, big fella,” he said.

The boy chose a red crayon and began with his left hand to make a head. Rose went downstairs, but Delaney and Carlito stayed in the room for more than an hour. The boy did little more than scribble, while Delaney tried putting watercolor on paper with his own left hand. He painted a crude house, and a cruder bicycle in a front yard, and the sun shining in the sky. Carlito watched and then tried doing the same with his crayons. When they went downstairs to eat, they left the door open.

That night she held him tightly, as if trying to calm him. Or herself.

“You okay?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Something happened,” she said.

“There were some letters from Grace.”

A pause. Then: “She’s coming home?”

“Maybe.”

He could feel her deflate. Now he held her tight. He touched her damp face. He could feel the faint ridge of the scar.

“Who did this to you?”

“I told you. Some guy.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

She was quiet for a long time.

“I was here almost a year,” she said. “Living in a rooming house. My own room. With a lock.” A pause. “I didn’t know much English. I was lonesome. And I met this guy.”

Her breathing was shallow now.

“An old story… I start going out with him. Here and there, mostly speakeasies, you know… He’s very handsome, thin, a good dancer. His Italian is very bad, all mixed up with American, but so is my English, and anyway… that wasn’t what it was all about.” Another pause. “He had a wife too. I saw her a few times. Everything on her was big, top and bottom. Some kind of an American. I know this could be bad trouble, and I want to break up with this guy, but he won’t let me. Another jealous guinea.” A final pause. “Then one night I’m packin’ to leave and he catches me in the hall and starts yelling and I curse him and his whole family and whoosh: the knife comes out and he cuts my face. Then he says, Okay, go. ”

Silence.

“You went.”

“To Jersey City. When I come back, I know he’s around someplace, but it was over. Around this time, I start having my trouble with Gyp, another guinea gangster that used a knife. That’s why I hate these gangster movies.”

He touched the scar again, up now on one elbow.

“What was his name — the guy that cut you?”

“It doesn’t matter. He put a mark on me.” A pause. “Now it’s the past. Nothing can be done.”

He felt her emptying beside him, at once ashamed of her confession and relieved to get it said. He held her closer and kissed the scar.

FOR DAYS ROSE WAS HER OLD SELF. HE DID NOT MENTION THE scar. She was cheerful, busy, focused, intimate, while routine established its discipline. She did not mention Grace again, nor the possibility of her return. Without words, she made Delaney believe that the present was everything, a kind of joy, even if the future might contain dread. Perhaps, he thought, this is an illusion. I think it’s true because I want it to be true. But as he and the boy tossed a ball around in the backyard, both using left hands, or when they made pictures in the room they now called the studio, or when they sat down for dinner in the golden aroma of oil and basil, and when Rose slipped into his dark room at night, Delaney allowed himself to feel happy. No matter what might happen, he would have these moments as long as he lived.

One afternoon he passed a music store on Broome Street, where old hand-wound Victrolas were for sale, and many 78 rpm records. He tried several machines, testing them with an old Brunswick record of Crosby singing “I Surrender Dear.” The records were ten cents each, and he bought ten: Crosby, Russ Columbo, Rudy Vallee. The records and the bulky Victrola were piled into the basket on his bicycle and lashed safely with cord by the man from the music store. Then Delaney slipped the handle of his leather bag inside his belt and pedaled home.

Delaney arrived with his secondhand treasures, to whoops from Rose and scrutiny from the boy, and they went to the top floor and through the open doors of the studio. He placed the Victrola on top of the piano and tried to wind it with his good left hand. His movements were clumsy, and Rose edged him aside.

“Let me do that,” she said. And wound it taut, while Delaney lifted Russ Columbo’s version of “I Surrender Dear,” holding it on the edges, and placed it on the turntable. Rose gazed at the needle, which was new, then cocked the arm and laid it on the record. The voice of Russ Columbo filled the room.

“Moo-zick!” the boy exclaimed, as if seeing a magic act. “Moo-zick!”

He sat at the piano and plunked various keys, and Rose clapped her hands in delight. When the song ended, she put the needle back at the beginning of the record and they did it again, Delaney keeping time with his feet, Rose singing along. Here. Now.

In the night, she did not talk about the boy. It was as if she had already accepted the possibility of his departure. She merged with Delaney, flesh to flesh, her body excited in the now, while forging images that would last for another day, or a month, or always. But above all, now and now and now and now. One night he reached for baby oil on the night table and began to knead the pliant flesh of her back, and her buttocks, and the back of her legs. Her breathing was deep, hoarse, rhythmic. Then he turned her and rubbed the oil into her feet, into the wide hard soles, softening them, into and between toes, into arches and ankles. Her breathing grew more rapid, second after second, deep in the now, until she reached for the pillow and screamed into its dense softness.

During breakfast on a Saturday, the telephone began ringing. Delaney wanted to ignore it, to hold off still another demand for relief. Then he sighed and went into his office.

“Hello?”

And heard a familiar voice.

“I need morphine, fast.”

Eddie Corso.

“Where are you?”

“In New York. I need to see you.”

“Where and when?”

“You’re off tomorrow?”

“Yeah, but so is the woman. I have the boy.”

“Bring him.”

“Bring him? Eddie, last time I looked there were four platoons of wiseguys looking for you. All with guns.”