Pete Hamill - North River

She waved at a waiter, made a spooning gesture. The waiter shouted something into the kitchen, then hurried over to take away the pasta dishes.

“You’re gonna need help,” Angela said, her face grave. “A lot of help.”

“I know.”

“You can’t go running out on house calls carrying a three-year-old with you.”

“I know.” He laughed. “But you know what I really need first? I need a cheese box. The boy can’t reach the bowl when he stands in front of it.”

Angela laughed.

“I don’t have one here, and the cheese store is closed. Wait’ll tomorrow.”

The waiter arrived with two dishes of vanilla ice cream and two spoons. The boy smiled. This was food he had seen before his journey to New York.

“You’re gonna need a woman,” Angela said.

He carried the boy part of the way on his shoulders, leaning into the wind, fighting to keep his balance, but bumping the boy up and down in a kind of dance. Carlito laughed in delight. Then he stopped laughing, and Delaney slipped him off his shoulders, saw that his eyes were closed, and held him close for the rest of the journey west on Horatio Street. A taxi pulled up in the center of the snow-packed street. A well-dressed man and woman stepped out. The Cottrells from next door. Both were Delaney’s age. From 93 Horatio. His neighbors. They didn’t look at him. They never did. Not since that summer afternoon four years earlier, when their son was knocked down by a speeding car driven by a drunk. At the sound of screeching brakes, Delaney rushed outside. He did what he could for the boy while an ambulance slogged through traffic from St. Vincent’s. But it was too late. The boy was dead. Nine years old. The only boy among three sisters. The Cottrells chose to blame Delaney and never spoke to him again.

As the gate of the Cottrells’ house clanged shut, he could feel the boy’s warmth, and his vulnerability on this street in the perilous city. Don’t worry, boy, he thought. I’ll make everything work. Or die trying.

Later, by the light of candles, he sat in his big chair with a notebook in his lap. Through the open oak doors that separated the bedroom from the rear, he could hear the shallow breathing of the sleeping Carlito. He began to write down the things he would need. Maybe fit out one of the maids’ rooms upstairs. A good bed. Clothes, guards for the stairs. Food. Including spaghetti. Monique will help, after she returns tomorrow. Money too. Money most of all. Not easy, at two dollars for a consultation, three for a house call.

This goddamned Depression. When will it ever end? He couldn’t charge a patient who had sixty cents to last a week. He couldn’t turn away anybody because of money, or the lack of it. He couldn’t ever charge a veteran. Not ever. In the week before Christmas, he had earned forty-two goddamned dollars. And he paid Monique twenty.

He thought about applying for a loan. From St. Vincent’s. Or some bank. Maybe one of the vested old Tammany pols knew a banker. That judge, whatever the hell his name was. But in all the years since his father had died, Delaney had asked them for nothing. Ah, Big Jim, would I even ask you? If you were here, would you come to my rescue? Could I even ask? He dozed, and saw himself filling in a form under the lipless stare of a bank manager.

Name James Finbar Delaney. Address 95 Horatio Street, New York, N.Y. Age 47. Almost 48. Date of birth June 24, 1886. I was two during the Blizzard of ’88. Place of birth New York, N.Y. Names of parents James Aloysius Delaney and wife Bridget George (both deceased) Their country of origin Ireland Did they love each other? Of course. Did they love you? With everything they had in them. In their own separate ways. Other siblings None alive. Two died when very young. Marital status Married, with an explanation Name of spouse Molly O’Brien (Delaney) Her place of birth Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland Citizenship American (naturalized: 1912) How did you meet? On a dock over at the North River. She was ill. I’m a doctor. Issue Daughter Grace, born July 1, 1914 Your education Sacred Heart grammar school (graduated 1899) Xavier HS (graduated 1903) City College of N.Y. (graduated 1907) New York Medical School (graduated 1909) Internship, Bellevue Hospital, N.Y., 1909–1911 Johns Hopkins, 1911–1913 Postgraduate studies in surgery, Vienna, 1913–1914 Military service United States Army (AEF medical corps), 1917–1919 Employer’s name Self-employed Annual income $1900–$2200 p.a. (avg.) That’s all? It used to be more. Until 1929…

Delaney could feel the banker’s chilly rejection. He listened for the boy, who was breathing in a steady way.

Any persistent ailments? Heartbreak.

He lifted the candle and his daughter’s letter. Time to go upstairs. To Molly’s floor. The shrine of the past, soon to be filled with the future.

Delaney opened the small rooms first, two of them, with single windows facing the backyard. The rooms of the Irish maids, who served a haughty family long ago. The shades were drawn. In the light of the candle, he saw an old-fashioned lamp on a small table beside a bed. He lifted it and felt the weight of oil, turned up the wick, placed the candle against the wick. Orange light filled the room, along with the burnt, sour odor of stale oil. Thank you, Lord, for small miracles. He blew out the candle. There were paintings by Grace on the walls of each room, done while she was a teenaged girl at the Art Students League. A gypsy. A man with a turban. An old woman. The brushstrokes were bold. God, she was so confident then.

There was a bed for Grace in one of the low-ceilinged rooms, but the other was empty. When she was thirteen, that became her studio, with her ceramic tabletop and her easel and her tabouret. She loved that room, especially when morning light came streaming in. He noticed splatters of old paint on the floors, and opened the closet door to see her brushes and various jars and cups and tubes of paint. He lifted one tube of burnt sienna. It felt like iron.

He looked into the bathroom, saw the old tub with its lion’s feet upon the tiles and the ceramic sink with its chipped edge. He turned the tap. The water flowed, rusty and coughing and then clear. When Grace made watercolors, she washed her brushes here. Never oils, she said. Because they would clog the drains. She soaked those brushes in turpentine, then used the faucet in the garden. Now on the top floor, the cold was total, like an apartment in Siberia. Delaney wished he had risked everything before the Crash to install steam heat. Each small room had a kerosene heater, and in the winter when they were all together here, Mr. Lanzano would lug the kerosene cans up the stairs without complaint, while his son helped deliver the blocks of ice through summer heat. The kerosene odor was awful, but Grace as a teenager said she loved it. Oh, Daddy, it’s so real! How long did she live here? Eight years? No, seven. And is it the odor of kerosene that urges me even now, in blizzards, to sleep with the window open?

Delaney paused before unlocking the door to the large room at the front of the house. Molly’s room. He hadn’t opened this door since that August night when he heard her playing one of the preludes. She had been gone for a year then, and now it was January, which meant it was sixteen months since Molly vanished. Last August he was alone in bed in the vast oaken emptiness and hurried upstairs and opened the door. The music stopped. He called her name. Molly! O my Molly-O.

But she wasn’t there. There was no sound at all in the empty house, except his own heavy breathing.