North River (14 page)

“Dr. Delaney’s office,” she said, the way Monique always answered the phone. She listened, then picked up a pencil.

“What’s the address, you know, where you live?”

She wrote down the details. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll tell the doctor. No, I don’t know what time he can come. Fast as he can. But in the afternoon, after he eats.”

She started for the kitchen, and the telephone rang again. She sat down in Monique’s chair and picked it up.

“Dr. Delaney’s office. Okay, what’s the problem? You got stabbed? Where? No, I don’t mean your house, I mean what part of your body? The
knee?
Where was your boyfriend — on the
floor?
Lady, listen to me, listen to me, okay? The doctor don’t do house calls for
stabbings!
That’s for the cops. You call the cops right now, okay?”

Now Carlito was there too, trying to understand what was keeping Rose from the kitchen, and Delaney was standing in the open doorway to his office, looking down at Rose and smiling.

“You’re doing great, Rose.”

“These people, your patients, they’re all a little crazy, ain’t they?”

She looked at him in a blank way.

Delaney smiled again and said: “They have good reason, some of them.”

Monique came in near the end of lunch, her face ruddy from the cold, carrying a small bag. She sat at her desk, saw the notes made by Rose. Delaney came to her.

“Someone’s been sitting at
my
desk,” she said in an arch way, as if telling a child a story about bears.

“Yeah, the phone kept ringing, and Rose —”

“It’s my desk, Jim,” she said in a clipped way.

“Of course it is.”

“You want her to do my job, send me home.”

She was more than annoyed now; she was angry.

“Ah, Monique, for God’s sake —”

“She’s taking over this house. I don’t like it.”

Delaney sighed. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Better you than me.”

“I need you, Monique.”

“Yeah.”

She took a new Brownie from the bag and explained it in a crisp way to Delaney, the two of them examining the apparatus and reading the instructions and inserting a roll of film.

“You can figure out the rest,” Monique said, and sat down at her desk. Delaney thought: Maybe her boyfriend has moved to Alaska.

On Sunday morning, puttering in the kitchen with Carlito, Delaney saw Rose as she was leaving. She had light makeup on her cheeks and a faint trace of lipstick on her mouth. Her long blue coat was brushed clean, and the wide shoes were polished. She did not say where she was going, and he did not ask. It was Sunday. Her day. And it would be foolish to worry about her. She smiled as she handed him the camera. Carlito hugged her hips.

“You remember how you do this?” she said.

“I think so.”

“Maybe you better get more film, Dottore.”

She said “film” the way the Irish said it. Two syllables.

“Maybe you could get a shoeshine too.” She smiled. “You de-serve it.”

“Okay, Rose.”

Then she was gone. He thought: Maybe she goes to church. Maybe she has relatives here that she’s never mentioned. Maybe she has a lover.

Delaney and Carlito walked under a cold sun to Astor Place, to pick up the Lexington Avenue local. The boy’s mittened hand was warm, and he gazed at everything he saw. Delaney helped him in the naming of the world. Newsstand. Garbage can. Bus. Taxi. Car. Lamppost. Sidewalk. Street. All nouns. He was still too young for most verbs.

“This is the subway,” Delaney explained, as they entered the kiosk at Fourth Avenue. He glanced left at the many used-book stores that stretched to Union Square. A woman carried a heavy bag of books into one of them, perhaps to raise the cash to eat for three days.

“Ubway,” Carlito said.

“S-s-s-subway,” Delaney said.

“S-s-s-subway,” Carlito said.

“Good!”

“Sssss
ubway!”

They passed through the turnstile to the crowded platform. Fewer trains were running on Sundays, to save money, but nobody seemed irritated by the long wait. It was Sunday. Delaney held the boy’s hand more tightly. Many people were reading the
Daily News,
starting with the sports section in the back of the paper and moving forward. Others were absorbed by Dick Tracy or Orphan Annie in the Sunday color comics. In the distance, they could all hear a train deep in the tunnel, and they shifted, stepped back from the edge of the platform, tucked the newspapers under their arms. Carlito’s eyes widened as the train rolled into the station, its wheels squealing, the air shoved aside, and lurched to a sudden halt.

“Tray!” the boy said. “Big tray!
”

They stepped inside the car, the boy absorbing everything: the many people, their woolen odor. Every seat was taken on the long straw-covered benches, and Delaney grabbed an overhead handle and held on to Carlito with his free hand, after checking the bulk of the camera in his pocket. He did not explain to the boy about pickpockets. Carlito was standing directly in front of a heavy light-skinned black woman with a flowered hat. She was reading a Bible. No doubt heading uptown to church. He looked down and realized that Carlito was staring at the woman. She was not as dark as Bessie, the woman who came to clean. Her skin was more golden than black. The boy looked up at Delaney, and mouthed the word “Mamá” with a puzzled look on his face. Delaney squeezed his hand, thinking: Perhaps he’s thinking of the bronze skins of Mexico. Perhaps this woman reminds him of what was left behind, and thus of his mother. The woman could feel the boy’s stare. She looked at him, smiled, and returned to the Old Testament. Carlito smiled too.

They made all the stops, Union Square, Twenty-third Street, Twenty-eighth Street, Thirty-third Street, and finally came into Grand Central. They turned to leave with almost all the other passengers, but the black woman sat there, determined to go on to a place where she could worship her God among her own people. Carlito smiled at her and said, “Bye.” She smiled back and said, “Bye-bye, little boy.”

Delaney took the boy’s hand to climb the stairs out of the subway. They were halfway to the top when the boy paused and looked behind him, as if memorizing the route. It was as if his eyes were also shutters. Delaney reached down and started to lift him, but the boy resisted: he did not want to be carried. They came to the top, and the boy stopped to watch a man in a business suit getting his shoes polished. What was this?

“Shoeshine,” Delaney said.

“Hoo-shy,” the boy said.

Delaney pointed at his own scuffed shoes and repeated the word, and remembered Rose in her wide men’s shoes.

“Hoo-shine,” the boy said, and they moved on. They saw a small crowd gathered around a bone-thin banjo player who was singing “Swanee” for the New Yorkers
.
Carlito stared at the man’s hand, strumming the banjo. He stood blinking, remembering something.
Does he hear the guitars of Mexico? Is some memory of his father making a move?
The boy turned to Delaney and pointed at the banjo player’s rat-colored boots, worn without socks.

“Hoo-shine,” the boy said.

“Yes, Carlito. He needs a shoeshine. But then, so do I.”

They walked on and passed under a wide arch, and then they were in the main concourse, and Delaney felt again as astonished as the boy must feel. He and Carlito just stood there, as some people hurried past them to departing trains while others stared at announcement boards, listening to an amplified voice barking about tracks and times. The voice caromed off such an immense plenitude of marble that it was almost unintelligible, and many people turned to one another, as if saying, “What track?”

Delaney could tell from their clothes and movement which people had jobs. The best-dressed people walked with a sense of destination. The others were in a permanent waiting room. The boy gazed around him, seeing beams of light pushing down from high arched windows to the station floor, and a ceiling that was blue and flecked with stars, and a wide marble staircase rising as if in a palace.

“Grand Central,” Delaney said, waving his arms in an encompassing way, holding the Brownie in his left hand. The boy did not try to say the two words. It was as if the place was so filled with grandeur and complexity that it could not have a name.

Then they walked around the great wide spaces, Delaney wishing there were enough light to make photographs, deciding there wasn’t. Then he saw another shine parlor, with three tall chairs for customers. And thought: Rose was right, I need a shoeshine. I might even deserve it. He led Carlito into the parlor and climbed onto a chair, placing his feet on the polished steel footrests. A small Italian man in his forties started brushing away the stains of winter.

“How’s business?” Delaney said.

“Lousy. Nobody got money for shoeshines.”

“They say it’s getting better.”

“Yeah? I don’t believe dem.” He was applying black polish to the shoes now. The skin of his hands was blacker than the polish.

Standing below him, Carlito was fixed on the process of the shoeshine. A fat man in a velvet-collared overcoat climbed into the empty chair beside Delaney.

“Christ, that’s the best exercise I had in months,” the man said, wheezing. “Climbin’ into this chair, it’s like going to the fifth floor somewhere.”

Delaney glanced at him. The face was familiar, from Big Jim’s club in the old days. And once in a while, at Angela’s. Pink face, veiny nose. He couldn’t remember the name. Delaney nodded a hello.

“Carmine,” the man said, “you gotta make
one
chair close to the ground. A chair for fat guys.”

“Den where am I gonna work, Judge?” Carmine said. “On my knees?”

They all laughed, and now Carmine was working on the final stage of Delaney’s shine, using saliva to help bring each shoe to a high glistening polish. The boy looked as if he’d seen a magic act. In a way, Delaney thought, given the state of my shoes, that’s what it was.

Delaney smiled in thanks at Carmine and started climbing down from the chair. The fat man paused. He squinted down at Delaney, who passed fifty cents to Carmine’s blackened hand.

“I
thought
that was you,” the man said. “You’re Big Jim Delaney’s kid, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Harry Flanagan,” the man said, offering a pudgy hand to be shaken. “Please’ to meet ya. I seen you box, before the war, some smoker down Baxter Street. You had a good right hand, I remember that.”

“Thanks.”

“Fast. Right on the button.”

“It’s a long time ago.”

A pause. “It was terrible what happened to your folks.”

“It was.”

“Your father took care of my mother one winter, when we didn’t have what to eat.”

“He took care of a lot of people.”

“You keep boxing in the army?”

“No, I hurt my arm in the war.”

“That goddamned war . . .”

Carmine was working hard now, while Carlito ignored the talk, staring at Delaney’s shoes.

“Just last night, at the club, I heard you had some trouble, downtown,” Flanagan said, speaking out of an unmoving mouth like an old Whyo, or a Hudson Duster, the baddest of the West Side Irish gangsters.

“We’re working on it,” Delaney said.

Flanagan sighed and shook his head. “These new guys,” he said. “They gotta work it out.” He took a wallet from his jacket pocket and removed a business card.

“I’m a judge now,” he said, handing Delaney the card. “Thanks to your dad.” He smiled at Delaney. “You need anything, call me.”

Then he nodded down at Carlito. “Who’s this guy?”

“My grandson.”

“How are ya, kid?” the judge said. “Don’t let your grandfather make you into a doctor. Get a job that
pays.
”

“Take care, Judge,” Delaney said, with a laugh. The boy squatted down and touched the gleaming surface of Delaney’s shoes.

“Hoo-shine, Ga’paw,” he said. “Hoo-shine.”

Delaney took the boy by the hand and walked out into the marble grandeur of the station.

They came out onto Lexington Avenue, easing past a man selling the remains of the Sunday newspapers, and two silent men peddling apples, and a woman beggar. They walked to the corner of Forty-second Street. Taxis arrived in a steady line at the station entrance halfway up the block. A heavyset cop in a long coat sipped from a cardboard cup of tea. Horns blared.

“Look up,” Delaney said to Carlito, gesturing above him with the camera.

The boy looked up and released a whoosh of astonished air.

Rising above the sidewalk across the street, glaring white in the hard sun, going higher and higher and higher, aimed into the sky, was the Chrysler Building. Neither Delaney nor the boy could see the top of the spire. They could not see the gargoyles on the sixty-first floor, designed like hood ornaments on Mr. Chrysler’s automobiles. The boy would see them in some future year. But now, on this cold Sunday, he was seeing the largest thing he had ever seen in his life. Delaney named it for him. Then he peered into the viewfinder and framed Carlito as the boy was looking up. He snapped that photograph. Then he snapped another, of the boy pointing, and then a third, squatting low, trying to get the Chrysler into the frame. He was sure he had failed, that the building would be out of focus. Carlito was still gazing into the sky.

They walked now to Forty-third Street, for another view of the immense building. Delaney snapped a few more pictures. They moved toward Third Avenue, where so many little restaurants were clustered under the El. There was a long line of men on the south side of the street, waiting to enter the basement of St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church. To Delaney they looked like prisoners of war. Carlito was puzzled about the mass of men, looking up at their faces, unshaven, gaunt, bleary. Delaney did not try to explain about a soup kitchen. Up a wide slate stoop, the doors of the red-brick church opened and parishioners streamed out, most with pink Irish faces, hats pulled low, scarves around necks. They did not look toward the men waiting for soup. Bells began to ring, calling parishioners to the noon mass. A few arriving men and women saw friends coming out while they went in. They smiled, shook hands, and kept moving. The line of defeated men now reached all the way to Lexington Avenue.