The Leap Year Boy (26 page)

Alex waved at Abe. “Hi, Daddy. Dr. Malkin gave me a nickel to pull my pants down.”

“No, wait, please, I did not say it to him exactly like that.”

Abe grabbed his son from Peck. “You all right, Alex?”

Peck explained how he’d come into the bathroom moments earlier to “drain the dragon” and found Malkin with his pants down around his ankles, bent over at the waist, his head near Alex’s stomach, a tape measure in his hand. “I would have cracked his head open for him right then, Abe, but I figured you’d want to do it yourself.”

Malkin waived his arms. “But it was for the scientific research is all.”

Alex pointed at Malkin. “He wanted to play a game with me.”

Abe handed Alex to Delia. He shook Peck’s hand. Then he hit Malkin with a straight left to the nose, sending Malkin’s pince-nez flying and ultimately landing in Carl Tosca’s beer mug two tables away. “That’s one.” Abe cocked his right fist, but Peck pulled him away.

“He ain’t worth going to jail for, Abe. You see to your boy, we’ll escort this piece of dog shit to the door.”

Blood dripped from Malkin’s nose, and he dabbed it with the back of his soiled cuff. He pointed at Abe. “Nothing I did it to your boy, Miller, except to measure. You will hear it from my attorney of law about this.”

“Tell your attorney of law about this, too,” Peck said. He and Horshushky took Malkin’s arms. They dragged him across the floor, and as they passed the tables, men that were close enough smacked Malkin on the back of the head. Outside, they tossed him to the curb. A moment later, his black bag landed on top of him.

Malkin sat up and leaned his back against a trash barrel. He ran his tongue over his teeth and was relieved that no new ones were missing. He felt his nose and winced. Even without a mirror he could tell it was broken, since it angled slightly to the right.

Two young women in long dresses and felt hats walked by him arm-in-arm. The taller one asked Malkin if he were all right but the other insisted that they move on, he probably was just some drunk they’d thrown out of the bar and that she didn’t want some soused-up rummy pawing at her or throwing up on her new patent leather lace-ups, which had cost her almost two dollars.

Riley the beat cop strolled around the corner, on his way to The Wheel for a sandwich and an envelope of cash from John, his fee for allowing The Wheel to host a Saturday night after-hours craps game. He tipped his hat to the two girls. The taller one pointed back at Malkin, who by this time had struggled to his feet. As he approached him, the cop said, “Everything all right, sir?”

Malkin spit out some phlegm and blood. “Yes, yes, officer, it is just an unfortunate fall I was taking over the curb.”

Riley looked at Malkin’s eye, which was almost swollen shut and had begun to turn colors. “That curb hit you a good one.”

“Yes, well, that is true, as you say, but now I must be it on my way to visit a patient that is very ill, perhaps it is she could be dying, no? So I shall be going, officer, if you do not mind it.”

Riley rested his club on Malkin’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t drink no more today if I was you, doc.”

“Oh no, I wouldn’t touch it the one drop.”

Malkin limped away from the bar, his bruised ego hurting even more than his mashed nose, but despite the slings and arrows he had suffered at outraged hands, he had one thing on his mind: He had to find a way to get hold of that boy.

*

The constable tapped Arthur and Jack on the shoulders and told them there was no loitering, that it was time to go home, not knowing that going home for them was not possible, at least for that night.

The boys drifted away down the street in the feeble last light of day. They stopped at a four-story red brick building, The Wayside Hotel, with a sign that advertised clean rooms, $2.50, an amount which would consume nearly one-third of the boy’s pooled traveling money.

In the small lobby, a chunky woman with thick glasses sat on a stool behind the counter with a ledger book and a pitcher of water. She read from
The House of a Thousand Candles
, a romance novel ironically set in Pittsburgh. A Pekingese slept on a pillow on top of a desk behind her. She looked up over her reading glasses. “Help you boys?”

Jack said, “That room for two-fifty? Do we get it for the both of us?”

The woman scratched the dog’s head. “Fifty cents extra. If you want breakfast, it’s another fifty. Hi, Cal.” She waved to an old man in a black suit walking though the lobby toward the stairway.

Arthur was all for the offer, but Jack insisted they hold out for his cousin. Finally, they agreed to wait another half hour, until it was completely dark, before they took the room.

They were sitting on a bench outside on the walk, sharing a pack of oyster crackers, when the woman came out with her dog on a pink leash. Her flowered dress came down over her feet, and as she moved it looked as if she were floating. She stopped in front of the boys. “You two still here?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The little dog lifted his leg to urinate on Jack’s shoes. “Bad boy, Sparky, bad boy. Lord, the day he listens to me, it will be a miracle, praise Jesus. Won’t it, Sparky-poo? But anyhow. Now boys, I ain’t trying to pry into your plans for the evening, in the hotel business it don’t pay to pry to close, but this here establishment, we ain’t got but the one room left for tonight, and I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut in a little while from now some traveling salesman will come by needing a place for the night, or some local feller with a snoot full looking for a room to sleep it off, seeing as he can’t go home the way he is. So if I was you boys, and I didn’t have no other place to go, well, I’d grab me that room afore someone else does. But like I say, that’s your business. Come on, Sparky.”

A man and a woman walked by them, arm in arm, and entered the hotel.

The boys counted their money for the fifth time that day. Home seemed a long way off.

Chapter 21

The next morning, as Abe slept off four lagers and a shot of Old Overholt, Alex and Benjamin ate apple butter and toast at the kitchen table with the newspaper spread open before them. Benjamin scrutinized the box scores from the previous day’s games, while Alex read the front page out loud. He fired off a series of comments—strike breakers battle union, mayor calls for tax increase, arson suspected in South Side fire—maybe it was a fire like at Grandma’s house. He shivered at the memory of flames and heat and smoke. He wondered if Grandma were in Heaven with Jesus.

He read the section titled, “From Across the Pond,” where armies were massing in France, Russia, England and Germany, and he thought, when my big brother Arthur gets there, he’ll beat up the Germans, he said he would. But Benjamin says Arthur doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and Daddy said yesterday he might get his fool head blown off which means he’d be dead like Mommy and Grandma, and that thought made his head hurt. His missed his brother’s sweaty smell and cigarette laughter, and he wished he were right there so they could play checkers or wrestle on the floor. Arthur always let him get him in a headlock before he surrendered. “Benjamin?”

“Yeah?”

“Is Arthur going to get his head blown off like Daddy said?”

“What? No!” Benjamin bit his lip. “I mean, I don’t think so. He’ll probably come home today or tomorrow when they find out he’s only sixteen.”

“But what if he doesn’t?”

“Well, Arthur’s pretty tough. He can beat up almost any kid in his grade, and some older kids, too. So don’t worry about it, all right?” He bounced a pinky ball on the floor. “Wanna play catch?”

The boys were on the front walkway when they saw Delia, dressed in her maid’s uniform, walking down Mellon Street toward them.

*

Belle grunted as she pulled weeds from around the tomato plants, flipping dandelions and chunks of crabgrass into a corrugated tin bucket. On the opposite side of the yard, Lillie, wearing a floppy sunbonnet and tan gardening gloves, tied pole bean shoots to tall wooden stakes. The dog slept on the bulkhead doors.

The sisters had been working for two hours after a breakfast of herring and eggs and prune Danish. The Liberty Theater was featuring a movie starring Mary Pickford, whom they both adored, and so if they worked diligently enough, they could get the gardening done and still have time for a sponge bath and light lunch before the two o’clock matinee.

“Aunt Belle, Aunt Lillie, good morning.” Hannah sprang from the back door, her hair loose, in her nightgown and bare feet.

“Good Lord,” Belle said, “put some clothes on.”

Lillie put her roll of twine in her apron pocket. “Hannah, dear, it’s time to get dressed. It’s eleven o’clock already.”

“I know what time it is.” She squatted down next to the dog and kissed him on the head.

Belle crushed out her cigarette. “Don’t you want to come see Mary Pickford with us? She’s your favorite.”

Hannah hugged the dog to her as if it were her dance partner and twirled like a ballerina across the lawn. “I have to see Papa right away.”

Belle looked at Lillie. Lillie looked at Belle. The sisters moved closer to each other and linked arms, as if the sum of their physical presence would lend more weight to their words. “Hannah, what’s going on?”

She stopped twirling and set the dog down. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Her dear old aunts, they’d been so good to her for the last few years, they really should be the first to know of her good fortune, even before she told her father. “I have such wonderful news. Magical. Abe and I are getting married! Isn’t it glorious, wonderful? Oh, Momma and Papa will be so thrilled. Finally they’ll be proud of me.”

Lillie said, “Oh my.”

“I have to tell them right away, today. There’s so much to plan, so much to do. I know they’ll want to throw me a big wedding—that’s what I want, too, of course. It will be at the synagogue, and we’ll invite just everyone, even my cousins from New York, and you two will be my maids of honor. Or is it matrons of honor? I want to wear pink baby roses in my hair…no, yellow…and my gown, heavens, it has to be striking—you must help me pick it out. And the cake! What about the cake?” She was hopping up and down.

“Hannah, please calm down.”

“But I am calm! And Alex, oh my God, the dear sweet little thing, he’ll be the ring bearer, oh won’t it be precious as I walk down the aisle with pink baby rose petals strewn in front of me. Maybe I’ll even be barefoot. Oh.” She put her hand to her mouth, her teeth to her knuckles. But would her Papa love Abe and Alex the way she did? Abe was a bit rough around the edges, yes, a bit uncultured for their tastes. They would prefer she marry a banker or a doctor, or even a lawyer or a college professor or a business owner, she’d heard that from them since she was eight. But her Abe was so nice and upright, and look at all he’s suffered through, and besides, he has Alex, her little boy. Momma and Papa would understand it, they must. “Do you suppose Papa will see me right now? We have so much to discuss.”

Lillie said, “You can’t go anywhere unless you get dressed.”

Hanna shook her nightgown. “But I am dressed.”

Belle whispered to her sister, “You take her left arm, I’ll take the right.”

*

Delia let herself in and went up to the bedroom. Abe’s chest was bare, and the sheet was twisted around his waist. She thought about stroking him awake, getting him all hot and bothered with her hands in his crotch, wouldn’t he get a thrill out of that, and she would, too, but that kind of stuff would have to wait.

She thumped his shoulder. “Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

Abe rolled on his elbows. “Delia?”

“It ain’t the Holy Ghost.”

He leaned up against the headboard. “But how’d you…my boys, you seen ’em?”

“They’re outside playing ball.”

Abe rubbed his eyes. He managed a smile. “Delia. I’ll be damned. Not that I ain’t glad to see you, but what are you doing here? I thought you was working today.”

“So did I.”

Delia explained how, when she reported to the mansion at seven that morning, the caretaker hustled her into her little office and told her, in no uncertain terms, that she was shit-canned. She handed her an envelope with her week’s pay, less the deposit for her maid’s outfit, which she would get when she returned it cleaned and pressed. “The nasty broad, I could scratch her eyes out.”

“But what happened? You do something wrong?”

“According to them, I did.” Apparently, she told him, a society friend of the lady of the house who happened to be downtown shopping recognized Delia as she marched with the suffragettes, and reported it to her employer. If there was one thing the matriarch of the manor wouldn’t tolerate, it was anything to do with women’s suffrage. The very idea was ridiculous and obscene to her, and a headstrong maid that marched with a bunch of sign-carrying lesbians? That woman had no place in her employ. “Can you believe it, Abe? I should have spit in her face, but I need the money back for this damn uniform.”

“Geez, that’s tough, kid.” Abe scratched under his arm. “You look like you could use some coffee.”

Delia took his hand. “Thanks.”

Once Abe got the coffee going, Delia sat down at the table. She took off her maid’s cap and shook her hair loose. She ran her hand over the letter from her old friend.

“Black, right?”

“Yeah.”

He stirred his coffee. “So last night you was telling me something about big plans for the two of us. You wanna tell me?”

“Not here.” She reached for a cigarette but let the pack lie on the table. “Abe, would you bring Alex to The Wheel with me?”

“You mean right now?”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s closed.”

“I have a key.”

“But what for?”

She put a finger on his lips. “Shush. I’ll show you when we get there.”

“Boy, you’re sure acting cagey.” What was the big secret? His birthday was in two weeks. Maybe she was throwing a surprise party for him, with a keg and a big cake and all the boys there—hold on, that wasn’t Delia’s style. Plus, she just got canned, so how could she pay for it? No, something was up, or she wouldn’t be so insistent. “Give me a hint at least.”