Water Street (2 page)

She felt as if she hardly touched each step as she went down the stairs. At the landing she reached out to Mama. She didn't have a way with words, and it was hard to say what she felt, but Mama knew.

“I remember my first.” She put her hands on Bird's shoulders. “You are like me, Birdie. You'll be a healer like I am. Better.” She touched Bird's face. “I couldn't ask for more.”

Could it be? Bird wondered. Would she ever know enough?

As they came outside, the church bells were chiming. Six o'clock, the day almost over!

And then she saw a horse and cart in front of their house; it was laden with boxes, and rickety furniture, and chair legs up in the air.

“Finally new tenants for the apartment upstairs,” Bird said. “I hope there's a girl.”

“Like himself, that husband, but he wanted a boy,” Mama said, and they both smiled. Hands locked, they went up the flight of stairs. Bird's older sister, Annie, would be home from the box factory and sure to have a pot of coffee on the back of the stove for them, and a soda bread coming out of the oven. Maybe Hughie would be home, too, bent over the table reading his newspaper.

Bird wished for a glimpse of the new tenants, but they were nowhere in sight, and the door of the empty apartment upstairs was closed.

“Soon enough,” Mama said, reading her mind again.

Nothing was ever soon enough for her. But then she remembered Mama's words:
“I couldn't ask for more.”

She said them over in her mind, words she'd never forget.

If only she could have held on to that day, held on to that moment forever, grasped it in her fists so it wouldn't escape.

If only.

Thomas thought about telling Pop it wasn't a good idea to leave the horse and cart out on the street like that. Anyone could take their stuff. And what about bringing the cart back to the livery stable over on Hudson Street? Hadn't Sweeney said he wanted them there before dark?

But Pop had one thing on his mind, and that was to find the nearest pub. He was too thirsty to listen to anything else.

Thomas took the bucket, still sloshing with water, from under the seat and held it up. The horse was as thirsty as Pop and gulped it all down, showing a thick pink tongue.

The baker on the first floor was moving back and forth in his shop as his assistant scurried around with trays of bread. It reminded Thomas that he hadn't eaten since breakfast.

He followed Pop down Water Street then, across Fulton,
past two or three pubs, until Pop finally stopped. “This one, I think.” Pop squeezed his arm. “It looks like the pub in Granard, doesn't it?”

He'd forgotten again. Thomas had never been in Granard, where Pop had been born, never been in Ireland.

“Yes.” Pop nodded. “A good place to quench that thirst of mine.”

Thomas looked up: gold letters splashed across the window,
GALLAGHER'S BAR AND GRILL
, a green door and a pair of gaslights in front. It was larger than the one around the corner from the apartment they'd had in Greenpoint, and a lot like Carmody's, two blocks down from their last place in Flatbush. It was certainly large enough for dog fights or bare-knuckle boxing in the back room.

Pop looked at him uneasily. “I won't be long, Thomas.”

“It's all right.” Thomas waved his notebook, but before he could say anything else, Pop had pulled open the door and was standing at the bar.

Thomas watched him for a few minutes. Pop was good-looking, muscular, and his hair was almost gold even though it was getting a little thin on top. Thomas must have taken after his mother, whoever she was.

He walked toward the back through an alley that was narrow enough for him to touch the buildings on each side. It opened onto a small garden.

A surprise. Even though it was weedy, and a few smashed bottles were mixed in with the bushes, it had color: bunches of stalky yellow shoots, a rosebush, and a tree that spread its branches all the way to the fence.

He sank down to lean against the trunk of the tree, and
listened to the piano playing inside. The music sounded like “Murphy's Little Back Room,” but all the player piano songs seemed alike to him.

He opened his book to a new page and wrote about the garden, leaving out the weeds and the broken bottles with their sharp necks.

He added a stone wall he had seen somewhere over in Manhattan once, and the window on Gallagher's back wall became the window of a house. He squinted as he wrote. He added paper shades that were pulled halfway up, so you could see inside.

All the house needed were people.

He could feel that in his chest. A family.

He'd seen a mother and a daughter at the end of the street before, holding hands as they walked. They looked alike, lots of curly hair, even though the mother's was caught up in back of her head. They looked as if they were glad to be together, as if they were on their way home to a cold ham dinner or maybe slices of leftover roast. Home to a family.

He wouldn't let the pencil move anymore. He had gotten too close to where he didn't want to be.

And then in spite of himself he began again, turning the page. He wrote about remembering how it felt to walk on the bare floor in the middle of the night. Where was Pop? His winter underwear wasn't enough in that freezing apartment. He wrote about going into the kitchen and leaning his head against the back door, hoping the woman with the lacy sleeves would come. He turned the page to write about
sinking down on the floor, too afraid to call, and falling asleep when he saw the light coming in the window.

But that was a real world, and he didn't have to put it down on paper. He ripped the page out of the book, tore it into shreds, and threw them behind the tree, where they settled into the weeds.

It was getting dark now, dark enough to see the fireflies flitting around in that garden, and the piano was still for a moment.

He stood up to look in Gallagher's window, and saw men in the room behind the bar. They stood around two boys, maybe sixteen or seventeen, who had climbed into a makeshift ring.

He leaned on the sill; it didn't look like any of the matches he'd seen where the boxers wore long tight pants and shirts and tied their scarves on the ropes, boxers who shook hands before they danced around each other, jabbing their fists into the air.

These two were angry, enraged at each other. The one closest to him had dark hair that flopped over his forehead, and he glanced toward the window as he shrugged out of his jacket and let it fall to the floor in back of him.

The boy looked at Thomas just one second too long. The other boy, bigger, stronger, threw himself on top of the first boy, and they crashed together onto the floor, rolling over into one of the men in the corner.

Someone else kicked out at them, and then they were up, and instead of just the two fighting, half the men in the room were at it.

Thomas watched the one with the dark hair; he was graceful and strong. If he hadn't been so angry, he might have placed his punches better.

Now chairs were thrown, and someone's face was cut. Thomas looked for Pop, but he didn't see him, and the door of the back room was closed, so he couldn't see the bar in front. He hoped Pop was still sitting there on one of the stools, out of it.

He ran through the alley, scraping his arm on the cement wall, and out in front to see Pop coming down the two steps under the gaslights, holding on to the railing.

He went toward Pop, heart pounding, relieved that he hadn't been hurt in that fight. Pop put his hand on his shoulder. “I'm sorry I took so long, Thomasy. It's just the heat; I had to have something to cool me off.”

He didn't look cool; in the flickering light his face was red and beads of sweat were on his forehead.

They walked back along Fulton to Water Street, the smell of the butcher shop strong as they passed, with its slabs of beef in the window, and sheep's heads with dull eyes that seemed to stare after them.

Thomas kept thinking about the boy with the dark hair, and his face when he went down. Had he been hurt?

They could see the tower that was rising on the Manhattan side of the East River. He wondered what it would be like to walk around eight or ten stories above the ground.

Pop's hand was still on his shoulder, a wide hand, long fingers. “Listen, Thomas. Maybe everything will be different this time.”

He said that every time they moved, but Thomas nodded
as if he believed him. He wanted it to be true, wanted it so much, and he wanted to reach up and hug Pop, because his eyes looked so sad.

“A new start,” Pop said as they stopped at the corner and waited to cross over to where the horse and cart waited for them. “A new apartment, Thomas. A new life.”

A new world to write about.

Mama's healing plants marched across the windowsill, waiting for a drink. Bird had promised her brother, Hughie, she'd water them this morning, and had forgotten all about it in her excitement over the baby. Next to Mama he was the most interested in the plants, not the way she and Mama were, for how they could heal, but for the look of them, the size of them, even for the feel of the damp earth they grew in.

One of her first memories: Hughie holding her up to touch a pink bud. “New like you, Birdie,” he'd said.

She filled a jelly jar with water and dribbled it into the pots: more for the primroses, thirsty things, and a little less for the chives. She ran her finger over pots of soft moss, and in her head:
Moss to stop bleeding.
She tapped the top of a spiky plant:
Aloe for burns.

She was writing all of it down in a book Mama had
made for her, but she knew most of it by heart now anyway.

Outside the window in front of her was Water Street. People sat on the stoops to escape the heat, and a line of dray horses clopped by.

The new tenants' cart was still there in front, the horse's head drooping; he was almost asleep. It was close to nine o'clock. What was the matter with those people anyway?

She angled her head to see better.

Her older sister, Annie, turned from the counter, looking almost like Hughie with her thick dark hair and skyblue eyes. She wasn't good-looking like Hughie, though. She called herself plain, and Bird knew that was true. Annie hated the small scar like a dent in her cheek from where she had fallen once, but Bird loved Annie's face.

“You're watering the floor, Bird,” Annie said.

“Watch out. I may water your feet and I think they're big enough as it is.”

That made Annie laugh. “Any minute the plants are going to go, and you with them.” She tapped her finger gently on the yeast dough she had rising in the yellow bowl. “Almost ready to bake.”

She came over to stand next to Bird at the window, her hair tickling Bird's cheek.

“I think you're hoping the new tenant will be handsome and single,” Bird said. “A beau for you.”

“Not a bit of it.” Annie gave her arm a tiny pinch.

At the table, Da looked up smiling. “At least let's hope it isn't someone who dances all night, rattling the floor-boards over our heads.”

Bird looked back at him, running his hand through that gray hair of his. He was broomstraw thin, tall, and a little bent, and she knew he didn't really care about how much noise the new tenants would make. Mama said he slept like a log.

Mama called him Sean Red, and once Bird had asked her why. Mama had wiped her hands on her apron. “His hair is the color of the carrots in the soup Annie makes,” she had said, and they'd all laughed. Mama had glanced up at Da then, her hand to her mouth. “You've gone white, Sean. I never noticed.”

Annie leaned forward. “Is that someone on the other side of the cart now?”

Yes, Bird saw two pairs of feet. She looked harder. Men's feet. “I think I'm going to get some air,” she said.

“Is there anyone nosier in this world than Bird Mallon?” Annie had a glint in her eye.

“No one unless it's you,” Bird said.

“Nothing wrong with a little curiosity,” Da said.

“It's dark out,” Mama said.

“Not that dark,” Bird told her. “And I'm just going to walk up and down the block.” She took a breath. “It's roasting in here.” She pecked Da on the cheek, and went around the table to run her hand over Ma's shoulder.

She rushed down the stairs, passing Mrs. Daley's apartment on the first floor, then Sullivan's Bakery on the ground floor, closed for the night, with its baker cooking somewhere in back.

She slowed her steps as she reached the stoop outside, glad there were people all over the place. The new tenants would never think she was coming after them.

And there they were. She was close enough now to see those sticklike chairs piled up on the wagon, a couch with stuffing coming out of one arm, a mattress, and stacks of boxes. She swept her eyes toward the sky, as if she were looking at the stars, then glanced down to the street again: a boy and his father.

The father was under the weather; he must have been drinking for hours. He was singing “Sweet Rosie,” or “Sweet Kate,” or “Sweet Mary,” stumbling over the back wheel, and “Sweet Kate” became “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph” under his breath.

She ducked her head the way Father Kinsella had told them to do when they heard the Holy Name.

The boy stood next to the wagon, skinny as a rail with sandy hair and baggy pants. He looked as if you'd raise dust if you took the rug beater to him.

A bitter disappointment.

He grinned when he saw her, almost as if he knew who she was. “What's your name?”

What nerve. “Bird,” she said reluctantly.

“I thought it was something terrible, like Eldrida, from the look on your face.” He tilted his head. “Prunes or lemons, maybe persimmons.”

She could only imagine what a persimmon was. She grinned, trying to hide it from him as she looked up, catching a glimpse of Annie's face at the window. No beau for her. The boy was too young, the father too old.

And the boy was right in back of her, his neck thin as a pencil. “My name is Thomas,” he said. “Thomas Neary.”

She didn't answer.

“The horse's name is Alfred, in case you want to know.” He screwed up his face. “Or maybe Fernando.”