North River

TEN

SPRING CAME ON SUNDAY, BUT NOT IN THE MORNING HOURS. IN the gray chilly darkness of morning, Delaney prepared coffee, found a tray, and carried a cup to the top floor, with a plate of crisped Italian bread and a slab of butter. Rose laughed, sat up, and slammed the pillow. “Breakfast in bed,” she whispered, savoring the words. “Just like the movies.” There was no sound from Carlito’s room.

“You can get out of bed now,” he said. “Just don’t wear the new boots until we get them stretched.”

She swung around on the bed and placed her feet on the floor. She moved her toes up and down then slid her feet into the slippers.

“The truth? I been up already. I go to the bathroom, of course. I look in the boy’s room. I sneak downstairs if nobody’s here and see if everything is okay.” She smiled. “Otherwise it’s like jail.”

She reached for a piece of bread and held the plate under her chin while she bit into it. She flipped off the slippers, then sat up in bed, still moving her toes. She looked up at him. Delaney smiled.

She joined him in the kitchen, carrying the tray, with its still full coffee cup and empty plate. The belt of her bathrobe was pulled tight. She was walking easily now, and he could see that the bandage was gone.

“Everything’s normal again,” she said. “I hope.”

“And a normal Sunday for you is a day off,” Delaney said.

“No, no,” she said. “I miss a couple days, I gotta make them up. I owe you, Dottore.”

“Rose, I already made plans,” he said. “So make this really normal with a normal Sunday.”

She looked relieved. “Okay,” she said.

Delaney told Rose that he planned to take the boy on a long walk. He would tire him out, and then they could all sleep a long time. Then he realized that her cup remained full. He made a sour face.

“You’re right,” he said. “That’s pretty lousy coffee.”

She glanced at the clock. “Want me to make a fresh pot?”

“It’s your day off, Rose.”

She smiled and then Carlito entered in his pajamas, holding the bear and grinning in a sleepy way. He hugged Rose’s hips. Then he walked into the light that was now streaming through the backyard windows and hugged Delaney, who hugged him back.

“Good morning, big fella.”

He remembered Big Jim calling him big fella from the time he was the size of this boy. This boy that Big Jim didn’t live to see.

“ ’Lo, Gran’pa.”

“Let’s eat.”

Rose started to place the warm loaf of Italian bread on the table, but Delaney took her elbow, moved her aside, and said: “It’s Sunday.”

“Okay,” she said. “I better get dressed. Carlito? When you finish come up and get dressed.”

“Okay, Rosa.”

And she was gone. Delaney watched her go, then took cornflakes from the closet and milk from the icebox. Normal. It was Sunday. She was never here on Sunday.

Then the telephone rang. Twice. A third time. He was suddenly rheumy with dread. But then thought: It could be news. From Knocko. Or Danny Shapiro. Or Grace. He went through to the office and lifted the receiver.

“Hello,” he said.

Someone was breathing on the other end. But no words were said.

Carlito dressed warmly, and they went walking east, with church bells ding-donging everywhere. Delaney could not tell Catholic church bells from Protestant church bells. Some were joyful. Some were somber. All were a form of summons, calling the faithful to services, as they had for centuries. He loved the sound but ignored the summons. Delaney felt warmer, holding the boy’s hand.

As they reached Broadway, Delaney squatted down and showed Carlito how to tuck the bear inside his coat, with its head sticking out, leaving the boy’s hands free. He could swing both gloved hands now, Delaney explained, or he could jam them in his pockets. And he could still talk to Osito. When Delaney stood up, a woman was smiling at him. She was about fifty, wearing a Sunday hat bedecked with artificial spring flowers. There was no makeup on her fleshy features. She wasn’t flirting. She didn’t seem amused. She just seemed happy to see a grown man, no longer young, caring for a small boy.

“What a handsome lad,” she said.

“That he is,” said Delaney. “Thank you.”

She nodded and moved on, walking downtown. He noticed that her long dress stopped above large feet. The feet of Connemara, not Agrigento. She merged with the crowd.

They turned west on Eighth Street, heading to Fifth Avenue. As they came closer, the boy stopped again. Up ahead was the Sixth Avenue Elevated, turning into Greenwich Street. For a moment, Delaney froze. Against the window of a saloon, he saw the bartender from Club 65, dressed in a camel’s hair coat and brown fedora. He was watching Delaney and the boy. Then he turned abruptly and walked away.

“Gran’pa, look!” the boy said excitedly, pointing to the distant sight of iron pillars rising from the street. “The El!”

“Yes, that’s the El all right. But it’s not the one we saw before. It’s a different El.”

The boy’s brow furrowed, and he whispered something to the bear. There was no train visible on the El. Delaney looked in the other direction and saw a man in a gray belted coat peering into a store window. The man who was alone in Angela’s that night. Goddamn. I’m being followed. By two different guys!

“Let’s go up onna El, Gran’pa.”

“Not now. Maybe later.”

The boy mumbled to the bear in a disappointed way. Delaney was sure that the bear was disappointed too. When he looked back, the man in the gray coat was gone. A G-man? Watching the same target as the bartender from the gangster joint? Maybe it was just an accident, Delaney thought. Maybe the bartender was out for a Sunday-morning stroll. Just like us. And saw me. Maybe the G-man, if he was a G-man, just needed a rest after sitting through mass. Maybe, but not likely. And who called this morning? Who was breathing into the telephone? Delaney noticed a hot dog shop on the other side of the street and, sensing danger, steered the boy left into a used-book store. From behind the streaky window, he looked back into the street and did not see the man in the gray coat or the bartender. Why would they follow me around? They must know I’m not part of the great communist plot. And Frankie Botts knows I’m not that hard to find. Killing me would be simple.

The boy was gazing around him at walls of books, and at tables piled with larger volumes. At the far end of the room, a man with a thick red beard and heavy horn-rimmed glasses sat at a desk. He wore a bulky gray sweater and a loose red scarf in the chill of the room. He looked up and then went back to reading his own book. Classical music played from a radio. There were a few other men in the store, examining books, locked in solitude. There were no women. Delaney turned to Carlito and gestured at the walls and table.

“Books,” Delaney said. “These are all books.”

“Books.”

They drifted around the store, the boy touching the books as if they were polished shoes. They came to a table of children’s books. Delaney searched them for a book about trains or the great oceans. Nothing. But there were some treasures. A Child’s Garden of Verses. Peter Rabbit. Treasure Island. The Story of Babar. Delaney wondered what the boy could comprehend. It was too soon for Long John Silver. But maybe I could read him the lovely Stevenson verses and put poetry in his head to stay. I could start him up the road to Byron and Whitman and Yeats. He picked up the copy. It was worn, but unmarked by scribblings in pencils or crayons. Then he opened the Babar book. The illustrations were bright with primary colors, as innocent as Matisse, with all those gray elephants in green suits, exploring the world.

“Look at this,” Delaney said to the boy, who took the large book in his small hands. He sat on the floor and peered at the images of elephants and ponds and jungle and a city that was surely Paris. He turned the pages with growing anticipation. He pointed at a bear’s face on one page.

“You like that book?” Delaney said.

“Yes, Gran’pa. I like it.”

“Give me a buck for da two of dem,” the owner said, in the tones of Brooklyn. His fingers and teeth were yellow from tobacco.

“Thanks.”

“Dat Stevenson book, da pomes are pretty nice,” he said, sliding the books into a paper bag. “But y’ know, dat Babar is pure colonialist propaganda.”

Delaney wanted to laugh and didn’t. The man was so serious he didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “Could be,” Delaney said. “But I like the pictures, and so does the boy.”

The owner shrugged. “Just warnin’ you.”

“Thanks.”

They turned into lower Fifth Avenue, with its stately Georgian houses and the Brevoort Hotel, and up ahead was the Washington Arch and the green swath of the park beyond. The boy stopped and gazed up at the arch, as if he’d seen it before somewhere. He pointed and looked up at Delaney with a questioning face.

“The arch,” Delaney said.

“Arch.”

In six or seven years, he would tell the boy about Stanford White, who designed the arch, and how Big Jim was at the opening with all the other boys from Tammany Hall. He would explain Tammany Hall soon enough. After a long while, he would tell the boy how Stanford White died. Shot down by the crazy husband of a discarded young mistress. He could explain the meaning of all this carved stone. For now, it was enough to take the boy’s hand and cross the street. A uniformed cop in a long uniform overcoat stood before the arch, shifting his weight from foot to foot, tapping his club into the bare palm of his left hand.

“Good morning, Officer,” Delaney said.

“Good morning,” the cop said, a bit startled.

“Morning,” the boy said.

They walked under the arch and back around, with Delaney pointing at the bas-reliefs and George Washington and details the boy would learn about later. All the time, he was scanning the square for the man in the gray coat or the bartender from Club 65. No sign of either of them. Then he and the boy faced the six acres of Washington Square. Under the grass and the walkways, the bones of thousands of human beings were buried. For a long time, it was the city’s Potter’s Field, where the bodies of the lonesome poor were dropped in ditches and covered with dirt. Here the victims of smallpox lay wrapped in yellow shrouds. Murderers were dropped after being hung from the gallows on the northwest corner. On foggy nights, the residents always insisted, the ghosts of the unhappy dead rose to walk the world again. That too must wait. The boy was still too young for ghost stories. He was still learning the names of the visible world.

They walked into the park, the boy swinging his arms freely. Under the brightening gray sky, students from New York University walked in groups across the park, talking intensely. Professors crossed their paths, overcoats open to the warming day. Carlito stared at a boy his own age who was pedaling a yellow tricycle under the watchful gaze of a red-haired Irish governess. There were battered men here too, as there were everywhere, sitting alone on benches. And on one bench, he saw the man in the gray coat, reading a Daily News. I should just confront him, Delaney thought. Go over there and…

Then Delaney was distracted by a man in a velvet-collared overcoat and modest gray fedora, walking in a jerky way from the Minetta Lane end of the park. It was Mr. Cottrell. Alone and far from Horatio Street. He staggered, then fell facedown, the fedora rolling a few feet. People stopped to look. Delaney ran to him, dragging Carlito. He squatted beside Mr. Cottrell and gently turned him over. His eyes were open, but he did not seem to be seeing anything. He certainly showed no sign of recognizing Delaney. Two students paused about ten feet away. Delaney called to them as he squatted beside the fallen man.

“Hey! There’s a cop just past the arch. Tell him to call an ambulance. Right now! This man’s having a heart attack.”

The students hurried away to the arch. Carlito was looking down at the man, his face tense, holding the bag of books to his chest. Delaney leaned close to the stricken man’s ear.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Cottrell,” he said. “The ambulance is coming. Don’t worry. Try to breathe. Slow, yes, like that. Breathe…”

The cop arrived as Delaney placed Cottrell’s hat on his chest.

“They’re on their way,” he said. “This guy gonna make it?”

“Maybe.”

Delaney and the boy watched as the ambulance pulled away to the east with its siren wailing. About fifteen other people watched too, including the governess and the boy with the tricycle. The man in the gray coat was gone. Delaney thought about Mr. Cottrell, locked within his bitter cell, and what he would think if he learned who had tried to help him. I couldn’t save his son, Delaney thought, but maybe I’ve helped save him. He wondered what Cottrell was doing here. Down beyond Minetta Lane there were whorehouses that had been there since the Civil War. There were also churches. Maybe he just was out for a walk. Maybe alone, in an anonymous crowd, with the winter easing, he could find some consolation. Maybe.

Delaney gripped the boy’s mittened hand. He took a deep cleansing breath, then exhaled. Then saw people looking into the brightening sky. Some of them were smiling. The boy looked up too, and pointed.

“Gran’pa, look! El sol!”

“Yes,” Delaney said, smiling too. “El sol. The sun.”

“The sun!”

Delaney could feel winter seeping out of him. He fought against tears.

They stopped to celebrate in a hot dog place on Sheridan Square. First they scrubbed their hands in the men’s room and dried them with sheets of the New York Times stacked above the bowl. They went to the counter, and Delaney lifted Carlito onto a stool, and the counterman asked what they wanted. Two hot dogs, Delaney said. Mustard in a bowl. Sure thing, the man said. This time Carlito insisted on trying mustard on his hot dog, instead of his fingertip, as if it were a sign of manhood. The counterman placed a bowl of mustard before him, with a wooden stick to be used for dipping. Delaney tried to help the boy, but Carlito insisted on doing it himself. He splashed mustard on the bear and on his own coat.

“Don’t worry, boy,” Delaney said, wiping at the mustard with a handkerchief. The boy looked embarrassed. “I mean it, boy: Don’t worry.”

Carlito made a face at the first taste of mustard, but was able to chew and make a face at the same time. As he worked his way along the length of the hot dog, the boy seemed to enjoy it more. He looked slyly at Delaney, who was consuming his own hot dog, as if they were engaged in a conspiracy. To hell with Rose.

Then a man was beside him. The bartender from Club 65. The man who had vanished from Washington Square.

“Hello, Doc,” he said.

“Hello. What’s your name again?”

“It don’t matter. Whatta ya hear from Eddie Corso?”

“Not a word.”

“Mr. Botts, the boss, well, he’s still very interested.”

“Let me ask you something, mister. You been following me?”

“Nah, I was just passin’ by. It’s a nice day. The sun is shining. A good day for a walk.”

“That’s what we’re going to do too. Just walk in the sun. Give my regards to Mr. Botts.”

He nodded to the man, took the boy by the hand, and walked out. He didn’t look back. They walked west toward the North River. The sun followed them, brightening every street, casting long sharp black shadows under the El as they crossed, bringing vivid color from the bricks of the buildings. These fuckers are everywhere. Feds and gangsters. Jesus Christ… More tenement windows were being opened, welcoming the breeze, letting it scour the sour winter air of the flats. Kids were arriving in noisy battalions. Running, leaping, playing tag, throwing balls and catching them. One kid burst out of the door with what was called a pusho, a scooter made of a milk box nailed to a two-by-four, with a dismembered roller skate serving as wheels. Carlito watched them all. They were offering him lessons in what it was to be a boy.

Delaney looked at the Cottrell house, but there were no signs of life. He thought about ringing the bell and explaining what had happened to Cottrell and how the ambulance had taken him to Bellevue. He didn’t. They were probably at the hospital now, on watch. Like hundreds of others all over the city on this day when the sun had returned from exile.

They entered under the stoop, the boy whipping off his coat. He called Rose’s name in the hallway, but there was no answer. He wanted to show her his books.

“Later,” Delaney said. “Now we take a nap.”

“Okay. I like a nap.”

He woke abruptly from a formless dream and saw the clock: four forty-five. Still Sunday. He remembered the man in the gray suit, and the bartender from Club 65. His breath kept coming in short panicky gasps. He remembered Mr. Cottrell and wondered if he was alive or dead. He rose and went to the bathroom and stepped into the shower and scrubbed himself. He dried, then dressed quickly, in rough clothes. When he opened the door, he could hear Carlito talking below to Rose. She was back from wherever she went on Sundays. The aroma of garlic and oil rose through the house. He hurried down to the kitchen.

She looked at him and held up Carlito’s coat.

“Mustard on his coat!” she said with a laugh. “I know what that means!”

He laughed too.

“Hot dogs!” she said, and now Carlito was giggling in a delighted way. The bear was seated on the fourth chair. Rose draped the coat on the empty chair.

“Rosa,” the boy said. “We see the sun.”

With that, she put her hands up, palms out.

“The sun, it’s beautiful,” she said. “It makes everything grow.”

They ate veal and pasta and bread, Delaney joking about how the hot dogs rose off the grill and flew into their mouths. Veal, he said, was definitely better. There was good color in Rose’s cheeks. She moved more easily now on her feet, and never mentioned the killer boots or murderous women at the funeral of John McGraw. Delaney cleared the table and washed the dishes while Rose helped Carlito feed imaginary food to the bear. When they finished eating, Delaney sat back in his chair. He said nothing about the man from Club 65. Or the man in the gray suit. He didn’t even mention what had happened to Mr. Cottrell.

“Okay,” Delaney said. “Some work to do.”

She looked at him in an apprehensive way, as he moved into the shed that led to the yard. He lifted the old Arrow bicycle and carried it through the kitchen into the hall where patients sat in the mornings. Rose and Carlito followed.

“We’ll need some newspapers, so we don’t dirty the floor,” he said. “And I have to find the oil in the shed…”

Rose produced some old newspapers while Delaney found the oil and then started tearing away tape and covering from the bicycle. Carlito ripped at the wrappings too. Then the naked bicycle stood there, as if shrinking into shyness. For twenty minutes, the three of them wiped away the dust of winter and spots of rust, using sandpaper and oil, and Delaney then oiled the gears.

“What a beauty,” Rose whispered. “Che bello.”

“Can you ride?”

“Of course. I can’t drive a car or a bus, but a bicycle, sì!”

“Hold this steady.”

Delaney lifted Carlito into the wide basket fastened to the front handlebars. It usually held his bag when he went on house calls. The boy looked uncertain and then smiled broadly when he fit perfectly, with his small legs draped over the front.

“He can be the chief!” Rose said. “Like on a fire engine.”

“The navigator,” Delaney said. “He can hold my bag in his lap.”

“Yeah, a navigator like Cristoforo Colombo.”

Delaney thought: Sailing without charts, right into the future.

That night he slept without dreams and awoke before six to a new sound.

Birds.

Unseen, but out there for sure. Their chatter celebrating the coming day with calls and whistles. Some must have worried about the presence of bullying seagulls. But mainly they issued songs of joy. Away off he heard the baritone horn of a liner, coming into the North River to one of the Midtown piers. Delaney felt the way he did every morning when he was twenty.

He shaved and showered and dressed. At Sacred Heart when he was a boy, they celebrated the first Friday of each month. But the central figure was always a dead man on a cross. They should have celebrated Mondays. They should have celebrated birdsong. They should have sung in Latin about foghorns.

Rose still slept, but the boy was up, and Delaney told him to dress.

“We’re going for a ride,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later, Delaney wheeled the bicycle into the areaway at the front of the house, with the bundled-up boy beside him. To the east in Brooklyn, the sun was struggling ro rise. Most snow was gone, and he saw that the yard was carpeted with dead leaves and litter and needed sweeping. That would have to wait. He placed clamps on his trouser bottoms and opened the front gate and wheeled the bicycle to the sidewalk. He lifted Carlito into the seat.

“Hold on, big fella,” he said.

And began to pedal. Slowly at first, with the back of the boy’s head before and below his own. Struggling for balance, finding it, then pedaling harder. He saw some silhouetted men waving as he passed, and he waved back. Then he saw the light burning in Mr. Nobiletti’s shoe repair store. Getting an early start. He pulled over and went in with the boy.

Mr. Nobiletti nodded, his balding head shiny from exertion, his lips clamped upon nails, which he removed one at a time to hammer into the fresh sole of a boot on his steel last.

“Good morning, Mr. N.”

The old man nodded.

“This is my grandson, Carlos.”

Mr. Nobiletti looked down and smiled, still hammering. Then the final nail was driven. He smiled. He had hard white teeth.

“Buon giorno, Dottore.”

“Good morning to you too, Mr. N. Listen, when you have a chance, can you come over? I want to undress the olive tree.”

The shoemaker looked out, and smiled.

“T’morrow, hokay?”

“Tomorrow.”

Back in the street, there was still no automobile traffic, and Delaney felt his blood beginning to move. From his heart, through his legs, making a round-trip back to his heart. He felt young. He could not see the boy’s face, but saw his small hands holding the rim of the basket and his head turning as new things appeared. He could smell the bakery before he saw it. The wonderful bakery of Mr. Ferraro, from Napoli, even older now than Delaney. Delaney remembered walking these streets as an altar boy, heading for the six-thirty mass at Sacred Heart, struggling with the demands of his fast when the odor of fresh bread and rolls filled the dark air and tempted him to sin. On this fresh morning, he turned right and saw the light spilling from the bakery, with Reilly’s newsstand beside it, and he could see Mr. Lanzano’s ice wagon pulled up in front, with nobody on the seat. He was making a delivery to the store. Oil for the boiler. Or ice for the icebox. And almost surely he was buying a fresh roll and a thick coffee at the counter.

“Stay here, Carlito,” he said, pushing down the kickstand. “I’ll be right back.”

Mr. Lanzano smiled as he entered, and said buon giorno, and sipped his tiny cup of the darkest coffee on the West Side. Even darker than the coffee of Rose Verga. Delaney returned the greeting in Italian, and the image of Rose scribbled through him. The dark glossy hair. The fine scar. Mr. Ferraro came from the back room, where the ovens were, sweaty and balding, with a towellike sash across his brow. The scent of fresh bread was like a delirious floury perfume, the best aroma in the city. Delaney held up two fingers, and Ferraro smiled and slid two fresh loaves into a bag and handed them over. Delaney paid and went out, wishing both men a lovely day.

He handed the loaves to Carlito, who laid them across his lap. Then he went next door to the newsstand and took the newspapers off the stand, waved at Reilly in the dark interior so that the delivery boy would be saved a trip. Then he mounted the bicycle and they were off.

All the way back to the house on Horatio Street, Carlito was silent, hugging the warm bread with one hand, holding on with the other, newspapers stuffed against his back. He was looking at the world that was arriving after the long winter. So was Delaney. Winter was the worst time, for patients, for people trapped in the dirty air of tenements, for coughs and colds and worse problems, and for boys. But they were moving into a better place together. To hell with the Depression, and Hitler, and the troubles in Spain. To hell with Frankie Botts and the man in the gray coat. To hell with Grace. To hell with Molly. He would forget about things he could not cure. It was spring.

Delaney lifted Carlito from the basket and leaned the bike against the wall in the waiting area. He handed Carlito the fresh bread. But when they went into the kitchen, Rose was there in her flowered bathrobe, leaning with her back to the sink. She was angry.

“You don’t leave a note!” she said. “You don’t wake me up! I think maybe Carlito is sick and you take him to the hospital. Worse: I think you are kidnapped by some gangster!”

“We wanted to surprise you, Rose.”

“Some surprise!”

He thought: Please don’t be a pain in the ass, Rose. Carlito handed her the bread, looking troubled, and she took the loaves and calmed him by rubbing his head.

“Thank you, Carlito,” she said. “What a good boy.”

“Eat, Rosa!” the boy said. “We all eat!”

The boy smiled, and so did Rose.

“Eat!” Delaney said. He laid the newspapers on the table. “And later, read.”

The day moved quickly, with fewer patients in the morning and house calls made easier by the bicycle. He used a chain and lock to secure the bicycle to the fences of the tenements, and noticed the odor of garbage rising from the dented metal cans. Patients were more cheerful. From Reilly’s candy store, he called a friend at Bellevue to check the condition of Mr. Cottrell. The doctor came back after a few minutes. “Critical, but stable. He should live.” He called St. Vincent’s too, to check on some patients and to tell Zimmerman that he would start grand rounds again in a few days and they could have lunch when everything was done. Delaney felt as he did when he was an intern himself: filled with endless energy, ready to help anyone feel better.

He made it to Tommy Chin’s around four, when it was still light. The wounded girl had healed. The others were clean. Liann looked unhappy, as usual, and Tommy Chin said business was picking up.

“It must be the weather,” he said. “It fills them with romance.”

He rode home on the bicycle, through the thickening traffic, wary of trucks. When he turned into Horatio Street he saw Callahan, the FBI agent, talking to an older man in a tweed coat and hat. The man who wore the gray coat to Washington Square. Delaney stopped, lifted the bicycle to the sidewalk, and walked to them.

“Are you guys looking for the unemployment office?” Delaney said.

“Hello, Doctor,” Callahan said. He looked uneasy. “You’re home early.”

“Maybe you’re here for the view?”

“Come on, Doctor,” Callahan said in an amiable way. “You know why we’re here.” The man in the tweed coat glanced around at the street, which was lively now with kids and unemployed men, with women staring down from open windows in the tenements.

Callahan squinted and said: “You heard from your daughter?”

“No. Have you?”

Callahan sighed, took the other man by the elbow, and walked away.

He talked awhile in his office with Monique, telling her that he thought Rose should get a raise. She made a face and said, “It’s a little early for that, isn’t it?” Delaney said that Rose put in a lot of hours and the boy loved her and he didn’t want her to walk away for another job that paid more. Monique sighed. “I’d like you to tell her, Monique. Not me.”

“You just gotta add some rules to the deal,” Monique said. “She’s too goddamn bossy, Jim. She thinks she knows you better than I do, and what’s good for you, and all that. Sometimes it pisses me off.”

Delaney looked at her in an annoyed way, then pulled a chair beside her desk and sat down. She wouldn’t look at him, her fingers busy with papers.

“Monique?”

“Yeah?”

“Listen to me, Monique.” She looked up at him. “You are very, very important to this house. And to me. I truthfully could not do what I do if you weren’t here. I want you here for as long as I do this work.” He paused. “But goddamn it, the boy has changed things. And Rose has to be here too. For as long as the boy needs her.”

Monique looked unhappy. “I guess,” she said.

“I promise I’ll talk to her about the bossy stuff. For now, don’t get in a fight with her.”

She sulked for a long moment. And then exhaled hard, as if saying it was time to move on.

“Speaking of the boy, what about his birthday?” she said. “It’s St. Patrick’s Day, right? It’ll be here before you know it.”

“I know, Monique,” Delaney said, pushing the chair back and then standing.

“My advice?” Monique said. “Don’t take him to the parade. He’ll think it’s for him, and that could ruin his life.”

“You’re right, of course. Even if you do sound bossy.”

She smiled in a thin way. “And don’t get him a dog. Rose’ll have to walk him — or it’ll be left to me.”

“Okay, no dog. Any mail?”

“Nothing important,” she said. “An’ by the way, some guy called three times but wouldn’t leave a name. I told him you couldn’t call back if he didn’t leave a name. But he hung up each time.”

“Maybe it was Hoover,” he said. “Always on the job.”

“He sounded more hoodlum than Hoover, you ask me.”

He peeled the wrappers off two medical journals and signed some checks, and then he could hear Rose and Carlito coming down the stairs.

After they ate together, and after they walked together down to the North River and Carlito stared a long time at a passing liner, and after they returned in the chilly night air, they went back to the kitchen for tea. Rose had bought some biscotti from the bakery, and music played quietly from the Italian station, and they talked about why there was no such thing as Irish food while there were hundreds of kinds of Italian foods, all delicious. Delaney said that the bad luck of the Irish was the problem.

“Sicily was conquered by the Arabs, and they knew how to cook,” he said. “But the poor luckless Irish were conquered by the English, and they didn’t even know how to eat. For them, food was fuel, like coal. Pleasure of any kind was a sin.”

“So how’d they get so many babies?”

“They could do something about the food,” Delaney said, “but they couldn’t do anything about human beings in bed.”

Rose laughed. Carlito looked preoccupied. He waited for a break in the talk, and then he went to Delaney and pointed upstairs.

“I want my book, Ga’paw,” he said.

“Damn, I forgot,” Delaney said. “Where’d I leave his books, Rose?”

“Upstairs. I know where.”

Delaney rinsed the cups and saucers, and Rose put away the cream and the rest of the biscotti, and they went upstairs together.

Rose found the books on top of the armoire, still in their bag.

“You read to him,” Rose said. “I’m goin’ to run a bath.”

Delaney and the boy went into his room and took off their shoes, and he stretched out on the small bed with the boy curled beside him. They could hear the water running in the tub. Rose leaned on the doorframe, arms folded across her breasts. Delaney held up the two books. “Which one?” The boy pointed to The Story of Babar. Delaney opened the book, and the first page showed a gray baby elephant being swung in a hammock by an older elephant. They were surrounded by green jungle. Rose came in and sat at the foot of the bed, while the water ran slowly.

Delaney read the text, running a finger over the words, and pointing at the things they named: “In the great forest a little elephant was born. His name was Babar. His mother loved him very much. She rocked him to sleep with her trunk while singing softly to him.”

“Babar,” Carlito said. “He’s an evvafent.” Rose smiled as Delaney turned the page.

“Babar grew bigger. Soon he played with the other little elephants. He was a very good little elephant. See him digging in the sand with his shell?”

Delaney pointed at elephants swimming in a pond and elephants playing football and elephants parading, holding other elephants’ tails in their trunks, and elephants snacking on oranges and bananas, with the jungle in the background and pink mountains in the distance. The little elephant named Babar had a seashell in his snout and was carving away at a small pile of sand.

“Let me see that,” Rose said, grinning, and Delaney turned the book. “Wow! That’s a great spot!”

Then Delaney went to the next spread. On the left page the little elephant was riding on his mother’s back, while a monkey and a red bird watched from a bush. To the side, behind another bush, a man with a helmet was firing a gun.

“One day, Babar was riding happily on his mother’s back when a wicked hunter, hidden behind some bushes, shot at them.”

Delaney glanced at the boy, whose eyes were suddenly wide. He thought he should stop. But he went on.

“The hunter’s shot killed Babar’s mother! The monkey hid, the birds flew away. And Babar cried.”

Tears began seeping from Carlito’s eyes.

“I want Mamá,” he whispered.

He wasn’t speaking to Delaney. Or to Rose.

“I want Mamá!”

Rose stood up abruptly and hurried into the bathroom. She closed the door. The running water stopped. Delaney hugged the boy and laid down the book.

“Carlito, boy, Carlito, big fella, don’t worry,” he said. “It’s a story, that’s all.”

“Mamá,” the boy whispered, his voice charged with anguish.

“Your mama’s not dead, boy. Your mama’s coming back.”

The boy sobbed in a small way, and Delaney consoled him, using soothing tones, and then decided he should continue the story. If it was, as he had told the boy, a story, then he should finish the story. He opened the book and showed the boy the drawing of Babar running away to safety, and finding his way to a town. “He hardly knew what to make of it because this was the first time he had seen so many houses. So many things were new to him! The broad streets! The automobiles and buses!” To Delaney, the town was Paris. It could have been New York.

He was near the middle of the story when Rose came out of the bathroom in her robe, to the sound of draining water. She didn’t look at them. She walked heavily to her own room, and Delaney could hear the door click shut.

He resumed the story, with Babar walking on two legs like a human and wearing a bright green suit, which made Carlito smile. And after a while, Carlito fell asleep. Delaney was still for a long time and then slowly detached himself from the sleeping boy, closed the book, and turned off the light. He slipped the Babar book under the mattress and left the door open a crack as Rose always did. Then he looked at Rose’s door. He knocked, turned the knob, and went in.

Rose was awake in the dark. He went to her and sat beside her, inhaling the aroma of soap laced with hurt.

“He didn’t mean anything,” he said quietly.

“Oh, I know. Come on…”

Her voice was choked. He slid an open hand under her head, and felt the pillow damp across his knuckles.

“Please don’t cry, Rose,” he said.

She was silent then for almost a minute. Then she cleared her throat.

“I gotta leave here,” she said. “This ain’t right. I’m not his mother, and he knows it and you know it. My heart is killing me. I gotta go.”

He held her tight now, pulling her to him.

“I won’t let you,” he said.