A woman came in with her teenage daughter. The woman was thick-waisted and dark but her daughter was thin and almost yellow and she coughed without stopping, the sound of it like metal gears grinding under water. The teamster was the first of them to ask the nurse for a surgical mask, but by the time Mrs. DiMassi found Danny in the waiting area, he wore one, too, feeling sheepish and ashamed, but they could still hear the girl, down another corridor and behind another set of double doors, those gears grinding.
“Why you wear that, Officer Danny?” Mrs. DiMassi sat beside him.
Danny took it off. “A very sick woman was here.”
She said, “Lot of people sick today. I say fresh air. I say go up on the roofs. Everyone say I crazy. They stay inside.”
“You heard about …”
“Tessa, yes.”
“Tessa?”
Mrs. DiMassi nodded. “Tessa Abruzze. You carry her here?”
Danny nodded.
Mrs. DiMassi chuckled. “Whole neighborhood talking. Say you not as strong as you look.”
Danny smiled. “That so?”
She said, “Yes. So. They say your knees buckle and Tessa not heavy woman.”
“You notify her husband?”
“Bah.” Mrs. DiMassi swatted the air. “She have no husband. Only father. Father a good man. Daughter?” She swatted the air again.
“So you don’t hold her in high regard,” Danny said.
“I would spit,” she said, “but this clean floor.”
“Then why are you here?”
“She my tenant,” she said simply.
Danny placed a hand to the little old woman’s back and she rocked in place, her feet swinging above the floor.
By the time the doctor entered the waiting room, Danny had put his mask back on and Mrs. DiMassi wore one as well. It had been a man this time, midtwenties, a freight yard worker by the looks of his clothes. He’d dropped to a knee in front of the admitting desk. He held up a hand as if to say he was fine, he was fine. He didn’t cough, but his lips and the flesh under his jaw were purple. He remained in that position, his breath rattling, until the nurse came around to get him. She helped the man to his feet. He reeled in her grip. His eyes were red and wet and saw nothing of the world in front of him.
So Danny put his mask back on and went behind the admitting desk and got one for Mrs. DiMassi and a few others in the waiting room. He handed them out and sat back down, feeling each breath he exhaled press back against his lips and nose.
Mrs. DiMassi said, “Paper say only soldiers get it.”
Danny said, “Soldiers breathe the same air.”
“You?”
Danny patted her hand. “Not so far.”
He started to remove his hand, but she closed hers over it. “Nothing get you, I think.”
“Okay.”
“So I stay close.” Mrs. DiMassi moved in against him until their legs touched.
The doctor came out into the waiting room and, though he wore one himself, seemed surprised by all the masks.
“It’s a boy,” he said and squatted in front of them. “Healthy.”
“How is Tessa?” Mrs. DiMassi said.
“That’s her name?”
Mrs. DiMassi nodded.
“She had a complication,” the doctor said. “There’s some bleeding I’m concerned about. Are you her mother?”
Mrs. DiMassi shook her head.
“Landlady,” Danny said.
“Ah,” the doctor said. “She have family?”
“A father,” Danny said. “He’s still being located.”
“I can’t let anyone but immediate family in to see her. I hope you understand.”
Danny kept his voice light. “Serious, Doctor?”
The doctor’s eyes remained weary. “We’re trying, Officer.”
Danny nodded.
“If you hadn’t carried her here, though?” the doctor said. “The world would, without question, be a hundred ten pounds lighter. Choose to look at it that way.”
“Sure.”
The doctor gave Mrs. DiMassi a courtly nod and rose from his haunches.
“Dr….,” Danny said.
“Rosen,” the doctor said.
“Dr. Rosen,” Danny said, “how long are we going to be wearing masks, you think?”
Dr. Rosen took a long look around the waiting room. “Until it stops.”
“And it isn’t stopping?”
“It’s barely started,” the doctor said and left them there.
Tessa’s father, Federico Abruzze, found Danny that night on the roof of their building. After the hospital, Mrs. DiMassi had berated and harangued all her tenants into moving their mattresses up onto the roof not long after the sun went down. And so they assembled four stories above the North End under the stars and the thick smoke from the Portland Meat Factory and the sticky wafts from the USIA molasses tank.
Mrs. DiMassi brought her best friend, Denise Ruddy-Cugini, from Prince Street. She also brought her niece, Arabella and Arabella’s husband, Adam, a bricklayer recently arrived from Palermo sans passport. They were joined by Claudio and Sophia Mosca and their three children, the oldest only five and Sophia already showing with the fourth. Shortly after their arrival, Lou and Patricia Imbriano dragged their mattresses up the fire escape and were followed by the newlyweds, Joseph and Concetta Limone, and finally, Steve Coyle.
Danny, Claudio, Adam, and Steve Coyle played craps on the black tar, their backs against the parapet, and Claudio’s homemade wine went down easier with every roll. Danny could hear coughing and fever-shouts from the streets and buildings, but he could also hear mothers calling their children home and the squeak of laundry being drawn across the lines between the tenements and a man’s sharp, sudden laughter and an organ grinder in one of the alleys, his instrument slightly out of tune in the warm night air.
No one on the roof was sick yet. No one coughed or felt flushed or nauseated. No one suffered from what were rumored to be the telltale early signs of infection — headache or pains in the legs — even though most of the men were exhausted from twelve-hour workdays and weren’t sure their bodies would notice the difference. Joe Limone, a baker’s assistant, worked fifteen-hour days and scoffed at the lazy twelve-hour men, and Concetta Limone, in an apparent effort to keep up with her husband, reported for work at Patriot Wool at five in the morning and left at six-thirty in the evening. Their first night on the rooftop was like the nights during the Feasts of the Saints, when Hanover Street was laureled in lights and flowers and the priests led parades up the street and the air smelled of incense and red sauce. Claudio had made a kite for his son, Bernardo Thomas, and the boy stood with the other children in the center of the roof and the yellow kite looked like a fin against the dark blue sky.
Danny recognized Federico as soon as he stepped out on the roof. He’d passed him on the stairs once when his arms were filled with boxes — a courtly old man dressed in tan linen. His hair and thin mustache were white and clipped tight to his skin and he carried a walking stick the way landed gentry did, not as an aid, but as a totem. He removed his fedora as he spoke to Mrs. DiMassi and then looked over at Danny sitting against the parapet with the other men. Danny rose as Federico Abruzze crossed to him.
“Mr. Coughlin?” he said with a small bow and perfect English.
“Mr. Abruzze,” Danny said and stuck out his hand. “How’s your daughter?”
Federico shook the hand with both of his and gave Danny a curt nod. “She is fine. Thank you very much for asking.”
“And your grandson?”
“He is strong,” Federico said. “May I speak with you?”
Danny stepped over the dice and loose change and he and Federico walked to the eastern edge of the roof. Federico removed a white handkerchief from his pocket and placed it on the parapet. He said, “Please, sit.”