Small Mercies

25

Bobby and Carmen’s first time together is awkward and fumbling at the outset. There’s no sense of rhythm; it’s like trying to dance after someone turns off the music. He has no idea what her body will respond to, and he makes a few poor guesses. But then he gets a whispered “Yeah, right there” and a quickening of her breath in his ear. Her heel glides along the back of his calf, and he moves his hip just a tad to his left, and she says “Yup” in such a way that yup becomes his favorite sound that week.

In the end they find a groove that works. It’s not fireworks, but it’s promising. The fireworks could be just up around the next bend. They’ll find out next time.

After, they lie in her bed and listen to the sounds of Chandler Street three stories below on a humid night in early September, and Bobby embraces a sentiment he’s never grown sick of since he returned from the war — It’s wonderful to be alive.

She gets out of the bed. “Would you like some water?”

“Love some.”

She walks naked into the kitchen. When she returns with two glasses of water, he notices that one of her breasts is slightly larger than the other, and her green eyes carry a shimmer in the half dark. She sits on the bed and hands him his water, and they look at each other for a bit, saying nothing.

“I like how considerate you are,” she says.

“When?”

“In general,” she says, “but in bed too. You listened to my body. A lot of guys don’t do that.”

“You’ve had a lot of guys?”

“For sure,” she says easily. “You?”

“Guys? No. But women, yeah.”

“So we won’t judge each other’s histories.”

“Nothing good ever comes of that.”

She slides down in bed beside him and holds her water aloft as she gives him a long kiss. Her hair tickles the side of his face. The kiss is warm and unhurried. Another of life’s blessings, he thinks, the leisurely kiss.

When Carmen pulls out of the kiss, she glances at the clock on the bedside table. “Didn’t you say you were on TV tonight?”

“I said I could be on TV. They filmed us walking those kids into their arraignment.”

She crawls down the bed and turns on the small black-and-white on top of her dresser.

WCVB is wrapping up its intro. They cut to the studio and then cut in close on the anchor desk, and suddenly, there’s Bobby in a little box to the right of Chet Curtis’s shoulder. (Lead story, he thinks. Damn.) Bobby and Vincent and Rum Collins and George Dunbar, the latter two trying to keep their heads down, are frozen in the shot as Chet talks about the big break in the death of a young Negro on the eve of the city’s controversial desegregation of two public high schools.

And just like that, they cut away from Chet and run footage of the latest anti-busing protest, this one over by Broadway Station.

“My new boyfriend,” Carmen says, “a TV star.”

“I’m your new boyfriend?”

“You’re not?”

“I just wasn’t sure I’d achieved that status.”

“Oh, you got the status, m’ man.”

On the screen, the protest turns predictably violent. The camera jerks a few times. A fleshy guy from the school committee talks into a bullhorn, throws around words like “tyranny” and “subjugation.”

“If the school committee had just acted in good faith years ago,” Carmen says, “instead of trying to throw a wrench in things from the start, maybe we wouldn’t be here.”

“You’re definitely not wrong,” he says. “But how come it’s always the poor who are expected to eat the food that’s good for them no matter how it tastes? You don’t see anyone in the rich neighborhoods dealing with this.”

“Because they’re not part of Boston Public Schools.”

“Right. They don’t want to be part of the public school system, and they don’t want subway lines or bus lines coming into their towns because they don’t want to mix with poor people in general and black people in particular. Or so it would seem.”

“Not all the suburbs are white.”

“Name one that isn’t. Just one.”

She tries. “Um...”

He waits.

“I can feel your look,” she says. “It’s very smug.”

“Our suburbs,” he says, “are designed to escape the melting pot. But now they’re telling all the people they left behind precisely how they should go about rubbing elbows.”

“But the schools are segregated,” she says.

“Yes,” he says. “And they shouldn’t be. You’ll get zero argument on that from me. It’s racist bullshit, and it’s unforgivable. But this is not the solution.”

“What is?”

He opens his mouth, still caught up in the rhythm of the debate. Then freezes. “I have no idea.”

“And that’s the problem. If no one can come up with a solution, but a solution has to be found, then this — by being any kind of solution at all — is the best solution by default.”

He says nothing for a bit.

“You don’t look convinced,” she says.

“No matter what we claim in public, in private we all know that the only law and the only god is money. If you have enough of it, you don’t have to suffer consequences and you don’t have to suffer for your ideals, you just foist them on someone else and feel good about the nobility of your intentions.”

“Phew,” she says. “You’re cynical.”

“I prefer skeptical.”

“You can’t compare the public schools here to the private schools in the suburbs. It’s not apples and oranges.”

“Why not?”

“Because people pay for the right to...” She turns in the bed and looks at him. “Ooooh, you bastard.”

“Right?”

“You set me up.”

“I did not.”

After a bit, she says, “But something had to be done.”

He flashes on Mary Pat Fennessy in the morgue the other day. Talk about someone who believes something has to be done, no matter what the fallout is. Jesus.

“Yeah, something had to be done,” he agrees.

“Because if not now, when?” she asks.

He sighs and stubs out his cigarette. “There’s the rub.”

“Can I ask you something... delicate?”

“I’ll gird my loins.”

“You’re an Irish cop from Savin Hill,” she starts.

He knows exactly where this is going. “How come I’m not a racist? Is that the question?”

“Kinda. Yeah.”

He drinks some water. “My parents were, let’s say, difficult people. They’d both given up their dreams when they married, so to be their kid was, uh, not fun. They were angry and hated each other and couldn’t admit to themselves that they were angry and hated each other. So they drank and they fought and they found a million different ways to make us kids proxy soldiers on their battlefield. Then my mother got sick and died. And my father realized he’d loved her as much as he’d hated her. And that fucked him up even worse. So, when I say my parents weren’t saints, probably weren’t even good people, you can believe me.”

She’s watching him with a curious half smile. “Okay.”

“But they also weren’t racists. Something about the idea of it — the pure irrationality of it — offended them. They didn’t think black people were necessarily good, don’t get me wrong, they just thought everyone — regardless of what color they were — was probably an asshole. And to say you were less of an asshole because your skin was lighter was reprehensible to them. It just made you a bigger asshole.” He smiles, remembering their utter core contrariness. “There were only two big sins in the house on Tuttle Street — feeling sorry for yourself and racism, which, when you think of it, are two sides of the same coin.”

“I think I might have liked your parents.”

“Until the fifth drink,” he admits, “they could be a lotta fun.”

“What were their dreams?”

“Hmm?”

“You said they’d given up their dreams.”

“My father was a painter. Not a housepainter — well, he was that too — but a genuine artist.”

“And what did your mother want to be?”

“Anything but a mother. Or a housewife. I think she just wanted to be free.” He can feel her looking deeper into him than anyone’s cared to look for a long time. “What about your parents?”

“They wanted me to marry well. And live in the suburbs. And not need a job. I was always fairly certain I’d been a disappointment to them. But just before my mother died, she told me, ‘We never approved, but we were always proud.’ Isn’t that a weird thing to tell your kid?”

He thinks about it. “It’s nice, actually. She’s saying you took your path, and it wasn’t what she would have chosen, but you did well.” He finds himself flashing on Mary Pat Fennessy again, a woman robbed of both her children. Christ, he wonders, what could possibly give her the strength to get out of bed in the morning?

Fury.

Anguish.

Rage.

“You come from the upper middle class,” he says to Carmen, “but you left it all behind to help people. To actually fucking matter in this world. If I was your parent, I’d be proud of you.”

She taps his nose with her index finger. “If I was your mom, I’d be proud of you.”

“This is a weird conversation to have naked.”

“Ain’t it?”

She rolls on her side and he tucks in tight behind her and they fall asleep with the windows open to the night and the TV still on.