Small Mercies

7

Five o’clock comes and goes without a word from Brian Shea.

Six and seven o’clock do the same.

She walks to the Fields. There’s a sign on the door: Closed for Private Function.

What the fuck does that mean? she wants to shout. The whole bar is a private function.

Mary Pat knocks on the door. At least a dozen times. Enough to waken the aches in her right hand that have been there since she beat the shit out of her daughter’s useless excuse for a boyfriend.

No one answers the door.

She tries Brian Shea’s house next. Over on Telegraph Hill, it’s one of the original redbrick townhomes that front the park. His wife, Donna, answers the door. Donna and Mary Pat (and Brian too) were in the same grammar school class, same class at Southie High too. At one point, Mary Pat and Donna were thick as thieves, but that was before their lives curved in different directions and Mary Pat ended up raising two kids in the projects while Donna Shea (née Dougherty) married a marine, traveled the world, and then came back when said marine got fragged by his own guys in a place called Binh Thúy. Donna came back childless, moved in with her senile mother, and looked to be staring at a long slow decline to her own senility when she hooked up with Brian Shea instead and changed the whole course of her life. Her mother died, Brian got bumped up to second in command of the Butler crew, they moved into a townhouse on Telegraph Hill, and Brian bought her a two-toned Mercury Capri right off the lot. No kids, no pets, no struggle. Donna Shea hit the trifecta. All she has to worry about now are canceled nail appointments and any unexplained lumps on her chest.

Donna looks at Mary Pat from the other side of the threshold and says, “What can I do for you?”

As if Mary Pat knocked on her door selling term life.

“Hey,” Mary Pat says. “How you doing?”

“I’m okay.” Donna looks bored. Glances over Mary Pat’s shoulder at the street. “What’s up?”

“I’m looking for Brian.”

“He ain’t here.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Why do you want to know where my husband is?”

“He was looking into something for me.”

“What?”

“Where my daughter might be. She’s been missing since the night before last.”

“What’s that gotta do with him?”

“He offered to look into it.”

“So wait for his answer.”

“He said he’d get back to me by five tonight.”

“Well, he ain’t here.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“So.”

“So.”

“I just...”

“What?”

“I’m just trying to find my daughter, Donna.”

“So, find her.”

“I’m trying,” though what she wants to say/scream is Why are you being such an asshole? She can’t think of anything more to say, so she turns and walks down the steps.

“Mary Pat,” Donna says softly.

Mary Pat looks up the stairs at her. “What?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with me.”

She invites Mary Pat into her home.

“I have no idea why I’m not happy,” Donna says after she gets them each a beer. “But I’m not. I mean, I got everything. Right? Look at this place. Brian’s a good guy, a good dresser too. He takes care of me. He’s never hit me. Can’t remember a time he even yelled at me. So what’s not to be happy about?” She waves her arm at the dining room. The china cabinet as big as a butcher’s freezer, the chandelier above them so enormous its shadows drizzle down the walls like vines, the table they’re sitting at parquet-top with seating for twelve. She says it again: “Why am I not happy?”

“How the fuck would I know?” Mary Pat says with an uncomfortable laugh.

Donna sucks on a cigarette. “You’re right. You’re right, you’re right, you’re right.”

“I don’t know if I’m that right,” Mary Pat says. “I just don’t know why you’re not happy.”

“I’m getting laid good,” Donna says. “I’m taken care of. He buys me anything I want.”

Mary Pat looks at the antique grandfather clock standing in the corner of the room: eight-twenty. Almost three and a half hours past Brian Shea’s promised deadline.

“Donna,” she says, “I can’t find Jules. And Brian promised to look into it. So I need to find him.”

“You don’t wanna fuck him?”

“No, I don’t wanna fuck him.”

“Why not?”

“Because I fucked him in high school and it wasn’t that great.”

Donna turns the color of boiled potato — a translucent white. Her eyes grow to the size of baseballs. “You fucked my Brian?”

“In high school.”

“My Brian?”

“He wasn’t yours then.”

“We were friends then.”

“Yeah.”

She stubs out her cigarette, her eyes never leaving Mary Pat’s. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Cuz you had a crush on him.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“But I was going with Mike Atardo.”

“Right. But crushing on Brian.”

“I never told you that.”

“But I knew.”

“So you fucked the guy you knew I had a crush on?”

“I was drunk. So was he.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“And where was I?”

“At Castle Island with Mike Atardo.”

She shrieks. “The night I lost my cherry?”

“Yup.”

Donna shrieks again. And so does Mary Pat. It feels good for a moment to remember who they were before they again have to sit with who they are.

After a few soft chuckles, Donna says, “Oh, shit, Mary Pat, what the fuck? How did we get here?”

“Where?”

“Here. Where we’re practically strangers. We used to be friends.”

“You left.”

“I did.”

“Lived in Japan.”

“Ugh.”

“Germany.”

“Worse.”

“Hawaii, I heard.”

Donna lights another cigarette. “That was nice.”

“I’m sorry your husband died.”

“I’m sorry yours did.”

“No, he just left me.”

Donna shakes her head. “The first one. Dukie?”

“Oh, right.” Mary Pat nods. “That was a long time ago.”

“Still gotta hurt.”

“He hit me a lot.”

“Oh. What about the second one?”

“Never. He was a gent.”

“But he left you.”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

It takes Mary Pat so long to speak that by the time she finally does, Donna’s finished her cigarette and the light in the room has changed.

“I embarrassed him.”

“How?”

“I dunno.”

“Your hair?”

I have bad hair?

“Your face? Your tits? Your... what?”

“My hate.” Mary Pat lights a cigarette of her own.

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either.” Mary Pat exhales a long stream of smoke. “But that’s what he said the day he left. He said, ‘Your hate embarrasses me.’”

Donna snorts. “Sounds full of himself.”

“He is that.”

“So fuck him. And, like, what, he don’t hate nothing? He’s a fucking saint?”

“Exactly.”

“You’re lucky to be rid of him.”

“Eh.”

“No?”

“I’m alone. I’m fucking forty-two.”

“You’ll meet a guy.”

“I liked him.”

“A better guy.”

Mary Pat shrugs.

“You will.”

“I might meet a guy who’s better for me, maybe, but I’ll never meet a better guy.”

They sit in silence for a bit. The house feels too large and cold — even in the middle of a heat wave — for Mary Pat to imagine joy occurring here. If she felt envy for Donna coming through the door, she doubts she’ll still feel it by the time she leaves.

“Why are you wasting time with Brian?” Donna says abruptly. “Why don’t you go right to the source?”

“Marty?”

“No. The source. Jules’s boyfriend.”

“I went to Rum twice. I kinda beat the fuck out of him the second time. I don’t know if he’ll be, uh, forthcoming from now on.”

“Rum isn’t Jules’s boyfriend.”

“What?

“Mary Pat, come on, you know.”

“I don’t.”

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Fuck me. Shit.” Donna turns a shade of white so pale it makes her pink lips appear scarlet.

Mary Pat watches her the way you watch a pot that’s about to boil over. “Who is Jules’s boyfriend, Donna?”

They listen to that big clock tick for a bit. The room picks up new shadows. Dry leaves scrape along the sidewalk outside.

“She’s with Frank.”

“Frank who?”

“Frank-are-you-fucking-kidding-me. Who do you think?”

Mary Pat doesn’t even want to say his name. “Frank Toomey?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Tombstone Frankie?”

“Yes.”

Frankie Toomey is married with four kids. His devotion to his family has long been considered his most redeeming quality outside of his good looks and his beautiful singing voice. (And he is good-looking, movie-star level; his resemblance to James Garner is noticeable.) More than his looks, he’s got charisma to burn, but he only uses it on the kids of the neighborhood. Buys them candy, ice cream, slips the really poor ones a few extra bucks to “help out your ma.” It’s Frankie, not Marty, the boys want to grow up to be. And Frankie, not Marty, the girls want to grow up to be with, apparently. He walks the streets like he doesn’t just own them; he built them. He calls out to everyone by name and has a hearty laugh that carries for blocks. That’s the Frank Toomey all kids grow up seeing.

The adults know he’s called Tombstone because he has more bodies on his résumé than the local chapter of the Hells Angels. When he’s not killing for the Irish, he’s loaned out to the Italians. During the McLaughlin war in the early ’60s, Frankie whacked so many guys that when Al Coogan, a barber, saw Frankie approach his shop, he ran into traffic to escape him and ended up shattering a hip. Turned out Frankie just wanted a haircut.

“My daughter?” Mary Pat whispers.

Donna looks pained. “I thought you knew. Everyone knew.”

“Who’s everyone?”

“You know. Everyone.”

“But me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you, though?”

“Sorry? Yeah. It’s like, when we’re in Marty’s world, Brian’s world, we only live there. Only spend time with each other. Only know what we know.”

“But what you knew is that Frankie Toomey was seeing my Jules, a girl seven years younger than half his age.”

“Yeah.”

“And that was okay?”

They hold each other’s gaze and time falls away, and the girls they were once could maybe, just maybe, become the angels on the shoulders of the women they are now.

But Donna’s eyes grow distant. “I’m no one’s keeper, Mary Pat.”

“You’re the second person to say that to me this week.” Mary Pat stands. “You know, we always say we stand for things here. We might not have much, but we have the neighborhood. We got a code. We watch out for one another.” She flicks her fingers and overturns her beer can. She watches it flow across Donna Shea’s parquet table. “What a crock of shit.”

She lets herself out as Donna runs to get the dish towels.