Inside the O'Briens

by Lisa Genova

  Maybe he’s getting too old for this shit. He’s one of the oldest officers here. He’s forty-three and feels every year of it lately. Never a slender man to begin with, Joe’s probably carrying an extra twenty pounds around his middle, his protruding gut the likely cause of his chronically aching back. He makes unattractive old-man noises, grunting and groaning when he gets out of bed in the morning and whenever he goes to stand after sitting for too long. He’d like to think he could still do twenty consecutive pull-ups and beat JJ in an arm wrestle, but he wouldn’t put money on it.

  Most of the guys here are in their twenties or thirties. This job is for the young. But Tommy isn’t having a problem. Jonesie and Quaranto are older. Who is he kidding? This can’t be about age or strength. He’s being ordered to keep the fuck still, not to do twenty pull-ups. Then what is it?

  He shrugs.

  “Jesus Christ, OB,” someone mutters.

  The acoustics in this cavernous hangar are awful, distorting pitch and amplitude, causing every sound to echo, but he’s pretty sure that was Tommy. This has to stop. Joe tries to take a deep breath through his mouth, but his chest is a concrete wall, his lungs a couple of bricks. He’s breathing like a panicked gerbil. Sweat is pouring off his nose. His head is baking beneath his helmet. That fuckin’ tag.

  He shrugs.

  Joe declares war on himself. He clenches his hands so hard that he can actually feel the length of his veins straining in his forearms. He clamps his jaw, flexes his ass and his quads, tightens his stomach, and envisions a fifty-pound sandbag sitting atop each shoulder. His heart races, his head is boiling in sweat, and he doesn’t breathe.

  His shoulders shrug. He jostles against the guys on either side of him.

  Mother of God. Joe closes his eyes. He can hear his heartbeat throbbing in his red-hot ears. The guy breathing behind him. Cars whizzing by outside. Pigeons cooing in the rafters. Joe unclamps his teeth. He listens to the manic rhythm of his heartbeat in his ears and coaxes it to slow down. He relaxes his face, softens his stomach, his back, his legs. He sips in a breath of air and then another. He listens and breathes and waits. His shoulders stay put. His feet remain planted. He listens and breathes and waits. His shoulders stay. They stay. Please stay. Stay.

  Sergeant Ferolito calls the next drill.

  CHAPTER 6

  The tasty smell of fried peppers and onions wafts over from the sausage cart on the corner, and Joe wants another sub. He’s not particularly hungry, but he’s bored, and that tangy, sweet aroma is undeniably alluring. Intoxicating. He inhales, and his mouth waters. He inhales, and every thought in his head becomes saturated in greasy onions. Women should forget about those fancy, expensive perfumes that all smell like some old lady’s garden. They should dot their wrists and necks with drippings from Artie’s Famous Sausages. Men would be all over them.

  It’s now almost ten, and Joe, Tommy, and Fitzie have been standing together at their post on Lansdowne Street in the shadow of Fenway since four thirty. There’s nowhere to sit, nothing to read, nothing to do but stand, wait for the game to end, and imagine what’s going on inside the ballpark. It’s worse than standing in the women’s intimates department at Macy’s, waiting for Rosie while she’s in the dressing room trying on a bra or some other piece of clothing Joe is too embarrassed to imagine in public. This is taking forever.

  Using their cell phones while on duty is frowned upon, but they all sneak it. Fitzie pulls his from his chest pocket and reads a text.

  “Shit.”

  “Whaddaya got?” asks Joe.

  “Cardinals up, one nothin’.”

  “What inning?” asks Tommy.

  “Toppa the fourth.”

  “Okay, okay,” says Tommy. “Still plenty of time.”

  Joe nods and prays to his Pedroia shirt. He sways back and forth on his feet, alternating his full weight between them for a moment, then rolls heel to toe. He’s been standing for over five hours straight, and his feet are begging him for any relief he can offer.

  “You’re like a friggin’ Weeble Wobble over there,” says Tommy. “Will you stay still? You’re makin’ me nervous.”

  “Sorry, man; my feet kill,” says Joe.

  Fitzie nods. They’ve all been on duty since seven thirty this morning.

  “I’m ready for my couch,” says Fitzie.

  “And a cold beer,” says Joe.

  They all nod. Joe imagines the first few minutes of being home tonight, the gratifying relief of finally pulling his exhausted feet out of his tight, heavy boots, the clean scent of citrus as he pushes a wedge of lime down the glass neck of a Corona, the sweet, cold, beautiful taste of it. Lying down on the couch. A soft pillow beneath his head. Highlights from the game on the TV.

  Joe’s reverie is broken when he catches the pointed look on Tommy’s face, clearly not imagining a couch or a cold beer. Tommy’s stroking the bare skin above his lip, studying Joe.

  “You and Rosie taking any vacation time soon?” asks Tommy.

  “Nah, nothing on the calendar. How ’bout you and Amy?”

  “Just up to New Hampshire to see her folks.”

  Joe nods.

  “You hear Ronnie talking about that cruise he’s going on?” asks Tommy.

  “Yeah, sounds real nice.”

  “Yeah,” says Tommy, thinking something over. “Everything okay with you, man?”

  “Me? Yeah, I just want to get off my friggin’ feet.”

  Tommy pauses, watching Joe. Joe’s lifting and dropping his heels, stepping side to side. He knows he’s bugging the shit out of Tommy with all his moving around, but he can’t help it.

  Beer. Couch. Soon.

  “What was with you this morning at riot training?” asks Tommy.

  “I dunno,” says Joe, shaking his head. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

  Tommy pinches his lips together. “I hear ya. I’m gonna go get another heart attack sub. You hungry?”

  “No, but I’ll have one.”

  After Tommy turns the corner onto Brookline Avenue, a mammoth roar erupts from the ballpark.

  “Yes!” says Fitzie to his phone.

  “What happened?” asks Joe.

  “Big Papi hit a two-run homah, knocked Pedroia in. Sox up two–one.”

  “Yes!” says Joe, thanking his shirt. “What inning?”

  “Bottom of the sixth.”

  Joe feels like a kid, hooting and high-fiving Fitzie despite the bone-compressing agony in his back and feet. Good. Joe hopes that he never loses the little boy inside him, that naive spirit who will always root for the Red Sox to win, whose cheering will always drown out the miserable complaining of Joe’s old-man feet. A win for the Sox is a win for the good guys. It’s Superman defeating Lex Luthor, Rocky knocking out Apollo Creed.

  After being gone for what seems like ages, Tommy returns with three hot dog buns overstuffed with sausage, peppers, and onions, steaming and dripping with grease, and Fitzie tells him about the homer. Joe consumes his sub in four uninterrupted, brutish bites and immediately regrets not going slower. He should’ve savored it. He inhales deeply through his nose while eyeing Fitzie’s sub, only half-gone, and feels the hot pang of jealous desire mixed with a pinch of indigestion.

  Fitzie licks the grease from his fingers and pulls out his phone. “Fuck.”

  “What is it?” asks Joe, wiping his hands on his pants.

  “Buncha friggin’ wild throws. Cardinals up four–two.”

  “What inning?”

  “Toppa the seventh.”

  “Shit,” says Tommy. “Come on, two more runs.”

  “My feet can’t take extra innings,” says Joe.

  Five years ago, he would’ve said “heart” instead of “feet.”

  “We’re still in this,” says Tommy.

  No more runs go on the board that inn
ing. Joe hears the distant karaoke of thirty-seven thousand people singing “Sweet Caroline.” The words fade out and then gallop back with the chorus. “So good! So good! So good!” Joe sings in a murmur along with them, feeling happier and less excluded as he does so.

  Almost done. Aside from the cops and street vendors, no one is outside now. Everyone is either in the ballpark or in the bars, glued to the tight game. If the Sox lose, the Series will be tied up. The fans will spill out of the park and the bars hanging their heads, disappointed and a little heartbroken, but they probably won’t do anything to land a starring role on the late-night news. Boston sports fans are passionate and loyal and a touch crazy, but they’re surprisingly nonviolent. Boston doesn’t see the kinds of riots other cities suffer after their beloved team loses. Everyone will likely want to walk it off, go home, and go to bed. It’s still early in the Series, only Game 2, still plenty of time. Sox fans want to live to tell their grandkids the wicked-awesome story of how they won as much as they want to win, so a loss tonight isn’t the end of the world. There won’t be any flipped cars, smashed windows, looting, or rioting.

  Unless they win. While Bostonians tend to be quiet, humble losers, they don’t always display their most gracious, flattering side when their team wins a big game. Joe thanks God that tonight isn’t a Saturday. With Saturday games, people drink all day and plan to sleep in on Sunday. When the Sox win a postseason game on a Saturday, everyone is typically fifty shades of drunk, gloating and looking for either a party or trouble, and it’s a long night of crowd control for the Boston Police.

  But tonight is Thursday night. Everyone who has a job has work in the morning. The kids have school. Win or lose tonight, the Sox will go on to play Game 3 in St. Louis. Most everyone will be looking to go home as quickly as possible when this is over. Joe hopes.

  He wiggles each aching foot and does a few deep knee bends. His shoulders shrug, like earlier, but instead of fighting it, Joe uses the opportunity to stretch one arm above his head and then the other. He scratches his head. He twists his torso side to side, trying to take the vertical pressure off his spine, even for a second, and groans. His back isn’t any happier than his feet.

  “Hey, Jane Fonda,” says Fitzie, reading his phone. “Bottom of the ninth. Still four–two. Two outs.”

  Joe closes his eyes, prays to God and his lucky shirt, and knocks on his service baton, wishing for the Sox to win. The street is eerily quiet, as if all of Boston is holding its breath.

  “Just struck out Nava,” says Fitzie. “Game over.”

  They all hang their heads and say nothing, a solemn moment of silence before they have to get to work. It takes only a handful of minutes for the sold-out crowd to begin pouring out of Fenway. The police have already blocked all side streets with barricades, creating a narrow channel banked by officers. The goal is to disperse the crowd and herd everyone out of the city. Soon, thousands of people are walking past Joe, all in the same direction. It’s a fast-moving river with only one way for the fish to swim.

  A young boy, probably around six, meets Joe’s eyes as he passes by on his father’s shoulders. Joe nods and smiles. The boy’s eyes widen, startled, as if he never expected Joe to move, as if Joe had been a statue that suddenly animated. The boy then slumps his shoulders and turns his face away, resting it on the top of his dad’s head. The father is holding his boy’s leg with one hand and his wife’s hand with the other.

  Family after family inches by, and Joe regrets that he didn’t get to spend more time like this with Rosie and his kids when they were young. In twelve years, he’ll be retired. JJ and Colleen should have a few kids by then. Joe knocks three times on his baton. The girls will hopefully be married with kids, too. He knocks again, once more for Rosie.

  It worries Rosie that the girls are so unsettled, dancing and Downward-Dogging without a steady boyfriend, not even a prospect for marriage in sight. Both the yoga and dance worlds are predominantly populated by women. It seems that the few eligible men who are in the ballet company are gay or from Eastern Europe, owning last names Rosie can’t even spell, and the yoga students who aren’t women are Toonies. Rosie’s long-held assumption that her daughters would someday marry nice Irish Catholic boys from the neighborhood is growing more and more far-fetched, absurd even. As long as they eventually marry someone. And he isn’t a Protestant.

  In twelve years, Patrick might even be settled or at least living somewhere else. Hopefully all of Patrick’s progeny will be legitimate.

  Retirement and grandchildren. He’ll be fifty-five, still plenty young enough to enjoy kids. He’ll take them to Fenway and spoil the hell out of them.

  Lansdowne is now empty but for a handful of dumb fish who resisted the current. Six college-age boys remain in the middle of the street. Joe gathers from three of the T-shirts and two of the hats that they go to Boston College. They’re all drunk, laughing and hawking spit, being loud and moronic. Probably not BC’s best and brightest.

  The street is lined shoulder-to-shoulder with cops who’ve been standing for seven hours straight, all desperate to go home, and these six idiots are in the way of that happening. Joe sighs, knowing that their minutes are numbered, wishing they’d save everyone the time and trouble and beat it now. Joe and his fellow officers will give the boys only a touch longer to celebrate, to sober up a bit. There are no more beers to be had in the middle of the street, and no bathrooms. Even Artie’s sausage cart is gone by now. There’s nothing interesting going on here. Maybe they’ll leave of their own accord. Joe knows they won’t.

  At last, Jonesie steps out of formation, into the street. It’s finally time to nudge things along. The night will now end one of three ways—full cooperation, the paddy wagon, or an ambulance.

  Jonesie is a six-foot-four grizzly bear of a guy who grew up in a tough section of Roxbury. He saunters into the middle of the street and approaches the biggest of the six boys, probably only five feet ten. He’s wearing a preppie striped golf shirt, jeans, and boat shoes.

  “Game’s over, boys,” says Jonesie. “Time to call it a night.”

  “We have a right to stay here if we want to,” says one of the other, shorter kids.

  “Come on now,” says Jonesie. “Everyone went home. Time to wrap it up here.”

  “It’s a free country,” says the redhead, the most visibly drunk of the crew.

  The kid standing nose-to-nose with Jonesie stiffens his posture and stares straight into Jonesie’s eyes. He ain’t budging. Jonesie adjusts his stance a bit wider and leans in real close to the kid’s face.

  “Listen, Chester,” says Jonesie. “You and your pals need to go on home. Now.”

  Maybe it’s because Jonesie invaded the kid’s personal space, maybe it’s a matter of alpha male pride, maybe it’s because Jones­ie spit out his t’s and p’s, maybe it’s because he called the kid Chester. Joe never knows for sure what exactly trips the trigger, but he and every other cop watching this scene knew Chester would bite the bait. Chester takes a swing at Jonesie, and Jonesie easily dodges the blow. He then grabs Chester by the arm, turns and pins him stomach down to the ground, and cuffs him.

  Joe and ten other officers march into the street in a wedge formation, heading directly toward the remaining kids with an intimidating suggestion of force.

  “This ain’t campus security, boys,” says Tommy. “This is Boston PD. Unless the rest of you want to join Chester down at the station, I suggest you go home right now.”

  The boys hesitate for half a second and then, like a flock of birds who decide to take flight in unison, they wordlessly abandon Chester and scurry down Lansdowne, out of town. Good boys. Joe smiles and checks his watch. Time to go home.

  IT’S JUST AFTER midnight when Joe parallel parks his car on Cook Street. His good mood dials up a notch as he appreciates this small but significant victory. Parking in Charlestown can be a nightmare. It’s practically routine to “
get home” only to spend the next half hour hunting for a spot that will invariably be six blocks away and at the bottom of the hill. And then it starts raining. But not tonight. Tonight Joe found a space first try in full view of his house.

  He steps out of the car, and every muscle in his body screams in protest. No more standing! He pushes the heels of his hands against his lower back, forcing his torso vertical. It takes considerable effort. He feels as if he’s aged thirty years in one night, as if he’s the Tin Man and every joint in his body could use an injection of WD-40. And nothing can save his poor feet.

  As he approaches his front door, he’s surprised to notice the windows glowing amber yellow behind the drawn shades. The living room light is on. He checks his watch again, even though he knows the time. Patrick is still bartending at Ironsides. Rosie’s a morning person and usually can’t last past ten, but sometimes she has insomnia. Sometimes Joe will come home at midnight to find her ironing. Rosie irons everything—­clothes, underwear, sheets, towels, doilies, and every so often the lace curtains. The ironing board is a permanent fixture in the living room, as much a part of the decor as Joe’s chair and Yaz’s dog bed. If she’s not ironing, she’s lying on the couch, snuggled under a blanket, watching QVC or Oprah. Rosie has at least ten years of The Oprah Winfrey Show recorded on VHS tapes. Sometimes she’s asleep in that same scenario, the TV light flickering on her angelic face. But the light in the living room windows isn’t flickering. The overhead light is on.

  Joe turns the cold brass knob of the front door and pushes it open. The foyer light illuminates the bottom steps of the stairwell leading to the second- and third-floor units, but aside from that, the front of the house is dark and quiet. Joe closes the door, turns the deadbolt, and tosses his keys onto the small wooden table to the left of the door. They land at the feet of the Virgin Mary.